Things that deserve the stink-eye:

If you live in Alberta or British Columbia, you might relate? I opened this virtual assistant at 19:15. Great service, eh? If you live elsewhere, I'm sure you have similar stories. I haven't used the Telus Babylon health services app, (and probably never will because, Telus) plus I'm hearing disturbing things. 

P.S. As I write this, I am still on hold with Telus (1 hour, 13 minutes...). Why access Telus both online & via phone simultaneously? This isn't my first Telus rodeo. 

Ugh.

Ever wonder what that movie scene moment would be like to cause an explosion and then walk away? Me neither. However, I did discover that when you drive away while still attached to the gas pump, there is no massive explosion. At least not in my case.

Ugh.

Yup. I drove away while still attached to the pump. Gassing up, I jumped back in my vehicle the other morning to resync my phone to the dashboard menu. It took about three minutes and during that time I forgot I was still attached so I drove away. When I heard a noise and noticed the gas pump nozzle hanging out of my vehicle, I experienced disbelief, belief, denial, disbelief, belief and a bowel movement pretty much simultaneously. Confused, I hopped out of my vehicle, checked the hose AND WHAT SORT OF TRICKERY IS THIS? The nozzle has a breakaway feature? And no damage to my vehicle? BLEEPING GENIUS. So I pushed the hose and the nozzle back together. BUT WAIT COULD IT POSSIBLY BE THIS SIMPLE?

I immediately entered the gas station and confessed, and then, like some sort of Dunning-Kruger effect ground zero, asked, "is it fixed then?" I will quote the response of the woman behind the counter.

"Ugh. No. It is NOT fixed. I will fix it. This happens. All. The. Time. Just go. Please go. We should really start charging for this. Ugh. It's okay. It's not that big of a deal. Just go. Just have a nice day."

Her admirable Canadian politeness training kicked in, but quite honestly, she did not give a shit about whether or not I would have a nice day. Nevertheless, I AM GRATEFUL FOR THIS GAS STATION MIRACLE.

One final caution: do not assume all pumps have this feature.

Dear Ford Canada,

You win.

Despite being assured during numerous phone-calls by your several customer service line representatives that a supervisor would return my call in two business days (didn't happen), by 7:00 p.m. (also didn't happen), and to quote "I guarantee that my supervisor will call you in the morning" (nope), I no longer want to talk to your supervisor. Why? Because I am willing to concede in this big corporation tactic I like to call the-customer-will-eventually-give-up game.

I write this open letter because as I grow older, I vow not to become a grumpy, bitter old man. Let me rephrase: I hope to grow old but I am actively working on preventing the bitterness that sometimes comes with age. I seek not to be a complainer. I do not have grudges I wish to nurture. I do not get offended by everything I disagree with. I recognize and am grateful for my privileges. Perhaps I'm stereotyping, but I want to age intentionally mindful that life is too fantastic and too enjoyable to waste time on being angry. Plus, like all of life's experiences, despite the wrongs, this one had some 'rights' too.

If it mattered to you then you might be pleased that one of the 'rights' included how I was treated by my local Ford dealership. When my 2013 vehicle went into the shop over a month ago for a new block heater, I expected to have it back in a day or two like every other time my vehicle has needed service. Great local service is one of the reasons my wife and I have purchased for each other and our family--and this fact surprised me when I did the math--eight Ford vehicles from my local dealership in the past 25 years. So, when I was told that a hose broke during the installation, I authorized a replacement, and here I am a month later still waiting for that hose. During that time, our local dealership has provided a courtesy car to us, but mostly I have been using my wife's vehicle (also a Ford) for the 2 hour commute I take for work sometimes three days weekly. She has been using the courtesy vehicle. Our local dealership is also installing better tires on the courtesy vehicle because (and I quote) "at no point in time do we want our customers in a non safe vehicle." Fist bump.

Anyway, after a month of searching for a part--apparently there were none in North America--I am told it is slowly making its way to Alberta. Is that little hose-r driving itself? Is it being transported by a donkey? (Oops, bitter moment.) Now remember my vehicle, a very common Ford Escape, is just barely five years old. And consider that some people might not even own their 2013s yet. How then could this part be so rare? About 2.5 weeks into this, I called your service line to beg someone to find another parts source. Nada.

Ok. Patience, right? Exactly. We all need patience. But after a month, I needed one of your Ford Canada supervisor to do four things:

1. given the timeline, determine if there was any possible way this part could expedited,  
2. given my vehicle's relative newness, explain how this happened and hear what you might do to prevent it from happening to others/me again,
3. and in doing so, apply the phrase customer service literally by acknowledging the situation deserves a little more finesse than just a patronizing first level phone interview,
4. but first, RETURN THE PROMISED CALL. 

But nope. No one called back. This kind of crap, Ford Canada (O you mighty corporation interested mostly in sales not service), is why I declare my defeat. 

Sure, I explored other avenues. For example, I researched the woefully pitiful other contact information on your website essentially designed to undermine human contact. I took the surveys after I spoke to your customer service line operators but they informed me that the surveys were actually my opportunity to judge their phone skills, not assess the INCREDIBLE lack of follow up. (Oops, creeping into bitter again. Sorry.) And so I will continue to wait patiently and thus prevent the bitter-old-man-ness from clogging my veins. 

Or...I suppose there are a few other things I could try including social media or perhaps sharing my struggles with Chev or Honda or Dodge or Toyota? But is the competition any different? Maybe it's time to find out? Another avenue is to never buy another Ford vehicle. We can always vote with our pocketbooks right? That is a tempting option, but honestly, my local Ford dealership has always been good to us. Whatever I do or do not do next, this experience reinforced, at least for me, that customer service is alive at local businesses, yet quite cremated at the Ford Canada Corporation.

In closing, I'd wish you a good day, but you aren't listening anyway. So instead, a good day to my readers. Do what you will with this info, my friends. 

Let's be honest.

I'm not smiling on the inside
(because this is bullshit). 

When the neighbour kids make a surprise snowman in your front yard, it's quite heartwarming and adorable. Isn't it?

One problem though: WINTER IS COMING (TOO SOON).

Things that deserve the stink-eye:

Um, ? I discovered this in the basement bathroom of the Rutherford Library at the University of Alberta. And I don't like it. At all. What's it for? Other than perhaps the perfect setting for a Stephen King story, like Sneakers?

108% Sure

source

We’ve all had our wars with insects. Whether spiders, mosquitoes, flying ants, and especially spruce beetles, the struggle is real. But honey bees? No problem. Sure they sting. Not pleasant. But more typically, they are busy saving the world, literally. Essential to human survival, not only do our precious bees make honey for our glazed doughnuts, they also make protective wax for those round little cheeses we all like. Oh and they pollinate crops and flowers and trees which is basically everything we rely on for nourishment. Yes, the little bee, like a tiny hairy farmer in black and yellow overalls, is essential to our food production and our food economy. Food’s pretty cool to have, isn’t it? So yup, bees = good.

But what about those other bees? Yes, I’m referring to the bee’s aggressive relative, the ones I’m 108% sure are never invited over to any bee family reunion: wasps and hornets. AKA flying arses. 

Sure, they resemble some sort of super-cool prototype for futuristic flying machines but they have one mode: hair trigger. And one emotional response to everything: WHAT? OH REALLY? MAKE ME! WANNA GO? WANNA GO? We all know at least one wasp or hornet who’s bragged on social media about

• ruining a BBQ.
• ruining some kid’s birthday party.
• ruining an outdoor wedding.
• ruining the outdoors.
• flying around the bar set up on the deck trying to steal drinks like, well, bar-flies (on steroids).
• constructing the only deceptively delicate paper mache art-pieces that (when suddenly encountered) induce terror.
• snorting bear-spray.
• killing a lady-bug.
• kidnapping caterpillars and feeding them to their young, live! (Not even kidding.)
• generally stealing happiness by causing everything in their path to wither.

But you know what else wasps and hornets do? They make a really sweet sound when you hit them with a badminton racket. There: now you have something I don’t recommend you try at least once this weekend. Wink. 

Things that deserve the stink-eye:

not cool when this arrives close to your birthday.

Luck?

source

Driving in the early morning Northern Alberta darkness last Friday, I hit a deer.

I'd say five trotted out of the ditch all at once; there was no way to avoid it. It bounced onto the hood of my car and then slipped off to the side to remain on the highway.

Despite that initial shock, I felt oddly calm.

This happens often where I live. Everyone I know who chooses to share this big beautiful Alberta wilderness with wildlife has one or even two of these stories to tell.

One person stopped immediately; I expected a stranger but it was a friend. She listened politely as I rambled on. My car seemed relatively unscathed but it was definitely not safe to be on the side of the highway even with our flashers blinking so I urged her to go on her way. I jumped back in my car to let someone past but instead someone else stopped, also a friend. She gave me a hug. We talked briefly. After a semi-trailer blew by us like a slap in the face, I urged her to travel on to work.

I still hadn't had an opportunity to actually go look at the deer. Honestly, I was avoiding it. Before I could, another driver stopped and in that morning dark I saw him grab something from the back of his truck, a shovel. He pushed the deer off the road and then came over to my car. A stranger, I shook his hand and thanked him for that. At least the road would be safe for drivers again. He said there's only one problem: the deer was still alive.

The calm drained out of me.

I thanked him again so he left and then it was just the two of us waiting for the sun to rise on that warm December morning, one alive, one dying.

Or maybe both? Not me, this time. I called Alberta Fish & Wildlife and was told someone was already traveling in the area and that he would euthanize the animal. My calm mostly returned but there was another feeling too.

The entire incident from collision to conclusion? Fifteen minutes. Although the repair bill will be costly, my car is drive-able. I'm alive and uninjured. It could have been much worse. At least for me. I even arrived to work on time. That's why something about this whole thing feels too easy.

Brandon Mull wrote "luck has a way of evaporating when you lean on it." I've think I've been leaning on luck, and luck is something I don't much believe in. Because if I did, then I'd probably learn nothing from this lesson about strangers, about mercy, about myself, and about every other ordinary extraordinary day when everything I touched, lived.

Keyed

We all have those mornings. Take for example, one's keys. There are many different ways a guy's keys could interfere with that frenzied-rush-to-get-out-the-door-efficiency required some mornings when it's important to be early or something needs to be prepped before work or someone needs a ride or whatever. So keys are pretty much key, aren't they? Keys don't always cooperate though. Familiar scenarios follow. Maybe...

1. I can't find my keys.
2. I have the wrong set of keys.
3. I left my keys in my other coat.
4. My key won't work.
5. Someone stole my car so my keys are useless. It could happen. That reminds me of the time
6. One of my teens borrowed my car but came home without it and well, you know that parking-lot-I-have-no-freaking-idea-where-my-car-is-feeling. That.
7. My dog ate my keys.
8. My kid dropped my keys in the toilet. (It's happened to several people apparently.)
9. My keys are at the bottom of the lake/river/swamp/ocean/vat of cheese dip.
10. My wife drove six hours away for the weekend with her keys and my keys. (True story.)

BUT HERE'S A NEW ONE.

I'm going to be presumptuous and declare that this has NEVER HAPPENED TO ANYONE ELSE ON EARTH except me and sure, that's probably exaggeration but wait, maybe not.

Rushing to my car one early sunny beautiful morning recently, I stepped off my deck and onto my driveway, my keys in my right hand. Suddenly I realized I had walked right into one of those cobwebs that spiders like to clothesline us unsuspecting humans with, likely to enjoy the effect of seeing us humans flail around in irrational horror while those same spiders record the drama on their tiny iPhones with the intent to upload footage to Arachni-you-tube and get lots and lots of hits, go viral, impress their friends, and become famous before someone crushes them with a shoe, repeatedly. (My bitterness will be explained momentarily). Anyway, instinctively I reached up to frantically remove that spider silk from my face and promptly shoved my car key up my right nostril into my brain aka a self-administered mini-lobotomy.

OUCHNESS.

If there is indeed an Arachni-you-tube, I suspect I'm famous too.

Things that deserve the stink-eye:

I bought these much-too-expensive Cracker Jacks so I could enjoy me an innocent little time-travel-trip back to my boyhood but instead all I got was:
a. about 6 peanuts.
b. a cheap sheriff sticker (instead of the sheriff badge like I deserved, I mean come on).
c. annoyed because I wore my sheriff sticker but it must have fallen off after about ten minutes and then I couldn't find it and thus I didn't get to be the sheriff for very long.
d. about 1000 calories and bummed.

Sometimes being a grown up is unnecessarily hard.

Just so you know, the answer is no.

Is it possible for me to NOT wonder every time I use a boot-boy if today is the day when he snaps and becomes a wood chipper?

Whoa.

Just so you know, the answer is no.

Does snow spray in a can taste the same as whipped cream in a can?

#oops
#readthelabel

Wordfuse (Irk Edition)

Why so wifickle?!

(adj) Wifickle!

Grr. (interjection)

Unexpected Sharpness

He left behind his best pair of shoes. (I know they're comfy because we're the same size.) She left behind almost everything. (One can only take so much on a plane but I'm happy she has her guitar.) Let's be honest though. What they mostly left behind is this: me.

That's why there's an unexpected sharpness today, a lonely sharpness. I knew it was coming but I'm always easily surprised. My children are grown and gone. One moved about 8 hours away, one moved about 48 hours away. And yes, they will be back: Thanksgiving, surely Christmas, probably next summer, I don't know.

That's the thing: I don't know.

For the past week I've been talking with myself about this but I haven't much been listening to my logic. I knew it was coming. My daughter has already had two years of university six hours away. This isn't really new. Yet the difference this time seems to be that both of them are gone. And that's what I don't know: as a parent, who am I and how do I cope if both of them go?

I don't have a choice. I have to let go. But that also means I can't protect them. I can't be in charge. I can't see their faces in the morning and at night and I remember in the early years, that was the best part. I can't read Harry Potter aloud at bedtime anymore. I can't sing We Three Kings every night. And I can't make burritos, one without onions, one with everything, both with avocado and just sit and listen and laugh and nag and argue and question and challenge and debate and laugh and just look at them and just enjoy family life every day because that was the routine for so long and I barely remember a time without that routine.

That's the other thing: I don't know the new routine.

Wow that sounds old and anal. But honestly, my wife and I have built this sturdy structure, a sort-of scaffolding and now construction isn't complete but we've certainly finished this phase. And I know this is just all my stupid selfish tender heart because I'm also equally excited for them to find their own paths. My own path led to much happiness: marriage, children, career. They've earned this. I want this for them.

Yet I don't quite know my own path now.

Friends help. They remind me of the times I couldn't wait for my teens to grow up and get lives and at times, stop being assholes. I'm also told these relationships will evolve in deeper ways. I hope so. But will that happen for sure? I don't know.

Here's what I do know though: they don't need me to pine for them. They need me to be what I've always tried to be: Dad. So, just like from the very beginning of my life with them, that's what I will figure out how to do and how to be and who to be in all the ways they need me to be.

Things that deserve the stink-eye:

this is a banana with a hair band attached to it (retrieved from my daughter's backpack--the one she last looked inside 4 months ago).

#whatadingdong
#imgoingtomissyou

Dear Dude,

I want to say we've all been in your shoes and really, we have, but your shoes were particularly uncomfortable that day when you found yourself behind me in the grocery store line-up after the cashier charged me for 83 plastic bags instead of just 3 especially when she tried to void them but some till code error inspired that machine to make a noise like an airport security violation (just enough to make us all feel uncomfortable and somehow guilty) and yes, you and I both knew it was inevitable, she had to locate a manager to void the transaction because the entry-level cashier was not privy to the override code needed to void it herself and so we waited while she tried to CSI a more senior employee and then she finally did and did I mention only two tills were open (?) and so the dead-on-the-inside manager came and was going to void the transaction but that's when she discovered that the #8 till button was stuck and of course, she needed to void 80 bags, not 79 and thus she needed the #8 OF COURSE SHE DID and thus even with the middle upper management void code she would be unable to void what we all so desperately NEEDED her to void so she tried to use her fingernails to dislodge the button and then probably neither of us would have predicted that the button would actually pop off the till and so then the manager lady attempted to refasten the #8 button several ways while making a joke I couldn't concentrate on because my brain was in CTRL ALT DEL mode because by then it was oh I don't know 38 minutes later or maybe the store had closed already oh I don't know because I glanced at you and noticed your head was hanging all droopy-like over your jar of pickles and whatever else and the cashier apologized and I thanked her but I sort of wanted to start laughing like a maniac, you know what I mean, that sort of laughing that's intended to reestablish sanity because inside it's suddenly like time has stopped and this is the moment when all the weight of one's incredible powerlessness in the face of not adversity but the profound overwhelming mundane-ness of the world settles like asbestos into one's lungs and then finally, FINALLY the #8 button was repaired and she voided the transaction and dude, I'm serious, you deserve some sort of award for choosing the worst, THE ABSOLUTE WORST grocery store line-up in the absolutely history of line-ups because dude, no one should be that unlucky, like SERIOUSLY and I felt your pain, that pain emanating from you like heat waves off pot-hole ridden asphalt but you persevered man, you persevered and you bought those pickles dude, you BOUGHT THOSE PICKLES without complaining or weeping or any whiff of whatever terrible inner goings-on were surely tumbling inside you like wet clothes in vent-less dryer!

And that, dude, is why you are my hero.

Wordfuse (Sick Edition)

Me: cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, clears throat, pause, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, pause, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, cough, pause, wait, wait, wait, thinking There should be a name for it when you can't stop coughing and it keeps you up all night.

Up all night talking to myself me: Coughinsomnia?

Me: Yup. That's it. Perfect.

Up all night talking to myself me: cough, cough, cough....

Things that deserve the stink-eye:

Every time I open the fridge this keeps staring at me with its bulbous-surgery-enhanced-nipple-mouth-engorged-baboon-bum-pulsating-growth-thingy.

Ok it's not pulsating. Yet.

I try not to make awkward eye-contact but it stares.

And that's why I highly recommend it because, appetite-killer.

#thanksteresa

Things that deserve the stink-tongue:

Read the fine print.

#whoa
#howdidthislegalygetacrosstheborder?
#onetasteandifeltlikeihadsmokedapackofcigarettes
#thanksgrant

Things that deserve the stink-eye: