So Inventive, We Canadians, So Bored

*snort*

HALIFAX(CP) — Metal signs are disappearing from roads and highways across Nova Scotia as industrious thieves steal them and sell them for scrap.

A man in Cape Breton was recently accused of stealing about 700 kilograms worth of aluminum signs, cutting them into small pieces and selling them to a scrapyard for $800. The provincial Transportation Department in the Annapolis Valley has spent $87,000 replacing stolen signs that fetch thieves $3 to $4 apiece from scrap-metal dealers. “To replace them, it’s $100 or more each by the time you pay the labour costs,” said Bernie MacDonald, the department’s operations supervisor in MacLellans Brook, Pictou County.

While there have always been people taking signs to hang in their garage or basement, the problem intensifies when the price of aluminum goes up.

With scrap dealers now paying 90 cents US per pound for aluminum, the signs have become an easy target.

More than 200 signs have disappeared from the eastern end of the Annapolis Valley in recent weeks, including the theft of 63 on Nov. 1 alone.

“When the price went up, the signs went missing,” said Paul Stone, the provincial Transportation Department’s Middleton area manager. “When the price went down, they didn’t.”

Stone said someone used a circular saw to cut down the large metal support posts of a huge sign on Highway 101.

“If a driver goes off the road because someone’s taken a 90-cent sign, that’s what I’m worried about.”

Tony Gates, operations supervisor at the Transportation Department office in Middleton, said thieves have to be using power tools to get the signs off. Staff have been using locknuts and specialized bolts to attach them to the sign posts.

“The way we’re putting signs up now, you’d need a compressor,” he said. In some cases, staff even strip the bolts so they can’t be backed off.

“But they’re still getting them.”

One night a thief put a chain on some sign posts and pulled them out of the ground with a vehicle.

Restoration

On the 2:30 mail run (erm..... mail-walk-really-slowly....) I passed the restored chapeland someone was inside playing the organ. It was sort of haunting and pretty all at the same time - an empty hallway, slow ponderous music moving alongside me - and I realized when I turned the corner to the Dr's lounge that I was .... smiling.... and humming.

And I realized that even though I got almost no sleep last night and I'm still sick... I'd been humming all day. In fact, I'd been doing it for at least a week.

And I thought, "You know, I like it here."

My next thought was, "Well, I better - I've got Sunday off then I'm working EIGHT in a row."

And then I went back to humming.

I'm pretty sure that flickering pot light in the hallway has done something to my brain.

and in this world theres a whole lot of golden
in this world theres a whole lot of plain
in this world you've a soul for a compass
and a heart for a pair of wings

A Canadian Culture Moment

Yes, kids, it's a poetry day. A little poem and a gentleman named Robert Sward caught my eye.

One for the Road

One for the road.
A little detached it was, but bouncy, flouncy, hoochie coochie,
woo wah woo, out there under the stars,
woo wah woo,
one for the road, one for the road it was,
and end of the show.
Stupid shit, how was I to know?
One for the road and end of the show?
So good-humored it was, I missed the clue,
hugging and kissing, all that
hugging and kissing.
Missed just how all over it really was.

Old Wives Tales

I am now thinking that my mother may actually have had a point when she said not to go out with wet hair cause I'd get sick....

...apparantly wet combat boots and a wet beret fulfill the same purpose.

I am offically ill. Again? Still?

But don't tell MaJen I'm finally coming around to her view of things, hey?

i keep putting off
and the more time passes
the more i get soft
i'm standing up there in a weakened state

i'm not saying anything
you think that I forgot
cuz I'm not saying anything
but I'm thinking a lot

Backtracking. To The First Week Of November.

Along my drive to work in the mornings/evenings I pass the gravel pit that's been there ever since I can remember. They used to tell stories about kids that climbed the fence and disappeared forever in the shifting piles of dirt and gravel.

For years, almost nothing came out or went into the pit but since I've been back, production has stepped up a 1,000 fold.

Mostly, I think, due to the fact that a house here costs $370,000 (at the low end) and the gravel pit land is prime - right along the ocean. I think they're sucking out all the gravel they can and then selling the land to developers - there's one area that's already in the midst of being levelled out in preparation for building.

Anyways, there's a 'new' road that cuts through these areas heading inland and it connects to a feeder highway to the main #1 highway into town. During the first two weeks of November, pumpkins started to appear along one 1/4 mile stretch of the road.

Just the bit along the undeveloped spots and no other. Every day, a few more. And because this is the most temperate climate in Canada - they've been quite well preserved (and, even more strange, left unkicked by the local kids) up until about the 19th....

It's sort of cool to drive along as they gaze in little groups across the road at each other.

And sort of creepy.

lights will guide you home
and ignite your bones
and I will try to fix you

It's All About Thoughts. In This Village In My Head.

What am I thinking?

I'm thinking that adding a wet beret to the wet boots was no fun.

I'm thinking being referred to as 'right freaky' in that PEI accent because one of my hands is a full 1/2 inch bigger than the other was pretty amusing.

I'm thinking about a monk dressed in rope-belted robe-brown lying on a stretcher while a woman tells me he is an amazing man.

I'm thinking that I would so very much have loved to ask her why she thinks this and what it means to her to know it.

I'm thinking about my massage the other night and how strange that moment is when I realized I hadn't been touched by anyone in almost a year.

I'm thinking that, whether we prefer to be alone all the time or only sometimes, for whatever reasons we are alone and whatever reason we continue to be alone - that at least once a year we need to be touched.

That touch is what brings us together as humans. That touch may be part of what can save us. That those of us who have no one to touch us need to go out into the world and find someone to do it, even if it is just an hour long massage once in a while.

Because that simple thing can bring us back out of ourselves and let us see things outside of ourselves in a way that we lose without it. That simple thing is everything. That even though paying for something such as that seems, in a way, the wrong way to go about it - in the end it comes down to this....

...I believe that on a regular basis we all need to be touched where the intent behind it is loving. Or at the very least, healing.

So that we ourselves don't lose our ability to love and to heal.

And Then

...about 2:30 I went back to sleep.

But, I put something in the comments that I'm going to drag in here and pretend it's a post because I thought it was funny. And I'm the only one that counts.

I had to ask yesterday that everytime they said something like - let's go do the DI on the MLVW and the SLVW - THEY SHOULD PAUSE AND EXPLAIN WHAT THE FUCK THEY MEAN.

And, James, you may just get your wish - they're going to do formal backdropped pics of each of us (to raise money for the pathetic mess fund) sometime in the next couple months.

I may be persuaded to scan it in.