The man sits me down in a chair, sticks a needle in my mouth, holds it there for about an hour and a half, then takes it out and waits. After a few minutes, he starts to drill. When it start hurting, he gives me another needle, waits a few minutes, and continues drilling. Again it starts hurting and again he gives me a needle. Finally, after he’s drilled away half my tooth, he tells me that I’m going to have to come back again so he can give me more needles and drill some more, just enough to take the root out and kill the tooth. Then I pay for this service, with the knowledge that I’ll have to pay more when I come in for the nerve-ripping-out ceremony.

After forty minutes of needles, pain and discomfort, all of which I paid for, and the promise that I have to come back for more, what do I say to him?

“Thank you.”

I wrote an email to Canada’s Wonderland about the Gatorade incident, and here’s their response:

Thank you for contacting Canada’s Wonderland. We appreciate your feedback and I have forwarded it on to our Security for their consideration. Our No Outside Food Policy has been in effect for the past Season and was instituted by our new Parent company, Cedar Fair. This is a policy that they enforce in all of their Parks with exception to water and individual portion snacks, as well as any dietary required foods.

If you should have any further questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact me.

We went to Canada’s Wonderland today for the first time this year. Only one new ride this year, the monstrous roller coaster “Behemoth” which we will not be going on. It’s about the same height as the Superman coaster at Darien Lake which I’ve ridden once, and that’s just too high for me. Feel free to call me a chicken, you’re right.

First off, to the slimy piece-of-shit scumbag who stole my son’s Transformers baseball cap while we were riding the go-karts, you could have gotten your own at Zellers for under $10. You made an eight-year-old cry — I hope you enjoy the hat.

“I wish I had a camera phone” moment: Walking past the “holy crap is this ever slow” swan ride, and seeing a little girl, maybe four, sitting in the front of the swan enjoying herself while her father sat in the back, pecking away on his Blackberry.

WTF moment: Going through security at the front gate. We had a backpack with some snacks and a bottle or two of water, Gail’s mom had a water bottle and a thermos of coffee, and the boys were each carrying a bottle of Gatorade (all of the bottles were plastic). The security lady said that the water bottles were OK, but the Gatorade bottles were not allowed. Gail asked if the problem was that it was Gatorade rather than water and she said no, they’re just not allowed to let Gatorade (or pop) bottles in. They were the same kind of bottle, though a little bigger (750 mL rather than 500 mL), so what’s the difference? What makes a Gatorade bottle more dangerous than a water bottle? Perhaps it’s because they don’t want people bringing their own stuff in, so that if they are hungry or thirsty, they are forced to buy food and beverages in the park. Again, I understand this, but why wouldn’t that apply to bottled water? They sell bottled water inside the park as well, so I don’t understand the logic of this rule either. And it’s not enforced — we bring snacks (grapes, oranges, carrots, celery sticks, juice boxes) almost every time we go to the park, and security has never said a word until the Gatorade incident today. Another example of someone in authority making a rule that makes no sense, and everyone else blindly accepting and enforcing it.

After we confirmed the rule with the security lady a couple of times (“you’re saying we can’t bring a Gatorade bottle in but we can bring a water bottle in, and it has nothing to do with the contents of the bottle?”), I took the bottles and was going to walk them back to the van. The security lady quietly told us to stuff them in the bottom of the backback and go ahead.

And finally, if the keys in my pocket set off the metal detector, she never mentioned it. If they didn’t, why is the metal detector there? We’ve had questions about Wonderland security a couple of times before, and I’m in the process of writing an email to Wonderland guest services to that effect.

After a couple of years of frustration with my old lawn mower, I finally bit the bullet and bought a new one. The old one was a gas mower, but over the last couple of years, it got quite difficult to start. I got tired of yanking on the starter cord over and over, almost putting my shoulder out, only to have to borrow my neighbour’s mower to get the job done. It had a side chute, and I bought a side bagger attachment for it, which was OK, but I really wanted a rear-bagger.

I read somewhere earlier this year that an old two-stroke lawnmower dumps as much pollution into the air in one hour as the average car does over a 600 km trip. Since I had changed the oil in that mower exactly once in the eleven years that I owned it, I suspect it was probably even worse than that (and that probably explains the engine trouble I had with it too). So I did a bit of research, and although the newer four-stroke engines are much more efficient and less polluting than the old ones, I decided to go electric. The one I bought was a cordless model from Canadian Tire (Yardworks 24V, 20″ — sorry, couldn’t find a functional link), so I have the advantage of electric (no emissions, no gas or oil, instant start) with no extension cord to drag around. I charged the battery overnight and then cut the lawn on Sunday.

My dad always had gas mowers, and as I said mine was gas as well. In fact, I’ve only used an electric mower once in my life, when mowing my neighbour’s lawn back when I was a teenager — and that one time I used it I ran over his extension cord and cut it in half. So when I started this new one by pressing a button and holding down a bar rather than yanking on the starter cord, I was very excited. It’s quieter than the old mower, though not by much. The mower itself is very light, but the battery is a monster. I was worried that it would be heavier and harder to push around because of that, but it wasn’t noticeably different. Being able to adjust the height of the mower with one lever rather than one per wheel is very nice. There’s also a battery level meter which is kind of hard to see, and even a drink holder that will probably never be used.

The battery can be easily removed from the mower, which is good since the mower lives in the shed which has no electricity. According to some online reviews, I will probably have to charge the battery about once a month or so, and I’m supposed to charge it up every couple of weeks in the winter as well. Right now I’m all gung ho to do just that, but we’ll see next winter. I was all set to empty and clean the humidifier every week or so last winter, and I think I did it twice.

Update: One thing I didn’t think about — if your gas mower runs out of gas when you’re halfway done, you can just put more gas in it. You may need to run to the gas station. But if your battery dies halfway through, you’re stuck. Nothing to do but wait. This didn’t actually happen to me (the battery died just as I was finishing), but I hadn’t thought about it before.

On Saturday morning, Gail and the boys and I went over to the school with some garbage bags and spent an hour and a half picking up litter from the parking lot and gardens in front of the school. We filled three garbage bags in an hour and a half which was very satisfying but at the same time, cleaning up things like a tampon (unused), a condom (didn’t bother to check if it was used), hundreds of cigarette butts and some broken beer bottles from in front of an elementary school was quite sad. We didn’t do this specifically for Earth Day; we did the same thing last year on a walking trail near us.

The City of Toronto sponsored a bit anti-litter campaign for Earth Day as well. Yesterday, our friends Liisa and Richard and their kids came over and we went for a walk through our neighbourhood. We passed by a bunch of people doing the same thing in the creek; seems a local church had organized a big cleanup for Earth Day.

It hadn’t occurred to me until Richard mentioned it, but he’s right — when did Earth Day become nothing more than “litter cleanup day”? Originally, I thought it was about increasing public awareness on energy conservation, vanishing rainforests, endangered species, and larger environmental issues like that. I’m all for cleaning up litter, but it seems that people are thinking “I can’t do anything about the rainforests, but I can pick up this pop can”, and that they’ve done all they can do. I thought the whole idea of Earth Day was to convince people that cleaning up litter isn’t all they can do.

The storm hit with a vengeance on Saturday. In the morning it wasn’t too bad, so I took Nicky to his skating lesson and Gail took Ryan grocery shopping. All of us were home by 11:00, and Gail and I didn’t leave the house again. The boys went out to play after lunch, but both were back inside within 15 minutes and then they stayed inside the rest of the day as well. It snowed and snowed and snowed, and by Sunday morning, we had more than a foot of new snow — luckily it was the light fluffy stuff, not the heavy wet stuff. I went out Sunday morning to shovel it, and spend an hour doing the sidewalk, front walkway, and half the driveway. I was too tired to do the other half, so I left it for later. An hour after coming in, I had to take a couple of Tylenol because my back was sore. It was sore again this morning so I took another two. I never went back out to do the rest of the driveway yesterday, so I had to do it this morning so I could get out (though I did as little as possible to allow me to manoeuvre the car out of the garage). Tonight, I’m feeling particularly old — my back is still sore as is my right shoulder (which frequently hurts during shovelling as well), and my legs are kind of stiff too.

I’ve managed to avoid buying a snow blower in previous years, using various excuses: it’s too late in the season to justify doing it now, or I should have bought it in the spring when prices are lower, or I can just borrow my neighbour’s (who’s very generous with his), or the ol’ “back in my day” excuse — I’m young and in relatively good shape so I should suck it up and do it by hand. In addition to those, I simply have no place to put a snow blower. In the winter we keep both vehicles in the garage, and there is no room in there for a snow blower. The only alternative is to leave the car in the driveway so we can store the snow blower in the garage. But then every morning I’d have to brush and/or scrape it and then get into a cold car, and in the past I’ve decided that the convenience of not having to do that outweighs the convenience of having the snow blower. Keeping the car outside in the winter is also likely to reduce the life of the car, whether through engine damage or rust.

As I get older, however, I’m finding that a snow blower is no longer merely a convenience, it’s becoming a necessary tool to avoid killing myself shovelling snow. In the past when the snow was particularly heavy, I’ve borrowed my neighbour’s. I feel a little guilty every time I do because he’s spent the big bucks to buy this thing and I’m benefiting from it, but boy, does it make the job easier. There have also been times where I have come home from work to find my driveway has been done for me (sometimes by my neighbour, sometimes by persons unknown), and I’m very grateful, but I feel a little bad that I cannot return the favour. Next year, though, I think I will have to bite the bullet, buy myself a snow blower, and leave the car outside for the winter. I will have to be gentle when I break the news to it.

Oh, gotta go. Matlock’s on.

It’s come to this — blogging about the weather.

A front-page article in the Spectator the other day had the headline “‘Winter from hell’ far from over, folks”. That morning we got 15 cm of snow, and today (Friday) and tomorrow we’re supposed to get another 10-30 cm. We’ve already gotten more snow than we did all of last winter, I’ve worked at home because of weather more times this year than any other year (there were a couple of weeks in early February where I worked at home for about 8 out of 10 consecutive days), the potholes on the roads are brutal, and the four of us decided this morning that we’ve all had quite enough of winter, thankyouverymuch.

This year more than any other year I can remember, I have wondered to myself “Why do I still live in the cold, snowy, slushy Great White North? Why have I not moved to Vancouver or Florida or California or Hawaii or someplace warm?” The standard answer is that southern Ontario is where I’ve lived pretty much all my life (other than 4 months in Seattle and a year and a half in Ottawa). Most of my friends and family are here, and it’d be hard to make it to Rock, Leafs, and Blue Jays games if I lived anywhere else. I suppose the short answer is that I love southern Ontario… except for the winters.

I’ve been to Vancouver, and I loved it. It’s a beautiful city. Moving there would have the advantage of staying in Canada, but the winters are much nicer than here. It would also have the advantage of being close to the mountains — not only are they beautiful, but you could pick a spring day where it’s 15 degrees at home, drive for two hours and go skiing. I have friends in San Jose as well, and moving there would give us a zillion opportunities for tech jobs (not that we don’t have that here). However, both of those cities are very expensive, and to get a house the size of ours in either of those places (that’s not 100 miles away from the city) would be a million dollars, and I don’t have a million dollars.

So I guess we’ll just hang out here and complain about the winters until we retire, at which point we can spend our winters in Florida with thousands of other Canadian retirees. Maybe once the kids are in university Gail and I can winter in Florida and telecommute — Sybase might build me a GraemeAnywhere! (Note that the picture of IvanAnywhere in that article is old — here’s a newer one. If you look down the hall in that picture, you’ll see the top of a doorway on the left. My office is two doors down from that one.) (Update: IvanAnywhere has his own page on sybase.com now!)

Anyone else notice the irony in the phrase “winter from hell”?

Hi there… I’d like two random hot beverages and two random bagels, either toasted or not, one with 1/2 a cup of melted butter on it, and one with just the tiniest scraping of some random type of cream cheese, please.
I’m sorry, sir, but we can’t do that.
Why not? You do it every other day…

Gail and I are fairly regular Tim Horton’s customers. Each of us stops for a tea and bagel pretty much every morning on our way to work, as well as on long drives up north and such. We’ve been to many Tim’s locations around Ontario, but in terms of service, the two worst we’ve been to are the two nearest our house. It’s become a running joke in our family whenever we go to one of these two: “What did they get wrong this time?” Gail drinks decaf tea and I get steeped tea, and at these two locations, we frequently get regular tea. A couple of times we get coffee instead of tea, and neither of us can stand coffee so in those cases, not only do we not get our tea, but the coffee gets wasted. They also screw up on bagel types, muffin types, and cream cheese types, or else we’ll get butter when we asked for cream cheese or vice versa. Sometimes they’ll cut the bagel in half, drop a slab of cream cheese in the middle and wrap it up instead of spreading it around. Other times we’ll ask for butter and the bagel will have either a tiny scrape or be literally dripping.

The servers are human, so mistakes are going to happen. I don’t have a problem with that, the occasional mistake is inevitable. But at these two locations, the percentage of screwed up orders is much higher that at other locations we’ve been to, and it seems that quality control is of minimal importance. These locations are the closest to our house, but they’re not the ones we visit the most often, so it’s not the case that we visit there more often so we see more mistakes. To make matters worse, we are going through the drive-thru most of the time, so we don’t always notice the problems until after we’ve left.

After our latest screwed up order (last Friday morning), I got annoyed and sent an email to Tim Horton’s customer service explaining all of this. I didn’t really expect anything to be done, but I feel a little better having done something. To my amazement, I got a phone call from them (customer service) on Sunday afternoon. The very friendly person on the phone apologized for the inconvenience we had experienced, and assured me that as soon as she was off the phone with me, she would personally call the district manager responsible for those locations and get them to talk to the owners and staff and reiterate the importance of consistency and getting orders right.

I expected to get a response, but more than likely it would be a form email saying “Thanks for your email, we will investigate your problem and take appropriate steps” or something equally meaningless. The fact that I got a actual phone call was great, but I was even more impressed that it was (a) within 48 hours of my email, and (b) on a Sunday. Kudos to Tim Horton’s customer service.

And to top it all off, the Roll up the Rim contest started again today, and I won a doughnut.

Nice thing to see first thing on a Monday morning:

To all my regular readers (and even the semi-regular readers) (and the every once-in-a-while readers) (ah heck, even the “google search brought me here and I don’t know who the hell you are” readers), I hope you have a very happy holiday! For those of you who celebrate Christmas, have a very merry one, and for those who don’t, I hope you enjoy the movie. :-)