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Manatee Country
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Manatees are gentle, slow-moving creatures with no enemies, except for humans. Unfortunately, manatees are close to extinction - many manatee injuries and deaths are due to collisions with watercraft. Does the manatee take the time to wonder what it did to deserve being driven to extinction? Why doesn't the manatee simply stay away from humans and avoid being injured?
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Posted by Wendi Friday, November 10, 2006
Article: Wal-Mart: We're not afraid to say Merry Christmas I never thought I'd say this, but way to go, Wal-Mart. I am so sick and tired of the excessive political correctness we experience these days. I don't want to get into a ruckus about culture and ethnicity because I love diversity, but I draw the line when you take away my culture in my own country. I like that people are free to practice their own culture and beliefs here, but it's wrong for those people to expect me to stop practicing and exhibiting my own culture and beliefs just because they practice something different. Interesting, but not surprising, that the American's did this first -- when I saw this on the news this morning, they mentioned that it was US Wal-Mart stores. Americans tend to feel more strongly about traditional Christian values, especially over the last few years. Anyway, It's about time someone brought back "Christmas". Now we just have to get schools and other businesses to follow suit. And don't forget to refrain from wasting electricity on Christmas lights!! Monday, November 6, 2006
Saturday, August 12, 2006
I think I am beginning to have a thing with birds.. (so far, with ducks, penguins and seagulls) Early this morning I went to the coffee shop for breakfast and was sitting at a table by the window. A weird but loud fluttering sound, then a thud, caught my attention.. I turned towards the noise and a little bird was sitting on the floor beside the corner window. It was one of those little brown birds you see everywhere; what are they, sparrows? Burger would know... the little ones with the feathers in varying shades of brown... you see them in flocks on the grass or in trees in the mornings.. they're the same size and shape as Chickadees. Anyway, the poor thing was sitting in the corner on the dirty floor, looking exausted. It sat there for the longest time, and the more I sat there watching it, the sadder I felt. Who knows how long the poor thing had been trapped inside? The coffee shop was starting to get busy with customers, but they were come-and-go. In the area where I was sitting, it was just me and this middle-aged guy reading a newspaper. I was wondering if I should try and catch the bird so I could let it out, and then started thinking how I would go about doing such a strange thing. I thought maybe if I came at it slowly, I could ease my sweater over it and cover it, scoop it up, and take it safely outside. There were too many people around though.. I was afraid it would cause a commotion and people would get excited and the bird would get even more scared and start flying around again. I thought and thought, and finally decided that when the last of the customers left, I would try and get it outside. After a few minutes, the store cleared out, just me and the reading guy.. so I took off my cardigan and tried to gently make my way over to the tired bird. It surely knew I was coming, and as I got closer I realized my hands were shaking! I wasn't scared of it... it was like I could feel how scared the bird was. I got close enough and brought my sweater down, and it tried to flutter over to the next window, tried to fly out of it, and ended up bouncing off it. How awful! Again, as gently as I could, I tried to come towards it and capture it, and again it fluttered away and banged into the window. My hands shook even more; the poor bird must have been terrified. I got worried that I would end up killing the thing before I could save it! Still, it was obviously very tired and managed to get back into its corner. I'm sure less than a minute had gone by, but it seemed eternal, and I'm sure it seemed even longer to the poor bird. I tried again -- I went over and gently brought my sweater down to the bird.. it tried to skitter away along the floor but I easily got down to it, scooped it into the sweater, and picked it up. It struggled a bit as I first got a hold of it but as I covered it up, it completely calmed down. In fact, if I hadn't seen that I picked it up with my own hands, I would suspect that my sweater was empty! It was so light, it was as if the thing disappeared inside like magic. The only way I knew I still held it was because I could feel the tip of its wing through the fabric, between my two index fingers. So light it was... I went to the door and pushed it open with my hip, then knelt down and opened my hands... I almost expected that my hands would be empty, but as the sweater fabric fell away, the bird poked its head out, sensing the outside air. Then suddenly I felt a powerful push as it lept out of my hands and bulleted through the air to the nearby trees. It was a wild feeling... like there was nothing in my hands, then suddenly the heaviness and force as it took flight. It's incredible how the smallest and gentlest things can have such strong power. I remember years ago I used to go to the RBG in Burlington and Hamilton. First, I would go to the bulk store or the pet store and buy sunflower bird seeds. Then I would wander around one of the forested parts of the gardens and find a spot where the Chickadees were. I would put some seeds in the palm of my hand and stand there holding it out in front of me (you don't have to hold your hand out too far). A chickadee would come over and land on my hand, pick around for a seed it liked, take one in its beak and fly off to a tree branch where it would eat. When that one left, another would take its place, find a seed, and go off to crack it open. One by one, they would take their turn. After a while they would get more comfortable and I would sometimes get two at once! It was an amazing thing to feel the weight of these little creatures on my big, clumsy hand.. their elegant little feet gripping my finger or a fleshy part of my palm. It never hurt, but I could feel how strong they were. I always felt like I was being given a special privilege when the birds would come and land on my hand, a special connection between avian and human. We're the ones who supposedly rule the world, but look at what we've done to it. Polluted the air and the water, put garbage everywhere. Sometimes I think the wild things are more sapient than we are: they treat the earth with respect and leave it as it should be, they follow the natural order of things. It touched me when the birds landed on my hand and it broke my heart when I saw one trapped by the man-made glass and brick. The birds really don't belong on my hand, nor do they belong in buildings. They belong in trees, in the air, in nature. At one time, long ago, humans belonged in nature, too... Tuesday, August 1, 2006
I haven't written in a while, things have been really busy this summer. The good news is that Paul has finally nagged me into going to the sports clinic to find out what the hell is wrong with my feet. I came back earlier this afternoon, and now I'm sitting here with my feet bound with athletic tape. This is my first-ever bondage experience. Strange, strange, strange... but it somehow makes sense.. my feet (mostly the right one) fall asleep when I do my cardio, usually within the first 7 to 10 minutes, and now my big toes are numb all the time, so I checked in at the sports clinic to see what the problem was. They found that I walk like Bigfoot. They didn't actually say "Bigfoot", they used words like "over-pronated", but I am pretty sure they were thinking of Bigfoot's feet when they watched in fascination as I walked back and forth down the length of the room... Anyway, they made me these cute little foam arch supports, and GLUED them to my feet (not my socks or shoes, to my FEET!!) and then they taped up my feet so that they would be restricted to the movements they're supposed to make (anti-Bigfoot movement, apparently). I'm supposed to walk around and work out for a couple of days in my lovely tape-slippers and see if it solves the problem. I'm also supposed to spend a large part of my day stretching my calves and standing in various poses on one foot. This is going to look great around the office: me in tape-slippers standing on one foot. ---- The boring explanation, for those who are interested, and I think I got this right, is that I put my heel down, then put my big toe down and fall into my arch when I walk, instead of rolling from the heel, along the outside of the foot and along the toes like you're supposed to. This totally explains why I always make a slapping sound when I walk, and why my oh-so-elegant sister always called me "Paddle Foot". Anyway, this over-pronation (your ankle kind of dips inwards) does something to the nerves or ligaments in your foot and that's why it goes numb! Tuesday, May 23, 2006
I've been working on my vacation, but what else did you expect? Other people however, have been lazing around all day like bums:
Usually she burrows her whole body right under the covers because she's getting old and doesn't like the air conditioning or the drafts from the windows. Sometimes you can't even tell she's there - it looks like I just made the bed haphazardly (which I do, but not so lumpy!) Anyway, I went in to check on her at lunch time today and found her like that. It struck me as really funny, so I grabbed the cam and took some pictures.
I probably wouldn't look so thrilled if someone was pointing a camera at me in bed, either...
Nighty-night..! Thursday, May 18, 2006
I posted this story in blogspot, and thought what the heck, I'll post it here, too. No, this isn't a cool story about network security and crack codes. This is hacking of another nature. The kind that occurs when you give a drunken friend a pair of scissors. I met this lady a few years ago in our laundry room when I was complaining about needing to get my hair cut but hating going to the hair dresser's. She mentioned that she occasionally cuts and styles hair for friends in her apartment, and if I wanted, she could do mine. She did go through school, but ended up working in a salon for only a month before realizing she hated it. So from then on, this lady has cut my hair. She does it once a year, so I can have shorter hair for the summer. Every April or May we hang out for the day and she does my hair. Instead of paying her with cash, we barter. One year I took her out for sushi and another year I gave her some textbooks about the Internet and taught her some things about email, search engines, and similar tools. This year, I offered a few bottles of home made wine. I happened to have three batches of wine that I had just bottled. Two of these are Niagara Mist (strawberrry and pink grapefruit) -- if you've never had these, they're more like a "cooler" than a wine, and they're yummy. Like a cooler however, you can drink a few glasses pretty fast without realizing you've been drinking until you stand up and try to cut someone's hair. I show up at her place this past Tuesday with the wine. Let's Cheers, she says as she opens one bottle -- just one glass to get relaxed while we sit on the balcony. You guys all know how it goes... one glass turns into a few glasses, turns into too many glasses and whar da hell ish d'schhhhhhhhhizzzerz? She actually said she was too drunk and I should come back tomorrow and I sad, nah, I'm too busy Wednesday, just do it, I don't care... she said no way, and I said, come on..... I flash back to the time I was five and cut off all my sister's blonde curls with the pinking shears. We laughed afterwards, but I could see the worried look in my friend's eye. It was pretty bad. I went back yesterday so she could inspect her handy work and fix it up a little. She was pretty upset, but I couldn't stop laughing... Anyway, it's pretty short. I usually get it cut to my shoulders, but she chopped off an extra couple of inches. It's a bit uneven in some spots, but she fixed that pretty much. Still, it's pretty damn short. I'll be at my usual post on Friday at lunch if you want to have a good laugh. Thursday, May 4, 2006
I do have a lot of new things to add post-strike, but things have been absolutely insane with the so-called "semester completion strategy". In fact, I had officially completed my semester as of noon yesterday when our grades were officially due, but then a bunch of students suddenly decided that 1pm was a great time to mention that they really *meant* to hand in those late assignments and pleasepleaseplease could I mark them anyway?? Well, if that's you, you suck. You'll have to sweat it out until Monday. Be glad that I'm taking the weekend to think about it, otherwise I'd readily tell you where to stuff those assignments. Anyway, I'm posting because, not having to teach today, I've been watching news channels for the last 16 or 17 hours and have been inundated with the Tim Horton's Goes to Afghanistan story. Don't you just love how "Canadian" this story appears to be? Well, hate to break it to those of you of the uneducated (i.e. don't ever read anything) sphere, but Tim Horton's is not Canadian!! I know, you've probably been sucked in by the brand imaging and visioning from this company's latest commercials... like the young guys and the old couple each going across Canada from opposite directions, stopping at each donut shop along the way.. or my "favourite", the Asian gentleman watching his son play hockey while he finally overcomes the akward relationship with his academically-agressive dad (who'd been watching his own son play hockey for years).. yeah, yeah, yeah so Tim Horton's is Canadian and is symbolic of multiculturalism, coffee, hockey, etc.. NOT!!! They are just playing with your consumption-ready brains!! Check it out - Tim's is owned by Wendy's International, an American company. Just because the first store was in Hamilton (on Parkdale, and still there, trust me, I've been there many times) and their headquarters in Oakville, means shit. The guys who make all the extra profits off the underpaid teenaged and elderly staff are American. You know what that means: it's only a matter of time before children in China are getting paid 2 cents a day to make donuts...!!! So, for all of those fantastic Canadians out in Afghanistan and other overseas locations, we're proud of you and grateful for your efforts and hard work so far away from home. If Tim's makes your day, well then great, all the power to ya'. Just remember that it's only being served by Canadians. The product is not manufactured by Canadians or grown by Canadians; your hard-earned money is not going towards a Canadian company. But with sincere honesty I do wish happy coffee-drinking to you, and safe travels to all those serving, both in the Canadian military and those serving non-Canadian coffee to Canadian military personnel. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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