The Squamidian Report – May 19 / 12

 

Issue #521

 

Including:

The Ontarion

 

Hi All,

 

I wish I had a camera with high quality telescopic lens like one of my friends has. His is called a ‘spy camera’ because it can zoom in on things that are miles away and capture images that are incredibly crisp and clear. You can recognize faces from a mile away. Anyway, I’m not that into photography so I wouldn’t actually want something like that but I’d like to have one for just long enough to take some pictures of the cornices along the high ridges across from us. We’ve had some beautifully clear sunny days lately and so the snowpack in the mountains across the valley stands out vividly. The snow along the ridges overhangs like a giant cliff, very visible to the un-aided eye and spectacular through binoculars etc. I have no way of knowing just how deep these cornices are or how far they are overhanging the ridges but when I visually compare them to the trees further down on the mountain sides, the trees loose by a factor of 3 or more. The snow depth up there is at least 3 times the height of the trees below. Would not want to be on or under one of these when they give way. It would be a wild ride.

 

Change of topic… we take the dog out for a nice walk every morning. The walk is more for us but the dog is the excuse. Anyway, lately we have been stalked by an attack cat. No, not a big wild cougar, a little half grown kitty-cat that live in one of the houses we pass on our way. It looks to be about 8 months old and is a skinny little grey thing full of energy and devoid of fear. This little cat seems to enjoy taunting Willow who is hard wired to nail any small creature that gets within reach of her big jaws. That makes it all the more entertaining when the cat comes dancing sideways down its driveway as Willow quivers with anticipation of a nice juicy cat snack. But Willow never gets the cat because we have a good hold on her leash, and the cat scoots into and out of the ditch, just beyond reach. Just when Willow can’t stand it anymore, the cat disappears, gone with no hint as to where it went. Then as if to further taunt the poor dog, the cat is suddenly behind her, dancing sideways as if to be saying “na na na” or what ever a cat would be saying. The cat has discovered that it can use the culvert under the driveway as a secret passage, a way to confuse and bemuse its victims. What really drive the dog nuts at about that point is that the cat is very, very friendly and usually rolls onto its back to have a belly rub from which ever human can be convinced to supply said rub. By then the dogs hard wired brain is about ready to explode and we have to drag her away where she can return to a normal mental state and get on with her walk.

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I wish I could say we are having a nice warm sunny long weekend but I  can’t. We are staying consistent with the last 3 years or so where we tend to sit several degrees below normal. Now the interesting thing with being consistently below normal is that ‘normal’ is relative and to stay consistently below it, the average temperature is actually falling while staying the same number of degrees below the target figure. It’s the way averages work and numbers work. The ‘normal’ temperature for a given date is an average of that date’s temperature over the past set number of years. Each time a given date posts a below normal temperature, it pulls down that dates average temp. So, if we were to sit consistently at, oh, lets say 2 degrees below normal, we would actually be getting colder as the average for that date would be dropping and the 2 degrees would be in relationship to that dropping number. What it means is that anyone wanting to enjoy the long weekend will be doing it in the cold and the wet. The rains are moving back in as well.

 

We actually had a nice warm sunny weekend last week, but warm is relative to the ‘normal’ numbers. It was nice though except for the fact that the ever greedy gas companies took full advantage of the one and only nice weekend of the year so far and jumped the gas prices way, way up. There was no reason for it at all, oil prices have been steadily dropping and gas prices are way down in the US states just below us. However, the gas supplied to the north west US states comes out of Alberta and for some reason we pay to subsidies their low prices. Once the sunny weekend was over, the local prices fell back down, but not all the way back down. ‘They’ sure have figured out how to con us, raise the price for a week, then drop it a bit and we are all happy because prices are down but still higher than two weeks ago and we are too stupid to realize it.

 

doug

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THE ONTARION REPORT

 

Hello everyone!

 

For those of you who liked or loved “Disco” back in the 70’s, Thursday was a sad day. Donna Summer “Queen of Disco” passed away as a result of Cancer. She was 63 years of age and lived in Naples Florida with her husband and three daughters. The world of music will dearly miss her talent!

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Well, here we go, diving head long into the May Two-Four weekend and this year it promises to be a hot and sunny weekend indeed! Unlike many of the May 2-4 weekends in the past that I can remember being wet and cold and thus uneventful, this one looks like it’ll be a wonderful chance to get outside and enjoy all the pleasures of a beautiful spring weekend! Those of you who have cottages will undoubtedly be enjoying this occasion while opening the cottage for the summer. It’s still fun I’m sure even if you do have to open the cottage and do all those chore-like projects while trying not to let them get you down! I’m sure with the sun shining there won’t be too many grumpy cottagers or weekend celebrants that will spend their time in the sun begrudging the few things that would normally seem like work. After all, one can always stop whatever it is they’re doing and take a seat and enjoy a beverage with their family or friends around the campfire. Even if you don’t leave your home to head to a cottage or a beach somewhere you can make a point of just relaxing and enjoying the weekend doing nothing! It’s always more fun on such an occasion to make an effort to do something special with family and or friends. You can sit in your own back yard and enjoy some company or you can pack up and head to the nearest beach.

 

I can remember several May 2-4 weekends when I was a teenager (Man, that’s going waaay back!) when we’d load the car with friends and booze and head for Grand Bend on Lake Huron! “The Bend” as it was affectionately known was the “In Spot” to be back in the late 60’s on May 2-4! My favourite memory of a Weekend in May at “The Bend” was back in 1967 when I was good friends with the band members of The Copperpenny a local rock band that was really big at the time. Rich Wamil was the keyboard player and one of the lead vocalists in the band and also a class mate of mine at KCI. We became friends in grade 10 and we are still good friends and incidentally neighbours. He lives and his wife live just around the corner from us to this day. That particular year I was fortunate enough to be the bus driver for The “Penny” as we called them. They asked if I would fill in on occasion when their regular driver was unable to make a gig. I happened to be a fill in for him on their weekend at The Bend on May 2-4/67.

 

We had so much fun just driving from here to Grand Bend in their old 1957 school bus that seemed to be on it’s last legs every time we went somewhere. We made it to The Bend and settled in at The Colonial Hotel where they were booked to play all weekend. We actually stayed in 4 cottages if you can call them that, out behind The Colonial. They were damp and stinky and filled with spider webs mosquitoes but at least the bedding and sheets were clean when we got there! That particular year was one of the hot and sunny years for this special weekend. The Coppepenny was the hottest band in town that weekend and of course the Colonial was packed to the rafters every night! Only two of the guys in the band were of age to drink and I of course was one that was not legal at the time. We drank like idiots and carried on like the young bounders we were back then and really had a ball! During the day we’d walk the main drag of The Bend and sample the food and booze at every vending spot on the strip. Come Monday I had to stop drinking around noon so I could drive the bus home to KW after midnight while all the guys in the band were either passed out or sleeping the weekend off. I managed to behave myself and didn’t drink anything after about 2pm Monday but I made up for the lack of beer by taking advantage of all the free food the Colonial supplied to the band members and me as their guests and entertainment all weekend. They always had great food at the Colonial and it was the rockinest joint on the Lake Huron coast in those days. We managed to make it home by around 3am Tuesday and I think I slept for three days straight to catch up! LOL! I can’t remember all the fun things we did that weekend but I do remember it as the best of the 5 or 6 May 2-4’s I spent at The Bend in my high school years and a couple thereafter! They played The Colonial four nights straight that weekend from Friday to Monday and I think they made a whopping $2000.00 for their efforts. I figured I was being paid food, drink and accommodations for my driving the band bus that weekend and wasn’t expecting anything more. After all, it was just so cool being part of that experience with such a famous (at the time) band that I’d have paid for all my own food and drink etc anyway! Their manager Dick Wendling from DRAM Productions surprised me with a cheque for $100.00 the following Friday when I was watching The Penny play at “The Purple Peanut” in downtown Kitchener. I was shocked but that hundred bucks was a heck of a lot of money in 1967. I managed to pay my car insurance with that “Hundred” so the weekend and all that fun really turned out to be worthwhile indeed!

 

Well, I think I’ll end this week’s column at this point and say, “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>

I would like you all to know that I am not proud of all the drinking I did as an underage teen but at the time it was just the thing to do! We all got lucky in those days and nobody I knew had any serious problems resulting from our carrying on with the drinking and driving! I’m sure it still goes on with the youth of today and I had my share of experiences with booze related crashes and deaths once I was on the Fire Dept. Every time I responded to such an incident I thanked God I’d made it through my foolish drinking days without being one of the victims of such a fool hearty act as drinking and driving!

Here’s hoping you all have a Happy and Safe May 2-4 weekend! Enjoy!

PPS: I still don’t remember how I got that black eye that I woke up with on Sunday morning! Hmmmm…?

 

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Have a good one..

the doug

http://www.thedougsite.net

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