Manners, Evolution and Intuition...

I'm going to post my thoughts in the order that makes most sense to me.. I want to end on a positive note.. Not to say that this entry will be particularly negative but blogging is one of a few outlets I have to vent and I plan on taking full advantage of that ;)

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I can be a bit high strung about certain things. I have pet peeves and I get easily annoyed especially when it comes to human behaviour.

I try my best to stick by certain golden rules such as "never going to someone's home empty handed" or "simply saying please and thank you". Seems pretty brainless but I feel like certain common courtesies are beginning to see their way out of our society. It could be that humans are evolving towards a new era of "wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am-ism" or perhaps we are running out of suitable role models. After all, it seems we can all benefit by a refresh of these things on occasion... the following phrases come to mind... "Use it, or lose it..."Out of sight, out of mind". I guess if fewer people are carrying on these seemingly "old-fashioned" courtesies, there is no one to lead by example...

I suppose it is only fair that I give some examples of such behaviour. This morning, I was approaching a set of double glass doors in my office building lobby. The doors are obviously transparent and the woman walking towards the doors from the opposite side can clearly see I am approaching the door on the right hand side. Now, rather than reach for the second door and make her way through, she not only stops and waits for me to open the door but then decides that she should be the first to go through. Ok so I could look at this from the other side and say.. ok so I was nice and opened the door for another person yadda yadda yadda... but the fact here is that she fully intended to wait until I opened that door without even making an attempt to reach for the handle herself, let herself through and went on her way. In the same regard I notice that the average age of all the men downtown, who actually open the door for me (or other women) or wait to step on/off the elevator until the women have passed, is roughly 45. Few (if any) men younger than that have the "ladies first" instinct. Ok, so I will play my own Devil's advocate here and say.. Yeah but with women's lib and all that jazz can you really blame them? Or why should women get priority etc... and the bottom line for me is that quite frankly it shows respect. I don't care if it is evolving its way out of our society, its still nice to see a man who is in most cases larger and stronger show that little bit of gentle courtesy to a woman.

Ok so I am almost done griping but I have one more... I love to entertain. One of my favourite things to do is cook and since I tend to have the inability to cook small portions anyway, it seems fitting that I cook for friends. Because of that passion, it seems that the natural thing for me to do is throw parties..

So for the third year in a row, Lauren and I had a Halloween party. Of course this year Neil was a co-host as well. I don't take my parties lightly. Neil and Lauren can attest to how OCD I can be when it comes to being in party planning mode. I end up spending a lot of money on food/drink, we clean the house to "presentation level" and we decorate. This year we had 17 confirmed guests (not including some spouses etc..). We expected roughly 27 (in all) and 8 actually showed up. Less than half.

We have had our share of party mishaps.. we've had potlucks where people don't bother to bring food or rather than bring their own alcohol, help themselves to ours. We have had many parties where few showed up (or the year one person showed up and I became Dr. Phil for the evening).

Honestly, I never care if people just don't want to come to one of my parties. As long as they are honest and RSVP. Don't sit on the Maybe list and pretend like there is a chance you will make it. Definitely don't be a "maybe" if you are sure that you can't make it. Don't double book and if you can't make it, be honest and just call/text/email/facebook. The fact is, parties aren't easy to plan and they can cost a lot of money and just ignoring that is in my opinion .. rude! Don't think you're doing me a favour by making me think you want to come when you know you can't.

Anyway, I think I have vented enough. I would be interested in hearing some opinions about this because maybe I am crazy or totally on another planet or something...

So last night I was out with Neil and we were heading to his Lab to do some work. It was late (around 10) and we were driving down Deerfoot trail when I suddenly had this vision of a deer darting out into the road. I have only ever seen one deer around Deerfoot trail in my lifetime and it was dead on the side of the road. So I thought this "vision" was my overactive imagination because we have decided to go to Lethbridge this weekend and we all know what happened the second-last time I went to Lethbridge.. we hit that poor deer.

So I told Neil "I just had a vision of a deer!!". I saw it dart out into the road. It really made me feel like I needed to be on the lookout. Not two minutes later I saw a huge stag on the side of the road just past the Calf Robe Bridge (by Peigan Trail). It was on the other side of the barrier and didn't appear to be looking to jump over but it was huge and had massive antlers. I was so alarmed. Not so much that the deer was there but I often get these twinges of intuition and recommend alternate courses of travel or suggest we be more alert etc.. but it is not often that those visions are validated. Ok so the deer didn't dart out but it may have and as a result we didn't head home in that same direction. We took the alternate route of Crowchild to Glenmore.

In my opinion it doesn't matter if these little bits of intuition are validated.. I have learned to always listen to them and to trust my instincts.. but it is nice to see that it is not always my overactive imagination at play.

On that note, I took a tea break just now. I went to the store this morning and bought a 1L carton of 2% lactaid milk. I finished off the last carton this morning on my tea and when I brought the new carton back from the store, my gut kept telling me to check the seal.. of course I was fiddling with the cap and didn't bother to check... so just now I went to get another tea and when I opened the milk (supposedly for the first time) the seal was missing from the inside.

Now there is that chance that in the short time since I bought the carton, someone from my floor went to the fridge and opened my new milk and helped themselves.. or maybe the seal was missing altogether... Either way, I wasn't sure so I quickly ran downstairs and exchanged the carton for a new one...

Speaking of tea.. ever since I got back from England I have been on a bit of a tea kick. I have always loved tea but I usually stick to green/herbal teas (usually on account of the lactose intolerance). But lately I have been enjoying the black teas with milk/sugar as I used to when I was younger.

I'll discuss the England trip in my next post. These are getting too long to keep as one...