Crappy Customer Service

I forgot to have kids so I could give away shit jobs.

The weekend of July 17 was our deck-building weekend.  Is it me, or do you have to be a master fucking engineer to figure this shit out?  We had to submit blueprints to the city and give them a big piece of pie so they'd put an "OK" stamp on our plans.  Fortunately my husband is a genius because if I'd had to sit in front of the city's structural engineers and explain beams and joists I'd have shoved my finger up my nose as far as it would go and commenced drooling.  Spatial relations were always my weak suit. 

Day One went well but then Mother Nature interceded on Day Two with a plow wind.  I sent my kind volunteer force home before the worst hit, with the deck done but no railings.  These last two weeks have been about coming home and chipping away at the last few hours of work.  The shed we're putting up there was delivered yesterday too - complete with 10 000 parts to assemble.  This shit makes IKEA seem like a joke, people.  The last several HOURS of the shed assembly have to be done in one shot on a windless day or someone's going to get cut to ribbons by flying sheet metal.

And on top of it all I've injured my lower back somehow. My chiropractor declared me completely nuts for hand-digging those post holes.

Check Out the Whip

My office windows look out onto one of those "performance" places.  I don't know about your city but Edmonton has at least one per industrial area.  The one across the street specializes in pimping japanese cars of all makes.  It's a frequent sight to see a group of guys clustered around the front of someone's ride, showing off his shiny new engine or whatever.

You can always spot the guy who owns the car - he's the guy propping the hood open.  For some reason this shop removes all the stick props from their pimped cars or something, because the owner of said car will stand out there for half an hour or more, chewing the fat about his car and holding up the hood.  Not once have I seen a guy take out the stick prop, put it up, and continue the intense discussions.  You will see the guy's arms getting tired because he switches sides.  Never in four years of being in that office!  Why is that? 

I mean, other than the notion that the whole thing is a dick-measuring contest?

For The Record

I live with the Canadian health care system.  It is none of the things American politicians have been going around saying about it for the last month or so.  Let's face it, when you're a non-Canadian in a non-Canadian country talking about our universal (NOT FREE) health care, you can say whatever the fuck you want about it and everyone's going to nod their heads in agreement because they don't know the truth either.

The truth is, it sucks sometimes and doesn't always work.  People fall through the cracks.  Plenty of Canadians talk shit about universal health care, including one who had a giant sliver pulled out of his foot as a child in a gruesome and surely expensive procedure that his parents couldn't have afforded to cover in full.  Ten times out of ten I will take it over the American system.  The only people I know who really hate universal health care are quite rich enough to pay for their own lengthy, complicated deaths out of their chequing accounts.  And those people will just drive over the border and pay for health care anyway. 

Wanted: Power Tools

I'm still tired from digging post holes for our new deck on the weekend.  By hand.  Who is the masochist in my family?  My dad, who has probably dug 10 000 post holes by hand in his lifetime.  He is absurdly strong for a man on the small side - a classic Scot, in other words.  And since I am half my dad and absurdly strong for a woman, I got to dig the last foot of each of the holes.  My house is sitting on the world's stickiest clay that would ball up in the digger.  Seriously, my dad tried to make a pot out of it.

We also mixed our own concrete, since my dad has a mixer.  His presence, complete with tools, probably shaves $2000 off this project.  But WHY doesn't he buy an auger?  Especially since I now owe him quite a bit of manual labour at his place?

Hook, Line and Sinker

This weekend past I was at my parents' place, which is situated in the middle of nowhere, SK, on my uncle's mixed farm.  It was time to brand, vaccinate, chip, ear tag and castrate the calves.  It's an easy task to sign up for when the dividend is a year of free-range, grass-fed, custom-cut beef at $4 a pound.  I posted some pictures on my Flickr photostream, with a few more to come. 

My mother, aunt and I catered lunch and dinner for the cowpokes.  During this meal my second cousin Dwayne was telling stories about my Uncle Bill, who was present at the time.  Bill loves to mess with kids' heads because he knows they are very gullible.  He doesn't have his own kids but he has scores of nieces and nephews so there's plenty of time and opportunity for pranks.

I reminded my uncle of a time he gulled me and my three cousins.  He had a motorboat that was rigged for waterskiing.  My family spent time with him and his various girlfriends every summer because my dad loved to waterski.  The boat had those seats up front in the nose.

Once, Bill took the four of us out to the centre of a lake and pretended to run out of gas.  He handed each of us an oar and told us we had to row the boat back to shore!  Now, I don't know if you guys know anything about boats but a motorboat with an outboard big enough to haul two grown men is insanely heavy.  I know this because I rowed one back to shore from the nose seats at the age of six.

I told Bill this story - he didn't remember, having played so many other tricks on relatives and friends dumb enough to believe his line of bullshit that this one was lost in the mists.  After pondering on it for a moment, and asking me which lake it was, he said, "Well...that does sound like me."

Wherein I Make A Controversial Statement

I hate jeans.  Hate 'em.  I know that every other person on the planet will disagree with me and I'm down with that.  You go on wearing your jeans however you like - I don't hate your jeans.  I hate mine!

I wore jeans today for the first time in a couple of months and all I could think of all day was how long it would be until I could get home and take those suckers off.  I feel like I'm being squeezed in a vise.  The best pair of jeans will never fit me as well as a lousy pair of pants.

And it's not that my jeans are too tight.  It's my various Fit Issues.  I am 4" taller than the average woman, yet I have a normal inseam length.  This means that all my height is in my torso - yes that's right, the LEAST attractive way to be tall, I managed it.  So I have a long rise as well as an actual ass.  Jean waistbands never even get within shouting distance of my waist.  And let's not even talk about low-rise jeans, which I can actually walk out of.

I'm too old to be uncomfortable in my clothes.  So no more jeans!