Telegram! Telegram!

Ever send a telegram? I have. It was in 1993, and I was travelling in Europe. It was a pre Internet cafe, pre cell phone, pre text message era. Just a few years later, a friend doing the same adventure kept in touch world wide with email. The world has changed a lot.

At the time though, I was sending postcards home to my family, but after three weeks or so I realized they were probably just starting to get my postcards from three weeks ago and might want to know that I'm still OK in a more immediate way. That's the kind of considerate daughter I am. But I was in Romania, and in that post wall transition time, the country was still caught between the closed Soviet regime and the newer open western free for all. Regular people didn't have telephones, and the phones available in the officially sanctioned western style hotels set up by the previous government to fleece wealthy businessman were out of my price range and had notoriously bad international connections anyway, according to my guide book.

The Lonely Planet guide recommended a telegram, and I loved that idea. It just seemed so World War Two and romantic somehow. As if I was a character in a Humphrey Bogart movie. So I went to the post office and sent my mother a telegram. It said:

In Romania [stop] No phones here [stop] Having a wonderful time [stop] Go Hungary tonight. [end]

On second reading, I decided to change Hungary to Budapest, because I didn't want my mother to think I was starving in Romania like all those one-armed orphans she was seeing on TV at the time. That's the kind of considerate daughter I am.

She told me later that she received it by phone at first, and then got a paper copy in her mailbox the next day. I was disappointed by this because I had pictured her answering the door to a messenger on a bicycle wearing a bell boy hat.

I think telegrams have a romantic appeal that other forms of communication don't. I'm sure it comes from watching too many black and white Warner Bros movies when I was a teenager. And when I worked in theatre, I was always little disappointed on opening nights that well wishes from friends came over the FAX machine instead of by telegram, as they had in those movies. So when my friend Sharon got a part in a play at the Fredericton Playhouse, I thought it would be a hoot to send her a telegram on opening night.

Can you even still send a telegram anymore?
It turns out you can. Telegrams Canada will send a telegram for you anywhere in Canada. They use the Western Union network. I can't imagine they are very busy. The base price for a telegram is about $15 plus $1 for every word. When I filled out the form, I realized that the address was part of the word count. A simple break a leg message to my friend was 25 words long, making the cost for this little joke $40 plus tax. Ouch.That's when I decided I would FAX my friend instead. Sorry Sharon. Break a Leg.

Incidentally, if anyone is in the Fredericton area tonight through Saturday afternoon, check out Theatre New Brunswick's production of Skin Flick.

Proof

Spring officially arrived on the weekend. It is the first time I can remember that my spring bulbs were up and blooming before spring. Usually my bulbs are late because they are in the shade, but they are so early this year that there isn't any shade yet.
The snowdrops were blooming last weekend when we were cutting down trees.
The crocuses bloomed Wednesday. We saw a red winged blackbird on our walk yesterday and these birds, were hanging around this morning. Not being a birder, I have to guess they are robins. Living in the country has turned me into nature girl. Sort of.
Weird.

Celestial Miracle

When the moon is in the seventh house,
And the electrician aligns with Nova Scotia Power,
Then peace will guide the planets,
And the Yana and Peter Homeshow will get a service upgrade.

I guess we just needed to wait for the right celestial event. I had given up hoping that I would be able to fire a larger kiln before I went back to work this spring. But yesterday, on St. Patrick's Day, I had the luck of the Irish and it actually happened!


It all happened.
Power upgraded to 200 amps. Check
Power to garage upgraded to 100 amps. Check
Final Electrical Inspection on the house complete. Check. (That took only 3 years)
New 60 amp plug added to the garage. Check
Filled in the hole in the driveway.
Figure out if kiln we bought off Kijiji last year actually works. It does!


I'm doing a bisque firing today, and we will see if the automatic kiln sitter will shut it off at the right time. It took me an hour to load the kiln this morning. It held everything on the shelves waiting to be fired and is still only 2/3 full. I only have 1 1/2 shelves for it, so I was improvising with using the shelves for the small kiln too. It was like solving a spacial geometry problem trying to get the right combination of posts and pots to be able to fit it all in and still see the witness cone through the peep hole. I guess I need to order some proper shelves.

Chainsaw Massacre

In Spring, a young man's thoughts turn to chainsaws. The other one celebrated sending in his (hopefully final) draft of his proposal by cutting down some trees in the back yard. Mostly they were poplar and butternut that were shading my berry patch and fruit trees. Every year we plan to get rid of them, and every year we don't and then wonder why the peach tree keeps dying and the raspberries don't ripen. This is the first home reno work we have done since the dreaded ditch. (Which is still waiting for the electrical inspector coming on Wednesday, yeah right) We both are feeling the effects of work this Monday morning.
In addition to electricity, we are getting water in Habitant. Soon, we will have all the mod cons. These diggers have been working their way along the highway for two weeks and they are in front of our house this morning. This is the first stage of getting municipal water. They are putting the main line in first and then will come back and connect all the laterals to the houses. It should be finished by August, so we have a whole summer of dust and delays to look forward to, all so we can have water when the power goes off.

Fix an Error on Google Maps

The Other One discovered Google Streets today. Last summer the Google van came through our area and now it is posted so all can see the lovely Town of Wolfville if they so choose. (But sadly, not our Village of Canning, I just checked.)
While talking about this over supper tonight, we lamented that sometimes Google gets it wrong. Like our local intersection just down the road, which Google maps has listed as being named Pereau Bridge. I can understand how this happened. Locally the Pereau Branch Road would be written as Pereau Br.
Br. would certainly seem to suggest that this is a bridge to someone somewhere who isn't familiar with the idea of branch roads. Branch roads are traditional short cuts between two main roads, and almost certainly has the same name as one of those main roads. Hence, the Pereau Branch Road connects the Pereau Road (that runs through the settlement of Pereau) with the Habitant Road (that runs through the settlement of Habitant.) It could have just as easily been named Habitant Branch Road, but I digress. Branch roads are usually dirt, and probably were made by a farmer though his own farm instead of going round the long way. As our Branch Road is not very long, it could look like a bridge to someone far away in a mapping centre.
But ever sticklers for accuracy, we decided that Google must have some way of editing the information on their maps, because this is the information age isn't it? Turns out there is an easy way to do this, although it may take some time for the changes to come into effect. Under maps help there is a hyperlink called Fix an Error on Google Maps. Cool. I did it, and got a notice that it was in the works. I can't help feeling my friends Reny, JaySee and Mark, all map makers in their own way, would be proud.

Curling Mash Up

So I had this brilliant idea the other day. I like classic novels, particularly the Miss Jane Austen kind, but I'm also rather fond of the Brontes. I also like ironic post modern fiction, so I'm not above reading those (mostly) dreadful fan fic mash ups that are on the book store shelves recently. I admit to buying Pride and Prejudice and Zombies simply for the cover art, but I was utterly disappointed by the completely bad writing. Not Jane's obviously, but that other fellow who inserted the Zombies. Unlike (I think) most P&P fans, I found P&P&Z annoying not because there were zombies, but because the zombie parts were crap. I mean, if you're going to put your stuff right next to Jane's, it better be good right? Otherwise you run the risk that you just look really really bad. Like Leonardo DiCaprio in The Man In the Iron Mask along side real actors like John Malkovich and Jeremy Irons. (Who thought that was a good idea?)
No, the really annoying thing about P&P&Z is that I could have done it better. If only someone had suggested to me first. So here comes my big idea. Given that mashups are big, and right now Curling is big. I know Curling. I know Classics. I know mashups. It's perfect. I am going to write a Classic/Curling mashup. At first I thought I should just insert some curling mayhem into the Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Then I thought, I'll put a Canadian spin on it (because that's what is missing from all these other mashups isn't it?) and I'll mashup a classic Canadian play with a classic English novel and call it The Black Bonspiel of Wildfell Hall.
This is going to be Awesome.

Is It Spring?

I know that simply by asking that question I am doomed to make the snow come back. We are experiencing a very early thaw here. Bright clear sunny days, temperatures above freezing, and tiny green bulbs beginning to poke up through the garden beds.
I was sad the snow went because my snowshoes are still hanging by the door in hopes of a good snowfall, but today I spend the whole day outside gardening. Now I'm hoping this weather just keeps up.
Last spring we had cold wet weather all the way to the end of April. I remember because I didn't get a chance to spring clean in my own yard before I had to go to work and clean up other gardens. I played catch up with myself all summer. This year the fruit trees are already pruned, and today I picked up garbage that has blowing in from somewhere. I also started raking out the beds and turned the compost pile, and fixed the door on the garden shed where the wind blew it off the hinges. Ironically I am going back to work late this year, because last spring was so crappy. I may have everything at home done and dusted before April.

Disaster Averted

Had my first kiln disaster this week. Almost. I'm still waiting for power (still, yes still) to fire the larger kiln so I have become adept at packing the small one as full as possible. And I guess I got a little cocky.
Lots of bad things can happen when firing a kiln.
Things can stick to the shelves or each other.
Things can explode.
Things can crack.
Things can get stuck inside another and this is what happened to me.
I placed a smaller bowl inside a large one and then decided to put a trimming chuck inside the smaller bowl. This can be dangerous because pots shrink in the kiln, but at a certain temperature they also got through an expansion stage, and if stacked pots expand and shrink different amounts they can get stuck together. My trimming chuck got stuck in the bottom of the bowl. At first, I was uncertain if it was because of the shrinking or because I had slipped the bowl with the dark colour and they got fused. I'd never made slip before (new skill for me, yay) and I was perhaps overconfident when I packed the kiln. I tired to pull them apart but no go. I wondered if I should just say it was a chip and dip bowl, or fill the centre with wax and say it was a very large table centre piece. I figured at the very least I could break the bowl and keep the chuck, but my Knight in Ceramic Armour managed to twist them apart and they released with out breaking. Crisis averted. Whew.