Oliver and I are in Halifax this weekend, having some important Father and Son Bonding Time before he and Catherine head off to Ontario for almost a month for some much needed grandparent, great-grandparent, aunt and uncle visiting.

On our way to the ferry we were listening to CBC Radio and heard Bill Richardson invite listeners to come down to the special CBC Train at the station in Halifax. The train, a joint project of VIA Rail and the CBC, is a celebration of CBC television’s 50th anniversary.

So, at ten o’clock this morning we headed to downtown Halifax to visit the train. Except when we arrived, there was a sign at the door that said Private Function. Given that we had a personal invitation from Bill Richardson, we were not daunted by this.

And so we opened the door and walked in.

“Are you a CBC employee?,” the friendly gatekeeper asked.

“No,” Oliver and I replied.

“Are you a former CBC employee?,” she asked.

“Ahhh,” I thought quickly, “yes!”

“Go right in,” she replied, handing us CBC-branded brown paper bags as she did.

The secret employees-only inner sanctum turned out to be the morning preview of the attraction open to civilians in the afternoon. Besides free pastries and juice, it appeared as though the public and the employees (I mean “we employees”) got the same fun.

Inside the train was a neat, if abbreviated, collection of CBC artifacts, including Mr. Dressup’s tickle trunk, The Friendly Giant’s castle and set of small chairs, and, oddly enough, Fred Roger’s first “Land of Make Believe Trolley,” which I didn’t get the whole story on (although my guess is that we traded Fred Rogers to PBS for Ernie Coombs and a first round draft pick).

It was as odd being in a train station full of CBC people as it was being in a hotel full of librarians at the APLA conference a couple of years ago: CBC people are certainly of a type, and it was odd to have all that CBC energy concentrated in one place.

Fortunately Oliver and I didn’t win the door prize, so we didn’t have to claim that I was the weekend anchor on Compass or a key grip on Land and Sea.

Later in the day we ate Japanese for lunch, Indian for dinner, and Oliver and Yolanda (the daughter of our friends Bob and Yvonne) held hands.

As I type this by LCDlight in our room in the Holiday Inn, with Air Force One on the television and Oliver asleep in his pen, I’m prone to think, for the 1000th time, how strong Catherine must be to look after Oliver day in, day out, day after day: I’m exhausted.

The down side of our trip: Catherine and I celebrate our 12th anniversary today, she in one province and me in another. We’ll be home tomorrow.

Can someone who understands the law better than I explain why, if the following sentence (from this CBC story) is true:

Under an agreement between the oil companies, Irving Oil will become the the distributor for all of P.E.I. and New Brunswick, while Imperial Oil will be the distributor in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

Conspiracy

45. (1) Every one who conspires, combines, agrees or arranges with another person

(a) to limit unduly the facilities for transporting, producing, manufacturing, supplying, storing or dealing in any product,

…

is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years or to a fine not exceeding ten million dollars or to both.

Several years ago, both Leone Bagnall and I were on the board of the L.M. Montgomery Land Trust. I needed to get in touch with Leone about something, and I phoned her repeatedly over the course of several days and never reached her. “Where is she?” I asked myself in frustration.

The next night on Compass there was video of her receiving the Order of Canada in Ottawa. That explained that.

Yesterday I had business with the Legislative Assembly of Nunavut (never let it be said that my job is boring), and sent off an email requesting a reply as quickly as possible.

Today I received a reply with an apology that the matter couldn’t be attended to until next week because, well, the Queen was arriving today and everyone was preoccupied.

Queen and Country — always slowing me down.

After having ignored instant messaging for many years, I got the IM religion when brother Johnny on the opposite coast (of Canada) started working with me last year. We use a combination of MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger and Jabber to stay in touch on a daily, and sometimes hourly basis. It’s saved us a lot of long distance telephoning, and has made it possible to work together.

That said, I have remained sceptical of the whole “group chat” thing — everything seems to go to hell in a handbasket when you get more than one person typing at a time.

If you need proof of this, witness this small lightly edited snippet of a longer instant messenger conversation between my brother , my mother and I:

Peter Rukavina says: Hello?

John says:  hello… its johnny

Peter Rukavina says:  Where did you get birthday photos?

John says:   Fran sent to me

Peter Rukavina says:   Mom, where did you get then?

Frances says:   Catherine sent them to me.

John says:   I saw God with the aubergine coat

Frances says:   Where has he been?

John says:   who?

John says:   God?

Frances says:   God.

John says:  in the sky, I suppose

Frances says:   no no

John says:  aubergine means eggplant

Frances says:   Did he live up to your expectations?

John says:   courgette means zuchinni

Peter Rukavina says:   Who?

Frances says:   I knew that too.

John says:   and cilantro means coriander

Frances says:   God.

Peter Rukavina says:   in the Aubergine Jacket?

John says:   yes

Frances says:   yes.

Frances says:   I thought cilantro was celery.

John says:   nono… coriander

John says:   celery is celery

Frances says:   I knew that.

Frances says:   How long has god been on the island?

John says:   ok

Peter Rukavina says:   For about 3 years.

Frances says:   Okay. You guys can go to work now. oo

Tonight was the season premiere of Amazing Race on CBS. It looks like it’s shaping up to be another barnburner of a race, and I will again have to contort my life to always be withing CBS range on Wednesday nights.

As you may recall, Rob and Brennan were winners of the last Amazing Race. What are they up to now? Well, here’s one recent event, from the official Rob and Brennan Website:

Brennan (along with Alex Boylan, co-winner of AR2) will attend Movieline Magazine’s Beauty on the Beach party to benefit Ted Danson’s American Oceans Campaign/Oceana and to celebrate the launch of the Mermaids for Clean Oceans campaign.

You’d think with $1 million, you’d be able to avoid the Ted Danson benefits, but I guess fame is addictive.

Stay tuned: Oswald and Danny’s website is coming soon.

I walked into the Telus store on Kirkwood Drive this morning.

“Hello there, ” I said, “do you sell any of the Ericsson cell phones?”

“No, we don’t have them,” the clerk replied.

“What if I was able to get one somewhere else: would your network support it?”

“No, our agreement with Island Tel doesn’t let us activate their phones, it’s part of our agreement,” he replied.

“But what if I got one somewhere else?”

“Well, it would have to be a Telus phone.”

“Okay, thanks,” I said, heading out the door.

Oliver’s day, or at least the part I was awake for, started with a visit to Dr. Champion for his annual checkup. Oliver used this occasion to provide us with a full-on introduction to the “terrible twos” and conducted a cosmic freakout, complete with writhing and screaming, that effectively prevented the good Doctor from doing anything more than looking in his ears and weighing him.

We returned home to gifts in the mail from Brother Mike and the Carlisle grandparents. Oliver was especially intrigued by Mike’s present of a “shapes cage” wherein the goal is to place the appropriate shape in the appropriately shaped hole. He was very frustrated at the lack of universality in the game — i.e. that round peg would not fit in square hole. This seems like a Good Sign to me.

Tonight, Oliver’s small birthday gathering was graced with many luminaries from near and far.

First there was Catherine Hennessey, host of the gathering, and gifter of a prized pink piggy bank with promises to fill same with toonies as the years progress.

Catherine’s sister Mary Clare (or Marie Claire; I can’t get her to tell me) was there as well, and as well as marshaling together a fantastic salad, was her usual charming self.

Just as the night was reaching a fever pitch — candles lit and me ready to teach Oliver how to blow — who should walk in by AE Thurlow and her crew.

This included not only God in Aubergine Jacket David, but also an exotic guest star from away: Bob Henson a meteorologist from Boulder and author of The Rough Guide to Weather.

Candles were blown, stories told, and a good time was had by all.

Onward and upward to the threes.

Aside from the panic and the waiting and the worry, endless worry, the things I remember most about the day Oliver was born are the sounds.

Oliver was born by a C-section that was convened in a hurry at the last minute after his heart rate started diving into the low 60s the day before he was to be induced out.

I remember the unearthly quite of the surgery waiting room where I waited with Dr. Peter Noonan, the wonderful paediatrician who attended the affair.

I remember the constant beep, beep, beep of the machines in the NICU that helped keep Oliver alive. I remember being scared to death that they would stop beeping their “he’s still alive” beeps.

But most of all I remember the sound of his emergence from Catherine. It is a hard sound to describe, and I’m fairly certain that I was the only one in the world to hear it clearly (Catherine and the medical people being distracted by other things, obviously).

The sound was sort of exactly like you would think it would be, a sort of schlorpt sound. To approximate it as you read this, you can put your tongue on the roof of your mouth, then pull your tongue quickly back and down and back while taking a quick breath in.

But that will be only an approximation. I will never forget that sound.

Oliver was born on Sunday, October 1, 2000 and by Tuesday he had bounced back from near oblivion and has been a happy healthy boy ever since.

My friend Stephen Good says that becoming a parent is like joining a club that, before you join it, you can’t understand why you would ever want to join, and after you join it you can’t imagine why you didn’t join sooner. He’s right. Oliver is a joy to be around, and has changed my life in untold ways.

So please join me tomorrow in wishing Oliver a happy second birthday. It’s the end of free airfare and the start of the really exciting years.

HBD2U, O.

Last week’s television week wrapped up on Thursday night with the season premiere of er. Careful readers will note that I have abandoned the television sitcom entirely in favour of crime, politcal and medical dramas, so if you want my take on 8 Simple Rules or Life with Bonnie you’re out of luck.

When er started I was a big fan; I watched religiously for the first several seasons and found many of the episodes gripping.

Then I stopped watching for a couple of years, only tuning in for the “character X leaves the show because they are dead \| going fishing \| moving to Baltimore” episodes. I found the lack of some characters, and the introduction of others confusing, especially because the show is somewhat driven by the personal lives of its characters, so it’s mildly important to keep track of the broad arcs of their lives.

Last year I tuned in more frequently, and although it was milked for everything it was worth, and accompanied by a full-on onslaught of “a very special episode of er” promotional commercials, I found the “death of Mark Green” plot very compelling, especially the closing episode, shot primarily in Hawaii.

The season opener was a continuation of last year’s “smallpox hits the er” storyline, and featured the usual panic, helicopters, kissing, etc. Besides a shocking rotor blade amputation, there was nothing to distinguish the episode and, I fear, that is the show’s problem now: there are only so many things that go go wrong in a hospital emergency room, only so many combinations of characters who can date or want to date, and the show has run through pretty well all of them.

In the world of er there’s simply nothing left to be done.

Downloaded iSync. Synced iBook to iPod to PalmPilot 5000 (which is 7 years old!). All went according to plan. Couldn’t sync with dot mac as it appears to be completely off the air tonight. iSync is slower than I would like, but it does exactly as promised.

By the way, Piloting Palm is an interesting read, especially if you’ve had a PalmPilot for a long time like I have. It’s an interesting look inside a Silicon Valley start-up, and if nothing else I learned that Big Companies work just about the same way that Little Companies do, but with more money and people’s jobs on the line. The other interesting thing I learned is that Palm hasn’t actually had a product called the Pilot for over 5 years; interesting because I’d say the at least 95% of references to a Palm device I hear day-to-day are still to PalmPilot or some variation. There marketing, viral and otherwise, was too good.