Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Oh heck. My mouse is possessed. Strange things are afoot. It's a laser mouse, which usually works like a charm, but sometimes it decides to do funny things. Today is one of those days. I'll keep you posted with any late-breaking news.

That's not the only thing acting strangely. At this exact moment, we're in the grip of a disgusting winter storm that's dropping piles of snow. Here's what it looked like first thing this morning...

And here's this afternoon...

If I could take a picture now, you'd see about 10-15 cm of accumulation. The only thing that makes me feel somewhat better is the fact that it's doing much of the same back at home--at least, in parts of the Lower Mainland. But heck, it's April, and my sense of entitlement tells me that I don't deserve this. To make matters worse, I have to drive across the mountains this weekend. Super.

Today's high temperature: -6, with the windchill bringing it down to -14. More of this tomorrow, apparently, which I'm really looking forward to.

Okay, we need to move on, because I'm starting to get really depressed. 26 days until grad.

There were a couple things I forgot to mention yesterday that I should mention today, because they're just so good that they make me feel better about this snow. Okay, not really, but here's hoping.

First, though, I had a little pronoun-antecedent mixup in yesterday's posting (which is what happens when I do them at 11:00). When I was talking about wife's cousin, husband, and son, I used the term "he" to refer to the husband, but the placement of the pronoun in the sentence might have led you to believe I was talking about the son. The thing is that I was talking about this "he" going to work, which is a little incongruous with something a year-old child does, at least ever since the inception of trade unions. Oops. It's actually quite funny when you read it like that, even if you didn't the first time. I know you've gone to check, so I'll just wait until you get back.

Welcome back. On with the story. Last night, I took a much-needed trip down to the recycling depot to eliminate the disaster in the shed (the recyclable materials purgatory). The depot is open at various inconvenient hours during the week, but it's also got a drop-off area for weekend and evening disposal.

In a seemingly unrelated bit of news that I'm cleverly going to weave into the story later on, the United Church in town had a huge garage sale on Friday and Saturday at the curling rink (no ice--I imagine that a garage sale on curling ice would be a lot of fun. You could curl your purchases over to the money-takers yelling curling words like, "Hurry!" and "Hard!"). As much as I don't like to give money to the doctrinally impaired (ouch), it was fun to snoop around. Our total purchases: 25 cents for a paperback copy of The Constant Gardener. I loved the movie--a compelling storyline and incredible acting from Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz (two of the hardest last names to spell in all of show biz)--and I figured that the book would be good, too. If I ever have time to read for pleasure again. Besides books, there was the usual mish-mash of used crap that makes up a garage sale, only this one was really big, so there was more crap than usual. Plus it was church sale, which means that it was crappy Christian stuff, which is often times worse. In other words, there was a big stack of old vinyl records, but they were all of the Gaither Trio and various couples singing hymns. And some Streisand--it's the United Church, after all. Nonetheless, everyone in Three Hills was there, so it was a Big Deal.

Back to the recycling. Off I went to the depot (it being a Sunday, of course, nobody was there). When I got there, I noticed a pile of boxes near the door. Being the snooping individual that I am, I investigated further. Turns out that there were about eight huge boxes of books sitting there--I suppose you can recycle books--all the ones that hadn't sold from the aforementioned garage sale.

When I see books for sale, I'm very choosy. We already have way too much generic fiction at home, and I'm loathe to add more paper to our collection. I do, however, feel that having a large library is an asset, even if they're all Tom Clancy rip-offs. Somehow, having lots of books on one's shelf connotes some sort of literary power and prestige. Or perhaps I'm just making that up. But being widely read is fun for me, and I'll never pass up the opportunity to read something new, even if it is just for the sake of it being new. But when I have to pay for it, I'm very selective, knowing full well that the book might never be read.

Of course, when books are free, I am not limited by my feelings of an already-crowded bookshelf. Hey, even if I don't read them, they were free, so I'll just toss 'em. I went crazy. I rifled through those boxes in the freezing cold and picked up everything that seemed even remotely interesting--I think I ended up with a dozen or so (it says something about the selection when all I could muster was 12 books out of 8 boxes). I even managed to pick up two copies of the same book, such was my haste. But now I have plenty of material to keep me going when I can think of reading being pleasurable again. Which will be in roughly 26 days.

On Saturday (although it could also have been Friday; either way it makes no tangible difference to the story, except to weaken my credibility as a storyteller), I had yet another moment of complete delight in finding something unexpected.

I was checking the status of my TV shows to see if I needed to download any new episodes (which I do with a great deal of frequency, considering we don't have cable), and one of the more elusive shows is "Little Mosque on the Prairie." In my search for it, I ended up at a particular site where it is filed under the dubious category of "Other," along with 19000 other entries. Fortunately, they're alphabetical. Unfortunately, you can't just jump to a certain letter; no, you have to go through all the other ones first.

As I was going through this incredibly slow process (I never did find any new Little Mosque), I came across the "D" section, and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but that beloved show, "Dinosaurs." What, you don't remember it? I get that a lot. It aired in the early 90's (was it that long ago?) and featured the line, "Not the mama." You know the one.

Anyway, someone had posted the first two seasons up there, and of course, I immediately downloaded it. Just watched the first episode tonight--what a gem. This particular set also has the extra features from the first season's DVD set, including a 15-minute documentary on how they made it work. Amazing. The creativity just astounds me. It's a great show, one that might have fallen victim to the classic blunder: never get involved in a land war in Asia. No wait, it was the second (andonly slightly less well-known) one: never make a TV show that's too smart for an audience whose favourite show is "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader." Totally worth watching again (and again).

What else? Oh, nothing really. Had quite the productive day, if I do say so myself. With only three days to do school work this week (and then five days of not being able to do anything), and the end of the semester rapidly approaching, I had to crank it up a notch. But I got through, so we're looking good. Tomorrow looks like an essay writing day. I tried to write this ugly thing today, but I was just writing sentences that didn't make any sense and had no flow whatsoever--in other words, a blog posting. Anyway, just thinking about doing this thing is making me gag, but I have to git 'er done, so that's what I'll do. And I'll hope it doesn't suck as much as I feel it will. Somehow it never does, though.

You know, I just looked up and out the window again, and it's still fargin' snowing. Gosh.

Sorry. Moving on. Wife is out tonight, which gives me free run of the computer to watch things like Dinosaurs and post blog entries to my heart's content without feeling like a neglectful lug. She got a call just after dinner from another one of the young moms. Her husband had class tonight, and would my wife come over for some girl time? Hey look at that, we actually have friends. It only took most of two semesters. Anyway, they're off doing girly things, I'm sure. I'm a little worried about the conditions out there, but they only live a couple blocks away, so I think I'm just worried for nothing. But that's me--I worry about my wife.

Before you start either vomiting or saying "Maw, what a nice guy," you should know that my motives for worrying aren't solely noble. Oh sure, I worry about her because she's the woman of my dreams and I'm madly in love with her, but I also worry because it's a situation I'm not in control of. As a male, I like to have control of a situation, even if I can't do anything to change that situation (I can't make it stop snowing, for example). It's just that having control makes it seem better for some reason. Man, I have to get over myself.

That was surprisingly cathartic. Thanks.

With that, another posting winds down, and I, well, I go do something else. Maybe I'll watch some more Dinosaurs. Did I tell you how good it is? Just checking.

Anyway, more of the same tomorrow, which I hope you stop by for. See you then.