Author: Rae

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I’m Going to Need a Wake-Up Call Tomorrow

After I finished counting cars the other day, I was asked if I’d be available for more work this summer. Of course, I said yes, but I honestly never expected to hear from this lady again, not with the way my employment situation has been since I got to Lethbridge.

I must learn to have more faith. I’m meeting her at 5:30 tomorrow morning. It’s going to be a short night. 🙂

I’m going to be counting cars again, but the reason we are meeting so early is so I can help lay down some hoses. At least, that’s what I understood. And I might be introduced to flagging (being a traffic control person).

To think I could be working in an office in Gatineau doing the same thing over and over and over and over again day in and day out instead of learning something new every day. Lack of steady income not withstanding, my life is pretty awesome!

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Alberta Propane Prices

I went to fill the 30lb propane tank today and once again was shocked by the cost of propane in Alberta.

In the last three years, filling that thing in BC and the US has cost me between $20 and $30, with Campbell River and Blaine being at the high end of the spectrum, the Okanagan in the middle, and Surrey at the bottom. I also once filled it for almost $40 in Dawson.

Propane in Canada is sold in a price per litre and I’ve always considered the low eighties per litre to be an acceptable price.

I’ve filled up twice since I got to Alberta and hope I don’t have to get used to the price they have here (ie. that I have to stay here in definitely) because I’m going to get spoiled. Propane is 74 cents per litre, so my 35lbs costs me just shy of $18!!!!

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New Project Starting to Bear Fruit

When I finished my cross-stitch project at the end of April, I posted that I was in need of a new project. I decided to cross another item off my bucket list: learn to read a language that does not use the Roman alphabet. My top three choices were Russian, Arabic, and Japanese. I decided on Japanese because it’s a much easier language to learn than the other two. Moreover, I have some experience with Asian languages, having studied Mandarin in college. Japanese is much easier since it has two phonetic alphabets and no tones. I set myself a goal: to be able to read a sushi menu.

As it turns out, there are three sets of characters in Japanese, hiragana, katakana, and kanji. The last one is what people think of when they think of Japanese writing; those are the pictograms that represent words. Hiragana and katakana are symbols that represent sounds and have no inherent meaning. They are just like our letters.

Common pedagogy suggests learning the forty-six hiragana characters first, so I got my hands on the most highly recommended Hiragana workbook, Let’s Learn Hiragana: First Book of Basic Japanese Writing (Kodansha’s Children’s Classics) and started studying.

Oy. Learning languages past mid-adolescence is quite difficult. Nothing was sticking. The first lesson has you learning ten hiragana characters and it was so overwhelming. I would write them over and over and over again, but all I saw was squiggles.

Until the other night. I couldn’t sleep and was browsing through the sushi app on my iPod Touch when I realised that the squiggles next to the English were hiragana. And I could recognize three of them, those for the sounds a, ka, and i. Breakthrough. The squiggles were no longer meaningless, they were sounds!

I’ve been able to add three more symbols, one of which isn’t in that first lesson: e, o, and ga. Ga was the forth symbol in that first word, which is akagai, a type of clam.

With those six, I have been able to truly READ some words. The first one was aoi. Blue.

I can now read a couple of words on a sushi menu, including ika, squid.

I’m going to start making myself vocabulary flashcards. It’s all well and good to be able to read, but understanding would be good, too. 🙂 The next sound I’m working on is U so that I can read all the vowels.

My favourite Japanese word that I can read is oka. That’s hill. And also French-Canadian for stinky delicious cheese. 😀

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Parking Your RV At a Hospital

Tioga George had some day surgery today. Glad all went well, George!

When he was well enough to be released, he was wheeled out to his RV sitting at the back of the hospital parking lot. What luxury!

I had major surgery in July of 2007. I didn’t feel too badly upon awakening, but the drive home over terrible Gatineau roads, and the drive back to the hospital the next day for a dressing change, was torture. There would have been a lot less pain, and possibly a quicker convalescence, if I could have gone home to my RV parked in the hospital parking lot instead of being subjected to those two car rides. I remember my surgeon’s shocked expression at seeing me in a wheelchair the next day. I was worn out from trying not scream on the half hour ride to see her!

I don’t know if US hospital parking lot rates are as bad as those in Canada, but I think that any price would be worth getting permission to spend at least a couple of days in the lot in an RV after undergoing surgery to avoid the agonizing ride home.

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Grey and Yellow

Jody is really in tune with the delivery market in Lethbridge and so I was able to get through her a couple of routes delivering the CanPages phone directories. Like fliers, this pays minimum wage at best, so I didn’t over-commit to the project. Today, I did two flier routes, went out and did one phone book route, then finished up my day doing two more flier routes. It has been sunny and hot and I am done for the day even though I still have two flier routes to do tomorrow. I think I did a pretty good day’s work!

The phone book route I did today was just south of downtown proper (yay, free parking), in neighbourhoods filled with grand Victorians and cozy English-style cottages. This core part of Lethbridge is so pretty! It reminds me of Savannah, actually, with the number of people out on the porches enjoying the heat and sun, the friendliness of everyone I passed, and the huge trees dripping greenery over the street. It made me hungry for shrimp, sweet tea, and hush puppies!