Sometimes I Speak Swahili

January 25, 2012 / Diane Henders / 29 Comments

Sometimes I speak Swahili. It’s the only possible explanation. Except for the fact that people who speak Swahili can’t understand me, either. So maybe sometimes I speak a heretofore-unknown but terribly clever secret language.

Yeah, that’s gotta be it.

Has this ever happened to you? I’m standing in front of somebody flapping my gums, and I think I’m being perfectly clear. Then I see the glaze of bewilderment in their eyes.

I try harder. I explain it a different way.

If they’re nice, polite people, they try really hard, too. They frown in concentration. They watch my lips. They try to read my body language for a clue. And incomprehension spreads across their faces like local anaesthetic during dental surgery.

Eventually, we give up by tacit agreement. They nod and pretend to understand. I nod and pretend to believe them. We walk away frustrated, brains feeling like wrung-out sponges.

Or, if they’re not particularly polite, their eyes dart sideways before they sneak a glance at their watch and exclaim, “Geez, look at the time! Gotta go!” And then they flee.

Frankly, I don’t blame them.

I hate it when words fail me. The problem is, they don’t fail me in the sense of refusing to come out of my mouth. They fail me in the sense of refusing to come out of my brain in any kind of useful pattern.

That happened to me the other day on a blog. I wrote a comment. I checked the comment over and edited it, because I’m anal and that’s just what I do. Then I posted the comment. When the blogger replied, it seemed words had failed me again.

Written words are worse than spoken ones. When you’re standing in front of somebody, your voice and expression and body language combine with your speech to get your message across. But a few black squiggles on a white background can’t do that, and when I read them again, my words didn’t say what I really meant to say. I felt like an idiot.

So I posted another comment, explaining what I’d really meant, and apologizing if I sounded like an idiot.

Then I felt like an idiot apologizing for being an idiot. Sheesh.

Life would be so much easier if we could just do a Vulcan mind-meld. Then we could understand each other completely, bang, in a single moment. Imagine the time and frustration it would save.

Then again, I’m not sure anybody would want to mind-meld with me. You really don’t want to know what’s lurking inside this skull. Maybe Harry Potter’s Pensieve would be a better solution. Just yank out the specific thought you want to convey and pass it on.

Hmm. Nice idea, but I don’t know where to get a Pensieve. Maybe I’ll just get a T-shirt that says, “I’m not really an idiot, I just sound like one sometimes.”

At least I hope it’s only sometimes.

Did any of this make sense?

Show Me Your Tool

January 18, 2012May 25, 2014 / Diane Henders / 28 Comments

I was struck by an epiphany the other day. And yes, it left a nasty mark; thanks for asking. I won’t offer to show you the mark, but the gist of the epiphany was this: If you’re considering a serious relationship with a man, ask to see his tool first.

It’s not about size. It’s what he does with it that counts.

If a man refuses to show you his tool, run away. A man who has no pride in his tool isn’t even worth considering.

If he does show it to you, you can infer a lot by observing the type and condition of his tool. In particular, get him to show you his torque wrench. It tells you everything you need to know about him.

In the first place, owning a torque wrench indicates some automotive know-how and a willingness to get his hands dirty. This is good. Tread cautiously if he doesn’t own a torque wrench at all.

The cleanliness of the tool is important, but don’t generalize this statement to his box-end wrenches or sockets. They’re meant to be ingrained with black grease. In fact, if a guy’s box-end is too clean, watch out. You may be dealing with a compulsive neat freak.

The torque wrench, however, is a precision instrument, so it should be relatively well-kept. Is his tool shiny and clean, or caked with nameless grime? If he doesn’t take care of his tool, don’t let him anywhere near you.

The type of torque wrench is also instructive.

Beam-Type: A beam-type torque wrench is a solid, flexible tool that’s good enough to do most jobs. Its owner is an easy-going guy who isn’t extravagant. He cares enough to do the job right, but he won’t drive you insane over tiny details.
Click-Type: A man with a click-type torque wrench offers you a rigid, accurate tool that’s a joy to use and handle. He will do the job with enthusiastic precision.
Electronic: Ah, the electronic torque wrench. Yeah, it’s impressive at first glance, but does he know what to do with it? Some guys can handle these bad boys just fine, but this can also be a sign of anal-retentive pickiness and a tendency to overcompensate.

Brand can be difficult to interpret. If his tool is Snap-On brand, ask some pointed questions to determine whether he is, in fact, a pit rat at the local track and/or a qualified mechanic. If the answer is yes, you can relax. This is a guy with a high-quality tool, and he knows how to use it. This is the way life should be.

But if he’s just a backyard mechanic, a premium brand like Snap-On could go either way. On one hand, he might be a spendthrift who’s hung up on brands and status symbols. On the other hand, he might have lots of money and appreciate the finer things in life. Tough call, but consider this: a guy with a Snap-On tool is pretty much every woman’s dream.

I have both a beam-type and a click-type, and I’m not going to speculate what that says about me. But here’s some free advice for my male readers, too: If you find a woman who owns any kind of torque wrench, it means she knows how to handle tools, and she’ll know how to appreciate a good one when she finds it.

You can thank me later.

A Dave By Any Other Name

December 7, 2011 / Diane Henders / 19 Comments

I’ve been called a lot of different names in my lifetime, sometimes by people sincerely trying to get my name right; other times not so much. Like a dog, I focus on the intonation, not the actual words. “Sweetheart” can sound really hostile, and “Hey, Buttbrain” can warm my heart.

Not that anybody’s ever called me Buttbrain. This week.

Some people seem to accumulate nicknames more easily than others, but I suspect there are a couple of factors that influence the process. The truly cool nicknames usually get applied to people who’ve either done something truly cool, or truly dumb. Besides that (dubious) qualification, it seems to me the quality of one’s nickname says more about the creativity of one’s friends than anything else.

I wasn’t overly popular in school.

Wait, gotta run. Minions of the Society for the Eradication of Ridiculous Understatement are breaking down my door to drag me away…

Okay, I’m back. Phew. Lucky I learned those ninja skills while the cool kids were attending all their cool parties.

I didn’t do anything particularly dumb in school, and I missed “truly cool” by an embarrassingly wide margin. My nickname in school was “Fender Bender”, which sounds kinda cool now, but in fact had nothing to do with my driving skills and everything to do with the fact that those are the first two words in alphabetical order that rhyme with “Henders”.

Those who knew me in university might consider “Fender Bender” appropriate, but that wasn’t related to my driving, either. Suffice it to say that you don’t want to narrowly miss running over me in a crosswalk. I get irate when I’m scared shitless.

Later, I acquired some more predictable nicknames: “Di”, and, while Charles and Diana were an item, “Lady Di”, which caused considerable amusement to those who knew me well. Ain’t no ladies here.

Oh, and I was briefly nicknamed “Garbage Gut”, “Mongo”, and “Anklebiter” in university, but those were just passing phases.

My all-time favourite nickname was “Dave”. Back when I was a geek… Oh, never mind.

Back when I was being paid to be a geek, the vendors apparently decided a mere woman couldn’t possibly deal with the intricacies of building computers and networks, so they christened me “Dave”. For the last several years I held that job, most of my outside correspondence arrived addressed to “Dave Henders”.

I didn’t really mind. I figured Dave was probably a pretty cool guy. In fact, I developed a fondness for Dave, so I named a character in my fourth book after him.

The rest of my handles were either insults or endearments, none of them particularly interesting or creative. Though Hubby does call me Gorgeous on occasion, which is just one of the many reasons why I love him.

So, to quote the old chestnut: Call me anything you like; just don’t call me late for dinner.

Or you can call me Dave. That works, too.

What are (were) your nicknames?

Brainless

November 16, 2011 / Diane Henders / 23 Comments

I just got back from two weeks in Manitoba. I have 682 unread emails, and there’s a stack of as-yet-unidentified but vaguely frightening papers and envelopes in my “In” tray. It’s Wednesday morning, time for a blog post. I’m brainless.

I pre-planned carefully for exactly this situation. I have 38 half-written blog posts in my “Blog” folder, ready for the day that I can’t think about anything to write. Just like a boxed meal in the freezer, all I have to do is take one out, add some seasoning, and serve it up.

I’ve tried three different ones so far. They’re all flat, boring, and tasteless. And that’s “tasteless” in the sense of “bland and flavourless”, not “rude and potentially offensive” (which can actually turn out to be fairly entertaining on occasion). Apparently those posts were not only half-written, they were half-baked.

I feel the same as I did at three A.M. the day I was planning to begin my fourteen hour drive home. “Thump-bang-bang” woke me. This is not a happy sound at three o’clock in the morning.

I got up to discover that the pulley from the furnace blower motor had flung itself off its shaft and was lying uselessly in the bottom of the furnace. I spent a good half-hour trying to reinstall the pulley in my semi-conscious stupor before I realized that it was just around zero outside, there were electric baseboard heaters in the rest of the house, and we were highly unlikely to freeze to death if the furnace didn’t run for a few hours.

The pathetic part of all this is that there’s only one way to put the pulley back on the shaft. It’s not like you can do it wrong. I tried over and over. The same way. The same result. It wouldn’t go back on.

Hands covered with black grease, mind circling as uselessly as the remaining pulley on the now-disconnected drive motor, I stumbled into the bathroom to wash up and fell back into bed, realizing as I shivered under the covers that it probably would have been smart to put on slippers and something warmer than a thin robe before attempting repairs in the middle of the night.

The next morning, the problem was miraculously simplified when I looked at the furnace again and realized that both the driveshaft and the pulley had been gouged when the pulley twisted off, leaving a slight burr on both. A few minutes work with a metal file solved the problem. Amazing what a few hours of sleep and a modicum of alertness can do.

I’m hoping to regain a useful level of alertness soon, and maybe the judicious application of some honing and smoothing tools will fix up those blog-posts-in-waiting. I’ve also resolved to get a few of them completely written, once I get my brain safely reinstalled on its driveshaft.

Meanwhile, anybody got a brain file? Apparently I’ve got a nasty burr somewhere…

P.S. Many thanks to all who offered encouragement to my step-mom. Her first treatment went very well, and she wants me to thank everyone for their good wishes.

Ooooo, Scary!

November 2, 2011 / Diane Henders / 8 Comments

Since Halloween was this week, “scary” has been on my mind. It was definitely on my mind when I looked in the mirror this morning, but that’s another story.

“Scary” is such a versatile word. Halloween costumes are good-scary. Haunted houses and ghost stories are creepy-good-scary. Politicians are scary in a stomach-churning, “eeeuw-I-don’t-want-to-think-about-it” way.

There’s exciting-scary, when you’re hurtling down a black-diamond ski run and you catch an edge and almost lose it but you don’t, and the adrenaline slams into your veins and you let out a whoop and haul ass to the bottom grinning like a maniac.

There’s the detached sort of scary you get when you’re airborne immediately after parting company with your dirt bike or slipping on the stairs. It’s that short moment that takes approximately forever to experience, and your brain has exactly enough time to say in calm and reasonable tones, “Oh, shit, this is really going to hurt!”

And then there’s scary-scary. The kind of scary that makes your heart pound and your hands sweat. The kind of scary that makes you drop your shoulder like a defensive tackle and fling little old ladies in all directions as you bull your way through the lineup to get to the toilet before you shit your pants.

Well, maybe not really. And anyway, that only happened once. Don’t bug me.

My point is, even though “scary” is technically defined as a bad thing, we search it out in so many ways. When I was a kid, I always wanted to be something scary for Halloween. Some people would argue that I achieved “scary” on a regular basis, but they may be exaggerating. Though I do have a vivid memory of my mother saying, “Try not to be so… ferocious.” It wasn’t even Halloween.

But I never wanted to be a clown or a princess or a ballerina. I wanted to be a pirate, a headless person, or some other horrifying apparition. I wanted to make people shiver in abject terror. Note the clenched fist and fearsome grimace. I was seven at the time, and my sword was tinfoil-covered cardboard. I wanted a bigger, scarier sword, but cardboard wasn’t to be wasted and tinfoil was expensive.

When I got old enough to understand real fear, “scary” lost some of its attraction. But still, in fiction and movies, we have to have a dose of scary, or the storyline just seems flat. It makes me wonder if cave men sat around telling scary stories, too, or whether they had enough “scary” in their lives without making any up.

What is it about that burst of adrenaline? Maybe it’s the relief afterward. Maybe it’s the bragging rights when you’re sitting in the pub telling the story with a cold one in your hand, and your friends shiver and exclaim and laugh in all the right places.

I don’t know. All I know is, it’s my corporate yearend, and I have to wade through my financial records again. That’s a whole different kind of scary. And that story isn’t going to hold anybody enthralled at the pub, either.

P.S. I’ll be with my step-mom for the next week or two while she starts her chemo treatments, so I may be slow in responding to comments, and I might not make it around to comment on my favourite blogs. I’m still thinking of you, though. Thanks for visiting!

PANIC!! …Nah.

October 26, 2011 / Diane Henders / 19 Comments

It’s funny how the bloggers I follow seem to read each other’s minds. This past week, there have been all kinds of posts about stress, panic, and overwhelm. So what the hell, I’ll get in on it, too.

Panic is an interesting critter. It starts out as, “Oh, crap, I forgot the candles for hubby’s birthday cake”, and instantly morphs into, “Oh-my-God-I’m-such-a-loser-my-husband-will-divorce-me-my-friends-will-hate-me-I’ll-end-up-dying-broken-and-alone-in-a-rat-infested-cardboard-box-under-a-bridge”.

Whoa, say what? That’s good stuff. If I could pour that into an engine, I could blow the doors off some top-fuel dragsters. Zero to insanity in under a second.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not joking about real panic attacks*. But our everyday “panic situations”? Yeah, I’m joking about them. They’re an overrated pastime.

This was inspired by the “Everybody PANIC!” post over at Visiting Reality. Thanks, Linda!

And since Charles Gulotta over at Mostly Bright Ideas reminded me he wants another flow chart (and he just did a stressed-out post, too)… voilà: here’s another scary glimpse into the inner workings of my brain.

Charles, this one’s for you.

Is It Time To Panic Yet?

*If you’ve ever had a real panic attack, you know that on a 0 – 10 Funny Scale, panic attacks are about a -50. A word of advice from someone who’s been there: If you have panic attacks, find yourself a medical professional who specializes in cognitive therapy. You’re not crazy, you’re not a coward, and you’re not weak. Your brain just took a wrong turn down the logic-path and ended up in the “Oh-shit-I’m-about-to-be-eaten-by-something-big-with-sharp-teeth” parking lot. Trouble is, it gets in the habit of taking that shortcut, and the longer you let it do that, the longer it takes to break the habit. And yes, it is possible to stop having panic attacks, it just takes a while. Go take care of it. Soonest. Not kidding. Okay, I’m getting off my soapbox now.

I Feel So… Versatile!

September 28, 2011April 27, 2012 / Diane Henders / 28 Comments

Update #2: Thanks also to Chris9911 for another nomination on April 27/12. I never get tired of praise! And I will do another “7 things” post to catch up on my obligations – I promise.

Update: Thank you also to Let’s CUT the Crap! over at How The Cookie Crumbles for a second nomination on January 13/12, and to RVingGirl on January 18/12! I’m flattered, delighted, and… pushed for time, so it might be a while before I keep this circulating. Meanwhile, here’s the post from my first nomination.

Many thanks to Nancy over at notquiteold for nominating me for The Versatile Blogger award!

As she points out in this post, when you do the math, it becomes apparent that within a very few iterations of this award, theoretically everybody in the blogosphere could receive this award. Twice.

But I don’t care. I’m pumped that she liked my blog enough to nominate me.

The rules are that if you accept this award, you are committed to the following conditions:

Thank the person who shared the award with you by linking back to them in your post.
List 7 things about yourself.
Pass this award to 15 recently discovered blogs and let them know that you included them in your blog post.

Here goes:

In the category of “awards that sound more prestigious than they actually are”, I won a silver medal in the 2003 team archery event at the Multi-Sites Indoor Championship of the Americas (MICA). There weren’t a lot of participants, and the medal isn’t really silver. It’s not even silver-plated. But, hell, it’s in my drawer, and I’m proud of it. Shortly thereafter, I was sidelined with a wrist injury. It’s taken me a long time to get back into it, but I’m hoping to compete in some archery tournaments again this year.
The only food I don’t like is black liquorice. If I had to choose only one thing to consume for the rest of my life, it would be milk.
I’m a car nut. I love to watch drag racing, and I’m in the process of rebuilding a 1953 Chevy 210 sedan. The engine is done, but the body is waiting for a budget. Has been for years. Sigh.
In my rare moments of spare time, I paint in oils or play the piano, both of which I do with more enthusiasm than talent. Here’s one of my paintings:
My talent level is the same for both painting and piano: I’m exactly good enough to realize how bad I am when compared to a real artist/pianist. But hey, I have fun.
I have a helpless, uncontrollable addiction to gardening. I’m incapable of leaving a patch of dirt undisturbed. I grow and preserve my own fruit and vegetables, and I make hard cider from the apples from my backyard tree.
My MP3 player contains blues, rock, metal, country, barbershop quartets, classical voice and orchestra, Gregorian chants, folk, ragtime piano, reggae, jazz, and some stuff that I can’t even put a genre to. I love it all. The only music that makes me retch is the vapid, limp-wristed whining of 80s boy bands.
I have worn a dress or skirt about nine times in the last thirty years. Twice to get married (the first time didn’t take), once to my sister’s wedding, a couple of times to funerals, and a few times to black-tie parties. I enjoy dressing up approximately as much as I enjoy listening to 80s boy bands.

Regarding Condition #3: I follow tons of blogs, and my perennial favourites are in the blogroll at the right. Here are the ones I’ve discovered most recently. There aren’t fifteen in the list, but I’ve never been much good at obeying chain letter instructions.

Recipients, please treat this like the thinly-disguised chain letter it is. If you want to play along, great. If not, please accept my admiration for your writing, and ignore the conditions.

Here they are, in alphabetical order:

Big Ugly Man Doll – A fabulous males-eye view of marriage, parenting, and manhood. Don’t miss ManFAQ Fridays. And don’t drink hot beverages while reading (I learned that the hard way).

Carol Henders – Faith, inspiration, and recipes for yummy food. How can you go wrong? You wouldn’t believe it by our blogs, but we are actually sisters. Carol, feel free to not link back to me. You probably don’t want to do that to your readers.

De Libertas Quirkas – Since I’m a geek myself, I love Kavya’s engineering take on life.

Diana Murdock – Sometimes touching, sometimes raw, always thought-provoking.

Sierra Godfrey – A great sense of humour about writing and life in general. Don’t miss her Friday Google Reader Roundup. She also writes an excellent blog about design, communication, and usability here.

Me! Me! Me me me! – Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Aquatom! Poetry, musings, and days in the life of a superhero.

Murrmurrs – You never know what you’re going to get with Murr Brewster. From poop to politics, and everything in between (oh, wait, those aren’t actually that far removed), Murr says it loud and proud. Her blog subtitle says it all: “Snortworthy”. And you will. Oh, you will.

notquiteold– It doesn’t make a lot of sense to bounce this award back to the person who gave it to me, but I just discovered Nancy’s blog and I love it, so she’s going on the list. If you’re looking for an irreverent take on life from somebody who’s getting better with experience, don’t miss this one.

Visiting Reality – Funny double entendres… and a disturbing fixation on camels. Don’t miss Wednesday Hump Days. Hell, don’t miss any of it. Linda Grimes is a blast!

****************************

As I look at this list of blogs, it’s apparent that music isn’t the only field in which I have eclectic taste. Hope everyone finds something here to enjoy.

I’m A Hoer

September 14, 2011September 14, 2011 / Diane Henders / 19 Comments

I admit it. I’m a hoer. Now that the weather is beginning to cool off, I’ll soon pack it in for the winter, because it’s pretty much a fair-weather pastime for me. But most nice warm days in the summer, you can find me by the side of the road, waving at all the passing cars.

A few weeks ago, I even caused an accident because drivers were gawking at me. That’s no mean achievement, when you consider the fact that I was out in the middle of nowhere, and the average traffic load on that road is about one car an hour.

I’m talking, of course, about hoeing my garden. Wait, what were you thinking…?

And before you ask, no, I wasn’t wearing anything gawk-worthy. Quite the opposite, in fact. Dirty, baggy jeans and T-shirt, with a too-big long-sleeved shirt over top, along with my white Stetson (I’m from Calgary, I can get away with it) and a pair of geeky sunglasses.

I have a big vegetable garden by the side of the road at our acreage outside town. I don’t know what the protocol is these days, but when I grew up in the country, you waved to passing cars, whether you knew the driver or not. So I waved, as usual.

Apparently, the two drivers were lost, and the one in front decided to stop and ask for directions at the same time as the one behind turned to wave at me.

Seconds later, there was a crash, and then I was gawping like an idiot at the sight of two cars mashed together on an abandoned gravel road in the middle of nowhere. Pandemonium ensued as one of the passengers went into hysterics.

I’ve never actually witnessed hysterics in real life. If I get a Chrysler suppository or some other unpleasant shock, I’m more the ‘swear-loudly-and-hit-something’ type. So observing hysterics first-hand was… enlightening.

Fortunately, nobody was hurt, the drivers apparently remained friends, and the two cars limped off into the sunset. I think I heard one of the drivers mutter something about giving up and going home. I stood there, hoe in hand, feeling vaguely guilty about the whole thing.

I’ve heard that hoeing is a dangerous undertaking, and now I understand why. So if you happen to pass a badly-dressed middle-aged woman working in her garden in the country, please don’t be offended if I don’t wave.

Just throw money. I’m a hoer, after all.

Totally Freakin’ Inadequate

September 7, 2011 / Diane Henders / 17 Comments

I’m still on the road this week, and maybe my bad hotel karma has finally run its course, because my hotel in Regina didn’t feature hookers, cattle, or rappelling nudists.

It did, however, make me wonder who makes the purchasing decisions in the hospitality industry. I stayed in a king suite at a nice hotel (not on my own dime – you know I’m too cheap for that). But despite the upscale surroundings, I felt… cheated. Because this hotel, like most I’ve stayed in recently, apparently purchased their supplies from the Totally Freakin’ Inadequate Supply Company.

The low-flow shower head was so pathetic I had to stand under it for five minutes before I at last felt a trickle of water on my scalp. Granted, I have long, thick hair, and it usually takes a few seconds before anything penetrates. Some would argue that nothing ever penetrates, but that’s another story.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually quite rabid about conserving water. I grew up on a farm where every drop of potable water was trucked in. Most people think “bath night” is a tale from the dark ages, but on our farm, it meant two inches of water in the bottom of the bathtub. The cleanest person went first, the dirtiest last. I’m not even going to describe what the water looked like by the time five bodies had gone through.

But I digress. My point is, I fully agree with water conservation, but you have to apply some logic. It takes X amount of water to wash your hair. If X is supplied in five minutes, that’s fine. But if it takes ten minutes to supply X, you’ll be standing there for ten minutes. You’re not saving water, you’re just wasting time.

The lighting underwhelmed me, too. There are lots of good options available for compact fluorescent bulbs. Sadly, the hotel didn’t choose any of them. When I flipped the switch, nothing happened. I assumed I’d hit the wrong switch, so I tried the other one. Still nothing. At last, the light flickered to life with a series of seizure-inducing flashes. Not inadequate once it got going, but definitely disturbing.

The toilet paper was totally freakin’ inadequate. They think they’re saving money by buying cheaper toilet paper? I could see through the stuff. Trust me, nobody is ever going to use only three squares of single-ply, micron-thin toilet paper. Ever.

The towels, too, failed the adequacy test. At home, I call that size a “hand towel”. That’s because it fits hands nicely. Not bodies. At least, not this body.

But what do I know? Maybe their target market is bald, constipated midgets with excellent night vision and no tendency toward epilepsy. It’s all about niche marketing these days.

So here’s my question. Why spend money on high quality furnishings, and then cheap out on the things that, frankly, guests notice more than the tub and tile? Half price is nice, but there’s no actual cost saving when you have to use twice as much. And it annoys the hell out of the folks like me.

But maybe I’m just cranky because my fingers went through the toilet paper. Again.

Sorry for my tardiness in responding to comments this week. I’m helping my step-mom after her breast cancer surgery, and I haven’t had much time for blogging or visiting anybody else’s blogs, either. I hope to be back to my usual routine soon. Thanks for sticking with me! 🙂

Manitoba Chinese At The Paris

August 31, 2011October 2, 2018 / Diane Henders / 7 Comments

I’m posting this from Regina, Saskatchewan, partway through another 14-hour drive from Calgary to Manitoba. Being on the road again has made me think of the Paris Café in Gladstone, Manitoba. It’s been about 12 years since I visited the Paris, but the internet assures me it’s still in operation, so I plan to check it out again.

Gladstone, population 802 (don’t underestimate the importance of the 2), is a typical prairie town with a rail line through the middle of it. Most small prairie towns have a Chinese food joint, left over from the days when Chinese labourers pushed the railway across the prairies. Appropriately, the inexplicably-named Paris Café (Chinese and American cuisine) snuggles up to the railway track.

I don’t know exactly when the Paris was built, but I’m going guess it was around the early 1900s. There are only a few feet between the wall of the wooden building and the sides of passing trains, and the dishes rattle precariously on the shelves as the deafening rumble drowns out all conversation.

The most exciting feature of the Paris is the view. If you happen to be looking out the front window when the train is coming, you’d swear you’re about to be run down. The oncoming tracks are slightly curved, and the train looks like it’s bearing down directly on the building.

Another endearing feature of the Paris is that the entire building slopes noticeably toward the railway tracks. So much so, in fact, that when you’re sitting in one of the bench seats, you have to cram a sweater under one butt cheek so you’re not straining your back to stay vertical.

As you may know, I talk about my bathroom experiences frequently*, so I would be remiss if I didn’t describe the bathroom. It was clearly added some time after the building was built, but before the building code got too stringent.

Let’s just say it’s a little cramped. The door swings inward, so it’s an exercise in flexibility to get into the bathroom and shimmy around the edge of the door to close it behind you. There’s a large notch cut out of the edge of the door around hip-height, because that’s the only way the door could get by the sink. This leaves a significant hole in the door when it’s closed, but what the heck, it’s a small town. If you got caught peeking, you’d never live it down.

The toilet has been installed using as little space as physically possible. The edge of the seat is inches away from the wall. This makes it impossible to sit the usual way, so you have to perch side-saddle. It wouldn’t be so bad if the toilet seat was securely attached. I won’t tell you how I discovered that it wasn’t.

I promised I wouldn’t tell any gross stories this week, and I won’t. Last time I was there, the miniscule bathroom was scrupulously clean, and the food was good.

But the best part was the atmosphere.

Anybody else have a favourite small-town restaurant experience?