Man, my beloved homestreet of Quinpool Road sure has been going through some minor but frequent changes of late. Not all of them for the best. Example: At the Royal Bank up the road there was a security camera that I used to talk to when I was making ATM transactions (I offer no explanation as for why I did this), but recently they re-designed their ATMs and the camera on the ceiling next to it has been removed. I assume there is a camera in the new ATM somewhere, but I don’t know where. How am I to know which direction to ham it up? Egads, what a predicament.

Up the road: The Iranian restaurant with really awesome rice is gone, replaced by a Sushi place. And I only got to eat there twice! Granted, for all I know the sushi place has excellent rice as well, but I’m not a big sushi fan, so why exactly would I go in to find out, huh? I wouldn’t.

The travel agency I have used in my too infrequent trips around the world has moved to a street about twenty minutes away (on foot). And I never got in to thank them for how hard they worked to help me get to China. I didn’t want to go in unless I actually had a travel-related reason. Of course, with that attitude I would have to come back and thank them for the trip I set up when I thank them for the China trip and it would continue forever. Perhaps when I use them again I will, upon my return, bring them muffins as a thanks and then hopefully I won’t feel so bad about thanking them without immediately booking another trip. I’ll have to keep that in mind.

Over the Summer, three businesses directly across from me (I can see them from my window Right Now) got big fancy murals painted on them. Not bad, I admit, but one of them Vogue Optical no longer has a sign on front that identifies it as Vogue Optical. Sure it has a mural of Halifax on the side of the building which, if you pay attention, you can find some glasses painted in there. Also, I don’t know why I care if the sign is there or not. I might be getting old.

And perhaps the most confounding is a change that I noticed in my very own building just yesterday. The door in the lobby which leads to the stairwell has been replaced. Replaced by a door which looks way, way worse. I find it strange that a building which has made so much effort in making itself more presentable in the years I have lived here would purposefully replace a good door with a bad one. I figure the reasons must be one of these: The old door was damaged somehow, which I wish I had seen for my own entertainment’s sake, or they sold the old door to keep our rent down. I’m pulling for that to be the true one.

One thing, though, the store connected to the Irving is now branded as a Circle K. I don’t even remember what it used to be called, for sure. I want to say Blue Canoe, but that might have been a hallucination I had. But anyway I assume the Canadian store that was there was bought out by the American Circle K in some Corporation-Style Shenanigans. I approve of this because now I can say “Strange things are afoot at the Circle K” any time I want! Any time. And that is one of the best things I can think of.

So today was a hurricane hitting us day here in Halifax. It didn’t really amount to much of anything more than a typical storm as far as I could see. I went out for a couple of walks, one during the hurricane day and one after at night. I got soaked during the first one (which is of course the point of going for a walk in a hurricane). The second was just about as clement as weather can get. I like rain, but I’d still consider the second walk superior because of all the stars showing through.

The hurricane was named Bill. Every day of work in the few days leading up to the weekend had an article talking about Hurricane Bill and my mind always, just for a second assumed it was about how we’d be paying for the hurricane. Stupid mind.

Haiku!

If Vikings are here,
Who’s to say there ain’t Baboons?
Those types both hang out.

My ability to recognize constellations seems to be kaput. I can find Orion when he’s around (I don’t think he is at the moment) and occasionally I think I can find a Dipper, but that’s it. No wonder I haven’t been accepted into Awesome Space Guy School yet.

I have just purchased tickets to see Louis C.K. when he plays Halifax. Now, I’m poor and all that, but I couldn’t miss out on that so soon after finding out that Modest Mouse was coming only after tickets were already sold out.

I have seen stand-up acts in comedy clubs, but this is a much bigger deal. The venue is going to be like seven times bigger than the tiny clubs I’ve seen. Plus: It’s Louis C.K.

That’s gonna be sweet.

Today I got to see ex-Beatle Paul McCartney live in concert. Of course, to be technical I was not attending the concert. Marq and I were among a throng of people outside the fenced-off perimeter of the proper concert who were listening anyway. Take that box offices.

All in all, I would say that was an excellent several hours of music listening. We found a nice place where I wasn’t too surrounded by people and we could kinda see over the fence. McCartney puts on a good show. And the thing I enjoyed most was the big bald drummer who would not look out of place on a metal band.

Marq had to leave early, so I’ll just tell him some stuff he missed:

• Songs Marq missed include (but are not limited to): Yesterday, Hey Jude, Day Tripper and Helter Skelter. And Live and Let Die had fireworks.
• Four people jumped over the fence by the road. They pretty peaked at the second attempt and got progressively worse at getting past security. The first guy just jumped and made a break for it with a security guy coming after him. The next guy used that distraction as chance to make a break for it. By the time I lost sight of him he hadn’t been spotted. I doubt he got anywhere really, but who knows? The third guy jumped over and hid behind a bush for a while until the crowd egged him on to try his luck, which caught the attention of security. He then fell into the bush because he was apparently too drunk to run for it. The last guy, apparently even drunker, would have done just as well if he’d jumped right into security’s arms.
• Someone cut the cord of that balloon and it floated away never to be heard from again.

That’s about all I can think of for now. For the most part it was just me, standing by a fence and enjoying music.

There’s apparently a Japanese restaurant opening up the street from me. They’ve a sign on their window saying they want “part time employers”. If I wasn’t so sure that that was a typo, I’d really have to consider trying for that.

Okay, anyway. I found this article in the paper two days ago and attempted to rip it out to talk about it here. Except it would appear that what I ripped out was the article directly beneath the one I wanted. I guess “Even in White House, Obama girls do chores.” Not really what I was looking to talk about, (and not really newsworthy if I were asked…) but good for them, I guess. It’ll build character. Last thing we want it a couple of little kids with atropheid chores-doing skills. There’s enough of those around already.

Actually, I did get the last paragraph of the article I wanted, and that’s the most important part. The peice was about a decision by educators to stop using the phrase “I before E except after C” because there are just way too many exceptions. Most of the people in the article as I recall were down with it, but here is the last paragraph as written on this scrap of paper: “But supporters say the ditty has value because it is one of the few language rules that most people remember.”

To sum up, educators say, “we’re not going to use that because it is wrong.” These “supporters” whoever they may be say, “It may be wrong, but people remember it.” What the chunks, supporters? Are you idiots? As an idiot myself I can say that that little ditty was definitely remembered by me and it Messed Me Up. While the examples in this post are done on purpose, I do have a genuine problem remembering the I’s and E’s of plenty of words and I say we get rid of that misleading phrase and prevent another generation of children from hesitating over words the way I do.

It’s like effin’ Pluto again. People just don’t like things they know to change because then they don’t feel like they know things, I guess…