Cilantro is love.

We took my dad out for dinner today because it was his birthday and he's still teary about his mom. We went to the Cannery, which is kind of cool, because it's down in the middle of the Port of Vancouver. You need to go through the security check-in to get down there, so that they can keep tabs on how many vehicles go through and make sure that you're not a terrorist.

I doubt terrorists would be driving around in a bright yellow Plymouth Caravelle two years away from having vintage plates. But we would.

And we would drive past all the cranes loading and unloading the container ships, past the fish canneries and grain elevators. Past the exact same rendering plant where Pickton used to send the dead bodies of prostitutes to be turned into cosmetics and glue. Well, pieces of prostitutes. The pieces the pigs wouldn't eat. And, well, allegedly. Innocent until proven guilty.

And all of this is near where mom used to work just out of high school, doing all sorts of trading of goods and supplying equipment to longshoremen. Women from the canneries used to come in and ask in very poor English if they could purchase rubber gloves, but only left gloves and not the pair. They'd argue with them over whether or not they should be able to purchase single gloves or not, but the object of the game was to get them out of the door as quickly as possible, because they reeked of fish guts.

The Cannery Restaurant doesn't smell like fish guts though. It's got a nice view of the docks and the port, and the service and food are always really decent, at least when we've been there. Seems to me that last time I was there I had a piece of blue-rare ahi tuna marinated in rum and a peanut sauce. This time I had trout and pineapple salsa, which came with some scalloped potatoes that had almonds and leeks cooked into them.

I have become convinced that you can mix cilantro with absolutely anything and call it salsa. The first time I had mango strawberry salsa it literally blew my mind. Now I make salsa out of practically everything and leave it in the fridge. Sometimes I mix it with cheerios and eat it that way, just to use it up.

Grandma's first electroshock

I've been reading a lot of books lately, but I'll spare you my pitiful attempts at reviewing them. Try as I might, I'm just bad at it, unless I mull it over for a few months first.

But still, books tend to remind me of other things, or at least make me think a lot, so I guess I can tell you about that. So I finished The Cure for Death by Lightning today. It was set in a place I'm not familiar with, but judging by the description, it was about 150 km north of where I live.

In it they mentioned a place called Essondale. I thought that perhaps it would have been helpful had they put some sort of note in the book as to what exactly it was. I knew, but I don't suppose many would.

Essondale, now Riverview Hospital, is where my grandma Eileen studied nursing. Today much of it sits empty, and its grounds are home to an impressive collection of rare trees, but from what I understand it wasn't a particularly nice place when grandma worked there.

Inside there is a display of all the old instruments and equipment that used to be used for the treatment of mental illness. They used to stick people in special therapeutic bathtubs with fitted covers to keep them confined, shaped such that the patients could recline, but far too short for them to slip in and drown. Left alone in the room, patients used to drum their feet rythmically against the ends of the tubs. The rest was silent.

The space in the middle of the stairwells at Riverview are all caged in. They weren't always that way. While grandma worked there, one of the patients threw one of grandma's coworkers down that space between the flights and she died. This same patient used to stay in a special room naked, all by herself because she was so violent.

Once a day all the nurses would block all the exits between her room and the shower room. They would throw open her door, and she would walk down to be washed, occasionally throwing a few punches at the staff on her way. Then, while she was out, they would hose down her room.

Years later, grandma came across this woman eating ice cream in front of a corner store. By that time, medicine had made enormous leaps past what it had been while she had been a psych nurse, but she still hid from her.

The nurses used to wear shoes with very thick rubber soles. At her first electroshock, grandma's job was to hold down a patient while he convulsed. Later, they would go through one after another after another on electroshock days, but her first time the man was struggling, because he was scared. They applied the electrodes, placed something in his mouth for him to bite and flipped the switch.

Grandma woke up in the room where they wheeled everyone after being electroshocked. Already, people were regaining consciousness, silently getting up from their gurneys and wandering around the room, bumping into walls.

How did that get in there?

I left work feeling jittery and agitated and the train ride home didn't help much. I got to my apartment, had a glass of water, sat down on the floor and emptied my mind of thoughts. Well, not completely empty, because I think that's a pretty uncomfortable feeling in and of itself.

But some days the problem is that I have too many thoughts in my head and then I panic because it's too much at one time. It's like I overheat and then my cpu crashes or something, so I have to take everything and file it away somewhere, so that I can pull things out later and think them through, one at a time.

I have a lot to think about at the moment, and contrary to what you might expect, little of it has to do with grandma.

So here I was, being all mindful of my thoughts and stuff when all of a sudden needle hits vinyl on an old phonograph and The Liberty Bell begins to play. Then a sort of surreal cut-out animation sequence began, very reminiscent of what would be seen on Monty Python's Flying Circus, except that it was kind of pornographic in a Monty Python sort of way.

I opened my eyes, wondering where the hell that had come from, in the same way I wonder every time I find a screwdriver in my fridge.

At least I can have hot showers.

This morning I woke up on the train, finished Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan, to start The Cure for Death by Lightning by Gail Anderson-Dargatz. Watched the waters of Burrard Inlet slip past, golden from the rising sun, the cranes of the Port of Vancouver glowing red.

Attention, the doors will be closing in approximately two minutes, two minutes until the doors close, and I always wait a good minute and fourty-five before I even bother contemplating leaving the train. Any earlier and the platform is a nearly unnavigable torrent of humanity, flooding toward the three escalators.

Escalators are for pussies. I take the stairs.

Arrived at work a tad out of sorts, and I guess it showed. I put in a few hours and then left early to wander the streets for a while. Caution signs sit at the feet of the steel and glass of the financial district because it's window-washing season again. I stood for a while on the westbound platform at Burrard Station, letting the wind whip down the tunnel, transforming my hair into an unruly frizz. The glaring fashionistas of Robsonstrasse were out full-force in spite of the clouds. I braved their disdain for a good fifteen minutes.

It was then that I hit upon a brilliant idea, that I would go to school and pick up a paper from the office. I had gotten a good mark in that class, but I wanted to see what sorts of comments had been left for me. The first and second pages were somewhat marked up, mostly with check marks, and then after that I guess he gave up and gave me 95%. I can't really complain about that.

After that, I wandered home to my apartment. My father wandered in around 2:30ish to have a shower. On top of all the job related stress dead parents, rugby trips, band trips, holidays and charity carwashes, my parents' hot water tank stopped working on Saturday, which means they're visiting me more often.

Or rather, they're visiting my bathroom. I have little to do with it, really. I guess that means I should feel used.

Dad wants to know why when he said that grandma was dead, he and my sister burst into tears and I didn't. "You're always so emotionally detached," he said. But I can't think of a time when I haven't been that way. I'm just like that. I don't like having to justify myself.

I need some sleep.

Erin is not so much in a partying mood.

After not a lot of consideration, I passed on the generous offer to go out to that rural part of Maple Ridge right near the correctional centre to have a party that involves drinking topless in a hot tub until you pass out.

Brown gets a B+ for effort though, by stating that the two people in our extended social circle who are most likely to grope you would not be there (which doesn't really bar the third, fourth and fifth in line from doing it).

I also got the very generous offer of not only being able to sleep in the trailer, but being entitled to the bed and bathroom in it too. Of course, I'd have to share the bed with Brown's brother and his boyfriend, but there are far worse things in life than sharing a bed with two gay guys.

In all honesty, mostly I'm just not in the mood. That and I don't like hot tubs at all. And, well, some of their friends are nice enough people, and others, I don't know.

Like, just last night, waiting in line for Pirates of the Caribbean, he introduced us to a friend that I hadn't met: "[name I've already forgotten], this is Don't Touch and Don't Touch," to which the friend replied "Come on, Brown, even I have standards!" proving that he was a bigger moron than he looked, for thinking he even had a chance.

Rest in peace, grandma

Mom and dad arrived at my place for a snack on Friday night. Kathy called to say that she'd gotten me a ticket to see Pirates. Dad had some things to finish at work, so he took mom with him up to the school.

When they got there, there was an incident in one of the afterschool programs. A large autistic kid had walked into a class that he wasn't supposed to be in and began to disrupt it, throwing things around and being a nuissance. They located the mother and began to talk to her. She became very defensive, accusing the school administration and staff of discriminating against Asians (the kid was Korean) and the mentally challenged.

In the middle of this argument, my mom got a phone call, and then handed the phone to my father. He then announced that he wanted to continue the conversation with this woman some other time, because he had just learned that his mother had died.

Incensed that he had been so rude as to answer his phone in the middle of their conversation, she lit into him. He spent the next half hour writing an incident report about her child.

After that there was a second incident in the gym, which he also had to write up. It's unusual that there would be two on one day.

Dad isn't in very good shape, but he's also not in any shape to take time off work at the moment. With his new job he inherited a one big disorganized mess that really needs to be cleaned up. Soon.

Coffee break

There's a sudden loud, low rumbling outside which you could blame on a bike gang entering the parking lot, but really it's the sound of the ground beneath us breaking from its bonds and floating up into the sky. They'll stick a huge glass dome overtop of us and then we can all breathe and rebreathe the same stale air, just like in Waydowntown.

Some days I really do turn into Sadly-it's-Bradley. All I need is a bottle of marbles. I look around for inspirational epigrams on cardstock so that I can staple them to my chest, but in my office all they've got are warning posters.

Over the coffee machine: Do you know where your guests are?
By the water cooler: Curiosity killed the cat.
By the photocopier: Don't leave anything unattended.

Loose lips sink ships. We all have folding tent cards for our desks telling people that we're away and not to leave confidential information while we're gone. Keys and locking drawers, filing cabinets, shredders, safes. Everything's safe. I don't need to be told not to share people's personal information, because I have absoluetly no right or reason to, but evidently some people need to be reminded.

There's one thing, though, something that I can not begin to understand, and that is a peculiar office ritual, enshrined in legislation: the coffee break. Some people observe it religiously, to the point of being absolutely ridiculous.

One time last year a guy was showing me how to use one of the database programs on the computer, when all of a sudden, the little clock in the bottom corner of the monitor changed to 10:30 and he immediately jumped up mid-sentence, said "coffee break" and ran out. Nothing's wrong with that, really. He was entitled to that break, but it seemed so weird that he would get up and leave right in the middle of something he was explaining to me.

So it's come to the attention of the people that I work with that I do not take coffee breaks and they're horrified, thinking that perhaps I am young and not familiar with labour laws or something. I get reminded by up to four people per day that I am entitled to take breaks during work. But to tell the truth, I don't like interrupting my work to do 15 minutes of something completely unconstructive. I never have and probably never will. What exactly can be accomplished in 15 minutes away from your desk?

If I could, I'd probably skip taking a lunch break too. I don't mind eating at my desk while I'm working. But alas, the world is not perfect, and if I sit at my desk all day, my inner thighs start rubbing against each other and my pants get tight, so I have to be content with wolfing down my lunch at my desk and then putting in a good 6-8 km of walking at lunchtime.

But I shouldn't complain. I work with a lot of really nice people who do their best to watch out for me. It could be far worse.

Works for me.

How about I not post anything

and say I did?

Hospitality

Mom and dad are home from their rockhounding trip this past weekend but I didn't get the chance to ask if the proprietor of their bed and breakfast was insane or not. It's just our luck that the host of every bed and breakfast we have ever stayed in has fit the following description:

- blonde
- middle-aged
- delusions of grandeur

The first had apparently been everywhere and done everything and had done it better before. She'd apparently organized the catering and hospitality for the Commonwealth Games and had also held a variety of really important sounding jobs in several countries doing really important sounding things and getting all sorts of acclaim, which would naturally explain why she was now the owner of a bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere, complaining about how difficult it was to break even.

Very few things escaped her commentary, because she was infinitely knowledgeable, and far more qualified to run everything than anyone else. But the thing she was most proud of, the thing she repeated several times over the course of the weekend was

wait for it...

She knew Stockwell Day! The Stockwell Day. Well, maybe not know. Actually she had only just met him, really.

Was I supposed to prostrate myself in front of her or something? I suppose I should have asked her if she had signed the petition to have a referendum on whether or not to change his name to Doris. I certainly did.

The other that stands out more or less fit the same description, except that she claimed often to have a master's degree, though in what I'm not sure. Watching Sex in the City? She kept claiming that she could be doing better than babysitting a bed and breakfast for the owners, but when asked, she said that she would probably be teaching yoga.

But once again, everything we did, she had done already and better. Eventually she figured out that we didn't care and left us so that she could surf lavalife instead.

Update: the proprietor of the place they stayed in this weekend wanted to put another couple in the room with them so they could all "keep each other company."

Fishes

I just finished When Eve Was Naked by Josef Svorecky today and the passage that got me most was one where he was rowing out on a lake and found what seemed to be a disgusting monster: a two-tailed fish, floating up at the surface of the water.

It seemed to be dead until he poked it and it began to swim. It was then that he realized that it wasn't one but two fishes of the same species. A larger one had attempted to swallow a smaller one, but had choked to death in the process and now the smaller fish was trapped partially inside and would undoubtedly die because of it.

Makes me think of how incredibly stupid people can be.

To commemorate the fact that I finished the book and also the fact that I was hungry, I made some pesto couscous, steamed asparagus and a nice piece of tuna that I seared on the outside and left nice and cold and rare on the inside, which as far as I'm concerned, is the only way to eat tuna.

I have to refrain from saying these things around my colleagues because it gets me a lot of weird looks. Just because we're starving students doesn't mean we have to eat crap. The way I see it is that I don't really spend money on anything other than rent so I may as well eat well. But maybe I'm just weird. Mom blames Chernobyl for that.