Thursday, July 21st

It's been an interesting week here. On Monday, my brother arrived from Texas. He drove from there to here in four days. He is a driving machine. He travelled from San Marcos to Salina, Kansas (about 800 miles) his first night of driving. I say night, because it was too damn hot to drive during the day, so he would wait until mid-afternoon, and drive until 3:00 the next morning.
I remember driving down to Texas with him a few years back. We took a little more time, because I wanted to make some stops along the way. We visited the Little Bighorn Battlefield site, Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial, and Dealey Plaza (my second visit). One night, he drove about 500 miles in one shot.
He is up here to do a little business. he takes down old barns and sells the wood for people to make rustic decor. My brother also uses some of the wood to carve artworks or make boxes. He took up carving about eight years ago, and has gotten quite good at it. Right now, he's in a mermaid phase, but he also does rattlers, buffalo, and these kind of fishhook type necklaces.
This year, I'm helping him market his stuff by offering it for sale on Kajiji and maybe Craig's List.
On Tuesday, my mom came home for the first time since her accident. Her glasses were broken in the crash, and she's been seeing double, so she came in to see an optometrist. She then spent the night before going back to the Red Deer hospital the next day.
She's been slowly improving. She was even able to climb the stairs into her house. She has to walk with a walker, of course, and spends most of her time in a wheelchair, but she is definitely improving.
Mom has expressed a lot of frustration at the slow rate of her recovery. When we try and tell her just how far she has come, sometimes she sits still for it, but she can get pretty low at times. It's a job to keep her spirits up.
Today I mailed the last bit of paperwork I needed to turn in for my application to university. I just need a letter of reference and a description of my work in the classroom from a colleague in Korea. He's taking his time about getting it in, so I may have to prod him a bit.
I may be foolish trying to get my Education degree since Alberta has been firing teacher's left and right, but I guess we will see once I have it, eh? Maybe European employers will find me more attractive. I sure hope so.
I watched a movie called "Ironclad" this evening. It was recommended by a friend in Korea. It's set in England just after King John signs the Magna Carta. Pissed at having to kowtow to the barons, John (played by Paul Giamatti)raises a mercenary army and begins slaughtering anyone who signed the charter.
One of the barons, played by Brian Cox, hires some mercenaries of his own, including a Templar played by James Purefoy, and holds a strategic castle until the French arrive to drive John and his mercenaries off.
In reality, the castle fell to John, and the struggle raged across England for another year before John died of dysentery while fleeing the French. It wasn't until much later that John's son Henry finally succeeded in driving the French out and claiming the throne for himself.
But the movie was fairly entertaining, not the least for it's gory battle scenes, in which limbs are chopped off, blood sprays everywhere, and one man is nearly split in two by a broadsword. The movie's depiction of the savagery of battle, the mud and the blood prevalent during those times, and the struggle between people fighting for freedom against a tyrant was well done.
Tomorrow, our family is meeting with the doctors to discuss our mother's future. The whole family will be together for the first time in four years.

Planking, Again

We all know what planking is. Mooks take a picture of themselves lying prone on top of something, and then post the picture somewhere. It was just something stupid for mooks to keep themselves occupied with until an Australian man fell to his death from a seventh story balcony.
You would think that death would put the kibosh on a fad, but planking has resurfaced in the form of some players on the Winnipeg Blue Balls of the Canadian Football League doing it while celebrating a touchdown.
The TSN comooktaters were nonplussed. They had no idea what the celebration meant. It wasn't until later that they explained what had happened to us viewers.
Duh, hello! My name is Stig!
I guess some research gnome, or someone who was awake and aware and alive on this planet, told the comooktaters what it was all about.
The teeth and hair who do news, sports, opinion, etc. are not really reporters in the original sense of the word. Reporters used to do research on a topic for a story, and usually knew what they were talking/writing about.
My parents watch the news on Global Calgary morning, noon, and night. When I question the need to see the same goddamn story over and over again, my mom tells me she's waiting to hear the weather report.
Weather reporters are even more unreliable than the ones who do the news. To be wrong that percentage of the time while doing your job... well, I should be so lucky.
I tell my mom that I could do their job just by looking out the window.
But I digress.
One Global newsreader was commenting on a Youtube video. They play one as a regular part of their newscast. Yes, Youtube videos (especially ones about kitties) are news.
The newsreader made an off the cuff comment about the video, and then said that what he said might be true, he didn't know.
I thought, you're a reporter, and you don't know? And then I remembered, ah, teeth and hair. He doesn't report the news, he just reads it off a teleprompter. It's too bad his ad-lib showed his ignorance.
So the Blue Balls players and the TSN comooktaters were probably not aware of the death that had taken place when they decided to go ahead and air their ignorance.
I thought what the players were doing was not really planking, as they were laying on the ground. If they really wanted to plank, why didn't they climb up onto the goal posts?
Planking has even shown up in the comic strip "Betty." Her son discovered it and tried it out for himself.

I guess his research into the topic didn't extend to the dying part, either.
Well, it was a lot of fun, and we all had a jolly good laugh.
Until the next death.

Thursday, July 7

We had a terrific storm here today, one of the worst I've seen in a while. I saw the clouds boiling up when I went for my afternoon walk. They were coming from the southwest and spreading out across the town. I wondered if I would get home before it broke (I did).
It was humid, as well. Reminded me of Korea a bit, though it was nowhere near as bad as that.
It started to rain just as I got home, about three o'clock. It wasn't raining too hard at first, but it gradually picked up speed as the clouds began to swirl around the area, and the lightning began to flash. The time between flashes and the following thunder got smaller and smaller, and at one point it was almost a continuous roar.
The rain really picked up, and hail started to fall, as well. I went out back and turned the rain barrel over, so it would catch the runoff from the gutter.
It was full in about five minutes.
The rain continued until about six. It would slack off and then return, more furious than before. My dad was worried about the hail denting the roof of his new vehicle, but it came through okay.
It wasn't until later that we heard a tornado had touched down 10-15 miles south of town. A friend of mine has a cabin near there, but he says they didn't receive even a drop of rain.
It reminded me of the first issue of "The Dark Knight Returns," when a terrible thunderstorm hit Gotham just about the time that The Batman returned from a ten year absence.
"Like the wrath of God, it's heading straight for the city."
I was going to suit up and wreak havoc on the underworld, but the rum tasted good, and then the pizza arrived.
Maybe tomorrow.