The Squamidian Report – May 6 / 06

Issue #205

Also in this issue:

The Ontarion

Hi All,

Life is made up of both good adventures and bad adventures. We tend to have more of the good kind because that is what we strive for, or perhaps remember. But the bad ones creep in once in a while and there is nothing you can do about it. Case in point, ever have one of those weeks where things just seem to be spiraling down hill and fate seems to be out of your control! You feel like you are headed toward some unknown place at the bottom and until you get there you can’t start the climb back to normalcy. You end up feeling tired, over worked and grumpy. And then you hit that bottom, deal with it and then start to re-bound.

I had one of those weeks. Don’t know what set it off but I could feel each day deteriorate, like a train heading down hill toward a washed out bridge. Nothing I could do about it. I was along for the ride, dragged against my will. To add to my confusion, normal daily things were out of sequence or altered. Then on the Thursday after work, Sue called to say she would be late getting away from the city. Ryan came over to madly try and get his tax return finished. I decided to slip down to the store and pick up some burger meat so I could make hamburgers when Sue got home. Meanwhile, Ryan had pulled in and parked on my side of the driveway. He never parks there, as there is a paved parking spot along the front of the property that has been ‘his’ right from the beginning. When I announced that I’d drive down to the store and get some meat he didn’t pick up on the fact that his car was on the driveway.

Now, I always open my garage door using the controller that is in the garage by the house door, then as the door is opening, walk around behind my truck to the driver’s side. That gives me a view down the driveway. For some reason, I didn’t do that. I simply got into the truck. I had even thought of using the bike but things just didn’t feel right so I disregarded that idea. Once in the truck I clicked the remote and the door opened. A quick check with the mirrors and I backed out. Problem here is our driveway drops off steeply so the mirrors actually don’t see ‘down’ it, the see out over it. I backed right into Ryan’s car, pushing in his grill and bending his hood. All to the tune of over seventeen hundred dollars in damages. Fate seemed to be happy now so after the usual cursing, frustration and remorse, I was able to begin the climb back out of the abyss toward normalcy again. The hopeless feeling of a downward spiral had been lifted, along with everything in my savings account. By the way, not a mark on the truck, the high bumper that pushed in the front of his car didn’t have a scratch on it.

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The long awaited Squamish Wal-Mart store is finally under construction. We began digging for the footings in midweek. We were supposed to start at the beginning of the week but there were some set backs, as usual. In this case, the company that did the site prep, removal of the overburden and shmoo, and then install the gravel pad that replaced the shmoo, cut some major corners and left huge pockets of buried stumps and logs. So they have had to spend all week removing and hauling away the stumps and re-building sections of the pad, correcting what they should have done right in the first place. So not only are they having to re-do it properly at their own expense, they are facing fines for breach of contract. Looks good on them.

doug

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THE ONTARION REPORT

Hello everyone!

I don’t know about any of you but for the past two years around this time I’ve been suffering from pollen allergies. My eyes swell up and become so itchy I could scratch them out of their sockets. Then they start to water and become blurry. This lasts for a month or so and then subsides until the next spring. I asked my doctor about it last week when I was in for a checkup and he said some folks develop allergies later in life so I guess that’s me. Can you imagine 55 years allergy free then suddenly “WHACK!” Pollenitis and two years of misery! Now I know how John Edwards felt in grades 3 through 6 with his watery puffy eyes and his runny nose. He used to snort and sniff all the time with “Hay Fever” and as kids I guess none of us understood the misery he was going through. Not that we used to tease or be mean to him or anything but everybody looked at the poor guy as if he had some kind of deplorable disease or something. If you’re reading this today John, I apologize for not understanding your plight. I can now sympathize and empathize with what you had to go through back then. I don’t think I’m experiencing as severe a case as you had but what I’m putting up with is certainly enough discomfort for anyone to handle. Shouldn’t life and health get better as we get older? Maybe the new conservative government will do something about things like this now that they are in power. Great idea, let’s all lobby Ottawa to rid Canada of all diseases from here on in! Wouldn’t that be great if they could? Oh well, we all know that’s a ridiculous pipe dream but crazier things have gone through people’s minds when suffering from far greater health problems than Hay Fever. Guess I should count my blessings and rip open another box of Kleenex.

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I cut the grass for the second time with my new SNAPPER today. What a difference a quality lawn mower makes in the finished product. This mower has a fancy “forked” mulching blade on it that is sharp as a razor. It makes the grass stand upright like a brush cut on a 10 year old boy. The lawn looks amazing when you stand back and look at the results. I guess it pays to use a quality tool for the job. Some people don’t care how their lawn looks and it shows. They never trim the edges from year to year and are lucky if they cut it once a month. I know of a couple of home owners in our area that are like that. Sometimes you feel like mowing their lawn for them. We do have property standards by laws in Kitchener that require home owners to maintain their properties including keeping their lawns looking respectable but unless one’s front yard is covered in old cars or other such junk it seems nothing is done to enforce these by laws. Oh well, I guess it boils down to a matter of pride in one’s residence. Carole always says that she can tell what the inside of someone’s home looks like by the way they keep the outside. I agree with her on that one. I’ve spent a lot of time doing home inspections for the fire dept and believe me, there are a lot of “rat’s nests” that you wouldn’t raise your farm animals in let alone your kids. Its unbelievable what some people live like. I remember crawling through a two story semi detached house in Waterloo trying to find the seat of a fire that was raging somewhere in the thick black smoke and wondering what we were sliding in on our hands and knees. It turned out that these people had two huge dogs, a Doberman and a Black Lab and they let them do their business in the house and never cleaned it up from week to week. That’s right we were sliding in dog dodo and didn’t know it till we had the fire out and the smoke cleared from the building. What a deplorable mess that was and this couple had 4 kids ages 4 through 12 that lived in this mess. It was on the floor in every room in the house. We had to pressure wash our bunker gear and then have it professionally cleaned before we could wear it again. I reported the situation to the children’s health and welfare dept and was told there was nothing they could do about it but make a note. Something like this has to have more than one complaint from different sources before they can act on it by law. Hard to believe! Oh well, at least when the insurance company finished rebuilding their house after the fire it would have been clean for a few days. Let’s hope the people appreciated the fresh start with clean floors and made an effort to keep it that way.

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One quick note on the Conservative “Get tough on crime” program. I’m with them 100% and it’s about time this country backed such an initiative. Not only will the two new Super Max jails being built by the federal government take hundreds more criminals off our streets, they’ll also provide employment for many Canadians. This is the tip of the iceberg in cracking down on criminal activity in Canada and hopefully it’ll be successful enough to warrant further progress in the fight against crime. “House Arrest” my ass! Throw them in the clink and toss the key away!

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Thanks to all for tuning in this week! I look forward to talking to you all again next time in The Ontarion Report.

Bye for now… Greg.

PS: Something To Think About>

CRIME

I’ve got a little list – I’ve got a little list.

Of society offenders who might well be under ground,

And who never would be missed – who never would be missed.

W S Gilbert 1885

PS again: I've mentioned the "Global Warming" situation a few times in past Ontarions. I just thought I should pass this bit of proof on to the Squamidian readers.

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The Family and the Squamidian sites:

http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b/ and http://www.thedougsite.ca

Have a good one..

the doug

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