Maquinna's Poop du Jour: July 2005

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Nosy

When a Creative Job Really Isn't

Sometimes people ask me what I do for a living, and when I tell them I'm a marketing director at a university, they always respond with something like "oh, cool!" This immediately makes me feel like I must burst their bubble, because what seems, on the surface to be a funky and creative gig in a young, energetic environment, is anything but.

People hear 'marketing' and they think I get to wear funky purple shoes, and spend my days designing gorgeous brochures and giving free reign to every spark of ingenuity that runs through my head. What little people know...

I work for the man. I don't get to design things the way I want or the way I think they should be. I frequently have to make things that I despise. I write a lot of copy...saying the same thing a hundred different ways, constantly in search of the magic words that will bring students running to the door...because remember, this is all about the bottom line.

I crunch a lot of numbers - yes, you do that in marketing. I run statistical analyses of campaigns, create and deal with budgets, deal with unruly databases, and write proposals justifying my need for more money.

Budgets and money - there's never enough of either. This means that I have to create crap because I can't afford to do anything really truly cool with enough cash to make a real impact. The idea that you reap what you sow still falls on deaf ears with our administration, which has a great distrust of marketing. As far as they're concerned, people should just flock to the school without any advertising at all. They think this place is hot shit and that everyone feels the same way.

Mostly, I have to sell an idea that I don't believe in. That's the worst of it. I spend 25% of my time dealing with administrative stuff, 50% trying to make silk purses out of sows' ears, and another 25% just buggering off and doing whatever. The sad truth is they think I walk on water but I'm so jaded and uninspired that I'm not inclined to put any real effort into it - especially since I'm not pressed to.

What's good about the job? A stable paycheque, decent benefits...that's pretty much it. I have a great deal of autonomy and I have the best boss I've ever had, who just leaves me alone and trusts me to do my work. And yes, I do get to wear whatever shoes I want. I suppose I should be grateful - a lot of people never get a gig this good. For someone else, this might be a dream job. For me...well...the day can't come fast enough when I can leave it behind and really let my creative juices take reign.

I'm not so naive as to think running my own photography business won't be a hard slog too. I know there'll be sucking up to do, and some photography jobs that get done just for the money, and a heck of a lot of marketing...but I'll get to call all the shots and if things aren't working, I can't blame anyone but myself.

Anyway, the next person who suggests that my job is cool is going to get an invitation to follow me around for a day and see if they can stop themselves from opening a vein before 5:00.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Tidal Pool, Schoodic Peninsula, Maine

So Whatever Happened to Boot Camp?

In case you were wondering why all mention of boot camp ceased rather suddenly last month...circumstances unfolded in ways I did not anticipate. On the Friday of the third week of camp, a week before the wedding, I was out for the warm-up run along Salisbury Street when without warning, I heard an unbelievably audible *POP* in my left calf, and simultaneously felt my entire leg seize up in sharp pain. I knew right away this was not good.

I stopped running and leaned against a tree to see if I could stretch it out, but the pain was just greater. I knew without talking to anyone that boot camp had ended for me right there and then.

Sergeant Erica saw me hobbling back up the hill and asked what had happened. When I told her, she just shook her head and knew what I knew. I had to get to a doctor that day and get myself sorted out - quickly - if I was going to be able to walk in a pair of 3" slingbacks along beach rocks a week later for the wedding.

I drove home, pissed at myself, and getting increasingly agitated about the situation. A couple years earlier I had torn both calves playing volleyball, and I didn't walk right for weeks after that. Why had this happened again when I was, I thought, being so careful about stretching and warm-ups?

I won't go into the distress I had dealing with my doctor. Suffice to say I'll be looking for a new one if mine can't fit me in a week before my wedding with an urgent injury, and sends me to the E.R. instead...a half hour drive (yes, I drive a standard, and we are talking about my clutch leg here), limping around the hospital's extensive construction zone, and then waiting to be examined. Diagnosis: rupture of the plantaris tendon, sometimes referred to as 'tennis leg'. E.R. sends me away with my leg wrapped like King Tut and a pair of crutches that were more trouble than they were worth.

I spent the weekend with my leg up and iced, and three or four days later I felt I was walking without any noticeable limp, although it still ached. I had an entirely useless consultation with a sports medicine doctor when I returned from the honeymoon, but today I will be heading to a physical therapist to learn how, if at all, I can prevent this from happening again in the future.

As for boot camp, I will be back as soon as I have the medical all-clear.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Hubbards Harbour, Nova Scotia

Tales from the Honeymoon, Part Four (final)

Now that Craig and I have (somewhat) reluctantly returned to our old routine at home, I've had some time to think about what I miss most from the honeymoon...

1. Riding around in the sunshine with the top down on the car
2. Eating lobster every other day
3. Indulging every whim and curiosity just by stopping the car and getting out to look
4. Random oddities that greet you around every corner
5. Having days wide open and unscheduled
6. Spending a lot more time with Craig
7. Sand between my toes

I also wish I could have had little fairies stay behind at home to weed the garden and do all the little chores I didn't have time to do before we left. Oh, and maybe strip wallpaper, paint walls, wash windows, install flooring, and refinish the cupboards...I guess the trick is to make all the fun things fit into married life along with the necessary things.

I think I'll pick up some lobster this weekend!

Monday, July 25, 2005

Tales from the Honeymoon, Part Three

The Cabin From Hell

Craig and I are at odds about this one. He would prefer to pretend it never happened and never think on it again. I, on the other hand, have decided the only way I can deal with the incident is to try and make it amusing enough in retrospect that I can put the horror behind me.

Half-way through our journey in Nova Scotia, we hit the island of Cape Breton late in the evening and promptly started looking for a low-key place to spend the night. A quiet motel or something along those lines would have been just fine. All we needed was a place to crash, then get up in the morning and get on our way.

We had stopped at some beachside cottages just outside of Antigonish, only to discover they were all booked up. The owner said we'd probably have trouble finding anything in the area as there was a very large Highland dance competition on that weekend. We decided then to head right into Cape Breton and away from the no vacancy signs.

After much stumbling about the backroads, and repeatedly asking Craig...so, do you think there are any TOWNS on this road somewhere?...we found ourselves bouncing over 20 miles of dirt road into nowhere, and popping out on the other side in Canada's answer to Brigadoon, circa 1974. A small one-pump gas station with a little corner store attached to someone's home, the blue cathode-tube glow the only indication of life. We thought we'd at least go in and try and find out where the hell we were.

The woman behind the counter was in her 60s or so, in requisite polyester, her grey hair set off by a backdrop collage of hundreds of photos of small children - possibly all the same three kids, I really don't know. Her practised reply to our question - 'why, you're in beautiful River Denys, of course.' Which was about like saying that we should bless the gods that led us to a dungheap in the middle of frickin' nowhere. We asked if there were any motels or cottages nearby...oh, had we simply asked instead for directions to the Trans-Canada highway...

'Why, we have cottages right here!' she was happy to tell us. 'Let me just get my husband.'

She bellowed over the half-door dividing the store from their crocheted-afghan covered living room, rousing a man who plainly would have preferred not to have been disturbed for the rest of the evening. He escorted us to their 'cottages'.

'There's an in-ground pool too, you know!' she said as we were led out back.

After determining that all we really needed was a bed, the man showed us the smallest of the cottages, all of which came with their own kitchenettes, sitting areas, full bath, and abandoned wreck of a car on blocks in 3 feet of tall grass beside them. Going inside, he showed us the breakers to turn on the stove (not necessary, but he turned it on anyway), the cable TV with movie box (not necessary, we won't be watching any TV), made sure there were towels, and then charged us $50. It wasn't pretty, but I figured what the hell. We just need to sleep and get going in the morning.

We dragged our bags in, and then the filthy hell began to reveal itself. There was a fist-sized hole in the panelling right by the door. The handle to the bathroom fell off the moment I tried to close the door behind me. There was a layer of mildew in the fridge that told me everything I needed to know about when this place was last cleaned. The greasy dust on the drapes was an inch thick. There wasn't a magazine earlier than Ben Affleck's first reported flirtation with rehab in 2001. Every towel in the bathroom looked as though it had been brought out of open storage in a leaky basement.

I feared what I might find near the bed. I went upstairs and inspected it, and decided the sheets seemed to be clean, so I didn't insist on bringing the sleeping bags in from the car. Honestly, I really think I was just trying to convince myself that they were.

We played a round of cards and went to bed. Immediate problems became apparent. The bed had a serious list to the port side - my side of the bed - and I felt like I was going to have to hold onto Craig for dear life not to fall on the floor. The pillows had as much oomph as cast iron pans. And the sheets...well...maybe they were clean, maybe not. Lights out, we could hear the mosquitoes buzzing around our heads. I stuck my head under the covers.

And then the dinging began. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding...

Apparently the stove had an oven timer on it. We went downstairs and tried to make it stop.

An hour later: Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding...

Fuck. We got out of bed and headed downstairs again, and spun some other knobs to make it stop.

You can guess what happened an hour later. I couldn't deal with it at this point. Craig got up, went downstairs, and flipped the breaker off. Dinging dealt with. On his way back upstairs he grabbed the bug spray and sprayed my head as I lay there trying to doze.

I barely slept all night. I couldn't relax. When light hit, I started packing up right away and tapped my foot impatiently as Craig attended to his morning constitutional on the john. I was so stressed about the place my bowels refused to budge in it.

Later, when I asked Craig what grossed him out most about it, he said that it was when he went downstairs in his socks, and the toe of his foot slid under the sofa and got stuck in something on the linoleum under it.

When the man had been showing us the cottage, Craig asked him if they got many people like us who just come in off the road. He said that mostly they had return customers, people who came back time and again because they like the place.

I shudder to imagine.

Friday, July 22, 2005

Tales from the Honeymoon, Part Two

The Dog We Nearly Had To Take Home

On our last day in Nova Scotia, we were driving lazily along the southeast shore towards Yarmouth, scoping out cottages in the gothic style - steeply pointed gables on the second floor, sometimes a single gable and sometimes two or three, and conspiring to find our way inside one to see what the floor plan was like. Craig was especially interested in this as he harbours romantic notions of having such a place one day in Nova Scotia. I wouldn't be disappointed in this, but I'm not sure I'm as convinced yet as he is.

While heading down one minor highway - essentially a glorified backroad with a line painted down the middle, but enough actual pavement to encourage drivers to attack its nicely banked curves and lack of traffic with enough speed and recklessness to qualify for the Nascar circuit - we saw a small dog standing nervously in the middle of the road.

At first, we both thought it was a puppy. The dog wasn't very tall, and seemed to have puppy-like soft white fur, the kind of fuzz new puppies have before they get their adult coats. It seemed oblivious to where it was - something definitely wasn't right. We pulled over to make sure it hadn't been hit, or maybe see if its owner was nearby.

When we got out of the car, we realized quickly it wasn't a puppy, but simply a very small dog. It showed no signs of recognizing that a car had just passed nearby, but as we came nearer and spoke to the dog, it became friendly and excited, and happy to be pet. I felt along its back and hindquarters to make sure it wasn't hurt, and it seemed to be okay. It was only then as I got closer that I noticed its eyes. Nearly obscured by the curling fur around them, I could see that they were a solid, milky green, with crusty green mucus stuck in the fur all around them. My immediate thought was that this dog was blind. A small, blind dog, out here in the middle of the highway.

I picked it up and showed Craig. At first we were both a bit mortified, as though here was a dog who had been terribly neglected. There weren't many houses in the area and we discovered later we had the same fear - that this dog was about to become the third passenger in our already overloaded car. There was no way either one of us could have left it there on the highway.

We went to the nearest house, me cradling the dog, who was quite content to be held, and Craig traipsing through the tall grass to find out if anyone was home. A man came forward and said he didn't know the dog, but that people abandon animals out here all the time. My heart sank.

While they were talking, I could hear a voice calling from the other side of the road. There was a house back there, but it was hard to see past the trees. I hoped it was the dog's owner - and more so, that I wasn't going to have to hand over this unfortunate creature back to someone who was just as likely to set it back out on the road again after we had driven off. Craig and I walked towards the gravel driveway.

A middle-aged woman came towards us. Behind her, what we could see of the place looked neat and well-tended. I asked - 'is this dog yours?' I was so thankful when she said yes. When we got nearer, I asked if the dog could see at all. She said no, she had been blind from birth. They discovered after they got her that the dog had been born without any tear ducts, which was why all the mucus caked up around her eyes. She was surprised to hear where we had found her, and said she never ventured that far away from the house. She seemed very relieved, and invited us in for tea. Craig and I had just had breakfast, however, and we declined the invitation, heading back for our car.

As we walked back along the highway, we caught a better glimpse of the woman's house through the brush. A single-gabled gothic cottage, nicely proportioned, center staircase, appearing to be in the middle of getting a new coat of paint. Before we knew it, we were driving back up the driveway, hoping we could get a peek inside.

The little dog - whose name we now knew to be Alexa - barked excitedly when we knocked on the door, and ran out and lapped our bare legs when the woman opened it. We told her how we had seen the house from the road, and why we were interested, and asked if she would mind if we took a few photos and could see the layout? She was happy to oblige us - and in that way Craig got his wish to get inside one and see how the center staircase opened up to the landing under the gable, and how much more spacious the rooms were than we expected them to be. Alexa stayed at the bottom of the stairs - she knew better than to try them, without sight - and barked at us the whole time we were up there.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Tales from the Honeymoon, Part One

Two weeks spent tooling about Maine and Nova Scotia in an overloaded convertible (best described in the same manner as the helicopters in the Canadian air force - 2000 pieces of metal flying in close proximity) are bound to give rise to all kinds of stories and vignettes. Here are some of the things we encountered during the road trip:

1. 'Extra weather'. This is when you can see that there is a beautiful blue sky painted with the faintest white brush strokes of cirrus clouds, way, way up there, but a lower layer - the 'extra weather' - of thick dark clouds, mist, fog, and intermittent rain - continues to torment you. Nova Scotia seems to have plenty of this. This led to various hopeful exclamations on Craig's part, such as:

a) "I think it's clearing up!" (appropriate response: spit at him)
b) "I think it's breaking up!" (appropriate response: smack him)
c) "I think it's brightening up!" (appropriate response: pull hat down over his eyes)

2. Hanging a 'just married' sign on the back of one's car makes people quickly forgive you for anything foolish you might do, sometimes benefits you in mysterious and unforeseen ways, and inspires large semi-trailers sandwiching you on the highway to honk vociferously and give you the big thumbs-up. Announcing our newlywed status resulted in one campground owner paying our breakfast bill (behind our backs!) at a local cafe, prompted an elderly Acadian woman to present us with a green ceramic dog statue she just happened to have in the back of her car (more about Vaunda d'Entremont another time), and made customs officials take pity on us and accuse the car of emanating 'a certain glow'. We're just glad they didn't find the plutonium we smuggled back over the border.

3. Don't ever order the 'Big As Your Head Burrito' on your honeymoon. Especially not from a supposedly Mexican restaurant whose only tequila offering is Jose Cuervo. 'Nuff said.

4. Meat Cove. Meat Cove? Yes, Meat Cove. A remote outpost on the northern most tip of Cape Breton, at the end of 8 km of dirt road, where one can camp on cliffs falling at 80 degree angles straight into the ocean. If it weren't so socked in with fog, you could pretend you could see all the way to Newfoundland. A fellow traveller told us that the government stepped in there during the 1950s to stop rampant inbreeding. I have to say I don't doubt it for a moment.

More later...

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Regimental Colours, Halifax

Regiment, Highland Games, Halifax

Highland Games Drum, Halifax

Low Tide, Bay of Fundy

Wedding Getaway Car

Boy with Mohawk on the Fourth of July

Pipers, July 4th, Bar Harbor

Wedding Bouquet at Isle Au Haut

Quick Images From The Honeymoon

Above are a few images from the honeymoon...my lovely bouquet (thanks to Sprout, a florist in Worcester) in our wedding night room overlooking the lighthouse at Isle Au Haut...some July 4th festivities in Bar Harbor, Maine...our little TR6, fully loaded like the Grinch's sleigh (we got a lot of honking and thumbs-up for that one!)...fishing boats on the bottom of the harbour in the Bay of Fundy during one of their world's lowest tides...and a few shots from the Highland Games in Halifax, Nova Scotia...

More to come!

Monday, July 18, 2005

Hitched

It's all official. Craig and I got hitched on July 1st, under a torrent of mist and mosquitoes in southern Maine. Nothing ever goes exactly as you expect it will, but the day was still perfect in my mind, if for no other reason than looking at Craig and dabbing tears out of my eyes while I listened to his vows, and feeling his arm around my waist as I spoke mine. It was an intensely heartfelt moment and a perfect reflection of our relationship.

The day was capped off magnificently with a night spent at Isle Au Haut at The Keeper's House, an inn created out of the lighthouse keeper's home, with a view of the lighthouse blushing through our window all night long and the fog-filled straits beyond. The next day, the sun broke through and we were off for two weeks of touring and being tourists all the way up to Cape Breton.

There will be stories and photos over the next little while. Apologies for having none at hand at the moment. I did want to simply check in here and assure people that we are indeed home, in one piece. The TR6 (our honeymoon getaway vehicle) may have seen its last road trip, but it probably couldn't ride off into the sunset any better than it did.

xoxoxo

Maquinna's Poop du Jour