some wildlife

Alone on Thanksgiving and it's no sweat. I'm reminded of the heady days in Prague when I was alone on Thanksgivings, Christmases, and the occasional Birthdays.

I've got everything I need here: fast internet connection, a large hunk of ham, beer, and some of the finest cheeses I could get my hands on locally. Also a sack of locally grown potatoes.

As is tradition, the things I'm thankful for:

Aside from a knee that's wonky I'm in fairly good health. Although I went for a wander around town and quickly came to realize my cardio isn't all that great.

They view here is great, even standing in front of the clunky, yellow, pulp and paper mill which spans about a city block. Relatively speaking the thing is a behemoth.

I've got a pretty cool job, and my bosses are not twats.

I appear to be writing again.

According to Aubrey de Grey they'll have the means to make me immortal within my lifetime. Here's hoping it's not near the end of it.

I've still got my sense of humour, even if it isn't everybody else's…Actually especially because it isn't everybody else's.

Brittany King has arrived.

Brittany will be taking over the morning show. Hard to get a bead on how old she is –about my age, I guess. Regardless, she's going to be the new Assistant Program Director. Officially, starting on Tuesday, Sun FM will be staffed with a grand total of two people.

She showed up bright and early at 5.30 on Friday morning. I attempted to teach her everything I know over the course of my show but it's probably all moot. I'll still have the same duties, including: loading the news, loading the commercials, reconciling the logs, doing interviews, finding the music, merging the next day's show, and blah, blah, blah. It seems to make more sense that way since I've been doing it anyways, and these jobs tend need to get done near the end of the day, rather than the beginning.

Another thing to be thankful for: I no longer have to slog my ass out of bed a 5am. It takes me forever to wake-up (I refuse to drink coffee). You listen to my morning shows and you can hear the alertness creeping in over the course of the hours.

She seems nice and very driven. Which is good, because she can take over a lot of the imaging and promotional sides of things. It also frees me up to do a bit more production which is what I enjoy doing.

She waves at everybody that drives by, which worries me, because I haven't been doing that. I haven't particularly noticed anybody waving at me as I drive around in the gay-mobile, and of all the cars in Powell River you would wave at, the gay-mobile is it.

Six in the morning we were standing outside and she waved at a guy in a pick up truck driving by. She says, "That guy looked really happy."

A pause.

I say, "I think there's a lot of meth going on around here."

Silence.

I say, "I'm not saying that guy is on meth, I've just seen some people walking around with crazy looks on their faces."

I have no idea why I'm telling her this.

Later on she asked me where I was from. I said, Ottawa. She said, "Oh, a city boy." I was thrown for an instant. Yeah, I guess Ottawa could be considered a city. I told her, "It’s not really a city, more of a huge suburb."

I wandered around yesterday and took some pictures. I've loaded them into facebook today and had a look at them. Christ, they really look rural. You almost expect to see tumbleweed rolling by with Ennio Morricone whistling in the background.

I did an interview with Mike Gerard the other day. He's the Powell River Conservation Officer. He want to get the word out that the bears are going to be hanging around town. It turns out that hibernation season is coming and they want to fatten up, so they head into town looking for food, usually in people's garbage's.

The way he told it, it was almost like, "So don't be surprised if you run into a couple at the pub. They tend to get a little wasted, so don’t startle them. And definitely don't make fun of their mothers."

He suggested freezing your garbage and keeping it in the basement, so you don’t attract the bears. I wondered if Mike was married.

I had another conversation with Janet Alred– a late-thirties lady who is involved in numerous organizations around here –about bears. The conversation started about hiking, and that I should explore a lot more and hike in the local wilderness. I agreed wholeheartedly. But then asked, "But what about the bears?"

She said, "Just make a lot of noise. It's not the bears you have to watch out for," She looked me dead in the eye, a strange look coming over her face, "it's the cougars. They'll get you."

An awkward pause, then I said, "Erm, is that a double-entendre?"

Whether it was, or not, she had a story. She told me about this family that went for hike in along the Willingdon Beach trail. It follows the coast North up to the general vicinity of my neighbourhood. She said they were skipping (well probably not *skipping*, it just sounds better in a woody-travel-story) when they started to hear some rustling in the bushes. They realized they were being followed.

Janet says, "Now, with bears, if they're following you, it may be just curiosity, or making sure you clear away from their hang-out. With cougars, when they follow you, it's because they want to eat you."

She went on to tell me that this family started hustling away, at which point I interrupted, "Wait, you're not supposed to run away, right? Because then you look like prey." She agreed and dropped a couple more tidbits: You always make eye-contact with a bear while backing away slowly. You never make eye-contact with a cougar. From what I gathered, if you ran into a cougar you wouldn't be able to make eye-contact anyway because your head would be between your legs trying to kiss your ass goodbye.

It turns out the family got away. The weren't that far form civilization and they called a friend to come meet them half-way. Regardless, the cougar probably found some other young men to stalk (damn, I told myself I wouldn’t go there).

Then Janet says, "Yeah, you should definitely go hiking."