Call to Celebrate

After a gruelling 12 months through an accelerated paramedic program, my oldest graduated first in his class.

Here he is, giving the valedictorian address.



And again, more relaxed with his lovely girlfriend.


Behind the camera are two very proud parents.

Of course, now we no longer have medical opinions to speak of...

The Spider and the Fly.

Naively I thought it would be so easy. Build a website from scratch, just the way I want, how I want.

Although, I’m not of the "text-now" generation, I know a few things. Hell, I still remember programming in machine language (1000110010100001...) so I thought, well how hard can it be?

So I started. OK, I can learn HTML. At the end of which, I found out that I had to also learn CSS, and after that XHTML (Extensible what??!), followed by JavaScript. To a smaller and larger degree, I did all that. But was is Joomla?

And I did put together a website that worked on my computer. So then, I rented myself space, loaded it, and there I was--on my own WEB.

"Come in. Come in," said the spider to the fly, who was just surfing by, "Look at my attractive web. Careful, you don’t want to get stuck. But look around at all my treasures, my guilty pleasures..."

And there I’m, day in, day out, hoping someone will drop in.

Trouble Parking

I wheeled a hard right into paid-parking serving the bus depot. I had to take the bus to Waterloo, and I was in big trouble. I had plenty of time, the schedule had said not till 8:45, so that wasn’t the problem. What was though, was that I had to go in the worst way, and had just three seconds to reach a bathroom before my bladder would explode. I pulled up to the kiosk to get my time-stamp, but the attendant was busy on the exit side, where an outbound patron was paying for his stay. They made a social time of it, chitchatting, while I was in the last stages of pain.

I had to do something... NOW! I jumped out of the car, just leaving it in the entrance lane, strode across to the bus depot, took a tight turn toward the washrooms in the back. I was within reach when I ... when I woke up, out of a dream, home in bed.

But the urgency was real, very real.

I scrambled out of bed, and staggered into the bathroom. Having reached the refuge of the bowl, about to be relieved, I nonetheless hesitated. The mind did tricky things when it did not want to wake up when nature called, and "dreamed up" a bathroom for convenience, not caring about the repercussions. In agony I did a quick reality test to find that I was indeed in my bathroom and it was safe to proceed--which then I did. I can hardly describe the relief and rush of well-being that followed.

My business done, I stumbled back into the bed room, eased down on my bed, and in two winks of the eye was back in my dream. So then, I walked out of the depot into the parking lot, noticing for the first time what a beautiful sunny day it was. I crossed over to the kiosk, only to find my van gone. During the three minutes I had been away, my car had been towed. The attendant was still busy with a new customer, so I pushed into the adjoining office to inquire about my car. A man with a bushy hair looked up from his desk, the very picture of an owner of such an enterprise.

"Yeah?" he demanded gruffly, directing all his attention on me.

"Excuse me, but my car has been moved..."

He frowned hard, and set to berate me for blocking his business access, costing him tons of money.

"I had no choice... my bladder was going to explode... had only couple of seconds..." I stumbled through my excuse.

The owner turned to his partner and said in a smug voice, "See, just like I told you, Jake. There is always a story someplace. Even in a straight forward business like ours." He looked back at me with a sharp look, calculating. He had me: he could legally charge me a hundred bucks for a tow and in his mind he was already spending the fine he was set to extort from me. But I had him dead to rights too; we both knew we were in a dream, and I could just say screw it and walk away scot free. In the end we settled for $6.00, the regular charge for half-day parking.

With a sense of triumph I walked into the bus depot, bought my ticket and climbed on the Waterloo bus. The glow was still with me as I eased into the seat. Now, if I only knew why I was going to Waterloo, everything would be fine. But between the start and the end of the dream I had forgotten, but I was going anyway. Perhaps on the way I would remember...