Crowne Plaza

This weekend, I'm been at the Crowne Plaza! It's one of the swankier hotels in Kitchener. It has its own pool, hot tub, sauna, exercise room, ping pong tables, mini golf, bowling, arcade and more!

I know it sounds odd that I would spend a weekend at a hotel in the city that I live in. It's work related.

I did wind up getting a plot in a community garden. Not the one I was after, though. This one's a bit of a hike out, but whatever. I've planted snow peas, sunflowers, zucchinis, cherry tomatoes, and impatiens. The impatiens are to attract bees, since I learned that the reason my zucchini plants always flower but don't often turn into zucchinis is because there aren't enough bees to help cross polinate. So I decided to get a flower that is more consistent to establish it as a hot spot for bees.

My phone broke. One day my phone just wouldn't power on. I always thought it would meet its end due to something charger related, but instead it just started freezing on the front screen. So I brought it in, and the guy said it was just done. If I'd been able to have it last until November, I would have gotten a new one for free, so I was disappointed. Still, the length it lasted put it down to $75 on a phone that is usually over $200.

 I remembered an interaction I had with a guy at the bus terminal. He'd asked for $3 for a bus. I gave it to him and he held out a phone. I said "What is this?" He said "For the $3", I said "You don't have to give me your phone, man", he said "I don't take charity", I said "Fine, but I'd give you the $3 regardless". I then accepted his phone and he offered to give me his autograph, which I also accepted.

So I wondered if this phone might actually work, and if I could just put the SIM card of my old phone into it. I charged it, powered it on, was surprised it was a fully functioning phone, with his contact list, a working calendar and other basic apps, and could work as timepiece. It wouldn't recognize my SIM card though. I wondered if it was because my phone was an android and his a Blackberry (no wonder he was selling it for $3 amiright?). I lamented over a memory of a woman on the street in crisis trying to sell me an Alcatel (same make as my phone) for $20. I didn't take it because it seemed kind of exploitative and I didn't realize you could transfer a SIM at that time.

So I had to go buy one. Even though I had to pay the $75, they soothed that pain by giving me a $100 gift certificate.

So really, the Blackberry was not the cheapest phone I've owned.

My flip was $60.

My Alcatel was free.

My Blackberry was $3.

And they gave me $25 for my Samsung.

This thing is beautiful. It pulls up the keypad on outgoing calls. so I can dial extensions now (shouldn't be a selling point, but after the past year and a half, it is). I just plug it in to charge it. The screen is even larger, and it can go for days without charging. The battery will likely weaken, but the Alcatel was always a daily charge, so it has a better starting point.

Ducks Mating

Recently, I had the experience of seeing ducks mating. I'd heard much about their unique mating habits, but never seen it in person. It's uh... not in agreement with the acceptable standards of human romantic interaction. I don't think I'll get into it here. But here's a Cracked article on it:

http://www.cracked.com/funny-2938-duck-rape/

So... before seeing the actual ducks, I first saw a neighbour of mine staring in abject horror. I followed her gaze to see a crowd of children trying to intervene. I slipped beside her and whispered to her:

"You know it is... what they do right?"

"It looks so mean!"

"It is mean... It's why I don't like ducks."

"Are they going to kill her?"

"No... or else there wouldn't be baby ducks."

She then called out to the children to step back, saying the ducks were just "hanging out". The children contested this. She saw her husband coming over the hill and called out to him, "Babe, look what the ducks are doing! He says it's natural!"

Her husband called back to her "Can't stop nature, Honey".

Except even in that article I linked, they described a variety in duck mating rituals. I think most people get caught up in the morbid side of it, and forget it's not typical. But because I described it as a natural act, and everyone trusts me around here to provide sound knowledge, people took what I said to heart and the consensus became to let nature take it's course even if it looked ugly.

After telling this story to someone else, she did some research and came back to me with some new facts. Actually, ducks typically form pair bonds, and the female duck's evolution is such that the aggression gene in male ducks is currently being bred out.

In other words, because of what I'd told the community, countless acts of aggression by male ducks were not being intervened in. I might as well be doing it to those brave female ducks fighting the good fight to end this violence!

Next time I saw it, I kind of stood by, looking on, not sure what I should do. I thought that, being men, all good and randy, they would either be difficult to distract or turn their aggression on to me. I sauntered up to the group but they took no notice. Then I sent my foot crashing down next to the closest male like a guillotine. If I had aimed for the duck, it would have been crushed. I was surprised by my own force. The group exploded and scattered. The female escaped.

When telling this story to the woman that educated me further on duck mating facts, I said "Now, knowing that I have the power to stop this, I'm never going to let that happen in front of me again."

She said "That sounds like the weirdest Superhero origin story".

Mom's Birthday

Today is Mom's birthday and I'm in Guelph to celebrate it.

I'm not really in a financial position to cash out on presents this year, but I got her a few things.

One of the people I'm associated with does chainmail jewellery, so I got her a multi-colour bracelet from this guy. It's kind of cool, because it's similar to what Mom used to do when she had that entrepreneur jewellery business. I got this at the Side by Side Art Show at The Museum, which is run by Planned Lifetime Networks.

Planned Lifetime Networks is an organization that helps people diagnosed with developmental disabilities to create support networks and friendship circles. The Side by Side Art Show was an event where pieces done by local artists, from people with and without disabilities are put on display and sold. They had their most successful year this year, about triple the turnout of the year previous, enough to fill the entire bottom floor of The Museum.

I also got her a painting at this event. Made by an artist I'm not familiar with in this case. I won't be able to give it to her until The Museum is done with the display, though.

The Museum is a museum in downtown Kitchener. I don't really like the name, it sounds arrogant. It's kind of like saying "We are the one and only museum, compared to us, those other places don't deserve to call themselves such." We even have another major museum, the Waterloo Region Museum. Although I don't really like the name of that one either, because it's on the farside of Kitchener, and even though Kitchener is part of the Waterloo Region, considering the rivalry between the two cities, showcasing Waterloo's prominence in the heart of Kitchener feels uncool. I still prefer it to The Museum though.

We have a couple of smaller museum's too. There's one in the University of Waterloo, and one in Conestoga Mall, and we have a more specified Clay and Glass Art Museum. And while The Museum is a nice museum, it really only has one major exhibit going at a time, which the swap out to keep things varied. It's a relatively small museum compared to, say, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, which has enough space to maintain a variety of stable exhibits. It might not be fair to compare Kitchener's major museum to Toronto, considering Toronto's status, but it still goes to show you that between the to of them, if one of them is going to be The Museum, it isn't Kitchener's.

The Museum also has a pub attached to it named "B @ The Museum". The "B" doesn't stand for anything, it's just trying to be modern, I guess, by misspelling the word "be" as if it were text or chat. But people do that because they're firing off a  quick message and don't want to waste time. When they do it, it comes across like they were in a hurry to get their market out and couldn't bother to waste time spelling the words "be" or "at". The person in charge of naming things @ The Museum doesn't know what they are doing.

Mom's birthday always falls near Mother's Day, so she kind of gets the two celebrated in one. Since Mother's Day was last Sunday, I couldn't really get to Guelph for it, because I'd have the awkward decision of taking a whole week off or going back Monday, staying in Kitchener for one full day and leaving the day after. I guess she's got a similar problem to a kid whose birthday is near Christmas.

Community Garden

I've been trying to rent a plot at the local community garden.

There's a fenced off portion of land near where I live with sectioned areas of gardening space. All of my neighbours seem to know someone whose used it, but nobody has done so personally.

It doesn't exactly have an address, but a vague Google of the area, plus "Community Garden" brought up what I needed to know. Apparently it's part of something called the "Community Garden Council of Waterloo Region".

http://community-gardens.ca/content/about-us

On the page for my local garden, I got the phone number and address for a local community centre. This was surprising to me, as I'd lived here for some months and had not noticed a community centre. I called them but got voice mail, then decided to go to the address.

So this part of the story might be quite common, but it's the first time I'd ever run across something like this, so it seems worth telling. Following the instructions to the community centre led me to a townhouse complex. My perspective of a "Community Centre" is a stand-alone structure with a variety of resources, and this didn't quite fit that perception. I found the relevant address in front of a very standard-looking home, except this one was marked with the letter "A". To find the centre, I walked down the street of homes with identical numbers but increasing alphabet letters. Eventually, I came across a unit with a sign saying "Community Centre" in the window, and a sign saying "Open".

It looked like all the other units, so I was conflicted on whether I should knock on the door (typical of a privately owned space) or if I should just enter (typical of a public access space).

I decided to just go in. The inside looked like someone's home. Someone called out to ask who'd come in. I stammered something about not knowing whether or not I was in the right place. The people who greeted me looked like family, furthering the "home-image", but they said they were the ones who ran the community garden. The main guy who started it wasn't there, so they left him a note to call me back.

He didn't call me back, and I've called twice more and have visited three more times. Each time I've visited has been inside usual business hours, but other than the first encounter, it's been closed. Today, I asked a guy sitting outside if he knew what the hours for the centre were, and he said it was pretty random.

It's almost like a family just claimed some unused land, told people that if they wanted access, they'd have to pay, and put up a "Community Centre" sign in front of their window, deciding on a whim when they felt up to having the Centre open to the public. Maybe I could do that.

I've called out several people working inside the Community Garden. When I asked the first guy how to rent a plot, he said he didn't know. When I asked him how he did it, he said it was for a friend. Today, I asked a woman and she just looked at me and shook her head sadly...

Creepy, creepy Community Garden dynamics.

New Doorknob

Recently I tried to replace the doorknob on my bedroom door. This is something I've never done before, so I was pleased when a few Youtube videos successfully guided me through the process of removing and then assembling a seemingly functional knob. However, when I closed the door, I realized I was locked in.

I had enough ingenuity to come up with the solution of removing the knob and moving the latch manually from the inside. But nothing on the inside would move. I called to my roommate and the two of us spent a good time poking at the latch and reassembling the knobs and attempting to turn it and pretending we were going to come up with something new.

I had an evening work shift coming up. My roommate suggested destroying the latch. I pointed out that even if we broke the latch, the relevant piece was still between the door and wall. He agreed and suggested breaking the door. For me, that was a last-ditch option, so I suggested popping out the screen door of my window and jumping though it.

So that's what we did. Unfortunately, there was a crowd of children playing beneath my window at the time. Probably being kind of dressed-up for work and holding a briefcase made the jumping out my bedroom window seem even a bit more peculiar. After getting to the other side, I realized I'd left my light on, which led to many children trying to volunteer to climb through the window to help me out.

I should point out that my window is raised high enough that a foothold such as a chair on either side was helpful, and the jump made me look a bit athletic.

One of my neighbours joked that when she saw me coming through the window, she thought it was a home invasion. When I came back after my work shift, night had fallen, and hopping through the window under the cover of dark really did make me think an onlooker could have the wrong impression.

So that was two window hops. Next morning, of course, I had to jump through again. I got my Super and we examined the situation. Apparently the latch in the knob I'd bought didn't have any insides. That means, there was nothing connecting to the metal knob that connects between door and wall. Straight-up a defective latch.

He had to jump through my window. He tried to pry the knob, but he couldn't reach it. He had to pry the trim loose. The trim had been painted over and was much harder to remove. Once he did, he still couldn't access the knob. So he popped the pins out of the hinges, but because the hinges moved in a weird direction, he still couldn't open it. Neighbours were making wisecracks.

"Harder to break into than Fort Knox!"

"Jeez, Gryphon, when you do something, you really do it!"

Took a person on either side to pop the door out. Then the latch was removed, hinges were re-installed, and I got a new knob.

I have to admit, I took pride in how difficult it was to get through my door. Even if a robber could get into my room, they wouldn't get any further!

Check it out, I'm on the Extend-a-Family Summer Program recruitment brochure.

My eyes are closed! Everyone keeps talking about how they've seen me on this brochure. Apparently I'm on the I Choose Dignity Rally brochure to, carrying my "Nobleness" flag. I've been hearing this for years but have yet to see it.