Why We're Handing Over the Election to the Left

Mitt with his constituency--or Bachmann's kids?

 Why do we do it? Why do we allow the left-biased, liberal, socialist-leaning, Obama-loving, Islamophilia media to dictate the show? Both George-I-Did-Not-Have-Sex-With-Clinton-Stephanopoulos, and David-I-Am-Not-a-Racist-You-Are-Gregory, hardly asked any serious conservative questions to the GOP candidate contenders, according to Brent Bozell in Townhall Magazine.  In fact, Stephanopoulos asked a slightly higher percentage of conservative questions compared to Gregory, who asked about 1 out of 28.  But when all is said and done, I have to ask myself, why do they even entertain these pseudo-journalists in the first place?  One theory is that Conservatives are masochists--I'm still working on that theory.
 

I talk about media bias in my latest novel, Jihad Joe.  The hero, Zed Nill, works for The Free World Press, a fictional newspaper that actually reports the facts and leaves opinions to the people who matter most--the readers.  But you don't find that in the media today.  Even The New York Times has a long history of leaning far over to the left--look at the way they reported on Joseph McCarthy--demonizing his efforts to uncover communism in America's elite.  Time Magazine, The New Yorker, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, are all prime examples of the left's attack on the foundations of this country, it's religious majority, and the heroes on the right.  

Wasn't it great when Tim Tebow threw for 316 yards against the Steelers while wearing glare patches that cited John 316?  C'mon, that's just what creeps like garbage-mouth Bill Maher needed.  I'm a New Yorker, born and bred, but I've become a Tebow fan and would probably explode from mass confusion overload if the Broncos ever played the Giants in the Superbowl (the chances of that happening in my lifetime are about the same as being struck by Bill Maher during a solar eclipse on a Tuesday at a Tea Party meeting with Maher as guest speaker).


So it looks like Mitt is going to go all the way (speaking of football), but Ron Paul needs to go away.  To call him a Republican is like calling Diane Sawyer "perky."

If you are interested in terrorism and suspense, I have provided 2 links (below) for a hard copy (soft cover) edition and an eBook edition of my latest novel, Jihad Joe.  It's a story about Zed Nill, a New York based reporter, taken hostage by Islamic terrorists.  He must escape, or be beheaded the following day . . . the clock is ticking.

click here for softcover Jihad Joe                     

click here for ebook version

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Jihad Joe: a novel

 The most difficult thing to do in the world, is to write a novel. It is also the easiest thing to do, because you cannot not write it--you are forced by your own nature to write. That`s also the way it is with blogging, but blogging is easier in a way, and harder in another. Easier in the sense that I can shoot from the hip, like I`m doing right now, but harder because you need to be prolific and interesting.


I've just completed my second novel, Jihad Joe, which is now out in e-format and hopefully will be available in a few days on Kindle, Kobo, Nook, Cranny (made that one up), Soni Smartphone (I believe it`s called), and a bunch of other e-reader devices, as well as your own PC, (which is available right now).  In fact, I believe that before too long, there will be fewer paper books and the market will be dominated by electronic media.  Just as long as the media doesn`t remain dominated by left wing troglodytes like you find on MSNBC.


Briefly, the novel is about a guy named Zed Nill, (musta been drinking when I came up with that name), who works for The Free World Press, an honest paper that prints the truth. Zed finds himself in the middle of a terrorist attack and is taken prisoner and secreted to a safe house in upstate New York. He is guarded by Yusuf, an Indian Muslim who is new to jihad, and it becomes Yusuf`s job to kill Zed if the President of the United States refuses to release three Gitmo prisoners by the next day.  Protocol dictates that the government does not negotiate with terrorists, so Zed is to lose his head the next day.  Yusuf is alone in guarding him, and Zed must convince him that Islam is not the religion Yusuf believes it is, and that his life should be spared. Can Zed convince Yusuf, a man who has been taught since childhood that Islam is the only true religion, that he was duped?  And if he can convince him, can he get away before the two other terrorists return to finish the job?  

The clock is ticking.


Jihad Joe  is entertaining as well as informative about the "religion of peace."  If you know nothing about Islam, it will open your eyes and give you powerful insights. 

If you know about Islam and jihad, I believe you will learn things that you might not have known about the doctrine and what the civilized world is facing today.  For the Amazon version click here 

click here for ebook version

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This photo is blogged

This photo is blogged a photo by Rob Hoey on Flickr.

You're laying in bed. All you hear is the sound of your spouse asleep, breathing and dreaming next to you; a ticking clock on the wall, and if your hearing is really good, the sound of melted snow in the process of refreezing from the cold night air. You ask yourself philosophical questions like: "if a clock ticks in the forest and there is nobody there to hear it, does time stop?" Or: "did Tim Horton ever sleep?"
Yes, you realize it was that late night cup of coffee that is causing those neurons to fire like a Donald Trumpathon on steroids. And you lay there and the clock's ticking seems to get louder and all kinds of new thoughts enter your mind like: "when the hell am I going to get around to hanging that freaking light in the dining area?" Or: "if god exists, why did he make bedbugs and maggots?" Or: "what if they never give me permanent residency in Canada?"
Then I try to relax and take a few deep breaths, which is a little like white noise but it still doesn't drown out the ticking of the clock and the refreezing of the melted snow.
Did you know that the number 8 is the brightest digit on a digital clock?

Canadian Flag in Reflection

flag3
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

Only in Canada do you get advertising that also talks about the weather. Let's face it, talking about the weather is about as mundane as you can get in normal conversations, but today we received an ad in the mail for Rogers cable TV where you can get "the hottest shows anytime with Rogers on Demand-free access on Channel 100; up to 170 channels, and Reliability." This is where you can "enjoy your favourite programs even during extreme weather conditions". And I think that's a point well taken because the Canadian weather can be extreme. It has already snowed three times since July and it's still pre-Christmas. In New York, we rarely had a white Christmas. Sometimes we'd get a few flakes in early December, but the flakes were a fluke--it would not snow for a month afterward. But here in Canada snow is like oxygen--they need it to live, and it's everywhere around you all winter long.

I'm going to a hockey game tonight, the first I've been to since I was in my twenties. The Sens are playing the Rangers and guess who I'm rooting for .  .   .

Wrong--I'm rooting for the Sens. I am no longer a New Yorker, although I miss the Big Apple a bit (or should I say "a bite"?), but I never had allegiance to the Rangers. In fact, when I went to that game years ago at Madison Square Garden (which is anything but square), I was surrounded by crazy louts who smoked dope and drank beer, often launching it in the air whenever a Ranger physically abused a member of the opposing team, thus dousing me in suds and making my time at the game quite uncomfortable.

I told Thasneem that I'll be wearing my new Senators sweater and she said "It'll be too cold." I realized she thought the game was played outdoors and I comforted her by explaining the scenario. Imagine how small the crowds would be if the games were actually played outdoors in the dead of winter, when the weather gets really cold--at least it's only going to be around minus 15. No big deal. Eh.

war--what is it good for

thank you
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

This photo was taken on Remembrance Day in Canada. It seems that every country has some day set aside to honour the war heroes, alive and dead, who have risked or given it all for the real estate we call home. When I think of a justified war, I think of WW2--the Big One. There have been other seriously deadly wars, no doubt, but this was the war to end all wars. Yes, they`re all big ones to the families who have lost someone in it, or to those who lost a limb or their own life. War, it seems to me, is man`s craziest expression of his innate drives based on his testosterone. Men go to war and years later they make movies about it starring guys who look like they'd freak out if they broke a nail, and the men who served are proud to have been in that war. Well, maybe not so much for Vietnam, the war I served in, but there are a lot of wars that we can brag to our kids about. Like our Desert Storm, our Desert Shield, The Persian Gulf War and let's not forget the Korean Conflict. I like the last one--"Conflict" --a word we used in high school when we made out our class schedules and two classes we applied for were scheduled at the same time so we had to decide which one to attend. Now that's a conflict we can all live with--literally--but a Korean Conflict was not something everyone could live with because lots of dudes died. Well, at least we got M*A*S*H, a funny movie and TV show out of it.
Today we have a war on terror. Oops--I should capitalize that: War On Terror. This is the first war I can recall that actually isn't a war on people, but is a war on a tactic. If we used that premise in The Big One, WW2, The War to End All Wars, we could have called it The War on Messerschmitz or the War on Kaimikazes. Let's face it, we're so clever to call it the War on Terror.  By calling it that, we avoid offending anyone, like the people who are blowing themselves up, or flying planes into buildings to kill us, aren't we?  But we aren't fighting people--we're fighting the way those people are trying to kill us. I recently saw a cartoon (no, not of Muhammad), but of an ostrich with its head hiding in the sand, and there was a desert guy with a sword (I have no idea what his religion must be) cutting the bird's head and legs off. This is the west as I see it. We are ostriches.
Well, it`s getting late and I should end this and go to sleep. I just hope we can kill terror and make the world a safer place.

Fart Fresheners and other Stuff

ahh the pause
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

I was like wow, okay, so here`s the idea I had in bed last night, where I was attempting to sleep in a room that was cold enough to cool off my refrigerator. A battery powered battery charger. The problem with it seems to be the fact that once the batteries are charged, the ones in the charger are discharged, or low, so you`d have to use the charged batteries in the charger. It kind of sounds like the way our budget deficit and bailouts are working, but that`s another story. It was clearly a night for my brain to go into the invent mode. If there was just some way for the charger to charge the batteries it was charging to finish the job before those batteries discharged, then I would make a fortune. That`s the rub.

Another thing I thought about in bed: notice how annoying it is for the person sleeping next to you to have to deal with you when you`re coughing and she`s trying to sleep. What about a cough muffler? You know, something you could wear over your mouth that quiets your cough and maybe even helps you to breathe at the same time. And while we`re at it, a fart freshener wouldn`t hurt. Imagine, you`re lying in bed, your spouse gets up to pee, and you cut a deadly one loud enough for the neighbours to hear, (and you live in the boondocks)and the smell could peel paint off a Bradley tank. But instead, she comes back to bed and she notices a pleasant minty odour that reminds her of the great outdoors, and maybe gets her to agree to go ice fishing with you, which may or may not be what you want, so perhaps you need choose another fresh scent like jasmine or honeysuckle in order for your ice fishing to be what you really want it to be: a drunk-fest with your buddies at the lake where there are no kids that belong to you, and no responsibilities.

So now that you`ve come up with some of the best ideas of the century, and you want to blog them, but you want as many people as possible to get to your blog, what to do, as my lovely Indian wife would say. You find the best keywords to use for the Googlers of the world to hit upon. And the best keyword in the world is just something I happened to think about lying in bed while I was thinking about fart freshener and such. That keyword is “keyword.” Yep, it`s that simple. Keyword is a word on every keyword list and that should mean that the entire planet will see your blog, and you will get the hits and the advertisers will pay you the big bucks that will change your miserable life so you can go ice fishing with your buddies and not have to worry about fart fresheners, cough mufflers, and battery powered battery chargers. See, it all works out in the end.

old soldier

old soldier
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

Thasneem, Vidhya and I found ourselves in the midst of a huge crowd on Remembrance Day, November 11th. We were simply planning on showing Vidhya the town but when we saw what was going on, we had to be part of is--especially since I brought Steve, my Nikon D300 camera along for the ride.

It was a huge event, and I suspect there were tens of thousands of spectators, and there was a flyover by a few jets and some older planes like Mustangs, and the like. I mostly got to see the backs of people's heads as we were buried in the crowd (next year I'll go earlier), and I felt proud to be a part of this town where it was obvious, that people took very good care of their hair, and I couldn't find even one case of dandruff in the crowd.

There were speeches and a 21 gun cannon salute, which was quite moving and quite loud. There were wreaths from many countries, businesses and even local schools, laid at the tomb of the Unknown. I became a bit nostalgic, thinking of my own Marine Corps days, and how glad I was to make it home from Vietnam in one piece. War sucks, but sometimes it is the only way to defend our country. I worry about the world of today. I think the west is handing over our land to people who don't deserve what we worked so hard to get and to keep. I think the west is asleep at the wheel and it isn't funny, like it was in the movie Vacation, when Chevy Chase woke up in the car from a deep sleep, and he realized that he was still driving. I hope the west remembers that Israel is a better country than any of those tyrants who would want it destroyed. I hope Obama changes his thinking about Islam being a religion of peace and sees it for what it is and what it is doing.

Lastly, I hope someday we'll have world peace, but I don't think that's going to be for a long long time.

nightbirds

nightbirds
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

The night is moving in, the sun is moving out. Ottawa is ready to sleep. And it's only 5 p.m. Winter is slowly approaching and it should be here within the next few hours. Not the official " " winter, but the winter of our discontented Canadian lives. Of course I exaggerate. It isn't going to snow anytime soon, but I'm anticipating a cold winter--I do this because I am so sure that in spite of the great deal I got from a neighbor, Mark, on firewood, I didn't take enough for the fifty dollars he charged me. He said I could take as much as I wanted for that price and I think I took enough to build a respectable campfire for maybe two nights, but the winter will probably be cold enough to require approximately seventeen times the amount I calculated as being sufficient. Well, actually I did no such calculating--I based the quantity of my take on the fact that I took eight trips with his wheelbarrow from his place to mine, and I was getting tired of the boredom of my mini-journey, what with the schizophrenic neighbor kid watching my every move as he smoked frenetically on his cigarettes, rocking and staring at me. It gave me the willies and I thought it best to stop at eight.
So I pray for warm nights and even warmer days but as an atheist, I doubt my prayers will be answered. However, I am willing to think it over if there is divine intervention and the quantity of my wood gets us through the winter. Let's see.

NaNoWriMo

Well, it's that time of the year again--my anniversary and yes, NaNoWriMo, or NationalNovelWritersMonth. It runs from November 1st to the 30th and all one has to do is write a 50 thousand word novel by midnight of the 30th.  The good news is that the novel can be a hunk of crap, lousy plot, weak characters, and all the typos you might have if you just wrote like a bat out of hell without checking yourself for errors. The whole idea is the word count--that's all that counts. I am the proud owner of not one, but two NaNoWriMo congratulatory certificates of completion of two rather awful novels.
But this year is different. Not only is my novel not awful, but my novel isn't going to be written by November 30th. I just will not subject myself to that burden this year; but next year will likely be a different story, literally and figuratively too. I have what I believe is a great idea for a novel and I am researching and writing, but I can't go forward fast enough to get that kind of word count without sacrificing quality.  Now I know they don't give a rat's hairy little butt about quality at NaNoWriMo, bit I do, and if I forge ahead too quickly, I'll lose my voice and my plotting.  My timing will suffer too. 
Also, I am not going to publish the title of my novel, or at least the working title (publishers often rip out your heart when they use their own title rather than yours), but I will say that it's clever.  Really.  I also believe the book idea itself is rather clever too, but that remains to be seen.
So I will leave you, dear reader (I use the singular "reader" to give a sense of familiarity and for the fact that I don't have that many readers of my blog to justify an ego-filled plural), with hopeful anticipation of my newest creation, my baby, my love.  I wish you all a good night.
Ho ho hoey

Vidhya

porch
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

Our friend Vidhya is coming to visit on Tuesday. She lives in India and is visiting her daughter, Lakshmi, in Boston but wants to see snow for the first time in her life. We hope we can accommodate her but I'm not sure I can influence the snow god, Frostama. I'm not a religious person and haven't prayed in a very long time, particularly to a snow god, but I'm going to try.

I've heard that no two snowflakes are alike but I would really like to know how anyone could know that with certainty. I'm sure there are snowflakes that are pretty damn close to looking exactly like their sister snowflakes. When I was a child, there was a kids tv show and I remember the song they played every winter after the first snowfall--it was called "Susie Snowflake." My sister's name is Susie and she is far from being a flake, but that's another topic altogether.

"Here comes Susie Snowflake look at her tumbling down,

Bringing joy to every girl and boy

Now Susie's back in town;

Here comes Susie Snowflake

Hear what she's come to say,

'Come on everyone and play with me'

Before I'm on my way.'

If you want to make a snowman,

I'll help you make one

One, two, three

If you want to take a sleigh ride

The ride's on me

Here comes . . . .

etc.

I miss my childhood--the innocence, the high snowfall, my tingling toes from playing outside, my sister, Ellen, Mom, and Dad. I miss them.

Let's pray for snow--Vidhya should see it

What I've Learned to be a Better Canuck

bike in traffic selective colour_edited-1
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

So I've not written a word since the beginning of October and it's even NaNoWriMo month (National Novel Writer's Month) from November 1st to 30th in which one tries to write a 50 thousand word novel, good or bad, in order to receive a piece of paper that says you've done it--and I still have not written one word on my blog. Luckily however, I did write a few good pages of the book, and did a lot of hard research and outlining, which means I should be finished with my masterpiece within the decade, if I don't get off my butt and push.

But I did accomplish something really great the past two days--I registered Doug, my car, and even got him protection, in case he wants to fool around with girl cars. Well, actually, the protection is insurance. We're finally covered Canadian style. That's why I'm using a photo of downtown Ottawa to show cars and how Doug can now go out and make friends legally.

I've learned a lot in the process of making Doug legal. I can now convert miles into kilometers (Fun Fact: one mile = 1.6 kilometers) and I learned that some car insurance salespeople can be really decent individuals--I kind of knew the latter to be true, as I was a real estate person before coming to Canada, and I know how difficult sales can be. Did you know that Tom Clancy, of the Jim Ryan, submarine, incredible weapons system fame was also a real estate salesman too? I also learned other things since becoming a wannabe Canuck--a Looney and a Twonee are one and two dollar coins, respectively. The Rideau Canal is the longest free skating canal in all of the world (or Ottawa, at least). The Giant Tiger is a very good place to shop for many interesting items you find in such stores as Walmart and Value Village, and the food doesn't suck as much.

Well, that's the interesting fun facts for now. I hope you'll give me more to add to my repertoire of Canadian information.

I love Canada.

Sports

openman
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

I went to the gym today. Yes, I went for my workout on the treadmill, the universal, dumbbells, crunchy pad thingy and other machines whose names escape me as do many memories of late.

But no complaints.

So I worked up a sweat, met a guy who looked about my age and turned out to be four years younger, so maybe I have poor judgment, or maybe I look younger than I am.

I took Steve with me--left him in the trunk of the car and he waited patiently for me to get pumped and sweaty--and when I returned to Doug, (he's my car, of course), I went for peanut butter and paper towels at the Metro across from the Hunt Club Community Centre (that's the way they spell center here) and put it in the trunk and took out Steve. The photo of the guy catching the football was taken by Steve, my Nikon D300. I watched the game for a while and shot photos to put on Flickr, and then went home to a television-less house while Thasneem worked. Now I know that this information is not important to you--but think about it (in Canada they say "aboot" or perhaps "a boat," it sounds a lot like that), some dude made a skillion billion dollars inventing Twitter so all of us twits can tell each other what they had for breakfast, what they're doing at the moment, oops, they just farted, and so on--so maybe this photo of the park, and my time in the gym, and my buying peanut butter with paper towels isn't going to change the face of mankind anytime soon, but it beats the crap out of Twitter.

The Caped Crusader Rappelling

30
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

This is my son-in-law, Frankie, dressed as a super hero whom I've never heard of, rappelling down 19 storeys at the Delta Hotel in Ottawa. His company, Morguard, is the management company for the buidling and I guess it was Frankie's way of doing something for charity while sucking up to the boss. Unfortunately, Shabana arrived just minutes after her husband reached the bottom, so she didn't get to watch him risk life and limb for kids who need help with theirs. I shot over 100 photos and posted some of them to my flickr site. It was a blast.

Rapid Rob

Rapid Rob
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

The photo was taken in 1986 at the Philadelphia Marathon. That's me running the last few miles to the finish line. I was tired and now that I see the photo again, I looked exhausted. I was 39 years old when I ran this race and I was in great shape. So here I am pushing retirement in a few years and I'll be heading out to the gym after this blog is written. My body will not be as strong, as fast, and as resilient as it was back in the day, and I'm not okay with that--I wish I was. I don't like the idea of aging but I agree with George Burns who, when asked when he turned 100 how he felt about being so old, replied, "Well, think of the alternative." So I will go to the gym and lift weights, do the treadmill, and feel better that I've done something positive for myself. I will be happy that I can lift a bit more weight than some, not all, of the younger guys, and all of the women (at my small gym, at least), but I will come home and remember when I was young and had legs that could carry me 26 miles when I felt I could fly. But the thing I like about my age now is that I've learned so much in all these years and I don't sweat the small stuff. I see how lucky I have been to have found Thasneem and also to have come to Canada. Here is a place where I can appreciate all that I never had as a young guy from Brooklyn, and as a bonus, be a mere two miles from my daughter, Shabana.

Who has it better than me, eh?

Money---the root of all stuff

Cindy Crawford will be at the tent sale (at least her photo will)
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

Microsoft Excel is an excellent program that can easily show you how long it's going to take before you end up in the Poor House. I did a spreadsheet for Thas and averaged what her daily intake was for two days in August and for September, thus far. She is busting her butt for nine to ten hours a day at a commission split that would make a pizza delivery boy LOL because he's doing better. So I'm in the living room writing my blog and she's in the office getting her papers together for a job she had considered to apply for several weeks ago until this one came along.

Let's face it, the Canadian economy sucks as much as that of the USA, except it sucks a lot colder in the winter. In order to get to work you need a car, or be willing to freeze body parts blue, and I don't just mean those body parts that turn blue for lack of usage, if you get my drift. It's only one day beyond the ides of September and I've already gone out and bought heat shrink plastic covering for the windows and terrace door. I anticipate snow as high as this door, and it's on the second floor.

So getting back to my opening point, the tent sale didn't make us rich or even pleasantly comfortable, but it served the purpose of warning us that a real job with a weekly salary vs. a job only paying commission, is the viable option.

I look forward to getting my permanent residency so I can begin helping out the cause, but it's taking so long.

Remember, every time you click onto one of the ads in this blog, I make a few cents--money that can be used for heating or food; money that, I can assure you, will not go to waste.

Click at will.

maple leaves

maple leaves
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

So we took Shabana's advice and went to Le Parc de la Gatineau. It was truly a French experience what with all the French signs in the windows, and those pain in the ass bike riders in the streets of the park (oops, parc) riding like they owned the rue. Lucy, our GPS, wasn't able to find the route for us because parks don't actually have addresses, and I'm as technologically advanced as a broken frisbee, so I didn't know how to find parks on the device, so we used an ancient method of navigation, you've probably never heard of--something called "a map," if I spelled it correctly. A map is kind of like a schematic diagram of places, only much much smaller so it can fit on a sheet of paper. Thasneem was the navigator and I was the pilot, and Doug was, and still is, the car.

We found the park without too much difficulty and went to the information booth. There was a French family of three ahead of us, asking for information about the map they were given by the information maven, and the discourse seemed to go on for hours. French question after French question and finally Thasneem realized that on the other side of the little Question Hut was another French person answering more questions. We got our own map of the park and found out that the closest lake, pinc lake, was fairly far down the road. Oh, I forgot to mention that when I opened Doug's trunk to get my camera gear, I had left the backpack opened and my 60 mm macro lens fell out and got bruised on the edge so that I cannot use a filter on it anymore. Now of course, this is sad on one hand, but gives me leverage about getting another cool lens as a replacement, on the other hand.

But I digress.

So we got back in Doug, drove into the heart of the park, and found Pinc Lac or Lake or whatever. I was as disappointed as the little British girl next to us on the observatory platform as she asked her mummy, "Mummy, why isn't the lake pink?"

"Well, it says here that a man named Pinc discovered it, so I guess they named it after him."

"Boy, that sucks," I said, much to the shock of the British mummy, who put her hands over her daughter's ears and scooped her up and away from me.

So I shot some photos with Steve, my Nikon D 300, and we got back into Doug, and headed for more park to shoot.

The photo above, called "Maple Leaves," is my symbolic concept of the drugs being used in this area of Canada by its citizens. Who paints a house mauve anyway?
Before long, it started to rain. It was a gentle rain that fell, and some of it fell into the back of my shirt, down my back, into my underwear. It was uncomfortable and I decided it would be a good thing if we would go home and see my wonderful photos of this glorious Labor Day in Canada.
So Thasneem and I put Steve away, got into Doug, and drove home to Ottawa. We were one big happy family.
The end.

worms for fishin'

worms for fishin'
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

So, okay, Thasneem and I took the food handlers certification course today and don't you just hate when people start a sentence with "so" and/or "okay," and especially hate it when they do both in the same breath? So anyway, the course was about E-coli, Sal Monella (ex-third baseman for the NY Yankees, 1952) and handwashing and shit. No, I really mean shit, and the problems shit causes with food, which makes handwashing even more important. The photo you see here is of minced beef or hamburger meat--it's a closeup and it kind of tends to make a vegetarian out of many people.

So, okay, we took the course, aced the test, came home and we actually joined the gym in our neighbourhood (Canadian spelling). Tomorrow we work out for the first time since the beginning of June. They don't have a large facility here, but the price is right and there are enough free weights to do the job. I may need to pump to the metric system, however, and will know more tomorrow morning at abooot 7 a.m.

Have a good one, and sleep well, my American and Canadian friends (all five of you).