“Oops!  Sorry.  I measured wrong.  This board is too short.  Won’t fit.  But I checked it.  It was my fault.  Better cut another”.

“OK.”

“Oops!  This board is too short, too.  But I checked my measurement.  I was right this time.  You must have cut wrong!”

“Really?  OK?  Give it to me again.”

And that is how ordering building materials becomes a crap-shoot.  If I measure everything up and add 10%, then I am doing what professional builders do.  Mind you, I really should add 20% because pros also know how to measure everything up.  I don’t.  But when you cut three boards to get one correct one, that suggests ordering somewhere around 300% extra and no amount of measuring is going to be useful in that case.  Gross and profligate incompetence simply adds up.

“Well, I am building a roof 20 by 24 so that is 480 square feet.  Better give me at least 800 square feet.”

The building supply guy just looks at me strangely.

“I make mistakes.”  He looks at me more.  Squinting.   “I make a lot of mistakes.”

He is dumbfounded.

“I work with my wife.”

“Oh, now I get it!  Women, eh?”

I really want to leave it at that but I know it will come back to bite me.  Somehow.  His wife probably goes to yoga or bookclub with my wife.  It just has to be that way.

“Well, it is not really all her fault.  Not really.  She measures and I cut.  Her measuring is pretty bad but where she might get it right, I screw up the cut.  Together, we’re hopeless”.

“You realize I have to tell this to the other guys who work here?”

“Yeah.  I know.”

“Sorry.”

“Me, too.  But think of it this way: I get two sheds.  One I planned for, the other smaller one from the off-cuts.  I call it building Matryoshka style”.

“Huh?!”

Short rant.  Not much, really.  Just hasta get said.

Government senator and Harper appointee Pamela (Pam) Wallin ‘misunderstood’ the admittedly lax and ineffectively enforced rules on government expense spending to the tune of approximately $180,000.  In other words, she cheated the public on her expenses.  She cheated the country for which she was supposedly representing.  She cheated the government, the people and she tried to cheat the auditors.  She spent, she lied, she obstructed and she obfuscated.  And she did this on top of the staggering salary she gets for merely showing up now and then to do virtually nothing ‘cept what she is told to do by the Prime Minister and his inner political circle.

But eventually she got caught (by the CBC mostly) and so the government put the hammer down!  “Pay up what you owe us or we will dock your pay!” 

“Dock your pay!?”  

Guys go to jail for smoking marijuana (Well, they did.  I have a friend who did four years in Northern Saskatchewan for that).  Guys go to war for their country and then get stiffed for medical benefits and such.  Somebody shouts rape and some guy is ruined – even before the trial!  The RCMP taser and shoot people who pose no real risk to anyone.  None of that is fair.  None of that is just.  None of that is right.

But this has nothing right about it.  NOTHING.  Everything about this story is wrong and it just gets wronger and wronger.

Maybe a better way to put it is this: a guy steals a few loaves of bread over a few years and sleeps under a bridge in between times and they put that poor jerk in jail (maybe a taser or two).  The elite steal and get away with it 99% of the time.  When they get caught, nothing happens.   Pamela Wallin will get her pay docked!??????? 

If you ignore for a minute the original sin (theft by any other name) and you ignore the lies and resistance (hiring lawyers to fight the auditors’ findings) and you ignore the uselessness of the function in the first place and the other $120-something in expenses they allowed along with her overly generous salary, you simply cannot ignore that her behaviour was not befitting that of an exalted senator.  She violated the public trust.  She was – in no way – acting on behalf of the people.  The woman cheated her employer (and we are her employer!) – plain and simple.  She’s a crook.

She should be fired.  Canned.  Booted out.  Escorted from the building.  Of course she should pay back what she filched but first she should be sent packing.  Like, right now!  And she should make restitution in some other way than being paid by the people to pay back the people!

What bloody nonsense!  And the senate themselves are proposing this ‘way-to-pay-back’ as a solution!  Is there any question about the need for the senate?  Well, at least the unelected, pork-barrel style senate that we currently have…..

I don’t think so.  They really have to go.

And it ain’t just Pam.

Sal’s sister, M, is here for a few days.  She’s good.  Funny, too.  She is a lot like Sal and, consequently, up for anything.  And with a smile to boot.  Climb a mountain, work on the roof of the shed, cook, clean, play with the dogs…..M is in like a dirty shirt on all things.  With gusto.   Some kind of family gene, I guess.  They all seem to have it.  Fatigue is not part of the equation until five seconds before they conk out.  Then they sleep like babies til the next day when they crank it up, go like a train with a great attitude and move mountains in the process.  I wish I could bottle this stuff.

Mind you, there are quirks.  Plenty of quirks.  And, interestingly, they each have their own unique set of quirks.  M is a garage-saler.  Every Saturday she and her ‘group’ go to local garage sales and ‘collect’.  ‘Course, after awhile, they are practically knee deep in extra junk but then they – what else!? – hold a garage sale!  To M, there is an obvious logic to all that.

I can’t list Sal’s quirks.  I am sure you understand.

I guess if I had to boil it all down, it is the family attitude.  Life is attitude and attitude is everything.  They have great attitudes and therefore have great lives.  It is a delight to see.  It is even better to be the recipient of all that great attitude.  When M comes, she brings scotch and salmon and a willingness to help on projects.  And she fits right in.  Doesn’t get any better than that.  Plus she and her sister gab all the time.  I like that.  Don’t ask me why.  A quirk of my own, I guess.  But I like it that they get along so well.  It’s good.

M might be our last guest this season.  Nice to end on a high note.  Might get a couple of Wférs.  Might not.  And, if the Wférs come, we will share them with neighbours.  And, anyway, Wférs are guests but they are not the same kinda guests as we have had throughout this summer.  Usually in their early 20’s and from foreign countries, Wférs aren’t friends or family (altho some have turned out like that!), they are guest-workers.  They help chop wood and that sort of thing.  They, too, are good as a rule but they are not like friends and family.  I am sure you understand.  M is our last real guest.

Progress is slow on the studio, of course.  But there is progress.  That is good.    Weather is lovely.  All the locals hammering and sawing and up for their projects.  Dinner parties (potluck) every week at the very least.  Dogs are happy.  Trips to town minimized.

Tís a good time of the year.

A reader:  “Are you OK?  It’s been six days since you last blogged!”

Answer:  “Really?  That long?  Not much to say, I guess.  But thanks for the prompt.”

Which is not entirely true.  I always have something to say. But right now all that I would have to say is ranting.  And people don’t like that.  Even I don’t.

Rant #29:  Syria worries me.  But Harper worries me more.  Harper may commit Canada to a war in Syria.  And Harper may do that without even having a conversation about it in parliament.   Stephen (the) King may just rule us into a massive tar baby.  He is proroguing parliament again and consulting only back room boys.  Another horror novel.  Great!

Yeah, I know...’for evil to be done, good people only have to do nothing’.  From the Holocaust to Rwanda.  From our aboriginals to Wiebo Ludwig, we Canucks have a pretty good track record of doing nothing.  Canada is often evil in it’s absentia.

But sometimes, taking time for second thoughts is a good idea.  This may be one of those times.  I think it is.

And this rant is about exactly that.  This is mostly about reacting to unproven political claims.  And, worse, there seems to be an impatience to getting involved without waiting to have those claims substantiated by neutral UN investigators who are in the process of doing that job!  It just smells.  It stinks, really. Canada, the Johnny-come-lately of politics, is hot to trot!

Methinks something is in it for Harper.

And that is why I haven’t written.  That little rant above has little to do with living off the grid.

But this does:

We have guests of course.  Our current guest is an old friend.  Haven’t seen him for years.  We barely recognized each other at the ferry pick-up.  Two old guys staring at one another to be sure if the person was who we thought they were.

He’s a committed city guy.  Invested heavily there.  In every way.  But, as he is getting on too, starting to weary of the grind.  Wondering what comes next.  Looking around to see what others have done.  That was the main reason for this visit.  It is a reconnoiter for the soul.  His.  Friendship counts, of course, but more importantly, we had embarked on a bigger leap in retirement than most and were worth a visit for that reason alone.

His eyes bugged out!

Mind you, everyone’s eyes are bugged out the first day.  It is all so ‘different’ from urban living, the conversation often turns to what similarities there are.  “Sheesh, this is hardly wilderness living, is it?  I mean, you have a freezer, dry wall, milk for your tea and OMYGAWD! You even have a large flat screen to watch movies!  Holy!  I kinda expected bears and outhouses, ya know?”

“We got bears.”

Eyes bugging out, looking around the property quickly, “Where?  Where?”

“They come down in late fall to the local orchards.  Some of our neighbours have bears in the garden every year.”

“Do they come here?”

“No.  We don’t have an orchard.”

“Wow!  Geez, I really like the rocks, too.  Weird, eh?  And I really like your site.  Perched on big granite.  Cool.  Would it be safe in an earthquake?  And the view!  Geez, I really like the view.  Boats.  Eagles.  That’s pretty neat.  How long could you live out here without having to go to the store?”

And so it goes for awhile.  I enjoy it.  I like to describe our life out here.  I like to show people.  It’s always fun.  But I have to watch what I say.  I am a bit of a preacher by nature.  And now that I have discovered nature, I find myself preaching.  “Yeah.  You should consider chucking it all in and buying a splitting maul and moving out here.”

“Ohhhhhhhhhh……I dunno about that….ya know…..no Starbucks.  My life is back there, ya know?  I like my work.  And Peggy likes her routines, you know.  She’s got her life there, too.  And she doesn’t like bears.  Or the water.  I don’t think this is the kind of place for her.  She likes to shop.  We aren’t like you guys.  I don’t think we could do it.”

I used to argue that we are indeed like each other and that they could, in fact, do it but that was not the real discussion.  Not really.  Mostly they were here for perspective gathering.  We were visited to dispell the notion of going feral rather than to confirm it.  People come to see us and feel good but they feel even better going back home.  That is the role we play.  That is the way it is.

And we have come to accept that.  We are simply one of the boundaries from which one bounces back toward the middle.

We’ve been here almost ten years.  Feels like one.  Maybe two.  It’s probably because it is all still so new and we still have so much to do.  So much to learn.  It is also because, as we get older, time seems to go by a lot faster.  The days seem to be a blur.  Whatever the reason, it does not feel stale yet – no boredom, no itch to scratch.  I am strangely satisfied.

That is weird.

‘Course, this summer was and still is a whirlwind.  Sal figures we have had something like 13 uncommitted days to ourselves since May.  The rest were booked with guests or restocking trips or the odd appointment in town.  Maybe there is no itch because we have been too busy to notice one.  But I don’t think so.  I think we are happy.  Maybe even content.

I’ll get back to you on that.

I can say that on each of those thirteen days and not just a few of the busy ones we have remarked to each other, “Well, it just doesn’t get any better, does it?”

So why have I been thinking of RVs again?

Because, I have.  I can’t deny it.  There may not be an itch to scratch but there is the hint of one……….it is the hint of a future itch that might need scratching by the time winter comes.  Maybe.  I dunno.  Just sayin’.   Thinkin’ of south.  Arizona.  Trade in our dogs for little blue poodles and get us some Tilley hats.  You know?

Seriously.  This is good.  And we are happy.  And that will not likely change for some time.  But the original plan – such as it was – had us going south once in awhile and last year we did not.  I think this year we will.  There is something about going south for the winter that is not in itself so great as it is the coming back in the spring that seems so good.  Almost like leaving makes the heart grow fonder.  I do know that south never feels so good as north does when I come home.

God, some people are weird, aren’t they?

My neighbour got conned.  By me.  And I am not proud of it.  Well, I wasn’t until yesterday.  Now I am.

R had a hard approach to his site.  Water access only is a term that can mean ‘easy access’ to the beach or very hard access to a cliff face.  He had a pretty difficult approach (somewhere in between beach and cliff face) and it was getting tiresome for him and his wife to say the least.  I had a chance to get some ramp and dock materials at salvage prices and I bought them to improve my own access.  “Hey, neighbour!?  Why don’t you buy some of this junk with me and rig up a ramp and dock.  Should be able to put that puppy together for about $500.  Piece o’ cake.”

“Five hundred?  Ya think?  But, geez, I dunno…..lots of work….kinda hard….geez…..”

“Oh, don’t be a wuss.  Just say yes and get on with it!”

And so he did.  But my neighbour does not do things by half.  In fact, he does things better than an engineer, fabricator, industrial designer and a gang of slaves combined.  Over the last year, he planned, machined, fabricated, assembled and constructed  major improvements to the purchase and put them on the beach awaiting the hand of God to lift it all in place.  The new components were impressive.  But, until the installation was done, they were also useless.

And God was slow in coming.

“You and your %$#@! $500!!!  I am into this now for $5,000 and it is still sitting on the beach!”

I didn’t actually hear that.  He was talking into the air as I had made myself scarce for the last few months.  I couldn’t hear the actual cursing but a fist shaking in the air in my direction was communicative enough.  I stayed away.  I was tempted to sneak over and yell, ‘Piece ‘o cake‘ in his direction (I have a twisted sense of humour) but I think he is armed.  I definitely felt he was dangerous.  Discretion is definitely the better part of valour in this situation.

God, it seems, is a barge.  And the barge eventually came.  It lifted and it put in to place my neighbour’s magnificent $5,000 new and improved ramp and dock yesterday (my mis-estimate-of-cost excuse?  My wife claims I tend to add or delete zeros when I do math in my head.  She may be right).

It was a delight to see it installed (and with not just some small relief for me).  Everything came together like the work of the swiss watchmaker my neighbour is at heart.

“Hey Dave, why don’t you and Sal come over tonight and celebrate the completion of the dock?”

“See!?  I told ya!  Piece ó cake!  We’ll be there!!”

You’d think I’d have a lot to say – what with all the guests and all?

But I don’t.

The days fly by.  The folks come and go.  The work-around-the-house has virtually stopped.  It’s a holiday.  Kinda.  Whether you want one or not.

Face it, this is not the kind of life one needs a holiday from.

Still, it is all very nice in a lethargic kinda way.

Well, we are busy when we have guests so it is not really lethargic in that sense.  Cooking, cleaning, shopping-when-you-can and just plain ‘visiting’ takes a lot of time.  And energy.  It is just somewhat unconstructive and, for some reason, I have got construction in my head.  It is a phase, I guess.  The terrible twos, the frightening fours, the tumultuous teens and the still-sexy-but-constructive sixties, eh?

It will pass.

I enjoyed G, Sal’s father’s sailing buddy.  He and I worked well together.  We didn’t do much and what we did wasn’t right but we whiled away a few hours in a pleasant carpenter-kinda way.  It was good.  And, more to the point, we were still talking to one another after a day of working together!!

It is so much different working with men than my wife.  You’d think they were a different species.  And she works well with other women!!??  So, the old from-Mars and from-Venus thing is still strong after all these years!  Mind you, Sal and I ‘patch things up’ quickly and patching is kind of a fun way to while away a bit of time so I am not complaining.  Just sayin’….

Probably said too much…….she does ‘edit’ this stuff, ya know.

Oh well, I am in the mood for a little patching.

Well, the whales showed up again yesterday.  Twice!  Once going north and then, a few hours later, they came back south.  Day-trippin’.

Wild Boys

And eating, I think.  On the other side of the channel I saw what seemed like a school of Pacific White-sided dolphins.  Not unusual.  They are fairly common around here.  But on this side I saw a pod of orcas running parallel to them.  Maybe a half dozen orcas.  Big ones, tho.  They kept apart from the dolphins by a few hundred yards.  Next thing I know there was a lot of leaping and splashing about on the dolphin side.

And some of the orcas began surfacing now and then somewhere in between.

On a few occasions it was pretty clear that some kind of thrashing, swirling, slapping conflict was happening but to be accurate about it is difficult.  It is hard to distinguish an orca from a dolphin except for size and they were then a good distance up the channel.

Still, I think it was lunch-on-the-go for the orcas.  And the dolphins were lunch.

A few hours later, when the orcas went south, there were no dolphins to be seen.  Some may have escaped through the pass just a bit further north.  Some may have slipped through a narrow channel a little further along from the pass but it is hard to know who made it to safety and who made it to the buffet.

We have seen this kind of herding behaviour before.  The orcas slowly gather their prey into a constrained place and then dive in.  For every orca tidbit caught, several tidbits get away.  Those who get away scatter as individuals, probably schooling again later.

It is impossible to do a before and after count.

The only constant is that we see a school of dolphins and then we don’t.  But when we see a pod of say, seven orcas we still see them as a pod of seven when the action subsides.  We don’t see any dolphins.  The orcas can’t eat them all – there is always more dolphin-mass than orca-mass so a good portion of the dolphins must get away.  But we don’t see them.

The orcas we saw yesterday looked familiar.  It is not so much the facial expressions or body profiles that stick out as it is the dorsal fins (which, of course really stick out) and the number of such big fins in a group.  This group – I am pretty sure – is the ‘wild boys’.  Many are large males.  It is not a big pod (6 or 7) but the members are big guys.   And they are always hunting….well, at least on the few occasions I have seen them, they were.  This not a resident pod — they are just movin’ on through, and these guys are always on a hunt of some kind and it usually involves seals, dolphins and or porpoises.

The orca pods really do seem to act like I imagine wolf-packs to act.  The parallel and comparison of orcas to wolf is a native theme and I can see it.  Now.  With the wild boys.

SIDEBAR:  A lot of whales these past few days.  Orcas.  Hunting.  Going up and down the channel.  Sometimes followed by half a dozen whale-watcher boats.  ‘Oooooohíng and ‘aaahíng.  It is quite the spectacle at times.  Interesting. 

We’re back in the thick of it……..visitors.  But, as usual, we like ’em.  Sal’s dad (90) just sailed up from southern BC and is visiting with a sailing buddy.  We’ll eat, drink and be merry for a couple of days and then they’ll sail home.  Takes a week or so to get up here and the same amount back.  So we hope they have a good time.

We should all be sailing, drinking and being merry at 90!  But I think it is best to start practising now if you want to be good at it at 90.  That is the theory, anyway.

The sailing buddy and I will likely do a little construction work this afternoon.  Try to figure out how to do what I need to do.  Maybe get the gable ends up on the studio.  I am challenged by some angles and engineering so it will be good to have a second opinion.  Someone else to blame, anyway.  (Poor guy.  Just wants to help.  Little does he know that what I need more than anything is a scapegoat! )

I’m honest about it, tho.  I told him.  I told him I needed a scapegoat but I mumbled a bit and it sounded more like scaffold to him.  So, he volunteered to help.  I am sure he’ll be surprised when I start yelling at him.  Oh well, no good deed is supposed to go unpunished.

I raised the fourth wall of the workshop the other day with the help of another guest.  He, too, liked to get his hands-on construction experience as part of his eating, drinking and merry-making vacation time.  This is an older male syndrome of sorts.  The women don’t feel the need.  The young guys aren’t so keen as a rule. It is the older guys.   And I like it.  Let the old wanna-be carpenters come!

Real carpenters go to the all-inclusive resort in the Caribean in the winter.  They are busy working in the summer.  I don’t get real carpenters.  I get the summer-weekend-hobby-guy-kind.  But, for me, they are the best.  They may even know more than me (OK, they all know more than me!) but they defer to my judgment because of the eating and drinking component.  So, I get my way.  I get to be the boss for once.

Sal is busy prepping for the eating and drinking part.

I am the boss unless she comes out to see what we are up to……………. 

Plus these guys are ‘real keen’ and I like to exploit that kind of ready-to-martyr kind of energy.  “See those beams?  The ones with the creosote?  You may wish to get some newspaper for your clothes first.  That stuff is horrible.  We are going to need them all piled up at the top of this hill.  You get started.  I’ll be right back….”

Hey!  Somebody has to carry them!

And I do come back………..later………usually just after the last of the beams has settled on the pile at the top……………don’t forget…………….there is eating and drinking………….soon……..Hey!  I don’t feel guilty.   Did I mention the merry-making?

With the new satellite ISP service comes changes.  Passwords, e-mail addresses, that sort of thing.  I am sure that making those changes is easy for those of you who are digitally hip but for me, it is a smidge of a challenge.  So, I approach it the way I do most things difficult.  I ask Sal to do it.

But as marvelous as she is, she is no more digitally hip than I am so we had to do it together.  And, of course, her list is much the same as mine.  I had over 500 addresses.  And I had to tell them all my new e-mail address.  And, I am ashamed to admit it – I could only place about half of them.  “Riley Henderson?  Who the hell is that?  What’s his e-mail address?  Geo-slime@Octopus.com?  Who calls themselves ‘geo-slime’ and why do I know him?”

Multiplied by two hundred or so.

And passwords..!!!  Don’t get me started on passwords!  Don’t get me started because I can’t remember them.  What a horror show!  Of course, I have a couple of favourites,  like Maddog.  But ‘Maddog’ doesn’t have 8 characters or a number – which seemed to become a requirement after I had my password memorized – so I guess I went to Maddogs, Maddogandpudding, Maddogpudding, Maddog123 and so on.  In other words…no idea.

The only good part is that I don’t care that much.  I can’t get on the woodchopper’s forum.  So what?  I know how to chop wood now.  I can’t get on the Ex-pats in Hong Kong forum.  But they don’t miss me.  I don’t miss them.  So, I am good.  I’d like to get on the Honda 50 outboard forum but the engine is runnning good and I may just have to re-register or something when the time comes to learn all about the engine once again.  I am sure there is a better way but, like I said, I don’t care that much.

But I will.

That is the thing about damn computers……………ten steps away and I have forgotten about them.  I don’t care.  I am doing something else.  But first I have to get the ten steps away.  There seems to be some kind of invisible black hole around my computer.  It draws and sucks me in.  And, while I am here, I seem to care about all sorts of things.  ‘Ooooh…..the forum on geo-slime………!’   But, as soon as I get out of it’s gravitational pull, I am free!  So free, that I forget stuff.  Like passwords.  And whatever the hell geo-slime is.

It is like some kind of duality-thing.  There is the real me and then there is the digital me.  And we are separated by ten steps.  And a different memory.  Whatever.

I am never ever going to change my service provider again.