Now I know what the opposite of "very funny" is. It's "And then we came to the end," a book I finally managed to finish,which is mostly a great testimony to my perseverance and will power, since it took me two years and three tries to get to the end.

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It was very subtle, actually, but the signal was there. Something about the man was a little off. Not the hat, it was fine. It was an old NHL hat, last season's design, but OK. It wasn't the windbreaker - we were on a boat, after all - and it wasn't the pants, although they were kind of big, and baggy, and not in the cool way. But I didn't notice that until afterwards.

After I had seen the subtle signal.  

He smiled at me which was a nice enough gesture for me to forgive him for cutting in front of me in the line. Besides, I could tell he was traveling with friends who were already standing in front of me.  

But. What made me do a double take was this:

The man had his shoes on the wrong feet. 

He was lying on his side, supporting his head with his hand, stroking Wife’s hair gently. She was lying on her back, reading a magazine. 

 

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As long as I have known how to read, I have been wondering about one thing: Why are there so many spelling mistakes in signs people put up in public places. You know the ones. "Wet pant" and so on. I estimate that 85 percent of such notes are misspelled one way or the other. 

Because they used to be handwritten notes, I always thought the reason was just that people were too focused on making them look good, so they were just a little too close to the paper or cardboard or whatever it was they were writing on. But these days everybody's making their notes on a computer so that theory doesn't hold up anymore. 

 

 

OK, if you've lost your camera, maybe you're upset about it, so you type a note fast, print it out, and sprint back out to tape the notes onto trees. I guess you have other things on your mind then so mistakes happen. 

And on the other hand, when you see a spelling error, it seems pretty petty to go up to somebody and point it out, right? Nobody has done it at the local library, anyway.

 

 

 Until tomorrow. 

Apparently, all signs in the economists’ magic 8-balls point to recovery and it looks like we missed Great Depression: The Sequel, after all. But for somebody who remembers the recession in the early 1990s, the past year has been an unwelcome flashback.

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Now that hockey season is about to start (or has started), it's time to remind you of the different parts of the RistoPakarinen.com jungle.

For hockey, go to Puckarinen.

For fake news clippings, see Risto Twist-o.

And for every day musings, writing exercises, observations and personal notes, stay right here at Home.

The same applies for my many Twitter accounts:
@puckarinen for hockey
@ristotwisto for fake (and funny!) news
@finnjewel for the real Risto.

Thanks!

Webmaster.

Doing the post-game interview can be tough, especially after a loss. But, being the professional that I like to think I am, of course I was ready for one … even if the walk upstairs was a long one, made even heavier by the weight of the loss on my shoulders.

The winner was already sitting in the booth when I got there. I saw the door with the sign, “Announcer / head referee”, at the end of the room. When I opened it, I saw her sitting in a special chair, smiling, and chatting with the said announcer, a legend in his field, mind you.

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Quite recently, there was an interesting - and comforting - article about parenting in the local paper. The one thing that stuck to my mind about it was that some research expert - probably a Fellow at some Institute - noted that we, human mothers and fathers, tend to forget - and overrate at the same time - our own childhood by the time we’ve become mothers and fathers.

When we also overrate our own children’s abilities.

The result: We rush our kids into doing things.

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Inspired by whereiwrite.org. They didn’t ask for this, but I took a photo anyway.

When a baby is born in Finland, it is customary for the godmother (or father) to buy him (or her) a spoon that has the baby’s vital stats engraved in it. At that point in time, the stats are height and weight at birth as well as the date and time of birth.

And - naturally - the name.

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We may all be brothers and sisters, and on some level I kind of like that idea, but, honestly, I just can’t feel it. I’ve never had a friend, or a teammate, that I’d say was “like a brother” to me.

Then again, I’m an only child, so how should I know what it feels like to have a brother.

I never even had an imaginary friend, let alone an imaginary brother.

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When I was a small boy living in Finland, my teacher told my class that despite Finnish being a small language with only about five million speakers, there were, in fact, two words that the rest of the world had adopted from us: sauna, and sisu.

For emphasis, that story was then followed by another one about Finnish UN soldiers in the Middle East, and how the first thing they did at their post was to build a sauna.

(For sisu, and sauna, see here.)

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About nine years and eight months ago, I received an email from a pretty, young lady. The subject of the email was, “I hope you visit this site every day”, with the appropriate link attached to the body of the message.

http://www.thehungersite.com

The link took me to a site which I obviously hadn’t ever visited - the Hunger Site which helps to feed the hungry in Africa - but which I just as obviously visited right then.

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