22 November 2015
Island Life 22 November 2015
22/11/15 08:01
Last Sunday I went to the store to pick up some macaroni. You’d think this would be a simple job but as it went on the trip just got stranger and stranger. All was fine until I got to the pasta aisle. I couldn’t find the macaroni. OK understand that macaroni is a minority. There’s lasagna and spaghetti, and angel hair spaghetti, and rotini, and manicotti, and on and on. There’s a lot of different kinds of pasta. That’s cool, but it did make it hard to find simple elbow macaroni. Once I did find the macaroni though, I was no closer to my goal. There was whole wheat macaroni, lemon macaroni, Halal and Kosher macaroni (and I’m not even sure how macaroni wouldn't be), organic free range macaroni, and on and on. I mean I just wanted regular ordinary macaroni you know to make regular ordinary macaroni and cheese. Then I saw it. Gluten free macaroni. Gluten free? Seriously? I understand there are people that have to avoid gluten but macaroni? After all isn’t pasta the Latin word for gluten? That’s what it is. In the old days they even advertised their pasta as 99 and 44/100% gluten. The essence of pasta is gluten. How could you make gluten free macaroni? Which makes me wonder then, if they have removed the gluten, what are they using to bind the bits together? I know, this is all a conspiracy by “those kids”. You know the ones we all knew in school. The weird ones that ate paste? Maybe they’ve grown up and are all working together in the baked goods industry to get the rest of us to join them. They’ve made pasta with school glue. But then is school glue gluten free? I wonder, if I go to the aisle of school supplies if they’ll have “gluten free school glue”. Oh well but I digress. For me, I like my gluten. So after searching for a bit longer, I finally found regular ordinary elbow macaroni. You know the one in a big box with an Italian sounding name, and a chubby Italian grandma’s face on the front. The one made by a bunch of Norwegian guys in the Midwest. Just like we’ve bought for decades.
After I found my macaroni I wandered over to the bakery. You know to get some nice gluten enriched bagels. Now as you are no doubt familiar, in grocery stores they have a store wide speaker system for sending out general messages. “Could we get another checker up front?” “Customer Service in the flower section.” That sort of thing. This time they came on with the message, “Dengue, cleanup in aisle four.” Dengue? Somebody named their kid Dengue? What arehis siblings named? A sister Malaria and a brother Typhus? Seriously, sometimes I think people should go to class before they become parents. There should be a class called “How to NOT give your kid a bad name”. People, people, people, you have to look at meanings.
And then on the way out I noticed they had started to put their Christmas stuff up. OK, I’m not going to complain about that. It is the middle of November, it’s after Halloween, you kinda have to expect them to roll out the egg nog and wreaths about now. I however came across something I found interesting. An actual Charlie Brown tree. Ok I have to admit it is cute. I thought about getting one. Then I remembered the twelve large plastic totes full of Christmas stuff that we already have, plus two giant plastic boxes holding the tree. I decided to pass. However, as I thought about it, something didn’t add up. If you remember, this particular sub plot in A Charlie Brown Christmas was that Charlie Brown chose this scrawny natural tree rather than the shiny plastic and aluminum ones. It was special because it was a real, not an artificial tree. So, they’re commemorating the 50th anniversary of the first broadcast of this film, by selling a tiny ARTIFICIAL Charlie Brown Christmas tree. This just seems wrong somehow.
But the big news this week arrived on Wednesday. We received a notice from Immigration Canada telling us that we needed to appear at 8:00 in the morning on December 2nd. As ominous as that sounds, it just meant that they’re finally going to swear us in. We’re going to become Canadian, for real. You are all welcome to attend, but sitting is limited.
The event is going to happen at Beban Park. Now, the centre at Beban Park has two sides. One has a couple of large meeting rooms. This is where go when the Home Show is in town. The other side is the Frank Crane Arena. It’s the hockey rink where the Nanaimo Clippers play. You didn’t know Nanaimo has a hockey team? Well, of course it does. This IS Canada after all. We of course had been assuming that the event would be in one of the meeting rooms. A friend of ours suggested however, that might not be the case, we could be in the arena. Maybe rather than having us recite the oath, whoever scores from the blue line is in, and the rest have to start over.
I hope not. We wouldn’t stand a chance.
Doug & Marsha
PIX: We saw the coolest building. It’s actually an electrical contracting company but for some reason they have incredible stonework on the outside of the office. It’s so cool.
After I found my macaroni I wandered over to the bakery. You know to get some nice gluten enriched bagels. Now as you are no doubt familiar, in grocery stores they have a store wide speaker system for sending out general messages. “Could we get another checker up front?” “Customer Service in the flower section.” That sort of thing. This time they came on with the message, “Dengue, cleanup in aisle four.” Dengue? Somebody named their kid Dengue? What arehis siblings named? A sister Malaria and a brother Typhus? Seriously, sometimes I think people should go to class before they become parents. There should be a class called “How to NOT give your kid a bad name”. People, people, people, you have to look at meanings.
And then on the way out I noticed they had started to put their Christmas stuff up. OK, I’m not going to complain about that. It is the middle of November, it’s after Halloween, you kinda have to expect them to roll out the egg nog and wreaths about now. I however came across something I found interesting. An actual Charlie Brown tree. Ok I have to admit it is cute. I thought about getting one. Then I remembered the twelve large plastic totes full of Christmas stuff that we already have, plus two giant plastic boxes holding the tree. I decided to pass. However, as I thought about it, something didn’t add up. If you remember, this particular sub plot in A Charlie Brown Christmas was that Charlie Brown chose this scrawny natural tree rather than the shiny plastic and aluminum ones. It was special because it was a real, not an artificial tree. So, they’re commemorating the 50th anniversary of the first broadcast of this film, by selling a tiny ARTIFICIAL Charlie Brown Christmas tree. This just seems wrong somehow.
But the big news this week arrived on Wednesday. We received a notice from Immigration Canada telling us that we needed to appear at 8:00 in the morning on December 2nd. As ominous as that sounds, it just meant that they’re finally going to swear us in. We’re going to become Canadian, for real. You are all welcome to attend, but sitting is limited.
The event is going to happen at Beban Park. Now, the centre at Beban Park has two sides. One has a couple of large meeting rooms. This is where go when the Home Show is in town. The other side is the Frank Crane Arena. It’s the hockey rink where the Nanaimo Clippers play. You didn’t know Nanaimo has a hockey team? Well, of course it does. This IS Canada after all. We of course had been assuming that the event would be in one of the meeting rooms. A friend of ours suggested however, that might not be the case, we could be in the arena. Maybe rather than having us recite the oath, whoever scores from the blue line is in, and the rest have to start over.
I hope not. We wouldn’t stand a chance.
Doug & Marsha
PIX: We saw the coolest building. It’s actually an electrical contracting company but for some reason they have incredible stonework on the outside of the office. It’s so cool.