Random Musings and Nicknacks

Taken on a lunchtime walk around the Quay

Well, it’s been edited again. Sometime soon I’ll be deleting the last draft from OurLog, so check out the differences while you can!

–Prologue–

The man woke up.

Where? Who?

A man was lightly leaning against a rectangular wooden pillar. It was a tall wooden support. He was on a small playground, alone. The supports were holding up a playground.
Who was he?
A lot questions crowded in his head, which unfortunately gave him a major headache. He needed some water, even though he was sweating quite a lot.
He tried really hard to stand up, only to realize that his joints wouldn’t obey him at all. He lay there, only able to breathe and maybe twitch his arms and legs. He was powerless to nature.
It also didn’t help that his mind was barely able to function. But it was only after a few moments (which seemed like hours) before he started getting his nerves back. The numbness slowly washed away.
He could slightly feel something in his hand. A piece of paper was his guess.
Slowly raising his hand, he opened the paper.

He tilted his head a little. He saw the small crumpled piece of paper. Looking past the nearly-illegible writing, he read out a name.

Vic Damorov

Was that his name? Nothing else could come to his mind that related to that word. Guess he was going to stick with the name Vic. It was a pretty nice name actually.

A pistol had come to lay at his side, a Desert Eagle .45. Do those exist?
When Vic reached for it a rush of knowledge suddenly hit him. Apparently, something bad was going to happen at night. He just knew he had to get out of the playground fast.

The small playground was filled with wood chips. A huge crater covered the landscape just northwest of him, and some fencing lay to his right side. He could easily climb over it at full strength, but right now Vic could barely fend off a squirrel. Using all his strength, he pushed himself up with his right arm. He squeezed through a opening in the fence, turning right, and jogged up the jagged sidewalk. Huge chunks of the sidewalk were blown up in pieces and in shambles.
Vic approached a mini jeep among a heap of burning cars. He noticed some weapons in the passenger seat. Just as he opened the car he also took in the bullet marks that riddled the driver’s side of the car. A turret stood attached to the back. Whatever they fought, they didn’t hold them off forever.
Vic jumped into the seat and realized the key was still in the ignition. He drove off quickly, not looking behind him at all.

End.

I’m so proud of myself.

And they will never know what I did.

(I’m not talking about the keys)

–Punky

Ling lost her keys yesterday, and we couldn’t find them. Losing her keys is very difficult, because she uses them to get in and out of the office, and in and out of the house, so if she’s sitting at home, its a pretty good chance that they have to be in there somewhere!

Ling, Tim, and I spent over half an hour last night searching for them, going through everything. Since we had cleaned the house on Sunday (Chinese New Year) there wasn’t a lot to search in or under, and they were nowhere to be found. We even searched Punky’s crate thinking that maybe he had decided to sneak away with something special to remind him of mommy.

In desperation I went so far as to actually pat down the tablecloth on the kitchen table to see if they had somehow got under there, and moved all the books and DVD’s on the table to look under them. I found out later that Ling had done the same thing.

After we had totally given up, and were starting to get ready for dinner, Ling found them. On the kitchen table, under a paper towel that had been crunched up.

Now, assuming we rule out aliens and Tim’s magic tricks, how is this possible? Both of us had used our hands to go over every inch of this table, not found keys that were sitting in the middle of the table that we were searching.

Is it possible that psychology had kicked in, and *both* of us had so unconsciously ignored the piece of garbage that we didn’t notice we were searching around it, even when we thought we were touching every inch of the table and moving everything on it?

I’m beginning to think the aliens sound more reasonable.

Friday morning started a bit interesting. Ling came back from walking Punky and commented that there was a police car parked in front of a house on the same corner as us (not quite a neighbour, but close). I suggested that maybe they were being visited by a friend who was only recently off duty. When I walked outside, though, I could see the officer was writing a report in her car, so it was a call. Maybe a case of domestic violence?

On our way to the bus stop, we saw a second police car come in. Okay, maybe they were rendezvousing. I didn’t really think about it Friday night.

Saturday morning, as I was taking Tim to soccer, I noticed a sign out front of the house. It had a drawing of a very familiar looking green leaf on it, with a line drawn through (the “no ….” symbol) and a police phone number.
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Standing at Lonsdale Quay, looking towards downtown.

I have noticed lately, that Punky likes to go in circles. Literally and figuratively.

First there is the famous circle that dogs do when they lie down. He doesn’t do that a lot, but sure enough, sometimes he does.

Then there is the circle he sleeps in. When he curls up, even his tail is curled around.

Then there are the circles he jumps in when you pull out his food, or when Ling comes home. He literally spins!

Finally there is the most important circle, the one he spends most of his life in. First he starts at the food door and begs. When he gets fed, he goes to the back door and begs. Once he’s let out, he goes back to the food door. This is a constant lifetime circle it appears, that is only interrupted periodically when he notices the couch as he walks buy, and jumps up to sleep for a bit.

Once he rests, the circle continues unabated.

Ling and I had a very interesting day yesterday. On one hand it was very nice. We were tired of the fog, and never being able to see sunlight, so we took the cameras, went up Burnaby mountain, and walked through the snow snapping photos. It was bright and sunny, and quite warm.
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Misty Days
Nikon D80 + 50mm f/1.8
Exposure: Aperture Priority
Shutter Speed: 1/60
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 50mm
Flash: Off
ISO: 180

Riding home through the fog the other day, I was struck by a beautiful view over last lagoon — the fountain had a wire Christmas tree on it, the lagoon itself was still mostly frozen over, and there was a mist / fog just hanging around the bottom of the fountain. It would make a great picture except, of course, I didn’t have my camera with me.
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I got a phone call mid-afternoon at work.

It was Tim.

“Dad, Punky accidentally locked himself in the office all day. And he got mad, and he shredded a bunch of stuff. It was too messy, I’ve just closed the door so you can see it.”

Oh great. Punky shredded papers in the office. The office where I have been sorting all our important documents from last year and separating them into piles so they can be filed properly.

I thought about it and decided not to tell Ling until I got home and assessed the extent of the damage. No use having two of us worried.

Well, I got home and it appears our puppy may have grown up a bit! All he had done was get into the garbage pail and shred the contents of that. Everything important was still in one piece.

But I’ve got thinking, maybe we can make use of this biological shredding machine. I have a large pile of “to be shredded” papers — maybe I should pile them in front of his crate and leave for the day.

I’ll bet not even Russian spies would be able to reconstruct that set!