It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it is one damn thing over and over

I have always considered myself to be a little on the lazy side. My two favorite quotes are from Calvin (to Hobbes: "I don't know, but I refuse to find out") and from some long forgotten stand-up comic ("I start out kind of slow, then taper off").

A while back I figured aloud as how you can't proclaim that you are "complicated", since if you really were you'd probably not know it because your mind would be all wrapped around other things besides navel gazing and impressing peers. I mean, that's just a fact. And not a complicated one, either.

Now just a second ago, or "pre-deletion" as it were, there was a long, rambling rumination on my bona fides to back up my ultimate claim to unaffected cool and laid backness. Nevermind. It was drivel. Suffice to say here that other than a random lapse here and there, I got the mellow thing down.

Lazy... not so sure. But you'll get even less pontification on the reasons, becsause my DELETE button/index finger interaction went even further on that. Basically, to summarize what I had written earlier, I feel like I'm lazy, but I am probaby not and I can more or less prove it. So mellow...yes, lazy.... edifying, but ultimately incorrect, self-characterization.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome. -Isaac Asimov

We are stomping around Ottawa during the day and crossing the river to stomp around Quebec at night. Never before been to Canada and I am finding it to be fun filled and inexpensive. However, we had to get by most of yesterday morning on "smile credit". We did not think to change any money at the airport upon arrival on Monday. As we headed in to work on Tuesday, in the shadow of the TOTALLY AWESOME government buildings downtown, we kept running into problems paying for things. Everybody wanted cash. And not greenbacks, but the plastic stuff with the Queen on it. We were working in a hotel conference room, but since we were not guests, we could not get money exchanged, even just $20, to pay them for our parking. We could not pay for coffee and bagels because a) we had no Canadian dollars, b) they would take our credit cards as payment...or would have if their network wasn't down, something we discovered too late to abort the coffee and bagel getting operation and c) the ATMs we tried all had negative feelings towards processing our transactions to withdraw some of the local plasticized currency. In both cases we just smiled while I drawled, "We don't want to cheat you. We'll come back later to pay you back if you'll let us just go now." Surprisingly, in both cases there was no hesitation at all in allowing us to walk out with that verbal IOU as collateral. And, I am proud to report, bagel lady has already been repaid and the parking lady will be as soon as we hit the bank again. We had her money, but a too cute waitress got it all last night as a tip. She had the good sense to at least give the impression that she found us amusing.

Last night was a great adventure. Tonight will be an even greater one as we don't have to work tomorrow. Like they say, it's only money.

Never eat more than you can lift, out

Ramblin' Ed