How are we ever going to train our ears to not get lushed out by the sound of a smoke- honed voice? Like red-painted lips that make the heart race, the voice ravaged by relentless smoking somehow maintains its allure even though we know that it ultimately harms the practioner.

Postscript: there are people keeping track of smokers. I don’t know whether this is creepy or brave.

Angus Orford sent me the photo on the left yesterday (it came to him via Cathy Large) of the house he owns on the corner of Prince and Richmond Streets in Charlottetown. It was taken in 1904. The house on the left is our house.

I took the photo on the right this afternoon, roughly 99 years later.

Ignoring the fact that the 1904 photo was taken from a higher angle, and leaving out the power lines, the home renovations, and the trees that have had a chance to grow in the intervening years, it’s remarkable to me that this corner is much as it was.

I’m usually not one of those “heritage people,” but I gotta say that the notion that as I type this I’m sitting in a room that has been here for 176 years does kind of blow my mind.

It used to be that the television character I identified most with was Edmund on All My Children.

I realized this morning that I have far more in common, these days, with Daddy on Caillou.

In other words, I’m no longer a manly, daring, swashbuckling journalist fighting for the rights of Pine Valley citizens, I am a docile father who wears sweaters and cuts out cardboard houses for pretend horses.

I’m not complaining. I just wish that, somewhere between Caillou’s dad and Edmund there were some realistic male characters on television for me to empathize with. Somehow John Belushi and Ray Romano don’t cut it.

Apparently Aliant has cancelled their One Number Direct service: I called this morning to ask if it was available in Charlottetown yet, and was told by the operator that the entire project had been cancelled. I suggested they update their website, which caused him to laugh.

This was one service from Aliant I was actually looking forward to. This, of course, is why it was cancelled.

“Can I speak to Peter Rukavina?”

“Speaking.”

“Hi, this is Eric calling from Apple Computer. I’m calling about your iMac”.

“Okay.”

“Just calling to see how everything’s going…”

“It’s going just fine; I had a little bump in the road there with a hard disk problem, but it’s purring along just fine now.”

“Okay, that’s great, thank you for your time.”

Here’s a page of tips from a Segway rental agency in Vancouver.

Catherine reports that there’s been a system turnover at the Atlantic Superstore sushi desk. The staff are the same, but the materials, boxes, and varieties are different. We ate our first batch of the new stuff yesterday, and it was markedly better, most noticeably the rice was very moist.

Having perhaps the only three year old boy on Prince Edward Island who is addicted to sushi, this is a Big Event in our household.

Back in 2001, I experienced multimedia overload. Tonight it’s happening again.

I’m sitting here in my home office in Charlottetown. I am listening to the live Berkman webcast from Cambridge, Mass. At the same time, I’m on IRC with several other people, from across the continent, who are listening to the same webcast. And I’m IMing to Steven Garrity, who’s just up the street from me.

If I tuned in a web radio station from Prague, the experience would be complete and I would explode.

Winter arrived yesterday. Today, walking around downtown Charlottetown, everyone seems in a state of shock: slightly dazed, and wondering how on earth this could have happened.

Matthew Rainnie writes about his encounter with a teeter-totter (apparently they are called “seesaws” here in the east).

My childhood accident of renown is the day I “cracked my head open.” I was playing on the couch in our basement on Augustine Drive in Burlington, Ontario. I fell off the couch onto the concrete floor, and something bad happened: there was blood, and screaming, etc.. All I remember about the experience is being rushed to the hospital by my mother, and very, very bright lights and concerned-looking doctors and nurses everywhere. I needed stitches, I think, but suffered no permanent damage.

I must have been four or five years old at the time.

The other hospital experience I remember from childhood is developing some sort of stomach malady while staying with my grandmother, and going to see her family doctor at the emergency room. At one point he asked me “have you moved your bowels lately.” I had no idea what he was talking about. My grandmother whispered in my ear “he means ‘have you taken a shit today?’”. Bless her heart.