the day after tomorrow

I love living near the lake... I love knowing which direction is which (based on the lake always staying still) (what a concept!)

I love watching the weather as it comes across the lake... which isn't all that often, more often you can see the weather as it's leaving us... remember that time the Snowbirds were here? and there was a WALL of fog that came and ate the lake? We watched it as it came from about halfway over the lake, and it ran at us to the beach... stopping about 3 feet from the edge... eating the sky and the water and the pier, until they canceled the show altogether.... yeah... moments like that are pretty cool.

Yesterday had me frightened to go outside... once an hour I had to go and drive someone to a placement... or pick someone else up. Each hour I could see the cold front coming closer and closer....

The first time I looked out at the lake this morning I wasn't sure what I was seeing.
Upside down clouds? Clouds on the lake trailing up to the sky? what the heck?
The second time I looked out, it was closer... and I could figure out what is was.

You know those days when the air is colder than the water, but the water hasn't frozen yet? Early morning mist on the pond?

This was no warm pond on a cool late summer's morning....
This was the FRIGID lake Ontario sending giant clouds of vapour into the frosty air as it came closer and closer and closer....
Have you seen the movie "The day after Tomorrow"? I was having visions of that as it came closer to the shore.... Today a large cloud hangs over the lake... waiting to fall on poor little cold Cobourg.

Speaking of Movies, anyone want to watch the movie Chocolat and discuss? A sort of Pre-Michael-Frost engine starter??? eh? eh? eh? Tonight, Dad's house.

post 600

ok, I had some time while I was waiting to pick someone up, cell phones can be a wondrous thing.

Our Cobourg Sunoco's number is 905-373-8317, when I asked for the manager, the man (Mike) on the phone asked how he could help. I explained that I really liked the car wash that I'd gotten the day before, that the machine did a great job, better than I could and with a lot less water (I always end up soaked and start writing on the street with the hose....) I also said I appreciated the fact that there was a sign referring to the fact that it might take a little longer to get in, because it was about quality not speed... blah blah, chit chat... I then mentioned the 9:3 ratio of cars with their engines running for more than 20 minutes at a time, and asked him if he would consider placing a no-idling sign. His response was that it was a good idea, but he wasn't just going to "slap any old make-shift sign" up, and that I should contact the Sunoco customer relations department.
I called them, related my story again, and was told it was a good idea, she would email the manager and tell him, and would pass the message along to the org as a whole.
Here's the customer relations number for you too 888-858-7242
And Mike at our local shop 905-373-8317

took me a total of 5 minutes including dialing 411 for the local number.

my footprint

Ok, so I briefly mentioned that everyone needed to go and rent "an inconvenient truth" the other day.

Let me say it again... go rent it, watch it with a few people, eat food together, discuss.

With the topic of climate change and environmental issues as a whole being front and centre this "non-winter" (meh, I guess it's winter now) I totally recommend it, if only to bring people up to speed on what we've been ignoring or, just passively watching for a number of years. If by chance you decide to do something after watching it.... even better. There are so many small things that we can be doing that as a whole, are going to help to make a difference. There's a bunch of really neat ones listed in the credits, and there is a copy of the 10 easy steps you can take on the site.... ooooOOOoohhh... there's also a quiz to figure out your "carbon footprint" (what your personal impact is) which I found really interesting... sadly, they don't have it set up for Canada, but if you choose California as your State, they are pretty much the closest to us in terms of emissions... as far as I can figure out... Anyone know better?

yesterday I got a car wash. After chipping away at some ice stuck to my car... and discovering it wasn't ice, it was salt, I figured for the life-sake of my little Morgan (yeah, his name) I should get that off before he melted to a pile of rust before my eyes.
I drove to Sunoco, the new place out by the Hospital, on my way out of town. I'd heard they were pretty good there and decided to give it a try. As I was waiting in the line, I read a sign that said something to the effect of "good quality because we take our time". I took that as a hint I was going to be in that line up for awhile (with 8 cars ahead of me) and shut my engine off and read a few chapters of my book. Once in a while, I turned the car on and crept forward, where there was enough hill, I took off the brake and coasted. Back to my book... I got a good chunk read... more on the book later.
In total I waited 30 minutes to get my car washed... in horror I sat and looked at the cars around me... in front, two huge SUVs, behind me, a late 70's early 80's gas guzzling-beaster car... all with their engines running.

of the 12 total cars in line with me only 3 turned off their engines during their half hour wait.

Tonight after work, I'm going to head over to the Sunoco and ask them to place a "no idling" sign in their line up, hopefully I'll have their phone number by tomorrow or tonight, I'll post it, please, take the 2 minutes needed and ask them to put one up, if enough of us are asking, maybe it'll help.

(hee hee... random info... the spell checker wants me to change the word "Sunoco" to "smog")

red alert

I ventured out to the "alternative" service at the Anglican church this morning with the Sheff bunch. The service itself takes place in the small chapel that was just recently added on to the giant church across from the beach. I love this space. I've mentioned it before with the Taize services there... It brings you to a place of worship just being there... the place feels set apart. That, and the floors are heated. I like that.
We were just about to get into everything when it happened.....
The heat had been turned up so high in the building, that the boiler room, after labouring away, gave up... and something burst. Not that we knew that.. but we did know that the fire alarm was bursting our ear drums.
Stage right, the evacuation. And outdoors, a continuation of our worship, while the firemen tramped about.

other big bunnies

other big bunnies can be found here....

hee hee hee.

Tender.

big bunny

Ok... I don't know who that woman is, but I'm getting a big bunny.
That would be a "blue" bunny above. Mine will be grey (a mix of black white and grey hairs). Right now it is two weeks old, and I hope it will be this big.

4 things

there are four things I'd like to blog about... but I don't have the time.

1) An inconvient truth. - go see it.

2) Drama Club started. - it was fantastic.

3) I get some singing time in tonight with the old crew. -for that I am thankful.

4) I may get a new bunny in two to three weeks. - it will start out small.....

I do not like them sam I am

I do not like eggs shells in my cooked eggs.

*gaaack!*

better than massage.

ok, so I finished posting the earlier article, then did my daily juant through the blogosphere and found that Bethfield had posted the same article. How funny.

I've just returned from the most wonderful ever expierience. AND it was a training session for work! crazy... I know.
ok, so at this point in time I don't know weather to cry or to laugh... I'm so relaxed my body isn't sure which emotion is going to be allowed first.
I just had a two hour session at CL-WN (community living west northumberland) about their new Snoezelen room. This is a stimulation/ multi sensory room that allows people to choose how little.. or how much stimulation they need to focus and relax. They've been around for nearly 20 years, but it's hard to find any good information out there... The name snoezelen is from two dutch words meaning to "snuffelen" to explore, seek out and "dozelen" to relax. And that's just what you do... wander around the room till you find what YOU need to do to relax. It's alittle strange at first, but you need to lose your inhibitions and try everything, try different positions and combinations... pretend to be an exploring toddler... touch and manipulate....

Anyway... there are lights... there are soft mats, there are balls, there are bubbles... there are colours... it's beautiful.

I'd seen the catalogues in the past, advertising some of the elements found in a basic room.[note::that link is for some fancy rooms.. I know it's in Dutch, but I'm sure you can figure it out].. and I'd always fancied that I'd be one who would be happiest with a giant draping puddle of fiber optic light strands... thousands of thin ones, that I could cover myself with... and just sit propped up in a corner... or... maybe the ball pool... with those lights...
When I got there I was surprised that more than anything... I wanted to hug the giant bubble tube and keep pressing the button that starts and stops the bubbles...
Also... I found that the giant swath of lights that I thought I'd like... were almost too much... I didn't like some of the colours that they changed and found that they really did alter the way I felt depending on the colour.
The other part I was surprised at was the ball pit... it was amazing (as I knew it would be) but I was surprised at the fact that when I was in there... I wanted to be at the bottom, covered in the balls. And... I wanted to have one single cable of lights in there with me... it was a light blue and it just lightly shimmered (as the lights inside changed). When I placed the lights right up close to my face... it was so relaxing....

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day.... er... a week late.

[Thanks RJ for the forward]

TheStar.com - Life - Rev. King remembered
January 20, 2007
Stephen Scharper

This past Monday, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., would have turned 78. He has been dead as long as he was alive – 39 years – and the world and especially his country are still grappling uneasily with his memory and message.
As Seattle journalist Geov Parrish has noted, many often recall King's "I Have a Dream" speech from the 1963 March on Washington. But our memories of King are often selective.

We don't always recall, for example, that his home was bombed, his chest pierced by a knife, his body beaten and repeatedly jailed, his face rendered a spittoon by white racists, his personal world invaded by theFBI, and his life, and that of his wife and four children, constantly menaced by death threats, at times up to 40 a day.

Though each year on his birthday, now an official U.S. holiday, we are reminded of his lofty rhetoric and successful desegregation campaign inthe U.S. South, we seem to forget about mainstream U.S. scorn for Kingduring his lifetime, and his widely held sobriquet, "Commie dupe." We often even forget that he was a Baptist minister, and that his Christian faith and black church community served as wellsprings of his activism.

Yet our recollections become particularly dissipated when it comes tohis powerful indictments of poverty, state-sanctioned violence, and unchecked U.S. militarism, especially in Vietnam.

One of King's most prescient and compelling speeches, in fact, is one ofhis least quoted – his April 1967 address to a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam at Riverside Church in New York City. It was the first time King spoke out publicly against the war, and his outspokenness continued until he was silenced by a bullet in Memphis one year later.

King's diagnosis of our society that night remains as pertinent today as it did 40 years ago:

"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution," Rev. King intoned, "we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a`thing-oriented' society to a `person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

Anticipating the Jubilee international debt relief campaigns of Canada,the U.S. and the U.K. (not to mention U2's Bono), King continued:

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa andSouth America, only to take the profits out with no concern for thesocial betterment of the countries, and say: `This is not just.'"

In light of the Bush administration's failed and morally insupportable invasion of Iraq, and Bush's recent order to escalate U.S. troop commitment there, [Lesley's side note... I read something yesterday that caught my attention.... when did troop start to mean individual persons?] King's words could have been uttered yesterday:

"The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: `This way of settling differences is not just. This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.'

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defence than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

King's speech invites us to pause and reflect on what kind of future we want for our children and ourselves. Do we want a future marked by endless war? Do we want to live in a future increasingly divided into the desperately poor and insouciantly rich?

King had a dream, and he asks us, across the years, to ponder what our own dream as a society might be. He also invites us to ensure that our collective dream is not a nightmare.