Lost in Translation

*Sigh*

I really do not like phones. If it was my druthers, I wouldn't have a phone/cell phone. Sad thing, alot of my job deals with phones - either talking on it, dishing out of phones, setting up of phone contracts, answering questions about our phones....you get the idea.

I'm the type of person that would rather have a little 'face time',rather than try to explain or have something explained to me, over the phone.

Case in point: I had to call this one particular service twice today to obtain clarification on something, and twice I linked in to an operator that was very hard to understand (how's that for politically correctedness???). And while I can appreciate the effort made on the part of the customer service agent, it irks me to no end when I cannot comprehend what it is that they are trying to tell me - usually by this time I'm confused enough and the last thing I need is to being saying 'excuse me?' 'Excuse me?' 'I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time to hear you properly'....

Uh. No. It's not my ears...my native tongue is english - unfortunately when it comes to operated assisted services, these days - their native tongue is, well - native.

Deep Observations....by Me on Newness

How long does something stay ‘new’??
New and Improved!
Newer and Longer Lasting Flavor!!
New Hairstyle
New Car
New Restaurant….

I’ve been listening to this ‘NEW’ radio station for about, oh, two months now. Don’t get me wrong, I love the station! But when does it stop becoming ‘new’ and just – well, become?

I mean, c’mon, this post will only be ‘new’ until I post the next one!!!

Out of the Mouths of Babes...

So we’re sitting on the couch watching the nomination race between Clinton and Obama. We have the station tuned to CNN (the cat is going wacko for the little light that scrolls through the CNN logo at the bottom left of the tele – what can I say??? Cheap entertainment!)
The show has Anderson Cooper talking with all these political pundits – is the race over for Hilary? Does Obama have what it takes??? Talk about flogging a dead horse already!!! I don’t know how Americans can stay SO involved in politics for that long in one stretch…but I digress….
So we’re watching Anderson – he’s lookin’ smart, he’s lookin’ good, he’s asking the tough questions when out of the blue, my five year old son asks,
“Mom – is this a game show?”

How do I answer that with a straight face???
You don’t know how close you are buddy!!!

May Long...

AH - the May Long Weekend...it's never quite 'long' enough.

The weekend flew by - we putted around, I had a massage at my favorite spa (thanks Krystal, I needed that after my last exam!), did the obligitory visit to Canadian Tire and picked up some patio chairs, we saw 'Prince Caspian' (pretty good movie), we attempted to get through the boxes in the garage...on the upside, we made it through 6...not bad.

Sunday, after picking up Paden, we took the long way home through Sundre, stopped for a bucket of balls at a driving range, and booked our spot at Tall Timber for some camping in June. Later that evening we met up with my brother-in-law and his family and friends (they were camping in Cochrane), by the time we made it home it was quite late!

Monday, we had a bitof a lazy morning, topped up the fridge and pantry, then toodled off to the mountains....(along with thousands of other people who had the same idea!)

I have to say, I think this is the best part about living in Calgary, being so close to the mountains. A quick 45 minute drive and you're there.

The weather was great! We packed a picnic lunch and headed out to Elbow Falls. Just in the Kananaskis Country, they have picnic sites with fire pits all along the river....definitely a popular spot as you can see by all the people in the picture!

After that we drove to my favorite place on the planet - Forget-Me-Not Pond. It's so beautiful there, the water is a gorgeous emerald green and most times it's quite quiet. I was surprised to see that there was still ice on the pond. It was a lovely warm day as you can see by Paden in his shorts and tee.
The boys spent the majority of the time by the river seeing who could make the biggest splash!

The local wildlife was out and about this afternoon, and seemed more than accomodating to pose for pictures.


The afternoon went by too quickly, finishing off at home with a barbeque and a book read to me by Paden. *Sigh* I wish every weekend was a long one! Looking back through what I just blahged, we got quite a bit in!

In Ancient Times When Men Were Men And......

Paden brought home a lovely brochure from his kindergarten class all about the birds that lived in our area.

There were house sparrows, blue jays, magpies, chickadees, partridges, nuthatches and merlins. We had seen all the birds at one point and Paden was quite excited to go back and let his teacher know that he was able to check off all the examples.

So we get on to the topic of the merlin. Mark says to him, ‘Isn't that a cool name for a bird? Do you know that the most powerful magician was named Merlin?’…The eyes go wide…’Cool’, he says.
‘Did you know he lived during the time of King Arthur?’…You could see the wheels are turning in the brain – he says, ‘Oh!! I know!!! I know King Arthur!!! He was in Shrek!!!!’

*insert hand slap to the forehead here*

Hindsight's 20/20

It's funny to see, even if in a commercial, what people perceived to have missed in their lives...