Naked Man Not Included

We do a lot of "what did you get" in my family at Christmas time. Not because we attach a lot of importance to things, but because we really like it when someone gets/gives the perfect gift. I got some truly great stuff this year - my friends and family obviously know me well. I still remember the year that I got pjs, a comforter, an electric blanket a body pillow and a fleece nightgown. Apparaently I spend a lot of time sleeping!

This year, there was a perfect gift - one of many - that I neither gave nor got. A friend of mine got this bath thing. It is like a table that goes over your bath. I had pictured one in my head as I've always wanted to try playing crib in the bath. OK, not always. I wasn't born wanting that. Anyway...

This thing had a sort of easel thing for a book, a wine glass holder and a sculpted candlestick. How cool is that? I'd love that. All it needed was...oh wait, if you've read the title, you know what was missing. Although I suspect Peter would have been very upset indeed if he'd been given a naked man to go with it.

Drivel

People may not use the word drivel, but they sure spout the stuff! Besides, I use the word drivel. I just did. Twice. Thrice if you count the title! Ha!

Good-bye Orson Scott Card

It is a very bad day when someone you admired - or more correctly, whose writing you admired - turns out to be a jerk. I loved his books, but I may on principle get rid of them. I am bitterly disappointed Mr. Card.

Beautiful but Naked

I have a Christmas tree. A beautiful Christmas tree. Tall, full and then most beautiful deep green you could ever imagine. But....

It has nothing on it. It's naked as a Jay bird. In a series of inexplicable incidences that may or may not have involved elves, the box of decorationsfor the tree has gone missing. Now, the lights gone? No problem - cheap to replace and we've decided to use the ones that normally go on the outside tree to save even that little expense. The incredible sadness here is the ornaments. Each year we choose a new one to add to the collection, and we remember where and when we got most of them. There were a bunch that I got from when I taught pre-school, a bunch of home made ornaments - you know the kind, pictures with macaroni frames? - lots of oraments from friends, all with special meaning to us. I don't mind losing some of the glitter and if the lights needed to disappear, well, fine. But can I have the ornaments back?

By the Power Invested in Me...

Lots of wedding stuff to tell, but today’s entry will be on the almost boo-boo. My son did a reading at the wedding, and he was practicing the night before. Or rather earlier in the morning, as it was after midnight. The lateness of the hour is one of the two excuses I am using for what I did. He read the whole thing, and then asked “what do I say at the end again – this is the word of the Lord, or the word of God?” I told him they were both wrong, he was supposed to say “so say I”.

I’m actually at the wedding, mere moments before he reads when it occurs to me that I hadn’t set him straight. I meant to, but the getting ready situation was hectic, and I forgot. So while I was impressed with how well he read, my pleasure was tempered with worry that he would indeed end it with "so say I". Happily (does my own son not trust me?), he thought to ask the minister before the ceremony started. Seems he felt "so say I" was iffy. Phew. Because that would have upset my sister. But it would have been funny, yes?

Me? Really?

Apart from the fantastic food and the well-planned wedding, the whole mini-trip was enjoyable. Brought back new games, got to hang out at the ocean (yes, it was snowy and cold and windy but it was still the ocean!) and...unexpectedly...flirted with left right and centre. Ok, maybe more left than right, but still. It was a nice counterpoint to the whole feeling extra single at my sister's wedding vibe that I was feeling going out there.

Brought back lots more than games - most of it edible. Or drinkable. Flying out of Victoria I was thinking "well, if we crash (or get taken hostage) we've got tea, bacon, cheese, crab, smoked salmon, Branston Pickle - which only the desperate hunger of trying to stay alive in a crashed plane on some hard-to-rescue-from mountainside could make appealing - chocolate, various English oddities, and two Fry's chocolate bars. We may starve eventually, but the first bit will be great!"

And maybe a trip to the Balearics.

Sometimes in life you ask for too much. 'Tis in our nature. But you know what I want? To go toboganning on the weekend. And a million dollars would be nice too, but the sledding is what matters.

Not enough sex in Saskatchewan for lack of TIME?

I don't buy the Leader Post. Sorry, I just don't. I get my news online, thank you very much. I never did like the Post and I happen to like the world view one gets reading the BBC web site every morning. Nevertheless, I do sometimes read the Post if it is in the coffee room and I've read every single other option.

Yesterday I read that the people in Saskatchewan are having less sex than they used to, and less than their neighbours. Apparently, people are TOO BUSY to have it as much as they want to. Too busy? Honey, I can think of a hundred things worth putting off because time is short before that would make it to the list: vacuuming, dusting, laundry, dishes, ironing, shoveling the driveway, letter writing, getting rid of a thousand pieces of spam mail...LOTS. No sex because you've got no partner...ok. You're deathly ill...also understandable. In traction in the hospital - yup, we get that. But TIME? What is wrong with you people?

Stupid Unruly Mouth Part Deux

When you're in an high class establishment (you have to read it that way, with a snooty accent to boot), and a waiter - in a tux! - offers you and the woman you're talking with oysters (with a wink and a nod, telling you both that they're purported to be an aphrodisiac) don't, if you want to maintain your classy facade, blurt out "no thanks: she doesn't need one and I don't want one".

Her husband, at least, laughed. Because he got it - they were working out the details of how soon they could ditch the party and get back to the hotel. What with having a weekend in a nice hotel and grandma looking after the 18 month old baby and all. The last thing in the world she needed was an aphrodisiac!

Umm, is it just me?

We did a lot of fine dining over the wedding trip - and I didn't have to pay for any of it! Apparently, tradition dictates that parents of the groom pay for the rehearsal supper. I believe our rehearsal supper was "so...anyone feel like pizza?", my sister's was far classier. Classy, I guess, as classier implies that there was a modicum of class in the pizza supper. Anyway...

We had another supper, at yet another fine dining establishment and there I was, reading the menu, not a wanton thought on my mind when I came to "Pork Duo" and "Salmon Three Ways" and they both struck me as things more likely to be found in the Kama Sutra. So are they, or is it just me?

It isn't about you!

There is a woman retiring this week after like a bazillion years of crazy employment. The crazy being 50% the place, and 50% the woman herself. She didn't want any fancy retirement thing, which is fine, so the committee is having an afternoon tea thing. The theme is tea and chocolate. They are hiring a bunch of people for the catering, including yours truly. I would have done something anyway, I think, because I've known the crazy lady for a while.

The committee is asking me to make biscotti. Which I do well, don't get me wrong. But...I know the retiring woman doesn't like it. AT ALL. She finds it too hard on her teeth, or dentures. More likely a combination of both but you get the point.

So I told the committee that, thinking that they could choose something different. Or better yet, let me choose: I've brought lots of things in to the office over the years, and I know what she is especially fond of and what she isn't.

Didn't work. They want biscotti, damn it, and they're going to have it. So I said fine, but I want the retiree know that it wasn't my call. I mean, who wants to think that the only caterer you actually know made the one thing you really dislikes? I was told that the committee liked biscotti and that's all that matters. And here I thought it was all about the retiree. Wrong again.

Mr. And Mrs.

Ah, the wedding trip. Where to start? At the beginning, with the flight ‘o farts, or at the end with the non-alarming alarm?

How about we just discuss the flight there? I flew out on Wednesday (and May-b I’m going to have to make you some incredible mushroom meal to make up for the cold and early drive - Thank you for doing that!), from Regina to Calgary, then Calgary to Victoria. I arrived in Victoria just as they were canceling all sorts of flights. We were the last ones in that day – but we didn’t go into Victoria as planned, we stayed in Sidney. The storm was just that bad. Even here they might have closed some highways, I think. There? Total panic bordering on mass hysteria. They were canceling flights in and out of Vancouver, too, so it wasn’t just the island being snowed in.

On a side note, given that the last giant snow storm they had was ten years ago, which is coincidentally the last time I was there in December, don’t you think the city of Victoria should pay for me to go to Hawaii in December 2016? It would be cheaper than the cost of another winter like this one!

The flight from Calgary to Victoria was bumpy, but it was better than the flight to Calgary. See, the thing is, the guy one row ahead and one seat over from me was…under the weather. Or maybe he just eats a lot of beans. Whichever it was, the entire flight was punctuated by AUDIBLE (which would be ok if they weren’t also SCENTABLE*) explosions of gas. Eventually, people started making sounds of disgust – or despair – every time he let one rip. The guy he was with finally whispered (he was directly ahead of me, so I heard him) “Dude, ya gotta stop”. To which the poor man replied “If I had any control over this, do you think I’d be doing it in the first place?” Poor guy. By the end of the flight, he was despised by all, and he knew it. On the plus side, I didn’t have a lot of time to spare in Calgary to make my connecting flight to Vcitoria, and I’ve NEVER seen a plane empty so quickly!

*Not sure if that is an actual word. But it should be.