Why I would never get Veterans’ Licence Plates.

I was talking with my new boss about my work experience and mentioned my military service…but only because he commented on a car with veteran licence plates on it was we drove down to do a job.

I’m not exactly sure what the requirements are to get veteran plates but I’m pretty sure if you did your trades training (QL3) then you’re eligible.

If that’s the case then it’s sort of cheapens it, doesn’t it? What I mean is that I’m proud of the service I performed, but there are guys who do peace keeping work and those who never leave town and specialize in drunken table-top dancing….I have to be honest and say that while I did a lot of good work, I’m closer to the table dancer end of the spectrum. Should I get the same recognition?

Gender roles.

I was talking with the landlord of my workshop tonight and his eyes nearly rolled out of his head when I said that my wife handles all the money; I just hand over anything I earn and she uses it to run the household.

He’s a conservative fellow and I think he couldn’t imagine handing that responsibility over to his wife but the way I see it is that managing the money is yet another responsibility and additional work I could do without; I happen to think that toiling for 60 hours a week is a lot less work and responsibility than running a house because at some point for me the work actually stops.

A marriage is a partnership and since there are two of you, there’s no point hogging all the work for the sake of honouring some outdated notions of appropriate gender roles.

For the record, I’m not sucking up to my wife but I’ll gladly take any brownie points this post may garner.

Thinking about waste again.

I was installing louver vents on a compressor shed today to help with a heat problem and thought about waste…A quick guess would be that with the compressor in the shed, there was at least 12 kilowatts of easily recoverable heat going through those louvers doing no other work than to heat the great outdoors.

It’s a shame about all that energy going out the vents. It could be put to useful work, if only to heat the office during the winter, but at least the shed isn’t so stuffy now….

It’s not my compressor, not my shed, and I don’t pay the electric bill so it shouldn’t be my problem. I wonder if the waste offends me on environmental grounds or it’s the cheapskate thing….

Making the best of waste.

I was eating lunch in Ikea the other day and had a funny conversation. I asked a cafeteria employee about waste and they said that it seemed the most obvious waste she saw was people taking too many maple syrup packages and leaving them unopened on their tray; they cannot be reused once they’ve been in the hands of a customer.

It seems that most of us are much more comfortable with taking too much and throwing half of it away than taking the risk of having to get more after sitting down; it’s sad.

I suggested that while they couldn’t serve the syrup to customers again, they could put it to use and make maple syrup hooch for their staff parties….they could even give it an Ikea-esque name like Tipply.