Last Updated on: 25th April 2014, 04:28 pm
I don’t know what it is about awesomely sunny days, but they make me want to gabble about random things that usually I wouldn’t think are worth being posted. But since it is so awesome out, here goes, off into the land of my silly mind.
I’m so glad to have that annoying census thing done. I went to do it this morning, and something really surprised me. This is the first year we’ve been able to do the census online, and already, they had a special help section on how to do it with screen-readers. That’s pretty damn cool. Usually, they produce something that’s completely blinky unfriendly, someone complains, actually several people complain, they do some research, and after several tries, they make something half decent. I’m not blaming or bitching, just saying that’s the way it usually goes. But they produced something that didn’t require an elaborate help file! I can’t say it works well, because the good folks at stats can are not happy with my browser and I don’t know why, I can’t even find the settings they speak of. But to make a long story short, I couldn’t fill it out online. But maybe it’s a good thing I couldn’t, because the help said with a screen-reader, it might take an hour, and I managed to do it with a helpful operator over the phone in five minutes! There’s some speed and efficiency right there.
Today I was walking down the street and got a good chuckle out of something. There was a guy standing at the corner of a street playing music. My first thought was, “Hmmm I wonder if I’ll step in his guitar case.” I’ve done it before. My second was, “Hmmm I wonder what he’ll do as I get closer.” They all do pretty entertaining things. One guy stopped playing just in time to keep me from stepping right in his guitar case. Another sang and did a jolly dodge the blink dance. This one stopped in the middle of his tune and yelled, “Go left!” I hope no one was engrossed in his song, cause they’d be wondering where go left fit in. Then he told me he was trying to guide me *with* the music. It was a good thought, but my first instinct whenI hear music is not to be drawn to it like a moth to a flame. It’s to try to avoid his setup since I don’t really feel like joining him at centre stage. But at least he wasn’t too mad at me and nobody else seemed to be, so that was good.
I got even more amusement today on the bus. I was coming back from this thing the CNIB put on at this nursing home. So, while standing at the stop waiting for the bus, I was joined by this grunting man. I didn’t give it much thought, I thought maybe he had a stroke and lost the ability to speak. We got on the bus and he seemed to be able to see it coming and find a seat, so I thought, ok he must be cool to leave the nursing home. Then I started to question that assumption as we drove off. He would grunt louder and laugh. Sometimes he would copy noises around him. Once a baby screamed something like, “Dadadada!” The old man responded with a long, loud, “Daa-aa-aa-aa-aaa-aaa-aa!” Sometimes, he’d say, 10-4 along with the radio, or repeat other things. And sometimes when the baby would shriek, he’d say, “ooo! Screams!” It was really weird. Now I was really wondering if I should let the driver know where he came from. But he surprised me again when I got off the bus. He simply said to me, “Can you get down ok?” and sounded completely normal. So I really didn’t know what to think.
While we’re on the subject of getting a laugh out of things you wouldn’t expect to get a laugh out of, I never thought a radio that could pick up police frequencies would be so entertaining, more like captivating. Oh god I sound geeky. Brad got a crank-up radio for his birthday. On it, there was a setting to pick up weather stations, I guess if you lived in the states. But we found out that instead of boring old weather, we get exciting and weird police transmissions. That is the coolest when you’re in a small town where you might know the arrestee, and they’re less likely to use codes that you have to look up. Who’d think we’d turn off the TV and gather around the radio to see what we could hear? And then there’s the fun of saying to the other guy, “Do you recognize this name?” Scarily enough, we did recognize a few. Oh the silly little things that end up being fun.
And I think that’s about all the random things I had in my head. Maybe I’ll have more later. Get out in the sun, it’s supposed to rain tomorrow!