May 2006 Archives

When I arrived in Victoria, I kept the Thule Tornado roof box on my car. When I moved into my house I took it off the car and secured it by a steel cable to the back fence. When my possesions arrived, I secured my kayak the same way.

Last weekend I went to lumber yard, bought two 8 foot 4x4 posts, and to an equipment rental store where I rented a manual auger. I drilled a couple of post holes in the sandy soil, and used some 2x4's left in the house by past tenants to built a rack to hold the roof box and the kayak:

That took a chunk of last Saturday. It needs some more work to cradle the kayak - some plywood to the cross pieces, cut in a curve, and some foam noodle should do it. It needs something to secure a tarp to keep the sun and UV off the boat, but that should be easy.

I went shopping for some books on kayaking on salt (tidal!) water and found the Easykayaker books to be useful. On Sunday afternoon, on a slack low tide, I paddled the Gorge from the Kinsmen Park to the Selkirk trestle and then back up the Gorge to the bridge at Admiral's Road, and back to the park. No pictures - it was enough to get organized and back on the water, without worrying about the camera. I have only been on the water once since 2002. I have missed it, and I am in good place to make up for the lost time.

The Wikipedia entry of the day is Nostradamus!

This has a rich personal resonance. When my kids were young my sister-in-law, once known as Sharon Wehner the dancer, now billing herself as Ariole K. Alei, said she believed that she had channelled messages from alien/spiritual presences. She wanted to approach Sting, the Dalai Lama and the Pope to inform them of the messages she had received, to bring about a great spiritual awakening of humankind. She felt that people near to her, by birth or marriage, had been reincarnated. Yours truly was believed to be the reincarnation of Nostradamus. My spouse and her parents seemed to think that Sharon didn't have the gods lined up in the right order, but they felt the same way. My failure to be open to their collective beliefs, whatever they were, became a sore point in my dealings with my wife, and her parents and their circle of friends. My judgment that their New Age beliefs in things like reincarnation were, shall we say, eccentric, and that they seemed to gullible and vulnerable to being pulled into pyramid schemes was answered by their judgment that I was negative, destructive, hostile and sick. Repent Harlequin said the tick tock man and all that.

Sharon/Ariole has moved on and become a personal coach and healer, a poet, and spirit guide. Her husband is involved in the same ventures. They used to brand themselves as matchmakers too, but now they offer life and relationship services.

One of the links on Sharon/Ariole's web site goes to the Liberty League (critical web site here) - a classic pyramid scheme, which has been sued for consumer fraud by the Attorney General of Arizona. If you repeat your mistakes, are you reborn?

I, Nostradamus, predict a hard fall for these fools.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have started to bake bread. It started with a resolution to pack a lunch, which I have not done consistently since University. It brings back memories of Men into Space (see also the Wikipedia entry) and the lunch box I carried to grade school.

I was finding that I was not consistently eating the bread I bought at the supermarkets. The slices are light, suited for toast, not necessarily for hearty sandwiches.

Yet again, someone sceptical of psychologists and educators who value happiness as a goal and a measure of good living, and the sceptical of the politics of happiness. See: Politicians, economists, teachers… why are they so desperate to make us happy?, by Frank Furedi, in the Daily Telegraph. I agree. Happiness is for idiots.

My office is in Victoria, but trips to Vancouver are a regular part of my work. We tend to go by floatplane, and I took some pictures on my second trip, last week on May 3. It was late in the day and there were dried droplets on the windows so pics from the plane weren't great. This is the plane I took on my last trip to Vancouver:

My old friend Randy has mentioned, in a post called Aaden. Adan, Aden etc. that he recently got some unwanted, unfriendly comments on a blog entry he posted over two years ago, Bad Baby Names. Randy was caught commenting on people who bestow unique and precious names on their unborn offspring.

I went in to get my mail redirected to my house in Victoria when I moved in at the beginning of April. I was told that I could not amend the Change of Address, and that I had to pay for a new redirection. I filled in the new form, changing my address from Home Street in Winnipeg to my new address in Victoria. The clerk then checked off my forms as an amendment, but what do I know about their procedures. I knew there was a problem last week when Colleen called and said she was still getting my mail. This week - a full four week later - I got the new forms back with a printout of what seems to be a Canada Post intranet FAQ about amendments. It seems that amendments are possible - and free - before the redirection starts. Once the redirection starts, the customer is supposed to cancel it and purchase a new mail redirection.

I went to the post office and showed the clerk what I had received in the mail. I pointed out that I had paid the fees and given them a day time phone number on the forms. I wondered, if what they wanted, was for me to come in and cancel the first redirection, why my forms had been sent back. I didn't get an answer. To the credit of the employee at the counter and her supervisor, no one said that this was my fault.

Canada Post doesn't seem to train its employees in what should be fairly common procedures.

Shopping for a new computer and some work to set it up kept me busy on Saturday, when I wasn't working on the house.