August 2008

Hold On Tight.

The week is flying by at an incredible rate. Earl and I just got back from another trip to Syracuse, where we saw my sister, brother-in-law and the two boys (Dave’s first son and the new little guy). He is doing splendidly for being three weeks early, but his mum and dad haven’t had much time to sleep in the hospital this week. Apparently people are in and out of the room on a 24 hour basis so they catch little catnaps here and there. I think Jennifer might be discharged early tomorrow or Friday.

I’ve been keeping busy taking care of Earl, who had to have a tooth pulled instead of the planned root canal yesterday and trying to keep peace between the cats. Tom doesn’t like having another cat in the house and Xena, Jennifer’s cat, doesn’t acclimate well to a change in her surroundings. She buries herself between the covers on the spare bed and hisses at things. A bird will fly by the window, she hisses. The phone ring, she hisses. We try to make the bed and she throws a damn hissy fit. The only time she isn’t hissing is when she’s eating a treat I gave her. Instead she growls between swallows. She refuses to come out of the bedroom, so she has a litter box, food, water and familiar toys in there. Does she bat playfully at the toys? No. She wedges herself behind the computer and hisses.

I have no idea what to do to get her to calm down. I guess it’ll just take time.

Meanwhile, we are going to have a selection of houseguests for the next month or so. This should all be very interesting.

Well hello Little Man.

Earl and I were driving home from Toronto along the QEW. It was around 1 p.m. that a very special call came from my aunt.

“You’re an uncle. He weighs 6 lbs and 13 ounces and he’s healthy. Your sister is doing very well.”

Mom and Jennifer had said yesterday that they were heading to the hospital. My sister said there was no reason to come home from Toronto early, so we didn’t. The Little Guy was due on the 9th of September. He decided to do things his way and make his grand entrance on the 18th of August instead.

Earl and I stopped at the hospital on our way through Syracuse and visited with my sister and the little guy’s grandparents. I got to hold him for a while. My life changed a little bit at that moment. He looks like his Dad with some of my sister’s touches and was sleeping peacefully as he laid in my arms.

We planned our trip to Toronto early in my sister’s stay at our house figuring she had a few weeks left before she would be heading to the hospital. I guess the Little Guy had different plans for us all.

Oakville, Ontario.

In an odd twist of irony Earl and I are spending the night at my sister and brother in law’s house outside of Toronto tonight whilst she is spending the night at our house in the states. Earl and I are in Toronto for the weekend.

It should be a very intriguing weekend. We are looking forward to meeting up with some friends.

Tick Tock.

When a first-time visitor arrives at our house it usually only takes a few minutes for them to notice a “click-click” sound in the background household noises once a minute. That’s when I show them my collection of school clocks wired throughout the house.

I don’t talk about my clock collection very much here but I have a collection of school clocks made by The Standard Electric Time Company. These are the type of clocks that were found in most classrooms throughout the 20th century and are characterized by that familiar click-click sound that advances the time each minute. Thousands of students have watched these clocks over the years, waiting for that minute hand to click to dismissal time.

I’ve been fascinated with these clocks since my first day of kindergarten. I remember sitting on the floor of Mrs. Mosher’s1 room in a big circle. Apparently we were waiting for a bell to ring to announce the start of the day. We watched the clock. It clicked, causing the hand to move backwards slightly, and then it clicked again. The minute hand landed on 9:10. A bell was heard and then the principal, Mr. Bellardini, welcomed us to school. The minute hand continued it’s trick throughout the day, stepping back slightly before moving on to the next minute. The really neat thing was that all the clocks in the school did it at the same time. It didn’t matter if the clock was round or square, had a speaker or not attached to it’s casing, all the clocks said the same time and marched ahead through the day in unison.

I found this very fascinating.

When Earl and I moved into our first house back in 1997 I decided that I wanted to start collecting these clocks and via the internet I found that there were others that shared the hobby as well. In fact, that’s how we met our friends Tim and Gordon in Cheyenne; Tim and I both share an interest in these clocks.

Some find it unusual that a high tech geek like me enjoys the simplicity of this system of clocks. The clocks in the house actually don’t keep in time; as slave clocks they just jump ahead via a magnet, some gears and a short electrical impulse from the master clock in the basement. Most of these systems were controlled by pendulum clocks that resembled industrial grandfather clocks. As progress, um, progressed, the pendulums were replaced by motors, and later, electronic circuit boards. The master clock in our house is from a hospital in Bennington, Vermont. It’s an electronic clock made by the same company, dating 1985. It doesn’t like thunderstorms and occasionally needs parts replaced. This is where the high-tech geek in me kicks in, I have the master clock wired to the internet so that it’s always in time with the atomic clock in Boulder.

I find it relaxing to work on my clocks. Some are nearly 100 years old and they continue to do as they were designed, move ahead once a minute as ordered by an electrical impulse. No two clocks in the house are alike but they are all made by The Standard Electric Time Company. I sometimes marvel at how many times that minute hand has jumped ahead each minute since the clock was built.

And time just keeps marching on.

1 Mrs. Mosher was the same teacher that told my parents that I was “mentally retarded” because I wouldn’t color between the lines and I jammed my papers into my book bag each day. Even back then I didn’t sweat the small stuff. I like to think she just didn’t get me. Later achievements (and multiple IQ tests) proved that she just didn’t know what to do with this little red headed gay boy.

Crack.

After work I treated myself to a little 100-calorie pack of chocolate chip cookies. They were delicious and hit the spot after a long day at work. Unfortunately, I also broke a tooth on one of the cookies. I now have a sharp piece of tooth on the tooth that has been declared a candidate for a root canal. I’m trying to hold out until my dental insurance returns in 60 days. I think I’ll be o.k., it doesn’t hurt me at all.

We didn’t make it to Saranac Thursday tonight as my sister drove in from Toronto to move in for a couple of months. She is in the ninth month of her pregnancy. Her husband is playing hockey in Switzerland this season. She and the baby will join him in Biel/Bienne in late October or early November.

Enjoy It!

A couple of weeks ago Earl and I ventured out on a Monday night to see “Mamma Mia”. We had seen the stage production a couple of years ago in Chicago, so we had a good idea of what to expect in the movie. We weren’t disappointed.

I think I blogged about this before, but the crowd in the theatre was having a grand time during the entire flick and it’s one of the few times that I’ve seen a theatre full on a Monday night. At the end of the movie much of the audience applauded. That’s always a good sign.

One of the things that bothers me a little bit is that I keep hearing all this negative stuff about the movie. “It wasn’t believable.” “The singing wasn’t stellar.” “The cinematography was awful.”

Listen. The movie was **fun**. Remember when we used to go to the movies to have fun? Going to the movies is a chance to escape from this drivel we call “reality”. Engaging yourself in a television show or a movie and disconnecting from the laws of society is a great way to escape. So what if Pierce Brosnan didn’t sing like some great opera star. Who cares if it’s unlikely you would see people running through a Greek resort singing. The movie was meant to be fun! It was a friggin’ campfest and that’s the way it was suppose to be!

I think one of the problems with American society is that we are taking ourselves WAAAAAAAAAY too seriously these days. People just don’t know how to have fun anymore. (I also think another problem is that people aren’t getting enough sex, but that’s a different blog entry).

Crimminy, lighten up people! After all, you can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life!

Here Comes The Rain Again.

We woke up to brilliantly sunny skies this morning. It is now lunch time and it is pouring once again. I haven’t been able to mow the lawn because the lawn mower would sink. It looks like the trend will continue.

Oh well, no sense in getting depressed over it. I think I’ll go park myself in a sunny corner of my mind and hum a bit. That will make people think I’m completely crazy.

I go for that at times.

Eat, Sleep, Work and Be Merry.

Tonight I am on call for the first time since returning to the Mr. Telephone Man gig. “Mr. Telephone Man” doesn’t really describe the gig that well anymore, since the telecommunications industry is now a mass of internets, tubes, wires, airwaves and assorted whatnot. (The whatnot usually occurs in the secret rooms deep within the basement of the telephone company).

The storms that have been blowing through for the past week have kept the department lively. So much for the dog days of summer. The weather has been so freakin’ freaky. Now I love me a good thunderstorm but it has been a constant rumble of thunder for the past 48 hours or so! I thought about mowing the lawn this evening but I didn’t know where to attach the water skis to the mower, so Earl and I opted to clean out the back bedroom closet in anticipation of my sister’s arrival. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that yet; my sister is expecting her first child in less than a month and since her hockey player husband will be playing in Switzerland this year and her hospital of choice is in the States (they live outside of Toronto), we’ve agreed to play host home for the next eight weeks or so while she has the baby and gets her footing with the little lad before heading to Switzerland to be with her hockey player husband.

When I first realised that I was on call tonight I was exceedingly tense. Earl was rolling his eyes not 15 minutes into the whole affair. It was then that I realised that it’s not worth the aggravation nor household stress so I decided to just roll with the punches and picture myself rolling in overtime dollars come pay day.

Maybe I’ll earn enough to make a loin cloth.

Connection.

I had grand plans of driving Earl and me to Saratoga Springs for the evening. Rest and relaxation has been the name of the game today and quite frankly, when it came time for us to head east we decided that we weren’t up to driving quite that far. So instead we headed west and ended up in Syracuse.

Along the way we did some exploring around the shores of Oneida Lake. Oneida Lake is home to Sylvan Beach, which we visited back on the 4th of July. This time we snooped around the southern shore and gawked at the various camps that are twice the size of our current home. It’s amazing to see what some people consider “roughing it”. There’s only one butler instead of a whole team of them, I guess.

After Oneida Lake we wandered around the northern suburbs of Syracuse before heading towards the city and stopping at Onondaga Lake Park along the way. This park is beautiful and a haven for anyone interested in outdoor exercise. The recreational trails are top-notch. There are also various activities held at Long Branch Park; today it was some sort of Scottish Festival.

Unfortunately, Onondaga Lake is one of the most polluted lakes in the world. Many efforts are underway to clean it up, but it is not safe to swim in it or eat fish from it. However, wildlife seems to be able to do their thing alright so perhaps the efforts to clean the lake are starting to be successful.

Earl and I walked nearly three miles along the walking trails. I stopped to take a number of photos along the way.

This guy (or girl, I can’t really tell) was kind enough to stop and pose. Notice the smile.


Flickr Link.

Earl and I also took our customary self-portrait as we walked. I think this is one of our better ones.

Flickr Link.

I also took a picture of these powerlines, which crossed the lot we parked in, which is also adjacent to the New York State Thruway. I have been fascinated by powerlines since I was a small child and courtesy of our travels over the years have noticed this particular style of pylon/tower to be only in Upstate New York. These lines were relocated in the mid 1950s with the building of the New York State Thruway, and these pylons/towers are newer than the ones further down the line. I am such a geek.

Flickr Link.

Earl and I felt very connected to everything around us today. We both needed the relative downtime and the opportunity to just relax. After our walk, we headed over to the new Quaker Steak and Lube, where we ate lots of food but I remained beer-free for the evening.

All in all, a great day.


Flickr Link.

There are more pictures from our little excursion available on Flickr.

Frisky.

Photo 71.jpg

I snapped a photo while Earl and I were watching a video on YouTube. We were watching a bondage demonstration. It was hot.

Blushing yet?