hello, I’m back

We arrived home last yesterday afternoon punch-drunk from sleepiness from having just completed a twenty-one hour plane journey that took the form of two taxis, three airports, two sets of customs, a ferry terminal and some driving.  I had told Don back in Amsterdam, rather cockily, that I would drive home since “I had better reflexes with no sleep.“ 

Don drove.  I would have made good on my threat, but I think the idea of me behind the wheel of his beloved car, scared him enough to grab a couple of hours of sleep on the plane. 

I was not so lucky. 

I think perhaps it was a clever ploy on Don’s part.  See, ever since he got his i-pad, he’s been trying to entice me into sharing his newest, greatest excitement of his life. Sliding it into my lap, saying, “Don’t you want to even give it a try?“  Or, “Look at this new app I’ve just downloaded, it is the coolest thing ever!“  Once he even resorted to showing me how he could click on a metal and a chunk of it would rotate, glimmering and sparkling.  I guess he thought since I have an interest in the gold markets that I would scream, “Oh my god!  That is soo cool!  Fantastic!  Set me up with one of those i-pad puppies!“

Nope.  Nothing.  Didn’t do it for me.

Another attempt was when he showed me how if I was curious about a stock I could just plug in it’s symbol and all this information would pop up about the company. 

“Where’s the dividend yield?“  I said. 

“Um… Okay, so it doesn’t have that, but look at what else it came do.  See, charts!  One year chart, two year chart.“

“Hmm…“ Now I was interested.  “Show me the ten year chart.“

‘Can’t do that.“

“Okay, what about the twenty?“

“Nope, um… five years is as far as it can go.“

Which is totally silly, because I like to look further back than five years.  So, naturally, my tiny spike of interest in the i-pad flew out the window.

He showed me how he could read books on it, sliding his finger on the corner to flip the pages.  “I prefer to hold a real book in my hand,“ I said.  “Flip real pages.  Besides, I’m an author, if everyone in the world bought electronic books then I wouldn’t be able to hold a book that I wrote in my hand, feel the weight of it, the accomplishment, admire the beautiful cover and spine.  Wouldn’t be able to walk into a bookstore and see it sitting on the shelf for other people to pick up and enjoy.  Not to mention, I love the whole, going to a bookstore experience.  Nothing can take the place of wandering up and down the aisle and picking up possible reads.  Nope electronic books are not for me.  The only way I’m ever going to bend on that is when my eyes get so old and weary that they can no longer read the print, even with my progressive lenses.“ 

And I mean it too.  If we want bookstores to stay an integral part of our communities, we MUST support them!  It breaks my heart to see bookstore after bookstore closing their doors.  As a matter of fact, the holidays are just around the corner, we are all starting to make lists of possible gifts, why not trot down to your local bookstore and pick up a couple.

Hmm… I just realized, I have totally went marching down a different road than the one I thought I was travelling. 

Back to my round-about story of the airplane, lack of sleep and Don’s i-pad pushing.  Which I had managed, with no small sense of smugness, to waft around, entirely above such juvenile pursuits as fidgeting with electronic toys, blowing up whatever...

“I have better things to do with my time than blow up things,“ I would say.  “I would much rather cook something yummy, or read a book, or take a walk, a million things nicer than staring at a computer screen and wiggling my fingers and thumbs.  I am fifty years old, have never played a computer game in my life and certainly don’t intend to start now.“

Well…That was then and this is now.

What happened is, Don was showing our friend, Ken, all the marvels of the i-pad, because Ken is an Apple-junkie as well.  He is the one who came up to our old island cabin years ago, cradling his new mac-laptop, sliding his hands lovingly across the top, showing Don how fast it booted up when we were parked outside the local elementary school using their Internet.  He is the reason that Don got started on his everything-Apple binge. 

So, while we were bobbing down the Rhine, Don showed him a few of the so-called marvels of the i-pad and then Ken said, “What’s your favorite game on it?“  So, of course Don showed him the Angry Ducks (or chickens?) It seems all innocuous, and has little jaunty music and tiny movies about how the green pigs stole the eggs so the birds hop into a sling-shot and the player takes his finger, pulls back and aims and propels the birds into the air to try to land on the pigs and break through their fortification. 

Okay, now, the mother in me when I would see Don or Dave or even newbie Ken, playing this game is:

First: this is rather violent.  These birds are committing suicide missions here and you are helping them.  Why not go outside and plant some flowers or rake some leaves or something.

Two: Wouldn’t it be better for the pigs and the birds to just get together and try to start some kind of discussion.  Like, “Hey, look, stop stealing our eggs.  These are our unborn children we are hatching.  How about if we lay a certain amount of unfertilised eggs per week, which we will give to you in exchange for you ceasing and desisting from stealing the ones we are trying to hatch?“  Now I know that this might seem a little like an agreement that one might draw up if one was living in a neighbourhood which was run by the mafioso, however, given the amount of angry birds I’ve seen hurled out of the slingshot to certain death, this seems like a rather good compromise. 

Be that as it may, in watching Ken, who is probably one of the most honorable and nonviolent men you would ever meet, hunched over the i-pad, ruthlessly flinging electronic birds to an untimely end, enjoying himself enormously, Don having fun by proxy, and me, gradually, reluctantly, being drawn in.

Later that night, when we had retired to our cabin and Don’s mom and Ken had gone to their respective rooms, Don was reading and I had finished my book.  I wasn’t sleepy and didn’t want to start a new book, because I’m the type of reader who has to read a book from beginning to end, sleep-be-damned.  “Would you like to try Angry birds?“ Don asked all innocently, once again sliding the glowing i-pad my way. 

‘No,“ I said.  And then two minutes later, “Okay.“

Not a good move.  I don’t know how much time I have lost propelling imaginary birds through the air, but let me tell you this.  Don’t start.  It’s like warm Kettle corn.  The first taste is not so good, the second taste better, by the third handful, you don’t know how you lived all these years without it. 

Angry Birds is like that.  You can’t just play one game, because there is the next one to crack and the next one. 

I didn’t sleep on the plane. 

No, I blew up birds and green pigs and enjoyed every minute of it. 

It’s rather embarrassing to admit, but there you have it.

Therefore, Don drove home, as I had hogged his i-pad for a goodly portion of the flight, sleep was not necessary, there were pigs to explode. It wasn’t until we arrived on Canadian soil, that I realized I was wobbling on my feet.

Our friends, Dawna and Bob arrived on our heels as they are leaving for Florida today and we needed to do the table trade-off before they left. 

We (Don and Bob did most of the work) carried a rather hefty disassembled dining room table from the back of their van into the house.  Staggering across the wet lawn, our muscles screaming in agony, Dawna observed cheerily, “Lucy and Ethel strike again!“

“Oh no,“ I gasped.  “Don’t even say that!“ Visions of some unsuspecting disaster lurking just around the corner.  Which of course made her cackle happily.

We got the table pieces safely inside and Bob and Don assembled it while I made coffee.  It was good to be home.  The milk in the fridge had gone off while we were away, but Dawna and Bob pretended they liked it black.  Then their son called, and off they went to have dinner. 

Someone in customs had sawed the lock off my suitcase, so after Dawna and Bob left I opened it up on the living room floor and checked to make sure that the delicious, mind-blowingly good chocolate liquor we purchase at the Schokoladen museum at the Lindt chocolate factory was still in there.  IT WAS!  Yay!  I guess it’s rather odd, one would think I’d be worried about my fancy clothes or expensive boots that I bought in London last year that are the impossible-to-find-combination-of-stylish-AND-comfortable, but no… The only thing I was concerned about where these, not terribly fancy bottles of chocolate magic. 

If you ever go to Cologne, Germany, don’t bother with paying to go into the museum, as it is rather simple and boring and not really worth the price of admission even if they give you a wafer cookie with chocolate sauce. 

DO however, go into the attached store and buy all the chocolate liquor you can carry!  Don’t be put off by the unimaginative labeling.  It is DELICIOUS!  I wish I had bought more. 

Posted by Meg Tilly on Tuesday, November 09, 2010 in Chewing the Fat