Friday, October 18, 2024

Thanksgiving & thanksgetting

THEM APPLES:
When it comes to questions
 Michelle sure
knows how to pick’em. 
Wednesday morning two weeks ago, after I arrived at my office, Michelle Huang--one of the most important people in our company (I'm talking 35,000 people around the world)--asked, "How are you, Peter?" 

Poor Michelle. 

She is such a good sport. She probably didn't deserve my answer. And odds are good she was hoping for a "fine thanks how about you?"

What she got instead was firehosed, with an impromptu litany of all the elements that had to work seamlessly to get me from my bed to my office. 

Like the lights working in our bathroom back home. And the plumbing.

The fridge.

The toaster. 

The garage door opener.

The ignition on my motorcycle. And the clutch cable. Have you ever considered how many times the clutch cable on a motorcycle gets used? And it just keeps clutching and unclutching. 

So many things must mesh to make Peter's world work.

Michelle, who is very patient, put up with the following: "Between my house and here, there's hundreds if not thousands of traffic signals; the roads are all paved; and the other drivers all drive vehicles that are working, safely. I'm even amazed at the elevator that took me all the way to the ninth floor just now." 

Like I said. Poor Michelle. Everybody at our office is crazy about Michelle. I'm thankful I get to work with her.

Yesterday my wife Helena and I had an online appointment with a financial adviser at the TD Bank. 

His name's Mario and he's been helping us for, like, 20 years. I call him Super Mario.

Yesterday, before we started talking business, I wasted probably a dozen of Super Mario's minutes expressing my pleasure, surprise, glee and sheer astonishment that:

A: We have money;
B: We have a financial adviser:
C: We could meet with him from the comfort of my liviing room, which would not have been possible five years ago. And if you want to hear Super Mario laugh, tell him, as I did "I bet you didn't realize I'm not wearing any pants."

On Monday, we had some friends over for Thanksgiving and I read the following, citing each guest by name. 

God is great and God is good;
Let us thank him for our food:

God is great; He's not too shabby;
So thank you God for our friend Gabby.

Speaking of, thank you for Mick
Mateus, too, who's growing quick.

Listen God, don't think you owe me
 God, damn it's cool you sent Naomi.

Thanks for Frank, who came from Chad
And thanks for Gayle who's always glad.

Your tallest angel's also here:
I'm talking Doug, I think that's clear.

And Helena...you've met the missus:
She showers me with love and kisses

So thanks for her a lot, I say,
She's stuck it out both night and day.

Thanks for all the joy and luck:
Because without friends, this life would suck.

God is great and God is big;
It's dinner time so in we dig.

Amen.

I've been told sometimes people get tired of my positivity. My mom would say those people are just jealous.

Oh. Thanks for reading.



Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Tilt!

ARTISTIC DRIVER'S LICENCE: I just learned that the
waitress looked a lot like pinball-machine artist Paul Faris' real
girlfriend and that that's Faris himself leaning out the truck window.
So my friend Macbeth Swackhammer and I were sitting in the bar side of  the Anchor Inn in Little Current, Ont., on a Tuesday afternoon, when two guys came in to remove the pinball machine. 

They told us they were bringing it to the shop in Sudbury. I asked how much it'd cost to buy. I forget the amount but said "sold." 

The pair trucked it to my apartment, and my life hasn't been the same since. 

That was more than 40 years ago. 

What's important now is that the pinball machine--Night Rider, by the Bally company, of Chicago--has followed me through the years and sits in my basement in Toronto.

I just came upstairs after investing 45 minutes trying to win a game. (I can use the same quarter over and over again.)

Hadn't played in years but this morning, I watched a documentary called Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game, about a tall skinny brownhaired wannabe writer with a porn-star moustache who wrote the definitive history of pinball, and the movie inspired me to fire up Night Rider and doing so bro 

Sorry. 

I haven't a clue what was supposed to come after that ''bro."

My sister Norma phoned. 

While she and I were talking, I cracked a can of Sleeman's Premium Original Draft, the conversation took me away from writing, and that was five days ago. I'm only getting back to this now.

It just occured to me that this is the second blog entry since June that opens with me in the bar at the Anchor Inn.  

The "bro" could have been the first part of "brought," as in "brought back memories" or it might have had something with how my life hasn't been the same since the pinball machine. (One way it's the same? Beer in the afternoon can still yield surprising outcomes.)

But really. 

The person I'd like to meet is the person whose life hasn't changed after 40 years. That'd be a blog worth wasting your time on!

Where was I?