The Squamidian Report – Nov. 14 / 09
Issue # 390
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
While many parts of good old ‘back east’ have been enjoying unseasonably nice sunny weather, the wet coast has been living up to its name. We are entrenched in the storms of November that bring the endless rains that make the rain forests possible. This is normal for here at this time of year. You either get used to it or you leave, its that simple. We’ve been getting so much rain that when I leave a pail sitting outside, it fills right to the top in about 3 days. Empty it and 3 days later it is full again. I guess I should have just put the pail away but that option never actually occurred to me.
I mentioned the Railway Museum, we have been doing some excavating there for the installation of everything from electrical duct banks to sanitary sewer mains. The museum is down in the valley where the soil materials have been built up by centuries of flooding that laid down layers of silts and sands. This stuff turns to snot when disturbed and when disturbed under heavy downpour conditions turns to very runny snot. So the whole site around the under-construction roundhouse and turntable is a goopy quagmire of oozing saturated shmoo. And there is not a thing we can do to rectify the situation. Even the gravel we truck in from the pit is saturated and in a semi-liquid state. Makes for rather messy working conditions.
The snowline fluctuates up and down with the temperature changes each day but it is slowly and relentlessly working its way down the mountains. We can see fresh snow working its way lower as the days go by and the high country is beginning to build up an accumulation of the stuff. Whistler and a couple other ski mountains are opening for the season today. The mountain passes that we had so much fun crossing on the bikes are now firmly gripped in wintry snow so biking season is truly over for a while. The snowmobilers are all getting excited, and so are the quad riders who have tracks for their machines. Winter is ‘a coming’.
*
Funny how things can change right out of the blue and so totally unexpectedly. A few weeks ago ‘the wife’ and all the rest of the west coast audit team were called into a Monday morning meeting. Ten minutes later they were all unemployed, put out to pasture, unwanted and dumped by the center-of-the-universe Toronto executives. The decision was political, it was easier to dump those people way out west somewhere than cut some of the ones close by that they would have to actually see. And it was a ‘cost cutting measure’ designed to streamline Audit by having all the teams work out of Toronto. Problem is, that won’t work. The travel time needed to reach the western prairies and almost anywhere in BC will burn out any team heading out from Toronto. Travel cost will go through the roof. The 3-hour time difference that was so annoying to the managers in head office will not go away just because they will now be communicating with eastern teams working the west instead of western teams working the west.
Funny how fast corporate memories fade, a decade ago they had tried to dismantle the western audit and found that risk went way up and things got messy. They had to rebuild the Vancouver presence and ironically that was our ticket to moving out here. They needed an experienced senior auditor. The rest is history. So, a few years from now, after who ever made the decision to kill off the western division has pocketed his / her big bonus, someone else will get a big bonus for recognizing the need for a western audit team and re-creating said audit division all over again. That’s how big business works.
There was no interest at all in finding new positions for the western auditors. They were simply done, finished right then and there. They have been offered severance packages and counseling but that can never offset the feeling of abandonment that they all feel. So now ‘the wife’ is no longer a traveling road warrior out there striking fear in the hearts of bank branches. Instead she is home trying to get used to a new way of living, of not being important and of not having anywhere to travel to.
And lets face it, it is quite an adjustment for me too. ‘The wife’ is home all the time now. I don’t have the house to myself anymore. I have to actually talk to someone when I get home from work. I have to share the computers and the TV. I can feel panic setting in!
doug
****
****
Hello
everyone!
I’m happy
to report that our weather is holding out well for this time of year. But of
course most of you are well aware of that since the majority of you live in
Ontario as do I. I’m not usually one to rub salt in a wound but it feels kinda
good to give Doug a little jab about all the rain they’re having in BC! I know
that he’s stored his motorcycles for the winter and that he’ll have them out
again much earlier than we here in Ontario but so far Ontario bikers have
lucked out by having a couple of good weeks of sunshine that we’re still in the
middle of that allows us to keep on riding. It looks like we’ll have another
few days yet to enjoy the open road on two wheels. Whether or not I take to the
road depends on how much of a list of “home” stuff I have yet to do around
here. The one thing that I don’t like to do in lousy weather is put up the
Christmas decorations and it’s getting to that time of year once more. We’ve
certainly cut down around here on how many we splatter on the outside of our
home each year. I used to climb on the roof and hang wreaths on the outside of
each upper window as well as string “icicle” lights around all the eve troughs.
After having to climb up several times a winter season in the ice and snow to
fix the string in the middle that suddenly went out we decided that it would be
better to do away with the stringing of outdoor lights. We’ve had them up for
over 30 years and it was just time to change our way of decorating for the
season. Carole decided to hang the wreaths on the inside of the bedroom windows
last year and it sure was nice. Being able to stay warm and dry, not to mention
safe by working from the inside was a real pleasure for a change. So we’ll be
doing that again from now on. We haven’t put the outside trough lights on for a
couple of years now and that too is much nicer.
The house
still looks festive with the wreaths and the red lights in the outside porch
and garage lights. I would never have left our lights up all year round but
some years I was tempted believe me! Every year we have about 16 tubs of
decorations stored up on a mezzanine in the garage and it’s a big job to bring
them all down and sort through them to decide what we want up and what we
don’t. Last year Carole went through each tub and sorted out a bunch of outdoor
lights and decorations that she no longer wanted to use. We have narrowed it
down to about 8 tubs now and it’s actually kind of fun when you can do the
whole decorating thing in one day.
We still
like to have a Christmas tree up in the house so we do that first. My job is to
put the tree up and install the lighting on it. Then, Carole does the
decorating of the tree. If I did it, we’d have a half completed tree with no
balls on the back! LOL! Of course having no balls on the back is normal anyway
isn’t it? LOL! At least to my way of thinking it is! Hahahahaa…. ! Nudge nudge
wink wink! Every year we’ve struggled with the lights on the tree as well. I’d
test each string before painstakingly wrapping it around the tree starting from
the top and by the time I got them all on and plugged in, at least one string
would be out! Damn those little cheap lights anyway! Then the process would
start, unplug each light one at a time and stick in one that you knew was good.
NOPE, that’s not the one………..and so on and so on until I’d finally find the
culprit! What a frustrating job that always is! Well, this year we needed a few
new strings after winding up with only about 3 out of 8 strings working on the
tree last year. The other day we went out to do some shopping and wound up
purchasing LED lighting for the tree. They are a little more expensive than the
cheap lights but actually this year they have come down to about 25% of what
they cost earlier years. I guess it’s the same old story as with any electronic
device, the more they make of the things the cheaper they become. We decided to
buy all new strings for the tree. The LED lights are a little larger than the
old style but you gotta change with the times. I’m sure the new style will look
just fine once they are on the tree and lit! I’ll enjoy putting them on the
tree this year just knowing that I can depend on them working when I plug them
in.
This
should all take place while we have nice weather just because we do have one
large wreath about 5’ in diameter that still goes on the outside face of the
garage above the twin doors. Not to mention the outside light bulbs in red that
I put in the porch lighting. I think I’ll hurry and get them done while the
weather is still good. That should only take an hour or so to dig them out and
install them. Then the rest of the decorations will be a snap to do inside the
house. Then if the weather is still nice enough I’ll take one last ride on the
bike before storing it in the garage. Tomorrow is Friday the 13th
and they are still having the Port Dover “Bike Day” and I’m sure a lot of
motorcyclists will be meeting in that nice little town. As long as there’s no
snow on the ground, they tend to ride to Dover each Friday the 13th.
Adam and I have attended a couple of these days and it’s a lot of fun to see
the thousands of motorcycles. This 13th Adam is working so I likely
won’t be riding down to Dover solo. It’s of course a lot more fun to have a
companion rider when attending such events. Besides, even though it will start
out to be a nice day for a ride by the time 4pm rolls around it’s getting
colder and the ride home would be a tad too nippy for me. I’m a fair weather
biker for sure so seeing the event on the news tomorrow evening will do me just
fine! On the other hand, Carole might just want to boot my ass out for the day
in which case I might be heading south anyway! LOL! I don’t really expect that
to happen since we’ve got lots to do around here yet but one never knows until
the time comes! LOL!
That’s it
for now folks!
Thanks
for tuning in and I look forward to talking to you all again next week in The
Ontarion Report!
Bye for now.. Greg.
PS:
Something To Think About>
Opportunities always look bigger going than coming!
****
Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.