Die Hard Three

Enough is ENOUGH! I’ve sat here too long, keeping my mouth quiet while the rest of you put in jeopardy our most precious resource. I’ve had it up to here (just above my forehead) with your irresponsible behaviour. It’s plainly obvious that the rest of you don’t have the foggiest – so it’s time for me to interject.

I’m not sure if you’re aware but there’s been a lot of news in the press lately concerning the transportation of children. In the most prominent instance, the Royal Baby’s life was put in danger from the improper use of a child seat. Just the mere thought of our future Prime Minister being inconvenienced by a minor fender-bender is enough to give me a heart attack.

But before I get into it I need to clear one thing up. Some might consider it inappropriate for an unmarried, childless, unemployed, car-less man-child to provide guidance on how to transport children, but you’ve left me no choice. The ball has been dropped and it needs picking up.

First: the back seat is not the safest place for children. Fifty percent of all car accidents involve being hit from the rear. So to increase the likelihood of your children surviving a crash you need to get them into the front seat. Plain and simple.

Second: when you’re driving, the most important thing is to have your children within reach so you can properly attend to them. One of the alarming (but less-publicized) child welfare statistics is the long-term mental health issues resulting from a lack of attention paid to children when they’re being transported in motor vehicles.

And car seats? They cause more problems than they solve. We never had them when I was a kid and I turned out fine.

Third: non-vehicular transportation is just as important, but most parents get that wrong too. Until they’re in their teens, children shouldn’t use their legs. It’s only after age fifteen that their bones are strong enough to support their bodies. Here is the proper way to move a child around if you don’t have a car.

Note how the left hand is free to open doors and operate power tools.

What do you do if you have more than one child? Well that’s easy.

See, super-simple!

So there you have in three easy steps the most effective techniques for transporting your (and other people’s) children. Remember, it’s important to protect these future taxpayers. Without them, who will provide our government with the revenues needed to keep my life-support system online? Without their taxes, we are all doomed.

I’m back from my two-week vacation to Toronto and aside from all the mayhem and destruction it went pretty well. I ended up switching my ticket and I got into Ottawa around 23:45 Wednesday. I was supposed to come home yesterday (Thursday) but that turned out to be the same day as the GF’s birthday.

So I’m at the shopping mall right now where I just spent a good part of my Friday afternoon looking for a gift for my aforementioned girlfriend. And her birthday this year is a special one – I can’t give out her exact age because that would leave her vulnerable to identity theft and direct marketing initiatives – but let’s just say that when any anniversary is a multiple of thirty, it’s a cause for extra celebration. This is why I put a lot of thought into what to get her this year and I have to say, I really think she’s going to like this jigsaw puzzle.

After you’ve been with someone for a couple of years you would think that it would be straightforward to identify and acquire a birthday gift, but let me tell you: it’s not that easy. Ravensburger has such a wide array of puzzle sizes and styles, it can be a lot of work deciding which is the perfect one.

Just look at this selection.

But if I understand my GF (and I do) I know that she loves challenges. The other day she said that living with me is incredibly challenging – she sounded really serious when she said it but that was just her dry Finnish robotic-style humour. After all this time together I can tell when she’s in Robo-Finn mode, and it always puts a smile on my face. This is why I decided to get her a 1500-piece puzzle instead of the traditional 500 or 1000-piece ones. Those extra 500 pieces might not seem like a lot but let me tell you, that’s another five or six hours of puzzling right there.

Once I had the size narrowed down, I had to select the image. This was really important because she’s going to spend a lot of hours on this puzzle and it has to be something she wants to look at. So how do I know what she likes? Well, the key to a healthy relationship is being able to listen to the other person. But just listening is not enough, you have to remember what they’re saying too. I can recall several times over the past year when she talked about just wanting to get away. And being from Finland (where it’s winter ten months of the year) she’s going to want to go somewhere tropical.

I put all this information together and voila! The perfect birthday gift:

She’s big on saving the environment so I’m not going to get it wrapped. That would just upset her.

Alright, I’m glad that’s out of the way. I find shopping stressful so I’m always happy when it’s over. And now I’m going to head out from the mall. The tornado warning seems to be over and I hope there’s something to eat at home. I’m starving!

So I’m here in Toronto house / cat sitting for a friend. Everything was going ok until yesterday when the storm hit. If I had known back in May that I’d have to survive yet another natural disaster I probably would have not accepted the house sitting request.

For those of you who are new to my blog and were too lazy to go back and read all of my previous two-hundred and five posts, this past Hallowe’en the GF and I got stuck in New York City during the Hurricane Sandy. We barely survived – forced to subsist for days on a diet of Kraft peanut butter and Five Guys hamburgers.

The one thing that’s making this Toronto experience easier (logistically) is that I’m only responsible for me. Back in New York, in addition to myself, I had to take care of an hysterical woman. I had to find food to eat, beer to drink, shelter to refuge, and tickets to Daily Show. I also I had to provide an escape plan to get out of the city. Air Canada helped a lot with that last one.

But enough about the past. The present is where it’s at and to be honest I’m not doing that great right now – psychologically that is. My surrogate home is currently experiencing a rolling blackout and I have taken refuge in a pub. Before coming here I visited the local Home Hardware and I bought flashlight. I’m really happy about this last part. I didn’t think the house I’m staying in could get any scarier – but now with this blackout, I’m not so sure.

The problem is I’m living with two cats and I’ve never done this before. They walk around in the middle of the night knocking things over and making strange noises. And while I’ve not been able to catch it on video, one of the cats can actually talk. Not a full conversation of course, but he can make human word-sounds similar to this guy.

I think he’s saying “Kevibraough”

But by far the strangest thing I’ve experienced so far happened the first night I was here. A little background: I have a strict protocol for dealing with shower curtains when I lodge in unfamiliar environments. If I’m staying anywhere that has a shower I always always always leave the shower curtain open. This is so that when I enter the washroom I can see the interior of the shower stall.

This all stems from when I was a kid and I snuck into see this horror movie where the killer was hiding in the bathtub. When he jumped out from behind the curtain and attacked the protagonist, it scared the crap out of me. Ever since that unfortunate event my friends and family and co-workers have taken great joy in placing all sorts of cardboard cutouts and inflatable persons in the shower stalls of the places we stay during road trips and vacations. And to my credit, they’ve only gotten me once. It was during a Mont Tremblant ski weekend with a cardboard Han Solo standee. Good thing I was already in a washroom.

Okay – back to Toronto. On Saturday before I went to bed I made sure that the shower curtain was open, just like I do every night. And I’m sure that I left it open because it was my first night staying in a new place by myself – I did a thorough walk-through and made sure everything was in its place – windows closed, doors locked, appliances off, lights out, shower curtain open.

So the next morning I got up to go the washroom and I saw that the shower curtain was closed. I stood in the doorway for what felt like hours just staring at it cause I was positive that I had left it open the night before. Then I slowly lifted my hand and moved it aside. And nothing. There was nothing there. After checking the rest of the house for signs of an intruder, I was all like, WTF? How could this have happened?

I started running through the different scenarios in my mind. Is is possible for cats to operate a shower curtain? If so, why would they want to? The window was closed so it would be impossible for the wind to blow it open. Did I take a sleep-shower and in my narcoleptic state forget to leave the curtain open?

I called 911 several times but they refused to send anyone over.

I’ve thought about installing a webcam in the bathroom to try and capture on video (if it does happen again) but that’s a lot of work (and probably illegal). My low-tech solution has been to wrap an elastic around the curtain and this seems to have worked. It’s been two day with no incidents to report. I’m curious to find out how it goes tonight with the electricity out.