One

Another guy that hung around on the periphery of the “gang” was Freddie. Freddie was an odd dude –5′.5″ and a penchant for army gear. He’d frequently show up for parties toting iron –a pistol, a rifle, a machine gun –he scared most of us so we’d refer to our meet up by code names.

One place we’d party was the Dollarton Mudflats –miles of stinking mud and not a cop in sight. A big fire and a two-four of Hi-test was the best Friday, Saturday and Wednesday night. John & Bonus would show up with a can of gas and a tire stolen from the local gas station –the fire would be blazing by the time most showed up. Some of my friends from the nearby reserve would come down for free beer when they saw the fire scorching the cottonwoods.

Anyway, we’d refer to the mudflats as Fuck-I-Don’t-Know –as in Freddie asking “Hey where’s the party tonight?” and we dicks saying, “Mmmm, Fuck-I-Don’t-Know.” Everyone but Freddie would show up.

One such night we abandoned Freddie at The Raven, a local pub within staggering distance of most of our homes. We headed down to the flats and Freddie eventually back home –he had a bit more than usual to drink that night and decided he needed more, so stumbled up the hill to the off-sales window at the Raven. Realizing he had no money he pulled out the best thing he had, a 38 caliber pistol. Well, he attempted to pull it out, but some how had forgotten to ensure the safety was engaged. A shot rang out and from then on he was referred to as One-ball Fred.

I lost touch with most of the gang from those days over the years –most of them married each other while the marriage musical chairs left me standing. Not a bad thing as they all seemed happy and content with marriage in their 20’s –I had some living to do, so moved on.

A few years ago my wife and I were parking on Larch St near Broadway to visit out favourite burger joint, Moderne Burger. Across the street a large 4×4 pickup painted in flat green camo pulled up and a smallish woman slid out of the driver’s seat. On verge of climbing out of my car, I stopped and stared. It was a vision of Freddie, hoochie mama slinky dress, too much makeup and surprisingly modest heels. C. opined the vision was a transgendered male working his way into a new skin and sex. I gulped my agreement and watched Freddie run into and then out of a drugstore a pack of Export A Lights in nail polished hand.

Guess I wasn’t the only one who had some living to do.

Stripes

I was thinking of my misspent youth today and a friend I haven’t seen in many years. His name is Al, although we all knew him as Stripes. He gained his name while “in care” –he was in and out of group homes, foster homes and prison so much so he spent more time in prison garb than in civvies.

Finally a friend’s family took him into their foster home and he managed to stay out of most trouble. Unfortunately after a while he moved into a condemned house in North Burnaby with a couple of guys (brothers) from Trail and an old jailbird pal. Trouble followed them everywhere, culminating in a riot at a seedy motel on Hastings St.. Stripes got hit pretty badly in his face by the cops.

Stripes wasn’t very attractive to begin with –his facial injuries didn’t do him any favours. He developed a cyst between his eyes on the bridge of his nose. It grew, so he worried it, it grew more, still he messed with it. It got bigger and more disfiguring. Finally one night as the boys sat up drinking and beating on each other, Stripes wandered off to the bathroom returning with a razor blade and a handful of toilet paper. They all decided the best anaesthetic was a bottle of rye, and beer, and weed and some coke to sweeten the deal. All partook.

The resulting carnage took weeks to clean up with Stripes displaying a massive and roughly stitched gash bisecting his face. After a time, the wound became infected. We found him passed out on the verge of succumbing to septic shock –a visit to the hospital where he threatened to punch out the doctor if he re-sutured too nicely. Shortly he was back in action.

Eventually Stripes went back to school, became a carpet installer, got married, then blew out his knees and somehow got on with the Sheriffs Dept. transporting prisoners to and from court.

I sometimes wonder what Stripes is up to today, then decide maybe not.

Small town

Every now and then I’m reminded of what a small town Victoria is.

It’s our wedding anniversary next week, so we booked the services of Nana & Poppa for Sunday night so we could go out for dinner and hopefully a movie.

We’ve been anxious to try The Pink Bicycle, but never seem to be able to hit it when it’s open. Once again we’ll miss it because it’s not open on Sundays. We thought maybe Mo:le but they close at 4:30pm –seriously people, WTF is with that?

After checking out couple of other restaurants, we realize downtown is a ghost town unless you eat fast food from a chain.

Any suggestions of a decent place close to the Capital 6 that’s open on a Sunday evening?

Die Fälscher

I watched The Counterfeiters last night. Maybe not a great idea, as I was feeling kind of meloncholy already. This is the story of how the Germans set about to destroy the Allies economy by creating and flooding their economies with counterfeit British pounds and US dollars.

The casual brutality of the guards and sociopath commandant sent shivers up and down my spine. I trotted off to bed around midnight and spent more than an hour running the film back in my brain as I tossed and turned. The early wake up from F. calling out at 6:30am wasn’t entirely welcome.

If you have a chance see the film (subtitles), it’s a great story with (mostly) sympathetic characters.

Endless

A lot of stuff going on –I seem to have landed two jobs at the same time. I was contacted by a local group putting together an RFP for a Crown corp. located in the Lower Mainland. It’s a short term contract of 3-4 months at a decent wage of around $65/hr starting in early September.
They want me bad.
The other job is a regular full-time gig with another Crown corp here in Victoria starting in mid-September. The wage isn’t anywhere close to what I earned in the private sector or even half of the contract job, but it’s a regular paycheque with all the benefits. Something to consider since C. will be taking the lead on our business venture –she aims to cash in some incentives when they mature in late 2010 to fund the startup. If I’m working with the full suite of benefits to cover our kids health, etc., it seems the smartest route…plus hopefully the economy will have picked up. Not seeing it yet even tho “they” say we are in recovery.

So it seems my endless summer is coming to an end. I hope I still can remember how to talk to adults besides my wife. The ubiquitous “they” say it’s just like riding a bike –you never forget. Not so sure as I found myself talking about my favourite Backyardigans episode to a mom at the playground the other day (It’s Great to be a Ghost.)

Ha!

It’s been a busy summer –much more than we anticipated. A camping trip in July occupied more than a week of time although we were only gone for 3 nights. I had to explore and excavate our camping gear that was crammed in the farthest corner of the basement during our move-in last year. That was almost a day’s worth of work as I ended up doing a sort-out, throw-out, re-org of everything in the basement. I even got my workbench under control, which was a good thing as I quickly realised that our little Honda could not hope to contain everything we “needed”, so I made a quick trip to the lumberyard for a couple sheets of plywood and 1″x1″ stock. I am pretty proud of the result –a large unpainted plywood bin for the roof. Not terrible aerodynamic, but effective.

The camping trip did make C. to vow never to do it again with a 4.5 and a 1.5 yr old.

Little F. was  the cause of our angst, as she refused to actually sleep. The first night of screaming and kicking just made us harden our resolve to tough it out, by the 4th morning, we were more than happy to pack up and bolt home. I’m sure our patient neighbours on either side of our campsite were more than happy on our departure.

Before we left I started to prep for finally painting S. and F.’s bedrooms, plus a redo of the basement bathroom. Talk about biting off more than I could chew but the luxury of having C. at home for two weeks meant work  could start and actually finish — trying to work around the kids can be a challenge.

I’m pretty pleased with the results, although a few tweaks need to be made.

Money’s tight right now so the donuts are on hold until we can free up some capital. On the bright side I have a potential in doing contract work with a tasty wage. It’d help balance things while keeping me open to our own business. Talk of a room&board student is in the air –we need some backup plans in place if work doesn’t materialize.

Cidery

We just returned from a picnic at Merridale Cidery near Shawnigan Lake off the Malahat… A quick tasting, where it seemed I was getting short changed on the tasting quanity. Probably had something to do with my Beer Pong King t-shirt. The couple in their fine clothes and Gucci sunglasses next us were getting large doses and a lot of attentive patter while we got the dismissed.

That being said the cider was great; the only cider I didn’t really care for the was the “fun” berry flavoured cider. Pretty appalling. We picked up a bottle of Sommerset, two small Scrumpy, and a gallon of apple juice.

I have plans to cook brined porkchops with carmelized red onions in apple juice, new potatos, and chard w.garlic from the garden for dinner tonight.

We had a picnic in the apple orchard — prosciutto, sourdough bread, dill pickle chips washed down with a couple surreptitious sips of Scrumpy. A postprandial amble thru the orchard helped settle the lunch and then back home again for naps.

Slippery

So here I am with a deep fryer, endless quantities of oil, and worst of all, some time on my hands.

Although I’ve always been a kitchen gadget kind of guy, I somehow managed to avoid getting a deep fryer. It’s a survival kind of thing –if you have one, you’ll use the damn thing. My ageing body just can’t take the oil. Admittedly I’ve been terrified of the effects scalding hot oil has on bare flesh too.

On the other hand I do like to experiment… So what if you had a deep fryer and some time…what would you cook? Mars bar, fish, bananas, chips, donuts of course..?

Doughnut vs Donut

Day 3

The entire house reeks of deep fry oil, testers are running amok, buckets of dough on every fridge shelf   –still trying to find the good donut. The first batch were pretty bad, the second were not so awful but the texture was too gritty, the third, a yeast raised diversion, seem to be pretty close, but not quite right.

I’ll be on hiatus for the next few days while C. is in Vancouver and I’m doing solo-daddying. No way I’m going to be playing with hot oil with the testers…ahem I mean kids, run uncontrolled. Plus if something did happen to me while cooking there’d be no one around to help. I never realised how fucking scary hot oil is….

So DK over at the Victoria Burger Blog reckons it should be called the “Sugar Shak“  –I’m liking it.

Garden

Between the rows of strawberry and chard --garlic and raspberrys at the back (rt.)

Puttering about the yard is probably one of my most favourite solitary things –it’s my meditation. Not mowing the lawn though — the act of mowing the lawn is cathartic in that it lets me get all my anger out. Problem is I have to buy a new lawn mower every other year because venting process can be a tad damaging –that and the hidden tree stumps plus rocks carefully planted unseen by one of the pixies that live in our house.

The back yard is the best IMHO. The house sits diagonally but not evenly across the large rectangular 1/4 acre lot. The bulk of the yard is to the back. The yard is so well protected from the wind with very high hedges and house you aren’t aware of the gusting storm taking place out the front door. I tend to gravitate toward the vegetable garden –the compost cries out for stirring, the tomato, tomatillo, pepper, and broccoli plants need tending, weeds demand pulling and the raspberry bushes appreciate the complements –those bushes produce an enormous amount of fruit in season. I hope my freshly planted strawberries do just as well. I still want to grow the traditional scarlet runner beans but C. isn’t too keen on them…my solution is to grow them as an ornament and not force anyone to eat them.

The other parts of yard are amazing too –the arbour with grape vine and crawling rose is a sight to see and welcome respite from the hot days of August.

I’m looking forward to a good growing season and the freshy goodness of the edible garden this year. Last year I rushed and didn’t plan too well –lots of wasted space. I resolve this every year but at least in this new-to-me garden I’ll not be constantly fighting the ravages of my nemisis –morning glory.