The Squamidian Report – Jan. 8 / 05
Also in this issue:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
The west coast has been enduring one of those clear cold snaps that happen around the country throughout the winter. Only our idea of cold is down around the freezing point. Drops below at night, and then bounces back up to between –3 and +3. All the locals walk around in shock, thinking the world is sinking into the next ice age. All of us imports walk around thinking we might need a coat.
There has been some great planet viewing as well this week. With cold clear night skies the stars and planets are nice and bright. Just before sunrise both Mercury and Venus rise above the horizon together. Venus is always easy to spot but Mercury is a bit illusive. Her orbit is tight around the sun so she is only visible as the sky starts to lighten. Being just a tiny naked eye object she can be hard to spot but currently Mercury and Venus appear very close together. Viewing Mercury from our location here in the Highlands above the valley can be difficult due to the mountains to the east but the current orbit of both planets have them rising through the gap between two mountain tops. Mars is up above them and Jupiter is overhead at about mid sky. And then you turn to the west and there is Saturn. Cool.
The week ended with Vancouver getting it’s first major snowfall of the winter. They had a whole, are you ready for this, 4cm of snow. That pretty well shut the city down. Now granted, the Vancouver area is very hilly but the main problem is the west coasters simply do not know how to drive. They seem to think that you need to spin your tires at very high speeds when driving in snow. All that does is polish the snow into ice. The result is pandemonium.
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Currently have a rather strange and somewhat frustrating adventure happening. I was running a small excavator for a friend of mine on Monday doing some repair work to a municipal walking trail. (I will work for him come spring time rather than for the jerk I work for now). The Squamish area has many miles of community trails and paths. My neighbour Ray is both a municipal councilor and head of the trail society. I was parked at the side of the road near the entrance to the trail and Ray went driving by in his nice new pickup truck. He hadn’t expected the work to be done so soon and was surprised and delighted to see us there. He slammed on his brakes and threw his truck into reverse to park and check out what we were doing. He reversed right into the front of my van, taking out the headlight assembly, hood, fender and bumper. He only discovered it was mine when he went looking for the owner.
Anyway, vehicles are registered and insured through ICBC in BC. That’s government insurance, not private and therefore the red tape and bureaucracy are overwhelming. Just finding out the order in which things have to be done is frustrating. However, I jumped the gun and went to an ICBC approved auto body shop. The people there not only helped me through the process but dealt with some of the red tape for me. Because a smashed headlight is both a safety issue and illegal they set me up with an insurance supplied rental car.
I’m back with the construction company that I was with last year until spring when I’ll jump ship and go with the guy who was doing the trail repair. In the mean time, this rental car gets parked every day on a muddy old construction site. Van should be ready this week some time. Not much else going on around here, we all had a good laugh watching the local Vancouver TV news and seeing the traffic go nuts in their snow. Kind of makes you shake your head.
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Hey Greg, this is your 99th addition of the Ontarion. Congradulations. And have a happy birthday buddy.
On a sad note, Rosemary's
mother Edna had a terrible fall that resulted in hip surgery. Edna is a
beautiful, graceful woman and I know we all extend our best wishes.
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THE ONTARION REPORT
JANUARY
8, 2005
Gosh it seems weird seeing
that 2005 date! Oh well, I guess time marches on.
How is everyone this week? I hope the new year finds you all well and smiling! I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m lovin’ this lack of snow. Even with the Jeep for driving in the slush I still prefer a snowless winter. I’ve been watching the 5 day weather forecast and if their predictions are correct, I may be looking at my first Green Birthday ever on Tuesday January 11th. That would be cool for sure! I was talking to Clyde on the phone this morning and he said he heard that we are in for a sunny and +16c day either next Monday or Tuesday, he wasn’t sure which. Now if it’s Tuesday and the weather is that good, I’m going to celebrate my birthday by having a drink in my shorts on the patio. Yup, just SHORTS! Should be a good photo op for Carole or the neighbours! LOL! Oh well, if they want to take a chance on damaging their new camera, let them be nosey!
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When I was about 15 I started to hang around with my cousin Randy. He lived way over on this side of town on Ottawa St S. Their house was virtually out in the country.
It was the last house on Ottawa St before you hit the open countryside. In fact, there was a pond across the road from their house that we used to hunt ducks on. I believe Fischer-Hallman Rd that crosses Ottawa St about ¼ mile east of his house was called Filsinger Rd back then. I may be off on that name but I don’t think so. Anyway, from our house on Floyd St in the Margaret Ave / Guelph St / North Ward of Kitchener to his place was a good half hour by car or 2-3 hrs by bicycle (the bikes were only one speed back then). I made sure to phone him before riding all that way any time I wanted to visit him just to make sure he was going to be there when I arrived. Most times, I’d have to phone my dad to come over to get me with the Buick at the end of the day. I didn’t like riding home in the dark. My aunt still lives in that same house to this day but the view across the road has changed completely. She now looks out her front living room window at a side view of the Home Depot Store. They built a huge new plaza on that entire sight called the Sunrise Plaza. It contains The Home Depot, Canadian Tire, Wal-Mart, Shopper’s Drug Mart and this spring they will be opening about 25 more stores in the strip mall buildings being constructed on the sight. It’s hard to believe that the beautiful view they had from their house is gone. They also had endless acres of bush and fields behind their home for years. Now it’s all new housing to the tune of about 800 homes. I guess that’s called progress. We don’t live very far from this new plaza ourselves and actually find it very handy to have all that so near. Randy and I are still good friends and see each other a couple times a week. He lives in the same model house as we do and I can see his home from our driveway. It’s only about 2 blocks east of us. When we were kids, he wanted to be a scientist and I wanted to be a pilot. I guess your goals change as you age. He wound up graduating form U of W with a BSc and eventually entered the OPP. I of course as you know joined the Fire Dept. It just so happened that we’ve both retired within the last 3 years. It’s amazing how time passes so quickly. Both landscapes and lives seem to change in an instant. I always say it’s a shame that cities have to change so drastically and eat up the surrounding countryside but I guess it’s not much different than the way we change as the years go by. Now that I’ve said that, I should qualify my statement. Cities expand………….we hopefully do not! LOL! I guess some of us do but as we become more and more aware of healthier eating habits let’s hope we’ll all stop expanding and live a lot longer.
Guess that’s enough babbling for this week.
Thanks for tuning in as usual and I look forward to talking to you all again in The Ontarion Report.
Bye for now…..GREG.
PS: Something to Think About>
Whenever you feel your life ain’t going all that well, just think “Tsunami”!
“God bless the Tsunami victims”.
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The family site:
http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b/
The Squamidian Site:
http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b2/
Have a good one..
the
doug