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.

Parking and Other Problems

seagull parking
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

Imagine someone gives you a hundred good choices, say a hundred pieces of fantastic candy, all good, but all slightly different, and you can only have one piece. Or imagine you're a bachelor who is stranded on a deserted tropical island for years and suddenly a hundred beautiful people of the opposite sex (or same sex if you swing that way) arrive, and you can choose only one of them to satisfy your sexual needs that had gone unfulfilled for that entire year. Or say you go to Walmart to pick up some Elmer's Glue and when you get there you must choose between a hundred different parking spaces, all similar, but all having a slightly different advantage; what do you do?

This is precisely what Canada is like. There are so many choices and all of them are good ones. The pace is leisurely, and nobody seems to get annoyed at drivers stopping at red lights when they probably could have "made it" in time. Nobody minds being on the short line in the market and finding the long line is moving quicker and you would have been out the door faster.

Just look at all those parking places by the seagull and note the look of confusion on the gull's face--he wasn't sure where to park either.

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).

Canadian Guilt

Asian Grocery Store
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

As a New Yorker, I had enough to worry about just going to the store. You know, being able to safely get back from the store was just as important. I know everyone talks about crime in Metropolis, but while it isn't rampant, there is something to be said about it.

But now crime isn't a huge worry--there seems to be very little of it here, maybe a random duck snatching or two, a red light jumper, and maybe a stray snowball hitting a car window; that's about the gist of it. Now I have to be concerned with a far more important and personal matter and that, of course, is Canadian guilt.

What is Canadian guilt? Simple. It's the guilt you feel when you don't bring your own shopping bag to Loblaw's or Walmart and have to use one of their plastic jobbies to carry your stuff.

And boy, do I have stuff. Thing is, I have reached a point, (call it my going green phase), where I refuse to use one of their plastic bags for my groceries, even when I forget my cloth bag in the trunk of my car. The other day, I had to carry a bag of milk (yes, they come in these four little bags, which are then placed in a larger bag (plastic, I might add), a bunch of bananas, a box of cereal, two cans of No Name soup (that's the name, "No Name," I swear), sponges, and my 30-in-a-box No Name ice pops that I've become hopelessly addicted to, and then the woman at the register asks, "Will you need a bag with that?"

So I pretend that I always carry a bunch of stuff on my arms, pockets, and down the front of my pants to take them out to the car, because I want to look cool, and don't want to be thought of as a "waster".

Let me tell you something--ice pops down the front of your pants are damn cold.