The Breadbin

Okay, we've done "bad words", let's do "bad substances".

There is no drug I wouldn't try once. Provided I could know in advance that I wouldn't feel compelled to try that drug again.

And therein lies the rub, of course. I have an addictive personality. Most people are only peripherally aware of this because my addictions are legal and only marginally bad for me. I've rationalized away a mild gambling addiction on the grounds that I may as well just set my money on fire (and not having money to burn tends to curtail it as well, at least for me.) I can take or leave alcohol and my experience with other drugs is limited to the odd pot cookie here and there (and that entirely for its painkilling and soporific qualities): no addiction there.

But put a plate of food in front of me, food I like, with four or five servings, and I'll eat all of it without blinking. The only reason I'm half a blimp instead of a full blimp is that my job involves a …

WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE

I attended four different elementary schools, one of them twice. Trying to place individual events in that jumble more than thirty years later can be something of a challenge.

David Bodrug. What grade, what school did we share? Let's see. It was before I went into the gifted program at St George's (grade seven). It was after I left Byron Northview for the second time. That would make it grade six, Sir Arthur Carty Separate School, London, Ontario.

There isn't a word for what David and I were. "Frenemy" is close, but we didn't know each other well enough to be friends *or* enemies. He was a jock-type, and one of the first who didn't automatically relegate me into the Nerd Heap. It was his natural inclination to do so, but he fought it a little sometimes. The novelty of a jock who only treated me like a pariah sometimes meant that I hung around him a little.

One morning, David sauntered into class a couple of minutes late, just as …

...and it's only Thursday.

We still have a landline here. We tried to scrap it, but Bell cheerily informed us that if we did that, they would jack the price of our remaining services with them (cell and internet at this point) such that it would actually be cheaper to keep it.
But it's bare bones--as bare bones as a phone line can get. No long distance plan, so calling anyone outside of town is inadvisable. You have to be my age or older to really grasp how much phone service has changed: without a plan, which was never available in (ahem) university residence, long distance is prohibitively expensive.

We very rarely even pick it up when it rings anymore, because it's almost always a telemarketer. Well, yesterday it was a wrong number.

It rang on Monday just after 8 p.m. Not too late for telemarketers...I've had them call after 10 before...but something about it twigged me. I picked up on the third ring and it was Eva.

She'd hit a deer.

Again.

She hit one three mon…

Jeff Foxworthy, redneck supreme, defines being a redneck as having a "glorious absence of sophistication". I may never have brought beer to a funeral, but in a very real sense, I am a redneck. Sophistication, to me, is more precisely called "putting on airs" and I despise it.

I am pretentious in my lack of pretension. It's a fault of mine.

There aren't very many personality traits that elicit instant dislike out of me. Probably the biggest is snobbery: the closely cherished illusion that you are superior to the rest of us. I have no time for that. None.

Unfortunately, it's everywhere. I run across people whose noses rip the clouds all the time.

Organized religion is thoroughly infected with it, to the point where those who adhere to your exact set of beliefs are "saved" and others are "lost"; taken to its logical extreme, those others are infidels and fit only to be killed. And lest you think that commandment is only Islamic, go chec…

1. DOING WHAT I ALWAYS SAID I WOULD

Polyamory is a high-risk, high-reward lifestyle.

The risks, to monogamous people, are obvious.  Intrinsic to polyamory, you have

additional relationships that can upset apple cartsheartbreak potential that isn't just magnified, it's more like cubedthe certain exposure of every perceived inadequacy, every flaw in your relationships with your partner(s) and especially yourselfthe weird way poly has of creating ethical dilemmas you never dreamed you'd find yourself in the middle of. As if that's not enough, there are considerable social risks, although these should abate both over time in any poly relationship and with time passing overall as ethical non-monogamy becomes more visible and acceptable. The biggest one here is the risk of censure and rejection by family and friends. This social discrimination stings in a way you can't even imagine until you experience it: it feels like a complete denial of a part of your family and a lar…

Administrivia:  A blog on art has been commissioned...that will be forthcoming.

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I think I would have made a pretty fair father.

I still wish I'd had the opportunity--the CAS adoption rejection of 2005 still stings me, likely will for the rest of my life. But that ship sailed long ago. Doesn't keep me from looking out to sea every now and again. And when I do, I see 'good' kids and 'bad' kids. Oddly -- or maybe not so oddly when I think about the adults I'm attracted to -- it's the 'bad' kids that most interest me. I wonder how I might have done by them.

It's said that people turn into their parents. I've found that this is not always true. I think the more introspective of us look back on our childhoods and choose to either perpetuate or put an end to various patterns. There are many -- a great many -- parenting wins I would have chosen to pass on, and a few things, looking back, that I would have chosen to leave in my childhood. …

You might wonder what more I could possibly say about my wife, Eva, after sixteen years of marriage and more than a few anniversary, birthday and random because-I-love-you occasion blogs.  It's true, I've said a lot of loving things, because I love her a whole lot.
Longtime readers know the story: I met her at a job interview. She hired me, and at the end of that interview I knew my new boss would be a friend and quite strongly felt she'd be a great deal more than that. Hit by lightning, I was.
What I haven't told you about that interview was that I was dressed in full double-breasted suit and tie. The owners of the market research company dressed that way, and so did various presidents of sundry corporations that often attended focus groups. But for a man applying for a position in the phone room, calling people to try and recruit them for those focus groups...my appearance could hardly have been more incongruous had I sashayed in wearing  nothing at all.
Eva admitted…

The Toronto Blue Jays are into the ALCS.
There was a brief moment where my faith in them faltered this season...they took a tumble in the standings that almost carried them right out of the playoffs. In the end they got in and dispatched the Texas Rangers in three straight.

You have to feel a little bad for the Rangers if you're any kind of baseball fan. They threw two of the better starters in the AL at the Jays; both were shredded. They made the third game as close as could be only to lose as one of the more sure-handed players on their roster committed an error that led to the winning run in extra innings.

Now it's on to Cleveland to face the--

Okay. The nickname of Cleveland's MLB team is the Indians. One of my Facebook friends--a friend of a friend, in fact--posted this to her timeline yesterday:

INDIANS IT IS. BLUE JAYS, GET READY.

Whereupon one of her friends posted "Cleveland it is." Thus ensued a debate that got a little heated.

I originally came down wi…

In my last blog, about gratitude...I expressed it. 
In this one, I'm going to try to accept it.
I didn't go looking for compliments when I posted that. I never do. Taking compliments is much harder than giving them, for me. For most people, I think. Most of us don't think of ourselves as particularly worthy; for many, the thought is outright heretical. Which is one reason (among many) that I persist in spreading compliments and love. I usually see people as they are. Don't be alarmed: Who You Are is beautiful. 
That's nice, Ken. Apply that to yourself. 
I wrote a self-love post, not all that long ago, at the urging of someone my self loves deeply. Since then I've been the subject of some compliments that have left me at a loss for words. Yes, me.
Today was a case in point. I spent some time this morning in the presence of a Beautiful Mind (TM): a lovely person whose intellect would be intimidating if it weren't so welcoming and accepting. Some of our deepest…

Thanksgiving Day in Canada has been the second Monday in October only since 1957. Before that, it moved all over the place; occasionally it even jibed with American Thanksgiving. Not many Canadians know that. 
This day has always felt like a second New Year's Day to me...a day to look back over the year that was in search of things to be grateful for, and to fix those things firmly in my mind in anticipation of more of the same in the year to come.   
I've never had to search very hard, at least not since 2000, when I married Eva five days after Thanksgiving. When we started planning the wedding -- on the third date, which is also when I moved in with her -- October suggested itself quite naturally. I still remember telling her that having our anniversary so close to Thanksgiving (the latest Thanksgiving can fall, in fact, is on our anniversary) couldn't be more apt. 
It remains so. It is even more so with each passing year, in fact. My wife has always been a woman of many…

If you ask me what my favourite classical music piece is, I will first hem and haw and tell you there are far too many favourites to state just one. If, however, you then put a piano over my head and threaten to drop it on me if I don't pin myself down, I'll tell you it's Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto.

His Second is arguably more famous. You've probably heard themes from it, most notably Eric Carmen's "All By Myself" or, later, Muse's "Space Dementia". But his Third is, to me, on a different level entirely. Wikipedia states that it's "respected, even feared" among many pianists; the man to whom Rachmaninov dedicated the work never publicly performed it, stating it "wasn't for him" (which is how you said "WTF, man?!" in 1909). It's one of the most challenging concertos in the piano repertoire, replete with both astonishingly intricate passagework and, in many places, the very definition of po…