Blessed by the Potato

Bats seem to be everywhere these days, particularly for the people in my office at work. I saw one in a used bookstore this weekend, just chilling in the mystery section.

Perhaps because I had bats on the mind, I was astonished to see a new-to-me John Grisham title: The Brethren. I immediately thought “Cool! Vampire Lawyers!” and picked it up. However, reading the back of the book, I found out that unfortunately he’s using the word brethren in a decidedly non-vampirish way: instead referring to a brotherhood or association of professionals… kind of like the actual definition of the word. Go figure.

I was a little disappointed at that (and I’ve found Grisham getting pretty dull lately, so he really should consider that vampire lawyer idea). Then I had to sit around and wonder how it was that I automatically think of an underground (often literally) society of conspiratorial vampires whenever I see the word “brethren”.

I heard on the news that gas prices were going up significantly in advance of the long weekend, to the $1.15/L range. I already filled up earlier in the week at $1.05 expecting some such foolishness, but was quite surprised this evening when I drove by a gas station at $1.12, then the next one at $0.977 (with a fairly busy lot), then further down the road, 2 stations across the street from each other at $0.944 — the cars waiting in line backed out onto the road and nearly stopping traffic at that intersection. I just don’t understand some of this gas price behaviour — if the price really is going up, then how can the stations afford to drop it like that? If they have that kind of leeway in their margins, then are they screwing us the rest of the time? It reminds me of some of the other patterns in gas pricing. When I first moved to London, there was a very reliable pattern where the gas prices would go up on the weekend, and for most of the week would be higher in Toronto than in London. However, Monday nights they would reliably drop in London, dipping a bit below what Toronto was charging on the weekend. About two years ago the situation got a fair bit more complex, and I haven’t seen as much of a “weekend effect” in London, though there does still seem to be one in Toronto. Then there are particular stations: the one at Don Mills and Finch tends to lower its prices by 3-5 cents/L on Friday and Saturday nights after midnight (and it’s strange to see the streets virtually empty, but cars waiting 4 deep out onto the road for cheap gas). This latest nonsense with prices about 10 cents/L lower than par, I just don’t get… sometimes I think the station owners just get a kick out of motorists going crazy in line.

Also, this afternoon I was talking about the dipping sauces pretty much every pizza place sells nowadays, and pointed out that it can’t be too long before they start selling them in the grocery stores. In fact, many places (such as Easttown and Pizza Hut) just use prepackaged Hellman’s sauces, so I was surprised that they weren’t already available for individuals. And sure enough, tonight at Sobeys I saw featured in their deli section a 3-pack of Pizza Pizza dipping sauce; very serendipitous. What I found odd was that they were actually charging more for them than Pizza Pizza was ($3.85 for 3; I know the prices have gone up recently, but I do believe they’re still less than a dollar at Pizza Pizza).

Here’s a probably-true story that might blow your mind just a bit: one of the people in my office was riding her bike at dusk last night on the trail. She was going pretty fast down a big hill, when something big hit her right in the jaw: she figures it was a bat or maybe a bird. She keeps on biking home after that. This morning taking the path, there was a dead bat on the ground, right where she said the collision happened!

I think she killed a bat with her face.

Well, it’s another extreme heat alert day here in Ontario, so air conditioned buildings are opened up to the public/homeless to prevent heat stroke and the like. People are encouraged not to undertake strenuous activity outside in the sun, and all the rest that the heat entails. Far away, some debate rages over whether global warming exists at all — let alone what we should do about it.

But I’m going to talk about the heat on a more personal note. I don’t care for the heat, not at all. I used to; but then, I used to be skinny.

I’ve got a lot of trouble sleeping in the heat and humidity lately, even with my air conditioner running. Of course, with the heat this bad, I can feel the oppresive heat draft coming in through the partially opened door (only my bedroom is air conditioned, and I have to leave the door open a bit for the cat).

Beyond that, though, I’ve got to worry about what it was that got me so fat in the first place: food. The stinking heat and humidity is just destroying the food in my apartment, turning everything mouldy really quickly. I usually have a sixth sense about that sort of thing, throwing leftovers out before they ever get the chance to go really bad. But lately I’ve been seeing spots of mould forming on, and in some cases even completely taking over, my food before I get around to tossing it. Icky. Also, and perhaps even worse than the mould, is that the heat is melting all the chocolate in my kitchen. My Twix bar came apart when I opened the package, leaving me with a mediocre cookie and some gooey chocolate & caramel to lick up. I picked up a Toblerone (that I thought was on sale, but didn’t ring up as such) today, and when I took it out of the cardboard, all the little triangles went smoosh in the foil. It’s a real shame, because most chocolate isn’t as good after being melted like that and then resolidified in the freezer. I need to remember that for the future, and either keep my chocolate in the fridge in the first place, or at least in my room that is air conditioned for part of the day. (Last year, it was August before I finally started remembering to do that).

Lots of people are talking about books lately, so I was going to put up a list of the books on mine, but then it occured to me that “the medium is the message” — while it’s true that the large number of sci-fi and fantasy books would give you a pretty clear idea of my personality, the clutter and disarray of the shelf would provide an even better idea. Not only do I have some books that just don’t fit on the bit of shelf that isn’t dedicated to school books, so they’re sort of thrown on top, in front of, or even behind the other books, I also have a shelf that is soley devoted to junk and clutter. Matches, spare keys, change for the laundry machine, my hat, duct tape — you name it, and it’s probably been misplaced there at some point, and taking up valuable book-displaying room.

So, I was taking some much needed time off last night and doing a bit of gaming. Wayfare came in to my room complaining that her air conditioning was making too much noise to sleep and wanted my bed, so I went out to the kitchen to play Civ4 on my laptop.

The game went well, I won a time victory (I keep thinking that as soon as I get modern armour, I’ll just roll over their regular tanks, but conquest just doesn’t go that much faster…). I left my laptop running when I went to bed…

And when Wayfare got up in the morning, the exhaust from my laptop melted the candle on the kitchen table! Wow!

I also tried the Evil Genius demo. I downloaded it over a year ago and just haven’t found the time to try it out. It was pretty cool, in the same vein as Dungeon Keeper, except without the goobering demons. I sensed something was missing in terms of ways to move my minions around — I recall dungeon keeper had a way of slapping them to a specific spot or planting totems to attract them or something, whereas here they were all milling about the back without guarding the front door. It was also really annoying to have to individually tag each agent of good for destruction; I would have figured a game largely built around not having direct control over your minions would also intelligently target intruders for death or capture. However, the animations were cute, and it’s a fairly unique type of game, so I think I’m going to get it next weekend ($20 US for a direct download isn’t too bad).

Finally, a picture I promised to post last weekend but didn’t get around to (apologies, as always, for my crappy camera phone):

“Out of the car! Do it now!”

Yeah, this was last weekend. I was stopped at a red light about 5 cars back on that giant hill at Don Mills & Finch, just sort of spacing out waiting for the light to change. Next thing I know, there’s a cop car with its lights on screaming up the hill behind me, then cuts in front of me, through a space in the right lane, and blocks in a car two ahead of me. At the same time, to other cars come rushing in from around the corner on Don Mills to block the car in from the front. Before the cars are even fully stopped, the cops are leaping out with their guns drawn yelling for the driver to get out of the car. He comes right out with his hands up, and they turn him around for a quick pat-down and cuffing. Before the light cycles again, they’ve got him in their car and a tow truck is hooking up to his car, while traffic starts moving in the left lane again… Pretty intense!