Down the Bog

I read a story yesterday about a woman who stabbed her partner because he’d eaten a dinner that she was going to eat. Apparently they’d been due to meet for a drink but she failed to turn up so he went home, checked out the fridge, saw the pork chop dinner and decided to tuck in. She came home, was not amused and one thing led to another. She ended up stabbing him in the leg although she claimed it was accidental.

If you read the news story on the Daily Mail website I taken exception to the attempt at an amusing picture of the woman holding a fork. She was found guilty and things may just have got out of hand but a single stab wound can be fatal even in the leg and I have to ask if this supposed “comical” method of reporting would have been used if it had been the man who was responsible for the wounding? Would it have been so amusing then? Would there have been a picture of him holding the fork?

Further to that: Would he have just got a nine month suspended sentence? There’s no doubt in my mind that women are favoured in these cases and it’s just not right. Violence between couples is unacceptable whoever is responsible for it and men and women should be treated equally. Newspapers should also report in a responsible way.

Until recently I hadn’t really tinkered with RSS feeds. A lot of websites offer the facility to subscribe to an RSS feed so as to be kept informed on updated news articles or in the case of this site a new blog entry.

So over the weekend I downloaded a program called RSS Bandit, installed it and set it up to keep me updated on my favourite blogs and websites. Instead of surfing my favourite sites with my normal browser I just open RSS Bandit and it automatically checks for the latest news and blog entries. I’m then able to read all the latest news within the program. It’s a great way to keep updated.

So if you’re unsure how to but you want to keep up to date with this blog just right-click on the RSS feed button at the top or bottom of this page and in Internet Explorer you’ll get the option to subscribe to the blog with RSS Bandit (if it’s installed). If you’re using Mozilla then you’ll need to select “copy link location” and paste this as a new subscription into your RSS program. It will then keep you updated on anything new on the blog.

Honestly, this is such a handy tool and I’m really surprised at myself for missing out on the value of this until now.

Jake was diagnosed as having autism a while ago and although he’s a delightful little boy we’re anxiously looking at his development to see that he continues to move forward and make progress.

I’ve just uploaded a video to my movie site to show how he now has learnt to use the slide and get some real fun out of it. Until recently he would only use it once and then get distracted. Now he seems to really enjoy it and it’s great to see.

I use Skype to phone home to my family in the UK and I’ve always been very pleased with it. Not just because of the good service but also the good rates per minute. It’s a very cheap call and means that I can call from my computer to my Mum’s phone and afford to have frequent, lengthy conversations.

It’s actually even cheaper if it’s from one computer to another because it’s free to use in that way but today I tried the conference call facility to have a three way conversation with two of my daughters. Hannah in England and Sarah in Edmonton, Alberta. We were all using our computers so it didn’t cost us anything and we were able to have a very relaxed and enjoyable conversation between the three of us for around two hours. It felt like we were all in the same room and we actually haven’t been for a couple of years or so.

So it was a great way for all three of us to be catching up at the same time and definitely something we’ll do again soon.

I was reading about duct tape the other day and I had no idea that it used to be called duck tape. Apparently it had this name because it was made from a kind of cotton canvas called “duck” which was waterproof.

I don’t think I’d ever used duct tape before moving to Canada but it’s such a great thing to have on hand for all types of jobs.

Here are a few good uses that duct tape has been put to:

Good for removing warts. The tape irritates the wart and causes the immune system to start up and attack the virus that causes the wart. I’ve no idea if it works and I don’t recommend it from ever having tried it. I haven’t.

A farmer in Maine, USA used it on a cow when it had a large cut. The duct tape held the wound together until healed.

Another farmer used the same technique on a chicken.

Here in Canada, when calves are born in the severe cold their ears can sometimes freeze so the farmers tape their ears to their heads to keep them warm with duct tape.

Astronaut Bill Shepherd and Cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko pieced together scraps of aluminium with they then attached a duct tape top to for use as a table on the international space station.

Now I didn’t just know all this stuff but I read it in “Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader” the sixteenth edition. I love these books because they’re just so entertaining with facts and accounts of real life that are the perfect reading length when one is tied up in the washroom. To be honest with you sometimes I end up spending a little longer than I planned there.

Anyway I’d hate to take credit for the duct tape story but it’s this kind of thing in these books that I find so interesting. I’m not sure that I ever saw the bathroom readers  before moving to Canada but I thoroughly recommend them because they are so absorbing to read as opposed to the paper used within being absorbent!

So then. Global warming. Being the rather cynical person that I am I find that I have reservations about the whole global warming situation. I can’t base that statement on any science but I just find myself thinking that probably, maybe in a couple of hundred years our great, great, great, great grandchildren will be saying,

“Isn’t it amazing how they used to think that human kind were responsible for global warming?”

“Here we are now and it’s bloody cold!”

But then again maybe we are causing it to happen just as all those clever and well paid scientists, along with all the I-want-to-have-a-high-profile politicians are saying. It’s big business after all but just remember that science gets things wrong a lot before they get it right before they find out they were wrong before they find out they were right. Another university grant please.

Do you know that when I was at school in the first half of the 1970’s that I can remember one teacher saying that scientists were predicting that we were close to entering another ice age.

I’m a cynic I know but whatever the truth of the situation I certainly don’t see the point of wasteful practise and I’m absolutely all for recycling and conserving our planet’s resources. Just because something can be thrown away doesn’t mean that we have to.

Here at home we have all of the cost efficient light bulbs in out light fittings and I feel quite smug about that.

I came across this site this morning. It’s all about offsetting our carbon footprint so that for example if we take a flight we leave a carbon footprint. We’ve used the earth’s resources, we’ve polluted and we need to make things right.

So the the website has some tools and information to help us monitor what kind of footprint we are leaving behind and then gives us the opportunity to make recompense financially and that money is privately put towards some “green” schemes across the planet.

So, a nice idea all-in-all and I’m not about to criticize it. One of the site’s handy features was a tool for seeing what kind of emission output the car we drive is responsible for. We now own a Ford Taurus and I was pleasantly surprised to see that it’s emission level was lower than our previous Dodge Caravan. So we’re heading in the right direction.

The website then makes an assessment as to what payment should be made as compensation for the carbon footprint that our car leaves behind for a year and then it’s time to make a decision about paying up. Depending on our sense of responsibility and conscience of course. Oh, and if we believe which I suppose, in a round about kind-of-way I do.

This evening I had a glass of white wine. It’s ages since I last indulged but it was rather pleasant and I’ll have to do it again sometime.

So feeling somewhat relaxed I sat down to watch the 2001 movie “Donnie Darko” on DVD. My daughter is a big fan of this movie and has watched it several times so I feared it might be a bit of a teen flick but I decided to give it a go anyway.

I guess my concerns over taking the movie seriously was that it featured an overgrown bunny rabbit but I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying this was the freakiest most ugliest bunny rabbit I’ve ever seen. In fact the word “bunny” doesn’t deserve to be attached to the word “rabbit”.

The movie itself? Well, I didn’t think that I’d completely understood it so afterwards I resorted to looking it up on Wikipedia. Having read about it I realised that I more or less had understood it by watching the movie and it was just a time travel story really.

I think people understand it to be that much more but I’m not sure about that. People read much too much into movies. I saw one comment that claimed that the character of Donnie Darko actually represented Jesus. So there you go. I certainly didn’t pick up on that one but I think on balance that the movie was aimed at a younger audience.

Despite it’s apparent cult following I’m not sure I’ll be watching it for a second time. Maybe I will the next time I have a glass of wine. I’m an occasional drinker so it wouldn’t take too many glasses for me to start seeing my own, oversized rabbit!

I got one of those bogus and yet amusing emails yesterday advising me that my Paypal account had been compromised and that I would be unable to access it until I followed the link in the email and entered my personal account details.

I’ve copied the main content here.

“We have noticed several attempts of fraud. Seems like somebody tried to access your account. You are able to log into your account but all your payments are suspended untill you will update your personal information. PayPal works day and night to help keep your identity safe. That’s why it has come to our attention that your PayPal account information needs to be updated as part of our continuing commitment to protect your account and to reduce the instance of fraud on our website. If you could take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and update your personal records you will not run into any future problems with the online service”

Just reading through it leaves me with the impression that it’s completely bogus. Expressions like “seems like someone tried to access your account” makes me smile seeing as it’s trying to portray an official communication from Paypal with such poor writing.

I don’t know if it originates from overseas where the writers native tongue isn’t english or whether it’s someone who is not very good at writing but they could at least make an effort to write properly. On the other hand it’s much more amusing this way.

I’m being flippant but of course it’s worth emphasising that no financial institution or company will write to it’s customers asking them to follow a link and give their personal details or password. It will never happen unless it’s an attempt at fraud.

I like to feel that I can see these attempts a mile off but newcomers to the web (and there are still lots of them) quite possibly won’t and need to realise the importance of ignoring such nonsense.

I just thought I’d offer a reminder that our webcam can be viewed on this blog. It’s situated in our kitchen so we call it, unsurprisingly, our kitchencam.

It enables our family and friends to keep tabs on us and see what we’re cooking for dinner. Sometimes I turn the camera to face into our living room so that webcam viewers can see whats on television. That way you’ll be able to keep up with the Canadian television schedules.

So, okay you won’t be able to do that but it’s still worth checking out. See you on the webcam or rather you’ll see us!

The twentieth of September saw the three year anniversary of our arrival in Canada where we took on our Permanent Resident status. I really don’t know where the time has gone because it only seems like yesterday. But on the other hand so much seems to have happened since then that those three years seem to have been like a lifetime.

And I’ve yet to go back to Britain for a visit.

We’ve done a few things since we’ve been here. We bought a house here in Ontario which eighteen months later we sold when we tried an abortive move to Edmonton, Alberta. It was just too expensive for us and so we moved back and bought another house in our old town with a greater appreciation for what we now had.

It also meant that we’ve driven from Montreal to Edmonton and back again.Some two thousand miles or more each way and that’s not something every Canadian can say they’ve done!

My eldest daughter, Hannah chose to move back to the UK after being here for the first ten months and Sarah, my second daughter chose to stay in Edmonton with her boyfriend Bill because they felt good things were there for them. Our daughter Abby was born last November and it was earlier this year when our three year old son, Jake was identified as being autistic although he continues to delight us every day.

So we’re now in the position to ask the Canadian government if they’d be okay about us becoming Canadian citizens. Our residency status allows us to live here indefinitely as long as we spend two out of every five years on Canadian soil but we’d really like to become citizens as we see our long-term future here and even if we were to move back to England citizenship would allow us the option of moving back to Canada again. Who ever knows where their future will take them?

So making the application is the next thing to do although I note that it’s going to cost $200 per person in Canadian citizenship application fees from the information I’ve read so I’d better get saving.