Category: Workaday life

Performing my civic duties

About ten minutes after sitting down at my desk this morning I received a call from my friend on the regional police force asking me a very important question:

“How’d you like to come have free alcohol?”

Never one to shirk my civic duty, I said, “Hell yes.”

The police needed test subjects to come and drink, and drink, and drink some more. After this a group of officers would administer field sobriety tests. It was part of a training program for them.

They administered a pre-test (blood pressure, eye tracking, pulse) to the eight volunteers and then the alcohol flowed. We had lunch. We played euchre, but the game stopped when our opponents could no longer focus on their cards. My partner and I won by default. We got to be good friends in the way only inebriated people can. All the while the supervising officers watched and kept us topped up.

By early afternoon we were deemed sufficiently pickled. The officers made us blow in the breathalyser to get our starting reading. Then they took us downstairs where the training officers conducted the tests. Three or four officers tested each of us. At the end the testing officers had to say how many clues we showed for being drunk and how much over the limit they estimated we were. All of us volunteers drunkenly cheered for ourselves when we earned high estimates over the limit.

At the end we all received the thanks of the city and a ride home in a police cruiser. It was a fun and interesting day. And now I must go to bed and sleep off my civic duty.

Updating the web site

I’m updating my web site because it’s horribly out of date, and it reminded me how much I dislike the necessary task of marketing myself. In this case I’ll define that as writing promotional copy about myself, and developing what is the equivalent of the elevator pitch for a story. I don’t find it easy to create a pithy summary or high-level theme. Still it’s necessary, so off I go to update.

Eyes fully lasered

Here I am, back on the computer at home after just one day.

Everything went along very well and very quickly. The surgery was pain free. The only thing I felt was some pressure at the stage where they cut the flap open. And that just felt like someone pushing down on my eye. I was there for about 2 hours, but the procedure itself was only a few minutes long.

I went to the optometrist this morning for a 1day-later check up and my vision is now 20/20.

I have some eye drops to take every hour for the first 48 hours and  some refreshing drops too. My eyes don’t have any burning, tearing, or itching. They feel really good.

Glasses coming off

In just about two days now I should be free of my glasses (or far less dependent) for the first time in 22 years. On Thursday I’ll under go lasik surgery to have my vision corrected.

I’m somewhat nervous, because like any surgical procedure there are complications. I’m also quite excited because my vision has been terrible for years. Without glasses I can’t see anything in focus that’s more than a few inches from my face. That should all change after Thursday.

Winter travel fun

I went to my family’s cottage this past weekend, and I really picked the worst one to go on. Road conditions were fine when I left Friday night, but I ran into lake-effect snow just south of Parry Sound. It was near white-out conditions. I could see the sides of the road and so avoid them, but my trouble was reading the signs for my exit. All the signs were snow-covered.

Once left the main highway for the regional highway I didn’t see any other cars on the road. A clear sign and one I probably should have heeded. The regional highway hadn’t been plowed, but there were ruts to follow and visibility improved the farther I went from Parry Sound. Once I turned on the road to our cottage, however, there weren’t even ruts. My car, a 1997 Escort didn’t have enough ground clearance to clear the top of the snow and so it plowed through rather than over it. Really light powdery snow, but I had to go slow so it wouldn’t come flying up over the hood. It did clog the air intake and a few times I had to stop and clear that and the headlights. I only stopped on the downward slope of hills and I still almost got stuck when I did. By five kilometers of that I could smell hot coolant from under the hood.

I had a few moments where I thought, “so this is where I leave the car and hike the rest of the way”. But there was more the thought of the inconvenience than any sense of impending danger. I could have walked to the cottage. And I had snow pants, heavy parka, big boots, so I probably wouldn’t have had trouble with frostbite or anything.
When I finally arrived at the cottage I had to pull on snow pants and my heavy boots while still in my car to be able to climb the snowbank to the front door.

Sunday, coming home were more snow squalls north of Barrie, though not as bad as the ones on Friday. But south of Barrie they had Highway 400 closed because of a huge pile-up, and I had to take the back roads home. At least I wasn’t part of the pile-up.

Don’t think I’ll be doing that trip again soon.