rant and rave

This is where ranting and raving occurs. Venting. Blowing things out of proportion. That kind of thing.

Kim Jung Un’s “dismantle the nukes” party and more

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North Korea‘s Kim Jung Un is apparently having a ceremony marking the dismantlement of one of their nuclear weapons facilities.  USA Today  Now there’s a reason to have a party.  He comes up with all the good ideas.  Now why didn’t I think of this.  Probably because I don’t have any nuclear weapons.  Facebook

Something else hitting the headlines is parking lines in the downtown core of Lethbridge, Alberta.  Yes, painting lines on the pavement – to assist with parking.  But not just any lines.  They’re perpendicular lines, not angled lines.  Now I know what you’re thinking – this is big.  And rightfully so.  No word on if they’ll follow civil guidelines and use white or if they’ll cheap-out and use orange like the WalMart / The Home Depot parking lot in Lethbridge.  There they used orange to separate two lanes going in the same direction.  Like a hand-painted stop sign – you just know it’s not a civil project.

They’re also adding one hundred seventy parking kiosks downtown.  No, not as big as the parking lines, but exciting just the same.

The next newsworthy article is a bit misleading. Horse owner calls for introduction of safeguards to prevent slaughtering without consent  Well, if I were in this, I’d want to have a horse’s consent, too.  To do otherwise would be unfair.

This is not something that made it into the news mainstream today.  I was riding my bike northbound on the designated bike street adjacent Mayor Magrath Drive South when a guy and his friend told me to ride on the street.  I apparently scared him.  …  He could see me coming for about a block away but told me “a guy on a bike barrelling down on me” scared him.  I said “sorry” and rode by.  Then he offered that I should ride on the street.  <sigh>  I 180ed to go talk with him (which surprised him again, I supposed).  I told him that there are signs posted all along MMDS stating no bicycles are allowed and that this, in fact, was the designated bicycle street.  In fact they’ve been there for so long that they’re faded and hard to even see anymore.  It’s always been this way.  It’s a shared-use thing.  He apologized for the misunderstanding stating that he wasn’t from around here.  I was, at that point, tongue-tied.  Too many things to say.  1) you’re in a new environment; don’t tell people how to behave or you’ll look like a damned fool; 2) if you’re new, read the signs; 3) I didn’t mean to scare you, but … I really scared you?  How old are you?  You’ve lived this long and not died of a heart attack? 4) to avoid problems, don’t stand in the center of a “sidewalk” if you see someone coming – bicycle, pedestrian, horse running away from a slaughterhouse, Kim Jung Un’s nuclear-powered trucks – anything – just move to the right of the sidewalk so as to let both oncoming parties pass.  Has the whole world gone mad?

But this did make it.

quiet winter

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Now I remember why I like winter.  I enjoy summer, yes, just as much as spring and fall.  But it now, suddenly, occurs to me why I enjoy winter – no loud muscle cars, screeching tyres, Harley-Davidson bikes with noisy lag pipes, and Japanese motorbikes wound up to 9000 RPM.  It goes on and on forever.  I should hear birds, people talking, kids on bikes.  I only hear 4×4 trucks revving.  <sigh>  Living in Ilsan, Korea, a 2.5-million-person satellite city of Seoul, was more peaceful than this.  By the time the world runs out of dinosaur fossil fuel and runs on something quieter, I’ll be a deaf old man.

another windshield bites the dust

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I’ve got a crack in my windshield again.  This is my second windshield, and now it’s cracked.  So … let’s see … that’s two broken windshields and two broken back windows.  I’m not having very good luck with autoglass.

hamburger half-full

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42/50 on our Architecture assignment.  8 wrong?  No, 42 right.

Hamburger night.  Still daylight.  Kind of nice seeing daylight at 6:30pm.  🙂  We had a hamburger each, and suddenly one of us remembered the tomato & lettuce.  So much better with fresh tomatoe & lettuce!  The vegetables were cooked right when were were done our burgers – perfect timing.  Couldn’t eat another bite.  Leftovers for tomorrow!

or

Hamburger night.  Damn Daylight Savings Time … don’t make no sense.  We had a hamburger each but forgot to put the lettuce & tomato on until the last minute.  “Don’t bother … it’s okay.”  “Well I’m already up.”  The vegetables weren’t cooked in time, but we ate them anyway.  I got full.  I guess it’s leftovers tomorrow.

Admit success when it happens or you’ll end up a “hamburger half-empty” person.

balance at Tim Horton’s

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So I’m at Tim’s having a bowl of chili and a decaf, thinking about what just happened.

I asked the woman at the till to get me a balance on some cards.  “You don’t remember what you have?  Really?” she asked in a childish voice.  WTH?  Why ask me this?  “All of them?  Well how many cards do you have?”  WTH again.  “I’ve only got three,” I say to her.  She scans the first one and asks, “Do you see the balance?  Can you remember that?”  <Ahem>  When she was done, I asked her, “You think I have a short memory, eh?  I’ve got dozens of cards for everything.  No, I have no idea what the balance is.”  I was going to ask her if she could remember my order, but I was too polite.  I now think I should have.

There is a balance between formal politeness and familiar friendliness.  She broke that balance.

vodka, in English

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My view:
Silent Sam: 5/10
Absolute: 6/10
Smirnoff: 9/10
So I thought I’d do some research.

I just readed an artical on vodka.  I reconize alot of the brans onit.  Ones better then the other according to the righter.

Top 10 Vodkas In The World

Then it occurred to me that one shouldn’t trust a writer who writes so poorly.  Perhaps after they quit drinking, go back to school, figure out how to use the spell-check on their computer, or hire a proofreader, maybe I’d complete reading their article.

Seriously – alot?  I need a drink.

loss

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Since Father got sick until just a bit ago, things have been stressful for me.  I’m not great with expressing my most inner feelings.  I’m not altogether sure I believe they should be expressed.  As Stanislof once said, “I have religion – I just think it should be a private thing, not yelled out for everyone to hear.”  There are things I don’t really wish to blab, to discuss.  It obviously does many people a great deal of good to explore, voice, compare, listen, vent, etc.  Those people have a hard time understanding that many of us don’t wish to.  I want to just live my life, not talk about how it is lived.  Yes, I feel – I just don’t want to discuss it.  As Curly once said, “I crap bigger than you.”  Well, good for you.  But TMI.  Keep your crap to yourself.
So I lost a friend.  They were upset at me that I didn’t call after Father died.  I was busy talking with many people and dealing with many details.  (Still am.)  Three other friends whom I told next time I spoke with them didn’t get angry.  They instead knew that I needed time to myself.  Acceptance.

On to other things.  I notice that since my old blog, going back to October of 2014 of the Third Generation of the Ongoing Letter (sounds official, eh?), nothing has been said of many things.  So here goes – a kind of rapid-fire update.

The van, a.k.a. “38”, is gone.  I sold it to a young person in Coaldale.  He wanted to buy an older ‘collector’ (and, being older than 25 years, it was) to pimp it.  Last time I saw it, he took the toilet out of it and removed the rear bumper.  I wonder what became of it.  I just know it’s gone, along with the Fun Craft logos Glenn painted on it.

I’m not at Flexibility anymore.  I quit.  I gave my notice before summer began.  Almost six years is enough.  I still see students now and then – Mongali, for example – and I’m happy to see they’re doing well.  New country, new life, new future.  But I wanted to concentrate on my education at the college and my new career.  I have one tutor student at this time.  Not sure if I’ll have more.  I’ve taken down my teaching website but might resurrect it in its new form later on.  Hard to know.  But, for now, I’m done with teaching.