Humanyms

When I switched from home phone to cell, I forgot I wasn’t tethered and could walk. Now that I’m back to tether I forget and pull (or almost drag) the phone off the desk. (not too often but meh, just another of the wonders of living inside my forgetful skin.)

Likewise, I forget that my laptop isn’t attached to the desk. I can work anywhere if I want. This is kind of like mo-blogging but with full computer. Sunny café. What feels like summer. Free wifi. Sauna heat. A spider is trying to tie the table to the corner of the building across the walkway. Light catches the web, but it isn’t pulled away by wind.

And an empty olive can just rolled past. (That doesn’t happen at home.) And a sandwich board just blew over (for 3rd time) and chair flipped over. Bit windy out here.

Technically that isn’t the sky today. I am equipped with camera so I could take a photo here but the sky was prettier then. (No offense, sky.)

Vid Link: human rights leader Hawa Aden Mohamed is profiled for the good she’s doing in Somalia. [via The Hub: See it, film it, change it]

YouTube Link: Wrestler Kyle Maynard interviewed [ via Mental Floss]

Poetry Links: Fiona Benson’s poem on being alone in a garden center and this Jim Carruth life report poem of a farmer telling how to treat sheep too. [at the Scottish Poetry Library] [via Barbara] and Dani Couture reading Good Meat has such a lovely voice and cadence that she may read me the phone book anytime.

Quote: “It seems to matter/I use a Zippo, /not the taper’s monkish flame.[...] but what’s not authentic at the Virgin’s feet?/She knows I am not a bad person, just troubled./She knows the wick is burning.” – Frances Leviston

P.S. Probably my last post for a couple/few days. Seem to have tipped into both busy elsewhere and externally motivated for blogging. Need to reset focus.

Yesterday was dad’s 81st birthday. From the birthday visit, more pics from the trip…

Washboard, stomach not included. Liked the light coming in under the desk.

Brian and dad had a tailgate chat under the shade of the new shed/lean-to. Nearby volunteer potato and tomato plants in the dappled sun were lightly knocked by the toad coming thru. Already the first maples are starting to turn red.

The hydro pole has had no wires so long as I’ve been alive. The marks going up it seem less than I remember. When I was little I found dad’s old climbing spurs. I used to eye them and hear how he went up the poles and be told, don’t even think about doing that.

I settled for climbing trees, and up in haylofts and walking along roofs and climbing out the bedroom window for wee hours walks thru the forest and along the country roads.

If I went out the door the squeak in the floor would have caught me. As it was, as my mom loves to tell, a kind officer brought me home in the squad car. (But only once in those dozens, hundreds? of walks.)

The officer had informed me that it would make him worry too much to leave me out there walking at 2 a.m. and he’d have to bring me home to my parents for his comfort. He phrased it so nicely. My dad woke up bleary at a knock at an ungodly hour and had a baseball bat behind his back when the officer presented me. I really think letting me just walk back home and sneak back in the window would have been far less fuss and concern for all involved.

Ah, the stories Hub has to endure. I don’t think he minds really, he who is the miracle-maker-resetter-of-mom’s-clocks, the repairer-of-cupboard-and-what-have-you.

Blog Link: Cat adorableness slays

Tool Link:

The Polar Clock as widget or screen saver is visual clock so the point you are in the day, week, month, year are all in a graphic glance.

Quote: “Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee and I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.” – Robert Frost

Down the rabbit hole of another day. Better than being buried I suppose. :p

Glad to have picked up a book on typography that was set out on a table with a free sign in front of someone’s lawn. Random walking paths reward.

Glad to be done a poem a day. The process may be good but if I want to send out into a void, I already have ample avenues for that.

Glad for a sunny day. Glad that gets squeezed in before autumn comes in full.
Not a cloud.

Thinning papers is for the good, regardless of outcomes. And that scrap of paper that I remember months ago pausing over before chucking it, assuming I had it on hard disk or with the rest in the series? Any reconstruction from memory improves, right?

Glad to see so many new books coming out.

The IV Lounge series may be canned (to resurface date tba) but at least there’s the I.V. Lounge Nights anthology. Haven’t had a chance but to flip thru yet but it does have the Rob Winger piece that satirizes nature poems and what is mandated by habit to knowingly overlook. I loved hearing that in person. Now I have a copy. It’s already worthwhile.

Glad I didn’t restock on chocolate. Good decision. Cold turkey is good with chocolate to reset the system.

Glad for the ease of drinking at home. Unboiled barely-colored-water tea, lukewarm water or juice watered down by 1/2 or 2/3 to make it palatable rather than saccharine.

The Writers Fest is coming.

What would make an old scar rise? It’s not usually visible. A few minutes later it has flattened again, white fading back to skin-tone. Peculiarity of one exact phase of circulation?

Cow tracks and earthworm trails plod over sand.

The Incredible Country Hardware Store Catalogue is like a visual dictionary. Sure, I don’t need to know what spacing of high tensile wire I need to keep sheep in and predators out as versus keeping cows in. Or that 40 acres takes 1 mile, 320 rods or 16 rolls of wire to enclose with a wire fence. But what if in the wee hours I suddenly need to know what the name of a piece of horse tack is. It’s at hand. Or brands of injectable iron for pigs – which reminds me…

A neighbour (my parents swear this is not a shaggy dog tale) had pigs that were doing poorly. His neighbour told him they were likely low on iron. Get some and that would fix them up. The man put scrap iron parts in the trough for them to gnaw. (Preserve us from Hobby Farmers.)

Quote: “Progress always involves risk; you can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first.” – Frederick Wilcox

Ottawa has a baseball team. Who knew? At least a few thousand, apparently. And Ottawa had its first baseball team in 1898 in the Eastern League.

Ottawa Rapidz have been filling the gap the Lynx left since February 08. An entertaining game with a lot of quick bursts of action.

Today was the last game of regular season. They played against the Tornadoes of Worcester, Massachusetts.

The ball boy ran more than anyone in the game, except for maybe the 7 cheerleaders.

They did cheers, threw fan appreciation objects…You may already know this but baseball is quite a lot like hockey. There were draws for movie tickets, kids brought out to do contests…TV generation distraction every downtime minute with songs or audience being told to jump and cheer or else they won’t be thrown shirts, baseball caps, frisbees, ice cream, candies, more shirts.

There was no air cannon to shoot hot dogs that I saw tho. And no zamboni. Just little hand brushing now and then.

I’m not saying I didn’t like – just that sports is a foreign country to do cultural enrichment and immersion in.

The more the guys behind us drank, the poorer the teams played. Funny how that is. Although apparently one of the guy’s gramma is quite a cracker at the bat.

For a while a little bird sat on the back wire. It in the focus foreground would have been a good shot. But it was waaaay over there. While the girls did a dance routine, the lady selling 50/50 tickets joined in up in the stands. (The 50/50 incidentally raised $5000 for CHEO.)

There was a collision of back catcher and player. Ottawa’s the one in the blue. Who crash-landed I think was #9 who got a booing later. Jose de los Santos of Ottawa seemed to be a crowd favorite. People liked to chant his name and of team pitching coach Mike.

Seems like a good way to spend an afternoon. An hour cycling time and 3 hours at stadium. Gorgeous day to be outside and probably watch enough of this I’d get a better idea of what’s going on. It’s hard not to cheer for both teams tho. A good move is a good move.

Links: Eaten Up has the food angle. Serious Eats covers regional hot dog styles. Elsewhere, unrelatedly, Doug is a fixture. Ahhh xkcd.

Quote: “No man should advocate a course in private that he’s ashamed to admit in public.” – George Mcgovern

Mimi passed the purse or wallet meme to Rollie.

Apparently purses for girls and wallets for guys to explain. Pah, I’ll do both. If you want more bag-peeking Shawna Lamay is still going with the Capacious Purse Project. And before I get into it

Photo Link: age maps – Bobby Neel Adams has put half of the face of person as child beside current later adult, senior half face, adjusted for size. Disconcerting. The photograpaher has done the same half-person technique but with couples.

Now, bag…

Bag is down to 4 pens, and up to 2 notebooks because the end is near for one. (Ending a notebook becomes exponentially slower. As a notebook fills, and whatever I need has been transcribed from earlier pages, I go back over and fill the white spaces with a different color of pen jottings.)

2 sets of keys (if I drive or if I cycle), frequent tea card, change, 3 cent stamp, strappy thing for pant leg when cycling, pain medicine (still not convinced it isn’t placebo but sometimes that’s enough of a notch change to work), wallet, comb, moo cards (only 3 left. might need more.), 30 SPF sunscreen (because I burn as fast as a rocket in reentry), camera and charger, postcards received and one outgoing (August’s poem postcard a day project), address book, map of Quebec for roadtrip (pictured below) and a sheep (need toys) and antique porcelain door knob which I don’t always travel with. I might lose it. Perish the thought.

1. Describe the contents. (done)
2. What’s the most important thing in there? (That knob, oddly enough. I’ve had it for 25 years or so. Lovely shape and hand feel.)
3. What’s the most embarrassing? (nothing)
4. What’s the smallest ? (I’m sure you can work that out yourself.)
5. Is there anything illegal in there? (It’s never a matter of the thing, but the devious use.)
Bonus: I dare you to find a story in the pile.

Wallet’s collection of receipts (aka scrap paper), cash (rare to have that in person), stamps, stub from Fringe?, bluesfest ticket stub (shows how often I clean out this thing), points card (also doubled nicely for scraping flush the extra wood filler), cards, bus tickets (apparently the price went up again since I last bought), pen refill, picture of the Hub (at his sister’s wedding in 2001).

Story? Pictures rather than 1000 words. To expand on that map…

And that map up there led to here: Edelweiss Valley, Quebec

Gorgeous hills to fill moments with.

And this would be where I tried to get cornflowers in foreground and forgot those are tall grasses and slid down into the ditch to my shoulder blades, feet in the water at the bottom and laughing too hard to go right back up the steep bank.

The guy with the monkey on truck noticed my camera and was giving peace signs and thumbs up.

Critical Mass is a pro-cycling awareness raising anarchy ride (i.e. anarchy as grass-roots spontaneous consensus of individuals, not hierarchically led and not corporate). Critical Mass events have been happening since 1992 in San Francisco and has spread to about 20 countries.

There were cheers of “we don’t block traffic, we are traffic!” and thank yous called out to all cars who give space and pause, and one person called “gasholes!” to those who crowd and rev engines to squeal past. Some people fell into place to watch intersections to make sure between stragglers keep up and people call out opinions on route or remind to stop for red lights.

An interesting experience. Makes me see the logic and pleasure of those packs of long distance cyclers. It’s like being in a flock of sparrows. The sense of vulnerability when cycling alone of being picked off by clueless drivers isn’t there. (Sometimes you don’t know you feel on edge until you experience the contrast of feeling safe.) It’s not like a bubble of no-talk car or no-talk walk. Conversations fall in, fall away fluidly. People change pace and end up alongside then not, then back but the whole group stays together. It’s not like the bike paths when rollerbladers take full-width of path with their strokes and walkers are there to do random things. It’s not like bike lanes where cars cross them anyway. Cycling, while usually relaxing, is more relaxing.

There’s no set route on the monthly rides but that time part of it went into Gatineau Quebec along a scenic bit of the river as well.

Quote: “My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.” – Charles F. Kettering