bits and bots, spicks and specks, odds and ends

[Hey, I wrote this a while ago and didn't post it. It's been sitting in a 'draft'y place. Don't know why. Posting it now]

First...


Thanks for the notes asking...sonny-boy is just fine. Played the last 10 minutes of the game on the weekend, really stretched out the leg and came through it just fine. One more physio trip for good measure and it's back to regular trainings and games.

[edit: fully healed, he played almost the entire game on the weekend and ROCKED! - we lost though]

--oOo--

Second...


It's starting to get freaking cold here at night.


Yeah, I know, I grew up in that particular hell where snot freezes to your nose and you have to plug in the block heater on your car or -- and this isn't hyperbole -- the coolant will freeze and possibly crack your block. I grew up in a place where the snow at Halloween was old, dirty brown snow, it had been down that long, and Halloween costumes had to fit over the big-assed snowsuits we had to wear. A place where you had to allow a good twenty minutes at the front end of your schedule to scrape all the frozen crap off your car. A place where snowbanks 10 feet tall were not at all uncommon.


But I left that kind of weather for a reason. I HATE IT.


And I've aclimated to the lovely weather we have here, to the extent that when it gets down to 7 or 8 degrees C at night, I think I'm going to die.



[Digressive aside: Old guy was talking to a couple of tourists in Northern Canada interested in exploring the vast, tree-less country-side one February.


Old guy: "You need to get back here before night. The temperature is going down to 65 below tonight."


Touristy guy: "Celcius or Farenheit?"


Old guy: "First one, then the other."]


So we're lighting fires at night, got the electric blankets out, and we'll endure the frigid highs of 20C until it starts warming up again in August.

--oOo--

And third...


I was in a meeting today that got crashed by an idiot. I'm going to thread that fine line between obscuring identity enough to protect myself should this person, somehow, stumble across this and knows who I'm talking about, and revealing enough for it to be somewhat cathartic.


[Another digressive aside. I'm in a male dominated job, in as much that the he-to-she ratio is at least 10-to-1. In environments such as this, I find, hiding a persons gender almost exclusively means it's a 'she',


Exception to the rule? There's always exceptions, and I've got one.


I have worked with a guy who was gay. No big deal. Everyone knew he was gay. Nobody seemed to care, but he was old enough (at least I think that was the reason) that he felt he had to hide the fact.


His gayness didn't bother me, but his incessant, boring, Higgens-like stories did.


Here's the exception to the rule that hiding a persons gender means that the person is a she. In every single discussion about his personal life he talked about 'his partner', 'friend', 'person', you get the picture; all gender non-specific words. The 'partner' were a guy. Ah well. He'll loosen up soon enough. Bud, if you're reading this and know who you are, we know, and don't really care.


But I'm digressing]


I was talking about the gender non-specific person that loves to insert themself into meetings that a) they really don't need to be in and b) have no fucking idea what the subject matter is. Because this person has the ear of some highly placed people, we can't really say what we're thinking to this person. As soon as this person shows up -- usually unannounced -- I write in my notebook 'SHUT THE FUCK UP'.

It's addressed to me.

Should I slip, and it's happened before, and I end up attempting to have a discussion with this person, my head will explode. This is not just a saying. There will be a loud POP, a spray of skull and brain matter, and there will be a bloody stump where my head should be.


It's happened before.


So, when the neutral-gendered, annoying to the brink of murder-suicide, person shows up now my twittering volume will increase.


I have to vent somewhere.


Cheers all, and maybe I'll see you in twitterville.