A Collection of Daily Wisdom by Dennis Sylvester Hurd since September 2003.

Aren't I something?

It's not been quite as many days as the title would suggest; however, that is the correct figure for the number of this blog entry. During the early days of this blog I was still figuring out how to use the tools that make my eJournal and images possible. For example, the first week of this blog has 22 separate entries. It wasn't long though before, as is the case this week, there was generally just one entry per day.

Let's be more specific if you like numbers. Tomorrow will be the start of the 253rd week of continuous blogging.

On a local level, I was a little shocked that on September 4, 2003 gas cost $0.89 / litre. That seems quaint now that it's $1.52 for the same amount. On the international stage during my initial week, Wikipedia has a listing of a few things going on in the world. Can you imagine? Who'd have thought? There was trouble in the Middle East ...

Labels: blogging

It's rather late to include the photo above as it was taken nearly two months ago. I'm sitting in the center of a section of Route 66 in Arizona. (Earlier this year, I posted a similar photo when sitting on the main highway between Taif and Jeddah Saudi Arabia in the 1980's.)

I want to tell you what prompted me to add this photo today. I've been catching up on old Futurama episodes. I had copies of the first three years of the animated show but I was missing the final year. I got two discs via zip.ca and found a few episodes which I missed when they were being broadcast in 2002. Anyway, while researching information on the series on Wikipedia I saw mention of an episode from the previous year called Parasites Lost in which a reference appears. I went back to take a look. The writers of this show were brilliant. In a space scene where spaceships are jockeying for position on a crowded strech of space, a road sign reads "√ 66". Get it?

That show always seemed a perfect half hour of entertainment. I wasn't even aware that two full-length, straight-to-DVD movies have come out since the show's cancellation. I watched Futurama: Bender's Big Score (2007) and am now waiting for the The Beast with a Billion Backs (2008) which was released on June 24th.

If Katey Sagal is ever in the neighbourhood I hope she'll drop in for a drink.

Labels: Desert Southwest, television

For quite some time, I'd not been getting out of bed until eight o'clock. Now, however, I've got to be up earlier. Beginning yesterday, I'm in a classroom at 8:30 am. It was actually quite enjoyable getting back at BCIT again. This time I'm not working with my usual level. I went down a course. I've not taught COMM 0003 since 2004. It is, however, shaping up to be a nice change of pace. The course takes place on only 21 mornings. This allows it to finish on the last day of this month.

Then, I definitely have all of August free, as courses I teach don't take place then. Also, I've not been teaching during the September start for a number of years now. To us, the months of September and October are an excellent time for travelling. The weather is still great in most places, and there are far fewer annoying tourists running around after the school year has started. Here are some of the autumn trips of recent years. All have occurred since the blog was active. So, you could even go back to my eJournal and images vault and locate entries written on the road.

2004 - Sri Lanka/Singapore

2005 - Europe (Amsterdam/Brussels/Frankfurt/Luxembourg/Paris/London)

2006 - Sri Lanka/Hong Kong

2007 - Europe (Germany/Hungary/Slovak/Czech./Austria/Switzerland)

At this point, an all-Italy tour is still on the burner for this fall. Things are still open as we have no reservations nor have we bought any tickets yet.

Labels: BCIT, Italy 2008, students, travel planning

In New Hampshire, one could get a driver's license at the age of 16. Of course, I did, even though that meant petitioning our school district to let us take Driver's Education as a summer course in the neighbouring town of Newport.

We lived about three miles away from the town of Sunapee and so a 100cc Kawasaki motorcycle replaced a 10-speed bike during my first year on the road. That seemed much better than pedalling even if it meant suiting up in snowmobile attire on cold November mornings. This worked out okay until, at least, the snow actually started flying.

Eventually, my father gave me a junk car. Now, I'm sort of proud to claim that I once drove an early-70's Ford Pinto. It was rather smart of him to give me an underpowered crap car. I see teenaged drivers wrap their pricey, new rice rockets around trees nowadays killing them and their friends. My Pinto had a replacement 1600cc engine we installed during high school shop class. It couldn't make it up the tiniest of hills in fourth gear; consequently, I quickly learned now handle a manual transmission. At 40 a car is dangerous but a little less lethal than one travelling at 80 mph. In retrospect, however, Pintos did become rather infamous for blowing up in rear-end collisions.

I don't think of have a single picture of my first car. I guess I didn't take photos in those days. These two pictures were copied from the Internet. The Net is useful for more than distribution of porn, isn't it?



The colour of these two different cars even matched my Pinto's. That obviously was a popular 1970's tint. It does, in a way, go right along with kitchen decor from That 70's Show, or perhaps they had avacado. I believe this particular Ford hue was called Freudian Gilt as Good Clean Fawn was a little grayer. Oh yeah, I also painted black racing stripes that curled up behind the rear windows. That must've given me at least a 2 mph boost!

As silly teenagers, a group of us still managed to flip it over a stone wall and have it land on it on its roof in the woods. I swear, I wasn't driving but did help to throw all the unopened beer cans from its little trunk far out into the bushes before the police showed up. No one was hurt. Unfortunately, the accident left me without a car during most of my freshman year in college.

Labels: cars, New Hampshire, Sunapee

Can you remember something you saw each day during the past three years? I can recall something I looked at during each and every day but I'm no savant. It's just I've added a daily picture to Flickr over the course of these years. I started the project to include a photo every day on July 1, 2005.

Now that I'm starting another year, here's the fourth picture snapped on a Canada Day.

Labels: Canada Day, Daily Picture Parade, Flickr

Yesterday, I had to find the old, dusty copy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). I knew it was among the collection of backups in the DVD storage album. It was an hour and a half well-wasted. I so wish that strange, often irreverent type of humour had a robust, modern-day equivalent. Five .. ahem three questions to cross the Bridge of Death? Flying cows? Knights who say Ni? Come on, don't crack a smile, I dare you.

We were simply doing some necessary homework for next weekend. I Ticketmastered some entrance passes to next Sunday's matinee of Spamalot. It's the first show of this season in Vancouver. The Broadway Across Canada organization sent an email with a discount code. We still went cheap with balcony seats. Having never been in The Centre for the Performing Arts in Vancouver, I don't know just how far away from the stage we'll actually be.

After the performance we'll know about the seating when booking Cats in October.

Labels: movies, musical theatre

A big advantage of writing just a paragraph or two a day over a long time is that I don't have to apologize for repeating myself. Yet, even though organization skills aren't necessary, anything added helps form a large data base of my ideas. More than three years ago I once wrote about non-native plants growing here. Many things not generally associated with this latitude will take root. Today, I was prompted to continue this topic. We went up to see the Rose Garden in Queen's Park. Considering the small size of New Westminster, having such a large, centrally-located green space is a blessing of history. The roses were fine but I found something else just as interesting. I enjoyed seeing the banana tree!

Labels: flora and fauna, New Westminster, Queen's Park