An Accident Waiting to Happen

The older I get (and that's about to be pretty darned old), the more surprised I am at how stupid we humans can be. 

On my way to work this morning, I rode down in the elevator with a guy wearing pants and a white t-shirt, who was using both hands to balance a very large bowl of very runny oatmeal.  Spoon in the bowl.  Button-up dress shirt on a hanger tucked under his arm.  Medium-sized glass bottle with a screw top lid full of water also clutched in one of his hands, along with his car keys. 

Photo courtesy of brokenwisdom.com

When I asked him if he was planning to eat the oatmeal while he drove to work, he smiled rather sheepishly and said if he answered that question, he'd have to kill me.  I suggested it could be rather messy (while in my head thinking, "are you insane?!??") and he laughed and said that's why he doesn't put his dress shirt on until he gets to work.

I'm thinking this behaviour is a total recipe for disaster.  Seriously?  Where do you balance a runny bowl of oatmeal on a car seat? The dude could barely operate the elevator buttons and I have no idea how he would have handled the doorknob on the parking garage door if I hadn't been there. And a glass bottle with a screw top for water?  Oh right, you probably just steer with your knees when you need both hands to get that lid off, am I right?  Geez, buddy, get a clue, would ya?

As we walked to our cars, I asked if he'd give me a head start out of the parking garage because I sure as heck didn't want to be anywhere near this clown when he got behind the wheel!!  (He thought I was joking.)

In reality, we're all idiots, aren't we?  I like to tell myself I'm smarter than this guy but then, I foolishly believed the weather forecaster on the radio this morning who said the rain wouldn't start until "later tonight" and was surprised when it started pouring at 3 p.m. and I ended up with very wet shoes and toes because I thought it would be safe to wear sandals to work today. 

But at least I wasn't going to risk lives by driving with damp toes.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

I wrote an email to the CBC today, filed under the category of "complaint".  I was reluctant to do so but wanted to voice my opinion on their recent switch to showing five hours a week of Coronation Street episodes, instead of 2.5 hours as they have been doing for the past several years.

At the moment, I am currently at least 12 hours behind on the show (partly because this change happened back on Sept 5th and it wasn't until the following week that I even found about it!) and wondering when I will have the time to catch up, let alone keep up with the weekly quota.  It's especially upsetting because I know something absolutely earth-shattering happened in the middle of this past Sunday's five hour show and I'm dying to get to that place in the storyline as soon as I can, but I also don't want to fast-forward through what I'm seeing now, which involves the death of one of the older characters on the Street and the poignant scenes associated with that as the other characters say their goodbyes. 

I know one of these reasons the network has changed the format is to catch us up to the episodes that are currently being shown in Britain, where Coronation Street is filmed. Canada is currently about 9 months behind, which seems a bit extreme until you realize that New Zealand is even farther behind than us!  But unless I go surfing the Internet to see what's happening in the current storylines, it doesn't matter to me that other people in parts of the globe are already that far ahead of us here in Canada.  And I'd certainly much rather keep watching week by week than do what the CBC did several years ago, when they tried to catch us up by jumping several months worth of episodes completely and simply summarizing what happened in the missing episodes.  They never did show those skipped episodes and as a result, we missed several valuable chapters in the lives of our beloved friends on the Street, including the wedding of one of the major characters, which I have always regretted.

I just can't imagine myself tuning in for a solid hour every day, five days a week or all five hours on Sunday mornings starting at 7 a.m.  I know lots of people do this on a regular basis, that's normal volume for a daily soap opera but it seems too much to me and I wanted to let the people making programming decisions at the CBC know that I, for one, don't want that much Corrie, no matter how much I love the show.

And I do love it. I've been watching faithfully for at least 30 years now, believe it or not. (I'm not the only one watching, the show has been on the air longer than I've been alive, since 1960 to be exact!) These characters are a part of my life, I just don't want to be compelled to spend that much time with them every...single...day. 

Yes, I could stop watching altogether.  Or I could just catch parts of episodes here and there, an hour or two at a time when it suits my schedule, but that would make all the story lines seem quite disjointed.  So my only option is to hope the CBC will see sense and return to two and a half hours a week.  Pleeeeeze!!

Facing My Fears

Last week's lesson in Jane Davenport's Supplies Me online course was focused on coloured pencils and featured a tutorial from Jane on how to draw faces.  I don't do much drawing or doodling, mostly because I don't feel that I know what I'm doing and as a result, don't consider myself to be very good at it.  Which is one of the reasons I signed up for this course in the first place, because the class description said the emphasis would be on faces and the figure.  I figured it was time to face my fear of drawing by learning how to draw faces.

So, I dutifully watched Jane's instructional videos (which are stunningly awesome to watch, she is such a talented artist, it would be totally intimidating if she wasn't already in the process of showing us what to do but knowing Jane and seeing how encouraging she is, it's only slightly intimidating instead of being completely intimidating), took a deep breath, picked up my drawing instrument (sometimes a pen, sometimes a pencil) and started drawing.

I started by doodling with a pen and paper last week when things got a wee bit boring at the work conference in Niagara Falls (I've been carrying pens and a sketchbook around since seeing Jane do it in Portugal in June, just hadn't actually gotten brave enough to use them yet!) - here's the first face I drew:

Then I got a bit braver, and drew a few more:

Once I got home from the conference, I was able to pull out my coloured pencils and give them a try:

I have to say, I'm pretty excited about the results. I definitely need more practice, especially on drawing noses, that seems to be the most challenging feature of the human face for me so far, but I'm actually looking forward to doing more faces with this week's featured supply category - watercolour paints.  Stay tuned!

Dreaming of July

Remember this photo from back on July 23rd? Usually when people complain about the heat, as they did that day, I tell them I can't complain, that these are the days that I dream about in February.  Well, it's only September but I was definitely feeling nostalgic for that hot July day this morning when the temperature was only 5 degrees Celsius:

Alas, it feels more like October today rather than September and I'm so not ready for winter and cold weather and turtlenecks (which I am horrified to have to admit I have worn twice in the past 4 days). 

As far as silver linings go, it is nice to have the fireplace going at the cottage to ward off the cold. And the sunsets are just as pretty...

An Impractical Room

The hotel suite I stayed in while in Niagara Falls this past week was nice enough.  It had a spectacular view of the Falls:

but it wasn't really a very practical room for two work colleagues or people that are not related to each other and/or in love, although it's probably a great idea for a family with a couple of kids. There were two bedrooms separated by a hallway but only one door blocking off that hallway, leading into the larger bedroom.  As a result, not a lot of privacy for the person in the 2nd room when the other person was going in and out of the washroom or using the small kitchenette tucked into the hallway. And there was only one closet, located in the first bedroom.  Not to mention the fact that you had to walk through the first bedroom to get to the second when you entered the room from the outside.

hallway

Then there was the bathroom.  It had a lovely big tub that looked like it would be wonderful to bathe in, although sadly, I did not have time to take advantage of it:

But as you can see, there was a window in the bathroom! Said window looked into the bedroom shown above.

Luckily, there was a shade that could be lowered for privacy. Given that this wasn't a romantic weekend away with the man of my dreams, I was actually sharing the room with my boss, that shade went down as soon as we arrived and stayed down for the entire two days we were there.

Alas, my boss pulled rank and took the room with the view (although I intend to bring these photos to my performance review in January to use as blackmail if needed).   Which left me with a bedroom that was okay, but was really just a regular hotel room with a comfortable bed, a TV, a couple of pictures on the wall...and no view. In fact, no windows at all.

Unless you count the view from the kitchenette, which was pretty spectacular for a hallway window, I must admit:

But that's okay, we were only there to sleep anyway and luckily, my boss and I get along well, so we had an enjoyable time.  Still, I think I'd like to stay there again some day, sleep in the bedroom with a view with the curtain open so I could see that amazing view of the Falls as soon as I open my eyes in the morning, and make time to try out that tub - preferably with a cute guy.  What the heck, a girl can dream! :)

Home From Niagara Falls

I've been at a work conference in Niagara Falls for the past two days.  We stayed at the Hilton, across the street from the the Fallsview Casino, appropriately named because of its proximity to the Falls.  This was the view from our room on the 26th floor:



You may not realize that there are actually 3 sets of falls here where Lake Erie drains into Lake Ontario by way of the Niagara River.  The most famous of the three is Horseshoe Falls, which looked like this first thing this morning, with the mist rising in the sun:

Horseshoe Falls

Across the U.S. border in Niagara Falls, New York lies the second set of falls, known as the American Falls:

American Falls

The smallest of the three is known as Bridal Veil Falls, situated to the right of the American Falls, on the other side of what is known as Luna Island and separated from the Horseshoe Falls by a piece of land known as Goat Island.  You can just see this set of falls on the right hand side of the above photo of mine but here's a better (night time) view, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Here's how the view looked at lunchtime yesterday, from the restaurant on the 32nd floor of our hotel:

Here's how the American Falls looked at night.

Whenever I could, I would take another look at that view.  It was pretty darned amazing.

More Royalty

While I'm off in Niagara Falls, I thought I'd share a couple of the Royalty journal pages made by my fellow "Journal Junkies".

This one was Connie's.  She told us she has 7 bathrooms in her house (say what?!?), so she feels like the queen of toilet paper because there is always a roll that needs changing.

Betty's page featured a number of "other royals":

This lady (alas, I forget her name, sorry!) did a royal blue page. She was dismayed that her paint blurred all of the photo images she had on the page but I love the finished effect, don't you?

This one was made by Kelly, the self-proclaimed "Queen of F*cking Everything!".  Although for this page, which she donated to the store (Bizzy B), she cleaned it up a bit and simply called herself queen of the Universe".