MonkeyPants

Things I learned Today

Things I learned today:

Answer the phone, even if it’s stupid-early. It might be my new job asking me to come in and be a substitute teacher, so even though my Telus-issue shit-hang-up-whenever-it-wants phone actually hung up on my lovely, kind new boss, I managed to get an unexpected day’s work. And met some cool new students.

Burrard Street sucks, now that they seem to be doing major construction at every corner, and you can’t even drive onto Alberni Street, so God forbid, I had only 45 minutes to make it to my afternoon job and there I was, twenty minutes behind schedule, embroiled in tar-smelling carbon monoxide laden air, while Vancouver drivers merrily poked at their Blackberries, Ipods and cell phones, instead of letting the goddamned express bus through. When will Blue Tooth technology market a headjack so that these people can beam their inane thoughts directly to their Marketing Managers without having to look at a screen and thus disrupt the flow of my life?

Failing that, can I please, please have a taser?

Dried Squirrel is not the same as Dried Squid, no matter what the little Sanyo electronic translator says.

Coyotes in the UBC area of Vancouver will not respnd to the lure of a peanut butter sandwich as bait. This from one of my summer students, who is a teenaged Korean girl. She loves wildlife in all forms and is excited to live at UBC, where there’s so much of it. She watches every night from dusk to complete darkness, waiting to see a real live coyote, a species she has decided are “Like wolves, only smaller and cuter.” Last week, I had to explain to her that there are no wild animals you can just come up and pet. They are wild. Not tame. The best way I came up wth putting it was , “You think they are cute, but they don’t understand you. They think of things two ways: Can I eat it? or Will it eat me?

I hope I have averted her getting rabies while trying to hug a raccoon.