It’s my birthday and it’s a good one. I’m coming home to the cold snow tomorrow—Mexico was fun while it lasted.
Category: life
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Overheard in the Doctor’s Office
“Susan thinks she could be a DM. She was like, ‘how hard can it be? You just have to tell the story’. phfff. She has no idea.”
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Drayton Valley
After the show in Calgary on Tuesday I headed up to Drayton Valley for a quick visit with the cutest nephew in the whole world, Ryker. I’ve also said hello to my sister Jackie and her husband Glen, but oh man that baby is so cute—it’s all I can do to prevent myself from eating him up.
The next morning when he woke up, he even wanted to be held by me instead of his mom which apparently is EXTREMELY rare (it just goes to show how smart the kid is).
I also saw Anna’s new play in Edmonton yesterday; I’m sorry to say it was kind of brutal (I guess that’s community theatre for you), but I have no regrets.
I’ll be heading back to Lethbridge later today.
If you’re wondering about how the announcing went… it started out a little rough and got better as the afternoon progressed. I was kind of nervous at first, just speaking into the mic and hearing my voice echo across the pool. The stands were pretty full and there were swimmers and officials all over the deck. I was sitting at a desk up in the stands. I welcomed everyone out and then I said, please stand for the playing of our national anthem.
And then it happened. Probably the most embarrassing thing possible. In my nervousness I didn’t even realize anything was wrong. I could hear my friend Vicki laughing from the pool deck and I had the sinking feeling she was laughing at me. The song played on. Then about 30 to 45 seconds into the song, Vicki walks out where I can see her and yells up to me, “Jeff that’s the American National anthem!” Could my face be any more red?
Apparently when queuing the music I rewound the tape on the wrong side. Now the decision had to be made, do I just play the rest of the song out and have the Canadian National Anthem play after, or do I stop it now and fast forward to the next song? I elected to stop the tape and just announce my mistake, “Oops, that was the American Anthem”. The people of laughed politely at my blunder but I was more worried that the meet would get started late because of my fumbling around with the tape player.
There I was trying to find the Canadian National Anthem on the tape meanwhile everyone else was just standing there, waiting for the music to play. Finally I realized I needed to flip the tape over and rewind it, and once that was on its way I used the moment to announce some of the money winners from the races yesterday.
I have to say, it was really embarrassing but things did pick up after that. I slaughtered quite a few names but by the end of the meet while I was still butchering their names, however, I just did it confidently and quickly so that most people probably didn’t notice hopefully didn’t care.
I’m glad I went; I had a good time. I’ll be doing the announcing for the finals again today.
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Jeff Milner the Announcer
This photo of me was taken at a swim meet here at the U of L a couple years ago, but this weekend the Pronghorns are once again hosting their annual swim meet at the Max Bell Pool. I’ve been asked to do the announcing for the finals on Saturday and Sunday. Go Horns!
I’ve been thinking about this for awhile and so today I filled out the application for the Explore program, which means that (assuming I’m accepted) I’ll be moving travelling to Quebec sometime in either the spring or summer for a five week course in beginner’s level French and I’ll be living either in a residence or with a home-stay family. This is the most excited I’ve been about the French I’ve been slowly learning for the past six months.
The other day, my friend Kim Siever hit me with the four things meme. Apparently it started on LiveJournal and has spread across the blogosphere. Some of the bigger sites that I follow on my RSS reader have been participating too.
There is something particularly intriguing about the simplicity of the meme and yet it seems to derive answers that you might never expect. For instance, who would have ever thought that I had experience burying mines? (They weren’t live and they were for de-mining research purposes).
There are many more examples of the meme via google search four things meme.
For my 19th birthday [a long time ago] my mom gave me a laser pointer which I enjoyed until the batteries died, and I haven’t thought much more about it since.
One of my favourite stories involving that laser is from when I was living in Salt Lake. We were visiting some other teens in their home and playing with the laser and the cat. For some reason cats seem to just love chasing the little red dot from a laser pointer.
The room was open between the living room and dinning room with about two or three stairs dividing them. A large corner couch sat in the living room and with a flick of the laser we had the cat running back and forth from the couch up into the kitchen and back down the stairs.
This particular cat seemed a little on the chubby side, but boy when it came to slapping his paws on the red dot, he could really move. He was incredibly fast even by speedy cat standards. He used his claws for extra traction and would chase it all over the room instantly appearing wherever the light shone. We were all cracking up.
One of the kids decided to take it to the next level. They wanted to see how far their cat would go. To get things started, the cat was attracted up into the kitchen where we were all standing. Next they briskly shot the light across the floor with the cat firing itself after it like Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner. They shone the dot up on the wall in the very corner just above where the corner-couch sat. In one smooth motion the cat jumped up onto the cushion and then off the back of the couch and up as high as he could reach right onto the red dot on the wall. Then as if time stood still he made a couple of mid air-strides and quickly discovered his lack of flying ability. I’m certain at this point he wondered to himself why in the world he was finding himself six feet off the ground with no where to go but straight down. He dropped silently into the triangular shaped hole between the couch and the corner.
We were rolling on the floor laughing our heads off. Oh and he was mad at us. He jumped out from behind the couch, and looked extremely embarrassed and irritated. His fur was dishevelled and his eyes were red. Nothing was injured but his pride, however, no amount of persuasion could convince him to chase the little red dot.
I was reminded of this story when I came across these interesting videos of some newer lasers. The site claims they are all legal in the United States. They seem a touch too powerful for safe public use, so pets of the world, beware. (Luckily balloons and matches appear to be the main targets of the lasers in the videos).
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Air Conditioning in January?
I think some people fail to understand that if you’re having a meeting in a room where someone else is working and you think it’s too hot then setting the thermostat down to 15° will make the air conditioning kick in right about the time you head for lunch and consequently freeze the room.
It’s SO cold in here.
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The Story of a Free Electronic Organ
A little over a week ago my roommate knocked on my bedroom door to ask me for a favour. He wanted to know if I would help him move an electric organ from the Salvation Army Thrift store into the basement. Please note that it was a fairly large and non-functioning electric organ. My mind said, “no” but my mouth said, “sure” and with a smile we walked out the door.
As we headed across town in my fairly large capacity (but not huge) Jeep Grand Cherokee he explained that the organ had worked when it was originally brought into the shop but that somehow in its first week there it had stopped doing the one thing electric organs are supposed to do—that is to say it no longer made music. But he was confident that he could fix it and the guy running the store told him he’d let him have it for free if he would just come and take it away.
We muscled that boat anchor into the street but no matter how we turned it, it just wouldn’t fit into my jeep. Please trust me when I emphasize that we turned it plenty.
“I don’t really want to unscrew the spare tire”, I stammered, “because I don’t think it will be easy to get back together.” A moment later I pushed the now free spare up against the front seats.
I don’t know why it took so long for me to process what was obvoiusly about to happen. Either he wouldn’t be able to get it working and I was going to be stuck hauling a rather heavy and awkward non-operational organ out of my basement or he would get it working and I’d have the opportunity to enjoy a constant stream of vibrations from the basement until the end of his stay in my house at which time I would still be stuck hauling out a rather heavy and awkward operational organ from my basement.
He assured me that I’d have nothing to worry about and insisted that whatever happened he would take care of it in the end.
And what do you know? He actually got it working. I’m not sure how long it took him, but I returned home from my holidays in Medicine Hat to see a collection of electronic tools, a soldering iron and plenty of parts, peices, and wires scattered around the room. I could hardly believe it but my roommate—whom has absolutely no training in electronics—figured out how to solder wires together in the proper places thereby restoring the organ. He even cleaned up the mess and it turns out that the electronic vibrations are more like music than just a noisy racket afterall.
To him I have to say, good work my friend—I’m really impressed. Now maybe I should ask him if he can figure out how to get the spare tire back in place.