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A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE - Dec. 5 -- Stealthy? Not me.

Recent button mishaps have me thinking a world without gadgets might be ever so much more peaceful.

I’ve been playing a little game with buttons lately and, unfortunately, most times I have been losing.

I was at a meeting about the South Okanagan National Park proposal recently in the Greenwood Council Chambers.

It wasn’t a regular council meeting and not all of the regular councilors were in attendance so I took one of the fancy office chairs at the council table. This is not meant to speculate in any way that there may be irregular or less than normal councilors.

The meeting had just started and everyone around the room was introducing themselves..

All of a sudden my digital voice recorder starts playing back an earlier interview—and it was playing it really loudly.

I quickly frisked myself until I found out which pocket it was in and turned it off. This has happened a few other times too. One time the volume was just barely turned on and with my hearing loss I didn’t even hear it at all. But other people around me could.

Not exactly the way to be a stealth reporter.

The next button incident happened when I was heading through the border in Midway. I was heading toward the south so the U.S. border guards were putting me through their processes.

We’d gotten to the part where they were taking my passport into the office for whatever reason they have for doing that. It’s part of the process and you’re best to just sit there and act cool. If you want to visit their country then you have to satisfy these folks.

Just as the border guard was about to step into the office my car horn starts blaring away. I had been rearranging things over on the passenger seat and in twisting around to reach for something I’d somehow pushed the alarm button on my key fob that was in my pocket.

This is not a good time for this to happen. These guards are armed and just waiting for something out of the ordinary.

I think you are supposed to stay in your car unless they

tell you to get out at the border crossings. They don’t like a lot of surprises there. But here I was standing beside my car— with the horn beeping away—hopping up and down frantically trying to find which pocket the keys were in.

***

Another adventure in the kitchen this week. I’d made some stew a week or so ago and I had about a half a cup of shredded carrots left over. I figured I could use them on a salad or something so I put them in a little Tupperware container in the fridge.

The next time I went shopping I just tossed the plastic grocery bag on the shelf of the fridge – not something I’d have seen when Special K was about. Maybe it’s a sign that my standards are slipping?

Anyhow this container of carrots stayed buried underneath stuff in the fridge for about a week and when I finally dug it out the top of the Tupperware container had bulged out.

There was some sort of process going on in there that was producing gas or something. The carrots still looked okay – smelt okay too. But I tossed them in the compost anyway.

But it did get me to thinking that maybe we could come up with some way to make energy out of carrots. Power the world with carrot cake or something.

Take care of someone who loves you ….