June 23rd, 2010, posted in Random Musings, That's Life
From Wikipedia:
Six degrees of separation (also referred to as the “Human Web”) refers to the idea that everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of, “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in six steps or fewer. It was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy and popularized by a play written by John Guare.
Long ago I stopped assuming that I wouldn’t know so-and-so from such-and-such.
Once, when I was a kid, we went to Hawaii. Sitting in the hot tub we got talking to a fellow in the pool. The usual conversation about where are you from…turned out he was best friends with one of my second cousins in a little town outside of Prince George.
Another time I was working in a hair salon and a kid several years younger than me came in. He asked where I was from, when I told him he said I might know his friend. I replied that PG had more than 50,000 people living there so the odds were slim. He gave me a name. I sheepishly replied that he had lived right behind me and I’d had a many-years long crush on his older brother. Man, does that make it look like a hick town!
I spent a month on a teensy little island off Oahu during Grad school. On our last day a girl, who had just arrived, and sat down with the three of us and said “I heard there were other Canadian here”. Turned out that she had lived down the street from one of my labmates and they knew a lot of the same people…in Toronto.
But yesterday was pretty amazing. I was at a BBQ for our volunteer group and one of the former students in the class started chatting with me. His wife had previously told me that he was from Salmon Arm, but we never got any farther than that. Last night he said to me “I think a relative of yours taught me in Grade 1″. Yup, my Granny was his grade 1 teacher, in Canoe. The man grew up in Canoe, a teensy little place outside of Salmon Arm that most people have never heard of. He also knew my Uncle and went to the church that my Granny played the organ for.
Small world indeed!
June 6th, 2010, posted in 365 Challenge, Photography, That's Life
157/365 (June 6, 2010) – Tough day today.
The weather was supposed to be good, it wasn’t.
And our psychotic neighbour had a freak attack on us because her husband can’t park in a straight line and apparently we should park our vehicles (two motorcycles (OK, mine is a scooter) in one spot) differently so that she can get in and out of the passenger side more easily. In her words, our vehicles are small so we should move over to accommodate her, even though we are well within our space. We park defensively since she dented the last vehicle we parked there.
Poor Kirk was down there cleaning his bike and she freaked on him. Physically hit his bike and was screeching. He came up to get me and wondered if she;d done anything to either bike. Not the first issue with her in the building. Most residents don’t want to deal with her since she doesn’t actually know how to have a conversation. Either do what I want or I’ll start screaming at you. Doesn’t go over well with either one of us. She has no concern for personal property and flings her door open on whatever is at hand. So we resorted to a rope between the spots and pylons hanging from it to try and identify where the lines between the spots is, particularly after coming home to find them parked within three inches of our bikes one day. Sigh….People, pets, and parking. The three “P’s” of condo living. This month it’s parking.
Today was also the anniversary of a friends death by brain cancer.
So, I was looking for small things that make me smile.
This did far more than that.
Who does this to a pug?
May 22nd, 2010, posted in 365 Challenge, Photography, That's Life
142/365 (May 22, 2010) – A friend was in town for a meeting and we managed to hook up for brunch down in Horseshoe Bay while he waited for the ferry. Unfortunately, when we went down to check on our boat we discovered that our boat and our neighbours had made contact at some point in the past two weeks and we suffered some significant surface damage on the hull. No one can prove whose fault it is, although the fact that they have brand new lines on leads me to believe that during the storms of the past two weeks their lines either were not tied properly or they stretched more than they realized new nylon lines would – when I said to her that nylons stretches when wet and she said “really?”.
I know everything was fine two weeks ago since we were down at the boat and I was surveying the air intake vent since it had already been damaged in what looked like a poor docking job by the women at some point last year. We had planned to replace it this weekend, at that point, there was not other damage to the port side of the boat. We don’t think they are very good at handling it. But it is irritating that we have now been damaged twice and we are certain it was their fault both times. But they haven’t taken responsibility.
However, can’t prove anything so we will have to deal with the damage ourselves. So, went to Troll’s pub and sat on the patio for a beer to mull it over. Now we need to find someone to repair the gel coat, and the damage isn’t great enough that we want to involve insurance.
What a piss off , but at least it is not structural, just superficial.
April 30th, 2010, posted in 365 Challenge, Photography, That's Life
119/365 (April 29, 2010) – Finished the income taxes today, and dealt with my GST. Glad that’s all over. Decided I deserved some tulips for the effort. I’m not really into pink, but they were sort of "Springy". Bit difficult to get home on the scooter, but they made it unscathed.
I hate doing taxes. Mainly because I always owe a ton of money. And this year I was a bit nervous of doing them since we were dealing with capital gains for the first time. In the end, since I didn’t make as much money as last year, and since we dumped a whack of money into my RRSP, we ended up pretty much flat, with about $50 coming back to each of us. A darn sight better than the thousands I thought we’d owe. I now definitely see the benefit of the RRSP shelter!
April 13th, 2010, posted in 365 Challenge, Photography, Random Musings, That's Life
103/365 (April 13, 2010) – I seem to be obsessed with macro images, and I think this came out rather cool. A stack of five dice disappearing into a black background (my granite counter..again). All I need to do is get the angle right, and boost the final contrast a bit and the flecking in the counter disappears into the blackness.
Life is a bit like a game of dice though. You never know how the dice will fall, or what the outcome will be. You hope for the straight, but sometimes you don’t get a good roll. The trick is to roll them again, and again…. and again I suppose.
And that’s about the depth of my philosophical musings today. I have to get back to work on a lecture I am giving for a Seamanship class in a couple of days.
Nikon D300, Nikkor Micro 60mm, manual
