ain’t nothin’ left t’ do ‘cept complain ’bout nothin’

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Oh my goodness.  I read various articles that pop up on by Firefox browser start page.  They catch my eye, and off I go into the never-never land of short reads.  I enjoy most of them, and some of them I just abandon half-way through.  However, there is one that I just have to comment on.

Pocket worthy Stories to fuel your mind.

It’s time to talk about “It’s”

It’s overused. It’s lazy. It’s something that should be stopped.

The Outline – Leah Finnegan

It seems to me that the writer (writer?) of this article has lost his / her mind.  At least with navel-gazers, they’re picking apart imaginary parts of their own selves.  But this writer … <sigh>  Have we nothing more to fix these days without trying to fix imaginary problems?  Has this writer been in quarantine too long?

North York Creek plane crash hike

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This was one of the most gruelling hikes for us – Mo & family and me.  We talked about a hike a few days before.  I brought a brochure of hikes in the Crowsnest Pass for Mo & family to look at.  Since S really wanted a hike during one of our last year’s camping trips, I suggested that she pick the spot.  She picked the North York Creek plane crash hike.  It’s south of Coleman, AB.  I asked if anybody mined that I drove because my stomach had been iffy – motion sickness often gets to me.  So we all piled into my van and went.  We stopped at Subway for a bite before heading up.  The weather was decidedly cool when we got out – a balmy 16°C.  We were wondering if it would be chilly and rainy all day.

We drove seemingly in every direction, winding through the town, before finally heading south up a paved then gravel road, higher and higher up the mountain.  We saw signs for our destination.  We found a parking area (called a staging area – not sure why), parked there, and ate half our subs before heading up the gravel road toward our destination.  Quads and dirt bikes screamed by.  We wondered if we were in the right area – after all, M & M have kids.  I asked a guy sitting in his truck if we were in the right spot; he suggested that we were way off, that we needed to keep going way up the road another few kilometres.  So we did.

Mo was a little freaked by all the potholes, concerned that it would damage the van.  It was rough, and we bounced around like a bunch of Mexican jumping beans in the van.  So we parked the van and started hiking.  More vehicles were going by.  It was still a long hike up, but we came across a bridge (that everyone told us about) and a fork and decided to go up the steeper grade.

 

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some work resumes, some doesn’t

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My work on the teardrop trailer has resumed.  I’ve been working for a few weeks now, and it’s almost finished.  I have yet to finish the galley hatch; trim, refit, seal, & install hardware on the doors, and secure wiring under the chassis.  I’d like to sand everything again and apply a final coat of polyurethane to smooth the texture of the wood.  So that’s my goal in the next little while.

While working on that, I listen to news from NPR, CBC, and other places.  It is an astonishing situation.  I feel so very disturbed by this.  The George Floyd thing going down in the United States is horrific.  Now, in Canada, where RCMP is known for overstepping their boundaries put forth by our laws, they are in the headlines again for treating brutally a First Nations person (a chief, no less).  I have no doubt that police are overstepping their boundaries.  I have supported police services all my life – without them, mayhem would occur.  However, lately, mayhem is occurring because of them.  Police are there to serve and protect.  They are doing neither.

I still have not found work (as in, income).  There really isn’t anything going on in my field.  So, I keep working on my projects.

cytokine … for better or worse

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My sister called me today – at work.  She wanted to know how Mum was doing.  Paramedics had come by the house yesterday to test Mum for the COVID-19 virus.  The test wasn’t carried out because she was, according to other diagnostics, not infected.  Had she been, she’d cease to be, already weakened by cancer.

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reprieve in the long hours

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After finishing college and taking a couple stabs at finding my ‘ideal’ workplace, which took a year and a half, I think I found a place I belong, at least for now, at CE.  (Or, rather, T found it for me on Kijiji and emailed it to me.)  I’ve been working since late Nov. 2019, learning as I go.

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the slow blink

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I have noticed this with almost all cats – certainly all my cats.

Why Cats Do the “Slow Blink” at Their Owners

I’ve used the slow blink thing as a way of communicating with them.  It seemed to show a message of trust, and, with strange cats, their tails usually stop twitching back and forth.  It’s nice to see this level of understanding with cats.  …  There are dog people, bird people, even reptile people – but I’ve always had cats – or, rather, they’ve always had me.

COVID-19 / Coronavirus

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By now, everyone on the planet knows about the spread of COVID-19 / Coronavirus.  Every news agency in the world is reporting on this daily, and daily it gets worse.  Our neighbour to the south, the USA, is said to be the worst of the industrialized nations.  Their testing was and is inadequate, which let it spread without much check.  Remember Ebola?  They weren’t prepared then, either.  Here to the north, we’ve closed our border with the US (the longest free border in the world), except for essential services, in hopes of stemming it.

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