The Squamidian Report – July 21 / 07
Issue #269
Also in this issue:
From the Shores of Lake Huron
The Ontarion
Hi All,
She won! I tried my very best but she won! Through avoidance, procrastination and deception I had managed to NOT take down the outdoor Christmas lights. They weren’t bothering anyone. They weren’t being turned on so no one even noticed them. No one complained, no one tried to drum us out of the neighborhood. The lights simply were not an issue. Except to the Wife. And by now we are closer to the time for putting them back up than we are to the normal time for taking them down so it seemed quite expectable to leave them in place for next winter than to put them away now. At least to me it did.
I made the mistake of coming outside when she was tinkering in a front flowerbed. She asked if I’d help her bring the ladder out from under the deck. As we were retrieving it I asked what she needed it for. She dropped the bomb on me! Apparently, we were taking down the lights, NOW. So down they came. Coil them up and put them away. I’ll just be un-coiling them and hanging them back up in no time at all. Unless of course I can stall long enough that the outdoor lighting season will pass and it would then be too late. Worth a try.
*
We were working away one day this past week under a hot sunny sky when all of a sudden water started to fall from above. It wasn’t really raindrops, at least not rain drops like I’ve ever seen before. It was huge splops of water falling down. Golf ball size splops of water. Each one splashed as it hit. We looked up and around to find the source but the nearest clouds were big white puffy things floating miles away over the north shore mountains. But is was rain, coming from the sky. Big funny fat juicy balls of rain. The shower only lasted about 5 minutes. Didn’t last long enough to cool things down or settle the dust. Just lasted long enough to mystify us. Craziest weather related thing I’ve ever seen.
*
Now this is pretty cool. We had some unexpected dinner entertainment one evening this past week. I’ll back up a bit here.
A guy I worked with 30 years ago and his wife made a trip out from Kitchener to Vancouver Island to visit their son who was in Victoria. Don and Inga decided to come over to the mainland and take a run up to Whistler. They had called to let us know they would be passing buy and perhaps we could fit in a short visit. Their ferry trip over from the Island was later than expected and that put them into Horseshoe Bay later than they had wanted. They figured they could get a motel somewhere between Horseshoe Bay and Squamish, but of course there is nothing along there. So they tried for a motel in Squamish but everything was full, mostly because of all the highway construction workers. Don phoned to see if we had any ideas. Well of course we did. I met them down below in town and led them up to our place in the Highlands. Handed them a key and told them to use our guest rooms like a motel for the couple of days they would be in the area.
The next evening, after they returned from Whistler, I barbequed burgers for them and us for dinner. We all just got nicely settled at the table when a huge, and I mean huge, black bear stood up on his hind feet, leaned his hands on the deck railing and checked out the deck and bbq. If I were still out there, he would have towered over me by at least a foot or so. When his nose assured him that there was nothing left there of interest, he sauntered down the rocks and out onto the street where he casually wandered from house to house looking for a free meal or whatever. We lost track of him as he headed up a driveway several houses up the street. He was pretty laid back, totally unconcerned about us or anyone else.
He supplied us with lots of dinner conversation as we returned to munching our burgers. And no one seemed at all interested in going out for an evening walk. Go figure.
doug
****
Good day everyone. A while back I had mentioned about a shipwreck found buried on the Southampton beach area. At that time the also had found an old barge on top of the old ship. This past week they have erected a new interpretive sign at the site with the history of the old ship. The barge has been removed now and what the next step is I am not sure. The old ship is about 200 years old. It was a part Royal Navy and was called H.M.S. General Hunter. It sank in 1816 and was discovered in 2001. I will have to take a short bike ride over and check it out a little further.
Yesterday I took my first long trip on the Kawasaki down to Kitchener. It handles really well and is very comfortable to drive on. My backside didn't get sore and numb like the old 84 Suzuki. That's a bonus. The weather was pretty wild up here last Thursday about 3:30 in the afternoon, the wind picked up tremendously and heavy rain came down sort of, it was more sideways than vertical. I thought maybe there might have been a tornado in the works but nothing was mentioned on the news, just severe thunderstorms.
Today down at the beach from 4:00 pm until later in the evening Bruce Power is putting on their annual beach party with lots of activities, food refreshments (non alcohol) and with a fireworks display at dusk. I don't think I will go though because the beach at this time of year is crowded enough without this type of function going on. They say they are expecting about 7 to 8 thousand people down there. WAY TO BIG OF CROWD FOR ME! Anyways I must get some thing done around here so everyone have a good and safe week.
****
Hello
everyone!
Hard to
believe it’s 2007 already……oops I think I’ve already written that one!
Hmmmm
let’s see? Bears in your back yard, people murdering their kids and others
throwing new born kittens out of their SUV’s on University Ave in Waterloo.
What the hell’s this world coming to? I guess the bear in your back yard isn’t
quite in the same category as the others but it’s still unusual. I think if I
were sitting down to a BBQ’d meal and saw a huge black bear rear up beside my
deck I’d be heading for the clean underwear drawer. What the heck would you do?
The chances of this happening around here are pretty remote although there was
a black bear sighting last year around this time out near Breslau. I don’t
think they ever got near enough to the animal to catch it and nothing more was
ever said about it. I guess he finally found a better food supply out of the
Region.
This week
has been a real wacky one as far as the happenings in the news goes. We had a
bomb scare in downtown Kitchener early in the week but it turned out to be a
hoax or a misunderstanding of some sort. I think a woman was drunk and made the
erroneous 911 call to get some attention. Then the same afternoon there was a
reported shooting also in the downtown area. There was a claim by a driver that
someone had used a handgun to shoot out the back window of his car. The police
managed to arrest two guys shortly after the incident near bus terminal in
Kitchener with two real looking handguns in their car that turned out to be BB
guns. They were powerful enough however to shatter the other mans car window.
Good thing they hit his window and not his face. It’s all great fun and games
until someone loses an eye, as my mother used to say. You’d think that grown
men would know better wouldn’t you? The next incident that really ticked off
everyone that heard it on the news was a heartless bastard that tossed three
kittens out of his SUV while driving up University Ave in Waterloo. The woman
driving behind this cruel son of a gun only managed to tell police that he (or
she) was driving a black SUV. I guess she was too busy trying to miss driving
over the kittens to get a plate number. As it turned out two of the kittens
were run over and I think the third had to be put down by a Vet. Why in the
world would anyone be mean enough to do such a thing? If you don’t want the
little things, take them to the Humane Society Shelter and drop them off there.
I guess with the price of gas these days the idiot didn’t want to waist money
on fuel to get there. This jerk deserves a few months in jail if you ask me! On
the other hand maybe he was just upset and really didn’t know what he was doing
and didn’t mean to hurt the kittens. If society hadn’t been so mean to him
maybe he would have given the kittens to the neighbourhood kids for pets. The
bank was probably hassling him for missing a payment on his SUV and when he
explained that his social assistance cheque was late they didn’t understand.
That would be enough to drive anyone to throw their kids pets out of a speeding
car on a busy street, c’mon…. give the guy a break. He’s probably actually a
really good guy that’s under duress because he’s being threatened with
deportation for smuggling 30 keys of coke into Ontario in his Escalade five
years ago and his court date has been deferred again. Oh well, now that’s
understandable!
*
The next
appalling incident was the murder of an 8 month old baby and the attempted murder
of her two year old sister by their mother. The charges of first degree murder
and attempted murder have been laid by the Waterloo Regional Police and for now
it sounds like this woman will face the music for what she’s done. What a
terrible ordeal for the little girls to go through and also for the father of
these kids who will have to deal with this for the rest of his life. It’ll be
interesting to follow the investigation and see how the charges get reduced and
maybe even dismissed due to the fact that this woman was suffering from post
partum depression. If she hasn’t claimed so by now, don’t worry, some do-gooder
social worker or legal aid lawyer will make the case for her that she didn’t
know what she was doing and didn’t really mean to do it. So many of the
neighbours said they had seen her as a responsible loving mother to her girls
over the past 6 months and she was always attentive and caring to them. Do
people really just snap like this? If she was suffering with some sort of
depression, wouldn’t her husband or doctor or someone close to the family have
realized it before now? Surly there must be some validity to the “just snapped”
argument but if I were a judge I’d have a difficult time seeing it in a court
of law. On the other hand, how could any sane mother plan and carry out the
murder of her two lovely infant daughters. Either way, I hope this woman gets
her just sentence no matter what the reason for her actions. It’s a sad sad
case and nothing the courts can do will bring the little girl back or repair
the damage this woman’s actions has caused in the lives of everyone in that
family. She deserves life in prison and let’s hope the do-gooders don’t manage
to turn her into the victim in this case.
*
That’s
about it for this week folks.
Thanks
for tuning in and I look forward to talking to you all again next time in The
Ontarion Report.
Bye for now… GREG.
PS:
Something to think about>
Is there
a reasonable explanation for everything?
****
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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