Biker Bar

Rockets

As a young child, Hallowe'en was the highlight of my autumn.  The whole of October was spent anticipating an evening spent with friends, loose on the streets of Sherwood Park, masked to prevent recognition and armed with boundless energy and an empty pillow case for candy.  The costume was usually determined early. For me, scary was a fallback for inspiration.  I tended to lean towards emulating my heroes - "army" guys, Superman, Spiderman or other comic book characters.  The week prior to the eve was the time to make alliances for trick-or-treat buddies.  You chose someone who lived close-by, so you could quickly race over to their house after supper (clearing of the dinner dishes being the the unofficial starting gun of the candy fest) and the two, three or four of you would then plan the route, maximizing visits to areas that would yield "good candy."

In the 'seventies, Hallowe'en candy tended to be something that today's kids wouldn't even bother catching if it was thrown at them.  Things like stale, chewy, individually-wrapped toffees; small plastic packets of candy corn; hand-saran-wrapped balls of dry carmel popcorn; loose sticks of licorice; unadorned, bruised (and presumably razor-filled) apples ... all of these meager offerings were accepted with fake, luke-warm gratitude.  The thing that really caught our attention, and held it, and lived in grade-school folklore from year to year, were the houses that gave out REAL CHOCOLATE.  These were, of course, the childless and/or retired couples that graced our neighborhood.  Although we spent the other 364 days of the year being chased from their lawns, on that one magic night we would show up in mobs, hoping for some of that quality loot.

The following day, you would usually go over to a friend's place to compare your Hallowe'en Haul.  Although chocolate bars (candy bars in the popular vernacular) were the most coveted, I had a non-chocolate personal favorite - Rockets.  Rockets are a tube of tart, little compressed sugar pills.  They were fun to unwrap - no tearing involved - just grab the plastic flappy ends and pull and after a small, satisfying spin, the wrapper parted and left a line of individual morsels to enjoy.  As they are small, you could shotgun them all at once or savour them individually, holding them one at a time in your mouth until the urge to crunch that tiny bomb of tartness became too much, triggering the need to pop a fresh one into your mouth.

A few days prior to Hallowe'en this year, I happened upon a bag of Rockets and was bowled over with a wave of nostalgia.  I bought them under the guise of offering them up to the tikes that came begging for sweets this year. I had to fight to keep my Aussie bride from handing
out my treasured treat, as I think she was protecting her purchase of Oh Henry's and M and M's she had bought.  When the pumpkin candles were blown out, we both seemed to have an equal share of our own candies.

Do You Have ID?

Today suddenly became notable in my life.

Sunnyside Greenhouse is recognizing today as Early Seniors Day. Anyone 55 or over gets a 10% discount.

Guess who just got asked if he qualified? I must look much worse than I feel.

.....

Wait until it happens to you for the first time.

A Few Weeks Out East

Kate and I are gently swaying side-to-side at 140+ km/hour along the rail lines between Ottawa and Quebec, having come to La Belle Provence to visit our darling daughter.  Brianna is nowhere in sight, though.  There's a method to our madness.

I have held fast to the belief that houseguests are much like unrefrigerated fish, in that you wouldn't want either sitting around for more than three or four days.  For that reason, when planning to visit Brianna in Montreal this fall, we decided to incorporate other destinations and use Brianna (and Heather)'s place as a base.  Quebec City and Ottawa, both just a few hours away, would be where we ventured to during the weekdays.  The weekends would provide some time catching up with Brianna and getting to know Heather better. 

Quebec was wonderful for a few reasons: first, we stayed at the Chateau de Frontenac.  The Frontenac is considered the castle of the town, perched on a high bluff overlooking Old Quebec and the St. Lawrence River.  We had what had to be the BEST room, directly looking out over the St. Lawrence. Wandering the cobbled streets of Ville de Quebec seemed to peel away any stress I had and made for a very relaxed time.

Traveling by rail means that both of us can read, look about, blog and relax whilst we get there.

Birthday Reflections

This year's birthday thesis is that life still seems to be getting better.

I make an effort to take a look forward and back on my birthday and evaluate how I am doing in life.  It helps me justify breathing air, eating food and taking up space and resources on our little planet.  by "how I'm doing,"  I mean the amount of suffering I'm reducing.

Personally, I'm not suffering very much.  Most parts of my life (emotionally, relationally, financially, intellectually) are advancing, and measuring progress against yourself is the best thing for me.  My business is is doing well and I am doing well at my business.  At work I am doing what I need to and occasionally making mistakes, but I work hard to correct those mistakes and ensure that the same mistakes aren't made again.  I feel like I have a plan that I am working towards, and that plan is yielding the results I want it to reveal.  That, in itself, makes for a very satisfying life.  I am feeling less want in my life and I know most of my needs are already taken care of.

The others in my life are suffering less for my actions, too.  I am watching the end result of my influences on my daughters and seeing some positive results.  Kate and I are communicating well, enjoying each others company and helping each other be better people.  Even those that I have conflict with (my ex-wife and my Dad, specifically) are being dealt with in a manner that will help them, too.

On a very high level, I am quite satisfied with my life's path and can only see things improving from here, even though maintaining my lot in life would not be that bad.

I've reconnected with McMonk this year; grown my adult relationship with Banana; finished the stress of having non-adult children with The Warden; deepened and developed friendships with interesting people (my neighbors, my buddy Ron, my in-laws); traveled to Cuba and South Africa (big wanna-sees on my list); chunked down mortgages and made big strides towards making work more and more optional.

There are still challenges and goals for next year (and next decade), but seeing the fruits of some of my plans starting to ripen is pleasing.

Love-Hate Relationship

I love what I do, but today isn't a fun day. 

Internet providers make mistakes that get blamed on poor communication.  Microsoft makes software that doesn't live up to its promises.  The end result is that I start a process on a Sunday morning to fix a problem (thinking it should take one, maybe two hours to resolve) and end up working until long after all the city's bartenders have gone to bed, then get back up to beat the first early riser into the office to continue working on the problem.

It's a challenge, and it feels good when I have it under control, but I don't enjoy learning the intricacies of my trade while a business owner is watching over my shoulder, tapping his foot.

I'm pining for the open fields (ok, actually at this exact moment, I'm pining for bed) when I am not working at all.

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I've had some easement of the my nose from the grindstone when I left Veer, as I was quite exhausted.  The pressure of bills to pay, mouths to feed and child support to pay (yes, don't get me started - I pay child support to my millionaire ex-wife) means I've never really felt at ease with taking time off.  Of all the things that I *could* do for work, computer and network support are the most appealing.  I worry that if I didn't work, I would fall into a "do nothing" mode that might be hard to get out of. 

That's one of the problems with doing nothing.  It's hard to determine when you are done.

Staving Off Old Age

At 46 years old, it seems silly to be considering old age. But, subtle hints of my impending frailty constantly poke their heads around corners in my day-to-day existence.

• eyesight - at Kate's insistence, I have taken advantage of the optometrist benefit offered by her company's health coverage and went for an eye-exam. Although I still have 20/20 vision, I admitted to my optometrist that after 8 - 10 hours of sitting in front of a computer, my eyes do get tired and I focus on the screen only with some effort. She recommended a set of ultra-low prescription "working and reading" glasses that now sit on my nightstand.
• recovery time - I am used to exercising hard, falling into bed exhausted, then bouncing back to fully-charged energy levels first thing the next day. I am finding I don't make it back to 100% the next day after a particularly hard day of skiing/climbing/running/cycling.
• body aches - I find my back is a little stiffer than it has been, and I need to spend more time stretching. This is after (and possibly because of) doing nothing more than sitting at my desk. My knees are noisier (cricking and cracking) and my legs don't have the same amount of spring to bound up stairs two at a time whenever I climb a flight.
• eating habits - due to worsening eczema, I've gone to a naturopath to find a fix to my skin troubles, and she's advised me to alter my diet. No dairy, no refined sugar, no yeast (meaning no baked goods or bread - egads!), and no tropical fruit. Basically, I'm not allowed to eat anything I like. We'll see how long I can stick to that diet and whether it actually fixes me up.
  

In the past five years I have noticed how much my father has slowed down and it troubles me. He has become a shell of the man I used to know, although taking some of the vinegar out of such an inherently angry man is not all bad. I look at what he has become and know that we must all end up dependent, but I hope to hold off my slide into that state for three or four more decades, at least.