Simian Farmer

Snow trekkin'

I was going to start a fanciful new set of posts this week, largely dealing with hair.  Namely: mine.  That and it's noted lack, backing up my hirsute claim with pictorial evidence from my childhood and ending with photos from university showing the genesis of my pate's deforestation.

That all will have to wait for later in the week now.  I leave this morning for the site visit to a prospective job site I referenced in an earlier post.  What I failed to mention at that time was the requirement for snow shoes.  As part of the itinerary provided by the client, we're going for a trek through virgin forest to see exactly where our delightful road will displace a certain amount of wildlife and harvest marketable timber.  Nature stands in the way of progress just soooo frequently!

I haven't been on show shoes since maybe my early teens, so this should be interesting.

I'll have better, more entertaining posts later in the week, but for now I have to go meet my coworker, grab a big coffee, and hit the road.

Fresh fall of snow last night.  Current temperatures around -20 C.  If I don't post again by Wednesday, send out the dogs.

Let them eat cake

The Canadian Blood Services is missing out on an untapped demographic (literally) by not pimping themselves to the high school and university geek-gaming crowd.  I realised this earlier in the week while sitting in the comfy donor's chair for my 57th blood-letting, and later, when I had my free soup and cookies while reading a pamphlet that revealed, from a poll, that Canadians assume about 24% of the population are blood donors, when the real number is only 3.7%.  Three point seven percent.

I tie this to the blood that's wastefully roiling about the circulatory systems of countless thousands of gaming geeks across the country because it was only a couple of weeks ago I got my silver donor card in the mail to replace my old bronze one.  50 donations versus 25.  That's when it hit me: I just levelled up.  Hell, 43 more times and I'll get my gold card for 100, baby!

Diminishing returns?

Regular readers may recall that I have at times lamented (unwisely?) parts of the past year at work.  My diverse technical and problem solving skills (mad skilz, even) went largely unused in favour of administrative drudgery.  "Score that meeting for efficiency, Cinderfella!"  I am happy to say the sunnier side of that stormy weather front is beginning to peek through.

My corporate entity was shuffled to the Estimating Department last month.  We are, ostensibly, the project-oriented arm of the Business Development & Estimating umbrella held under the auspices of our VP, whom I've dubbed Muffy.  I prefer to think of us as Bullshit Deployment & Evasion, but that's just semantics.

I'm looking forward to the early spring -- we're moving.  We long ago outgrew our current office space and I find myself one of many who have been inhabiting a trailer complex stuffed into a small corner of the equipment yard.  This complex was first dubbed The Village when it was moved in as a 'temporary' human capital storage facility, but it has since more than doubled in size with additional trailers slapped on as needs arose.  It is now more affectionately referred to as The Projects.

I occupy a 10 x 10 enclosed office in The Projects, and I frequently dream of one day having a window.  Out my office door, across the hall, I can see another office door.  That office has a window, and I sometimes see hints of sunlight streaming in, occasionally reaching as far as the hallway.  It's not quite the same.  My dream will soon be realised, in the spring, when we - Estimating - are one of three operating groups who will move to a new office facility in the west end of the city.  We'll be in a real building with the potential of a window and office walls that will finally dull my ability to hear every time the toilet flushes and discern, by now at least, who it was that used it.

In addition to the hope springing from the well of new prospects of office space, my role in Estimating is beginning to appeal.  My first large task is to assume the lead estimating role on a coal mine road project near Tumbler Ridge, B.C. 

What's that, you say?  You have no idea where Tumbler Ridge, B.C. is?

Let me enlighten you...

Synaptic synopsis

Unsurprisingly, it took a fraction of the time to get reacquainted with my returned family Friday evening as it did to settle in to the unfamiliar embrace of Solitude when she usurped their place the preceding Sunday.  I cast my gaze back at her a little longingly when Amy pulled up in the driveway, having braved a five hour drive made over eight hours, exacerbated and elongated by the blowing snow and treacherous conditions that prevailed for the first half of her trip.  But my temporary mistress cannot live easily beside my mate, so I let the former go. 

Besides, on a lark, and in order to take advantage of having arrived home that afternoon before she did, I wanted to bide my time so that I could lay a pickle on the living room window as a memorable reminder of my wife's safe arrival home.  And so I did.

(She called me from south of Calgary - less than halfway home - and revealed in terse sentences how bad the roads were and how the stark whiteness of the blanketing snow so nicely complemented her knuckles on the steering wheel.  She told how if I didn't hear from her again by three o'clock that afternoon - it was late morning at the time of this first call - I should probably panic and presume the worst.  Call the police, send out the dogs.  Nice.)

But back to Sunday afternoon.

With my truck lost around the corner, family departed, I did, after some few moments that stretched to near an hour, make my way out of the house, still with my wife and boys on my mind, and with the express intent to buy a bookshelf so that the maelstrom of stamping paraphernalia that currently inundates the deeper parts of our basement be tamed to a more manageable flurry, or even a tepid squall.  Though my intent was single-minded when I left the house, it did not long remain so.  From deep in the recesses of my subconscious loomed a spectre that had long sought release.  It coalesced that same afternoon and fully forced me to walk into the nearest Staples and buy the expansion pack for Diablo 2.  And so I did.

I frittered away most of the rest of my Sunday in front of the computer, installing, re-installing and re-acquainting myself with an addiction only a full uninstall had kicked some few years ago.  I was again imbued with the ability to raise the pixelated dead and slay the animated living with the merest click of my finger.  And so I did.

I have grown stronger in the intervening years.  A habit kicked once no longer holds so strong a sway when re-introduced.  More a balancing act, then, and not as much a full and unconscious immersion.  My faculties were mine and I intended to keep fully in possession of them.  As proof of this, I offer the fact that one night mid-week was spent gaming via the internet with a friend in Montreal.  My necromancer's nefarious magicks were complemented by the unparallelled killing grace of his deadly lady assassin.  The hilarity of the moment reared up and smote me full in the jaw when I realised that quite some time had passed, and here we were, stealing time away from our respective families to delve into an escapist realm, and all we had done for long minutes was stand idle in the Den of Evil (having slain all nearby threats with an efficacy as would make Achilles reel) and use the in-game chat feature to catch up on domestic goings-on and exchange competing methods to, of all things, wash dishes.

These years have changed the man I am, no doubt.

Thankfully, I was able to trade off gaming with actively exorcising the responsibilities I had latterly set myself.  The vacuum closet got a right thorough sorting.  I would not believe we were in possession of so many batteries had I not seen them all with mine own eyes, and even lined then up from D to C to double-A, to a few aberrant nine-volts.  Fully dozens of them, my friends.  Countless tens.

Similarly, the spice cabinet.  It was emptied and cast haphazardly about the counter and stove top.  The prime occupant of the just-mentioned vacuum closet was brought to bear on small islands of dill weed and migrating shoals of itinerant pepper corns.  A forest of cinnamon sticks was victimised by a ruthless slash 'n burn, and a fallen carpet of bay leaves swept together that they may still see the moister side of a stew or a chili. 

Entropy got a right good drubbing in the Fraser household this past week -- one from which it will take a long while to recover and marshal its forces.  And I'll be waiting.

Later in the week my intentions to chip away at the by now geographically impressive stratigraphy of urine and dog shit layered throughout the backyard had very nearly fully coalesced into a kinetic force of action.  And then it snew.  And got right bloody cold.  A fresh layer of monochrome strewn over
a daunting task, combined with temperatures wont to make flesh freeze after only a small exposure, were quite enough to thwart my good intentions and divert them back to their previous occupation of slowly and methodically laying paving stones to a warmer clime.  They've been at it for quite a long while.

Mid-week, the phone rang.  Which was strange, since by then all Amy's regular conspirators knew of her absence and the time of her approximate return.  And folk rarely call for me, unless it's my mother and I'm being reminded that it's (again) been too long since she and Grandpa got some baby time.

It wasn't my mother, it was one of my wife's confidantes, and it was for me.  Odd.  Ended up I was asked out on a date with an erstwhile bridesmaid.  She stood to the left of the woman who was to be my bride three and a half years ago, and now she wanted dinner with me.  Score!  I texted Amy in an effort to engender a jealous response, but was rewarded with nothing more than an earnest reply, insisting we enjoy ourselves.  Dammit!

My only real regret of the week is that I never did indulge in the reading I wanted to.  I elected to fight faux demons and hell-spawn after work, or some evenings I got right domestically inspired and rewarded myself by putting my feet up to watch a movie into the small hours with only a stiff single-malt scotch as temporary accompaniment.  He never once made it to the end of a flick.

Now, the full force of familiar domestic routine has reasserted itself with an ease that I have to admit I find more than a little disconcerting.  I already smacked one dog but good on the snout for getting too close to Tavish's food, and Amy already glowered menacingly at me for my too-quick response.  The uneasy balance has been restored. 

Solitude again orbits about our singular family, and I'll snatch out at her when I can.

The meaty truth

Hot on the heels of yesterday's Burns Night post comes an introspective look at the philosophy engendered by haggis.  I was struck by this line of thought after reading the very first comment and the question posed at the end.  Why is there such a stigma attached to that Great Chieftain o' the Puddin' Race?  What gives?

The answer came to me just as quickly, and was provided posthumously by Burns himself -- in the very first line of his poem.

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face...

Haggis is much maligned because it is honest.  It deigns not to dress itself in a concealing garnish of diverting words, nor adopt vague descriptions of its components.  Burns knew this and called it out to attention at the very beginning of his Address.  The tragedy of the haggis - and don't dare think it isn't one - stems directly from its unabashed honesty.  It is, quite tastefully, "...a mess of minced lights, livers, suet, oatmeal, onions and pepper, enclosed in a sheep's stomach..." (Tobias Smollet, 1771)  The description leaves little to the imagination, save taste, which is inferred, and that quite often erroneously.

We, as a still mostly-omnivorous species, consume vast quantities of food, much of which falls into the rather broad category of 'meat'.  Given the increasing urbanization of so much of our population, there is very little food we urbanites consume that is not, in some way, partially prepared for us.  All we have to do is add milk, cook, bake, mix, boil, broil, slice, peel, or open the hermetically sealed package.  Frequently some culinary combination of several of those.

We are ignorant in our mass consumption and more than content to remain so.  What haggis does is guilelessly reveal that from which it is made and dares you still to eat it.  No, you say (or so say many), as you shy away from the naked amber beads of oil distilling through the pores of the unbroken skin, which waits to be pierced and gush forth its doughty repast.  Those same nay-sayers would rather turn to frozen pizza, tins of spam, or a comfortable hot dog roasted on the barbeque until the skin is slightly charred and split.  (O! sweet irony you wield your bludgeon with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel, you do!)

Many hot dogs, smokies, sausages, and other butcher-refined meats are still packaged in tube-like receptacles made of animal intestines.  In fact, the pricier your processed meat product, the more likely it is to be encased in a film of that which was once on the inside of a pig, now on the outside, containing bits of its former self on its inside.  That's hilarious.  Add to this the fact that commercial ingredients are never more specific than 'beef' or 'pork' and one is truly left to wonder what, exactly, goes into our guts wrapped in something else's.

I should note here that the further along a mammal's gastrointestinal tract one travels, the closer a substance so traversing bears a striking resemblance to shit.  Thus, it may be said that not only is haggis the most honest of stuffed-meat epicurean delights, it is also the least scatological in nature and composition.  I will lastly mention that the stomach used in preparation acts as nothing more than a water-tight vessel for the final stage of cooking, and is turned inside out before that.

Enjoying haggis as much as I do, fully aware of what goes into it, I am becoming more and more convinced that most people - from which group I don't fully exclude myself - would be content to have doled out to them, in a state of ignorance and convenience, shit, rather than choose food with awareness.

Great chieftains oft lead their followers to strange new lands where the scared, huddled masses would be loathe to travel unguided.  Let us hope that hundreds of years after assuming so arduous a role, the haggis will be content to bend itself to the task for some long while yet.  There is many a man, still, who "... looks down wi' sneerin', scornfu' view on sic a dinner."