Category: Home Fires

I’m at work and my wife is on a day off.  I think she planned to garden today.  All I really know is I received this email around noon.

The phone woke me up, I listened to the long stress filled story about the lawnmower, got out of bed, threw my clothes on, went into the garage and no truck.  ??? I mentally review the plan and I’m sure the truck must be here.  I wish for a coffee but I’m in a hurry, someone else might get the lawnmower so there’s no time.  I find the truck on the street in the front, get it unlocked, drive to rona and park.  yay!

Went inside, found the mower, listened to the story again (from the retailer point of view), paid for it, had it loaded into the bed and no straps.  I wish for a coffee. I drove home 15k all the way. 8th street closed I detour to bucks for a coffee and some beans, cuz I deserve a treat and we’re out of coffee.  I’m in line behind two women who are channelling the skunk through their hairdresser.  One is disguised as a leopard on her legs and I snigger to myself thinking that even though I am straight out of bed I am not so ridiculous and they’ve clearly tried hard yet failed miserably.

The first one orders a small caramel macchiato with sugar free syrup and skim milk and a low fat veggie sandwich and pulls out her phone to review text messages.  She does not move along the counter. The second orders a  tall caramel macchiato with the sugar free syrup, and make sure of it please, and skim milk with a low fat turkey bacon sandwich and a peanut butter cookie. She pulls out her phone while the clerk rings her bill.  She can’t pay until she sends her text, and now she can’t pick her cookie up because she’s sending another one.  Now there are ten people lined up behind them and the first one complains to the barista that’s it’s an awfully claustrophobic location.  I excuse myself quietly because after all even the most misguided deserve a nice visit to the coffee shop.  I reach over a phone to get my coffee, walk around the first woman and nudge her out of the way to get a stopper stick and finally make my way out the door and got the truck unlocked.  What I really wanted to do was tell the first bitch to get the fuck out of the way and the second to get her shit together and talk to her peeps when she sits down after I smash both of them into a wall. I get in the truck.  whew, only a few blocks to go, I haven’t even sipped my coffee yet but I’ll save it until I get myself home.  I get back out and take the parking ticket off the windshield.  Fucking skunk head leopard bitch, it’s all her stupid fault.

Home… yay!  I let the dogs out (2) and called mother.  I listened to the story again, and a dog starts to cry very loudly.  omg, is that our dogs???  It sounds like two – what the heck has happened?? Who is hurt?? I put the handset down rush outside and Oaks has locked himself in the garden and he’s loudly unhappy about it.  I let him out and then I can’t find Molly.  I look in every corner of the yard thinking she’s hurt herself and can’t get up.  No Molly.  I come back inside say goodbye to mother, check upstairs, downstairs, main floor, grab a leash and a coat and go back outside.  I check the yard again, calling the whole time.  I walk to the front, I walk around the block, no Molly.  I come inside to get the truck keys and I go to back yard.  Damn, I curse myself, the truck is in front because it has a lawnmower in the bed.  I hear a whimper… the garage door is open a sliver and inside is Molly.

How the hell did she get herself into the garage?? I must not have closed the door when I first checked for the truck this morning and she’s got herself locked in there.  Damn.  I tell you this story so you understand why it’s all your fault. You should have put the truck back in the garage last night.  And you will have to pay my parking ticket to make up for it.  And the dogs go in the garden to hunt cuz you have a mouse house in there and they get locked in cuz the gate is broken. 

Please book the truck in and get that steering issue fixed.  No way am I driving it like that.  I kept thinking a wheel was falling off. Oh yes, and I drove the whole time practically laying on my back peering timidly out the side windows because I couldn’t get the seat adjusted.  You have a sore back because you lay down to drive.  It’s time to sit up.  And you could even reach the signal light if you sat up.

I’m afraid to get out of my chair but i need a cloth to wipe the coffee off my chin.  

After 14 years of faithful service I have to retire the Dakota.  Not because it is no longer reliable or because something else has caught my eye.  I’m afraid it is an SGI decision.  A couple of weeks ago I lent it out to someone who managed to crease the drivers door.  Nothing to terrible but enough that the door needs to be replaced as opposed to being repaired.

The trouble is a combination of age and miles.  14 years and 400,000 kilometers are just too much for it to hold enough value.  The $3400 repair bill is making SGI cringe at the idea of fixing it.

We saw this coming.  The body is starting to show signs of rust in all the doors and wheel wells, the rear bumper already has rusted through in spots, and the handling is just loose enough to make you thing it may be ball joint time again.  We were going to replace it anyway in a couple of years with a spanky new “welcome to retirement” vehicle.  It just runs SO well I really wanted to drive it as long as I could.  Doesn’t burn oil, always starts.  Great little truck.

Since that kind of money is not available right now we have gone with an intermediate vehicle, a 2003 Silverado in great shape.  The new truck looks like we can get an easy 5 years out of it before we spring a new(ish) one.  At the end of it all I am only out of pocket $3,000 and have a rust free truck with half the miles.  Not a bad deal even if it was unplanned.

I spent two days at corporate head office last week. This is where I started my career, oh so many years ago. There have been many changes over the years but some things remain the same. First thing I noticed that had not changed was the wall paper. Exactly the same as I remember it almost 30 years ago. Also the same are the ubiquitous burlap looking partitions the form the cubical farms and the plastic flex hose going up to to the ceiling carrying the power and LAN wiring. I still remember asking why there were so many vacuum hoses.

One of the big changes was the lack of people. It used to be the cafeteria was always packed, even during work hours. It was a common adhoc meeting room. At any time there would be a dozen small group meetings happening around a table. Lunchtime required you to hurry upstairs to avoid the 20 minute lineup for food. Getting a table required somebody holding a spot. It was packed.

Over the last two days each time I stopped I to pick up a coffee it was practically empty. The head office cafeteria seats several hundred people and even at lunch there couldn’t have been more than 50. This afternoon I am in the second major office space we have in the city, home to a few hundred employees. The cafeteria here is literally empty. Zero. No one.

I’m not sure what to make of this. Does everyone leave the building now? Does everyone work through their breaks? Did I miss spring break week? (No by the way)

Reflecting on the empty common spaces I think we have lost an important sense of community. We don’t get to meet the people who work in other areas of the company. We don’t form a sense of common purpose. The family has grown up and moved away.

It makes me sad.

It has been a great day for word play and you know how much I love word play.  Here are some of the giggles I had today.

• The policy around use for corporate documents is still cloudy.

comment made while discussing the recent of introduction of Google Drive

• Is the application taxing?

question asked while scoping out the hardware requirements for an accounting application

• I’m too fast for myself

response from the person who said the above when they realized what they said

Many thanks to Ricky P for making the day go by a little quicker.

My wife and I have had an on again off again conversation out how long we want to work before retiring.  This has been going on for several years now.  For the past five years she has been diligently monitoring the real estate market in the location we want to live. Meantime I have been calculating savings rates and plotting cash flows.  My retirement age moves from fifty five to fifty seven to fifty nine. Argh.  Wrong way!

A few weeks ago we finally decided to “go see the money guy” and get real about it.  Once we laid it all out the answer was stunning.  “You could go now, if you wanted to”.  Holy Frack!  Didn’t see that coming.

Now, I recognize that all this comes with caveats.  “Could” is all about what lifestyle you want to have.  Want to travel to Europe once a year? Then no, go back to work.  Want to live to 100?  Go back to work.  In our case “could” means I can live to 90 without a lifestyle change from today.  That’s significant.  I have a pretty good life.  Not 4 weeks in the sun every winter and a new car every few years good. My truck is turning 13 years old and a winter holiday means staying home to watch World Junior’s on TV every Christmas.

It does mean I keep my cabin and its growing armada of boats (six now, is there a 12 step program for boats?).  It means I can continue to enjoy restaurants as frequently as I do today.  It means I can still hope to go to Europe at least once.

More importantly it meant that I could do what we just finished doing.  We put all of my wife’s efforts to use and bought that property in the location we want to be.  We won’t be using it immediately.  For the next couple of years at least it will be a rental property offered very discriminately to hand picked tenants.  After all, it will be my home one day.