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?

Canadians Defy the Laws of Physics

Global Warming: this photo is blogged
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

As we left the house this morning my wife, Thasneem, said to me, "This ice is freezing." I couldn't hold back my wise-ass response to her observation: "If it wasn't, it wouldn't be ice." But what she was really saying was how cold it was this morning with a temperature around -19 C degrees.

One of the things I've realized since moving to Canada is how Canadians defy the laws of physics. When it's freezing out, Canadians are just getting cooled off. When it's around -10 C degrees, they put on their coat to go out for long periods of time, but still prefer throwing out the garbage in their tee shirt. When it's -20 C degrees, they admit that it's starting to get cold and those two little round blue things hanging between that guy's legs aren't Christmas tree ornaments. No wonder Canucks kick butt in winter sports and call members in the Polar Bear Club a bunch of pussies. Canadians are impervious to the cold.

Well, maybe not all of them. There are still reports of poor people freezing to death in the streets here in Canada, so I should point that out that if you live in a town where they accept donations of overcoats, you might want to think of getting rid of that ugly monstrosity that has been sitting in your closet for the past five years never to be worn again because it's out of style and as ugly as a butt pimple.

Now getting back to the subject of cold--I plan to buy a pair of hockey skates to go along the canal. Thasneem plans to do the same, though she has never skated--the ice melts too quickly in India, and just as you're all laced up, it's gone.

Hope you are having a wonderful winter. If you aren't, you better do something abooot it, eh.

Eh?

cloud4
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

It snowed yesterday and my childhood flashed in front of my eyes. I remembered how I played in the snow in the mornings and my toes would get so cold that they'd itch. I'd come into the house and Dad would put Noxema on them and the itch would go away. Magic. And then I'd go out and play again, only to repeat the cycle.

It's November and it already snowed twice; maybe we'll get a white Christmas--if we do, it'll be my first one in many years. I think it has been so long since I've actually had a white Christmas that Bing Crosby's song about it just came out. Well, okay, I'm exaggerating, but it must be at least 20 plus years.

My favorite Christmas as a kid was getting my first set of electric trains. Lionel, of course, with the smoke pills and the whistle and the little houses and the tracks that fit together. Once I got too old for them, I put the trains in a box and forgot about them. Then, one day I came across them while going through my stuff. I had no use for them anymore, or so I thought, so I gave them away to my nephew, Michael. I wonder if he still has them; I doubt it.

Trains had a way of being a catalyst for the imagination; today the imagination of the young is fed by computer games, cell phone games, X-Box, and things I'm not even aware of, but I know it's out there. The trouble is, we tend to spend all of our time, lately, on our computers (as I'm doing as I write this), on our phones, in our games, and less time in our real world. George Carlin had a theory about this--he believed that this was the way for those in real power to distract us from what's most important in the world, which is how our leaders (most of whom are not visible to the public), are screwing us.
I don't know if he was correct, but I do know we need to spend more time in the here and now.
What's your favorite childhood memory, eh?

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.