Happy Anniversary

As many readers are aware, Bruce and I hooked up in March, 1979.

Thirty years later, in March 2009, we got married .... 

Over ....

March 9, 2009, Huatulco, Mexico. Bruce and I chant with Jeannine Woodall in a ceremony shared by all the people at our yoga retreat, including my dear friend Kate Storey. 

These roses were part of the ceremony and I photographed them in their water bottle in the washroom in our room.

... and over ...

March 21, 2009. Bruce and I got married full and proper in front of a small crowd, including my dear friend Kate Storey, gathered in Bruce's parents' living room. 

As you can see in this array of corsages and boutonnieres, I stayed with the orange rose colour scheme. Our talented florists added green roses, peacock feathers and orange orchids for flair.

... and over again

On July 4, 2009, we threw a yard party featuring a handmade ceremony for a crowd of about 100 people, including my dear friend Kate Storey.

Flowers weren't a big part of the July party. But, we did have pony rides, a bounce castle and, most expensive of all, this cake. 

All these parties are happy memories. But that doesn't mean it's out of the question I might forget.

On Tuesday, March 21, 2017, I came home from work and spotted a vase of roses on the dining room table. 

"What're the flowers for?" I asked.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen 

Nothing to See Here

Wasp's nest: empty

It's March Break in this part of the country. Everyone with or claiming to have children took some or all of the past week off. 

The office was a ghost town. Crumpled bits of post it notes tumble-weeded down the deserted paths between the cubicles. Saved late afternoon daylight slanted in through half-blinded windows and sparkled on suspended dust flecks undisturbed by the breeze of policy advisors rushing around.

My calendar, crammed past capacity just last week sat half fallow, granting me time to catch up with those whose nests have always been or have recently become empty.

What do harried bureaucrats talk about when the work-driven gales have, for the moment, ceased to blow? When we can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, go and grab a decaf in the late afternoon and chew the fat for ten minutes or so, what topics engage our interest?

Just one.

Retirement.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

P.S.

Busy Busy Busy

These two photos - the first one taken in April 2105, the second in March 2017 - show the industriousness of squirrels. Someone, some time ago, thought they would block a squirrel hole in a silver maple in the Allan Gardens. The squirrels, as you can see, thought different.

You Know You Work for Government When...

This is a picture of my calendar for the work week just past. The areas blocked off are almost exclusively chunks of time that other people have reserved for themselves in my calendar.  Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday have been tidied up so that there are only a few double booked spaces. On Friday, I was double and triple booked for almost the whole day, except  lunch, which got cancelled.

There's variety in all that quantity. 

On Tuesday, 

• I met for half an hour with one of my bosses to talk about a document on its way to Cabinet the next day, then 
• I talked for half an hour with a colleague in another division about clean tech, then 
• I spent an hour on a video conference with five high school students talking about their successful entry in a hackathon, then 
• I had an hour-long meeting with one of my managers to talk about sulphur, mercury and nitrogen dioxide, then 
• I attended for an hour a meeting on how things are progressing with First Nations and climate change, then 
• I briefed another boss for half an hour about changes to the Residential Tenancies Act and then 
• I closed the day with a 30 minute conversation that echoed the first conversation of the day, with more people looking for more details about the document going to Cabinet the next day.

I know everyone likes to be busy and you're probably wondering how you could get your calendar to look like mine. My advice is to have lots of bosses. Bosses keep you busy, and, at last count, I have four.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Surprising Numbers

Today's first two pictures illustrate the infinite variations available to anyone playing with digital information. 

They also illustrate popular taste. The app I use, ColorFLY, lets you post your efforts to a showroom, and thousands, maybe even millions of others who also have the app can look at and "like" your work.

I "like" the work of unseen strangers so that they will "like" mine. This seems to work and my highest number of "likes", until recently, had been 11, for this image.

The greatest number of likes I had ever seen on the ColorFly showroom for anyone's work was 35 for an impressive pixelated image of Johnny Depp. 

The pink romanticized horse head that starts this blog, coloured in less than a minute and posted absent-mindedly in a lazy attempt to see what would happen ... got 36 likes.

Being Watched

Another of my idle pastimes to recently score unusually high numbers is this blog. Normally, in a given week, along with the views from two dozen subscribers, This Week's Picture will get about 10 page views. 

But, on one day - February 17, 2017 - not long after I made what could hardly even be called disparaging remarks about the leader of the free world, there were 194 page views of my blog - all from the United States. 

You Know You Work for Government When...

This past week, I interviewed for the job I've been doing for the past 3 years, 8 months and 1 day.

Boy, sure hope I get it.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen



   

Watch and Learn

Kevan and Kim: Healthy and Happy

This week's picture features Kim and Kevan smiling as though the events of a couple of weeks ago never happened. This is truly awesome.

Meanwhile, back at the ministry, things are progressing with the speed and coherence of a long run out land slide. 

Of course, these matters are 100% confidential, and my usual ruse for communicating such stuff is not available. Our friend the Ruler and her advisors failed in their attempt to have the Thing perish in a fire (who knew it would be fire proof) and are now wandering in the wilderness looking for a place to abandon it. 

So let's try this instead:

A colourfully diverse group of young people dressed only in bathing suits has been working for the past week on a giant sand castle. It is vast, sprawling, both impressive and fragile. 

In the time they have worked on the castle, they have come to trust and respect one another. 

They share an understanding of the rules and principles of what they are building. The castle is made of sand, so it can't do everything and it is particularly vulnerable to being top heavy.

They work under the distracted gaze of a lifeguard who is not involved in the construction of the sand castle, but, like them, is wearing a bathing suit. So, they all have that in common. 

After a week of hard labour, the castle is all but done. There may be some fine tuning still required, but it is a thing of beauty and folks from miles around come to admire it.

Now it is the night before the judges arrive. A few young people have stayed late to fuss over the smallest details. A gang of fully-clothed thugs shows up.

They admire the castle, but they have authority to make changes to it. 

"We need to add a thirty-five foot spire here" they say, pointing to a spot where a two-foot turret stands. "If that takes too much sand, we can remove that thing over there," they say, pointing to a small dome at one end of the castle.

One of the bathing-suit-clad young people comes forward, "Um, guys, the sand castle has been built to stand the way it is now, so I don't think we can do that."

"Sure we can," says the life guard, springing down from his high platform and nodding respectfully at the thugs. "Whatever you say, sirs."

Then he turns to the young person. "Watch and learn," he says, "This is what it's like."

"You're the boss," says the young person. She gets on her phone to let the rest of the crew know about the changes to the sand castle.

The next morning, a large crowd of young people in bathing suits stands in a ring around the sand castle. The castle is the same as it was. 

Looking at the crowd, a new idea occurs to the life guard. He gets on his phone and calls the thugs "We'll get you your thirty-five foot tower, but not today, and not with this castle. We're building another one next week. We'll do it then."

Today's moral: Half-naked people should think twice before saying "yes" to anyone fully clothed.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Smoke and Mirrors

Happy squirrel chowing down on snow-flavoured popcorn.

This Week's Picture comes to you from Belleville, where I'm hanging with Kim and Kevan. The pictures come from the Allan Gardens.

The title comes from a meeting I sat - and occasionally napped - through this past week. 

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

About a year ago, I'd met for half an hour with a man, retired from the public service, who had a great concept to pitch. I sat patiently through the pitch, accepted for future reference (not) the materials he handed me and promptly forgot about him and his half-assed concept.

That's why, when he started hounding me earlier this year, I had no idea who he was or why I would want to talk with him. So I ignored him.

He then took stronger measures. He used some of his contacts in another ministry to finagle another meeting with me. Fooled by the subterfuge, I went along with the request.

To prepare for the meeting, I looked up the web presence for the organization - let's call it SwiftToss - and slowly started to connect the dots between SwiftToss and the man I had met with the year before.

The web site featured assertions of empowered communities, sustainable economies and pictures of smiling, apple-cheeked children. The one thing missing was any explanation of how these happy outcomes could be achieved. 

But I figured that my colleagues in the other ministry would not bring me a complete charlatan.

In fact, they brought me two. The man was accompanied by a partner. They took us through a slide presentation so bogus, so full of hot air and so boring that I struggled to stay awake.

I had actually nodded off when they got to their penultimate slide - the one asking for $350,000 taxpayers' dollars to pay for a conference to bring their brilliant idea into the world.

I got a bit less groggy.

I asked if they had any proof of their concept. Had they any case studies they could provide to show that their methods brought about the results they claimed.

Boy were they ever pissed with me. His partner, a middle-aged woman, turned to the man and said, "I wasn't expecting to have to do this at this meeting."

The man explained that they had no actual case studies. Even though their idea was a sure fire winner, no one had taken them up on it in the two years they had been shopping it around.

"Come back when someone does," I said, and ended the meeting.

I got a crabby e-mail from the man the following day, chastising me for having the temerity to ask that he demonstrate his concept works before handing him a haystack of dough.

We should all be grateful that this man is retired from the public service.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Your Tax Dollars Still Hard at Work

Spotted in an Elevator in the Frost Building - Home to the Ontario Ministry of Finance and Treasury Board

In case you've always suspected that public servants - especially those tasked with matters financial - are insular sorts, highly risk adverse and not naturally inclined to playfulness, be glad to know that you are absolutely correct. The proof is in the signs I saw while visiting Treasury Board one day this past week. Posted in elevators and on the walls: "Lunch and Learn - Adult Colouring." 

Further proof surfaced when I commented on how strange it was that people needed to "adult learn" how to colour (for Pete's sake). My colleagues, even the ones who were not financial types, did not get my point.

Sheesh.

Anyway

The title of this week's post does not relate to the sad strangeness of public servants, but to the miraculous events of the approximately 24 hours between 7:30 a.m. Wednesday and the same time the following day. My sister Kim and her husband Kevan were having a normal morning on Wednesday when Kim noticed her husband's speech was suddenly slurred. Remembering the public information campaign for "signs of a stroke", Kim sat Kevan down and called 911.

The paramedics arrived promptly. They got Kevan to the nearby Belleville hospital similarly promptly. Waiting when they arrived was a 9-member stroke team aiming to take care of Kevan and Kim, too. 

Kevan had a very large blood clot in his brain, but they administered TPA, a blood-thinning, clot-busting drug that, if given in time, can drastically reduce the impacts of a stroke.

Kevan's blood clot was still pretty big after the TPA, so they shipped him down the 401 to Kingston where there was a surgeon who could remove the clot. But, by the time they got to Kingston, the clot was broken in two and the surgery was unnecessary and/or too risky.

The doctor in Kingston said, "Now we have to see if we need to send you back to Belleville."

They spared Kevan another road trip and he spent the night in Kingston.

By the next morning, approximately 24 hours after his being struck by a potentially fatal blood clot, the medical team was seriously talking about letting Kevan go home.

And home he was at 5 p.m. that day.

Let's review. It was your tax dollars that paid for the public education campaign that helped Kim understand the severity of the situation on Wednesday morning. Your tax dollars paid for 911, so Kim had someone to call. And, of course, your tax dollars paid for the health care teams, equipment and medication that saved Kevan's life.

So please accept my heartfelt thanks.

Have a great week!

Karen