Handover Phist

I would like to put forth this idea, the difference between a good day and a bad day can most times boil down to the food. Food appreciation is a much underrated thing, and I've only just begun to scratch the surface.

After a day that started out with my homemade pancakes, yogurt, blueberries, strawberries, and real maple syrup, I could have taken on pretty much anything. What I did take on was a horribly busted computer. I won, of course. After a lunch consisting of a tip steak marinated in habanero tequila barbeque sauce mixed with my homemade beer, baked potatoes, and ceasar salad, I feel as if the day is complete. In between these meals I have a mountain of work to try to accomplish. Enough that I can hardly imagine it all being done, with more streaming in. Problem? Not here, the steak lunch included an estate shiraz for accompaniment!

At any rate I would simply like to say, pay attention to what you eat, it's terribly important! Moreso that the next thing to fix, the next report to write, the next meeting to impress people at, or the next review. It is what enables you to do all those things well.

I am. I have been convinced of this fact for many years.

OK, you don't know what I'm talking about. Let me give you the situation. A couple of days ago I had planned out my day, and the plan included changing the oil and filter on my motorbike. I love my bike, and it needs attention. So I headed out for the store I had reserved my stuff at. The problem at the time was it was raining and snowing. Not heavily, and the back road I live on was perfectly rideable. Halfway though the trip I came to a windy road covered in slush. I pulled the bike over to the shoulder and considered the road ahead while adjusting my gear. Moments after spitting on the inside of the visor (really works to kill fogging!) some guy pulled his car over on the other side of the street, rolled down his window and yelled "Hey! Are you crazy?!". I nodded and laughed. I laughed not from amusement, but from relief. For a minute I thought I might have been doing something wrong!

I genuinely feel that if nobody on our floating hunk of dirt thinks I'm nuts, then I must be living completely safely. I must not be pushing any limits of human endeavor. I must be boring as all hell. I cant do that. I was put here for, if I'm lucky, a mere 100 turns around a giant flaming mass of heat. That's not much time to cram beautiful experience into. So, my friend, you ride safely in your car with the heat turned up and the relaxing music playing, hoping nobody fucks up while chatting on their cellphone taking a left turn in their very safe Volvo. I'm going to live as you are afraid to, because someone has to. Someone has to push. Someone has to jump out of an airplane with a few square meters of cloth strapped to their back that will stop them from slamming into the earth.

Know this, though. I know you're alarmed when you see what I'm doing. I know you think I must be a madman with a death wish. I'm not. I know myself and my tools and my machinery well enough to turn around and head home when faced with that windy, slushy road. Straightaways that are just wet, I can handle. Slushy curves? Not thanks. I'll head back home and get a lift from someone safer. Someone warmer and dryer, and maybe a little bit saner.

I've never seen fog descend upon a city as it has in Vancouver over the last few days. The sun came out after about three feet of snow fell, and instead of melting off the snow seemed to sublimate into a dense soup. In some places it was impossible to see more than a few feet in any direction. Standing on my back balcony I couldn't see my back fence. The pictures to the left will give you an idea of what I'm talking about. Yes, those two glowing bits are the Lions Gate bridge. I'm sure folks in other places, say, London maybe, are used to this sort of blinding mist, but it's new on me!

I no longer believe in love at first sight, and I will tell you why here.

A couple of years ago, someone asked me if I believed in love at first sight, and I replied yes. They asked me if that's what happened upon seeing you, and again I said yes. Then they asked me what it felt like. I replied to them by telling this story:

Imagine you have an object that you value trumendously. Some thing of such value to you that if someone approached you and said "That thing is quite beautiful, how much does it cost?" no monetary value could possibly be assigned to it. To you, this object is priceless. Now imagine that you wake one morning and the object of great value is gone. You would search frantically for days. You would enlist the help of friends and neighbors, perhaps the police. As time went by the police would stop searching, then friends would lose hope and tell you to stop searching, everywhere has been looked into and under. After much time you would eventually come to accept the loss of the object. As more time passed you would go through a grieving process, and finally accept the loss. You would move on with your life.

Now imagine this. Years after the object is gone and you have accepted this, you walk into a room and there it is in all its splendor. There is the object that you had surrendered as forever lost, the object of your longing and desire. The subtle void that you carried from the loss that you carry as an accepted feeling would vanish and a wave of relief would wash over you. A feeling of emptiness that you figured was just a part of life would suddenly vanish as if it had never existed. This is the feeling I felt as I walked into a pub and saw her sitting and simply enjoying the music. There she was, the object of such longing that had dogged me for years, that I had accepted as a part of life that I would never see.

Looking back on that conversation and description of feeling I have to come to the conclusion that I didn't fall in love with you at first sight. I've loved you since the moment my lungs drew their first breath. I simply hadn't found you yet.

And so, there is no such thing as Love At First Sight.

If you want something done right, wait for someone crazy enough to come around and do it. When my son wanted a gingerbread house, my crazy wife went ahead and did it, with a brilliant twist. She created a house of cards, each artfully done in icing, and glued them together using melted chocolate. Even the face cards were created using an actual deck for reference. The results were a beautiful work that noone wanted to eat, as hours of painstaking work were obvious in the finished product.

Starting with homemade gingerbread cookies, she made the different colored icings and melted chocolate for the black cards. The red cards were made using cinnamon candy that she cut to shape by hand.

You can see a closeup of the king of hearts by clicking on the image.



You can see a closeup of the completed House Of Cards by clicking the image as well.