September 05, 2009

Google beans...

So, it turns out that my brother is somewhere outside of Venice. Just hangin' out. Waiting. He has a grad conference to go to in Greece and decided to take a quick spin around first. At a certain level I am a bit jealous that he'll be able to float down the canals on gondolas or speed around with a contraband outboard motor, but on another level I know that I'm lucky to be exploring Pangnirtung. Besides, Venice is sinking (please don't comment on global warming and how Pang will disappear someday too).

This is what got me thinking about the various geographic locations of my brothers (Queen Charlotte Islands, Nova Scotia, and Venice): my dad sent me an email which said he was looking at a picture and was wondering which house was mine. At first I thought it was one of those rhetorical questions...you see the skyline of a city and simply point to a light somewhere. Well, he wasn't looking at a random pic of Pang...he was checking it out using a super-satellite a la Google Earth 5.0. Creepy. With the help of his Bell connection out east and my fancy shmancy qiniq here, I gave him a guided tour of the hamlet. My place, the bridge, my workplace, the Lodge, the Northern...you know, the regular stuff. Then he zoomed in a bit more. There was my neighbor's GN truck, Louis' van, and a score of boats dotting the coast...like I said, creepy. Zoom in more and if a person were standing still long enough, I'm sure he or she would turn up too.

...hmm, a whole new era of keeping track of people...

So, in my previous post I mentioned my wonderful freshly ground coffee. What I didn't mention was that a few beans had dropped on the floor. Now, of course I picked them up and thought I had gotten them all...turns out I didn't. Do any of you know the history of coffee? It was discovered by a goat herder who noticed that every time he had his group in a certain field they got a bit crazy. After awhile, he looked closer at what they were nibbling on and, voila, better than sliced toast...if there were some sort of finder's fee those goats would be worshiped the world over.

I think it was Scarlett who took off with the errant bean. I found little pieces of the shell cracked around the top of the stairs she was madly racing up and down. Next on my 'to do' list? 'Dawgz Gone Wild'...

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