The
Squamidian Report – Dec. 31 / 11
Issue #501
Including:
Carol & Al
Willow’s Christmas
The Ontarion
Hi All,
I started out writing about how ‘the wife’s’ computer monitor died on the 24th and how we were therefore forced to make due with just my Mac desktop, and the Windows laptop as her backup computer, until I could find a replacement after the shopping rush was over. But when I proof read my composition, I realized that most readers would find it rather boring. So I deleted the whole thing and started over. I also figured I’d talk about being fed up with the Linux Ubuntu O/S version I have been running on my little Netbook, and while that might be boring to some, it’s not to me and so I decided to keep a little bit of that part.
That Ubuntu O/S that I had been running on my Netbook had been great when it was verion 10.10 but they put out a full version upgrade to 11.10 a while back that was a big step backward. It was slow and full of hardware issues. Ryan suggested trying Fedora Red Hat and I must say I am impressed. Like most open source Linux O/S’s, it is free, you just down load it, create a bootable USB drive and install it. This Fedora version is fast and stable, comes with oodles of useful software and pretty well any thing else you might want or need is available, free, through it’s software update feature. So, all is now well with my Netbook.
The wet coast has been inundated with pouring rain for the last couple of weeks. If it had been snow we would have been buried several times over. But alas, its been endless rain and that stuff just runs off, back into the ocean where it came from so it can do the cycle all over again. Needless to say, even our most die-hard riders in our motorcycle chapter have been driving in their cars lately. We keep our regular, weekly meet-up’s going through the wet season, meeting every Tuesday evening in Horseshoe Bay. This past Tuesday five of us were sitting in the coffee shop and a West Van police officer walked in to grab a coffee. We’ve seen this guy before, he was driving a squad car that rainy evening but during better weather he rides a police bike. We invited him to come over and sit with us, and he did. He hung out for an hour.
This particular cop has a reputation for being very no-nonsense, and for handing out a lot of tickets. He also has a reputation for being very willing to share ideas and safety tips regarding motorcycle riding. We chatted about a lot of things, as he has seen us around all riding season and although he knew we ride within the law and try very hard to be ‘good citizens’, he was interested in who we were and what we were all about. We got onto the topic of group riding and he had several good suggestions for us which we will certainly incorporate into our program. Some of his suggestions actually verged on being illegal, because as a motorcycle cop he is used to doing certain maneuvers that the general public is not allowed to do. When questioned, his response was that when safety is the issue, a safe but illegal maneuver is better than a less safe, legal maneuver. Case in point… only motorcycle police are allowed to ride side-by-side. The public may not, we must ride in a staggered formation. This creates a problem when stopped at a red light, because intersections are the most dangerous places for bikes to be. When we as a group pull up to a red light, we close up our gaps and sit side-by-side when stopped, this is legal and correct. But when the light turns green, by law we must fan out into a staggered formation again as we pull away one-at-a-time. This takes time, time which is spent within the intersection, a dangerous place to be. It also holds up traffic behind us causing drivers to become impatient. So, until we have crossed and cleared the intersection, we are encouraged to break the law and stay in a tight, side-by-side, block formation. As each set of bikes clear the intersection, we should begin to fan out back into staggered positions again. He assured us that no observing cop who is actually paying attention to what we are doing would give us a hard time. If a cop did pull us over, an explanation should be all that is needed, and that if a cop was determined to ticket us, every traffic judge would dismiss the charge, but it would never go that far in the first place.
He has some interesting points for merging a column of riders onto a freeway as well that my chapter will be discussing at our next meeting. He also expressed an interest in going on a ride with us if the opportunity were to arise. I doubt it ever will but it made for an interesting evening. As he got up to leave, we gave him one of our CMC hats. He had shown an interest in ours, and now he has one of his own. Don’t know if he will ever actually wear it but that’s up to him.
By the way, Happy New Year.
doug
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From Carol & Al
Hi everyone.
I trust that you all had an enjoyable Christmas. Al and I loved that so many of you either contributed to or responded to last week’s Christmas 500th edition of the weekly. It made for a fantastic read – a great Christmas present. We enjoyed talking to Doug’s and Karin on Skype at Christmas, it made them seem not so far away.
I discovered a sure proof way of not overeating during the holidays – have an emergency tooth extraction on the first day of feasting! It worked for me. We always start our celebrating on Ewan’s birthday, the 23rd. Gale has many of us over for dinner that day, she has occasionally even had Ewan’s birthday dinner when he couldn’t make it. This was a good year as Ewan made it, on time, and the weather co-operated. Christmas Eve dinner is always at the homestead. Mom has finally allowed the rest of us to help with the work. Ever since Jackie and Jim started running the Fern Glen Inn B& B they haven’t been able to join us for Christmas so you can imagine our surprise and pleasure when they walked in the door! Because of lack of snow (there is lots now if any of you are thinking of a winter get-away) they didn’t have guest’s booked so they made a last minute decision to come down. That was 3 hours down, 3 hours here, and 4 hours back. Jim thought they should call first but as Jackie said the surprise was the best Christmas gift we could ask for. On Christmas Day Al went up to see his Mom in Wiarton but the parents and I enjoyed dinner at Beth’s place. Jamie is a fantastic cook. Vivvy loved showing off her presents. She is only just turned 3 but is a real clothes horse, she loves wearing dresses and showing off new out-fits. In fact each morning she comes to our place she likes doing the “big reveal” going “ta-da” as she takes off her coat and shows me what she is wearing. She certainly doesn’t take after her Grandma. For me clothes are for comfort and warmth and shopping is something I do under duress.
Gale’s birthday is on Boxing Day and this year she celebrated one of those special numbers she would prefer I not mention. But we couldn’t let it go by unmarked. Maggie and Ron hosted a birthday party for her. They are wonderful hosts, even with Ron not well. In case you don’t know, Ron is facing a long, difficult operation in London on January 5th. The word “cancer” is scary but we all know it can be beaten and we are counting on Ron to be proof of that. Please include them in your prayers. We are all counting on Ron recovering quickly so he can enjoy his new year.
Al and I also took off for a romantic 2 nights in the Falls. We saw a package special at the Oakes, which has the best view of both the Horseshoe and American Falls from the rooms and since Beth is off work all week and we didn’t have Vivienne we decided to take advantage of the special. We never buy each other presents but Al does love getting away. It is more romantic but perhaps not as much fun to not take the boys and go with a group of family and friends. The Festival of lights are still on so we enjoyed them again. From our room, using the binoculars, we had as good of view of the rim as standing beside it. Surprisingly, even though it was the busy Christmas break season and there were a lot of people in the hotel, we had the pool area to ourselves. Naturally we arrived back in Kitchener in time for Al to make the Ranger game.
2012 will see a number of new members arrive in the families of several of our Squid readers, that I know of. Doug and Sue are to be first time grandparents in January, courtesy of Ryan and Lauren (expecting a girl). Sylvia will have a new granddaughter when her son Peter and Nicole have their first child. Karin’s niece, Beth & Jackie’s cousin, is also expecting. We hope the New Year will be good not just for the new parents but to each and every one of you. May it bring you renewed good health, a happy family and personal life, enough prosperity that you need not worry, and God’s many blessings. Happy New Year!
Carol & Al
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Willow’s Christmas
Willow, our adopted dog has long since comfortably settled in to her “pack” since arriving 17 months ago. When the Christmas decorations started showing up and the Christmas tree moved indoors she madly started playing with all her toys. About 3 days before Christmas, she was amazed to discover a red Borg Christmas stocking with a “Hedgehog” peeking out under the Christmas tree. She knew it was for her but didn’t remove it from the bottom of the tree waiting patiently for permission.
On Christmas Eve, we joined Warren, Rochelle, Rochelle’s daughter and son and his fiancé for an enjoyable evening at their place. When we got home, Willow rushed out into the garage to meet us and then rushed up the stairs directly to the tree. She could wait no longer! Grabbing her stocking, she charged back into the living room to pull the toy out. Bonus, it had 16 embedded squeakers! A blue squeaker ball also rolled out but she would not have anything to do with it as she was focused on the Hedgehog. We decided that we should put the ball away, so back it went into the stocking.
With Hedgehog squealing as she raced up and down the hallway, chaos ensued.
She put on the same show when Ryan and Lauren arrived shortly thereafter showing off her prize.
The next morning she discovered the stocking complete with squeaker that led to a noisy start to the day. She has played happily with these two new prizes and in fact the stocking is now in taters, the ball doesn’t make noise any more but a number of squeakers have survived her jaws to date.
Willow had a great Christmas!
‘The Wife’
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THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
I bet you’re all thinking “Thank goodness this is the last time I’ll have to read the BS written by that blowhard Greg!” sorry to disappoint you, but it’s only the last time for the year 2011! Hahaha… I fully intend to keep on boring the hell out of you with my BS for another 500 issues if Doug’ll let me! Something tells me he’ll be more than willing to keep me on as a writing partner just so you’ll have something to read that makes his compositions seem interesting! LOL! We’ve been trying our best we really have over the past 500 issues and can only hope that the ideas for our weekly submissions keep on coming! There are times indeed that we draw blanks and I’m sure it’s been obvious to many of you when you happen on a column on a Saturday morning that reads like a “Dick and Jane” kids book from Mrs Russell’s kindergarten class! Oh well, we can only hope that you, our readers, will understand that we can’t write like a Hemmingway every week!
For instance, this week is one of those weeks that the idea machine just isn’t in high gear but there’s not much I can do but hope my fingers are connected to my brain enough to make some sense out of the electrons being sent their way from up above! There is a load of news items that occurred over the past year that we could talk about but every one that comes to mind has already been beaten to death by the media and it just isn’t worth rehashing all that bad news! It sure would be nice if the news media would make a point of featuring at least one “Happy” story in every broadcast, just to lighten the mood. I don’t know how you all feel but I like to keep current by watching the news each evening but it sure gets me down when all they seem to have to report are gloom and doom stories. Let’s hope that in the coming New Year they will be able to find a truck load of “Happy” stories to fill their news broadcasts with so as to lighten the mood of the people that tune in to watch each evening! I know it’s important to report all the news as it happens around the word but surly to gosh there must be more than one happy story every five news broadcasts somewhere in the world!
If nothing else maybe they could hire one of Bob Hopes old joke writers to come up with a “one liner” to toss into the middle of the evening news just to give us a chuckle now and then!
Well, with all that said, I’m looking forward to the New Year 2012 and I sure hope it’s a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous one for all you fine Squamidian members!
I have a feeling it’s going to be a great year and hopefully the world will be a better and more peaceful place in which to live starting with the next twelve months! With a couple of wars ending in the Middle East and only one new one started, peace is edging forward ever so slowly. As long as “Kim Jong Un” can keep his cool and not be the fool his father was maybe things will settle down in Korea, both north and south. What the world does not need is an escalation of the problems between those two countries. It’s time they started “Westernizing” their nations by reaching for the American dream! Look what it’s done for the USA!
Well, maybe they can just become two truly peaceful nations and get along without longing to become a Korean “Donald Trump”! I think they can leave that up to the new China!
With the last 24 hrs of 2011 approaching the count down, it’s time to call an end to The Ontarion Reports of this year.
That’s it for this report and this year!
Thanks for tuning in and I look forward to talking to you all again next year in “The 2012 Ontarion Reports”!
Please hang in with us and I sincerely hope you all continue to enjoy reading our literary efforts for as long as we can manage to pump them out and send them your way!
Thanks again everyone and I wish you all a “VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR”!
Bye for now… Greg
PS: Something To Think About>
Try to do one good deed each week for the coming year!
You will be rewarded for sure!
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Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.