Hey Safeway on 13th Fix the Frigging Door

I am at that age where if I look ahead I see most people in walkers and if I look behind me the other half are in strollers. That is one reason I like Regina, I feel young. Hell when I run I am passing people right and left, mostly in walkers and yes I do most of my running circling the senior citizen centers but, you have to stay positive and get your exercise. And it is because the median age of a Reginonian is 95 that I write this letter of protest to the Safeway on 13th Avenue. If you have been following my blog you are aware that we have had other issues with this rogue store, like having parking border guard checking to see that if you park in their parking lot you shop in their parking lot. Amazing enough through the use of angry "How are we Doing? comment cards from irate individuals - OK it was one person Tracy the Butcher of 13th street as we fondly think of her who wrote like a gazillion of them using false names like Racy and Tacy and Traci with an "i". So scared the main office in Calgary they sent the poor guy packing to the oil fields of Fort McMurry where he was never heard from again.

So you can see this store has problems. The latest one that cropped up was when I went shopping on Saturday. I have had a rough time of it. I got in a traffic jam when 4 people ended up at a 4 way stop at the same time. Canadians are so polite no one would go first, they just kept waving their hands and shooing forward the other person, the other person would wave no, no you go first really, be my guest. After a couple of minutes of this I waved them all off with my gun and drove to the store.

I am not the most graceful person in the world and I hate to have it advertised, like I don't wear shirts that say, warning klutz. But I do occasionally do uncoordinated things. On Saturday I walk up to the automatic door at Safeway and BAM I find out it is not automatic because it doesn't move, oh well it did move by the forward thrust of my body and my nose against the glass, but by no means was it automatic. Then I proceed to push and with some force because you see there is an inner door due to the cold weather up here, which causes a vacuum seal so you push and push and then the vacuum seal breaks and then I almost fall through the other side. After this it hard to gather ones wits about oneself to continue on with ones shopping.

Now a note on the door could have been helpful saying it was broken and you had to push. It was a nice day the could have propped it open. Did they? No and what was the result? There is nothing funny about a pile of elderly people walkers strewn everywhere in front of the door, feebly pounding on the glass begging to get in. What was even more difficult was to climb over them to get out with my groceries.

So Safefuckingway, shape up and get that damn door fixed or I will send the butcher of 13th street to visit you.

Regina Social Scene

I have been here since September of last year and trying to work hard at breaking into the social structure of the Regina community. You may say, we are a friendly people and would help anyone stuck in the snow or if they had fallen through the ice and I would agree. But there is a big difference between saving someones life and being invited to dinner and I have finally discovered the secret of Regina. They best way for me to explain it is to use the diagram of a human cell. As you can see each cell has it's own nucleus which we will call your family and close circle of friends Around it other stuff that would make this too complicated so let us just say the lysosome would be your work, the ER is the shopping malls you go too, the golgi is your neighborhood, the squiggly black lines are either bugs or conflicts you are having and the lining around it is the Regina Ring road. See how simple this is?

Now in Regina everyone has their own cell they live in. Not a terrorist cell because that is different and involves bombs and guns and bad attitudes. No I am talking about the normal Reginain. They work hard at creating these cells and feel very comfortable in them. They are usually in a relationship of some kind and it is very nice and very few conflicts or squiggly lines. You following me? Now this is where it gets a bit more complicated. If you get divorced or break up with your partner, someone has to leave that cell and find their own new cell to hang in. You can take your job, your malls and your ring road (unless you move to Saskatoon then you can't) and create a new life. But as soon as you leave your cell you are now considered a free floating cell and you could be considered a danger to the other cells and not accepted. Some cells might consider you cancerous and that you would cause damage to their cells causing more squiggly lines (this would be bad, because that means you would cause strife in their cell or you don't bath and have bugs following you is just not good in any situation).

Sometimes cells merge mostly through marriage. This isn't a bad thing unless you had a bad break up with someone who knows someone from another cell and then you can expect years of squiggly lines to be in your life, unless that person falls through the ice and no one saves them. Now the dangers of cell merges is that you might introduce a friend to another friend thinking that you all can be friends. But then they become best friends and your cell is excluded and you are just sitting there stewing in your cell while their cells are going out partying. Personally I would say fuck their cells.

If you are from the United States and try to push your way into a cell, it just doesn't work. They might invite you over once or twice but will most likely count their silver after you leave and they wonder to themselves how can you be so stupid to have voted in George W. Bush twice. They never believe that you didn't vote for that lunatic.

In conclusion cell life can be great fun unless you of course have the squiggly line issue. It is always important to take good care of your cell and for God sakes if you are going to be foolish enough to sleep around, don't do it in your cell or else you will end up having to move to Weyburn or Moose Jaw.

Canadians and their Shopping Carts

And up here, Canadians are very nice but they don't trust you for shit when it comes to their shopping carts. So they have this stupid ass contraption where you shove a quarter in the handle push it in with this key thing and it is released from it's chain gang existence locked together with all those other poor carts. I refuse to put the quarter in for one good reason.

I still have a hard time figuring out how to do it, so I look like I have the shakes or am amazingly uncoordinated and I refuse to do that sober.

So I get a basket to buy a few things

I manage to get 33 items in the basket accidentally the bananas and eggs are at the bottom and I forget one fucking item all the way across the store in the veggie department. By this time it weighs so much I am dragging it through the store looking like I am the hunch back of Notre Dame, (to let you know I tried kicking it once or twice but there was the egg/banana issue and it hurt my toes when I kicked it) or the Elephant Man and I am looking around hoping there might be a Sherpa just back from Everest for hire.

No such luck

So I pull a muscle in my arm, but fuck if I looked stupid trying to put that fucking quarter in that stupid fucking slot in the grocery cart.

What I should do is get a bunch of quarters and go out there at night and release the carts so they can roam free and run into cars in the parking lots and stuff.

How not to catch a cat

Cats wonderful, I love cats, I won't go to places that serve cat on their menu but at the same time I find cats thing about catch me, catch me I bet you can't catch me is a stupid game and one that I don't play well and if I win the cat will lose.
Saturday I accidentally let the cat out. Sushi hasn't been able to go outside since bitch dog Stella came north to live.

After spending the day with Barb's parents while she was doing her engineering presentation (inlaws are wonderful but ya have to be "on" all the time) I was finally saying goodbye to them, Shithead Sushi flew out the door. I chased she ran. I stopped and Barb's dad scared her out from underneath the car coming right towards me, she ran to the right so I swung around and took a very forceful lunge forgetting that there was a huge tree right behind me. I slammed into the tree and fell on my back. I got up not swearing because her parents are BAPTISTS and say heck not hell (and there is nothing wrong with Baptists or anyone else who is connected with a church in anyway, you just don't swear around Baptists or your partners parents) while Fuckhead Sushi runs towards the back of the house, where my bitch dog from the south is at, Sushi jumps up on the fence bordering our house and the renters house. Stella is so excited that I am running towards the backyard she doesn't notice piece of pussy shit Sushi standing on top of the fence. On the other side of the fence is the renters that have two big "cats are not our friends" dogs and fortunately for me they weren't there. So I go in their backyard where there is evil fuck for brains Sushi sitting there waiting for me. There were so many bones in the back yard I thought I had walked into the remains of either a mass murderer or a big old Orc party. I picked her up gently with my good arm and didn't kill her and didn't even say heck.

Also is it too much to ask that if the cat is going to go outside in her pen that we built her where she eats a bunch of grass, that she stays out there to do her bulimic thing instead of coming inside and finding the rug that I just washed and puking on that? Am I asking too much here?

The Running of the Lemmings

The big thaw has happened. The birds are arriving by the dozens, skittering to a landing on a still partially frozen lake. The jack rabbits hopefully have started to turn brown or they are sitting ducks for predators like coyotes, foxes and fast moving sports cars. Regina will be having the annual running of the lemmings in the next couple of weeks which to people from Regina is the true beginning of Spring to the old timers. This custom began back in the 1800's when cabbage rolls were just nuggets and bunny hugging was still legal in the cold northern outposts of Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan has always been known for it's yearly migration of lemmings from the south to the north where they feed and have their offspring. Come fall they are all fattened up and hardly for their long track back to Phoenix Arizona where they stay in air conditioned trailers with gravel lawns. But come spring the whole city is comes alive with the excitement and the rush of the running of the lemmings.

You first see them come through town in ones or twos, the evening news makes it the lead story of the night. Lordy, lordy the lemmings have landed. Well the thrill that rushes through your body when you hear those words is like rolling up the rim of a Tim Horton's cup and finding that you won a car or a free cup of coffee, it is that kind of rush. From the first sighting on the town kicks into high gear. People pull out their Lemming outfits from last year. The police are put on extra patrol but have to driver very slowly so as not to run down the lemmings and of course they shut off Victoria Street for the running. It is different then the running of the bulls in Spain in that 1) lemmings have no horns and 2) you don't have to be macho to run with the lemmings you just need to watch where you place your feet so it is takes more grace then this:


These are mostly mean who feel that by dressing in red that it attracts the bulls to them and makes the running more exciting and they look more macho. Big clue for these guys, if you are running on a narrow street with bulls behind you the chances is that they are just trying to get the hell out of there instead of going after you specifically you big old macho guy you wearing that sexy red sash.

When it comes to the Running of the Lemmings, they block of the street of course because who wants to clean up the corpses of hundreds of lemmings that have become bits of furry carpet because of the cars. No we block it off to pedestrians only and only for one day. The day starts with a pancake and cabbage roll breakfast put on by the mayor. Then we take to the streets about 9am after the lemmings have woken up and are on the move, here is a picture of the last Running of the Lemmings:


As you can see by this picture that the it truly is a spectacle that no one should miss if they come to Regina in the Spring time.

My need to leave now for a fitting of my lemming outfit for this will be my first one and I want to look very lemmingish.

Next blog will be about what a springtime thaw looks like if you procrastinated when it came to cleaning up dog dropping from the backyard.

Until then Happy Spring!