Buy it Again for the first Time

There's nothing like rummaging around in Cohen's scrap and recycling store/yard. Went to get some stone for the landscaping work (P3) and couldn't resist a walk around the building to see what's new. Saw a big box full of "Canada's Cutest Baby" mugs, plus about a thousand stainless steel containers with small stainless steel cups inside. Must be reject stock from some manufacturer in India. Not sure how they'll move that stuff. But all the usual fireplaces, doors, and random things from defunct companies. Always fun. Hope they never switch to eBay to move the stuff. It would be fun to list all the wacky stuff here on the Life Without Practice Blog (LWoP) but it's better if you just go take a look - oh yeah, they're only in Ottawa, so sorry Aussie friends, or my European fan club, it's a bit pricey for a window-shopping trip. There are likely similar places in your town though - have you been there? What did you see?

But got flagstones, river stone etc. - about 500lbs worth of haulage, and a bit more sweating even though I'd already worked up a sweat shoveling earlier and showered and cleaned up since then. Drat. It's one of those multi-shower days.

Buried the pipe for the pumped water to make the streamy bit - hey not often you can say you laid some pipe, and not intend any double entendre's! It's getting late in the season for shopping, and stores will soon switch over to Christmas or something and leave me stuck. But I still have to get a liner and a pump, and do lots of dirt piling. Basically, I need to make the thing deep enough to generate enough dirt to make the berm the appropriate size. I also need to make a top-level spill pond. Couldnt' find much in the way of usable things, so I figure wood, caulking, and a whole lot of roof repair-type tarry stuff will make a decent water-holding thingy.

Upcoming Travel
Looks like there's lots of flitting about soon (P6). The SO is going to Miami in the midst of hurricane season, and staying in a hotel on a tiny spit of land in the Ocean - this is a work related trip. Should be interesting. Hmmm, I wonder if we'll be into the M or N range my then.

If she survives, we're off to Toronto for a weekend get-together. She has the get together, I'll wander around town a bit perhaps. Could visit siblings in the area I guess.

Then shortly after, we're off to Boston for a longer weekend. Got flights and rooms and tickets to the Ignobel awards lined up.

Funny Things at Bad Times
With the anniversary of 9/11 coming up we'll surely be innundated with bad-taste rehashes, and our poor American neighbours will be snowed over with wacky twisted logic justifying the whole Iraq thing via 9/11 which makes no sense what-so-ever. It seems so bizzare, from this vantage point anyway, that given a fundamentalist terrorist movement attack, a response would be to go and destabilize an unrelated area. Wouldn't you expect that to create more angry fundamentalists who were once indifferent, but now are motivated to extremeism by their collaterally damaged family? Wouldn't you want to go chase the guy who perpetrated the thing with most of your available resources? Just the sort of wacky logic you'd expect from those neo-con folk. Okay - I'm real off topic here. I guess that too is kind of a funny (funny-strange, not funny ha-ha) thing that happened at a bad time.

Anyway, the two funny (ha-ha) things that happened at bad times are one following 9/11 and one after the Swiss Air plane crash.

Just after the plane crash, there was an official with a US federal transport group of some kind giving a news conference. He was giving out preliminary information, and was concerned that the media run with the info. Now you'd think someone in that field might have used the word "preliminary" before. Perhaps it was even written down on the papers in front of him. But it seems he'd never connected the writing of the word with the proper pronunciation. Not only that, but he never thought about the irony of emphasize a word when you personally don't know the proper pronunciation. So he says in front of all the cameras and microphones:
"Now I want to remind you that this information is puh-liminary. I repeat PUH - liminary"

The big emphasis on the "puh" was hilarious... It would be like Bush saying "We are concerned about Nucular weapons, I repeat, New QUE lar!" And, for Daily Show fans, he'd have to add "Heh, heh, heh."

Okay, and my other favourite funny thing at a bad time, is actually related to ol' King George II of America. Just after 9/11, Bush is in the big pit talking to a crowd, and a bunch of cameras. He's got a megaphone in his hand, and he's standing beside and elderly looking fire chief, who is on his left. He's panning the megaphone about as he talks, and must finally think to himself- 'Hey there's all them folk on the left of me who can't hear...' So he pans the megaphone to his left. But wait, there's an old fire chief guy in the way - no problem, George just keeps on talking, with this megaphone almost in contact with this poor guy's ear! He panned around a few times. The poor old guy must have been blasted. He should sue for hearing loss. To his credit... or rather not to his credit, he must be nuts, he didn't move a muscle. He should have dropped to his knees and yelled, "What the hell are you doing you idiot!" But that wouldn't have played well I guess.

So those are my two favourite funny things that happened at bad times. I'd love to see some footage of that again, but never have. I hadn't discovered the "Daily Show" back then, so always wondered if they had noted it in their coverage.

Wrap Up
Well, that covers another item of my must-cover list. So now to think about supper(P9,8), maybe get a few pages of Plato's Republic out of the way (P5) and maybe a cup of tea.

Oh yeah - something you have to do, right this minute, dear reader. (If I'm a blogger, does that make you a bloggee?). Drop everything and find the nearest window. Stand there and enjoy the view for a few minutes. Try and see if there are any animals about - pigeons, squirrels, dogs, spiders anything. Is your view devoid of wildlife or is your neighbourhood teeming with it? I wanna know!