Runaway Future

On Monday, this happened.

Thinking outside of the standard feelings of tragedy and also the exploitive nature of the news coverage (the cover of Tuesday’s Metro was disgusting), I have this sense of closeness. I don’t know her, but it’s easy to see myself in her shoes.

Here’s a woman, in her twenties, just popping out of the office or something along those lines for a coffee. And now she’s gone. A life snuffed out. It’s a grim realization of the fragility of life. There one moment and gone the next.

The whole thing has been a regular topic at the office the past two days and you can see by the way people are acting during their daily routine on Spring Garden that there are others thinking of it too. I’ve never seen the traffic on the street be so accommodating and almost fearful of pedestrians.

What has been stuck in my mind is this: on Monday morning, this woman woke up, maybe a little tired from one of those case of the Mondays. It was a normal day until she popped out for coffee. Just a normal day, like any of the thousands of us go through everyday.

No one promised us tomorrow and that’s how it goes. Can you imagine leaving for work for the day and never coming back to your apartment, back to your life? What do you leave behind? Who do you leave behind?

And so it goes. On Tuesday, this happened. It’s on my route that I normally run.

I normally take the stairs in my apartment building. I live on the 8th floor but it’s no big deal.

Coming home from work today, I walked up the stairs, entered my floor, walked to my apartment, put my key in the door and turned. And turned. And turned.

Looking up, a mischievous 7 laughed back at my pitiful attempts to unlock the apartment directly below my own.

So I went back to the stairs, up another floor and unsurprisingly, my key worked in the door for MY apartment.

I hope no one was in the apartment I tried to break into. It would have given them a bit of a jolt no doubt.

I think I need to take a nap or something.

I’ve been meaning to make mention of the d250 campaign, which celebrates the 250th anniversary of democracy in Nova Scotia/Canada. It’s been a campaign that in my mind has missed its mark a bit (promoting concerts, etc while there’s a federal and municipal election going on).

But that commentary might have to wait for another day.

The reason I mention it, is that in celebration of this historical achievement, we have Premier Rodney MacDonald stepping into the affairs of the HRM and over-turning a decision made by the HRM council. Now I don’t have much of an opinion on the actual topic at hand, and I sympathize with the Premier’s reasoning that such decisions could stifle the growth here in Halifax. But to see him overturn a the decision of a democratically elected city council elected by the citizens of Halifax…it makes me wonder if he’s taken the time to read any of the d250 brochures they have sitting around the office.

Interesting little follow up:

Less then a year after starting a chapter here in Halifax, the Guardian Angels have faded away on the local scene, both from sight and from any new news.

So at the end of last month, Rick Howe got in touch with Angels’ founder, Curtis Sliwa to get a bit of an update. Turns out things are going too well:

I had a chat the other day with Curtis Sliwa, the founder and chief mouthpiece for the Guardian Angels. Folks have been wondering why they haven’t seen much of the red satin jackets and berets wandering the streets of Halifax since the big hoopla over their plans to set up a chapter here. Sliwa says they’ve got 8 volunteers trained and patrolling now but for a variety of reasons the patrols are limited to the Halifax Common on Wednesday night’s. Pizza corner in downtown Halifax is in lockdown now according to Sliwa, who says he’s pleased with the police response to the downtown rowdiness. He says he’d like to expand his group’s patrols, but needs more volunteers first. {Link}

So from the sounds of it, there’s not even enough interest to do more then a cursory effort. Seems the saviours of Halifax are no more then cardboard deep.

So on Saturday, I went to Hooters in Dartmouth with the family as sort of a going away party for my sister.

This Hooters was originally advertised in the Coast as opening on March 23rd (a Tuesday) but in fact did not open until Saturday…the day we were going. So there was a line to get in. The parking lot is in fact too small, as mentioned in some of the previous complaints about the building of the establishment, so we had to park across the street. After a few moments, we got a manager, got confirmed with our reservations and went inside. Despite the line, the inside was pretty empty, with maybe half of the tables filled up. It didn’t make too much sense on why there was a line, but I’m not too familiar with how a Hooters operates. Maybe they force people to wait 30 minutes, just to build a sense of anticipation…I’m jumping ahead.

So we get in and get seated, eventually we get a waitress to come take our drink order. The menus were on the table and there was enough discussion that it really didn’t seem like a long time for the drinks to come. A few drinks didn’t really come and some we had to re-order, but that was just the beginning of what was to come.

Eventually we ordered food. I ordered a burger. By now we had been there about 45 minutes, and I ordered my second beer. As we’re waiting for the food, natural tendency was to look around and there was a lot going on, with wait staff clapping and dancing, playing with hula hoops, encouraging patrons to stand on chairs while they sang. It was pretty cool until you realize that these wait staff were supposed to be…waitresses and be delivering meals and drinks and customer service and such. But hey, I’m not too familiar with how Hooters operates.

About an hour and a half after we arrive, they send some wings over to us, because our meals are taking too long. Around this time, I finally get my second beer. I watch UCLA lose on a TV, crushing my March Madness pool’s dreams.

Finally, about two hours after we arrive and a good hour and a half after we order, our food comes and I order my third beer. They have an interesting way of delivering food. Mainly, there’s a window that looks into the kitchen and when an order is up, there’s a girl (later on in the night it was a guy) standing on a box, who proceeds to yell for the appropriate Hooters girl to come pick up the meal. Usually, the Hooters girl is preoccupied with clapping or dancing or hanging around somewhere, so it takes a couple yells. Makes for a very loud atmosphere of people yelling at one another. But the food is pretty good. By now the whole group is pretty famished, so we polish it off quickly.

I made the decision to leave with my folks at that point instead of staying with my sister and her friends. So we ask for our bills. This takes a while too, culminating with the waitress returning to the table to ask us what we had so we can be billed appropriately. Finally, about three hours after we first got in there, we leave. I never got my third beer.

This is the first Hooters I’ve been to, and I’m no “restaurant” connoisseur so maybe I expected too much. It was their first day open and it was obvious that some of the girls were inexperienced or untrained. Maybe there was also some troubles in the kitchen, not expecting to have…orders…at all. Either way, some significant growing pains for sure. If they had been able to open on a Tuesday (like they planned with the 23rd) and sort of got used to the flow before being there on a weekend, then maybe things would have been better. I don’t know.
So, if you’re considering taking the trek to Dartmouth, I’d wait a couple of weeks, until they get a system of sorts in place. I don’t think I’ll be heading back anytime soon, frankly my experience wasn’t worth the buck-fifty to cross the bridge and back.