Remembrance Day

Last year I posted two poems which everyone should go and (re)read. They are In Flanders Field and In Fields of Flanders.

...

My grandfather was born at the end of 1899 and was in both World Wars. Other friends and relatives have served in those wars and every one since. [*Edit: At least the wars which directly involved Canada and/or the United States. *] Some of them were not necessarily on the side you might expect. As an example, I knew at least one person who was served in the German Army around the time of World War II. I don't know if he served or fought during that war, only that at one time around then he was in the German army serving his mandatory service. Since he only served the mandatory tour of duty for the country where he was born and didn't talk about it, I don't know any more than that. I had known him as a friend's grandfather, who happened to live in our neighbourhood, for a long time before I ever learned that he was German or what that could have meant.

All of this helps me remember that ALL of the soldiers are people. Even if we think that the one side or the other is "evil" that might only apply to the leaders (if it applies to anyone), the individual soldiers might not agree with the leaders, but are sometimes forced to serve anyway.

What does that have to do with anything going on today?

Nothing. And everything.

Today is a day set aside for remembering all those who serve and have served. But we should not limit ourselves to only this one day.

And as it pertains to the fighting that is going on today... We need to remember that "the enemy" is also made up of people. Yes, some of them probably are very bad people who need to be stopped. But some of them may not believe in what they are being forced to fight for, and others may only be defending themselves.

[I imagine I will get a few negative comments on this post.]

Lest we forget...

Happy Halloween

Halloween used to be one of my favourite times of the year but then things happened which changed it all. Now I am starting to put some of it behind me and can enjoy Halloween again even if I don't go all out about it any more. I am not going to go into all of it tonight, but I will tell you the story of the straw that broke the camel's back.

I used to go to haunted houses whenever I had the chance and then a few years back I started working at one. I worked two or three nights a week for the duration of the season, the month of October, at least until the owners decided that I wasn't allowed to work there anymore. The reason they gave was that I was too scary.

So I was too scary to work at some place called "The Haunted Mansion" whose whole purpose was to scare people.

Yeah, it made that much sense to me as well.

Now, the part of it which really upset me and turned me off the whole thing wasn't that they decided not to let me work there any more, what pissed me off was that I heard about it when other people who worked there started contacting me and saying "I heard what happened and I'm sorry." To which my reply was "What the hell are you talking about?"

Eventually I was able to piece together the story, no thanks to the owners or operators of the house. I called and emailed them but they would not respond. Nothing. They acknowledged my attempts to friends of mine, but that was it.

Apparently it was one parent who complained and had me removed from the house. She said I scared her daughter too much. Since the owners of the house wouldn't talk to me, let alone listen to my side of things, I am going to tell you what happened.

The girl in question came through and I did my job and tried to scare her. At this point her only reaction was to threaten to "mace" me. She then immediately reached into her purse, pulled out a small spray canister, and sprayed me in the face. Needless to say I was caught off guard and it took a couple of seconds before I realized it wasn't mace, pepper spray, or anything like that. It was perfume.

I don't think I have to say that I was not happy with this girl. So I pulled out the stops, without breaking any of the house rules (I didn't touch, trap, or block her in any way) and gave her a scare. Adding my anger into the mix was enough to actually scare her and while she left the one area, she did not leave the house. I know this because she came back later and mouthed off some more. This got a scowl as a reply but nothing else. I knew that if I did more I would have used language which would have made a gangsta rapper blush. Safer to not say anything. But as it turns out not safe either.

And that was the end of that.

That was three years ago and this weekend was the first time I have been back. I was back there as a customer, and to see friends of mine who still work there. I had seen these friends in the meantime, I work with one of them, but I hadn't seen them in this environment. It is too late for me to go into what happened, but I will say that I enjoyed it. Look for that story in the coming week.

In the meantime I am off to bed and, hopefully, to sleep.

Peace.

Can a Narcoleptic get Insomnia?

As those of you I talk to personally may know, I have been having trouble sleeping for a while. This happens to me from time to time and has recently come back.

It has been going on for a while and I have talked to my doctor about it. She gave me some advice along with a list of things to do which should help. This list includes some standard things like "Don't ingest any thing containing caffeine past noon", "Maintain constant bed/wake times even when you don't have to get up", etc. Some of these are common sense (although that doesn't mean I was doing them) while others I never would have thought of. I am doing my best to follow them.

She also gave me a prescription for a "sleep aid" with the caveat not to take it every night. She said I should only take it when things get too bad. If you take it too much you can become dependent on it.

I think I'll be taking it tonight, and possibly for the weekend as well.

For the past couple of weeks I have been getting about 3-4 hours of sleep a night during the week and then getting 10-12 hours a night on the weekend. None of this sleep has been very restful. And now it has gotten to the point where I can barely sleep at night and can barely stay awake during the day.

I feel like I have insomnia and narcolepsy at the same time. If I lie down I'm awake. If I sit or stand I can't keep my eyes open.

It's enough to drive a sane man round the bend, and I am making no claims as to which side of that bend I was on when this started.

Maybe I should just try sleeping in a nice comfy chair instead of lying in bed tonight. However, while getting to sleep tonight might be difficult, I think getting out of bed at the normal (read: workday) time over the weekend will be even more difficult.

Geez, I feel like taking a nap.

Do the Yankees really suck?

I need to preface this by saying that I am not a big baseball fan and I would much rather watch hockey or curling. However, I do live in Boston these days and have been unable to avoid baseball due to the Red Sox playing for, and now winning, the American League Championship. (Against the New York Yankees for anyone who didn't know, or care.)

Game 7 of the series (Best of 7) was last night and the Red Sox won. Now everyone around me is talking about it today. This is not really surprising since this is one of the bitterest rivalries in any sport. Well, the comments can be summed up in two lines:

About half the people have been saying: "The Red Sox won!"

And about 75% of the people (There is some overlap, I can do math.) have been saying: "Yankees Suck!!"

With a lot of people then continuing by going on about how the Yankees choked, couldn't beat a Little League team, or some even more degrading and disparaging remark.

Not to defend the Yankees, but I watched most of the game and the Yankees didn't play badly, the Red Sox just played that much better.

I guess my point here is that by tearing down the Yankees by going on about how bad they are and how badly they played these Red Sox fans are, in effect, taking credit away from the Red Sox for how well they played.

I have seen this type of behaviour quite a bit, including in several areas outside of sports, and think it is horrible. Constantly tearing down the other side will do nothing for your side. Except lead to the possible diminishment of your side, as I noted above, by taking away due credit.

I guess that is why I try to give credit where, and when, it is due.

I've been thinking too much...

I've had several things on my mind over the last month or two, many of which I was going to write about here. The problem is that they were weighing on me so heavily that I just kept thinking about and analyzing them until they were even less clear than when I started thinking about them.

This is a recurring theme in my life. And now with these in particular, things are so twisted around that I don't even have a starting point from which to write.

I don't know what I am going to do to work all this out, but I am going to try to prevent it in the future. I'm going to try not to over analyze things. If this means writing more short entries instead of working on it and then writing longer ones, so be it.

I am still going to try to avoid talking too much about work here. Also, so far I have avoided talking about politics here for various reasons.

Come to think about it, that may be part of the problem right there. Work and politics have been a large part of what has been weighing me down. Not everything, but a large part. I might rethink this and start posting about politics and work, but who knows. If I do, it is more likely that I will talk politics than work. There have been too many stories of people getting in trouble for posting ANYTHING work-related on the web.

I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I think I can figure it out. It just may take me a while. And a couple of tries.

Peace.

Anniversaries

Today, September 11, 2004, is an important anniversary. A lot of people out there are talking and writing about one anniversary, but I am talking about a different one. Today is also the anniversary of my coming to the States.

On September 8, 1995 I packed up and left Nova Scotia for a job in Boston, Mass. I drove down, moved into temporary quarters, and three days later, on September 11, I started working at my first job in the United States.

I find it hard to believe I have been living "abroad" for nine years. I have, but it doesn't feel like nine years. Lately it has been feeling like a lot longer. I am not sure how much longer I will stay in the States. Partly because it depends on how much longer the new Bureau of Homeland Security allows me to stay and partly because there are days when I am ready to pack it all in and move back immediately.

Despite what some people have tried to tell me, Canada and the United States are not the same. There are even Americans who tell me that Canada is not a foreign country. I agree with these people, but only because I grew up in Canada so the United States is the foreign country.

I don't know how much longer I will be here. All I can tell you at the moment is that I am not planning on packing up anytime in the next few days. I am not looking beyond that yet.

Vacation '04 — Trip back

I am back at the house and on my way to bed very shortly.

I have don't have detailed statistics this time as the GPS was not on. All I have is a watch and the trip odometer in my truck. According to them I was on the road for around 13.5 hours (I stopped to eat and then to chat with a friend in Maine) and traveled 649.6 miles. This time the conversion is left for all those readers who do use the metric system.

But I am here and thinking it is time to sleep. Hopefully it will still feel that way once I lay down.

There are more posts to come about the vacation and some of the other stuff I have mentioned. I just need to sleep before I attempt to write them. Even then it might be a couple of days.

Peace.

Vacation '04 — Remembrance

Today was spent on the road making a few stops around my childhood.

My mother and I went to the cemetery this afternoon to visit my family's graves. We stopped on the way to pickup some flowers. I was glad to go because it has been years since I had a chance to visit this cemetery and now my grandmother has been laid to rest there as well.

My grandparents are there right next to one another, and my father is only about eight feet away with a plot next to him for my mother. A plot which is going to remain empty for several years yet.

Mom and I cleaned up the graves and left fresh flowers.

...

I had to take a short break there because I was starting to tear up while writing. I am not going to go any further into that part of the day for now. Maybe I'll come back to it...

Before I go on I want to tell a quick story of my first trip to this cemetery. It was when we were burying my grandfather and I was about eleven years old. Some of us kids started to wander around and look at the other stones. This was just a bunch of kids being bored while the grownups were serious and took care of whatever they were doing. At least that's what it was until I made a discovery which caused some distress.

Imagine you are an eleven year old in a cemetery, with your limited understanding of what is going on, and you find a gravestone with your name on it.

That was the day that I found out that I shared the same name as my great-grandfather. But I still remember that initial shock.

...

Let's get back to today...

We stopped in to visit my aunt (mentioned in earlier entries) on the way back. She was doing okay, but you could tell that her mind was slipping at times.

The next stop on the way back was Economy Falls. (Did I mention the town is named Economy? The name of the waterfall makes more sense if I mention that.) The area of the falls are beautiful. It helps that Dad and I used to go fishing there when I was a kid and I had only been there once since. Mom had also gone fishing there with Dad, but she hadn't been there since before I was born. It was good to see the area and remember Dad. Although the next stop held more memories of Dad for me.

The next stop was in Pleasant Hills where I have land that I inherited from Dad. At one time there was a cabin on the land. Dad used to spend a lot of time back there during the summer and during hunting season. I used to spend a lot of weekends back there with him as well.

If there is interest I may write about some of the times I spent with my father, but for now it is enough that you know that this area holds a lot of fond memories for me.

That was the second last stop on the trip today. The last one being at a truckstop where we ate supper.

Vacation '04 — Night on the Town

Last night I went out to the Lower Deck to hang out and relax. It is a good place to do that. Especially so when you can walk in and have the bartender remember what you drink and have the band call you by name.

The band playing last night was McGinty, one of my favorite bands. In fact they are playing there tonight as well. They are playing all week. I imagine I'll be back there at least a couple more nights before I head back down to Boston, but not tonight.

I met up with some other people who had just gotten into town from all across Canada. All of us had gotten into town at some point in the preceding 24 hours and had only met at some point during that time as well. There was Jay from Vancouver, Cathy from Edmonton, Chris from Calgary, Joe from just outside Niagara Falls, and me from Halifax but living in Boston. I have a couple of pictures which I will be putting on Buzznet once I have a chance. I haven't had that chance yet.

But here we were, 5 people from all across Canada who have just met, and we hung out and drank together all night. In fact, after the Lower Deck closed we hung around for a while longer, well 4 of us did. Joe had packed it in earlier.

By this time, Cathy had to go and prepare for the presentation she was giving in the morning and Chris was running low as well. So they went their ways while Jay was looking for another bar which was open later. I wanted to grab something to eat and told Jay that I'd show him where some of the other bars were while I went for food.

I pointed out some other bars and dropped him off at the AleHouse which is open until 3:30am. Meanwhile I got a donair and headed home.

It was a good night. Very enjoyable and stress-relieving.

There are several people I still would like to bring up here to show the town, and the Lower Deck. Too many to mention them all, but a few spring to the front and will be singled out. Those being Smulch, Journey, Ulf, Vara and Cwellen.

If you feel you should be on that list, you probably are but weren't in the first few that sprang to mind.

Vacation '04 — Part 1

I didn't get any comments on my previous post so I had to make my own decisions about what to do. I would have anyway, but I was expecting at least a couple of ... shall we say "interesting" ideas.

I should say that I was sick over the weekend and in no condition to drive long distance so I didn't leave until today. And now I am in Nova Scotia and will be here for the week, probably leaving to head back on Sunday.

I want to tell you about a customer service experience I had lately, as well as a couple of things about the trip up. However, I also want to sleep. After I give you some information about the drive, I think you will understand why I am going to leave the rest for a later time.

I had my GPS with me tracking the trip and thought some of the information might be interesting. Keep in mind that the GPS stats cover the entire trip, I did not turn it off or stop the tracking while I pumped gas or stopped to eat.

Total Time: 11 hours, 30 minutes, 54 seconds
Trip Odometer: 1081 kilometers
Average Speed: 93.9 km/h
I am going to leave the conversions to the reader.

As you can tell, I didn't stay still for long. I stopped, pumped gas, used the loo, bought snacks, started driving again.

I have been here for a while now, but need to settle in after the drive, stretch, and wind down before trying to sleep. Otherwise I would not have slept well. But now that I have done this, partly by writing, I am going to lie down and sleep.

I'll write about the other things I mentioned later on. Most likely before I head back.

Peace