The Squamidian Report – Nov. 20 / 10

 

Issue #443

 

Including:

The Ontarion

 

Hi All,

 

It’s been a bit of a busy week. The Wife’s sister and their collective set of parents popped out for a visit. I didn’t really have to be too much involved with the visit, all that was needed of me was for me to be my usual charming self. The sisters took care of making sure their parents were comfortable and entertained and generally taken care of. The visit would probably have not been possible without The Wife’s sister coming along to deal with the details of getting them and their luggage onto an airplane and keeping them calm and pointed in the right direction whenever needed. The weather was not great but it is mid November and besides, they would not have been into hiking or exploring or any of the usual tourist things anyway. All they needed was a good visit, so, I think it was a success.

 

Just like most of the western part of the country, the west coast was getting an early taste of winter. By the time the visitors left there had been a light dusting of wet snow at the lower elevations and several heavy snowfalls up in the high country. So once The Wife had them packed up and loaded into the car for the ride back to the airport, I figured it would be a good time to dig the snow blower out of the storage shed and check it over. There is no danger at all of it being needed any time soon but snow blowers are like insurance. If you have it there is a good chance you won’t need it but if you don’t have it, you definitely will need it. There had been almost no snow at all last winter around here. We had 60 ft or more of the stuff higher up but none down here so the blower had not been needed at all. I had used it once just to try out my homemade skid shoes that had proved to be a waist of time but that had been it. I had then hunted for and found proper replacement runners but because there had not been even a trace of snow after that the new shoes have remained un-tired on my abrasive driveway.

 

Last spring when I put the blower away I had drained the gas that was by then over a year old and had made sure the carb was dry. So, in order to get the blower running I needed to put gas back in which I obviously did. Then I checked the oil and set the choke and throttle, primed the carb and gave her 1 pull. Away she went. Started up just like she was new. Then I ran her around to the front of the house, down the steps and into the garage where she will sit until needed. I’m hoping she will be needed a lot because I like a nice cold white winter. Green winters are normal here but so are white ones so you just never know which you will get. I do enjoy all the ‘blower envy’ from all the neighbours who struggle to shovel heavy deep snow while we easily and quickly clear our driveway. Not many people around here have blowers, we are the only ones on our street with one. They don’t seem to think they will work very well in our heavy wet snow but ours seems to do just fine. One thing about snow around here, when it snows, it SNOWS! We are much more likely to get a foot or more during a snowfall than an inch or so.

 

By the way, Whistler opened for skiing yesterday (Friday Nov. 19) and even the North Shore mountains will be opening this weekend. There is already lots of new snow in the high country and that’s on top of the snow left over from last winter that hadn’t melted away. Our cold spring and fall coupled with our short summer were not enough to melt all the snow. Some of the higher, north facing slopes had snow down below the tree line all summer. Looks like global cooling to me, the definition of an Ice Age is when more snow falls during the winter than melts during the summer. We shall see.

 

doug

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THE ONTARION REPORT

 

Hello Everyone!

 

Time once again to get out those Christmas decorations and impress the neighbours with your outdoor lighting displays! With the sun shining yesterday I managed to do just that, get out the decorations that is, but I’m not so sure if the neighbours are impressed or not. Like my son said, I probably just managed to piss off the husbands of the neighbours because my enthusiasm with decorating early in the season will likely give all the wives the same idea. They’ll be bugging their hubbies to do the same as “that thoughtful guy that lives on the corner” and get the Christmas stuff up early this year! I’m kind of expecting a knock on the door in the next day or two by an angry mob of hubbies cursing me out for starting this shit too early in the year! Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all I guess! I figure Carole has been right all these years when she says: “Why don’t you put the decorations up while the weather is still nice?” After all, I didn’t have to wear gloves or fumble with the ladder on slippery icy pavement OR climb on a snow covered roof to get the job done and that’s a bonus! Maybe I’m wrong, and the neighbourhood husbands will see the light and thank me for inspiring their wives to get them decorating early for a change! After all, they’ll be able to sit and enjoy a nice hot toddy from inside once the snow hits and their lighting is already up and glowing! So many other years I’ve had to struggle with doing this task in the first snow storm of the season and it led me to complaining and cursing the job rather than have a bit of fun doing it.

 

With the advent of LED lights on our strings the task of making sure all the lights are working is much easier. You can pretty much count on the LED’s working year after year. In previous years there was always one string and maybe several that would let you down. They would either be dead before you went to the trouble of putting them up or on the tree or they’d pop off shortly after you went to all that trouble! The more likely syndrome is that they’d quit after they were up! Then you’d have to spend an hour or more searching the length of the string tweaking each bulb to see if you could find the culprit that caused the outage. I’ve always wondered why the manufacturers of such devices couldn’t make it so if one bulb died the others would stay on anyway! Then it dawned on me that that would be too easy! This way people get fed up with the search every time and simply head back to the local department store to buy new strings of lights every year. It’s easier to do that than stand beside the tree or on a ladder searching the string for the dead one! I liken this marketing attitude to that of the hot dog manufacturers and bakeries of this world when they put 12 wieners in a package and only 8 friggin’ buns per pack to go with them! Just makes you have to buy more and of course the bakeries and wiener makers win!

 

These guys aren’t the only ones to use such tactics. There are many companies that use this approach to sales gouging. Pretty much anything you purchase that comes in a package will be in odd numbers when you get it home. Of course that’s why it’s wise to read the package before you purchase it, then you can spend the extra money to get that “one more” item before you drive all the way home and discover you have to turn right around and drive back to the store. The new LED lights are much more reliable and of course much more expensive as well. If they must keep up with new designs the makers figure they have to make that extra buck some how and that means upping the price if they can’t keep you buying the same item year after year.

 

Oh well, I guess that’s just the way of commerce and free enterprise in the world we live in. When you look at other countries around the globe we do have the best of all worlds right here in Canada and complaining is just human nature!

 

Christmas will soon be here and gone and I say enjoy the season and all the trappings that go along with it or…. You have the right to move to one of those other countries where there’s a heck of a lot more to complain about if the government there will allow you to!

Now get out there and get those decorations up so the neighbours will be scrambling to be second this year! LOL!

 

That’s it for this week folks!

Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!

 

Bye for now… Greg.

 

PS: Something To Think About>

Family at Christmas!

PPS: Oh yah, and Doug, you get out there and flip that switch so the lights you’ve left up from last Christmas will impress the neighbours in Squamish! LOL! Something tells me you ain’t so dumb or lazy after all! LOL! You’re just doin’ things the easy way!

 

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Have a good one..

the doug

http://www.thedougsite.net

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