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Issue #972
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The Ontarion

Hi All,

Remember way back to last week’s issue where I posted about a very fire red sunrise? I went on to suggest how it predicted stormy weather and sure enough, we went into several days of pouring rain. Well, it’s still raining, pouring to be exact. A series of Pacific storms, all lined up in a row and aimed directly at the BC coast has been and still is pumping vast amounts of rain onto us. Even higher up in the mountains where the moisture should be snow, its dumping down rain. Avalanches have become a real problem on all the mountains, both coastal and in the interior. It sort of makes sense in that we have been having west coast November ever since early September, and coastal Novembers tends to be very wet and down right miserable.

Here’s a question totally unrelated to endless rain…. Are any of you experiencing ‘delivery frustration’? By that I mean are you or have you been waiting for deliveries of parcels or packages that either came very late or have still not arrived at all. We’ve been waiting since late November for some packages that ‘The Wife’ had ordered for the girls for Christmas. They still have not arrived. Luckily we could not ‘do’ Christmas due to the lock-down, because the girls would have been rather disappointed. So I guess its a good thing that we are and will be in lock-down for another few weeks or so, giving the packages a bit more time to turn up at the post office. Then, there is the registered letter ‘The Wife’ sent to her sister that took a month to arrive. That was frustrating, but not as frustrating as the time sensitive legal documents she sent to their estate lawyers in KW. Those were sent by UPS a week before Christmas and just turned up at that office late this week. Tracking showed the documents had made it to KW quickly but then sat at the UPS sorting station the rest of the time.

Then there is my dealings with Shaw Cable, our western cable and internet provider. They had called me on Dec 4^th to let me know our current contract would expire in February and that I could renew said contract and therefor save a big price increase. As well, I could up my internet speed substantially for a modest fee. I said sure, why not. They informed me that my current Shaw cable equipment would handle the internet speed increase and no hardware changes would be necessary. Again, sure, why not. Shortly after that conversation I was called again by the same person who said he had made an error and that some minor changes were needed. Fine. Shortly after that I got an email stating that my new modem was being sent out and setup instructions could be found on their web site. Hold on! I had been told no changes were needed. So, I tried to phone Shaw’s service line to talk to someone who knew what the hell they were talking about. Have you ever tired to get through to a large companies service people? A rather daunting task at the best of time. I was basically told by the mechanical voice that my wait time to talk to a ‘real’ person was about 36 hours. To heck with that! I then remembered that way back almost 20 years ago when our Shaw system was installed, that the installer had advised me that whenever I needed to reach a ‘person’ at Shaw I should NOT use their posted service number but instead use the local number that he wrote down on my user guide pamphlet. Its not a number that the public is supposed to have but what the heck. So, I called that number and after a few ‘press 1 for English’ and ‘press 2 for service’ type things, I was talking to a real person within minutes. Cool.

I explained my confusion and she told me that the person who had signed me up with the new contract had indeed been wrong and that they had already flagged an updated modem for shipping out to me (from their Calgary depot). It would be over-night shipping with UPS and should be at my place within 2 days. Well, that was over a month ago. No package has arrived. I figured over Christmas it would be useless to try calling so I waited until this week, the 7^th to be exact. Using the ‘secret’ phone number I got through fairly quickly and had a little chat with the service person on the other end of the line.

By the way, ‘the line’ has to be a for real land line, if you try with a cell phone you end up on hold for about 3 weeks. The service person did some digging and informed me that the modem was lost in transit to which I replied that Shaw had included the price increase in this month’s bill, hardly fair given that they had not fulfilled their end of the deal. The service person removed the increase from this month’s bill and applied a $100 rebate on top of that. Good, but where is the modem I wasn’t suppose to have to install? (I have no problem installing a modem but its the principle of the thing). He informed me that the ‘replacement’ modem would go out immediately with Canada Post. Seems they have been having a lot of trouble with UPS deliveries not arriving.

It should be interesting to see when this package will arrive, given that we are waiting on several others that were mailed with Canada Post weeks ago but who knows. The only good thing about Canada Post is that our mail goes to a postal outlet where we pick it up so as long as it gets there, it is secure. Bad news is that we must get a ‘parcel pickup’ notice in our PO box, then stand in line outside (in the rain) until we can approach the counter to retrieve our item, but that’s how it is these day. Even the simple things in life seem to be needlessly frustrating these day.

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Well now, last week’s musical interlude was Ian Tyson’s ‘Springtime In Alberta’. So, in keeping with the passing of the seasons theme, I’ve got another Tyson number called ‘Summer Wages’. You know, spring, then summer… Well, I thought it was clever so stop groaning. This is a song about a seasonal worker in the logging industry who drinks and gambles away his weekly pay in the seedy hotels of down town Vancouver and in doing so has lost his lady friend and comes to the conclusion that he is better off with his memories of her than to try to re-find her as in the verse line “she is gambled and lost like summer wages”. This is actually an Ian & Sylvia number from way back, and then Ian did it again when he went on his own after he and Sylvia parted ways. Either way, my version is just that, the way I do things. Enjoy.

Summer Wages

doug

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THE ONTARION REPORT

Hello everyone!

Here we are in the middle of January almost so spring is just around the corner, I hope! LOL!

I looked out the front window the other day and was just in time to see the garbage men picking up my refuse! It reminded me of one of my first summer jobs. When I was only 12 years old a friend of mine asked me to spend most of my summer in Elora with him at his uncle’s place. My friend was named Bruce Seifried and his uncle lived in mid Elora in a small place that backed onto the Elora Gorge. His name was Mel Seifried. Mel had a patch of land just off the main street and was the town garbage man. He also had a small barn at the back of his property where he kept a Pinto horse by the name of Joker. Joker was a popular stud service horse and many of the local farmers would bring their mares to Mel’s place to be serviced. Bruce and I had never seen this deed performed and were in awe as we watched it happen time and time again for most of the summer. That in itself was an education for two young boys for sure! I remember Mel placing a canvas blanket on the backs of the mares so Joker wouldn’t damage their sides as he mounted them to complete his task!

While staying with Mel, we opted to help him collect the garbage a few days a week in the town. Mel had a two ton flat bed truck with short side rails on the box to contain the garbage. We would spend three days a week collecting the garbage and making runs to the town dump. It was an interesting job to see what many people tossed in the trash. Mel of course had an interesting collection of stuff that he picked out of the trash. He had a separate barn in which to keep his collectables! Bruce and I were not only introduced to the art of garbage collecting and horse breeding but also to the art of smoking big fat cigars that Mel always had in his shirt pocket! I didn’t really enjoy the taste of cigars but Bruce and I thought it was cool to smoke at such a young age and Mel didn’t object to us smoking along with him on the garbage runs! It was indeed a summer of education! We spent a total of 6 weeks at his uncle’s place and our folks never did find out about the cigars! One of the bonuses of that summer was driving around Elora in Mel’s two wheeled cart with Joker pulling us through the streets of town. We felt it was also cool to have a mode of transportation that wasn’t bicycles for a change. It was like having a car without needing a licence. Joker was a very fast trotter and was well trained in the art of pulling the cart. It wasn’t really a paid job but Mel gave us each $20.00 a week for helping him with the garbage runs. The other task we encountered was helping Mel change the tires on the back end of his truck. Bruce and I had to use our backs to lift the flat bed of the truck so Mel could remove the outer tire on each side of the bed to enable him to install new ones. I guess he didn’t own a jack at the time. I don’t know how he might have done that job if we weren’t there to do the heavy lifting! That was a fun experience and I had forgotten all about it until I watched our garbage men the other day! Its’ too bad that Bruce is no longer with us because it would be fun to talk about those days if he was. He had two younger brothers, Brian and Ron but I haven’t seen either of them in more than 50 years as well. As far as I know, they are both alive and living here in Kitchener somewhere! I had heard that Brian had worked for the city of Kitchener and was living on Queen St not too far from where we live now but I never did take the time to look him up. There’s another person from my old neighbourhood that I should look up some time just for old times sake! So many memories and not enough time to get to them all! Maybe I’ll make time this summer to see if I can find him for a chat!

That’s about all for this week folks!
Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next time in The Ontarion Report!

Bye for now … Greg.

PS: Something to think a bout>
Being the best at what you do Paves the way to achieve what you want in life.

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