Friday was a rest day, though I did a bit of stretching. As I was taking the train home, they were announcing a delay in service to the north west line. A guy ended up under an LRT car at the Sunnyside station. Maybe I'm wronging him and he had a heart attack and fell off the platform at just the wrong time.
But other than that, it's his fault, and it cost the city millions. LRT repairs are expensive, plus the alterations to the transit schedules, all the emergency services people, and tens of thousands of people more than a little inconvenienced. It's not like the LRT goes skulking down the sidewalks looking to run over the unwary.
No. Most of the track is fenced. Where pedestrians cross the tracks there are lights, loud bells, and often gates. The drivers watch for wayward pedestrians, and warn them with a variety of noises, some quite loud. And still we end up with people and cars striking the train. Sigh. The city should send him a bill.
Saturday I was up early to run with Michelle down in Fish Creek. The plan called for 10 K, but my phone froze up so I didn't know when to turn around. Nice and easy. The big part of the day was the tusks! Here they are for your viewing pleasure. This is in the car after.
Here's the obligatory shared selfie. It was a beautiful clear morning and we needed the sunglasses. There were lots of other runners out, some of whom I think are part of the Facebook running group I belong to. Any of you recognize us?
After the run I was doing some work on the computer, and I kept hearing this odd sound. I thought it was something in the music that was playing. It turns out that the plastic water bottle on one of the shelves started leaking. The plastic was brittle and cracked, just sitting there, nobody touching it. I'd never realized such a thing could happen.
All the water had to go somewhere, and that was into the landline phone. It was totally soaked. We tried drying it out, but to no avail. It's not like it owes us anything, it's probably 20 years old. Yes, we still have a land line. It's worth the $24 a month or so to have a phone number to give to people we don't want to talk to.
We never answer that phone, unless someone has arranged to call us, or they talk to the answering machine and we want to talk to them. It simplifies our lives enormously to not give up something we were doing to deal with someone trying to sell us something, or ask our opinions.
So, in summary, here's how to get hold of me, should you want to:
- Call the phone number that's been in the book for more than 30 years now. Let it ring twice, talk to the machine. If I'm there I'll pick up. I won't run for it.
- Call my cell. If I don't answer you probably don't want me to. Get me during a workout and you'll get lots of heavy breathing. Some of you might enjoy that.
- Text the cell number.
- Tweet me, I'm enjoying Twitter these days. Feel free to follow me, and get notified when I blog.
- Facebook message or post. I'm not enjoying Facebook so much these days, but I haven't abandoned it yet.
- Regular email. I've got a half dozen or so email accounts, it can't be that difficult to find one. Why, one of them is listed in this very blog!
- I have a LinkedIn profile, and I'll link up to anyone that I've dealt with professionally. There's mail through that as well.
- I just signed up for Runkeeper. There is a friends thingie there too.
I hadn't realized that corded phones are going the way of the dodo. There were only a couple choices at the store, mostly it's cordless, which I don't like. The phone is light and flimsy and cheap. I have no real hope of it lasting 20 years, but we'll see. Maybe it won't need to. Maybe Harper will kill home telephone lines like he killed home postal delivery. (You don't really believe the nominal head of the postal service would do something so drastic without being told to do so by the ultimate control freak, do you?)
In a curmudgeonly comment, I remember when phones were sturdy. You could use them as tools for repressing teenagers and barnyard animals. Not anymore. I think my iPhone weighs more than this desk phone, and there's certainly more metal in the cell phone.
I've had some really good comments on my novel, and I've been working on the fallout. Can't wait to see what people say as they get deeper into it, and stuff happens. Poor Curtis. He's still adjusting. Look.
You're not alone, Keith - we still have our land line, too! AND, how's this for holding out against technology - we don't own cell phones! On the happy side of our land line status, we still own one of those big, black rotary phones and the other day on some storage/auction/pickers show we discovered that it's worth $90 if it still works. Ours does, in fact, if you phone me and I'm in the bedroom, that's the phone I'll pick up. Fabulous, too, because when the power goes out, I can still use the phone (although sticking your finger in the hole and spinning and waiting for the dial to return to its original position takes forever).
ReplyDeleteGood job on the cold run - brrrr, looks very cold!!