VicNotes 11: In One Minute…

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A Moment or Two

I’ve been bragging about Victoria’s gorgeous weather non-stop to anyone foolish enough to have the common courtesy of listening while I talk. I even mentioned – and this is a sure sign of just how cocky I’d become – that since I’d started work at The Restaurant some time ago, I’d yet to be caught in the rain whilst biking to and from the downtown core. Two days after having said this, of course, I went through a charming 5 day spell of being drenched to the point that I looked like a kitten used as muskie bait. Only not as cute… or as disturbing of an image. With the exception of when I went out for a walk in the rain to geocache and photograph, and I knew full well what I was getting myself into, this was an unpleasant experience. Every day I would arrive home, bedraggled and crookedly bespectacled, bemoaning the bursts of water from the sky. With no-one else living at the apartment, of course, I just sounded like a babbling idiot, talking to myself about the weather. Which may be the anti-acme of coolness.

Thus it was with some happiness that I biked to work yesterday under a gorgeous blue sky, a cooling breeze and a general sense of serenity. It was one of those moments where everything came together and I had a deep sense of serenity. I’ve settled in, have a fun and well-paying job, the beginnings of a network of friends and the imminent reality of one of my best friends coming for a visit in less than a week. (That would be a certain Ms. Klarner, daughter of the aforementioned tall-father ). On top of all that, it appears that the third bedroom in my appartment shall no longer be filled only by a somewhat sketchy and spray painted box spring I’d dragged into the house my first day here, but rather by one of the fellows I met at baseball, Jeff. He’s agreed to move in, meaning that the last month or so of VicNotes will actually have some new protagonists. Seriously, I’d started to feel like I’d been writing the sequel to Castaway. I had an inanimate object that I’d given personality that wasn’t destined to make it to the end, but provided the bulk of my conversation with someone else. (Okay… correction from earlier: talking to The Desk about the weather was the anti-acme of coolness. Mea culpa.)

The Raining World-Champion of Flowers

That said, I have managed to at long last find my first real indication of Victoria’s decidedly left-wing nature. To be fair, the fellow smoking up in a parking garage that I encountered my first week qualified as a sort of precursor to that list, but since I could find a similar occurence not 10 feet from my own backyard in Acton, it didn’t really count. As a brief aside, you know you grew up in a small town when the spot where the cool, rebellious youth gathered to plot their subversion of rules was the back of the government-operated Post Office. I wonder if this was ever pointed out to them… In any case, my left-wing wonder was discovered whilst I biked home from a work shift on Saturday. There usually is about as much traffic on my route home as there is rainforest in Slovenia. However today, cars were parked up and down the road, and foot traffic made the street look like it was lifted from an informative video on Japanese population density. The city had closed Moss St. – a fairly long street, as I was to discover – for a paint-in. The entire street was lined with professional artists, working in the sun/drizzle on their latest creations, and displaying their art to the viewing public. It was a brilliant community event. Now – you may wonder, “Okay. Public art. Kinda hippie, but not really a southpaw duck.” This is because I had yet to mention the following attendees:

• The couple holding a banner decrying military health insurance fraud, and passing out pamphlets to confused passers-by who hadn’t realized this was a major issue
• The fellow dressed as Spiderman, complete with mask, holding a sign that read “Free Hugs”
• The artist who, dreamily staring off into space, explained his latest work thusly to a skeptical consumer (me): “This piece is about 2/3rds done.” “Really?” “Yeah… the other half I still need to do.” “Oh. Of course. The other half.” “Well… you know what its like when you’re 90% of the way there.” “Right.”

Needless to say, I now feel like I’ve gotten a bit of a better taste of my beloved adopted city.

Having mentioned both taste and conversations that follow a more strangled route than the Sea-to-Sky Highway, I have segued rather smoothly into The Restaurant, my favourite and greatest source of entertainment and writing material. The winners this time are twofold. First, I had a customer sit down, and in a strong southern-American accent and tell me that he wanted – and I quote – “a great, cold Canadian beer, something the locals drink… *heartbeat spacing* a Budweiser, please.” Sometimes all you can do is smile and nod. Second, I had a group of 7 men who came in for a table, all in their late 20s I would hazard. This in itself is unremarkable. What changed it up was that all, save one, were men of fairly slight build. And yet, all save two, ordered the 20oz bone-in Cowboy Lollipop steak. This is a steak that is approximately the size of a tractor tire. The steak itself can be used to bludgeon would-be attackers. Two of them were capable of feeding 300 piranhas for 23 days at a local pet store. This is a steak that the cow itself would be shocked could exists. And they ordered FIVE. And one fellow finished another one’s. These guys were my heroes.

Finally, I have a random throwaway note. Sean and Matt – my brilliant former roommates – were forced to listen to me complain ad nauseum about the failings of Windows Vista. This is an operating system that, apparently, has made improvements to the older Windows systems. (I’d originally typed “older, fully functioning Windows systems”, but really, who am I kidding?) Vista – for those as yet unfamiliar – appears to be the worst case of masculinity envy I have ever seen. The MAC-PC ads that explain how good Mac is at ‘life stuff’, and how good PC is at ‘numbers stuff’ have apparently stung and prodded Microsoft into trying to become like the hip and cool Apple. Here is my problem: I have no desire to be hip. Nor cool. If I did, I wouldn’t use the word ‘hip’. Nor would I have purchased Vista. Apparently, though, Microsoft decided that pretty colours and loud bangs were an excellent substitute for quality product. Here’s a tip, though: when adding more flash than Carribana, don’t forget to keep the functionality that squares like me buy you for!!

Now, I told you that story to tell you this one. Vista allows me to control the volume levels on different programs from a single mixer. This improvement alone is worth every piercing alarm I get when I try to delete files, open webpages or move the mouse faster than 6 pixels a second. Vista: you’ve got some ‘hip’ in you after all. Or at the very least, broken hip.

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