More On The Microwave Oven Debacle

So I did a bit of experimenting with the microwave oven last night.

I'l spare you the technical details as they would involve barrowsful of dense jargon that you would never need again. In layman's terms I plugged the microwave's power cord into a heavy-duty extension cord¹ then plugged the other end of that extension cord into various different power outlets in the kitchen, attempting to coax the microwave into showing signs of life at each one by hitting it smartly in the time-honored Slap of Electrical Implement Repair and then muttering some class one Words of Power to ward off anti-handyman demons in the vain hope they would go away so the microwave would start working again.

What I gained over the course of the twenty minutes or so this took was the following insights:

a) There are too many empty soda bottles littered about the floor of the kitchen. Someone could turn an ankle.

2) There is never an Ace Elastic Bandage around when you need one to strap up a turned ankle.

♣) The malfunction of the sockets might have been the result of a treacherous mutiny on the part of the microwave inducing a short that threw the breaker, said breaker perhaps being in need of replacement as the latch is dodgy and doesn't reset properly when recycled. I found one such breaker when the coffee machine refused to start the other day and it is quite possible the outlets involved are on the same circuit as those the fridge and microwave used to be plugged into.

So a bit more poking around with a voltmeter is needed, in conjunction with a bit of work inside Mr Breakerbox. Lovely.

All of which will have to wait ten days because tomorrow Mrs Stevie and I head out for our second annual trip to Florida. We are fed up to the back teeth with shouting and arguing with each other in Chateau Stevie, which leaves us with only two choices: Major dental surgery or relocation to somewhere not inside Chateau Stevie for a bit.

And it's so hard to find a dentist on Long Island these days.

1. Originally intended to couple car block heaters to power outlets in Canada² ↑
2. To stop the engine freezing solid and rupturing or the oil going so hard the engine won't turn over for luvner money↑

The Operative Word is "Late"

I just received an email and a text (formatted as a slide show for reasons I can't begin to fathom). They are identical in content, which reads:

The 4:51PM train from Penn due Ronkonkoma at 6:04PM is operating 11 minutes late due to a late late ahead experiencing equipment trouble.

I wish I could invent stuff half this good.

I wish I didn't have to ride the Bloody Long Island Railroad even more. Fortunately, the said mass-transit joke is working tirelessly to reduce the incidence of trains to help me reach that goal.

My day has been so full that I shall now be forced into traveling into Penn Station, there to catch the late late late or possibly the late late late late, depending on how late the subway system is running.

Stop The New Year, I Wanna Get Off

Gad this year is sucking and it's only two weeks old.

I already mentioned the busted camera fiasco and the dinged Steviemobile debacle. Those happened last year, but turned out to be harbingers of the levels of complete and utter suck that would prevail in 2015.

Example: On the 7th I left my car at the body shop to be fixed. Freezing weather immediately moved in so that any delay in being met by whoever was picking me up became an exercise in not dying, there being no windbreaks or shelter in the area after dark. When I picked up the car on Saturday, it turned out they had removed my car antenna, probably to put it through a car wash. When I found it on the back seat and went to screw it back into its mount, I found that the rubber mount seal had become brittle over the 12 years I've owned the car, and it had cracked in several places. So I have that to replace.

Example: That night we got a call from the Mrs Steviemom saying she had crashed her car into her house. We drove over with visions of the car sitting in the living room. It turned out the car was not in the house, but in the driveway. The house had only a small dent in it. The car however was looking much sadder. It had hooked up on the jamb of the garage door, and at that point probably only about a couple of hundred dollars of cosmetic dings and broken plastic clips had been done. But then, in a move last seen in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World it had been backed away from the garage, ripping off the entire front of the car. About two grand's worth of damage.

Example: Yesterday, at around 10 pm, the circuit into which the fridge and the microwave are plugged failed. An hour screwing around with a voltmeter in the breaker box showed no problems there. Somewhere a wire has broken, or burned through, or been gnawed through by varmints. I have no idea which of the fossil breakers in the box control those two outlets (and apparently only those two outlets). I put in a new circuit a few years back to accommodate the dishwasher and toaster oven so that the breaker would stop tripping when the fridge compressor kicked in, but I never labelled the breakers. I know where the new ones are but Azathoth alone knows which of the damn things operates those dead sockets. Fun lies in the near future for me in a rewiring job from Hell.

Example: Six o'clock this morning I woke up sneezing. My nose hasn't stopped itching like crazy inside all day and I've produced about 20 gallons of snot from it. Just in time for the three day weekend.

Example: Seven o' clock this morning Mrs Stevie announces that the burner in the furnace has shut down and the house is noticeably cold so I agree with her. A quick check with Mr Thermostat: 65°f. I do all the quick and easy things and then say we need the furnace repair guy to come and put in a new thermocouple. Mr Stevie arranges this¹ and the furnace repair guy arrives just as I leave for work.

So, as far as 2015 is concerned: I want my money back.

1. She called him and he said "Oh yeah, I remember you. You're the people who have a problem every year. So much for Slant Fin furnaces↑

Xmas Report 2014, Pt II

In The Aftermath Of Santa

Christmas Day dawned and the sleepers of Chateau Stevie were not brought out of hibernation by an excited child as in previous years, so we slept in.

We got up late, whereupon Mrs Stevie announced we were going to church to see The Stevieling do a turn as Assistant Pastor. I did some pro forma whining but the truth is that I'm always in the mood to watch The Stevieling in action, being about as proud of her as it is possible to be¹, and even though I have no belief that anything in me will survive death I like to sing the carols so a Christmas Service isn't such a terrible thing to endure.

The service was short too, which was good because we'd come out with no breakfast inside us. The Stevieling did very well except for the bit where during her reading she read something twice, then interrupted herself by saying "Oh, I read that already", after which I was plagued by the image of the angel going over to the shepherds and saying "I bring you tidings of great joy! To you a savior is born this night in Bethlehem! I bring you tidings of groh I did that bit already."

It certainly made keeping my mind on the sermon hard.

There was also the question of the tunes. Lutherans sing all the same carols normal people do, the same ones I'd been forced to learn and sing in my youth in those glory days of Mandatory State Religion Worship. But they sometimes use the wrong tunes to sing them to. This makes singing the blasted things hard.

I used to just sing the tunes I knew louder than everyone else, a task made easier than might be thought by the fact that most of the congregation sing carols and hymns softly in case they wake up God and annoy him, whereas I don't think there's anyone to wake and so belt out Oh Little Town of Bethlehem and Silent Night in a voice Ozzy Osborne would be proud of². Naturally, this could cause problems if, as has happened, I dropped the hymnal and simultaneously forgot the words, but in that event I simply sang "Lobster Thermidor" over and over³ until I remembered where I was in the song.

However, Mrs Stevie had put her foot down after the humiliation of The Away In A Manger Fiasco some years before and I had to read the music and work out how it worked or shut up. So that's what I did, and it was a great triumph as I was in fine voice. A little flat, perhaps, but what I lacked in accuracy I made up for in decibels. Mrs Stevie complained, but then again she always does.

Back home and it was present opening time.

We had agreed that we wouldn't go crazy with presents this year, so naturally the pile of boxes under the tree had grown to huge proportions as each person tried to smuggle their present ambush munitions in unseen.

I had presented Mrs Stevie with a large flat screeen TV, a surround sound soundbar, the furniture to put it all on and a Blu-Ray player. She was a bit put out that this meant deep sixing the old surround sound, which was actually better for the sound panorama, but the old system a) was part of a malfunctioning DVD player that annoyed the living heck out of me, 2) would not connect easily or well with the new TV and þ) was too big to fit in the new TV stand anyway. She became more enamored of the system when she found out she could watch Netflix on it, as the TV integrated with our WiFi network out of the box.

But I knew she'd like a stocking stuffer or two so I bought her an Elton John concert on Blu-Ray and a copy of Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing, a favorite movie of hers. I also bought her a book called Diabalries, which was a collection of digitally restored stereoscopic pictures of dioramas of scenes from Hell, first created at the end of the 1800s. The book contained lots of text about the pictures and included a sturdy steroscope with which to view the panels. It was the sort of quirky and neat present we used to find for each other when the world was new, we were newlyweds and Mrs Stevie knew nothing about Starbux and their mood-altering products.

I gave The Stevieling a book on the art used in the movie Frozen, a thumb drive disguised as one of the characters from that movie and the cash she needed to go and see her boyfriend⁵.

They bought me the Hess Trucks I'd asked for and an iPad air - something I'd looked at but dismissed as unattainable. Given our "no presents this year" pledge I thought my TV ambush had won the bragging rights, but I had been undercut and overtaken by this breathtaking iPad Ploy.

I also got scads of chocolate goodies, which I ate and made myself quite ill because I'd run out of my statin drug of necessity and the avalanche of fat caused the onset of the unmistakable signs of an attack of pancreatitis a few days later. But as I always say: what's the point of being given life if you can't throw it away stupidly?

We put ourselves in a good mood by watching Much Ado About Nothing on the new telly, then went over to the Mrs Steviedad's place so Mrs Stevie could make Xmas Dinner for everyone. We do this because the in-laws are too old to come over to ours as they did in former years. I took my laptop and new iPad so I could start moving some of my pdf textbooks over to it.

Upon arriving we carried in all the food and made our hellos, then, while Mrs Stevie and her Mom chatted I figured out how me and the Mrs Steviedad could watch an episode from the Band of Brothers Blu-Ray set we'd given him. We got about three minutes in to the running up Currahee bit before the women arrived in-theater, unloaded Band of Brothers and replaced it with some insipid movie about Christopher Reeves going back and forth in time so he can conduct an unbeliveably tedious affair with a woman.

I decamped for the front room and my iPad. Mrs Stevie did attempt a Don't you like this movie?⁶ gambit, but I cut her off at the knees with a heartfelt You must be bleeping kidding!⁷ and she retreated to leave me the bleep alone.

It took me about an hour to get the books moved, some of which was finding out that iTunes was the conduit for all PC-iPad communication (at least, hardwired communication) and then finding out how to work iTunes all over again, since I had foolishly allowed it to upgrade itself after months of nagging in full knowledge of what had been done to me the last time I was so idiotic as to say "OK". Once again the interface had been completely changed and it had taken me a long time just to find out how to display my music collection the way I want to in the bloody thing.

Why the bleep do software providers foist this never-ending unwanted set of changes on the user? Microsoft do it every time they upgrade Office to the point I won't use it any more if I have the option because I can't find anything in the revamped and completely bleeped-up menu. I can understand Apple wanting to fiddle about under the hood, but why would they assume that they know better than me what I need from my music player software?

It's not as though the changes fix any of the borked and unuseful user interface stuff anyway. All they've done is make everything different for difference's sake and force me to learn a new set of operations, typically making them harder-to-use, to get the same effect.

Building a playlist used to be a simple drag-and-drop thing. Then they changed the main window display and everything became tedious, as the window was never scrolled to where I needed it, or if it was the sidebar was scrolled to hide the playlist.

The cure? Not fix the display because, well, that was new and by definition "better". No, what had to change was the drap-and-drop mechanism. Now you build playlists using a drag and drop from the other side of the screen. Nothing is improved by this. Just annoyingly different. All the problems gthat the old method had are present in mirror image in the new one.

And yesterday I had to work doubletime to clean up a mess originally precipitated by the Amazon Music App, which sports an interface so mind bogglingly unfit for purpose I wonder how the Bright Young Things responsible haven't been found face-down in the mud of some tidal estuary.

My problem with it is this: There is no clear way to find the music I just bought from Amazon in mpeg format and differentiate it from music I bought weeks or years ago in CD form but sold with the "Autorip" value-added feature. Briefly, when Amazon sells one a CD they sometimes offer a downloadable version of the recording for free.

This is an excellent service, one I approve of, and certainly is not cause for approbation. Unfortunately, when one is forced to buy a downloadable version rather than a CD, one is then forced into installing the Amazon Music App in order to get the music from Amazon's cloudy goodness into one's personal electronic device.

"But Stevie", I hear you say. "Why not just stream it in from the cloud?"

"Because I do not have - nor do I accept the need for - a permanent persistent connection to the internet just to play an album Chris Squire recorded before you were born!" I rudely reply, cueing you that perhaps my tolerance for new technology has hit some Old Person arbitrary limit and I am not going to be susceptible to "reason" concerning persistent internet issues.

Anyway, when I pull up this bally app it shows me a button to download my purchases - say the Squeeze album I had a passing yen to hear again. When I click on that it downloads my Squeeze album, and every other album I've bought that has Autorip enabled.

The app is a nightmare of one-way navigation paths too, so if I move away from the download panel - perhaps to look for some help feature - I cannot find a way back to it again. This is annoying because I've already sucked those albums into iTunes the old-fashioned way, and have folders of mp4a files under the iTunes "music" folder.

No problem. Amazon's app uses its own folder to stash this content as mp3 files. It's all organized so you can sort it out.

Unfortunately, iTunes finds them and copies them into folders in its library folder. But wait! There's already a folder there containing mp4as of that content! No problem, iTunes will simply interleave the mp3s from Amazon with the mp4as it made itself. Then, in a move so stupendously unhelpful it beggars the imagination all over again, it imports the tracks into the iTunes user interface so whatever album it is has each track listed twice. And if I play the album, it will play each track twice⁸.

Convinced that this was in fact behavior caused by some switch I'd set, or perhaps that had been set for me when so much else of the bloody thing was changed, I rooted through iTunes to see what was what. After 20 minutes I was convinced that all the switches were set properly and that this was some dimwit functionality Apple was doing behind the scenes with one of the umptytump "helper services" it installs silently when you install iTunes⁹.

Lest you think I'm being harsh, consider: The music library My Music contains both the Amazon folder and, nested a few levels deep, the iTunes one. Windows media player can find both without any problem. The Amazon Music App can find both without any problem. And the secret Apple file buggerer-upperer can find both, which poses the question; why can't bloody iTunes find both and simply link without copying content around?

You see, in order to sort out this bleeping mess, if the content hadn't moved I would just need to delete the folders in the Amazon library folder that were duplicates. But because iTunes makes copies, wasting space for no good reason, screwing up the album experience for no good reason, I had to drill into the iTunes library too and delete only the mp3 files that were duplicates - a lengthy and manually intensive process - then pull up iTunes and delete the albums from the user interface, then re-import them.

People have stopped gibbering the Apple Mantra¹⁰ at me because I interrupt them by snarling the word "iTunes".

Anyway, all that messing around with iTunes tired me out almost as much as recapitulating it all here has, so, overcome with ennui and fed up with typing I'll just say we had a nice dinner¹¹ and then went home.

1. Even if she is breaking my heart by quitting school in NY and moving to another state and maybe emigrating to Canada but she's not sure and I'm not allowed to be negative about it all because she's a grown woman now so that's that↑
2. Assuming Mr Osbourne had a tin ear, no sense of timing and a problem staying in the same key as everyone else↑
3. A trick suggested by someone who had been in congregations featured in Songs of Praise⁴↑
4. A televised service from a different church each Sunday evening for those unable or unwilling to actually go to church but still of a mind to partake of a weekly dose of Mandatory Religion↑
5. This so she would stop trying to hijack our us-only vacation and repurpose it to her needs↑
6. This an attempt to throw me on the defensive and make me explain my reasons why I didn't think Christopher Reeve is a compelling use of my time↑
7. Which, of course, is as much of an explanation as any reasonable person would need↑
8. Remember the Apple Mantra: It just works↑
9. A practice Microsoft and Symantec (Norton) and McAffee get screamed at in public for doing for much better reasons than Apple have↑
10. ibid ↑
11. Mrs Stevie makes great dinners if she can keep her urge to experiment with the ingredients tightly under control, but Mrs Beaton help you if she gets creative↑

Xmas Report, 2014

Ho! Ho!
Haaaarrrrgggghhhh!

It's Christmas Again!

Or was, about three weeks ago. I'd have posted my usual effusively gushing report of merrymaking and excessive consumerism in a World Gone Mad but stuff got in the way.

Christmas Eve was the usual family affair, with Mrs Stevie at work, The Stevieling making herself scarce and me, having taken the day off, trying to make a dent in the crap strewn about our house in an attempt to achieve scenic congruence with Bikini Atoll shortly after the Castle Bravo event.

I shoveled and vacuumed and swore until about 4pm, when The Stevieling swanned into theater, announced she was going to her grandmother's and demanded to know my own ETA at that venue of in-law reunion, once yearly catching-up and loot exchange. I may have been a little short in my response, as I was feeling a bit out of sorts having been waiting in vain for her to join me in removing her crap from my Xmas Eyeline.

In any event she hotly denied any of the stuff on the kitchen table was hers¹ and stomped off leaving me searching my lexicon for the exactly apposite Word of Power to express my lack of confidence in her denials of ownership.

Some time later Mrs Stevie hove into view, her attitude somewhere south of "Blitzkreig" owing to a day long surfeit of idiots and Starbux Xmas Cinnamon Triple Clawhammer Latté Grandes, which it appeared she'd been hitting continuously since around 11 am in defiance of good sense and medical advice.

We exchanged a few desultory insults and got changed, she into a Christmas-themed sweater and me into a golf shirt and the same jeans I'd been cleaning house in, and I drove us over to the Mrs Steviedad's house, parking behind The Stevieling's car.

From the fleet of cars parked in the driveway I could see that BiL the Younger was there with the crew

They had driven down from somewhere barely not in Canada that day, so his kids (all grown up into late teens and early twenties) were all tired and shagged-out after having gotten up in the middle of the bloody night in order to get here.

Now it had been asked of us that we get together at four, but no-one who had a job could manage that, not Mrs Stevie, not BiL the Elder, and not me either given that my day off had been spent working twice as intensely as I would have if I'd gone into the office - and if I had they'd have been lucky to see me before 8pm. So we'd apologized and said we'd get there as soon as we could.

I could understand that the Northeastern Maritimes crew would want to get started on dinner and present exchange etc as soon as possible as they would be dead on their seats by 9pm, but the scheduling is all their own doing and is predicated on their not wanting to spend more time than absolutely necessary with Mrs Stevie's side of the family.

I can sort of understand why, my Mother-in-Law having been a little more critical of my Sister-in-Law than Pope Paul III was of Henry the Eighth, but the time squeeze and long day was, as in previous years, not of my doing and I have little patience with being given a hard time by whoever is out of sorts this time, which turned out to be the middle daughter, who gave us the bounty of about two whole sentences the entire evening and avoided returning my greeting to her by playing Minecraft at me.

Oh well, maybe she'll have come around by next Christmas, though the reasons for meeting are becoming less compelling as the years go by and it may be this was the last we'll see of each other. Her loss.

BiL the Elder and spouse rolled up eventually and the adults enjoyed themselves having fun while the various younger "adults" interacted or not with each other and sometimes everyone else. I felt sorry for The Stevieling, who was at one time inseparable from The Minecrafter and who was probably feeling the snub harder than anyone else.

Eventually it was time to eat, then time to exchange gifts. Now the kids are grown this has become a much shorter ceremony. It used to take about an hour as each person took it in turns to open up something and show it off. This time we were done in about twenty minutes - gift cards are not as time-intensive as Easybake Ovens or Barbie Doll RV Campers or whatever else the kids got over the years. At some point in the proceedings Mrs Stevie passed the camera, which she'd schlepped over there after ascertaining that my interest in playing Lord Snowden this year was nil, to BiL the Elder and asked him to take a picture of me, The Stevieling and her as we sat in an obviously contrived pose of family unity.

A sad mistake.

BiL the Elder is no stranger to digital SLR photography for he has a top-of-the-line SLR gifted to him by his wife some years ago. He was, however, completely thrown by the fact that my SLR is a bottom-of-the-barrel model that does not offer the facility to swing the viewfinder mirror up in order to allow the rear screen to act as a viewfinder itself. My camera requires you look through the viewfinder, which contains more dials, indicators and flashing warning lights than The Predator's Space Goggles do, and press the shutter release like you used to do on a film camera.

The conversation went like this:

Mrs Stevie: Would you please take our picture?

BiL the Elder: Sure. How do I get the screen to work?

Mrs Stevie: You don't. You use the viewfinder.

BiL the Elder: But how do I get the screen image?

Mrs Stevie: You don't. You need to use the viewfinder.

BiL the Elder: What? You mean you can't use the screen as a viewfinder?

Mrs Stevie: No. You have to use the viewfinder.

BiL the Elder: So you can't use the screen as a viewfinder on this camera?

Mrs Stevie: You can't use the screen as a viewfinder. Use the regular bleeping viewfinder!

BiL the Elder: But on my camera ...

Mrs Stevie: JUST TAKE THE PICTURE!

Which he did, grumbling about screens and viewfinders the entire time. Apparently, BiL the Elder doesn't know that the mirror swing-and-lock feature (which also enables the taking of movies as a free extra benefit) is only available on very expensive SLR cameras like his, and is not available on cameras like mine that cost about a third of what his did.

I considered telling him but then realized that he would press me for the reason why this feature is such an expensive option, and given that I have no idea why swinging the mirror for viewfinding is so much harder than swinging it for taking the shot (which has to happen anyway, just like in a film SLR) that it should cost one arm and most of one leg, and that I would be trapped in a second never-ending exchange, so I let it slide.

Later that evening I discovered my camera under a side-table where someone had placed it. Why it wasn't on the side table was a bit of a puzzler, so I picked it up and was rewarded by seeing the front element of the lens wobble from side to side.

"When did this happen?" I asked Mrs Stevie, as an experiment in prediction.

"It's always been like that" came back the entirely expected (and entirely ridiculous) response.

I was disappointed. Mrs Stevie has been known to ignore wobbly steering wheels, strange noises from the engine and flames shooting out of the air vents of her car, and to respond to my queries as to the length of time the car has been exhibiting signs of immanent catastrophic failure with vagueness or outright denial of the visual evidence of same six inches from her nose, but she has a background that includes photography and I expected more acumen concerning cameras.

I expressed extreme doubt as to the normality of the main light-gathering and focusing mechanism of the camera having always waggled a quarter of an inch from side to side, then switched on the camera and pointed it at something, pressed the shutter and watched all the lights, dials and flashing indicators in the viewfinder die.

"what's the matter with it?" she sweetly asked.

"I can't say for sure" I replied. "It's either been dropped or kicked. It may even have been drop-kicked. Either way, the lens is now a casualty of The Family Christmas. Let's hope the body comes back to life when we get home and I plug the other lens into it. As for now, we have no camera. You are going to have to use your phone for recording any more happy memories. Why didn't you put it back in its case when you were done using it?

She then deployed Spouse Ploy #1 : I gave it back to you which I countered with a hearty and firm No you bloody well didn't. The camera was your responsibility. You brought it. You were supposed to take care of it. I told you that in so many words before we left home and I hold you responsible for the damage and refused to discuss it any more. I knew that I had just been handed a $200 bill for expenses and was not a happy camper.

It infuriates me the way the women in my family treat expensive technology. They casually deal out all sorts of biffs, bangs and clangs to stuff, then have the brass nerve to look surprised when it breaks.

We scored this camera as a "freebie", inasmuch as I got it using the frequent spender points from a credit card to obtain gift cards that I used to buy the camera, but I at least am always aware that it cost about $500 in real terms. It isn't a toy, even though it is the low-end-of-the-range model. It is a very good quality camera as suitable for the budding shutterbug or photojournalist as for a point-and-shoot clod like me. It is stuffed with features that make life unbelievably easy compared to what I had with my Minolta SLR film camera. The lens alone is a technological miracle, with autofocus and an outstanding vibration reduction feature that lets me take hand-held non-flash pictures at speeds four times slower than I could with a film SLR², and it has an 18-55mm zoom range that makes picture composition a doddle.

Not that night, of course. It had been turned into a bunch of scrap metal and glass by a passing foot.

We grabbed some more food and chatted a bit more and then it was time for people to start leaving. BiL the Younger's crew was assembled and they departed into the night, yawning. We did some tidying and then BiL the Elder and Wife left.

The Stevieling took the tablecloth out to the front garden to shake off the crumbs, came back in and said "Dad, come outside please". I figured she needed help with the spinnaker-sized tablecloth, grabbed my shoes and walked out into the cold. "Uncle BiL the Elder has hit your car".

I was unprepared for this and so without thinking shouted an incredulous "How?" to the neighborhood reflexively. You see, BiL the Elder had moved his car so that BiL the Younger's convoy could leave earlier. As far as I could see he must've then been parked alongside The Stevieling's car. To hit mine, he'd have had to swing directly into it as the first thing he did. To miss it all he had to do was drive back one car length to the clearly visible road. I couldn't see how it was possible to have a direct collision between his car and mine.

But when I got there, indeed he had done the impossible and put a deep dent in the fender I had replaced only some months before when some other clod in an SUV had backed over me in a spectacular demonstration of driving with all power to the brain switched off³.

BiL the Elder was making noises about paying for it, so I waved him off and told him we'd sort it all out later, no, it wasn't important so long as no-one was hurt and so forth. Then I went back inside before my natural tendencies became too much and I deployed some totally deserved class four Words of Power in his direction. The car was, after all, driveable, so other than a spectacular inconvenience to come and some steep out-of-someone-else's-pocket expenses, there was no real need for a family feud.

So: one Minecraft-themed snubbing, one destroyed camera and a thousand-dollar-or-I'm-a-scotchman⁴ ding in The Steviemobile; not a bad haul for Xmas Eve.

1. A blatant falsehood↑
2. Where the rule of thumb is 1/30th of a second is the slowest you should try without a tripod↑
3. "I could hear your horn blowing but couldn't see anyone so I just kept reversing"↑
4. And I *never* drink scotch↑

The Brain Cell Shortage Of The Long Island Rail Road - Postscipt

For those tracking such things, the events of yesterday meant that although I was slated to be on my way by 9:33 am and arrive a bit late at around 10:45 am, I actually began moving out of Wyandanch (Pearl of the East) at 10:03 am, and arrived at noon after being stranded at Jamaica, where the 11:13 am train was held until the next train bound for New York had arrived (which took about ten minutes or so), and after being subjected to an unexplained five minute lets-not-go-yet on the #2 subway line.

New York, where the people are so busy telling everyone how great the place is no-one actually has time to make it happen.

The Brain Cell Shortage Of The Long Island Rail Road

So, today I am sitting on a train that is 30 minutes late, and which is severely overcrowded on account of it holding the passengers who would have normally boarded it and those who were intending to travel on the following train.

Okay, here's where I let you, dear reader, perform a mental exercise normally reserved for model railway enthusiasts and real railway dispatchers: a "switching puzzle". Study this entirely fictitious and made-up invented railway track plan. Red dots are stations. Straight lines are railway tracks connecting them. Each line represents two steel rails joined with sleepers or cross-ties so that a train can run on them. Okay?

Now, your challenge is to keep the network running as well as you can when a problem arises. Peak time traffic is traveling from Huntington to New York via Hicksville, and from Ronkonkoma to New York via Hicksville.

Off-Peak traffic, necessary to ensure you have enough trains at the ends of the railway to make up Peak trains (by turning them around - or in the case of the LIRR simply driving them backwards) moves from New York to both Ronkonkoma and Huntington via Hicksville.

The peak schedule calls for trains to move west from Ronkonkoma every half hour (not in real life of course, we dream of a train every thirty minutes in real life but this assumption makes the mental sums a bit easier to do while not changing the real-life model emulation disastrously).

Now, you have a problem near New York that causes delays in both directions, and eventually you have a train heading east from Hicksville bound for Ronkonkoma that is, say, 20 minutes late. That is, you have an Off Peak train that is moving east and that is 20 minutes late.

The astute reader will have noted the single track section at Wyandanch that forms a chicane. Obviously, a train in the chicane denies the route to any train coming the other way.

You have your twenty minute late off-peak train approaching Farmingdale and a peak train sitting in Ronkonkoma about to depart. Assume it takes about ten minutes to get from Ronkonkoma to the entrance of the chicane.

So what to you do?

If you are the Bloody Long Island Rail Road, for reasons that passeth all understanding, you push the off-peak late train through the chicane and hold the peak train. This makes the peak train unnecesserily late. Assuming the rest of the network is on time (an hilariously naive assumption when speaking about the Bloody Long Island Rail Road of course) the introduction of a late peak train will cause disruption as the late train is fitted between the on-time peak traffic from Huntington. Assuming the rest of the network is a mass of late trains and snarling passengers the introduction of one more late train to the rat's nest only exacerbates the problem.

What happens if you hold the late off-peak train?

Obviously, it becomes that much later. But, the peak train inserts itself into the normal peak traffic flow seamlessly (or at least, what passes for seamlessly on the Bloody Long Island Rail Road). No further disruption to the network as a whole is caused. Of course, we need the late off-peak train to become a peak train at Ronkonkoma, so the next peak train may be late, but you have a half-hour to play with and it is just possible the next peak train will be able to depart almost on-time, to the point that the Bloody Long Island Rail Road doesn't admit it is late at all¹.

Contrast this with the Bloody Long Island Rail Road's approach: To make all trains as late as possible, then shrug and blame "trains caught in single track territory".

The Bloody Long Island Rail Road has appropriated funds to start a project to lay another track to rid us of the chicane, but only they could come to the conclusion that this would fix anything since the problems they blame on the single track section never originate there.

The problems almost always involve, in order of likelihood:
a) A train broken down in the East River tunnels, which are unhelpfully signaled to the point that no matter which tunnel a train breaks down inside, the maximum disruption to tunnel traffic is caused.
2) Broken rails, which happen more often now heavy freight trains work on the light-gauge track of the Bloody Long Island Rail Road.
þ) Trains actually breaking down in the chicane.

Every single one of the trains that I have been riding that have broken down in the single track section has been a train that has been obviously malfunctioning for miles and which has been stubbornly driven, coughing and wheezing, into the single track section so it can finish the job of expiring. This could be addressed with a simple operating rule, Viz: "No train shall be driven east from Farmingdale or west from Deer Park unless it be in a sound condition, but shall instead be halted at the aforementioned relevant station so that a) passengers are not marooned and 2) other traffic will not be impeded by a broken train.".

It's not rocket science. It's railway network logistics, and the Bloody Long Island Rail Road has been doing that in one form or another for over a hundred years.

I just think that they should have gotten a handle on How The Trick Is Done by now.

1. Five minutes late is not late according to the Bloody Long Island Rail Road↑

Canada - Postscript

Oh, and it turned out I was right and we were totally in Historical Downtown Sexsmith where I said we were and not Somewhere Else You Idiot, because I agreed to let Mrs Stevie drive back there the day before the wedding and she ended up exactly where we had been days before after following signposts (the last refuge of the directionally desperate in my opinion) to it.

It was here I was quite badly injured when I laughed so hard I inadvertently tripped the door mechanism and fell out of the Ford Leviathan Supa-Kab Turbo-X, whereupon Mrs Stevie accidentally ran me over.

Luckily I remembered that our Ford Leviathan Supa-Kab Turbo-X was Bear-Rated and rolled myself between the wheels, thereby avoiding a nasty squishing by quick-thinking, but I was temporarily deafened by the roar of the exhaust as it passed over me and the radiated heat from the muffler set fire to my chest hair.

So much for Historical Downtown Sexsmith.

Of course, this victory was offset quite a bit when Mrs Stevie walked into our downstairs bathroom upon our return to Chateau Stevie and discovered the cell phone I lost in JFK Airport at the start of this saga lying by the sink.

Such are the swings and kicks in the nuts of fate.

Canada - The Rest Of It

So, I hear you asking, what happened in Canada?

Well, not much, really. We spent most of the time shuttling between the various family, a few places we wanted to see and my dad's hospital bed until the wedding on Saturday. The shuttling was done with Mrs Stevie at the wheel of the mighty Ford Leviathan Supa-Kab Turbo-X, which served to alleviate most of her rage for the duration of the vacation. Such was her joy in the earth-mover-sized truck that she rarely paused to drink coffee (the chief cause of her short temper in my opinion).

One weird event that left us scratching our heads involved The Stevieling's addiction to Animé Merchandise. We visited a small store in the old town high street (the town has grown and spread since this charming row of businesses was the center of commerce) where she purchased a couple of items and I bought a couple more for her. A couple of days later we went back so she could pick up another item she'd been on the fence about, only to discover the store completely stripped to the walls. No hint of a change of venue was given when we were there the first time. A classic fly-by-night.

I was sorry to note that one of the small bookshops had closed since my last visit. It was an old-style bookshop where I could pick up really old secondhand SF paperbacks from the sixties, and it had a prominent Canadian Author section too where I once scored a really, really good detective mystery set in Quebec. These authors don't get much if any exposure outside of Canada itself so I was hoping to do a couple of hours browsing in that section. Oh well.

The Wedding was coming along apace despite the Forces of Evil arrayed in good order trying to stop it happening. Everything that could go Eddorian Hellfruit-shaped did. The venue had to be changed in a welter of mendacity on the part of the renter that cost the happy-if-it-kills-us couple a grand and a half, That in turn screwed up the catering and the music and I don't know what all else in a cascade failure the likes of which left the East Coast dark for days. Eventually it was held in Centre 2000, a V-shaped building with a circular hall used by various town organizations for ad-hoc¹ functions and which serves as a visitor center. It is really cool, with an observation dome that looks out over Muskoseepi Park and it has a ginormous moondial in front of it.

What it doesn't have in any sort of profusion is power outlets.

This meant that the couple, who had negotiated the Rapids of Panic and cruised into the headwaters of What-the-Fbleep had to get creative. They retained the services of a local Beer'n'Pool pub for the food, which was delicious, and roped a local up-and-coming Reggae band into providing the Excellent Ents™. It was memorable, and they were radiant as a Newlywed Couple In A World Truly Gone Mad. If there is any justice in the universe they have a big lottery win coming for the torrential rain of needlessly annoying crap they weathered with smiles for all.

The wedding ceremony itself had been held in the open air in a park we had driven past about two trillion times and never noticed. It was really sunny, if a tad windy. Nowhere on the order of the mini-hurricane that made such a fiasco of the candle lighting ceremony at BiL the Elder's wedding but it carried the sound away from me so I couldn't hear some of the vows.

Didn't matter of course. The vows are for each other, no-one else, and I had done the whole thing myself once so had first-hand knowledge of the sorts of things being said.

Mrs Stevie said it was kinda fun watching someone start out on The Great Adventure, and without thinking I said it was more like a Grim Reminder of the Hell to Come, and then she said some very harsh things and called me vile names, but luckily the wind carried them away from the happy couple who were too busy watching each other to see the demeaning scuffle off in the wings.

At the reception, during one of the band's numbers, the conga player shyly approached my sister and asked about the dark haired girl in green. She fixed him with her very best lizard stare and said "you mean my Niece?" and he retreated at speed. It was worth the trip to see that happen. I told the Stevieling she should dance with him and have some fun but she scowled at me and said "I'm seeing Charles, Dad!" in her best imitation of her mother. I pointed out that Charles was about forty-five hundred miles away and I certainly wasn't suggesting anything other than a couple of dances at a wedding on account of me not being in the mood to have to punch anyone (thereby getting punched back several times if history serves as a lesson), but she went thin-lipped and sent me off to sit with the Old People.

Since these were people who in some cases had been influential in building the town we were sitting in, I actually felt this was a good thing. The Steviesis has a raft of Very Important People in her circle, indeed is a Very Important Person in her own right. I can't get enough of the stories some of the people who come to her parties can tell.

For example, we had gone out to the Muskoseepi Park Village Restoration Museum Thing and I had seen a humongous horse-drawn machine that had been there for years but was now being restored, and which turned out to be a horse-drawn grader. I never knew they had such things. When it became apparent I was really interested in the thing an ancient guy was called from what he was doing and asked to talk about it, and as he had been a driver of one about sixty years before he had a lot to tell. Well, turns out one of the Steviesis's good friends was not only an Extremely Important Person but had also driven one of these things in his long and checkered past. I was enthralled by his stories of how it all worked, how the teams were assembled (hired from local farmers), the sheer mechanics of making roads in the great prairie during the very harsh weather they can get. I told him he should get this all down on paper, write a book, at the very least tell someone at the restoration his story so it would become part of the larger tapestry.

Then I got sad for a bit because I've been trying to get my dad to do the very same thing for over a decade and he won't. His head is full of unique memories of the hardship people suffered while trying to restart the English industrial base in the post-war years, when the infrastructure was still in tatters and there was no money to fix it up. Hell, I remember seeing bomb sites all around and that would have been in the very late 1950s. There was no money to clear the debris and rebuild.

Anyway.

The kids were married and we were due to fly out two days later. We visited the happy couple in their new house the next day. They were rattling around with a collection of Star Wars and Batman themed memorabilia but only a bed and a table as furniture. It made me smile to remember what it was like to have no need for anything else, and they have so many great plans for what they want to do it made my head spin. I hope they get it all and then some.

One neat thing was that on the way home I finally got to see and photograph a train of grain cars, though they were a sad, dilapidated collection, lacking the majesty of their clean, well-maintained look of only, what, three years before. Pfft.

Then, of course, it was time for fate to kick me in the hurtybits. I went down to the hotel computer suite to arrange our tickets home. Everything was going well until I entered my address, at which point the whole website became hostile and refused to allow me to check in. Mrs Stevie called me an idiot a few times and then drove us to the airport where I tried to check in at a desk, but the nice man told me he couldn't do advance check-ins. He did show me to a machine and showed me how to use it to do what I wanted, only it also took one look at my passport and refused to cooperate. At this, the nice man scowled at me and became more distant. Clearly I was a security risk. So we went back to the hotel.

Later we drove over to the rental place and returned the Ford Leviathan Supa-Kab Turbo-X, where Mrs Stevie became extremely emotional and had to be taken for a nice cup of coffee to steady her nerves. For weeks afterward she would sigh and shed a tear before climbing into her Shuttlecraft-sized people-mover, her normal mode of transport and formerly a source of great satisfaction to her (something about being higher up than everyone else, but I wasn't really listening when she explained the attraction of the thing after she bought it).

Mr Steviesis blew me away when he insisted on getting up in the middle of the night to drive us to the airport the next day. I tried to tell him not to, but he insisted. It was so early that Tim Horton's was not open so he couldn't get a cup of coffee, poor bugger. On the plus side, neither could Mrs Stevie. At the airport we encountered yet more problems checking in and I told Mrs Stevie that she should perhaps plan on traveling with the Stevieling and I'd follow later when I'd resolved whatever it was. However, she saw through this ploy almost immediately and bullied one of the staff until they figured out how to turn off the snotty switch on the software, and I was able to be cleared for the return flight back to where I came from under the watchful eyes of the women of Chateau Stevie.

We said our goodbyes, removed our shoes and prepared for battle with customs and immigration. It started well when the jar of Saskatoon Preserves in my suitcase triggered the x-ray alarm, and got steadily worse as the day wore away.

As for the flight, the less said the better. It had its ups and downs.

Arriving in New York we walked out of the terminal building to be hit in the face with the atmospheric equivalent of a moist armpit and the eardrums with Snothausen's Symphony For Airhorns and Ableeps.

We were back.

1. Latin for planned while drunk on German wine ↑

The Bloody Long Island Rail Road: Their Incompetence

So, once again I am running ten minutes late and once again it is entirely because the policy on how to move trains to and from Ronkonkoma was written by a squashed apricot and implemented by The Clown Collective.

Just east of Farmingdale the double-track right-of-way narrows to a single track chicane, which runs through Pinelawn, then Wyandanch to become two tracks again at Deer Park. The common wisdom is that this causes congestion and an expensive two-track upgrade is being talked about as I type.

The problem is that the expense and disruption this so-called plan will produce is hardly worth the time and angst when a simple¹ change to the stupid-with-a-capital-stupe policy on how to move trains through the chicane would make the whole problem go away instantly.

The policy I speak of is the one that calls for late off-peak trains to be prioritized over on-time peak trains and sent through the chicane first when there is a clash.

This in turn guarantees that between the time the off-peak eastbound train with its three passengers comes through Wyandanch, Pearl of the East, a minimum of ten minutes must elapse before the train coming the other way stops to pick up the hundred or so freezing and/or wet passengers waiting to go to work or go home from work, having paid a premium to travel on the peak trains involved.

If the "policy" were changed so that an East-bound late off-peak train got held at Farmingdale and late Westbound off-peak trains got held at Deer Park, the peak trains could be routed around them.

Big deal, right? Why do we care?

Because holding the Westbound peak train disrupts not just that train but every other train on the network west of the junction at Hicksville. It also means that transfers at Jamaica² are lost because the Bloody Long Island Rail Road doesn't hold them³ and the next Atlantic Avenue-bound train is typically half an hour behind. Thus, holding the peak trains cause not a ten minute delay, but numerous delays and, more importantly, makes me a minimum of forty minutes late for work, time I must make up.

I can live with the unforeseen problems causing major disruption (while noting that some of these are perfectly foreseeable by anyone in possession of a plurality of brain cells), but this fbleeptardery is entirely avoidable with minimum effort.

As I type we are passing through Mineola. I should be boarding my connection, but I'm still about 10 (i.e. 40) minutes behind schedule

Another win for the Bloody Long Island Rail Road and the IQ Brigade “in charge” of it.

1. as in so simple a five year old could figure it out↑
2. Not the good one↑
3. I've been told that doing so would cause "congestion" in the Atlantic Avenue-Jamaica network, which in actual fact is a twin track straight line and so cannot become "congested" by too few trains↑

An Interlude With Electric Projects

The Stevieling called me at work on Thursday asking how she could turn off the electricity in her bedroom at the breaker box.

To say this induced a small moment of panic in your humble scribe would be to understate the case by several orders of magnitude. I immediately demanded to know why she wanted to do this, and she replied that her bedroom light, part of a ceiling fan that already had a broken switch in the fan part, was jammed permanently on, had now been burning for about 14 hours and that she had talked this over with a guy from Home Despot who had sold her "the parts" and told her "what to do".

Apparently I leapt out of my chair and screamed "DO NOT TOUCH THE LIGHT FIXTURE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES" at the top of my voice. All I remember was tunnel vision and the smell of burning roof tar, and coming to my senses a few seconds later to the sound of the usual supportive laughter and cat-calls of my colleagues.

I told the Stevieling to turn off the electricity to the whole house and then remove the bulb, then and only then to turn the electricity back on. I figured that it would take her so long to figure out the removal procedure for the glass globe and to hunt up a screwdriver to do the job that the White-Hot Bulb of Everburning would have had plenty of time to cool down, so I did not talk her through a burn-prevention checklist.

As luck would have it I had a duplicate of that fan in the Basement o Waterlogged Wonders. I had originally intended to fit one in each bedroom, but Mrs Stevie became convinced that she would somehow get her head caught in it and promptly issued an edict forbidding me to install it. Thus it had sat for lo these many decades, the box slowly mildewing away. A Plan Formed.

I would not waste time attempting, probably futilely, to obtain a new socket/switch assembly (everything was riveted in place so a simple switch-out of the switch was not possible). No, I would swap out the entire fan assembly, thereby fixing the busted fan switch and the Lightbulb Of Never Going Out issue. Ha!

So this I did. The old fan came off relatively easily¹ and the new one went back with only the expected screws that wouldn't go back without cross-threading and wires that needed different sizes of wire nut this time around. In no time at all I had the fan motor c/w lighting kit hanging from the ceiling waiting for the trim, blades and a bulb.

I started with the bulb, which burst into life as soon as I screwed it home. So I pulled the chain to switch it off, and nothing happened.

There followed a few minutes of British Farce as I madly pulled repeatedly on the chain while chanting the traditional Class Three Words of Power, then dashed downstairs to check that I had not somehow become so entranced by the task at hand that I had installed the old lighting kit in the new fan.

It is a measure of how addled my wits had become over this business that I could not assume just because I had not detached the old kit from the old fan, and that the old switch had a snapped-off chain and the new one didn't, that it was in fact impossible for that to have happened.

A scenic tour of every Arse Hardware, Blowes and Home Despot in the area proved that yes, indeed, non-one had the fixture I needed in stock, so I was forced to uninstall the lighting fixture and call it a day.

The Stevieling's contempt was palpable.

She was once again thrown back on the alternate lighting source, a string of multi-color Xmas lights I ran across her ceiling when she was about four and that were still functional. Indeed, the premier of that installation had also been the occasion of the Stevieling's contempt.

The lights have an electronic box that cycles through about 20 different patterns of pulsing light effects, slow fades and chases. I switched it on, and the toddler closed her door (shutting her daddy out) so she could appreciate the Seasonal Illumination. The patterns started with slow fades up and down of each color in turn then a fade to black for a second or two before more complex things start happening. I could see the colors under her door and hear her appreciation through it.

Red fade up: "Ooooooooooh!"

Blue fade up: "Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Green fade up: "Oooooooooooooh!'

Yellow fade up: "Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

All fade down: A disgusted "Augh!"

Her tone said it all: "Useless lump! He can't even wire some Xmas lights."

Anyway, I retired from the field of domestic lighting and decided to have a bash at amateur Nerf Blastersmithing while the delectable Jenny Agutter paraded around in a thin piece of cloth in Logan's Run for background noise.

I have an example of the mighty Nerf Rapidstrike CS-18 in my Nerf Arsenal. This is an all-electric fully automatic, 18-shot submachineblaster (Nerf eschews the term "gun") that is quite clever. Motors in the barrel spin up pinch rollers when a small switch is closed with the ring finger. When the trigger is pulled a separate motor drives a piston back and forth. Each forward stroke pokes a dart from the magazine into the pinch rollers, launching it at the enemy.

The power is supplied by four 'C' cells, delivering 6 volts. This gives a somewhat anemic rate of fire of about three darts a second. Not only that, the first dart or two always land short because for some reason the designer decreed that the pinch roller motors not run at full speed until the piston is activated, so they have to "spin up" a second time, allowing anarchists, zombies or whatever to close.

Clearly this is sub-optimal, and a number of so-called "mods" have been demonstrated on the web, usually as videos that deal with upping the oomph by increasing the voltage on the pinch-rollers and doing something about that two-speed nonsense. These require substantially dismantling the blaster into its component parts, which was too much like hard work for my liking.

I simply² replaced the off-the-shelf 4 'C' cell battery in my Nerf Rapidstrike CS-18 submachineblaster with a 3 cell Lipo battery³, overvolting the pinch-roller motors by almost 100% and converting a somewhat anemic rate of fire into a veritable hail of Nerfness. The Stevieling pronounced it "Awesome" as it spewed darts so fast it emptied the magazine in about three seconds

Of course, now you can hear the bloody thing spin up from a hundred yards away, but the trade-off is acceptable. It pumps out darts faster than I can launch them manually from the Hail Fire⁴.

Now, if only I can figure a way of preventing the motors from melting or the battery exploding.

1. You have to dismantle them before you can get them down because the motor has to be hinged out of the bracket and the blades bang up against the ceiling and prevent that unless you take them off first↑
2. An elision. I had to use a rotary tool to reconfigure the battery compartment quite radically to get the bits to fit↑
3. A quick-charge, high-drain capable 11.1 volt battery used in VTO drones, made from a Lithium Polymer sandwich which can catch fire spectacularly if drained too low or charged too long↑
4. A hybrid pinch-roller design in which the piston is mechanically coupled to the trigger, limiting the rate of fire to how fast and how long you can repeatedly pull and release the trigger↑

My Sh Crappy Neighbors

I may have mentioned in passing what a disrespectful shbleepy bunch my neighbors are.

At the back of me is Mad Joe, The Firework King, who has lived his life cleaving to the tenet "Why communicate with your neighbors when you can just ignore them as they get caught in the fallout?". His specialty for the first five or six years we lived here was waiting until we had gone on vacation, then inflicting damage on our property, usually involving trespass and damaged fences. He also convened parties in which everyone got drunk, let off industrial grade fireworks and made death threats against me and Mrs Stevie (which on one occasion were overheard by off-duty police people who were having a quiet drink with us - much fun).

To the side of us are the Singhs, with whom we used to have a cordial relationship but who in the last couple of years have taken to asking Mad Joe's advice on how to interact with us, advice he has gleefully supplied in job lots. More property damage has ensued. The Singhs also have a fleet of automobiles that often get parked on the sidewalks, making leaving my driveway an exercise in making left turns blind.

Today, Mrs Stevie opened the door to go to work, stopped dead, and said "Take a look out of the window".

Outside, resting on my curb, or more likely, the rubble left where my curb used to be, were two perforated concrete cylinders of the type used to fabricate septic tanks.

This opens two possibilities: a) that an honest mistake has been made by a contractor, or 2) one of my neighbors is being a shirthead again.

I know which I'm putting my money on.

I've decided that if they are still there tonight and if no-one has had the decency to leave a note explaining the situation I'm calling the peelers to report a dumping incident.

Deep Thinks

They say that even a broken watch is right twice a day.

But.

What if what makes it broken is that both hands have fallen off the little spindle and are now rattling around under the glass, offering only a surrealist's idea of the time?

I'm beginning to suspect that "they" are blithering idiots.

An Interlude With Teh Stoopids

This just in via e-mail and text message from the I.Q. Brigade at the Bloody Long Island Rail Road:

"Stay alert when traveling and protect your property. Keep your belongings in sight at all times. Don't display cell phones, laptops or other personal electronic devices."

So, Captain Cerebellum, how exactly am I supposed to keep my valuable laptop in sight while at the same time ensuring I don't display it?

Difficult to see how the Bloody Long Island Rail Road can be so utterly and completely crap when it has brains of this quality behind it.

Canada Trip, Day 3

Day three dawned and I decided we would take a trip to Rycroft for to do some photographie.

I've been making this trip whenever I can when we are in Alberta, and I have pictures going back to when Rycroft had working wooden grain elevators ¹ . Sadly, these have fallen into disrepair and of the two large ones left, only one is used now. All the grain traffic tends to end up at the humongous concrete affair on the other side of the main road.

Rycroft will one day be realized in an N scale layout when I get round to building it. It is an ideal model railway town, being essentially a crossroads in the middle of the prairie which has a gas station and a diner patronized by the people on the way to or from Dunvegan or the truckers going to or from the oilfields in the north. There's even a big mural of the yellow suspension bridge at Dunvegan in case you need another reason to go there, painted on the back wall of the diner.

I've seen some truly bizarre vehicles parked in that football field-sized pull-off too. A giant shed on caterpillar tracks that looked like a mobile barraks for a small army mated to some Nazi wet-dream SuperPanzer, huge skeletal structures of fantastical shapes and unguessable uses lashed to low-loaders, that sort of thing. Dead interesting².

There is also a giant Tepee that has been a visitor information center and a T-shirt and souvenir shop but now stands empty, slowly falling to pieces. It has a steel frame and a cloth covering and the wonder is it has lasted so long. And it is ginormous, about as tall as a two story house and a good thirty feet or more in diameter. It was in this very structure some twenty years ago that Bil the Elder first elucidated his "They're All Trying To Cheat Me" theory concerning the Province-wide standard $25 cost of a sweat shirt. A controversial idea that flew in the face of the conventional view that "That's What A Sweat Shirt Costs In Alberta , And Anyway It's Canadian Dollars For Wolfe's Sake!" but one to which he remains firmly committed to this day, perhaps in part due to certain re-pricing scams pulled over the years by Mrs Stevie wherein she arranged for "forgotten" price tags showing $15 to be discovered on souvenir shirts that, in fact, cost $25 and more apiece which were gifted to him on our return.

We drove there in about two hours or so - it's a straight line north from Grande Prairie to Rycroft down a road with few turn-offs³ so Mrs Stevie told me to drive, secure in the knowledge that I couldn't possibly get lost.

I have to say that being behind the wheel of the Ford Leviathan Supa-Kab Turbo-X was just as terrifying as I had thought it would be. A touch of the foot on the gas pedal would cause three foot-long flames to belch out of the exhaust and the windshields of vehicles behind us to shatter while we were subjected to four gees of acceleration, the truck slewing down the road barely under the control of the screaming driver.

"Will you be more careful!" snarled Mrs Stevie.

"I can't help it. I've never driven a vehicle designed to kill James Bond and win the Indy 500 before!" I snarled back.

Eventually we arrived and Mrs Stevie demanded tea and snacks in the diner. Snacks turned into lunch, after which we did some photography. I used my digital SLR to capture the environs of the mighty grain elevators in their slow, sad slide into silent senescence. Mrs Stevie and the Stevieling used their iPads to do whatever people lucky enough to have iPads bought for them by generous relatives do. Make HD movies and post them on Yootoob and Facebok I suppose. I dunno, because I don't have an iPad, I just get to buy them for everyone else. But am I downhearted by this despicable disparity in digital deployment?

Yes.

After the capturing of images Mrs Stevie demanded tea so it was back to the diner for more tea, at which time we got a phone call from the StevieSis. Mrs Stevie took the call, and apparently had some difficulty getting the StevieSis to believe we would have the gumption to drive to Rycroft - or perhaps have a reason to do so. It is, when all is said and done, a crossroads with nothing much to offer a tourist per se, serving a rural farming community and a transient trucking industry.

Once Mrs Stevie had persuaded the StevieSis that yes, we were already in Rycroft and about to depart, the StevieSis said we should use the opportunity to go on to Dunvegan and visit the gardens there. So we did.

The best part for me of that part of the trip is the long descent into the river valley and the giant yellow suspension bridge⁴ the Albertans threw across the river. It is a magnificent view and the bridge is a magnificent structure. The road then climbs up the other side of the steep valley walls, but there is a turn-off into the historical Dunvegan preservation site and camping area.

As an aside I'd also like to point out that the Albertans built these very steep roads with a bit of common sense about the sort of traffic they would be carrying, making provision for nimble cars to pass enormous trucks struggling with heavy loads up steep hills wherever possible.

Dunvegan was originally a trading post and a church. Much of Canada has the same sort of history, with rival trading operations being set up and then moved about to take advantage of new and sometimes ephemeral markets. At Dunvegan a number of original structures have been preserved and others relocated to the site (in much the same manner as was done with Spon Street in Coventry in the UK) and for a small donation one can tour the village and walk around inside houses from the last century.

The area is beautiful with the steep valley walls climbing into the sky and the river flowing swiftly past, but it must have been hell during mosquito season I'd think before the invention of Deet and the crop-sprayer. This day the weather was perfect and I waved away the womenfolk and dozed quietly in a seat overlooking the river until they decided that I'd had enough respite for one day and poked me awake so I could take pictures of them wearing Batman T-Shirts.

Mrs Stevie wanted to gift the StevieNephew and His Bride with pictures of the entire family in candid shots of them each wearing these shirts because the wedding was supposedly “Batman Themed”. We had no real idea what this meant, and all our asking had elicited no real answers from the family because it turned out none of them had any idea of what it all meant either. It was something the bride and groom had stated but had never explained to anyone's satisfaction. I had originally planned to have my hair dyed green and to turn up in whiteface a-la Caesar Romero, but in the absence of any reassurance that this would not be "overdoing it" had abandoned the idea as a good way to get punched up the throat by the StevieSis while Mrs Stevie held me down.

Where was I?

Oh right. Anyway, we started back because we had a deadline to meet. The StevieSis was throwing a party. We had a little time to spare so Mrs Stevie instructed me to pull off about halfway home in Sexsmith so we could find and explore the Historical Main Street en passant. I drove us into downtown Sexsmith and found a street lined with the sorts of structures one normally expects to find in a Hollywood western, with large flat fronts that offer a space to write large the business and what it does and front doors centrally placed between two windows. There was a general store, a small restaurant, a post office, an ice-cream parlor and a bunch of other businesses. Mrs Stevie went to investigate while I snoozed in the cab of the Ford Leviathan Supa-Kab Turbo-X, which I parked next to the working railroad spur and sawmill so as to disguise the sound of the mighty engine when it was restarted and give us time to escape any impromptu lynching parties incensed by the racket of the thing. I had begun to notice people had a tendency to throw clods of earth, horseshoes and small housebricks at us if we idled the vehicle within 50 feet of them.

Mrs Stevie took about four thousand pictures with my camera, returning after about half an hour to say that we were out of time and that this was not Historic Downtown Sexsmith because she had noticed a sign on a different turn-off on the way in and I must've driven down the wrong way and messed it all up again.

I looked around the small town and expressed confidence in my navigation and our current position with respect to Historic Downtown Sexsmith, but was cruelly disabused by Mrs Stevie who used Harsh Words on me for most of the remaining drive back to the hotel.

That evening we embarked for Ents in the StevieSis's back garden, which had been converted into a luau probably by the never-enough-harassed Mr StevieSis (The StevieSis and Mrs Stevie having similar views on many things including how long it takes to achieve complex construction jobs they've never actually tried to do themselves, and the obvious candidates to be doing the work in question since they couldn't possibly have anything else to do). It was quite a sight, with a bar overflowing with bottles of beverages that could also be pressed into service as accelerants and, in some cases, varnish remover.

Canadians in general have an eclectic palette when it comes to alcohol, and a never-say-die attitude that is well served by some of the concoctions that I've been offered that have prevented speech and even respiration for up to three minutes after taking a manly swig.

There was also a barbecue surrounded by chunks of every kind of dead animal that had walked the prairie. Since I am firmly against the consumption of foods that did not once have a face, this met with my approval, though I could not express it for about three minutes owing to my having accepted a drink and taken a stiff belt of it before I'd thought to ascertain what was, in fact, smoking and etching the glass it was served in. Fortunately no children were as yet present, so no-one was emotionally scarred by the sight of my bulging eyeballs or the class three Words of Power I used upon regaining control of my breath reflex.

The StevieSis was at the controls of some sort of demented cross between a food mixer, a gravel crusher and a barrel organ, and was turning out frozen drinks composed of one part vodka, one part stove fuel and five parts peach schnapps which she then pressed upon anyone daft enough to wander into theater. Mrs Stevie drank one and spent the next hour and a half giggling and falling about the place, which at least brought a halt to the torrent of abuse regarding Historic Downtown Sexsmith.

In no time at all a cadre of Canadians of all ages had filled the place. The StevieSis is very popular and knows all sorts of interesting people, some of whom have had extremely lively lives, had adventures straight out of the most unlikely survival-against-the-odds movies and risen high in the ranks of society, which was why she asked me to sit at the back and not draw attention to myself if possible, at least until the important guests had gone home.

We had a ball, telling tales and drinking aviation spirit and eating anything that had been too slow to escape Mr StevieSis. Once all the youngsters had left Mr StevieSis fired up the firecone, a feature of many Albertan back yards it seems, and we sat by it until we were completely smoke-cured, talking away the night while the women cleared up.

This we, by which I mean Mr StevieSis and I, had arranged by the simple plan of breaking a few things while trying to "help". It never fails, and though neither the StevieSis nor Mrs Stevie were fooled for an instant that we were non-compost mentis due to a surfeit of Organ Grinders⁵, neither were they willing to try and wait out our "clumsiness".

We left around 11:30pm, when it was just getting dark. There was a nasty moment when Mrs Stevie fired up the motor of the Ford Leviathan Supa-Kab Turbo-X and it inhaled one of the StevieSis's hanging baskets o' flowers from the porch, munched it in the engine, then spat flaming shrapnel out of the exhaust and into the neighbor's yard where it severely scorched some rose bushes, but they just laughed it off as one of Those Things so we pretended we hadn't noticed and drove off into the twilight. As I said to Mrs Stevie, it takes more than a few ruined roses to discommode an Albertan.

Albertans are tough buggers.

1. or would have if a certain hard drive hadn't turned up its toes and a certain famous and expensive software package used to provide a "ghost" backup of same hadn't proved to be as reliable as the Iceberg Avoidance Radar on the Titanic. But there's a place in Manhattan that may be able to replace the controller and get the pictures for a "modest" fee, so that's alright↑
2. Hey! Don't act all superior with me! We are all descended from the same common ancestor that put monkeys and apes on the Earth and if you see stuff like that and aren't interested just because you don't know what the hell it is there is something seriously wrong with you. Monkey curiosity is part of us at the genetic level. If you don't know what something is you are hard-wired to want to know. It is why we came down from the trees and set fire to them↑
3. turns-off?↑
4. the very same one depicted in the diner's mural↑
5. My informal name for the hellish alchemical philtres the StevieSis was creating in The Mighty Wurlitzer⁶ ↑
6. My informal name for the frozen cocktail mill↑

Interlude With Annoyances

Mrs Stevie was complaining to the Stevieling via text that I wasn't responding to her texts on Saturday while she was in Michigan at a wedding.

When informed of her distress at my silence I immediately texted:

Sorry I didn't see your message, I was busy trying to put all the parts of the dryer back together. The good news is that I managed to get the seized-solid motor turning again. The bad news is not for much longer to judge by the noises coming out of the bearings. I can't get the motor out of the dryer so we shall have to buy a new one.¹

I think I just saw a rat in the back garden.²

So: how's your day going?

That should keep her long-distance nagging down to a minimum.

1. A three-hour struggle of man vs machine in a World Gone Mad which I just can't bear to re-live, so you'll have to imagine it. Poke around in the index and you should find a similar event from three years or so ago↑
2. True. No sooner do I think things can't get worse than nature shows me how they can. So, I am destined to become The Mad Rat Poisoner Of Auld Deer Park Towne↑

Canada Trip, Day 2

Dawn came and went and we snoozed on.

We arose, rested, around 8pm and went for breakfast in the chain restaurant downstairs, marveling as we did at the incredible heat in the hotel corridor despite the outside temperature being extremely mild. Sadly, despite the restaurant being part of a chain we've used with great success in the past, today breakfast was inedible with the most bland, plastic-like sausage I've ever personally noshed on.

We were expecting a visit from Ali, the guy who had rented us the car and who had very kindly offered to pick us up at our hotel on Sunday morning and drive us out to the car hire dealership, and he showed up exactly on time to ferry us across town and temporarily sell us transport for the week. It took about 15 minutes to get there and sign the paperwork.

"I'm going to give you a truck" said Ali, waving in the general direction of the window. I could see a line of white Toyota pick-up trucks parked along the service road. All of a sudden the extremely reasonable cost of the car hire (about what a small subcompact would have rented for in New York) made sense.

"Er...We''re gonna need a King Cab" I said. "We have three people we're moving around."

"Yes, yes, yes. I am renting you a King Cab truck. Here, let's go and have a look."

He grabbed the paperwork and led us out the door to the biggest damned truck I could have imagined. It towered over me. It was half as wide again as the Steviemobile and seated about 27.

"I present to you your truck. A most sensible vehicle for this part of Alberta."

"And the mountains of Afghanistan" I muttered, noting the knee-high door sills and bumper lifted from a Chieftain tank. "Do they push-start many bulldozers in this part of Alberta, or is the appeal that one may safely pass over any stray bears one might encounter?"

"Most unsafe to drive over bears, sir" he replied, seriously. "They have learned to roll over and tear out the brake and fuel lines with their mighty claws as you drive. It is most unsafe to coast with no brakes in this part of Alberta and expressly against the terms of the rental agreement."

"I have no intention of driving over any wildlife" I said.

"However" he spoke over my protest "the Ford Leviathan Supa-Kab Turbo-X is fitted with under-frame bear-proof plates upon which their claws cannot find purchase, allowing you to drive over bears, cougars and many other examples of the local wildlife with no danger. Moose pose a separate hazard and you may either buy Moose collision insurance or simply avoid them."

"Where is the boarding ladder kept?" I inquired.

"Ha ha. Let me show you the correct technique. You open the door thus, take a small run up, leap thus and grab this bar, hauling yourself in."

"I'm sorry, Ali," I said. "I don't think..."

"Shuttup and get in!" came the voice of my beloved from somewhere inside. "It's perfect and we are taking it."

Before I could protest the mighty metal beast gave off a mechanical shriek and the engine burst into life. I held on desperately as the terrible suction of the engine's air induction gubbins aspirated huge volumes of air and a passing cat, mixing it with a half gallon or so of vaporized gas so it could be exploded in one of the cylinders before doing it all again.

Mrs Stevie stamped on the accelerator and a terrifying howl rent the air as the coffee-can sized pistons were driven down in their cylinders with about the same force needed to launch a space shuttle then rammed back up by a super-massive crankshaft surely salvaged from the Titanic. The vehicle was visibly trying to flip over on its back as the Newtonian sums were figured out by a universe so unnerved by this behemoth that it was forgetting to carry the odd one.

"Stop making that howling noise and GET IN!" snarled the truck-crazed Mrs Stevie.

"I don't wanna" I whined, but she reached over, grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and pulled me into the cab, almost suffocating me in the luxuriant nap of the Unicorn Hide upholstery.

Once inside with the doors closed we were isolated from the devastating ambiance pollution of the truck, and I began to see the appeal of the thing. Mrs Stevie spent two seconds reviewing the dashboard instrumentation, which looked like it had been lifted from the fire-control console of a battleship, and testing the build-quality of the various controls by wiggling them, then drove down the curb, up the opposite one, across twenty yards of snow ditch, a small herd of elk and the three lane carriageway that was pointing the wrong way, over a crash barrier and finally onto the other three lane carriageway where she combined driving at speed with attempting to figure out what each switch, stick and button did. I assisted her by pointing out possible collision hazards such as buildings and other road users while she practiced unannounced lane changes.

"Stop that screeching and stop cowering in the footwell like that!" she snarled playfully.

We reached the hotel eventually, where a problem raised itself. Everyone else was driving some variation of the vehicle we had, yet for some arcane reason the parking spaces were laid out for the vehicle we thought we'd be renting - a small to mid-sized sedan. Each monster truck was parked with its tires brushing the painted lines. Some people had just decided to park in one and a half spaces, which seemed very sensible when you consider that each truck probably represented a 60 kilobux investment.

I foresaw a problem. Mrs Stevie cannot see-saw a vehicle to save her life. She does not have whatever gland it is that enables one to reverse and steer productively when attempting to shift a vehicle horizontally a few feet by going back and forth, so if her space does not permit the operation to be performed only with forward-direction steering maneuvers she can and does perform five minutes of going backwards and forwards only to end up in exactly the same place she started in.

Mrs Stevie drove back and forth a few times in a futile effort to park inside the lines and far enough from other vehicles to ensure the safety of our Door Ding Deposit before realizing the Ford Leviathan Supa-Kab Turbo-X was in fact only two inches narrower than the stall and giving up. I encouraged her with playful banter and the occasional bout of good-natured laughter until she stopped the truck, whereupon she punched me. I protested that it wasn't my fault she couldn't park to save her life, but this statement of fact only served to trigger a stream of invective and hurtful language.

We went back up to the room to collect The Stevieling, who had very sensibly decided to sit this episode out, and to allow me to change my underwear. The Stevieling was scowling at the television, which was playing an episode of Big Bang.

"Why are you watching that show?" I asked. "You've always said you hated it."

"It's that or the weather, golf or the news" she replied.

"Local news might be a worthwhile use of time" I said. "Call it orientation."

"I do not require orientation in the various ins-and-outs of running a fresh produce stall."

"Eh?" My confusion was palpable.

"Today they are running a special report on the benefits of local produce and where you can find it."

"But I know for a fact there are twelve more channels you could pick" I said, a little bewildered at her obstinacy.

"Six in French, which I do not understand, three weather channels, two channels programming for the 2-4 year old audience and the channel menu. Are we leaving for Granny and Grandad's now?"

"Yes" snapped Mrs Stevie. "Hurry up so I can show you the truck they rented us."

And so we trooped into the hallway, where we were greeted by tropical temperatures again. The entire time we were there the corridor was somehow kept at something like 100 degrees Fahrenheit¹ . The outside temperatures were a blessed relief, being somewhere in the low 70s with no humidity to speak of. Very comfortable for me.

The elevator doors had just opened when Mrs Stevie's phone rang. It was the StevieSis, telling us to come to the parent's house because the StevieDad had fallen and an ambulance was on its way.

We made good time to the parental manse, set on a mountainside about five miles from the hotel, and a few moments after we had entered the house a team of EMTs arrived in a palatial ambulance loaded with high-tech diagnostic equipment. I have never seen such a modern and well-equipped ambulance outside of a TV show.

The EMTs were on first name terms with everyone as it turned out they had been to the house many times before. They determined that the StevieDad had to go back to hospital, whence he had only just emerged after an operation a few days before, and he cheered up. They loaded him and the StevieMum into the wagon and off they went, followed by The StevieSis in The StevieMum's Ford Explorer and us in the Leviathan Supa-Kab Turbo-X.

Mrs Stevie's head was swiveling from side-to-side all the way down the mountain.

"Stop looking for bears to drive over" I said. "You'll put us in the ravine."

"Shuttup. I'm driving" she replied.

We got to the hospital and were immediately confronted by the usual hospital problem - where to park. The miniscule car park seemed to be full every time we arrived, but by driving around for a mere 20 or 30 minutes a space would open up and the Comedy of the Parking would commence as Mrs Stevie would attempt to fit the Leviathan into a space dimensioned for a Volkswagen Beetle. Eventually she put the beast in a stall and we figured out the pay-and-display machine calculus that had us buying a 24 hour pass every time and it was off to find The StevieDad.

The StevieDad was upset about the abrupt derailment of our planned day, and concerned for the rest of our visit and the upcoming wedding. It turned out he had good reason because he had an undiagnosed infection that was to keep him in hospital for the next two weeks.

The hospital has a strict policy about visitors in the emergency room - as many as you like until they get busy. This was good as the entire Canadian Battalion arrived in theater at about the same moment in time. Some of us had to wait in the lounge with comfy chairs while others hovered around the bedside making comforting noises. We rotated in and out of The StevieDad's bay.

We took turns to alternately reassure him and nag him about using his walker until he was properly enraged and ordered us all from the emergency room. I pointed out - quite reasonably - that he couldn't enforce his order on account of leaving his walker in the bedroom, and that if he hadn't left it there he wouldn't have fallen in the first place. I was about to mention the purple veins pulsing on his forehead when one of the electronic boxes he was wired up to started wailing and a stern² nurse arrived and ordered us out.

I should just like to say at this point that during the visit I was constantly impressed by the amount and up-to-dateness of the technology at the fingertips of the Grande Prairie medical infrastructure. They have much newer, better and cleverer stuff than the hospital I visit every so often, and they pay for it all with a sales tax that is less than the NY sales tax. So the next time one of my American Readers listens to the tired old "Canadian Health Care" calumnies I want them to remember this - it cost my parents NOTHING for this excellent care in a state-of-the-art hospital with polite and friendly staff.

We chatted for a bit with The StevieMum and left her with The StevieDad - she wouldn't leave him until he'd been checked in - and went for lunch, promising to return a bit later. We killed some time in the original town center, making a point of popping into Wonderland, an excellent old-fashioned toystore that has a bit of everything in it from Legos to Marionettes. We used to shop there for Canada-specific Playmobil toys for The Stevieling and we did as we always do and loudly bemoaned that we no longer had a kid young enough so we could buy all the awesome new stuff "for her".

That last is true by the way. You could and probably still can buy Playmobil figures and playsets in Canada that cannot be had in the USA. Other parents would often marvel at the Inuit figures and extras in The Stevieling's collection - sleds with dog teams, seal hunters with complete miniature tool sets³, an igloo and so forth. I used to have no respect for Playmobil toys but 20 years down the road, having seen the play value for myself (and having secretly played with some of the stuff because it was so awesome) I have 180'd and recommend them everywhere I can.

We dropped by The StevieDad's ward later that night to nag him about his walker some more, but after only five or ten minutes of playful badinage he became agitated and had to be sedated. I think it might be something to do with his age because he doesn't drink that much coffee. Old people are known to be testy and have short tempers, as was demonstrated when I sat on his gouty foot shortly after we arrived. I don't think having a catheter shoved into his bladder improved his mood for the better either.

We went round to the StevieNiece's house to meet Mr StevieNiece and the StevieNiecelings, including the new baby who I may have mentioned is the most beautiful human being on the planet. We all got to hold her while she slept, though the women hogged her so I didn't get enough baby-holding time. I'll let you into a secret I've so far managed to hide under a gruff pantomime of indifference toward the child: I miss having a baby around the house. I never really recovered from New Daddy Syndrome and little miss StevieGreatNiece is adorable.

Mr StevieNiece is an affable fellow who had his life planned out ahead of him then had the rug pulled out abruptly right after he got wed to The StevieNiece. He has fallen on his feet though, and has a job that, like many in that part of the world⁴, takes him away from home for long periods but pays very well indeed. He and The StevieNiece had invited us to eat with them and he made steaks using a French technique I've never come across before.

The steaks were vacuum packed and cooked slowly using hot water, then removed from the bags and grilled.

I know. It sounds terrible, but the steaks were the most delicious, evenly cooked steaks I've ever personally tasted. For the first time I ate pink steak and enjoyed it. Normally, a steak that color will be raw in the middle and well-done on the outside, but these were cooked evenly and completely all the way through. Perfect, and we were angling for more steak meals ever afterward. He clearly would like to be cooking for a living but as he said to me, the market for an upscale restaurant in Grande Prairie is not large enough to keep one open long. I think his characterization of the town as "Burgerville" was perhaps a trifle harsh, but I could see what he was saying.

The boys showed us their special racing car beds, fabricated by Mr StevieSis their grandfather. He is an excellent carpenter and very inventive in conjunction with The StevieSis. Over at their house the boys kip down in bunk beds made up to look like a pirate ship. The racing cars were sleek, professional looking things that would have fetched a couple of hundred dollars in New York apiece. When I asked granddad what he used, he said "two sawhorses and a jigsaw".

Once the boys were in bed we went downstairs to sip drinks and talk while the women of La Famile Stevie hogged the baby. We had a bit of fun watching the boys on the video monitor their parents had set up while we spoke of jobs and family and when was I going to get to hold the baby for Crom's sake? The StevieNiece and Mr StevieNiece are looking at buying a bigger house and we spoke about properties for a while until it was time to leave.

On the drive home we once again took note of how closely packed the houses were. It seems insane that with all the space they have the developers insist on building houses so close to each other you can touch two by walking between them. The fire risk is substantial.

Our route took us past the railroad and I was surprised to note that the long lines of colorful grain cars that had been a fixture of the landscape on every visit were nowhere in sight. It was harvest time, but all I saw were some small, anonymous gray twin-bay hoppers. Next to the Real Thing these were drab toys. Where were the real grain cars? I wanted to photograph them up close for once. Just my luck they were not around.

We drove into the hotel car park, where Mrs Stevie spent a few minutes lining up the truck with the stall and then we retired, exhausted from the day's events and Mrs Stevie's parking.

1. It occurs to me now that it is possible one of the foreign staff had confused Fahrenheit with Celsius when setting the thermostat. There were many South American people working in the hotel, though I was under the impression that the USA was the last bastion of Fahrenheit. Why people get bent out of shape about that beats me, but it drives some of my UK and Australian forum-buddies into fits of apoplexy at times. Neither scale is used for important stuff, and in real life you only need a five point scale - Hot enough to kill, too hot for the clothes you are wearing, just right for the clothes you are wearing, too cold for the clothes you are wearing and cold enough to kill↑
2. By Canadian standards - she omitted to bracket "everyone should leave now" with "If it wouldn't be too much trouble I think" and "if that's okay with everyone, eh?" ↑
3. The toolsets were confiscated a) because they were too tiny for the small kid The Stevieling was then and 2) The Stevieling would have had a fit if she had found out what those Inuit Playmobils were having for dinner↑
4. Which is basically a way-station for those traveling to and from the oil fields and diamond mines↑