I have returned with more to come

I am back. I apologize for the lack of posting, again. I had some things to say, and I will get to them during the week, but we had a beautiful snow, sleet, ice, freezing rain, rainstorm here over the course of Thursday and Friday. Of course, that left us without power, and subsequently heat, from 3 am Friday morning (I woke to see a flash of light, no street light shining in our bedroom window and then darkness without a clock) until about 10:20 pm Friday night. I was up around seven and tried to call Hydro to see where they stood but the phone was out. I did not put two and two together.

Anyway, I decided to go out on Friday morning. Good thing. I got in the beast and found the Oil Pressure Low light on. I immediately went for an oil change and was told that I was leaking oil from the oil filter. That got fixed and I wondered how long that problem was occurring. I did call the Wife to find out that there was oil all over the driveway. She had gone out Thursday night (it took me close to two hours that night to get from from a twenty five minute drive normally) in the "Beast", so putting two and two together, she must have scraped the undercarriage of the "Beast" on a snowy speedbump on her way home. Oh well, that got cleared up.

It was when we had power restored (we heard the Hydro dudes scream "Woo Hoo!" just before the lights went back on) that I realized that the phone line was out. We had no phone, and Internet, until about 4:30 pm yesterday. It all works again.

I had things to say but I figure I am going to give a Happy Birthday shout out to my aunt, Rhoda, whose birthday is today. She is now the matriarch of our family, though she did not want the title (she got it when my other aunt, her sister, died last year).

I wanted to go back in time. I wanted to go back 23 years to 1984. The date was March 1st and it was a Thursday. I had a psychology midterm on the 2nd (Friday) and had just written a biology midterm on the Wednesday. I only had one class, biology at 9 am on Thursday, and knew I had time to study. I ended up going to the library at York University with a friend. I could have gone home but the cleaning lady was there. At the time, I would joke about going home early on the Thursday so that I could diddle the cleaning lady. The joke was if you had seen our cleaning lady at the time it would have scared you (I know she scared me). She was not the most attractive of women (she was well down the list, near Hatchet Face from John Waters's "Cry Baby". In fact, I have seen prettier crossdressers.) I was also afraid that I could only diddle her using those Playtex rubber gloves, I had a fear I would never get that scent off of my fingers and hands. So, given the possible disturbances of the vacuum and the cleaning lady herself, we headed to York.

We got some good work done, and then we were evacuated. Apparently, there was a bomb threat or something. We did see the police leading some people, in gas masks, down the tank ramp. The tank ramp was an actually ramp that could hold a tank. Apparently, York U. built in the early 70s, took their plans from a proposed California college back in the late 60s. Given the boomer/student "unrest" of the times, a tank ramp was deemed necessary in Cali and the US, but Canada?? It was an anachronism then and was until that sad day when they removed it to make way for the new York University frontage. Unfortunately, the Student Centre with all of its fast food outlets and shops make me pine for the simplicity and damn ugliness of the concrete tank ramp. You know it is bad, when you miss an ugly and useless piece like a tank ramp because it was replaced by, essentially, a mall. The mall may have more use, but the tank ramp had history and gave that ugly, concrete palace something unique to love. Now, there is nothing to love about the place. Oh well, that is progress.

That is it for now. Go forth and diddle the cleaning lady and please remember the tank ramp! Ciao!