Sub-zero Alberta?

Take off to the Great White North eh. Those famous wanna-be Canucks Bob & Doug Mackenzie had the Americans convinced it was frozen up here 365.

To brave typical Alberta winter can require layering of thermal shirt and long johns, woolly socks, wind-proof or snow pants, toque, scarf or neck warmer, ski mitts, even ski mask and goggles against the wind.

It's not the Great White North for nothing and before I found Baffin -40C rated boots I remember resorting to donning multiple pairs of wool socks.

That was a couple winters ago. Currently, the dress code is still ready for shorts weather.

Penguin hosers took all the cold this year so Bob & Doug need to do a reunion tour to update on the climate.

(Exhibit A walking on ice was taken in November 2009 -- I got cabin fever that year real bad.)

Christmas Day a friend in Calgary was complaining it was green and I had no sympathy coming from Victoria BC where it's a rainy Christmas regularly. Another friend wondered if we got skipped this year for winter.

I hadn't thought twice and figured it was a Chinook wind melting the fun of the tobogganing hill.

It was perfect weather for ice fishing, nice and sunny. I even did one of my last assignments of the year out on the lake. It only snowed hard in mid-November.

Yet in the past few years, I remember not wanting to leave the house voluntarily for weeks of December or January because the windchill was so frigid. I haven't even hit cabin fever yet so far, knock on wood... cabin.

The barometer is staying balmy so I'll reminisce on the signs of winter not appearing yet.

Had to kick my car doors to unstick them after frozen twice over-night instead of nightly.
Only been scared to be driving on overly icy roads a few times.
Have only driven in one blizzard, not weekly.
My heating bill is unseasonally low and that's okay.
Haven't gotten frost-bite practically for exposing any bare skin for two minutes.
My camera lenses have only fogged up once from a long assignment outside.
I haven't made any hot cocoa or taken any with me on photo shoots.
I haven't unpacked my parka and am still only wearing a polar fleece hoodie.
Have only used my snow shovel once to clear the driveway and three times for porch.
I've gotten colder in the hockey arena than when exiting it.

It's great for now. Yet I'm scared February is going to hit with a vengeance of blizzarding in the frozen wastelands. That or we'll have late snow in May -- not entirely unheard of around here.

Supposedly it's supposed to dip down to -15C by the end of the week. For now, it's a bit confusing and I had to double-check my direction of travel as I saw two flocks of Canadian geese flying north last week.

Suits me fine when I can't go home and decide whether I should declare it pre-maturely sandal weather.

P.S. I had to go through some of my archives even just to find some frosty photos. This last one was taken in late April 2007 when it started to finally defrost. I'm hoping it won't be a repeat deep-freeze.

P.S.S. I take full responsibility for jinxing this warm-front with my observation ^_^


~~ PLR ~~

roomates - 1st year - sound & silence - pt 4of4

 

There were things that went on that were beyond what I can remember about the little moments when my roomates didn't notice that I was there and they dropped their shields while talking to friends. There was a lot of empathy despite my threats and grumpiness from lack of sleep and school induced stress. Not that I'd want to betray that trust though nor take photos like this spiteful person did of their room-mate's mess - I can only say some of mine were messier. I was lucky as I could have had nightmare room-mates like my friends bemoaned.


Room-mates who stole stuff, made way worse messes then my nose would have been able to deal with. Other friends in dorm had murderous thoughts about stereo systems fueling dance parties late into the night. They liked and used my pre-tested solution of playing opera and polka early the next morning in retaliation to their neighbours.


They were lucky compared to the people who thought dorm was a place to test out their wrestling skills. Someone got put through a wall head-first, was okay other than concussion and stitches, but refused to pay the damage deposit fine imposed by dorm. Other people on dorm had angry pizza delivery guys to deal with after prank calls, angry neighbours when they couldn't control their room-mates.

Worse, others had to steer clear of recently ex-boyfriends and ex-girl-friends after bad break-ups or loud make-up sex that didn't heal the wounds. That and creepy people who tried to follow their room-mates home from the bar. Compared to the guys who had bike races and foot-ball games down my hallway, I couldn't complain. Or the huge dorm party which resulted in all the furniture being piled into a fortress in common areas.


Or the fire-drills because someone was 'cooking' hot-dogs stoned and forgot about smoke if they passed out at 3 a.m. or lit candles for a relaxing bath which became less relaxed when candles started to burn through the counter. Not that fire extinguishers were left alone, one was shot off and into the vents and again we were evacuated while maintenance and fire fighters ventilated the dorm.


Other people forgot to ventilate the bathroom hot-box properly and in lighting up the bong and light the smoke alarm as well. This was at least once a month in the -30C. I got very efficient at loading my camera bag and laptop and leaving the building from pajamas to clothes in 30 seconds flat in case it was the real thing finally.

However, the night Halo-boy, a few friends and I re-organized the common-room was my fondest memory of the first year of dorm. For all the assignments, I was allowed to relax once in a while and partake a drink or three. Never again with Royal Reserve and I apologize to my liver for that night.

Appleton, RR and Lucky's beer aplenty, we had a great time. Emo-boy whined so much but we had a great time. Nobody took credit for the first move, but by the time Emo-boy arose in the morning, I thought he was playing more screa-mo for the amount he yelled. We were pretty happy with the new decorating style.

Sitting on a side-ways easy chair, I was calmly watching cartoons and eating kraft dinner mac & cheese, head cocked to the side. Non-flat-screen TV, chairs, table, small appliances, lamps, even posters were all side-ways.


For extreme make-over, Martha Stewart would have been proud. I was a lot less proud thinking about it now, but there's something metaphoric about said about the whole dorm lifestyle -- sometimes it just goes sideways for a curve-ball so keep on trucking.

If this says anything about why I decided rum shouldn't be on my diet in such plentiful amounts, I learned my lesson. Come to think of it, by second year I was a lot more calm about assignments, no less busy, but less in the drinking.


Second year was much more orderly in comparison as I was blessed with a much more sane bunch of dorm room-mates who got along much better. However, that's a different story for a different day. Hope you enjoyed ^_^

roomates - 1st year - sound & silence - pt 3of4

As you may notice, this isn't the easiest stuff to write about, yet my retired writer friend dearly departed, challenged me to find the humour in these situations, so I'll keep it up in his memory.

Anyhows... Emo-boy wasn't the one who swabbed the decks. Note the plunger attempt.

Finding a friend to stay with, Artsy-wino had enough after first term and his replacement in the dorm was even more crazy fun. Halo-boy was a piece of work, hot-boxing up the bathroom with Emo-boy, playing massive amounts of Halo while he was 'working' on assignments and drinking Lucky beer by the 18 pack.

Having cousins from  Vancouver Island where Lucky is brewed and affectionately called redneck champagne, I'm used to bone-head drinking and yelling, but having to write assignments and edit photos was a bit more than I can handle over the racket of Halo-boy and Emo-boy in a cage match of yelling over who got the TV for playing video games.

If I had a major amount of assignments to finish, the cable connection for the TV to Xbox went missing and then screa-mo would have been a nice sound in comparison. At least it was a truce.

Halo-boy was okay with this as his assignments were almost as many as mine. He still found plenty of time to shoot up Halo online or cook hamburger helper while drinking Royal Reserve Rum. He clean up the kitchen well enough and loved the idea of stacking Emo-boy's dishes.

Then came the night Halo-boy plugged the toilet. The flooding of water awash through the common area was the first hint that all was not right. Neither was him yelling at the toilet. I yelled back that the toilet was on strike from lack of fiber in his diet.

Never met someone who couldn't use a plunger. Halo-boy thought they were for scaling buildings. Suction cups work on a similar principle but as I explained the physics, he was fascinated.


'Physics are so cool! I always just let gravity do its thing if I didn't have a cherry-bomb around.' I'm not making that up and wonder how Halo-boy survived his mother's wrath.


Emo-boy was already flipping out as he heard the word cherry bomb mentioned. His room was next to the bathroom and we both threatened to shove his head in the toilet but it was already full. Halo-boy and I got along well enough.

That was probably the worst we could come up with, yet Emo-boy thought it was hilarious as long as he didn't have to clean it up. An odd combination of swearing, laughing and screa-mo but at least he was smiling, ish. What we put him through next was much worse...

To be continued.... madness pure madness which I hope strikes a chord and someone out there gets some insight to what happens when cabin fever hits room-mates during long Canadian winters.

roomates - 1st year - sound & silence - pt 2 of 4

So continues the madness.

Now artsy-wino was a good kid in comparison but far from perfect. Not the best nickname, but I haven't seen a lot of classy drunks in college like that. I was sad to see him go when he moved out after first term because he kept Emo-boy quiet-er. Well almost sad.

He drove me nuts watching American Idol, MTV Cribs and Languna Beach, three shows I thought I'd never hear the end of the way he idolized the Cali-life-style. His artsy political rants and self-pity that his work wasn't good enough yet didn't help either.

I asked how anyone could not be shot for being so tone-deaf and ruining classic songs and Artsy-wino said to back off because they worked hard to get there. It'd be easier if they hadn't started singing....

How could teens live off their parents like credit-cards would burn a hole in the pocket? Who could be so shallow down in Long Beach when their neighbours were dying of over-doses or working triple-shifts to support their families? Artsy-wino said the perfectly tanned teens weren't perfect either, they had relationship problems and troubles in school with drugs and alcohol.

'You don't know what it's like to have those kind of troubles or have a tortured artist's soul.' He was a pretty talented artist too so I didn't get it.

He was half-right but I was a peer-drug counselor after high-school so I told him a few stories to shut him up about teens worse off. Plus I've lots of artists who don't have thumb-screws embedded but he was still finding his artist style which is brutally hard to be original.

Yet talking about crack-users' relationships caused him to blow up like a screa-mo 'singer'. This was normal - he yelled at his artwork, politicians on TV, and Emo-boy - but this was worse. He had gotten straight after been into the XTC and speed at the clubs, but the crack was the worst he had ever seen go down. He was 20 years old barely and dealing with that already for years? Had a bit more sympathy for him but other than artistic passions which we debated over wine and cheese, we didn't have much in common.

Not much in common with artsy-wino, other than his sweet little girlfriend who used to wander in. If he wasn't home, I'd make her a cup of tea and she'd complain about Artsy-wino, her mother, and everything else that sucks when you're 20 years old. She was about the same age as my sister so it was pretty easy to listen and offer advice or a hug.

Arsty-wino was surprisingly okay with this as he was really possessive about her otherwise, but didn't have time to listen all the time when his brutally mark-heavy portfolio was due and she understood this. People who put up with artists are incredible for many reasons, especially when said artist breaks down. So it was hard on her at times when he was being mopey. 

Don't think he could keep ranting or moping with her around. When his patient gal was pretty cute about jumping on Artsy-wino's bed if he took too long to finish his work or dance a sock-hop up with us. As couples go, she was ying for his yang and they were pretty balanced fun. We had fun mocking American Idol wanna-bes and talking about philosophical and political subjects. 

Which is more than I talked about with my third roomate, Silence as I never saw him. I think since he might well have been closet gay, he never chose to hang out around where my other two roomates yelled homo at each other and all other kinds of gay insults. It was messy, but I felt bad for the kid to have to put up with so much screaming.

He'd come out swearing and throw stuff if he got mad enough once or twice, but not often. I'd let him just rip into my shocked other two roomates because it was good for some stress to defuse. He stormed out a lot with friends who looked after him better.

Playing my happy ska and reggae full-blast lessened the stress and defused the hate, but I never got to really know the kid, stop my roomates from yelling homo, so it was a bad scene. Most of the time we forgot Silence was there and would pound on the door once a week to make sure he wasn't dead we saw him so rarely.

With so much stress, I started to think God had sent me to look after them. All I had to do was keep the peace, keep place tidy enough and tempers wouldn't flare for too long. I thought after Christmas it would get a bit easier with a new roomate moving in. Was I wrong?

To be continued....


p.s. How did I survive? Laundry night helped... when my room-mates were getting too loud as the weekend started, I'd go down with a few loads of dirty clothes and straighten out my articles and notes. Even studied in the laundry room and met cool people there too.

roomates - 1st year - sound & silence - 1of4

Without much in the way of defense of male testosterone when the cruel experiment of throwing four random strangers into a single dorm suite without any warning.

Having moved to a completely new city and life to attend Journalism school. May have become socially tipsy, but I met lots of interesting people all over the dorm.

Homesick, worried about a huge amount of work, even just heart-broken from a summer romance, it was a great mix with Appleton Rum and cheap Albertan Big Rock Beer. Made up for it by drinking a lot of water and exercising when I could.

Wrote articles sobering up like Hunter S Thompson and interviewed amazing people, some of them still sobering up around dorm. It was good fun but I can't say that my own company at home was perfect.


An old sports-writer who lived in my neighbour-hood in Victoria roared with laughter when I related these tales, so I write after his encouragement and to honour his sense of humour as he's now writing in Heaven.

To avoid them grief and slander, I'll call them by their nicknames, Emo-boy, Artsy-wino and Silence. It was an odd match-up to say the least. Halo-boy came in for re-enforcement part way through the year, but it was a strange discord to be sure.

'What's wrong with you? Why is this place so messed up? I'm going to my room....' And tortured cats yeowling of guitars, dying singers and heavy bass would emit from the room at all times of day and night. Emo-boy had three CDs it seemed, all of them screa-mo. Which is exactly what they sounded like, screaming and emo crying.

Guess when he'd play them? To wake up to first thing in the morning or to drown out our request to turn it down. Artsy-wino threw one CD out the window eventually and would have repeated the process if Emo-boy hadn't started up exactly like his CD sounded.

You might think I'm being harsh, although he might have been a nice kid, he left home and didn't know how to cook, clean, look after himself because he was too busy moping around. Maybe because I had a reserve navy officer for a father, but chores and swabbing the deck were expected, non-negotiable.

Having dishes pile up and mold, floors go un-vacuumed or washed in the common room, and really, I didn't know how he managed to sleep in his room, let alone breathe from locker room smell. He'd stumble hungover into his pots and dishes when I got tired of it and piled them two feet high in front his door every once in a while.

Consequentially an amazing squeal of whining at 6AM over-powered the screa-mo music blaring. He'd pound on my locked bedroom door, still whining. Without rolling out of bed, I'd issue standard threat that I had the phone number of Emo-boy's mother and would call about the mess. Knowing I met her when he moved in, he didn't want find out if I was bluffing so sulked back to his room.

Artsy-wino was similarly tired by half-way through the term and made me breakfast in thanks because he was so sick of Emo-boy as well. I wouldn't have been so harsh if he did anything besides play video games and whine about classes. I wish I was 18 years old again.

To be continued.... stick around for this four part series of weird-ness and fun coping with madness.


-- PLR --


p.s.


To put it nicely, it wasn't perfect, but I was too tired to care after working long on articles and delicate issues, so here's some of the back-story of why dorm-life was so strange some days. Emo-kid graduated and was doing well last I randomly met up with him.

make every day an earth day, not just a fancy slogan

Is there only one day where we recognize the earth and all its environmental massive diversity might have some unresolved issues? I'm not even who to believe has the most inconvenient truth or who is the most right about what happened to climate change, good or bad, hot or cold, unseasonal or not. The planet probably goes through cycles of good days/centuries and bad just like everything else in life.

So take time to enjoy a walk in the sun poking through rain clouds. Notice how light is beautiful and everything sparkles on a glistening sunny/cloudy windy day. And likely there will be another one to follow this one.

Either way, here's hoping it's not going to be some brutally ridiculous end of the world as we know it tomorrow. Maybe it's accelerating spiraling downwards, maybe it's getting slowly better. All I know is that there's a lot of planet to absorb all that pollution and guess what, it's not perfect, but at least things are changing.

It's like learning to ride a bike, our knees are take a lot of punishment. Yet they heal and we learn to balance. It'll take a while but the earth will balance out as well.

So haul out and tune-up the old bike instead having to drive everywhere for small errands and simple pleasures. Traffic jams and stress are unheard of when you're cruising along a bike path or bike lane. It's all about habits and cultural shift of mindset when trying to make the place better.

The planet isn't doing well for all the industrial progress. At the same time, people are making a small dent here, a huge dent there.

Take for instance that 11 year old (likely with help from her parents, teacher, marketers & publishers) who painted a book's worth of birds. Olivia's Birds is a simple idea of fund-raising. It seems to be making a fair sized dent from a small effort and snowballed into over $200,000 towards helping sick birds from the BP oil spill in Florida. That is one little girl who cared. Good on her and isn't she just a media darling of a poster child.

What if her whole class pitched in? The whole school? Exponentially that's a lot of children who are aware something is wrong and they have an solid example of helping fix it. Maybe a few of them will stick to it and make a huge difference when they're older. Maybe they will figure it out a little quicker like around the Alaskan ship-wreck that is still not growing anything today or the Ukrainian radio-active mess 25 years ago.

Maybe it's simpler when you're young to have less cares and want to help out sick birds but why stop when we grow up? There's some pretty small things to do and give back to the planet for all the resources we take from it.

So don't just fill, but over-flow the recycling bin for what it's worth. Or at least try to reuse stuff when you can. Or you could always make your building sustainable -- Small dents, big dents.

Ever heard of LEED? It's a honourable award for an architectural firm to make a large scale building project eco-friendly. It isn't anything special after the building is opened, just a plaque at the front of the building.

Yet from saving trees on the lot and reusing materials from the old building and proper disposal of toxic materials, to recycling gray water, energy efficiency and skylights, it's an ambitious idea. It might be more expensive to build; such a building likely pays for itself in the long run in energy savings and sustainability.

It's just a wild guess that those architects around the world who decided to do this, probably hugged a tree once in a while, or at least respected it when they were young. They probably rode their bikes through fields too. If you can learn from that and make your own home a bit better, great.

If they can also make a huge difference in how buildings are making a smaller impact on the environment, why stop there? It's a ridiculous balance of legislation, grants, co-operation and innovation but doable. It just takes longer than learning to ride a bike. Some people get all excited about ecological impact, foot-prints and consumerism.... yaddah yaddah until deaf ears it falls on. Kinda like losing inner equilibrium and balance.

That LEED thing didn't happen over night. It probably took tons of planning, problem solving, and raising of standards. Huge building projects aren't exactly the best thing to experiment on so designing probably went slow. Some super smart people are trying to plan out and make the earth a better place too.

Those people just need some encouragement and patience. In the meanwhile, hug a tree. A tree has seen decades and it's still here. Those crazy iPads or PDAs or whatever, they come and go. A tree can grow for centuries.

So take a moment and hug a tree. It sounds like crazy hippies' talk, but remember when you were a kid and could stare up into a huge peaceful tree? It's worth protecting for the amount of animal, plant and soil life it supports. No wonder environmentalists thought it was a good analogy for the planet.

Why not notice the earth every day? It's like smelling the roses once in a while, noticing the small stuff.

Views Walkies Never Know

'Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.'

~Winston Churchill~

Though it could be a bonus to always have a prime view of cute bums, it gets a little boring and annoying after a while. Looking up seems so intimidating if they are particularly tall. Being at that height puts a different perspective on everything. It is at child's height, but far less fun. They might bear a smile and grin to take it with grace, but we're not talking about dancing munchkins from the Land of Oz. It's a reality to 41,000 people in Canada who live in a wheelchair from either accident or from birth. One in three Canadians have a connection to someone with spinal cord injuries.

Most people, the walkies, have few ideas of how they should show proper etiquette to people in wheelchairs. Don't automatically talk about them when they are sitting right beside an able-bodied person. Might be shorter, but it's always rude to talk over someone's head, metaphorically or otherwise. They are people like anyone else you meet on the street: Nor are they in the least way any less intelligent. In fact, with a bit more steely determination to deal with challenges. Fortitude runs out occasionally, but more so, they still manage to draw up hope, endurance, and cheerfulness again. Helen Keller, an amazing advocate for the deaf and blind, put it more elegantly then I could. 'We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.'

I was only wheeling around in my friend's chair for an hour, but it long enough to notice there would be a lot of frustrations quickly enough. Reaching up for a plate or cup from the kitchen cabinets is next to impossible or a good way to bring the whole stack of plates crashing down on you. It's almost embarrassing sometimes to have to call someone over to help you all the time. Consideration to help with few questions is just as important as anticipating others' needs and abilities to do things on their own. Etiquette and hospitality to see to someone else's comfort should not just be something in a hostess' job description.

Talking to my friend has taught me a lot. I did not quote her directly as I was not thinking that I should have until after. So I summarized and made sure I got the gist of it with her. There are somethings that you cannot even imagine from not being in a wheelchair all the time. Having someone kick your chair as they walk by. Could you imagine? Not even consciously. Just walking by, it's like, it's a three foot tall wheel, dumbarse, how could you miss it? You don't kick strollers, why kick a wheelchair. Surely not on purpose, but would it hurt to apologize?

Someone in a chair might be out of your direct line of vision, but you can usually notice someone approaching in your peripherals? Move. Do it as if you were standing blocking the way of anyone else. Don't give a stunned look and stare, you are likely being rather rude. Apologizing profusely and jumping out of the way like you were liable to get run-over is a good way to exasperate someone. The response might be 'it's OK, don't worry about being in my way.' But the thought is 'look, my driving in this chair is probably better then you driving your car on the road.'

Good intentions can become completely exacerbating like a foot in the mouth. Oh and please refrain 'from telling children to be careful while I pass' as if the chair will suddenly swerve out of control. It is worse then jumping out of the way. 'Children are more likely to swerve unexpectedly then I ever will.'

Be not fooled it would be a disadvantage to be lower to the ground. A custom designed wheelchair has a tighter turning radius then an Indy race-car. Able to turn on the spot takes a swift counter-motion of the wheels. To twirl the hand-grips and coast is a bit of coordination. I cannot imagine trying to play basketball or rugby at the same time at the same time as keeping a steady motion without much practice, yet para-athletes excel.

On the practical, to glide down the hall is one thing, but most hallways are only made for one person to pass another at a time. Add half a foot for wheels and it's not so simple to slip by the other person. Going around the corners has a good chance of grazing or rapping knuckles on the wall if you cut it too close to the edge of the wall. The same annoyance comes from hitting doorways, automated doors, or tables in the arm.

It might have four wheels, but the wheelchair is liable to tip backwards and smack the head completely helplessly against the ground. Learning to pop a wheelie is essential to keeping balance if it starts to go backwards as well as losing fear of falling. Once you have gotten back on the horse, it is less frightening to know that it's not going to happen every time. Likewise with a wheelchair, best just to practice and learn.

Spend even fifteen minutes in a wheelchair and try to imagine not getting back up for any reason in daily life. A few statistics to leave those who think they are invincible in cars (55% of injuries are from collisions), sports (27% of injuries), or even just not wearing a helmet while riding their bikes (18% of injuries are from falls of all sorts). 1,100 people suffer spinal cord injuries every year in Canada. 84% of those people are under 35 years old. The Canadian health care system spends $1.25 million a year on helping people with spinal cord injuries and $25 million over each person's lifetime. Especially when 62% of those people become unemployed while they recover, retrain muscles to gain mobility, heal and come to terms with their new situation. Use your head or you might be finding out first-hand a new meaning to frustration and adversity to overcome.

On a far happier note, we still have much to learn. 90% of spinal cord injury knowledge has been discovered in the last twenty years towards a cure. Researchers believe they will find a way to regenerate the spinal cord within 10 years. 'If you believe in a dream and have the courage to try, great things can be accomplished. Anything is possible.' – Rick Hansen.

A more personal sweet thought is in the best perk for my friend who has taught me so much so far. People give more respect to someone in a wheelchair then before she was in a chair. They go out of their way to help or even just to say hi and smile. Everyone has challenges in their lives. It's much easier going if you keep on rolling and enjoy the ride instead of complaining. Life is a struggle, but why dwell on it? All I ask is to have a little more respect for those who live lower to the deck in a wheelchair.