get out the map, lay your finger anywhere down...

Another post about traveling.  Not interested?  thanks for stopping by anyhow.

What's 15 hours long and mind-numbingly dull?    The drive from Chicago to the MS gulf coast.

So, is it more or LESS god-awful, if you do it all at once, or you split it up into two days?

Doesn't matter, as it turns out.

Hit the road early on a friday morning, leaving Chicago in the rain.   Crappy, uncomfortable rental car full of snacks and good cheer and entertainment for a  four year old.    Just south of Kankakee, we spotted a wolf, prowling around in the median of the interstate.   Sweet!
Besides that, all we had was an ipod full of music, a cute kid, and watching for hawks to help make the miles fly by...

200 miles in, we stopped for breakfast,  At a restaurant chain known for it's rocking chairs; routing dining customers through their gift shop; and... gravy, I think.  
Tip for this restaurant chain - invest in smaller plates.  They'll make your portions LOOK bigger when you bring them to the table.

Oh, and run our damn bill up for us, please.  It's kind of annoying, making us go back to your gift shop to pay for our breakfast.  your restrooms were also located in the gift shop...

If we didn't know better, we'd begin to think you were trying to trick us into buying tacky crap in your gift shop.  
Fiona loved her new doll by the way.   At least for the first 48 hours or so.
Bastards.
Oh, and your Clove Gum was really stale.

We made it to our day one destination well within our target time, marveling at how smoothly the drive went, how easy it was, etc.  To the point that we were talking about how maybe next time, we'd go 11 hours instead of 7.5...

Blytheville, AR exists for some reason.   I'm not clear what that reason is, but in the middle of nowhere, it's a town that gets two exits on the interstate, and has every chain hotel and restaurant known to man.

And we were happy to be there.  

We explored the town a bit, being  turned away from the Holiday Inn because we were a half hour early and they wouldn't let us check in.

Almost immediately received a reminder about not judging books....  
At the local park.  Which was not in great shape.  
But it had lots of kids at it, and their moms, most of which did not appear to be in much better shape than the park.

Surprise!  they were all super nice.
The moms struck up easy conversation with us immediately, while one of the older girls offered to push Fiona on the swings, since she was pushing her little sister already.

We got more love from strangers at a park 500 miles from home, in 10 minutes, than we do at the nice parks in our middle class neighborhood at home.  

Talking in terms of getting love from strangers in parks... maybe I could have phrased that differently...

Similarly, we were treated with better customer service and kindness at the creatively named The Bookstore in Blytheville, than we receive at most retail establishments, hereabouts.  Including book ideas based on what THEIR children seemed to like, and tips on where to eat dinner.  Awesome place, The Bookstore in Blytheville, should you find yourself in the neighborhood.

The only other thing about Blytheville worth mentioning is that the coolest building in town is the one that is used to LEAVE town – the Greyhound Station.  Silver art deco, w/ a bit of neon.   It stood out like a piece of quartz floating in a cup of mud.  

Got up the next morning, packed the car, slid into the driver’s seat, and realized – all energy and “whoo hoo, this is easy!” from yesterday was gone.  

One day in a crappy, uncomfortable rental car was easy, two days… seemed like some kind of self-inflicted punishment.  

“Well, damn….” I muttered to myself, as I reluctantly turned the key in the ignition.

“this is gonna be a long day.”

TBC….

Oh, Canada...

Flew into Ottawa, ON on sunday.
Boy are my arms tired.


There's a whole lot of nothing to see out of the airplane window, for a very long time as you fly to Ottawa from Chicago.
as we got close, and started to descend, I really started to get a sense that I was in Canada.

Every creek, pond, river had squares of bare ice, where the snow had been cleared.

You'd think Hockey was a big deal here, or something.

And more so than the whole kilometer i/o miles thing on all the signs; and the gas prices listed per litre; it was the junior national Curling tournament on the TV at dinner that really hammered "You're in Canada" home to me.
Love nationally  televised sporting events where there's, like... 150 people actually watching it at the sports facility.
Woe is the Canadian sports network that didn't get the NHL broadcasting rights...

Then it was my cable tv at the hotel.   40 channels, several in french, over half of the 40 are news, sports or PBS-like.   A well informed, serious minded people, apparently.  Sports channels in Feb. in Canada show things like re-runs of old CFL playoff games; worlds strongest men competitions, Curling and... pro wrestling.  Woe is the canadian sports network that didn't get the NHL broadcasting rights...

TSN, by the way.    It's the real life equivalent of ESPN 8, "The OCHO!!!"

And given the apparent country-wide lack of interest in giving a creative name to anything, I bet TSN stands for...The Sports Network.    I bet they paid a marketing firm a ton of cash to come up with that name...

Lack of creative names... What am I talking about?  

There's a historical old church, dating from 1840 along the drive home.  It's light blue, and is the 2nd church built there, replacing the one from 1790 that burnt down.
What's the name of this quaint old church, surrounded by 200 year old grave markers?
The Blue Church.

And around the corner from my hotel, is a beer store.   Guess what it's called!
The Beer Store.

Oddly enough, the huge processing  plant with all the smoke and stuff billowing out of it, is not called "The Shithole" or "The blight on the landscape" or  "Icky". It actually has a corporate sounding name out front...


I have been driving back to my hotel along the St. Lawrence all week. Since I'm not in a hurry, have no place I have to be after work, no plans, no ideas... might as well take the scenic route.  

And it IS scenic.   A handful of picturesque (but not financially well off) old towns right on the water. Glimpses of 1000 islands around every curve. And a ton of historical markers, due to the fact that the area saw a lot of battles during Canada's fight to end English rule in the 19th century.

And French fry stands.
At least three of 'em between Cardinal and Brockville.  All of them closed until spring.  Each of them no bigger than a farmer's road side fruit stand.  

They take their fries pretty seriously, hereabouts.   A culinary specialty is Poutine.
That would be fries with fresh cheese curds and gravy.
I tried 'em last time I was in the area, and I'm still full, so opted out this go 'round.

As you drive along the water, you come upon signs, welcoming you to Johnstown, or Prescott, or Florence township.  

The usual artfully rendered wooden signs, with the name of the town, and a welcoming message underneath.

Like Johnstown's.    "We're Glad You're Here!" might be your guess for welcoming message.
OR
"Try our fries!"

Nope.

Welcome to Johnstown.
"Smoke Alarms save lives!"

a few Kilometers further east, you're welcomed to Historical Florence Township.

"Home of the AA Jr. Curling Champions 1987"?
nope.
"You're already home"?
Nuh uh.

Welcome to Historical Florence Township
"No Smoke Alarm?  NO chance!!!!!"

Unless you're driving the other direction, then the sign says "Have you checked your smoke alarm's batteries?"

And a bit later, you enter Brockville.
"Welcome to Brockville"
" Resort Liv..uh.. Do you smell smoke?"

Nah, I made that last one up.  

It's been fun running out to lunch with my coworker, in Cardinal.
Town's small.  REALLY small.  
And it's been a company town for a century at least.   At one point, 100% of the residents worked at the plant.   She's lived here her entire life.  

On the way to lunch today, she told me to watch out for the guy who was crossing the street, a block and a half in front of me.
"That's Earl.  Earl takes awhile to cross a street."
And he did.

And everyone in town can spot him from over a block away, and knows what to expect.

And to me, that's kinda awesome.  

You can keep your smoke alarm propaganda; your gut buster gravy fries; your lack of creativity in your naming of landmarks and retail outlets; and your lack of programming on your sports networks.
But I'll happily take the small town, the evening commute, and the idea of an Earl.

Southside Irish Parade 2012. Really??

Southside Irish Parade 2012. Yeah, THERE'S a good idea. But it's cool, because the parade's gonna be alcohol free. Logistically impossible. Unachievable. I wrote about the last one, which ended with me calling 911 as we beat a hasty exit from Maeve Park.

http://patrickosplayhouse.blogspot.com/2009/03/blog-post.html

Constructing Christmas. OR: Where the %%$^& is the little brown fencepost?

"Maybe we should just put it together now, and have them out under the tree for her when she wakes up tomorrow morning."  I suggested to my wife after we put my daughter to bed on Christmas eve, as I looked at the box that contained the Playmobil Wildlife Play Station

Fiona had received the Playmobil Animal Nursery  the weekend before as an early christmas present from a family member,  and the insanity of IT'S assembly was still fresh in my head.

"No, she won't have as many to open then."  My wife answered.
"She loves opening them."

And she does.  And more specifically to the story, she did.   She loved opening everything Christmas morning.
What little kid doesn't?

The problem is, we ended up spending 10 minutes opening presents, and AT LEAST two hours putting them together.

The box states that the set comes with a bazillion pieces, and that sounds pretty impressive.   And it truly IS impressive, but not QUITE as cool as it sounds.

Because when  you open it, you  find out that the worlds smallest flashlight is two pieces; the worlds smallest jar is two pieces; every VEGETABLE is two pieces; a tree is at least five pieces, the little straps for the binoculars and camera are each their own piece, and the structure itself... yikes.
And yikes again.

It came with a sheet of stickers, so you could label the small pieces if you wanted, to make them look more "real".
Wonder if each sticker counted as a piece?


And while the end result is sturdy and looks great, was it really necessary to make the product so that every little piece of the structure is... a separate piece?

the instructions might as well have read:

"Here's a wall, the wall has space for a window and a door.   We could have made it so that the window and the door are framed already,  but... no.  Those are separate pieces.
So here's the wall with holes, now insert the frames into the holes, now insert the window into the window frame into the window hole, and NOW the door into the door frame into the door hole...."

And the packaging of the bazillion separate pieces left a bit to be desired, too.

"Honey, do you know which of the eight bags of randomly thrown together pieces holds that small dark brown fence post?  I can't finish the railing without it! No, not the bigger, lighter brown one, I already found IT - it was in the bag with the zebra, the rifle, one of the tree pieces, two of the carrot tops and the cage padlock...."

All while your child's standing there, with two cheetah cubs in her hand, asking you if she can play with it yet.

"Not yet, darlin'.   I have to snap the cot into the side wall into the front wall into the floor...."

Can I put the monkey in the cage?  The monkey really needs to go in the cage!

"Well as soon as I put the four pieces of cage together, and then attach it to the underside of the floor of the stilt house, and then connect the house to the top of the floor ...."

And the pieces don't just snap together.  Nope.  That would be crazy.

Instead, they provide you with bags of little, tiny connectors of various colors, and a little tool designed only to insert the connectors into their respective holes on each piece so that you can in turn connect that piece to another piece....  And of COURSE each color connector's specific to various pieces, because having all connections being the same size is, well.. just plain silly, I guess.

And yikes again.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter, as she loves the toys, and has played with them a lot over the last  couple of days.  

How life changes

Even though I’ve been at it now for awhile, I still find myself marveling at how my life’s changed in the last few years, due mostly to the arrival and continued presence of my daughter.

Today, it was a trip to Target on my lunch hour.
A few last minute Christmas baking items, mostly. But there were a couple of other things. After all the baking goods were in the cart,  I found myself looking at wrapping paper, because presents from Santa cannot be wrapped with same paper as presents from mom and dad.
Duh!
 And I’m looking at all of this wrapping paper, trying to think about what kind of paper the elves would use to wrap presents.
 Probably not the CARS2 paper, doubtful they’d use Toy Story or Tinkerbell themed paper… Would they use paper that said “Ho Ho Ho” on it?
Blue wrapping paper? Would they even CONSIDER using blue paper?

WHAT IF I PICK THE WRONG PAPER AND END UP RUINING SANTA CLAUS FOR MY DAUGHTER????
 This is a serious dilemma, my friends. And I laughed aloud at myself for spending so much time on it, startling the two older ladies who were standing nearby, conversing in polish, probably about what kind of wrapping paper they use at the North Pole.

 I went with a pattern that’s reminiscent of a candy cane, by the way. Red and white strips, mostly, with a little thread of green mixed in.

On the heels of the wrapping paper conundrum, I found myself looking at shoes for little girls. Right up until the mother of the little girl started screaming for security, and reaching for the can of leftover pepper spray she had in her purse, forgotten there since she finished up her shopping at 5:30am on Black Friday….

 Sorry, I drifted off there… Where was I?
 Oh! Shoes for little girls!

 See, Fiona has a light blue and white dress that we’re hoping makes it through Christmas. It's made it through a couple of holiday functions already, and..we're hopeful.
However, there was an incident yesterday, which forced us to dispose of her silver, sparkly shoes that went with that dress.
"But you can’t have a Christmas dress without the appropriate shoes!" some of you are saying.
I know, or more accurately, I've been told.

So I was standing in the little girl shoe aisle, looking for a pair of sparkly silver shoes in size 10, to ensure proper accessorizing on the part of my four year old daughter.
And I found just the pair, and spent several more minutes going through all the rows of boxes, trying unsuccessfully to find them in size 10.

Without exaggeration, I spent less time shopping for the last fishing pole I purchased.

 Yesterday, it was an off-handed comment I overheard a mom say, as my daughter told Santa what was on her Christmas list.
 Earlier in the morning, my wife relayed a story to me, about friends of ours shopping for or with their four year daughter. If I have the story right, she wanted, or had picked out, a car related toy of some kind.
 She was pretty excited about it.
 And the woman at the check out voiced surprise at it, surely she didn’t want the car related toy.
 (Inferred – that’s for boys.)
 And we were indignant on their behalf.

Fast forward a bit, we were at Brunch with Santa, at the Brookfield Zoo, a “My, how life changes" moment in and of itself.
Fiona’s telling Santa that she wants a drum for Christmas.
The woman standing next to me, likely not knowing I was Fiona’s dad, exclaims: “A drum? The little girl wants a drum?!?!?” And I was ready to throw down, right in front of Santa. I was gonna give this complete stranger a lecture about NOT being ignorant and forcing outdated gender expectations on your…. Blah blah blah blah. I didn’t, of course. Santa was watching.
 And a few moments later, my daughter got sick and hastened our exit.

 But oh, how life changes...

Spring Forward, Fall Back - Part 2

Daylight savings, after not meaning much at all to you for the first 18 years of your life, can become more of an issue, real or imagined, around the time you dip your toe into the murky stream of adulthood.

You’ve a bit more control of your own life and schedule, and the twice a year clock manipulation becomes part of that.

Of course, when you’re 18, and away from home for the first time, it takes the form of:

A) Dude! We fall back this weekend!
B) Uh, we tend to fall every weekend.

A) I said “fall back” not fall down.
B) Oh. So what’s the big deal?

A) An extra hour of partying!
B) Yeah, like we party to some kind of schedule…

End of discussion.

So it SOUNDS like a big, cool deal, but in reality – it amounts to nothing.
This does not, however, keep 1000’s of youth from using it as an excuse to throw a party, every fall.
Cuz a THEME for a party makes it just a bit more fun, for some reason, than a party thrown for no stated reason.

A couple years later, you’re old enough to go to bars. Then, and perhaps ONLY then, does falling back actually become an issue of note.

See, because the bars really DO demand you party on some kind of schedule, and 1am becoming your 2nd midnight of the evening means an extra hour of bar time.
Finally, FINALLY falling back MEANS… something.
Sort of.

IF you decide to go out that night.

Sidenote: I worked in a bar for awhile, after college. Falling back meant listening to an extra hour of drunk karoake performances, while getting in an extra hour of total immersion in clouds of cigarette smoke. Oh, and an extra $6, before taxes.
Jivin’.

But once you settle down in a life a bit, falling back and springing forward goes back to meaning… nothing, when you get right down to it.
At least, nothing after you’ve changed your smoke alarm batteries and corrected the time on all the clocks in your house, that is.

Unless you have kids.

Then it’s a topic of conversation amongst parents, how to handle the time change, should you start adjusting bedtimes for the big one hour of sleep a few days in advance, or not?
I’m guilty of this too, even though, when you get right down to it –

IT’S ONE FREAKIN’ HOUR.

And the extra time you feel you’re getting in the morning, you’re going to want to give back by 7pm that evening, when you realize it’s not actually the little nipper’s bedtime anymore, even though it really, REALLY feels like it should be, to you.


Really? It’s only 7:05? REALLY????
Damn.

And a couple mornings later, everything’s shifted back to the clock schedule you were used to before last Sunday morning, and life moves on, unchanged.

So to sum up: Thanks, New Zealand Bug Boy, for… a whole lot of not much.


The “likes to use his imagination” part of me wishes for more.

Springing forward should mean that it’s 2am all the sudden, and there’s a gap in your life that you can’t fill in.
Whatever you’re talking about at 1am… well forget about it, it’s 2am now, and your life moved an hour forward without you.

Perhaps best illustrated in some edgy indy movie where a dozen people’s lives intersect in that missing hour, and we spend the entire movie piecing it together.

“How’d I end up in Jail with half my goatee shaved off, wearing a clown outfit? Last thing I remember it was a few minutes before 1am, and…. Uh oh.”

Meanwhile, across town, a clown wakes up naked in his car, with a woman’s bowling ball next to him on the passenger seat…


Falling back should have some youthful rom-com / coming of age feel to it.

An extra hour to win the girl, fix the problem, fall in love with your spouse all over again, come to some life decisions…whatever. You wake up the next morning somehow better and more self actualized for the extra hour you were given, optimistic about the future and the person sitting across from you drinking diner coffee.
An upbeat but unmemorable modern rock song begins to play as the camera pans out of the diner, showing a fresh, clean day starting, before it fades to black and credits roll.

Not realistic, probably. Hard to pull off in real life, year after year.

Except for maybe the diner coffee.

Spring Forward, Fall Back - do the hokey pokey and you shake it all about...

So, it happened.

This past Sunday morning, early.
All the Sudden, with little fanfare, the earth reversed it’s rotation, and we all went back in time one hour.

What’s that? The earth didn’t actually reverse it’s rotation? It’s just an arbitrary executive decision that decrees we move our clocks backwards once a year, and then forward six months later?
(Or should that be …our clocks forward once a year, and then backwards six months later? Chicken, or egg?)

Seriously? What’s next, mis-matched sock day every Wednesday, for the entire free world? No meat on Fridays depending on ones’ religious affiliation?

Oh, wait. We already did the no meat thing….The only good that came of THAT was the invention of the Fish Fry.


Decided to spend two minutes researching the origin and logic of DST.

Kinda interesting, actually.


(DST) is the practice of temporarily advancing clocks during the summertime so that afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less. Typically clocks are adjusted forward one hour near the start of spring and are adjusted backward in autumn.[7] Modern DST was first proposed in 1895 by George Vernon Hudson.[8] Many countries have used it since then; details vary by location and change occasionally.
The practice has been both praised and criticized.[7] Adding daylight to afternoons benefits retailing, sports, and other activities that exploit sunlight after working hours,[9] but causes problems for farming, evening entertainment and other occupations tied to the sun.[10][


George Vernon Hudson was a shift worker in New Zealand, and liked collecting bugs after work, so figured if there was more daylight hours AFTER he got off – more bug collecting!

And in the time before electricity, you could save a lot on candles and coal if you didn’t waste any sunlight by, say, sleeping or other frivolous activity.

Anyhow, it's kind of a big deal, every year. Set those clocks forward, change that smoke alarm battery, set those clocks back, change that smoke alarm battery....

Sidenote - my smoke alarm batteries last YEARS. Just sayin'...

(Another sidenote – when they DO start to fail, it’s always at 3am. When we wake up because of some irritating beeping noise that we then have to track down, so we can remove the battery, and hope to remember to install a new one, whenever we get around to buying some…..)

I've been thinking about it the last little bit, and have to say - whatever.

As a child, it had little meaning to me. We weren't allowed to watch TV on sunday mornings, not there was anything on in the days of pre-cable anyhow. Not like we were at risk of missing our favorite show at 8am on a Sunday morning…

Springing forward meant that you noticed the folks who forgot to do so, when they walked into church 45 minutes after services began.
Nothing else really to it.
You woke up, you ate breakfast, you spent the day, you went to bed - remarkably similar to every other sunday.

Falling backward - same thing, only no parade of the embarrassed at mass.

As a teenager - really, same deal. Maybe you felt a bit more rushed on sunday morning, when we sprang forward. falling backward had no consequences.


It became a bigger deal (good or bad), or in some cases a handy excuse, at the onset of adulthood.

More on that next time, as this is very long already, and I fear I’ve already lost half of you…..