Kevin's Ramblings…

I have been in Alberta for about a year and a half, give or take.  I know that I have already ranted about the way that people walk in the this city, now I am going to rant about how people drive.  You see, there is just no pleasing me…

I am not sure where people learned to drive around here, really, I’m not.  I mean in general, most people probably think that most other people don’t know how to drive.  People are generally safe it would seem, but, when driving down a road, why does it ALWAYS seem that I am following some idiot that takes 5 minutes to get their vehicle up to 50km?  Actually, if they got to 50km, that wouldn’t be so bad, BUT, it also seems that they top out at about 40km.

Come on people, that is a full 10km per hour slower than the speed limit.  On other streets, such as Memorial Drive for instance where the larger sections have a speed limit of 80km, it takes you even longer to get to speed and then it tops out at times at 60km.

Now, I am not talking about winter conditions here.  No.  I am talking about nice conditions.  Mid-day.  Sunny.  Clear skies.

Speaking of winter driving, it seems that this changes everyone.  Instead of slowing down like some people might do, they speed up.  Does this make sense?  No, not really.  Calgary doesn’t necessarily do a good job on snow clearing, at least to what I am used to.  People don’t seem to care.  Lots of fun.

Last night, I was returning from my  office at around 8:30pm.  It was dark and there was very little traffic.  The taxi in front of me was stopped at a light.  The driver turned on his interior light and started to read something, who knows what it was.  He accelerated slowly, VERY slowly, still reading.  I followed along, patient as ever for what seemed like forever.  He got to about 30km and leveled out at that speed, still reading.  I honked.  This appeared to “wake” him up and he accelerated, to 40km, still reading.  He might have been texting, but it looked to me like he wasn’t really holding a phone or anything.  By this point, I had had it with this taxi driver and I pulled around him.  I, of course, gave him the finger.  Unfortunately, he was STILL reading so he didn’t see me.

Anyway, I can’t be the only person who notices these things, can I?  Pay attention people.  I am not saying to red line your car accelerating to get to speed but really now.  And when using an on-ramp to the highway when it is clear in front of you, I REALLY don’t think there is much of a need to hit your brakes.  The on-ramp is straight.  There is 400m of it left BEFORE you need to merge.  There is NOTHING in front of you.  Go.  Merge.  Get out of my way.

Perhaps I am in too much of a hurry, I am not sure.

I have always wanted some sort of laser on the front of my vehicle to vaporize the people in front of me.  That would get rid of most of the problems.  Guess it might be illegal though.

I don’t think that I piss anyone off behind me, do I?

Well, I made it past my self imposed start date to turn the heat on – October 1.  Prior to that date, I refused, unless of course there was a danger of my pipes freezing.  That didn’t happen.

I would have made it a bit longer, BUT, one of my dogs and I don’t mention any names (the blonde one) decided to eat my slippers and my feet are cold.  Now, I could wear shoes, but I don’t like wearing them in the house.

So, this morning with the outside temperature hovering around the -1C mark and an expected high of only 8C, the heat was turned on.  Not too high, 18C, just enough to take the chill off.

Perhaps a bit counter productive, the bedroom window is still open a bit – I like the fresh air while I sleep and I like a cold bedroom.  The vent in the bedroom is closed though, so at least I am not pouring hot air directly outside.

The “fall” is rather short here in Alberta.  We seem to go from summer and then within a couple of weeks, winter sets in.  I am hoping that I won’t see any snow until late this month, or, perhaps maybe even November.

Anyway, the house is warming up.  My gas bill is also, I am sure, warming up as well.  Keep warm.

What is with the way that people walk in the City of Calgary?

I will admit that people are pretty good about obeying crosswalk lights and most people don’t jaywalk, these are good things.  But, with good, there is always bad as well.

People routinely step out into traffic without even looking.  They are completely oblivious to the world around them.  They either are wearing earphones with music cranked up (I’ll admit, I wear earphones when I take public transit, they aren’t cranked though, I can still hear you, I am just ignoring you) or they are typing away on their smartphone.

Drivers in Calgary are pretty good around these idiot pedestrians.  They seem to take extra care in NOT running them over.  They seem to have extra level of patience with them too.

This is good.  If it weren’t the case, the City would have a LOT of dead walkers on the streets.

Last night, I was coming home from the grocery store and nearly hit a guy who was jay-walking.  It was a black guy, wearing all black clothes, at night, crossing a 6 lane wide street.  He could have walked less than a half block in either direction to a light, but I guess he chose last night to lose one of his nine lives.

I am not sure if he was wearing ear buds, head phones or anything else – it happened too quickly.  I am glad I missed him.  It would have made a mess on my truck.

As a word of warning to Calgarians – If you EVER visit the City of Toronto in Ontario, take care.  If you walk the same way in Toronto as you do in Calgary, and I can’t stress this enough, YOU WILL DIE.  Toronto drivers will not stop for you.  Toronto drivers will not slow down and if you jay-walk, in the middle of the night across a 6 lane road wearing all black, they won’t see you and you will get hit.

There, my Public Service announcement is done for another year.

Walk safely fellow Calgarians.  Especially if you leave the safety of our nice City.

Last summer, when my Jeep died on me (RIP Jeep21), I had no choice but to take public transit to work.  I have never been a public transit sort of person really.  I don’t like waiting, I don’t like crowds and I don’t particularly like the “general public”.  Great combination when riding a bus and train into the downtown core or to drive to  Marlborough station and then a 20 or so minute ride via C-Train to downtown.

The worst part of it was in the winter when you would have to wait for the bus to arrive.  The bus that I took came every 15 minutes.  Going from home was easy, I knew what time the bus was supposed to arrive and typically, unless the roads were bad, they were on time.  Coming home after getting off of the train was a different story.  It always seemed that I’d get off of the train and then by the time I walked over to where the bus stop was, I would just miss it.  I am sure that the drivers took great pleasure in seeing someone run for the bus only to drive away.

So, in late January, I got myself another vehicle.  Although the transit system in the system is a good one, getting around in such a large place can be rather time consuming.  Going for groceries and what not was a bit of a pain.  Taxi’s are fine, but a bit expensive – mind you, a taxi ride once a week doesn’t compare to the expense of maintaining a vehicle.

I would drive to one of the stations (either Marlborough or Franklin), park and ride.  This cut out the bus part of my trip, which was the least convenient part of the trip.  When parking at Franklin became hard to come by, I would park at Marlborough seeing as it was a mall and parking was plentiful.  The Park n’ Ride parking was free, unless you wanted a reserved spot – not a bad deal.

The C-Trains are normally quite full.  They do a good job of getting people from the suburbs into the core.  Often, since I am not a fan of crowds, etc., I would wait until a train arrived that wasn’t already packed.  They are supposed to run every 5 minutes or so during rush hour times.  This became a routine.

Recently, with the aging trains, delays have become more and more common.  It is odd, there are rarely delays going into the downtown core from the NE where I catch the train but coming home, training that are coming from the West are delayed more often than not.  I am not sure if the issue is the trains themselves or if there is some sort of problem on the West line itself – seems strange that there are often delays on that line as opposed to the other line.

I have been looking, randomly, for parking downtown.  Parking is relatively easy to come by, but, the issue is that parking is expensive.  Pretty much starts at around $250 per month.  Not too reasonable.

Last week, I had to drive into work to bring a bunch of stuff back into the office.  I had stopped at 7/11 to break a 20 for change for the lot near my office.  Daily parking is $16.  I start to put my money in the machine and I happened to have two of the new toonies and the machine wouldn’t accept them.  After trying a few times, I decided that it wasn’t going to work so I asked the machine to give me my money back.  I figured that it would simply spit my change back out at me.  No.  It gives me a receipt that I have to take to the office of the parking company.  Awesome.

So, in the meantime, I need to find somewhere to park.  I moved into the lot directly beside my office building and the very nice lady in HR gave me a temporary pass for the parking garage across the street at the University of Calgary.  Managers get parking paid for them, perhaps I should become a manager.  I checked, parking over there is $450 per month.  Yikes.

A few days later, I take a walk to get my refund from my parking.  When I am there, I figured that I would ask about parking, somewhere neat my office.  They happen to have some spaces in a building about 7 blocks from my office, underground, heated parking for only $150 per month.  Not bad at all.

So, after a little more than a year of taking transit into work, starting October 1, I will rejoin the hordes of people driving into the core.  Of course, this goes against what the city is trying to do – get people to take transit into downtown.  But, I am getting tired of the things that I have mentioned.  It will be nice, if I want to, to be able to go home at lunch and let the dogs out.  I won’t have to deal with crowds, with people who wear backpacks that are a foot thick on the train who refuse, for some unknown reason to take them off.  I won’t have to stand, vying for a spot to hold onto.  I won’t have to put up with the odd smells and the odd conversations.  I will be able to drive with my coffee as I drive in.  Sure, I will have to put up with some traffic, but since I start at 9am, most of the traffic has cleared up by the time I leave in the morning and has also died off by the time I will leave at night.  I will have a longer walk to and from the parking garage, but, I am told, walking is good for you.

As for costs, I will pay about $50 more for the parking spot than I do for a transit pass.  I will also spend some more on gas, I am guessing $20 a week or so, presuming I don’t go home at lunch.

But, more important than all of that, I might be able to keep sane, just a bit longer.  In the long run, that just might be worth it.

Happy driving.

I have been chatting with one of the Partners at the Firm that I work at about his passion with running.  He’s in his early to mid sixties and if I could possibly be in as good shape as he is in, and, mind you, I am at least 20 years his junior, I would be very happy.

We have a full gym at my office on the 4th floor, complete with shower facilities.  I have not, in the year and a half that I have worked at BDO taken advantage of this excellent area.

Over the last few months, I have been wanting to try to get into better shape.  I have been eating healthier, more vegetables and fruit and I am trying to eat less processed food.  It is tough making these changes, that is for sure.  I have cut out most “junk” food, chips, ice cream, crap like that – stuff that I love to eat but stuff that has no real value.

In speaking with this Partner, I have decided to take up running.  I used to do it, a number of years ago and quite because I didn’t really have good shoes and I got bad shin splints.  I quite enjoyed it, other than the shin splints so I have decided to try to do it again.  We have at least one treadmill in the gym at work so that will be a good place to start.  If I get tired, and I am sure I will, it is MUCH easier to turn the treadmill off and then I don’t need to walk back the 100m from where I started.  🙂  Well, I think I will make it longer than a 100m, I hope so anyway.

I do have an immediate goal.  By Spring, and by the term Spring, I mean Spring in Calgary, sometime in May, not March 21 which is officially the first day of Spring – I want to be able to run 10km.  I think, with a little determination and some hard work, I will be able to get there.  JS (the Partner I have mentioned) has offered his encouragement and help with getting a program off the ground – much appreciated and I will take him up on his offer, for sure.

He suggested that I visit The Running Room in Calgary to get myself a pair of shoes.  They would see what type of step I have and could suggest a number of different pairs for me to try.  The pair that I got were even on sale:

They fit great, feel awesome and unlike another pair I tried on, they don’t feel like they will fall off of me when I step.  They are Mizuno’s, I have a few pairs of those (turf shoes ) that I have used when coaching baseball.

I also have been riding my bike, not as much as I would like to have, but I am hoping to use it more next summer, riding to work, etc:

It is a GT, 29″ tires make it a litter easier to ride on the road and it has front shock lockouts so when road riding it doesn’t bounce along.  It is also great for trails and off-road, not that I have done any of that.  I still need to get myself a helmet before I really get into it, but with cold weather on the horizon, this will wait until Spring.

Anyway, wish me luck on my goal – 10km by Spring.  With some hard work and some determination, I will be able to do it.

Progress reports on here, I am sure.

Well, a few weeks ago, or perhaps a few months ago, I posted the Story of Zeus.  Blondie has been bugging me to tell her story, so, here it is.  Well, she actually likely doesn’t read my blog, I rarely give her access to my laptop.  But, in all fairness, her story needs to be told as well.

Back in May of 2011, likely earlier than that, I started to think about getting a companion for Zeus and a second dog for myself.  I was told that having a second dog would be a LOT more work and that I should “give my head a shake”.  Well, I do sometimes listen to advice, but this time, I didn’t.  Turns out that having a second dog really isn’t a lot more work.  I guess my costs doubled, but, they are more than worth it.

In 2011 (and from when I adopted him), Zeus didn’t have much tolerance for other dogs.  He didn’t particularly care for larger dogs, dogs who were darker coloured (is he prejudice?) or yappy little dogs.  He did have a few “blonde” dog friends, so I thought, perhaps he’d get along with a blonde coloured dog.

I didn’t want to get a long haired dog, too much shedding.  Other dogs were basically out because I didn’t want to create an environment where Zeus might want to fight.

At the time, I was working for the Region of Niagara.  We had an internal buy/sell/trade web site where people could post all kinds of ads for pretty well anything.  This is actually one of the things that I miss about working at the RON – oh well…

Anyway, I saw an ad for Yellow Labs for sale – 6 weeks old.  I called and was told that there were two left, both females.  Well, I actually wanted another male dog, but I figured I would go and take a look – not really seriously considering getting one.  They were a great price – the breeder wanted to get rid of the last two and had reduced the price down to $200.  That is less expensive than getting many dogs from the local Humane Society.

Now, before you go off on me about buying from a breeder, these people didn’t regularly breed their labs, this, I was told, was an accidental breeding and they didn’t want 9 puppies around.  A large litter to be sure.

So, at lunch one afternoon, I decided to take a drive out to check out the available pups.  When I got there, only one was left.  The “runt” of the litter, a cute little, almost white dog with no name.  She was friendly and licked my hand when I approached her.  Little did I know that licking would be something that this new dog LOVED to do.

She was adorable.  I told them that I would like my dog Zeus to meet her before I committed as he didn’t like some dogs and if he “approved”, I would take her.

So much for not getting another dog.  So much for thinking about it.  I guess it was love at first sight.

After work, I went home and picked up Zeus and made the drive back so he could meet his new friend.  He wasn’t aggressive, wasn’t anything really, he ignored her, completely.  She, on the other hand thought he was great – I think she loved him as soon as she met him.

So, I told them, yes, I would take her.  I’d pick her up the next day – I don’t remember exactly why I didn’t take her then.

So, Zeus and I left, Zeus likely thinking it was the last time he’d see this little blonde dog.

After work the following day, I drove back to pick up our new addition.  I had been thinking of a name for the dog.  I had thrown around various Goddesses names, to go along with the Greatest God of them all (Zeus) and eliminated them, one by one.  Who’d want to named Athena or something like that?  I was tossing names based around the colour of the new dog.  Butterscotch?  No, too long and likely shortened to Butter, perhaps to Scotch or worse yet, BS?  My sister, JB, had always said that dogs learned their names easier if they ended in “ie” or “y”, and all of her dogs had been named that way.  After bouncing a few off the current owners and they had a few suggestions, I decided on Blondie.

So, off I go with Blondie in hand, or rather, in arm.  Even when she was 6 weeks old, I couldn’t quite hold her in a hand.

Blondie on Day 1 – 6 weeks old

She said “good bye” to her mom and remaining brother (they were keeping him) and off we went.  I put her on the front seat of the car and back to St. Catharines we headed.  Our first stop was to purchase a collar and leash as she didn’t have them.  The people in the pet store of course thought she was adorable, and she was (still is).  Our next stop was to the ball park, a baseball tournament was going on.  A few people that I knew thought that I was nuts getting a second dog.  Oh well, I’ll admit to being nuts I guess.

After an hour or so at the ball park with Blondie following me around, I decided it was time to go home and introduce her again to Zeus and Zeus to her.

As we pulled into my driveway, Blondie sitting in my lap (I’d like to see me drive now with her in my lap – that would no longer be possible), she puked, all over my lap.  Nice.  Good way to start a life together.  Actually, I have read that if a dog pukes on you on the ride home, it means a long happy life together.  🙂

We got inside and Zeus was pretty well like, “what is THAT doing in MY house?”  He didn’t seem very impressed.  Blondie though, loved her new “big brother” from the moment she met him.

Over the next day and a bit, Zeus completely ignored Blondie and I was worried that he would never warm up to her.  Just as I was thinking of calling the breeder to see if they would take her back, Zeus weakened and started to play with her, much to my relief.  I wouldn’t say that he did anything more than tolerate this new addition, but at least he was acknowledging her existence.

Over the next weeks, I house trained Blondie, she learned to walk down the stairs and all of the other “stuff” that new puppies need to learn.  She drove Zeus nuts with her playfulness and energy – Zeus was 5 when I got Blondie, so he was a mature dog and didn’t want to play all the time.

Now, nearly 2.5 years after getting Blondie, they get along just fine.  Zeus will occasionally grumble (OK, more than occasionally perhaps) when she “bugs” him and will growl if she dares to brush up against him on the couch, but essentially, I think he more than just tolerates her now, I actually think he likes her.  She, still, as she did on day 1, worships the ground he walks on.

Blondie has been a good addition to the family and we are BOTH happy to have her around.

Blonde and her best friend, Zeus

Now, should I get myself another dog?  🙂