- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1855
A clever reframing of ordinary things. To good effect....
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2132
No parades or lists this weekend, just a drive following my hunches. And there are a few, some books (one - a 1st edition of "Adrift on an Ice Pan" - the first hand account of one man's voyage on an ice pan, I'm guessing, complete with illustrations & photo of the author - 10 points for obscure adventure travel), some antique artist's handbooks, a houseplant that perfectly fills the corner, a couple of grass-hockey sticks to be placed in the hall with the walking sticks, sword and canes, a musical frog, a slingshot I pass on to G at work (who swears to kill gophers with it that very evening. **sigh**).
Nothing too great, but not too bad either, the season is, after all, over.
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1856
The owner, he's gotten into his head that he's going to fire the manager, she's not meeting his expectations. And he tells all the staff as a warning, there will be no days off until vacation, then maybe he'll look for another one.
She - the manager - has tried to quit a few times, the owner wouldn't let her. And he's talked of firing her before, but hasn't, this time he seems determined...
And when she comes in to work at 3:00 it's done.
***
Now the bosses nephew marches about the restaurant declaring himself to be the new manager, telling everyone what to do, it's in jest but he's doing the village idiot impression just a little too well, it's remarkable, really, and if you told him what a fine village idiot he was portraying he would be proud, wouldn't understand the that the quality of his idiocy was not just limited to his impersonations....
***
The next day, over dinner the owner inquires after C - the last waitress he fired - is she still in Calgary? Does she have a job yet? and he's feeling about not too subtly for the manageresses replacement...
***
Evenings, during the Calgary Stampede, aren't so busy, and if ever we could spare someone it's now. The part-timers are brought in and it's business as usual, except that there are some problems accessing his website, coincidentally it was the manageresses boyfriend who redid the site and now the passwords have been changed, he's locked out and he's finding it hard to believe they've done this, what has he done? and his confusion at this moment appears genuine, he has - to quote Somerset Maughm - that ability to "do someone a bad turn and not hold a grudge"
***
Mid shift another blowout, one of the part-timers has taken out the wrong side dish, the owner's screaming, throwing pots, audible in the dining room but nobody there cares, this part timer, she'd attempted to quit as a result of his rants before but he had hastened to assure her they were not directed at her, now there's no such argument, his abuse has been too direct. I meet her at the bar changing, she's off as well.
***
The owner, he's curiously quiet about the dismissal of the manageress and the missing waitress, the staff buzz over to my side of the restaurant and take over as if nothing has happened, these mid-shift departures are commonplace and everyone works around them. And so the circus continues...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1845
A thousand sales, nothing too great.
Friday, in Killarney, a skillsaw mitre saw for $45.00, which, given the renovations I've undertaken, is a bargain.
And on Saturday - off to a variety of garage sales, there are hundreds, the first sunny Saturday morning since....? well, I don't know.
But there are signs everywhere, and I stop at countless.
The Kensington Parade of Garage Sales finally takes off, and I'm sure to be there by 9:00 - 3 ceremonial Sabres, probably from the 20's or 30's, complete with scabbard and ornate hilts, surprisingly sharp (given their ceremonial status) - $20.00.
And hundreds of others of sales, most of which don't bear description. The sabres content me, there's much to be done about the house at the moment and I can't give over too much time to treasure hunting...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1889
Another day entirely wasted pulling up Wall to Wall carpet.
The installers, they go crazy, firing staples from machine guns, they assume that whoever ordered this carpet will want it forever.
I don't. I want it gone yesterday.
The whole idea of wall to wall carpet offends me, not least because I have to spend hours ripping it up, pulling staples and nasty wooden-spike-clips from the floor that have filled me with tetanus. Or the dirt, so much of which has built up beneath the floor that I think - momentarily - that the house has been built directly upon the ground and the wall-to-wall carpet is there to hide the grass...
No such luck.
And hours and hours of pulling up staples and tacks and sweeping up garbage bags full of fine dust later I'm done.
It should be illegal.
What is the benefit? A haven for allergies, dirt, mites? "It's like having slippers on your feet wherever you go, only at many hundreds of times the price"
For health reasons alone it should be illegal. But it's done, I've pulled it all up and hidden the remnants in the neighbors trash bin. Now to lay the floor.