Sunday, October 24, 2010

Adventures In House Sitting

I've been house sitting for M&L about twice a year for five or six years now.  When mom and I moved out of the house I grew up in, the day after we moved into her new house, I left to house sit for ten days.  When I got home, she had unpacked all of the common areas and to this day, there are certain things that for the life of me, I can't figure out what she did with.  Because of this we used to joke that I knew how to find things in M&L's kitchen that I couldn't find in my own.

In the past, there has always been at least one dog with me, if not three.  This is the first time I've house sat for them without any pets in the house and it is a little weird not to have any little buddies depending on me or keeping me company.

One of the great things about house sitting is that at home I have a shower but no tub, while M&L have two glorious tubs which I get all to myself.  Yeah, go ahead and laugh, but sometimes there is nothing quite like a good soak to soothe away your aches and pains and fatigue.  In the past, there have been several baths that got cut short because I could hear a dog whining to be let out.  Sara was pretty old, so you couldn't really ignore such a request for long.

The other day, I was having a relaxing soak, when what did I hear?  Something that sounded very much like a dog whining.  Problem was, there were no dogs in the house.  I listened for a while and heard the sound again.  It was not coming from outside, and some deductive reasoning told me that barring the presence of ghostly puppies, the sound was coming from inside the walls.  As it turns out, the pipes to that part of the house can sound eerily similar to a small dog whining.

Once I stopped laughing at myself, I realized the impact those whining pipes must have had on me: I weep at the thought of all of those glorius baths that got cut short due to false alarms!

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Weather Report

A few years ago, I was at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival when I happened upon a television news crew filming a live weather report.

"Today, expect to see a 40% chance of rain in the city of Vancouver..."

This sentence alone was hardly unusual given that we were in Vancouver, part of the "Wet Coast" known for a high annual rainfall.  What I did take issue with though, was that it was already raining while they were making this live report.  There were big fat raindrops falling from the sky, one landing on the nose of the weather guy, yet he was announcing only a "40% chance of rain."

While many of the other festival patrons were pulling hoods over their heads, or pulling out umbrellas, I looked at the weather report crew, shook my head, held out my hand to catch a few raindrops and raised an eyebrow.  They blatantly ignored me and the rain that was now spotting the weather guy's formerly perfectly powdered face.

When does a 40% chance of rain become a 100% chance of rain?  Does it have to rain 100% of the day in 100% of the city for it to count?  If it only rains for 9 hours and 36 minutes - that's 40% of a day for those of you wondering where I pulled that number from - does that constitute a 40% chance of rain?   Or does it mean a 100% chance of rain, 40% of the time that day?

In my humble opinion, if it is currently raining while you are standing outdoors in the heart of the city, that is a 100% chance of rainfall that day in that city.

But then, I'm not a professionally trained weather reporter or meteorologist, so what do I know?  I think that from now on though, I'll just stick to looking out the window and holding a hand out to test the weather, rather than trust the weather reports from that particular news station to be accurate.

~ Jeanie

PS: Polgara posted a comment today on FB that made me think of this incident, so she's to blame for this post! *g*