I just had a look at my blog and realized I haven’t posted anything in two months. I have been super busy, but I have also wasted many, many hours watching the hockey playoffs, so I have no viable excuse. My flimsy excuses begin with going to physiotherapy for my shoulder. It had healed on its own to the point where I could get a decent sleep, but the therapist got it all riled up again, so now it hurts at night and a fair bit of the time I’m a glassy-eyed insomniac zombie. Also I have begun to organize our annual chess tournament that will take place in September. Usually I do this in conjunction with other people, but my partner in crime has begun to have memory issues and is no help at all. Not that I’m blaming him in any way. In fact, I feel awful for him and his wife. I bumped into her a couple weeks ago at the casino. I was watching hockey and she went walking by. We talked for a while and she is not having a good time with her hubby who is forgetting everything and – almost – everyone. Anyway, the organizing takes a lot more time and energy than you might expect.
I was reminiscing the other day about a dinner at a restaurant I had with my parents when I was about 10 years old. It was at the Clydesdale Inn in Cloverdale, which used to have a fancy restaurant in the front of the building where the cold beer store is now. If you’re not familiar with this establishment, it doesn’t detract from the story so hold on. We all got menus, so I asked a typical kid question “What can I order?” and my dad said “Anything you want.” A medium sized mistake, for sure. To my parents’ surprise and horror, I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu: Pheasant Under Glass. When the food arrived, everyone got a dish of pasta or a burger or whatever, but the waiter stopped before me and lifted the glass dome off my pheasant with a waft of steam and a triumphant zing. My family stared blankly, and no one ever brought it up again. But what sort of Little Lord Fauntleroy orders pheasant? And why did they not step in and say something? Was I extorting them in some way? It was a genesis moment in the life of a soon-to-be asshole.
My list of complaints with the year 2022 has a new item on it: the spring weather has been awful. It has been raining and cold for months. Today it got up to about 17C, which isn’t frigid, but is still below normal. A month ago we had days which were full on rain and 8C which is more like late January than May. Crops are rotting in the fields, people’s unmown lawns are going to seed, my legs are not merely white but translucent. Where’s my summer? Can I get a refund somewhere?
Another bit of news. Right after my last post my car got hit by an Uber driver who took off. Luckily my neighbours saw the whole thing and gave a full description of the guy, his car and his license plate. Unfortunately, just witnessing the accident wasn’t enough for the insurance corporation who says I have to pay my deductible, as the other driver is denying he did it. Last week we were having breakfast at about 5:45am when there was a terrible racket outside. I went and looked out the window and saw a guy had veered off the road and side swiped four parked cars, my wife’s and my daughter’s included. His little pickup truck was demolished, and so was a little black Subaru parked between my wife and daughter. My daughter had her car for exactly one month when this happened, and her car has so much damage it may get written off. Luckily she has replacement insurance! My wife’s car only got hit by the Subaru which was driven forward in the crash into her back bumper. Still, that impact damaged the whole rear of her car, no doubt thousands in damages. Why the lack of focus by the driver? He dropped his cigarette and leaned over to pick it up. At least he didn’t take off like my Uber douchebag. Of course, his truck was totaled and embedded into a Subaru, so escape would have to have been attempted on foot.
In the photo you can just see the front of a red van which got clipped and lost its driver’s side mirror. Next is my daughter’s brand new Mazda, scraped from end to end. It got hit hard enough to bend the rims of the tires against the curb. Next is the Subaru which was a beater anyway, but the sad part is the owner just filled it with premium gas. Lastly the bright car is my wife’s. It got pushed forward a couple feet by the Subaru. It’s a crappy photo, but I failed photojournalism, so what do you want?
