Working in Ottawa --Damned poets

Good morning folks,

I will be working in Ottawa today as will be fellow Toronto office staff member Dalton Calford.


Last night whilst playing Racquetball, I believe game 4, Larry and I took the serve against John and Brian and as I served to John and called out the current score of, " 1 - 2 ", John retorted with, "Buckle my Shoe!".

What the hell! I thought to my self, "Buckle my Shoe?!".

I dropped the ball and walked very deliberately over to John, stopping just short, nose to nose.  looked steadily into his eyes and said, in a very dry monotone voice, "What have I told you about poetry in the Racquetball court?  My ace serve shall not serve as your afflatus and I not your muse, you keep your archaism and anapest stress to your self mister.  Buckles on shoes indeed! We will not speak of this again, clear?"

It's not a metrophobia that I have, but rather the very specific odimetrointraarena Roughly translated to the loathing of poetry within the sand of combat.  Yes, I just made that up, the Latin term that is, although it should be fairly correct, at least as correct as 8 A.M. On flight Latin can be.  The court banter, yeah fairly close to what I actually said to John.

Now in contrast to this very irrational odi or phobia, I do actually Have a very real fear of spiders, yes our friend, arachnophobia.  So it was extra special this morning as I tied the laces on my shoes, no buckles here, thank you very much, and stepped out my front door.

Now right outside my front door to the left is a hydrangea tree and on the right is a row of boxwoods and sometime during the night or very early morning some enterprising spider saw it fit to spin a web across the 8 feet or so running diagonally down from the tree to the low boxwoods.

This web had perhaps 100 strands of silk that intersected at my head height right at the point of the walkway.  It's strange, English has no exact words to describe the sensation of the consecutive snapping of spiderweb strands across your face accompanied by the slight tug on your skin and hair by sticky silk.

English also cannot adequately describe the very peculiar dance and twist - step - motion and the flailing of hands in an attempt to rid oneself of the web and no doubt, evil spider.

Have a good day, watch out for bad poetry and crafty spiders.