I spent yesterday morning at City Centre, getting trained for a one-day job. I’m going to be a registration officer on election day, registering voters who aren’t on the voters’ list.
Here are some things about the job:
1. It’s only one block from my house.
2. It’s a 13-hour day with no breaks, so I can’t go home for lunch.
3. I can bring my lunch and dinner with me, and eat when I’m not busy.
4. The dress code explicitly prohibits me from wearing red, green, blue or orange clothing.
5. I can bring a book to read during the slow times, but it can’t be a book about politics or written by a politician, even if it was written in the 1800s. I can’t bring a newspaper or a laptop. I can use my cellphone, but not the camera in it.
After the training I was walking home through Hintonberg, and some friendly fools from A Company of Fools urged me to go into the brand spankin’ new AlphaSoul Cafe, so I did. It had only been open for a couple of hours. It’s bright yellow and aubergine and it was full of people and balloons. I had a cup of above-average coffee and chatted with a couple of people, including my MPP, Yasir Naqvi.
I understand the AlphaSoul Cafe (1015 Wellington, right next to Hino’s Japanaese restaurant) is going to have live music in the evenings, and it’ll also be a venue for cultural events like the Hintonberg Writers’ evenings. I wish it was in MY neighbourhood!
I lived on Irving Avenue in Hintonberg in the 80s and again in the 90s. As recently as a couple of years ago, I used to walk through Hintonburg every day on my way to work. Now I just pass through once in awhile on my way somewhere else. But yesterday I noticed what a vibrant little village it’s becoming. All kinds of trippy stores and restaurants and interesting places to check out. Some day when it’s not raining I’m going to go spend the whole day exploring Hintonberg.
In other news, today is Baskin-Robbins 31-cent Scoop Day. Go to any Baskin-Robbins between 5:00 pm and 10:00 pm, and treat yourself to an almost-free ice cream cone. It’s a fundraiser for the Canadian Fallen Firefighters Foundation. There’ll be fire trucks and everything. We went last year, and the lineups were crazy at some of the locations, but the one on Bank Street near Heron didn’t have a lineup.
I’m really liking that quilting course GC and I are taking. We’re five weeks in, with three to go.
I need to pick up the pace of production, though, since I’ve only finished four of the twelve blocks.
But I have to say this: quilting is hard, slow work for me.
I have to think about everything before I do it. I mentally work through and double check and triple check every little thing, because if I don’t, my pieces will be upside down or backwards or sideways, and then I’ll have to unsew them. Even after all that thinking and triple-checking, I still end up with wonky bits that have to be unsewn.
I think it’s a spatial reasoning thing. You know that part of the IQ test where you’re shown pictures of pieces of flat cardboard and you have to mentally manipulate them and identify what shape box they’ll fold into? I had to guess on all of them, because my brain can’t do that.
Quilting uses that part of the brain.
Even though quilting is hard for me, I like it. It’s full of surprises. I’m delighted when something works. I follow the instructions and cut and sew and fold and cut and unfold and voila! It’s a real pinwheel!
I also like seeing the whole thing coming together, bit by bit. Not just mine, either – it’s fun to watch GC’s quilt taking shape, as well as all my other classmates’. Even though we’re all making the same sampler quilt, our fabrics are completely different, which makes them all unique.
Here’s the teacher’s sampler quilt, by the way. So far I’ve made the first and third squares in the first and third rows. GC has made those ones, plus the second square in the first row.
I’m very happy with the course. It’s a good group of people, and the teacher is excellent. I don’t think I could have taught myself how to quilt from books, which is how I learn most stuff. As an added bonus, I’m learning how to sew at the same time*. (I’m learning how to iron, too. I used to think you just went swish swish swish, back and forth all over the fabric until the wrinkles were gone. But no. Ironing is an art.)
*I love the sewing machine, Connie. Thank you so much.
My blogging software automatically detects spam comments and keeps them in a separate file for me, so I can go through them later and verify that they are indeed spam.
The vast majority really are spam. They have nothing to do with the content of the blog posts, and their sole purpose is to try to get readers to click on the links to whatever they’re selling. (Which, incidentally, has nothing to do with the content of either the blog post or the comment.)
So today I was scanning the spam, and this one caught my eye:
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I was sorely tempted to haul out the old Smith-Corona.
Here’s another:
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They were selling replica handbags. You think heavy-set women with skinny thighs doesn’t make sense? Try this one:
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How, indeed.
Yesterday I applied for a job as a raptor handler. Raptors are birds of prey. I could be working with falcons, eagles, hawks, and owls! The company would prefer an experienced handler, but doesn’t seem to have much expectation of finding one. Training and instruction are provided, along, I assume, with protective gear. Bilingualism is not required, which is very rare for a job in Ottawa these days.
I’d love to get this job. I just hope it doesn’t involve using an owl to disperse crows. I am fond of crows, and owls too.
This is the contest snowpile on Friday April 15th at 4:00 pm. So far Kathleen has been eliminated (sorry, Kathleen). The remaining contestants have entered guesses ranging from April 18th to June 24th.
I walked awhile this morning and it was wicked windy and cold. Not much melting going on out there today.
In other news, Logan and Duncan both had thyroid tests last week. Duncan also had his pre-anaesthesia blood work done in preparation for his dental surgery, and Logan might have to have x-rays of his hind end and back. If so, it would be crazy expensive because he’d probably have to be anesthetized for it. Meanwhile, Kazoo seems a little under the weather. I’m worried about him. If he doesn’t perk up by tomorrow, I’m taking him to the vet too.
In happier news, I made a three-month supply of bird mash last week, and Billie and Lester (GC’s lovebirds from the Humane Society) absolutely love it. Simon loves it too, but he loves everything. Oboe and Kazoo don’t love it yet.
GC and I made 4,000 bottles of wine yesterday. It’s for the Managed Alcohol Program at The Oaks, which is under the Shepherds of Good Hope umbrella. We’re the new volunteer assistant winemakers.
There’s a wine-making room on the premises, where they make the equivalent of 4,000 bottles every five weeks. Making the wine instead of buying it saves about $130,000 per year.
We empty nine 10-pound bladders of syrup into a 45-gallon drum, fill it with water, and sprinkle nine envelopes of yeast on top. Then we move on to the next drum. It’s sticky work, but easy. In five weeks we’ll filter it; they tell us that’s the hard part. (We won’t actually bottle it, by the way. It’s hooked up to a draft line, and will be on tap at the front desk, where it’s dispensed to residents.)
The residents are all formerly hardcore street-level alcoholics. These are the kind of alcoholics who might have drunk aftershave when the liquor stores were closed. Most of them are elderly and appear to have chronic health issues and disabilities in addition to alcoholism.
The program, which converted an old motel into a residential community, provides them with a room, meals, access to health care, social workers, exercise programs, homemade alcohol and rolled cigarettes.
The residents pay most of their income (generally public and/or private pension benefits) towards the costs of the program.
It’s controversial. Some question why we would ‘reward’ alcoholics with a decent standard of living, especially one that includes alcohol.
As a proponent of harm reduction programs in general – from seatbelts to safe injection sites – I think the Managed Alcohol Program makes sense.
These people have lived with an all-consuming level of alcoholism all their lives. Having them living on the streets is expensive in terms of their use of emergency services (medical and criminal justice).
It’s also, I would argue, expensive to us as a society in terms of how we must harden ourselves to the sight of other human beings’ misery.
Harm reduction programs meet people where they are. Instead of judging or moralizing, the Managed Alcohol Program accepts that some alcoholics are unlikely to ever quit drinking, as evidenced by the fact that they’ve already lost so much to their alcoholism and are still drinking – and offers them an environment where they can continue to drink (enough to keep them from experiencing withdrawal symptoms) and still have their other basic needs met for the last few years of their lives.
We work in the wine room, so we don’t spend a lot of time with the residents. But we do see them on the way in and out. And what strikes me is that this looks like a health care facility. Old folks shuffling to the bathroom, people hooked up to oxygen tanks, people in wheelchairs, nurses tending to patients. Before The Oaks opened last year, did we really leave people this sick and disabled and elderly to live – and die – on the streets, just because they were alcoholics?
Last night Duncan and Logan and GC and I all headed over to GC’s house to eat pizza and watch the debate, since he has a TV.
What I can’t figure out is how any thinking person who pays any attention to what’s going on in this country could bring themselves to vote for that ugly Stephen Harper* and his Conservatives.
Harper says everything in this placating, condescending way, like he’s the mature one and everybody else is just being childish, but nothing he says stands up to the facts. If he doesn’t like the facts, he just dismisses them. I couldn’t believe how many times he responded to questions or accusations with “That’s simply not true.”
Obviously he believes his strength is economic policy, because he kept coming back to that, but his spending on jets, prisons and corporate tax cuts is wildly out of control. The only thing that’s kept him halfway in check for the past five years is that he’s hamstrung by a minority government. God help us if he gets a majority this time round.
I just don’t get it. Why do people vote for him?
*Ok, maybe it’s not nice to pick on his looks, but he’s got sideways hair, almost invisible eyes, a creepy smirk, and he looks like he belongs in a wax museum.
GC and I have had our eye on this pile of snow for awhile now. We even had a little bet on how long it would be until it completely melted. Unfortunately we couldn’t remember what dates we guessed, so we had to start over. At the same time we decided to expand the contest to include you.
Some pertinent details:
This picture was taken yesterday.
The snow pile is on Merivale Road in Ottawa, across from an empty Experimental Farm field, and is on the east side of the building visible in the photo.
As you can see, the snow still reaches close to the second floor of the parking garage.
All the snow was dumped there over the course of the winter by a little snowplow from the top floor of the parking garage.
There will be a prize for whoever most accurately predicts the date on which this pile of snow disappears. Guesses will be accepted until noon on Wednesday April 13. Leave your guess in the comments. In the event of duplicate guesses, the first one wins. I will check and photograph the pile daily. The winner and the prize will be announced when the snow is gone.
I took Duncan to the vet yesterday for his annual checkup. For three years (ever since I adopted him) they’ve been telling me he needs to lose weight, and for three years he’s been losing weight. He has gone from about 24 pounds down to 18 pounds. They say he still needs to lose about two more pounds.
However, now they are concerned because he’s losing weight. Yes. Concerned. They say it’s notoriously difficult for a cat to lose weight, so they’re suspicious whenever a cat does lose weight. Especially if no real effort has been put into this weight loss. In Duncan’s case, I don’t know how he lost the first couple of pounds, but after that it became much easier for him to play and be active. I think that’s how he lost the next four.
The vet thinks we should do tests. Thyroid tests and blood tests and tests for IBS and diabetes.
It’s not just that he’s losing weight. It’s that he throws up a couple of times a week. I don’t know about you, but all my cats over the years have been prolific vomiters. Flea, who lived to the ripe old age of 19, threw up several times each day. His life was a vicious cycle of eating and throwing up.
“We’re so used to taking cats’ vomiting for granted,” explained the vet. “But really, it’s not something we should ignore. According to the experts, cats should throw up no more than twice a year. Anything more than that is a sign of a potential problem.”
The other problem is that Duncan’s teeth are bad. He has gingivitis, definitely needs a cleaning and probably needs an extraction or two. He had dental surgery three years ago, just before I adopted him from the Humane Society. But it needs to be done again; she says he’s in pain. She prepared a quote for me, and it’ll be about a thousand bucks. She says she can roll the other tests in with the pre-op tests, which will save me a few bucks.
She also said he’s the sweetest cat she’s seen in a quite awhile.
I can’t bear the idea of him being in pain, so I guess he’s going to have the surgery. But I’m not so sure I want to have the other tests done. Why go looking for trouble I can’t afford to find?
You most likely don’t know this about captive birds in the Springtime, but they masturbate. Simon doesn’t yet because he’s just a baby. And Oboe doesn’t because he’s saving himself for true love, which he optimistically believes is just around the corner.
But Kazoo does, several times each day.
As soon as the days started getting noticeably longer, he (or she; we really don’t know) began interpreting any physical affection as a sexual overture. I’ve read that during the Spring you should only stroke their heads because the rest of the body becomes one big erogenous zone. But Kazoo gets turned on by head stroking too. In fact, sometimes just perching on one of us is enough to get him started.
How can you tell when he’s masturbating? He widens his stance, flattens his body against you, and starts cooing. The cooing becomes louder and faster and more intense until he (or she) is done. I haven’t noticed any residual fluid or anything like that.
Once I suspected what was going on, I did my research and stopped letting him do it on me. There’s a good practical reason for this; it’s not just a matter of aesthetics. If you allow a mateless bird to achieve sexual gratification on you, it will think of you as its mate. If it thinks of you as its mate, it will become territorial and jealous about you. It will try to attack or chase away your real mate, as well as your other birds. So GC and I put him back on his cage whenever he gets amorous ideas about either of us. If he’s truly desperate, there’s always his toy chicken.
Oboe, who is a little wee lovebird, has repeatedly offered his services to Kazoo. He flies over to him, perches beside him, draws himself up to the tallest he can be, puffs out his little chest, and chirps out his most enthusiastic mating call. Kazoo just snaps at him like he’s a mosquito.
After the training I was walking home through Hintonberg, and some friendly fools from A Company of Fools urged me to go into the brand spankin’ new AlphaSoul Cafe, so I did. It had only been open for a couple of hours. It’s bright yellow and aubergine and it was full of people and balloons. I had a cup of above-average coffee and chatted with a couple of people, including my MPP, Yasir Naqvi. 
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