The Squamidian Report – Feb. 22 / 14
 
Issue #613

Including:
From Lorne
The Ontarion


Hi All,

Well, I'm here in Southern Ontario. I'll be here till the middle of next week. I had hoped to see some good 'old fashion' winter and well and behold, its still here. I met up with my good friends Brian and Kitty for lunch on Thursday and they told me that some of the snow drifts up around their place near Port Elgin are 14 ft high. It must be really fun to be a kid during a winter like this in a place like that. The flight in was uneventful which is a good thing, you wouldn't really want the alternative, whatever that might be.

We ran into a bit of an adventure on my first full day in KW, I was scraping the car windows on Vivyan's car when I noticed that the registration sticker on her car expires on Sunday (I never have to scrape car windows at home, mostly because we park in our garage). When I pointed out that the registration was about to expire, we discovered that the notification paperwork was no where to be found. Carol managed to contact the government service that deals with that and verify that the car could be re-registered anyway. However, because it is an '01, it would need to pass and air-care test. I no longer have any knowledge of how things are done in Ontario, or where to get things done. In Squamish it would have taken a week or so to jump through all the hoops because there are no resources there. Anyway, she was able to simply drive into an immision checking location and then on to the registration place and everything fell into place. If I hadn't noticed the imminently expiring registration, me or someone else would have been using the car on Sunday or next week, and we would have been driving illegally.

Checked out a couple of bike dealers in the KW area with Greg, and dropped in at a hobby shop where I spent way too much money. I had thought that prices would be better here in Ontario but it turns out the prices on the west coast are better. Heck, KW gas stations are charging Vancouver prices now. Oh well. Anyway, for me to go to a hobby shop on the coast I have to drive all the way to Burnaby, and hour and a half each way plus gas and traffic etc. So, I picked up some parts I needed and a few things I didn't actually need but kind of wanted and would have ended up getting in the near future which would have meant a drive in to Burnaby after all. Everything was a few bucks more than it would have been but now its done. I do however need to figure out how to pack my loot into my suit case for the flight home next week, and how to sneak it past 'The Wife'.

Something that was very cool and totally unexpected was what Greg handed to me, and intended for Kyra. As you may recall (see, another memory test) Greg has gotten into woodworking and has come up with absolutely awesome wooden toys aimed at kids under 5 or 6 years old. He made an airplane and a helicopter. They have a solid feel and look really good. Kyra is going to love them, and she is going to want 'grandpa' to play with her with them. No problem, I'm looking forward to it. Thanks again Greg.

While we were out and about, we stopped in at Long and McQuade to say hi to Ryan's friend who is the manager there, and even though I was not sure I wanted to, I rented a very nice Taylor guitar, a guitar I could never afford to buy. I could have rented one of two Gibson's but the Tylor blew them out of the water for sound and feel. Now I guess I'd better play it a bit before returning it early next week. I think that's if for now, I'm trying to do this issue on a laptop and sending it out though Webmail so who knows how it will turn out.

Oh, I've got Lorne playing 3-D Logic on his computer.

doug
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A Note From Lorne

You may know  Vivyan attends a special session one day a week at Sunnyside Home, a facility servicing seniors on daily  and long term needs.  I usually pick her up at the end of the day.   Last week as I came to pick her up, a taxi with a rear ramp for wheel chairs was ahead and preparing to open the door and lower the ramp to allow a motorized chair to  back down.   I stopped about 20 feet back as room was needed.  Then I thought more room would be better but a car stopped too close behind.   The chair came down the ramp rather fast, I thought, so I laid on the Horne. The old guy kept backing up until he came to an abrupt stop on my front bumper.   He glanced back, put his chair in forward and
scooted off. Now that is hit and run.   Left marks on my car too. 

Attendance's bringing Vivyan saw it happen and asked if I wanted to find the son of a ***** ,  but someone living in a home won't have liability insurance.   Just not worthwhile.   On the way home a song kept running through my head. It went something like 'Grandma got run over by a reindeer'. Perhaps it should be called 'Grandpa got run over by a wheelchair'.

Lorne

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THE ONTARION REPORT

Hello everyone!

Well, he did it after all, Doug brought that shitty west coast rain to us when he arrived Wednesday and it looks like we can blame him if we get flooded out as well! Nope, it’s not because of the large accumulation of snow we have on the ground this year that’s to blame, its DOUG’S fault for sure!

If only his plane hadn’t punctured that rain cloud as he landed it might have drifted to the Maritimes like the heavy snowstorms we’ve been sending their way. Oh well, I guess we’ll just have to hope our storm drains are open and functioning well enough to carry all that moisture to the Grand River before it backs up into our basements! Thanks a lot Doug!
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Like most of the residents of KW I’ve been blowing snow for the past few days and hoping that some of it will melt away soon so I’ll have room to pile more of the white stuff when we get hit with another snowstorm next week and another and another after that! You all know I’m sure, that we’ve got only one more month of winter left this year but judging by the way things have gone so far, we’re not guaranteed an early spring. In fact, I doubt we’ll even see spring arrive at its normal time the way it’s looking! I hope we start to experience spring like weather sometime in the next couple of weeks. Even though winter hasn’t been any longer than usual so far, it seems like we’ve been in the depths of it for months now! I guess that’s what happens when we get spoiled by several unusually mild winters in a row and then suddenly have what is actually a normal winter for this region. We’re just getting what we should and it’s a bit hard to put up with when we’re spoiled that way. I’m sure the next couple of weeks will bring milder temps and more sunshine and before we know it the piles of snow along the roadways will be just patches of brown slush!

Speaking of accumulating, it’s hard to believe how much “Stuff” we accumulate during the course of our lives. In fact, it doesn’t take a lifetime to accumulate a lot of “Stuff” at all when it comes right down to it! Carole took to cleaning up the office a little today here at home and she discovered that every cupboard she opened had “Stuff” in it from as far back as the early 2000’s. We as humans tend to put things “away” thinking we’ll need it again some day soon and then we just plain forget about it. She found a whole raft of magazines that haven’t been looked at since they were new and many of them were 10 years old or more. I guess we figure when we find an interesting article we’ll find a need to refer to it again sometime. So rather than saving the article, we keep the whole magazine. Eventually there comes a time when we realize that we’ve saved way too many of these old magazines and all they are really good for now is filler for our recycle boxes! She did however find one booklet that I’ve been wondering where it was and that is the service book for my TORO snow blower. I know that I saved this booklet so I could refer to it when it came time to do a service on the blower. As it turned out, each time I needed info on what kind of oil to use in the motor I’d look it up on the computer so the TORO book just drifted off into oblivion only to surface today along with the receipt for the purchase of the machine. I’ve often wondered how long I’d had the TORO but could never find the receipt. Well, today while looking at the newfound service book, I also found the receipt for the purchase. I’ve owned the blower since 2006, that’s eight years and here I was thinking I’d only had the blower for about 4 or 5 years. Ain’t it funny how time slips away?

“Well, I gotta go now! Guess I’ll see you hangin’ round. It’s been so long folks, but it seems like it was only yesterday and ain’t it funny how time slips away?”

I hope you all get to see Doug while he’s here in KW and see if he’s got any more gray hairs since the last time he was visiting. He’s a grandpa now you know! And from what I hear, he and Sue are really enjoying being grandparents! Even if it does mean a few more gray hairs! LOL!

That’s about 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>
“When chemists die, they barium!”
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Have a good one..
the doug
http://www.thedougsite.net
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