So when I got up on Friday I found that Marsha had left me a note that said “Throw Bad Meat”. Ok, that might sound strange but there was a good reason. On Thursday we’d discovered a package of sliced chicken lunchmeat against the back wall of the fridge. Not sure how long it had been in the fridge (but I think the package might have been marked Methuselah Meat Company). In any event this was a reminder to send the package out with the trash before it, like, actually exploded. Those of you that know me will understand though, that my mind tends to make unexpected connections and this was the case with the bad meat. My mind immediately went to the classic song from Credence Clearwater Revival that went:

“I feel the bad meat rising”
You remember the song. It had the chorus...
"I won't  go out tonight. This is bound to take some time. There’s some bad meat on the rise."

Well OK maybe that’s the version they did in concert, not the one on the album.

But I digress.

A good week overall. I finished my first week at Inuktun and it’s going quite well. I’m learning the systems rapidly and already I think I’m contributing to the operation. For the moment I don’t have an office because they didn’t have an IT guy before I started. I’m working from a table in the corner, but they are looking at rearranging the main office, moving some walls and some people. The idea is to centralize the files, put all the Accounting people next to each other, and incidentally to free up some space by shrinking some overly wide hallways to give me an office next to the server room. With luck this’ll be done by the first of the year. In the mean time they did send me down to Staples with the company credit card to get a new office chair. I took that as a good sign.

I’ve been driving the truck to work. Yes it uses more gas than I like but it’s what I have. We’ve started talking about trading the truck in for something else. I want a small sports car like this
http://www.hyundaiusa.com/veloster/
Fast, cool, handles well. It’s a Korean Mini.
Marsha is all for this, but she did make a few suggestions. First with her bad knee she really does better with an automatic transmission. Also because I’m commuting it would be best to get something very fuel efficient. Also because it’ll be our newer car, it’s the one we’ll want to take on long trips rather than the Prius so a bit more storage space would be handy. (The Prius is still solid but it’s closing in on 100k so we’re less comfortable driving it across the country.) Also because we’re getting rid of the pickup, having something that could occasionally pull a small trailer would be good. You know, for getting soil from the garden centre or concrete and sheet rock for the garage project. The upshot of this is that my cool, sleek sports car is looking more and more like an electric minivan. Oh well.

Driving to work has been a bit weird for me too. It feels strange to get up, have breakfast and take off to work either before Marsha gets up or before she gets home from her job. You see with Aviawest I worked at home so I saw Marsha all the time. At NCO, Marsha worked at the same place as I did, so we saw each other all the time. At the University we worked in the same office so we both commuted together and saw each other all the time. Prior to that I worked for a company just off the U of MN campus so we commuted together and I walked over to her office and we had lunch together all the time. Literally, it’s been a lifetime since my work life was so separated from my home life. OK it’s supposedly the ‘normal’ way things work but it feels weird.

And speaking of weird, Friday was a strange one here. In addition to the Bad Meat incident, there was an earthquake in the Okanagan region of southern BC. No damage but it shook things up a bit. More significantly, we got snow here on the Island. This made the commute on Friday fun, one more reason I want to replace the pickup with something better. I gotta say that I could never have imagined a time when Nanaimo got snow before Minneapolis. Our only consolation is that, where most of you will be dealing with snow, winter driving, and the need to carry a winter survival kit and shovel until May or June, we should be back to clear roads by Tuesday and we’ll be planning the garden in February.

Neener, Neener, Neener.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING.
Please drive safe and enjoy your family, friends and the wonderful food.

Doug & Marsha

PIX: Yes we got snow in Nanaimo. The second picture is what passes for a municipal snow plow out here.