Winter returns

This morning, for the first time in over two months, I woke to see snow covering the trees and sidewalks below. It is depressing. The flowers are buried and clumps of snow cover the bunches of newly budding leaves on the maple outside my window.

It is still below freezing at midday and tonight it is expected to drop to -5C and then -7C Wednesday morning. So the year continues, like last winter and last summer, with colder than normal temperatures--much colder. The normal high for this time is +10 and the normal low +3. I'm going to sue Al Gore for false promises.

Busy at work

This is our busiest time of the year at the call centre. Those who have moved in the past year and who are getting their pensions by direct deposit have often forgotten to change their addresses so they all call because their tax slips haven’t arrived. Of course it is always “our fault” as we “should have known” somehow, or they insist they did call to change their address but we didn’t do the promised change. Yadda yadda. I resist the urge to suggest they visit their doctor to get tested for possible dementia.

Then there are those who say they only got one slip. 9 out of 10 times the second slip is behind the first slip but they didn’t look closely. These are my favourite calls because I can feel them blush when they check their envelopes.

Knowing legislation, policies and procedures for pension processing is about 20% of my job. Most of the rest of the skill required is being able to explain it in many different levels of comprehension ability from university mathematicians to the mentally retarded and terminally bewildered, and putting up with the occasional ranting and self-righteousness without letting it get to me. I’m pretty good at what I do. It can be draining at this time of year trying to stay cheery so I usually crash or do something mindless when I am home in the evenings.

Expressing myself in writing is easy, but many of my clients have difficulty getting ideas out of their mouths coherently. Some can barely read. A couple calls per day start with “Yous guys sent me a paper. What am I supposed to do?” or even something less informative. From there it takes 20 questions to figure out if it’s a letter, an application, a receipt or even something from another department or level of government.

For others, vocabulary is a virus from outer space. A wife might say she’s her deceased husband’s executor, placing the emphasis on the first syllable instead of the second (erroneously implying that she murdered him), and several callers refer to Alzheimer’s as “All Timers”, like a four year old might.

Government jargon is another matter. When a client receives a large lump sum of back pay for a delayed benefit covering more than one year, the tax department can spread it back to previous years using a “notional” tax treatment. Last Friday a caller told me he was told he was illegible for an emotional tax treatment”. There is also a “child rearing provision” used in calculating a pension so that years spent raising young children will not adversely affect a client’s life average. One client referred to it as the “child rear-end position”. Calls like that keep the smile on my face.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?. - Oscar Wilde

Bird brain

I must have used too much bleach the last time I did my hair. My mind just doesn't seem to be working well these days. Perhaps I am empathizing too much with the seniors I help on the phone all day.

I've been leaving things at work, like my backpack a week ago. How does one not notice he is not wearing his backpack? Two nights ago I forgot my blood testing kit. I have been spacey at other times too. This weekend I was set to watch a mail order DVD movie and couldn't find it. I remembered exactly where I had set it but it wasn't there. I searched the whole apartment, even in all those places where I KNOW it couldn't have been because I haven't looked there for weeks or months, but it was no where to be found. I fretted over this for 2 days. Finally I wrote an e-mail to the video rental store last night, apologizing for losing it. This morning they wrote back that it wasn't lost, that it had just arrived back at the rental store. I had mailed it back without even watching it! DUH!

No more pot this week....

Good news: I have been taking increased amounts of my diabetes medicines without any reaction after my sister's treatment. Can getting rid of allergies really be that easy??

"Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

Holistic treatments

My sister, the holistic allergist, tested me for allergies yesterday for the first time. She uses the body's magnetic energies to test for my +ve or -ve reactions to a wide range of food and household substances. She required me to press my ring finger to my thumb in a circular shape and to resist as she used her thumbs to pry them apart as I held various substances in vials next to my forearm. When I was resistant or allergic to a substance my strength failed. It was fascinating.

I had seen this used before and had received Bio-Energetic Synchronization Technique (BEST) treatments from a renowned doctor in Toronto for years, which operates on a similar principle. Rich & Luis were over to play "Settlers of Catan" when she arrived and they stayed to watch the testing, which they also found fascinating.

I always new I had certain food allergies, such as ginger, cardamom and maybe others. Sis found I was particularly allergic to gluten. I have also been allergic to both my diabetes medicines, which I need to take. They have caused me so much pain, diarrhea and loss of sleep over the past four years. She used an electric probe with a mild current (I couldn't feel it) on several acupuncture points to reverse my intolerance to some of these substances. They seemed not to affect me more after the treatment. This morning I took the most difficult of the diabetes medicines, Januvia, which usually makes me sick with one pill. So far, 14 hours later, there is still no typical reactions.

I could ask why my brother, who has make this work his career for a few years, and why my sister, who has taken on this line of work too for the past year, have not offered to treat my diabetes or muscular dystrophy before now. But then, we have been so estranged for so long. Neither even called me, let alone visit me, when I was in the hospital with a broken leg for 18 days over Christmas 3 years ago. They basically ignored me for years while my life fell apart and I slowly reconstructed it.

There's no point going there now. Suddenly both seem interested in my health and I am grateful for anything they can offer me. I'm not proud.

Gone in a Flash

Flash isn't coming into town from Galiano Island this weekend as planned. He is helping friends shop for Irish Dexter cows on Vancouver Island instead. We gays do have that shopping gene! Since I listened to his message, I have been wondering how they will get them on the ferry. I suppose they have a truck and won't be walk-on passengers, and the poor critters won't be able to visit the upper deck as the ferry cruises between the islands back to Galiano. They will probably be given names like Ertha and Bertha, or Polly and Esther.

PHOTO 1: Flash
PHOTO 2: Irish Dexters

81st Academy Awards

I don't much like awards ceremonies, no more than listening to annual budget reports. I don't have television reception and haven't for years so that makes it easy to side step most of North America's cultural references. Friends have learned that I don't have any knowledge of popular TV shows, sports events or popular mini-series.

But yesterday was my friend Frank's birthday party and he decided to hold a pot luck dinner party to watch the Academy Awards to celebrate. Also, given that he is president of a local gay men's nudist group, he decided to make it a nude event.

I am not shy. In fact, I came out at age 21 on Wreck Beach, preferring the sunshine and freedom of a nude beach to bars or saunas. I like swimming, sun-bathing, strolling and sleeping nude whenever possible, but somehow eating nude never gives me the same liberated feeling that others seem to enjoy. Perhaps I am too concerned with finding pubic hairs on my plate or pizza sauce on my dick, etc. My on-coming disability has made me increasingly self-conscious over the years, too, though no one has given me outward reasons to feel ashamed.

This Academy Awards show was a fairly crisp and entertaining one. I certainly saw more sides to Hugh Jackman that I have seen before, though most of the musical numbers weren't anything to write home about. "Milk", "Rachel Getting Married", "Waltz with Bashir" and "The Curious Tale of Benjamin Button" were the only films I have seen, but somehow I ended up winning $20 in a shared Oscars betting pool.

On Saturday, in advance of the party, I went to see "Benjamin Button", which I thoroughly enjoyed. It makes me sound like a common plebe or school girl but I have always been drawn to Brad Pitt, both to his acting and his looks. He's totally fantasy material and he often chooses interesting roles. Seeing him morph over the course of the movie from a garden gnome to a heart stopping, cock throbbing teenager was compelling and I failed to notice that the film is almost 3 hrs long (though it is made much longer by the films quizzes, advertisements and previews that preceded it, which make the high prices and crowds seem all the more unnecessary). I thought it was a good piece of story telling too. I had no idea it was based on a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, though the screen writer had updated it somewhat by setting it as a flashback told in a New Orleans hospital while Hurricane Katrina is approaching the city. I am glad it won as many awards as it did.

Ssssnake returns

Shehzad left Thursday, left the futon bed down, the blinds closed and a small note saying he had to make a long distance call on my phone with no money to compensate. No big deal; nothing that worries me but he won't get a reference from me.

Danzante & Gerry invited me for dinner last night. Ssssnake and Wallowa were up from Portland to collect Ssssnake's belongings. His application with Immigration Canada had been rejected late last year and he has been living at Wallowa's since then. I spent half of Thursday evening making a kitten night light for him.

I went to Gerry & Danzante's right from work. Gerry picked me up at the Skytrain station and we enjoyed another of Danzante's innovative and tasty meals: braised lettuce, vegan pizza and baked fruit on skewers. I got to see their renovated den which I have heard so much about. It looks great but still has a third of the way to go to completion. Foxtail and Rainbow Strongheart were also there and Rainbow drove me home across town afterwards. He leaves for Palm Springs for 16 days today.

PHOTO 1: First snow bells of spring, Burrard Skytrain station
PHOTO 2: Ssssnake's Kitten night light
PHOTO 3: Foxtail, Ssssnake & Danzante