Worst Nightmare - by Roxie

My brush with sheer and utter panic and fear occurred this afternoon around 12:24 p.m. I turned on the living room television to watch my all time favorite soap opera that was in the process of recording and the screen immediately and in high definition showed a frightening scene. All thoughts of Pine Valley drama immediately vanished from my mind. I sat down on the ottoman to see what horrible tragedy had transpired in our now tenuously safe world.

The channel tuned to Randy’s favorite news show, Fox, had a ticker tape flashing across the bottom revealing the burning and smoking building was located in Texas. Okay, I thought, maybe (probably) in Houston or Dallas. Next thing I read is that a small private plane had taken off from Georgetown, Texas and crashed shortly thereafter. That’s when my heart began its staccato beating and instantaneous horror of WHERE it had crashed filled my terrorized mind.

Georgetown is just north of Austin, where several people I love live and work. My son, Brandon, is one of them and resides in Round Rock, which is between Georgetown and Austin, and my instantaneous alarm focused on him. I kept my eyes glued to the screen, frantically searched for the location of the burning high-rise and wondered why they hadn't revealed “where in the hell IS that building?!!!” I was terrified. Tears blurred my vision and I had to find out where it was and where my son was.

Finally, the beautiful blonde woman announced it was the Echelon Building III. I vaguely remembered that name because I had a brush with the IRS in that same building many years ago. My trusty laptop and I immediately went to work figuring out its location, but already my panic had subsided because if it was the building I believed it to be, my son was nowhere near it.

God will forgive me for breathing a sigh of relief when I discovered the address on-line because I know some people must have died in what the screen revealed as a black-smoke-filled inferno. I said a prayer for those unknown people whose loved ones passed on because their horror-filled day had just begun. My story could be quite different and I am sufficiently frightened of the terrors of this world we now live in to know that.

I watched the scene unfold as policemen and firemen did their jobs and the talking heads on Fox and authorities in Austin reassured us it wasn’t a terrorist attack. They explained bit-by-bit the events that lead to this tragedy. After a few minutes I broke down and had myself a good cry.

God help us all if a world exists where I can turn on the television and imagine my worst nightmare happens so easily. We are in deep doo-doo, people.

OLYMPIC (mis)ADVENTURE - Tamar

Go Canada Go!

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The Olympics are finally here, and last Saturday we left, not bright and early, but cloudy and early, to find some Olympic excitement in Vancouver.

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Despite warnings by VANOC of hour-long line-ups for buses and sky trains, we enjoyed a sit-down ride on a nearly empty Canada Line to downtown Vancouver. It was nice to see the streets turned into sidewalks filled with lots of people - here there were definitely signs of something wonderful happening. I think everyone had the same purpose as we did, so we just followed the sea of red jackets past the Vancouver Convention Centre to the Olympic Flame. Everyone was as disappointed as we were to discover the Flame was burning brightly behind a six foot Olympic security fence, with one 3-foot wide space cut down enough so people could get a look-see.

The official reasoning is because the Flame is in the vicinity of the Conference Centre, which has become a tightly-secured Media Centre. I just believe they are afraid someone will go poof the fire out.

The next item on our agenda was to head for the Irish House, which is supposed to be the biggest party place in Vancouver. It already had made the headlines for all the noise it was producing, keeping residents awake all night long. So we headed up Granville Street, which was full of displays celebrating the Chinese New Year Festival, for a damp 25-minute walk.

Irish House is a humongous white tented structure, which was sprouting a line-up at 11am, so we joined the end around the corner. After waiting for about five minutes, we heard someone ahead explain, "There's a ten dollar cover charge, and you get a free drink ticket..."

Well, we certainly didn't mind the ten dollar charge, if we had known about it already. But since we went travelling with a debit card, a MasterCard, and about $25 in cash, and Olympic venues only accept Visa or cash, and we didn't want to spend all our cash money just to enter and not be able to buy anything to eat, we slipped out of line. Needless to say, neither of us were very happy, but since I had had nothing to eat all day, not even breakfast, I wasn't willing to spend eatin' money on two alcoholic drinks for my husband.

The day wasn't going real well up to this point - if daddy's not happy, nobody's happy - so we decided to head back to Richmond. As in,

"Well, what do you want to do now?"

"I don't care."

"F..k it, let's just go back home."

So, another non-crowded ride back to Richmond, where we dined on A&W at the Richmond Centre, then took a raindrop walk to the Ozone for a visit to the Heineken House at Minoru - after a stop at the bank to withdraw some cash (just in case.)

Joining the lineup to enter the Ozone, which is Richmond's Olympic Party Headquarters, we realized that big umbrellas, like the one Howard was using to keep dry, are banned from the premises, along with backpacks and weapons.

Needless to say, it was a silent bus ride home.

So our first Olympic adventure was but a learning experience. Next Saturday we're going to try again. Wish us luck.

I Don't Smell Anything, Do You?

This past week, we noticed a faint odor emanating from somewhere unknown near our back door. It wasn't the dogs, as Howard assumed, and it wasn't Charlie the rat. Days passed and the faint odor became a bit more rancid, and still we had no idea what it was - until my husband discovered the plug to the freezer had become separated from the wall. The proof of that particular pudding hit me in the face when I walked in after a hard day's work.

"Ok then," I said. "Let's haul this outdoors and bag all the stuff so we can get rid of it." (Thank heavens there wasn't a lot of food involved.)

"No," he said. "I just plugged it back in. The stuff will freeze, the smell will disappear, and we can just put it out with the garbage on Wednesday."

Well, that sounded like a great idea, from a clever shipwright who is full of great ideas. However, the smell didn't quite disappear, although it did settle down a tad. Just keep the lid on til Wednesday.

Garbage day came, not soon enough. Howard was smart enough to skedaddle off to work without doing the garbage thingie, so it was up to me to tackle the job. I hauled in a huge breath, and grabbed a plastic baggie that used to have un-decomposing meat in it.

Oh oh. The top of the baggie came off in my hands, leaving its contents, along with the rest of our yummies, frozen solid to the bottom of the freezer. I thought maybe I would need a jackhammer to loosen this mess. Down goes the lid again, and I run outdoors to get a good intake of cool fresh air, thanking the gods that I had to go to work in a little while.

So this morning, I dragged the smelly offender outdoors to await another thaw, at least a partial thaw, that would allow me to double-triple-quadruple garbage bag the remains.

Life is good.

By the way, if you know anyone who wants to buy a freezer, let me know. It's going cheap.

The Dandelion - by Tamar

I'm glad they never told me

When I was just a seed

That I'd be growing up to be a weed

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For if I'd known my future

I might have hid my face

And now I wouldn't be here in this place

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A little bit of summer

And it's not even Spring

I'm glad of all the smiles and hopes I bring