When I was a kid, watching afterschool TV with my sisters, we had an unwritten competition surrounding some of those classic TV shows. I am talking about the Brady Bunch or Gilligan’s Island or possibly My Three Sons. These shows were on every day of my childhood for several years. We must have gone through the entire loop of them a few times. Since we knew them quite well, we competed with each other by spouting out the central premise of the episode as quickly as possible. We would say things like “This is the one where Bobby shoots pool.” or “The one where they break the vase.” (the Brady Bunch) For Gilligan’s Island, we could say “The Russian Astronauts!” or “The attaché case!” These utterances were good enough.
With these shows, we didn’t even need for the characters to speak. For my sister, just seeing what Jan or Marcia was wearing was enough. I can’t say as I won many of these contests, but I wasn’t far behind.
With some free time this afternoon, I lazily turned on the TV to see that an episode of Happy Days was starting up. It seems a local TV station is airing a lot of old TV programs including Hogan’s Heroes (a favourite of mine), the original One Day at a Time, Cheers, and Happy Days among others.
With one look at the opening scene, I muttered to myself that “This is the one where Arnold’s burns down.” And it unfolded just like I remembered it. Before the fire Chachi finally got a “maybe” from Joanie. This would lead to the ill-fated Joanie Loves Chachi— I should stop now before my reminiscing gets to be too much.
While I could spend these paragraphs lamenting how much my brain is clogged up with useless trivia knowledge of TV shows and can no longer factor a quadratic equation, instead I am choosing to celebrate it. Yes, I have watched a lot of TV. Yes, a lot of old sitcoms seem to take up a lot of room in my head. That doesn’t alter the fact that my memory for this stuff is still good. So, Today’s Perfect Moment is realizing that I still have that childhood skill. Now, either I am going to have to audition for Jeopardy or challenge my sisters to a game of Scene it.
It was a great surprise to me, but perhaps not to most of you, but yesterday’s post on editing and errors generated a lot of great comments. I had believed that I alone had the inability to easily spot and correct my errors. I thought that it was only I who had that maddening blind spot.
This post, which is not officially Today’s Perfect Moment, though it certainly could be, is written in thanks to all of you who took the time to read the post and comment. I appreciate it. It is quite reassuring that I am not alone in this.
alternation between opposite or contrasting things.
“the vicissitude of the seasons”
So on Friday, the day I lost my bus pass, I happened to glance at my horoscope. I don’t do this every day, but whenever I take a look at the free commuter newspaper, I tend to start from the back page first. This could be in relation to living in Japan when I always checked the sports first, or it could just be the way I have always looked at newspapers without complete sections. Who knows?
I read the horoscope, but didn’t know what vicissitude meant. Despite the fact that I work at a language school, finding a dictionary is, at times, rather difficult. We have class sets that the students aren’t interested in using, despite being shown time and time again how faulty their electronic versions are, but they are in the classrooms and not the teacher’s room. Sure we have a bunch of translation ones we’ve collected from students who’ve chosen souvenirs over the books when packing their luggage for the trip home, but knowing what the word looks like in Turkish does not really help me. I suppose I could have looked at an online definition (what I did here) but that really isn’t my style. Nonetheless, I felt it was kind of ominous. Based on the definition above, I probably should have checked to see that I had my bus pass at that very moment.
I went about my day teaching and doing my paperwork, completely forgetting to look up the word. However, it still tugged at my brain. I wrote the word down and kept the horoscope, thinking I would look it up later.
Saturday, with its wonderful bike ride, didn’t make the thought go away. However, that and the Tour de France time trials certainly put it on the backburner.
Now, here, Sunday morning with the laundry in, the lawn cut, lunch eaten (see my instagram pictures on the lower right), I finally had time to scratch the itch at the back of my brain. I finally had time to do something I love. I finally got to learn something. Learning is fantastic. Being challenged is fantastic. It is Today’s Perfect Moment.
As the cycling season gets going, there are always things that need fixing, updating, replacing. This is probably true of every sport, activity, or pastime. So far this year, I have changed my bib shorts, the batteries in my cycling computer, the card in my wallet. Today, I changed the cleats on my cycling shoes. I noticed on last weekend’s ride that the left one was coming loose rather easily. I considered this a safety issue and decided to replace them immediately. I could have waited another ride (probably) but I thought better of it. They look so shiny and new. I wish I had taken a photo of the gnarly ones I took off, just for juxtaposition.
Now, let’s be honest. Buying cleats for my cycling shoes is not Today’s Perfect Moment. Considering how much these pieces of plastic cost, it might be considered Today’s Worst Deal, or Today’s Worst Expenditure, but nothing close to perfect.
What was Perfect, was spending time in the bicycle shop getting some more knowledge. The attendant, Nigel, gave me lots of good advice about riding, pedal floating, seat height, tire wear, and the advantages of 25mm tires over 23mm tires. This may mean nothing to you, but I am sure you can apply it to something in your life. Think about learning about one of your interests. Thing about seeing someone perform the way you aspire to. Think about someone so sincere and infectious answering all your questions without judgement.
I am a teacher, but I am always fascinated by life’s classroom. When I get to hear from someone who has knowledge (as opposed to blowhards that don’t and only want to dominate a conversation–yes, I work with a few of those) I really enjoy it. When I get to talk to someone who really loves what they do, I really take it all in.
First and foremost, I have to apologize to anyone coming to this blog thinking that they were going to get “today’s” Perfect Moment. Since I haven’t had time to write since Thursday, I had to make some choices. I could either write about each day, hoping I could remember the moments that made me smile, or I could wrap this up with the nice title of “the weekend’s Perfect Moments”. While either solution works for me, I have opted to go for the latter.
The Plan and the Drive
Friday I left work after a positive evaluation on my observed class. For the next several hours, despite being on a high, everything went downhill….or in light of what happened that probably isn’t such a nice thing to say.
I left work and headed towards St. Catherines and my best friend Chris’ place. He had enlisted my help on his team for a charity trivia night. I have a lot of trivia knowledge, though to be fair, most of it is personal trivia. What I mean by that is when we get together I can remember a lot of the things that happened to us with remarkable clarity. How that was supposed to help in the trivia night is anyone’s guess. In truth, I think my friend just wanted to share a few drinks with me. The feeling was mutual.
On my drive, just as I passed a critical exit point, I heard on the radio that the Burlington Skyway was closed. There had been an accident on the Niagara bound route and things were brought to a standstill. I managed to keep my cool, but I regret not having my phone set up for hands free dialling on my car.
When the accident finally cleared, the traffic opened up and I was able to make good time. Of course, I was much later than anticipated.
Trivia Night
After collection myself, and having a drink with my friend, we headed out to Trivia night. The weather was warm and we were walking as we planned to have some drinks at the trivia night–it was a charity event and I wanted to do my part.
My spirits were buoyed a little when my friend mentioned there would be one single woman on our team. Since most of the things I get invited to are usually stacked with couples, I felt like this was at least better than usual.
I wish I could say we mopped up the trivia night, but alas no. My knowledge of TV shows, wrestling, science fiction, literature, comic books, obscure sports and all things Japanese didn’t really help. I did manage to help the team with some questions, but not nearly enough to put us in contention. Fortunately, my friend’s team were not ultra competitive and were just out for the fun. It was a pretty good night after all.
Jessica Jones
So, I am one of those people who doesn’t have Netflix. I just haven’t gotten around to it. My friend Chris loves movies and we usually find ourselves at the movie theatre or planted in front of his TV watching Netflix. The last few times, he has shown me episodes of Jessica Jones. I thought that the program was so good that it might finally prompt me to get Netflix. Sadly, lots of teaching hours in the summer meant that I just didn’t have time to watch anything.
This weekend, we made a conscious choice to finally watch the whole series. I thought it was excellent and Krysten Ritter and David Tennant were amazing. It was a pretty dark and disturbed series…but wow.
Additionally, Chris was kind enough to lend me the Jessica Jones comic books. It should make for some good reading.
Outside
Lest you think we spent all our time indoors nursing hangovers, we managed to get outside and play with his dog. As the pictures will attest, there are few things better than a fast dog who loves to chase a ball over vast distances. Thank god that they invented the chuck it.
The weather was warm and there were some nice trees in the park.
The Weekend Menu
So, those who have read this blog before know about my love of pizza and burritos. Though I didn’t plan it, those exact foods featured in my dinners. We had pizza on Friday and burritos on Saturday. My stomach was as happy as I was.
Dr. Strange
Seeing as we had time, we decided to go see Dr. Strange. It was a visually interesting movie and fits nicely into the Marvel Universe. We watched it in 3D, so there were a few moments that were a bit trippy and a few moments that were hard to follow. My only concern is that Benedict Cumberbatch sounded an awful lot like Tom Selleck. Maybe that was who his voice coach was.
A funny thing, odd really…..the movie theatre didn’t put down the house lights when they were showing the previews. I can’t say as I appreciated that very much.
The Moral of the Story
Weekends with friends are awesome. You probably already knew that, didn’t you.
It is amazing how an offhanded comment by one student can really start me thinking–can really start a tumble of dominoes in my mind.
Shortly before class on Friday, while wondering aloud where some of the more punctual students were, one of my bright students explained that the subway trains were running slow. Because she was a regular reader of my blog, she then pointed out that I should have already known that. While I was acknowledging the truth of her statement, she let forth with the offhand comment that has been rattling around in my brain ever since.
“Maybe you should think about changing the name of your blog,” she explained, trying to point out that quite a few of my recent posts were not really “Perfect Moments.”
It kind of stopped me dead. I freely admit that a number of posts have been focused on interesting moments rather than perfect moments. I had hoped that these were interesting explorations rather than whiny rants–but now I might need to readdress that. Perhaps she was right.
I started looking for perfect moments to brighten my mood. To a great degree this worked. I can honestly say that right now I am pretty happy. Sure there are tons of things that could be better, but I feel confident that those things will get better. I am also not really bothered with the negative things. However, I don’t think that means I should give up the basic premise of this blog.
I tried that before. I changed the title to “A Quest for the Better Me” which seemed reasonable, but since I couldn’t change the address without starting a new blog and importing all the content there, it confused new readers. It also didn’t seem to resonate with readers. I concluded that was because I didn’t really seem to be on a quest–no new diets, no new life plan, no exotic location, and no new philosophical outlook. It also had no definite numerical targets–pounds lost, pushups done…that sort of thing.
Lately, I have been writing about things I find interesting not only to improve my mood, but also to practice my writing skills. Though I don’t talk about it as much, I would still like to have a writing career. I still have short story and novel ideas rattling around in my brain. I would still like to escape the grind of the ESL world before it decides it can do without me. Writing scenes from the bus or the mall or anywhere is a literary exercise as well as a therapeutic endeavour.
But I digress–as I am wont to do.
I am not desperately searching for those Perfect Moments right now, but I still need them and I still find them (today, for example, they had cherry coke at the dollar store–actually $1.25 store but that just doesn’t sound nearly as cool). I hope you don’t think I am being selfish with them, when really it is more about the writing of them. While effective for me, the writing of them sometimes feels sort of “samey” to me–and I worry about this. I really don’t want to bore the twenty or so of you who read this blog. I hope my diversions into the weird, sometimes off-putting part of my life is at least somewhat entertaining.
The world is full of wonderful and odd ways to learn things. I guess that was the basis for the novel Q&A (also known as Slumdog Millionaire). As a teacher, I have tried to impress upon my students that there millions of opportunities to learn that aren’t in the classroom. Today, I came across one for myself.
I went for a haircut, and while there is nothing interesting or insightful in that, it did provide me with one of those interesting learning activities. Before you start wondering, I have to explain that it did not come from talking to the barber. I am rather reluctant barbershop chair talker. Unlike some of the people sitting alongside me, I don’t find I have a lot to say while someone hovers around me with sharp objects. Luckily, most barbers have mastered the skill of talking to the talkers and leaving the silent ones alone–if only one of the hygienists at my dentist’s office could do the same.
As I was getting my haircut, I noticed that the shop owner had invested in new aprons, or bibs, or dustcovers , or smocks–come to think of it, what are those sheetlike things they cover your body in called? If anyone knows, please leave a comment in the comment section.
These new aprons featured a dizzying array of moustaches with the names of the moustache types below them…..and there were a lot of them. I know of the standard goatee and handlebar, but I had knowledge whatsoever of any other names. I have told my student that everything has a name–sometimes right down to the minute part of any machine or object, but I really hadn’t considered it as deeply as these new smocks forced me to do.
I notice that beards (I have heard them called hipster beards but I am not so up on the trends to know if that is correct. Again, feel free to comment. While we’re at it, I would like to know what the women think of this current fashion trend–I am just curious. I have long given up my goatee and have no intention of ever growing it back.)…. where was I?
Okay, beards seem to be trendy. I have to guess that is why the barber decided on this particular pattern for his new smocks. These replaced purple red ones that matched the chairs along the waiting wall. Given that the decor in the barber shop probably hasn’t changed in 20 years (despite and ownership change that preserved the name of the shop for some odd reason), I wonder what spurred the change of smocks.
As a learning exercise, I can’t really file this under the useful knowledge section of the great hard drive in my brain. However, it will find its way into the great collection of useless trivia I already know. If only pub quiz’s were more popular here.
An Archive of Perfect Moments 