Dreaming on a Leap Day

I had some strange dreams last night. I dreamt that Damon and I had gone to a Def Leppard concert (even though we despised them at the height of their popularity, and for the most part still do). We had seats off to the side of the stage. But the band wasn't playing any of their annoying hits, in fact the only song I remember them playing was a cover of a Led Zeppelin song from "In Through the Out Door," it might have been "In the Evening" but I'm not sure. After the show Damon and I went to the Times, but the bar was moved so it was up against the north wall, and it resembled the kitchen area of The Nook, which likely explains why I was back there working.

Next I dreamed of my old house in Charleswood, and Steve Simm showed up on my front step wanting to play Scrabble. For some reason I was in the backyard and I didn't want to come to the front, but I did want to play Scrabble. So I came and got some tiles from him before going back (I think I was BBQing something). One tile had three "i's" on it and was worth ten points. Cool, I thought, this is some kind of modified game, until I realized that there is no word in the English language that has three i's in a row. Then Lee and Devon showed up in a Pirus taxi (with Devon driving) to whisk Steve away. They invited me to their show tonight, but I told them I had plans to see Twilight Hotel (which is true) and that I'd come tomorrow (I don't even know if Crumbs has a show this weekend, but I'm guessing that if they did Devon would not be in it.)

My Back Yard is a Crime Scene

I came home this morning to find a reporter from the Free Press knocking on my neighbors door. When she got no response she asked if I lived on the block and if I'd heard anything last night. I was house-sitting so I didn't come home last night, but if I would have I might have witnessed a young man bleeding to death from a gunshot in my back yard. Last I heard the boy was still alive. When I left my place at about 2:30 there were still some forensics types mucking about in my back yard, and two media trucks (CBC and Global) had just pulled up. I might even watch the local news tonight to see what they're saying about my neighborhood.

Here's a link to the story the Free Press reporter filed earlier today.

An engrossing synopsys of my research project so far

The maritime emirates were "feudal" Turkic states in the 13th and 14th centuries. They bordered the Aegean Sea on the western edge of Anatolia, having seized this prime land from the fading Byzantine Empire. The arrival of the Turks was necessitated by the Mongol invasions to the East, and upon reaching the coast they came into contact with the Latins and Greeks whose record of alliances and betrayals read like the plot of a particularly nasty soap-opera. These Turkomen were a raiding people by habit, and when they arrived at the sea they took to pirating and marine invasions like they were born for it. The Western powers--when they were not too busy fighting amongst themselves-- tried to organize crusades to flush out the ghazi (the Turk warriors who fought for the glory of Islam and heaps of fine booty.) But it was too late to put any kind of cork in the Turkic advance. The willingness of the Anatolian Greeks to accept Turkish domination and to teach them the ways of the sea was of vital importance to the eventual establishment of the Ottoman Empire, which had virtually no navy to start, but in the end controlled the entire Black Sea and had a vast and prosperous merchant navy.

My disappointing new deodorant

You know it's minus 40 out when you start writing stuff like this to amuse yourself:

For the last ten years or so I have been faithful to the same deodorant. At various times it has been available as a generic brand or through Mennen under the moniker “Northern Ice.” Recently they stopped making this scent, I guess it just wasn’t profitable enough anymore.

That left me in a bit of a bind. I always felt fairly comfortable and confident in that particular shade of deodorant (it was blue-gray). It wasn’t overpowering and it wasn’t too fresh smelling (you know, like a bar of Irish Spring when you hold it right up to your nose and take a huge whif.) No, it had just a hint of spice and it worked with my natural chemistry in just the right way (or so I thought.)

I’ve never been into anti-perspirants because sweating is a natural thing, and I’m not a grotesque dripper or anything. When I was younger I used them but they gave me rashes sometimes, and they left odd stains to my shirts. But the funny thing is that since I’ve been using this new scent of deodorant I’ve been noticing perspiration. Is it possible that this particular formulation is making me sweat? Is it some kind of conspiracy by Mennen to sell more anti-perspirant? Also, I don’t like the smell of it too much, it smells so... fake.

Problem is I bought a stick that had 30% more, and being my grandpa’s grandson I am loathe to waste a perfectly good stick of deodorant no matter how cheap it may be to replace. My grandpa used to make me sop up the last bit of chili with a slice of bread; he had this special piece of plastic that went on the bottom of the toothpaste tube to roll it up so you’d get maximum value, and woe was you if you ever dared squeeze from the middle. I used to despise my grandpa’s tight-ass ways, but now I see what an influence his depression-era economies have had on me. I have “waste not, want not” tattooed to my brain.

I wonder if my grandpa has any advice on a suitable replacement brand of deodorant.