Author: Ron Baker

10:00 and we want to assemble a high chair for tomorrow’s dinner.  We have invited over a single mom with her 2 year old.

This is a Fisher Price chair – should be a breeze.  30 minutes in and we decide it will never fit together.  In a rather grumpy mood we repackage the whole thing. 

Behold, there is a piece that I hadn’t seen.  Somehow it had been taken out of the box and set aside.  Looks just like a piece that I had inserted and tried to fit other pieces to. 

New hope — or complete frustration.  This is the choice!  We decide to try again.  The first few steps are easy.  Then the misplaced piece is put into place.  The next piece fits — with some persuasion.  Now 35 more minutes later and we are finished.

Remember the good old saying — “It’ll only take a few minutes!” 

Wrong again!

Recently my wife, Jill, picked up a novel by John Fischer.  The title is “Saint Ben”.  Actually it was two novels rolled into one.  The main characters are pastor’s kids.  Some great humor and deep theological perception rolled into easily readable text.  In fact, Jill spent a good number of evenings reading it to me!

I was not surprised, then, to find his name crop up again when I was looking for some background on a sermon I was writing.  He has a website at www.fischtank.com that you might find interesting.  Here is one comment made in his “in the tank” section.

Hard Rock Mice –  Tuesday, January, 09, 2001

 “SUFFOLK, Va. (AP) – David Merrell, a Suffolk high school student, was so convinced that hard rock music is bad for the brain that he picked up 72 male lab mice, a stopwatch, a 5- by 3-foot maze and some CDs to prove his point. The 16-year-old from Nansemond River High School ended up winning top honors in regional and state science fairs.

David said a group of mice exposed to hard rock music took 30 minutes to bump through his maze. The same mice got through the maze in 10 minutes three weeks earlier.”

My conclusion? Play hard rock music in your house. Mice will have a harder time finding their way in.

I have1578 pages of writing in front of me.

No, it is not a doctoral dissertation on “The appropriate waste distribution of fibre based, integrated forestry products.”  This is not from a recycling bin!

This is the Canadian Oilfield Service and Supply Directory.   You can order your copy on line at www.cossd.com. 

Venture to their website and you will find all sorts of current oilfield news.  Such as a great piece on how oil exploration helps maintain sovereignty in the Arctic.  Watch out, environmentalists might not like this.  Here’s the first sentence: 

• Paying $57 for the right to explore a disputed island in the Arctic long the subject of a minor territorial tug-of-war between Canada and  Denmark appealed to geologist John Robins’ sense of humour.

By the way, guess where this is published.  Did you guess Alberta?  Did you guess Edmonton? 

You win!

They sting like crazy.  Or maybe they are just stingingly crazy.

However you say it, hornets/wasps are not fun.  A week or so ago I was mowing the lawn and I felt a bite on my leg.  The culprit disappeared.  My leg felt a little numb around a nickel sized area.  That passed within a day or so.

Yesterday I was again bitten.  Mowing the lawn.  By the same swarm.

This time I found the nest.  A hole burrowed into the ground was constantly experiencing incoming and outgoing flight patterns.  They buzzed more fiercely as I approached.  Needless to say I backed off.

Backed off all the way to the store.  Where I purchased some hornet/wasp spray.  Tonight I will seal up their hole and hopefully take care of the threat.

But this morning the bite was very itchy.  And the swollen area increased in size.  So much so that I ventured to our doctor’s office.  An unusual thing for me.

How unusual, you ask?  Well, in the year I have been here, I’ve never been to the clinic.  The search was on by the receptionist to find any previous files.  She checked the  file room down the hall.  Apparently there was a Ron Baker, but the file was in the “archives’ in the basement.  She wandered down the stairs and returned with a thin file.

I had lived here from 1976 – 1980.  My previous file contained one page — probably just one visit for insurance purposes.  Four years and one visit?  That is basically the ratio for my doctor visits over the intervening 30 years.  You will not find a lot of paperwork on me at doctor’s offices.

Now the file has two pages. 

Amazing what hornets can bring back into being!!