DIARY
I
have finally cleaned my office
by Robert LaFrance
Some expressions are beyond the
pale, as it were, but some are right on the mark.
Try driving
sometime when my friend Flug is behind the wheel. “He (or she) is driving me
crazy!” I have heard people say, but last week, because of a foot injury, I had
to ask Flug to drive me to the grocery store. Next time, I take a taxi, or even
a limousine service, even though the nearest one is 132 kilometres away.
I didn’t mind Flug’s backing out of
his driveway without looking behind – I assumed he had a backup camera – but
going through stop signs without slowing down rather unnerved me. Especially
when there was a dog (Greyhound bus) coming at speed. We survived though.
It was only later that I realized
that his 1989 Gremlin didn’t have a backup camera unless someone had duct taped
it to the rear bumper.
It was a harrowing trip, but we
returned in one piece, or rather three pieces, but that was what we had started
with – Flug, me and the Gremlin. Groceries aren’t worth it. I resolved to dust
off my hitch-hiking thumb if the need arose again.
**************************
Some of the news stories I am asked
to cover for the Victoria Star turn out to be rather brutal. The Dam Run (http://www.runnb.ca/) that took place Saturday,
Oct. 8 in Perth-Andover, was one such event.
There I was, lemonade belly hanging
out over my belt, and looking at this gaggle of athletes, real athletes who
surely would race Flug’s Gremlin from Perth-Andover to Plaster Rock to Grand
Falls to St. Leonard. One guy said he had run 150 kilometres since Wednesday
and looked as if a cheetah would fall back in embarrassment if they were
competing in a 1000 kilometre foot race.
A woman from the Jemseg area took
off running an hour before the actual 10k race and came back half an hour
later, saying she had run to St. Andre just to warm up for the Dam Run. As I
was getting ready to take photos of the 10k race, I caught a glimpse of my
reflection in the River Valley Civic Centre’s front window. Then I looked at
all those finely tuned athletes champing at the bit and decided to lose some
weight. Tomorrow without fail I will cut down to six bottles of lemonade a day.
*****************************
Lately there’s been a lot of talk
about Facebook. Indeed, if there weren’t, the company running that shebang had
better fold up its tents and head for Minto. Facebook is nothing but
conversation.
Yesterday evening I happened to be perusing
a few Facebook posts when I saw one from my Aunt Tillie. She’s 98, and got her
first computer two years ago.
And what a brute it is! I mean the
computer, not Aunt Tillie. (I’m still in hopes of a hefty inheritance. She
bought 1000 shares of Microsoft in 1991 and is now worth somewhat in the
vicinity of the gross national product of Algeria.) She told her computer
consultant, Harry, who sells used cars, to get her one that “won’t go wimpy on
me when I’m trying to get on the %$#@*&$% Interweb”.
Harry did that all right. The CEO of
IBM was by last week to take a look at it. Apparently it has a zillion
gigabytes of RAM – random access memory to you non-nerds – and a hard drive
that a Sherpa would have a hard time lugging around. The keyboard, made personally
by Bill and Melinda Gates for Stephen Hawking who found it too high-tech, is
one that runs by speech recognition. If Aunt Tillie is in the garden and feels
like insulting Donald Trump (not possible, but she tries) she just says it out
loud and the Donald feels a pin sticking into his comb-over.
Back to Facebook, Aunt Tillie said
this morning on FB that she felt a little “unsettled” by all this talk about
New Brunswick’s having an aging population and got a lot of responses, one from
the prime minister. “Sunny days, Aunt Tillie,” he wrote. “Just because of your
concerns, I have set aside an extra $5 billion (with a ‘b’) for your province’s
health care system. Anything else you need?”
*************************
This morning, first thing, my wife
poked her head (as the phrase goes) into my office and pronounced it “the
messiest room in the western hemisphere”.
Of course I was chagrined and
nonplussed but, peering between boxes and files, I couldn’t help but agree. I
resolved to smarten up and although that resolution didn’t go very far
generally, I did decide to clean up this miasma.
“You can do it, Bob,” said She Who
Must Be Obeyed. “After all, London, England cleaned up their air pollution and
the sewer that was the Thames River in the 1950s, and Stickney, just below
Florenceville, used to be the smokiest place east of Flin Flon, Manitoba and
Trail, BC. You can do it,” she repeated.
And so I did. I am looking at you
now from my desk, which is visible from several metres away.
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