What next? And other things.

What next? I ask. What next indeed. Today it is snowing, we had about 2 feet of snow over night and the backdoor is blocked, fortunately the front door is openable, if we need to go out, but I doubt that we will. K is not working today, so we will spend the day together, something we haven't done in a while it seems. It is nice when you find someone that you can be with in silence, no words are necessary, but then again you can talk about anything that comes to mind. I am sure that today we will cover numerous topics, including her ex, her cousins, her daughter, her mother, my mother, my neice, my BIL, the snow. But it is all good. Just being together is the most important part of it all, and being snowed in makes it just that much better, no one will drop in, and there is no reason to go out. Well except I should shovel off the deck, but that can wait till it stops snowing. My car is completely buried too LOL! Just as well we won't be driving that for a few more months eh?

So what is next? Well I guess more waiting. Waiting for Immigration to reach my part of the priority pile. I had to laugh last night when they were saying that they would expedite the immigration for those people from Asia who suffered in the tsunami. At the end of the report, having said that they were going to expedite the immigration applications, they then said that people would be able to move here in a year! Which is probably about right. I wonder if I have to wait another 6 months before I hear anything? I hope not, I really do hope not. I think it is about time that the Canadian government made a decision about what they want here, because having reduced the requirements for immigration in an attempt at inducing more people to want to come here, they are now so backed up that it is taking some people 2 or 3 years to get their paperwork! Which is ridiculous! Why aren't the government taking on more officials to deal with the extra applications that they themselves have caused? Oh yes come to Canada, it is even easier to immmigrate here now! You only need to score 67 points on our eligibility scale to come in! Instead of the previous 75! Of course it will take 5 years before you can come in! It is quicker to get a green card in the States! So we will continue to wait. For as long as it takes. To live on the edge of poverty, K can't earn enough to pay our bills, so we have to live off savings, in the meantime there is nothing that I can do to earn money, so I have to sit at home, not spending, which isn't difficult, and wait. Perhaps I could learn to twiddle my thumbs.

Dogs in the Snow

Yesterday we drove MIL back home, we didn't stop long as the roads were pretty slippery, and there was frozen fog making visibility not great. On the way back, we were only about 50km along when we spotted a dog sitting at the side of the road. In the middle of nowhere! No houses anywhere in sight, no cars stopped, nothing. So we stopped, and opened the car door, when the dog promptly leapt in! Then we realised that there was another dog sitting off in the snow. Both dogs got into the car and we decided to head off towards civilization. The dogs were very well behaved, they sat calmly and quietly on the back seat as we drove along. We went about 15km till we came to a police station. Both dogs were well fed, well cared for, they clearly had their teeth cleaned regularly, and were well behaved. Neither dog was covered in snow, considering it was -20 degrees out, they weren't even that cold. It was pretty obvious that they hadn't had to walk far because their feet and legs weren't covered in snow or ice, and we wondered if they had been dumped off! Anyway, the police were able to trace the owners because one of the dogs had a tattoo in her ear. The policeman commented that he knew the owners and that they were "good people", but I have to ask the question how did the dogs get there? Why were they there? And what the hell were the owners doing letting the dogs run out to the highway (transcanada) in -20 degree weather?

Of course this time of year there are bound to be any number of dogs and cats abandoned, mainly due to being bought at Christmas without the purchaser realising how much time and effort a pet takes. Just another drain on the already overstretched public servants that make up the police and pet rescue places.

Random Thoughts

I just phoned the car hire company to let them know that we will be keeping the car for another couple of days, we will be taking MIL back tomorrow, so will return the car Thursday, and there was no reply! I expect that they are not open today, which is weird considering I was supposed to take the car back today, and haven't paid for it yet! But that is up to them. So I left a message after the beeps, if that was an answer phone, and if it wasn't then that is not my problem. But it is a little weird that they don't have a proper answerphone, or that they are closed on that day. There was no mention of it when I took the car out!

Anyway, today we are going to head into town to a Dim Sum restaurant in China Town, to see what it is like. If it doesn't work out we will go to the Forks for lunch. We will go to the Forks anyway, because MIL loves it there. It is a very nice place I have to admit. It reminds me of Covent Garden in London, except it is indoors, and much cleaner. But the idea is still there. Apparently we will be heading up the tower so that MIL can look out at the snow covered scenery. She loves the snow. I think that she was secretly hoping to be snowed in here, but we haven't had that much snow. Anyway, we will take her there today, and hopefully she will have a good time. She doesn't want to be a pain in the bum (she says) but doesn't realise that she isn't being a pain, we enjoy doing stuff like that too. Last night we went to the Winter Wonderland Lights, out at the Red River Exhibition Park. She was on the verge of saying that she didn't want to go, but I said I wanted to go, so we went. She had a good time. It was a very beautiful display too, much better than the one I went to in Maryland 2 years ago. The light displays were more solid looking, and less bent into shape looking. They had a lot of new ones too, which was nice as MIL and K had been last year. But I suspect that you wouldn't get bored of seeing the lights even if they were the same every year. The car ahead of us was taking pictures of the lights, but they had the flash on! So I expect that their pics will come out looking like the lights aren't on! LOL talk about dumb.

Samantha came by today, but didn't ask for food, she has been stealing the food that we put out for the bunny, and just now the HUGEST crow/raven came by and took some of the bread that is out there. So the animals are happy too. Joy to the world.

All Done

That's it for another year. The presents unwrapped, cooed over, and put away. The turkey eaten, demolished actually, and the last of the Christmas desserts sitting in the fridge waiting to be finished off. Now we are in that anticlimactic period between Christmas and New Year, when there isn't really anything to do but sit around. Well that is not strictly true, we will be taking my MIL to look at the lights tonight. There is a huge display of lights, arranged in pretty scenes, on the outskirts of town, so we will drive out there tonight. I hope that it will not be too long a day for her, she is getting slower with time. But it will be a nice evening none the less.

We were planning on having New Year with our neighbour, she invited herself over (LOL), but now has made other plans, so I am not sure what we will do. I am not a big an of New Year, I always thought it was overblown. As a kid I would sit home and watch TV on my own, as my parents were out partying, and my sister was out partying. That was fine by me. Sometimes I would even go to bed before midnight. I remember for many years watching the end of year Old Grey Whistle Test on the BBC. It was always a peaceful way to spend the evening as I recall. No pomp and circumstance, no false hopes to be shattered. I guess that was it more than anything else, the knowledge that you hoped things would be different, and they never were. Nothing changes on the 1st January, except the year! I have tried to make resolutions, but they are always forgotten by the 2nd, so what is the point? The only resolution I remember making was when I was 20 and resolved to give up smoking, it lasted a week. I think that was when I stopped making them. But that doesn't mean that people shouldn't look forward to the New Year, there is always the hope that it will bring about change. Not on a global scale of course, but even on a small, personal scale, change may come about if you want it to. And if everyone in the world resolved to stop disagreeing with other people, perhaps global change would occur. But then again, it is so unlikely as to not even be worth thinking about.

So on that cheerful note, with a warm glow in my heart, I wish you all a peaceful week while you wait for the celebrations that are upcoming this weekend. Whatever you decide to do, I hope you stay safe and warm. And of course happy.

Merry Christmas

It is finally the big day. We are in the middle of the round of phone calls, my mother in law is still sleeping, and there is a beautiful blue sky, bright sun, and glistening snow outside the house to cheer us up. What a wonderful time of year. No matter what your religion or origin, if you live in the West you will be bombarded by Christmas. Which of course is just another of the Pagan holidays incorporated into the Christian Calendar by the Romans as they made non-believers follow their doctrines. But let's not dwell upon the past, let's look to the future. Because Christmas, Winter Solstice, Hannukah, whatever you celebrate at this time of year, is a forward looking celebration. People wish for good things to happen, for peace to reign on earth, and for the poor and needy people of this world to get a solution to their problems. Of course it will never happen as long as there is money. People who have lots of it want more, and people who have none, need more. But I digress. My MIL is up and about, I am about to emtpy the dryer of the laundry, then it will be present opening time! K is desperate to open her presents, and I am intrigued to know what is wrapped inside the glittery paper bedecked with ribbons and bows.

So no matter what you are celebrating this year, give of yourself freely, think of others before you think of yourself, and open your hearts and minds to the opinions and beliefs of others.

Sleeping like a baby

My mother in law is sleeping. This might not seem strange, being as it is 2.30pm and she is 87, but when you put it into context it is. She didn't get out of bed until 11am this morning! When she did finally appear K had gone to work, and I was about to go out for the Christmas sprouts. I guess as you get older you revert to your old sleeping habits, ie those of a small child, sleeping at every available opportunity, even when you don't really need to sleep. It is ok, I am making cookies for the mailman, finishing off the florentines that K made yesterday (coating them in chocolate), and doing a few odds and ends around the house getting ready for Christmas.

Oh, here is my vent for the day! I had to go and get air put into the tires on this dumb rental car that I have. One of the tires was all but flat! I know that it was a cheap car, but honestly. And I have the feeling that the transmission is about to die on it too. I put my foot down at the tire place and nothing happened. Now admittedly the parking lot was covered in snow and ice, but I think that the wheels should have at least spun around some! Maybe they did, and "The Christmas Shoes" was playing so loudly that I didn't hear the wheel spin. That bloody song will be the death of me I swear. I think I have mentioned it before. Oh and I remembered the name of that band that plays those god-awful Christmas tunes on the cheap radio stations, Manheim Steamroller! ARGH! That I can do with out! And Kenny G!!!! So now I have to go and retune the radio, get on with the cookies, and then check out if my MIL wants a cup of tea.

Later

Have a safe journey

Yesterday my mother in law travelled a short 220 km on a greyhound bus to join us for the festivities. Ordinarily I would have rented a car and driven over to pick her up, but she insisted that she would be ok on the bus. Well the bus must have been on its last legs, that or the heater had died and the driver had tried some imaginative plumbing to fix the problem, because she said that the fumes from the engine were blowing into the bus through the heating vent. The stench of diesel eventually, and inevitably, made her sick, fortunately (if you can use that word) she was only a short distance from her destination, and so didn't have to sit on the bus much longer, but at her age this was a very distressing thing to happen. I have often sat on buses where the fumes from the exhaust seem to be blowing directly into the passenger compartment, and I have never understood why that would be. You would think that the bus companies would want to make sure that their passengers were comfortable, more specifically that they didn't get sick! But I guess profits override all other concerns. She is ok, she was fine by the time she got to the house, ate a huge dinner and went to bed to read her book, so no long lasting damage was done. Other than to her pride, and I suspect to her dignity. I think she is realising that she is getting older and is no longer able to do the things that she used to be able to do easily. We are wondering if she is eating properly too, so we will look into meals on wheels, and getting a maid to come in and clean the house for her every so often. It is a fact of life that we grow old, and it seems increasingly more common for families to post old people in homes, but in this instance it would be the worst thing to happen, because my mother in law is very independent, and she likes her own space. As long as she is able to, we want her to stay in her apartment building, where all the old ladies have lived for years, they have known each other for 30 years, and look out for each other. Hopefully my papers will come through in the not too distant future and we will be able to drive over to see her once a month or so. So if you are into that sort of thing, could you pray for us? Put in a good word with the man upstairs. Thanks.

If you are travelling to be with your family this year, please take care, arrive in good shape. And have a good time with the people you are with, because you don't know how much longer it will last.

Research before you buy

In this day and age, with the internet they way it is, there really is no excuse for not doing research on something before you invest money in it. Several times recently I have visited web sites that have virtual tours on them, this is a nice idea, expecially for home sales, or people who are proud of their houses, work place whatever. Today I went to a web site for a store that sells essential oils. We have purchased oils from them in the past. They have one of these virtual tours of their store, restaurant and health and beauty salon on the top floor of their building. Just out of interest I went to the home page of the company that does these virtual tours, I am guessing that they provide the hardware to create the tour, and then host it on their server, and on the front page they proclaim how proud they are to be supporters of the local hunting and shooting club here in Winnipeg! Not only that, if you click on the link to find out more about the company, you get to read an essay on how the CEO of the company loves hunting and killing things, and indeed was only 12 years old when he killed his first whitetail! Now I understand that people enjoy the (so called) sport of hunting, I myself come from a family of country bred people for whom hunting was a sport, a necessity in some instances to keep the rabbit population down, and I am not saying that I think it is an abhorance that should be banned from the face of the earth, I realise that in certain cicumstances hunting is the best way to keep down the population of animals that have become a pest in the local environment. What I object to is this so called healthy, peace loving, gentle and spiritual group who call themselves apothecrists are appearing to condone the unnecessary sport of klling deer in Manitoba! I know that deer aren't a pest here, because unlike in Maryland, where deer were omnipresent ( even have antler marks on my car to prove it), I do not see deer on the sides of the roads in town! The only animal that might be considered a pest in Winnipeg is the squirrel, because there are so many of them! Even if hunting is a sport that people should be left to enjoy (yeah ok) a group of healthy, peace loving people should not be happy about being linked to a group that so clearly admires the ability to kill a defenseless animal using a high technology rifle. Clearly the apothecary did not bother to look into the background of the company they hired, or more likely the web design company that designed their web site hired. Which brings me to my initial point, that with the internet the way it is today there is no excuse for researching before purchasing! Especially when you are tryig to present your services and products to the world!

Or am I alone in this thought? Do people use the internet to its fullest extent? Do people care enough to worry about what someone else represents, and how using their services might affect their public face? I am beginning to wonder.

Why?

Why is my ex boss such a moron? Why are *all* my ex bosses morons? Is it me? I am now the boss, and I am wondering if my people will think I am as stupid as I have thought my bosses have been. It is a worry! This last boss has been on my case about writing up a paper of the work that I completed while working for him. Well I didn't have all the information, I was waiting to get data from another group, now he has decided that the guy who preceeded me, there were 2 years between us, and I should combine our data to produce one paper, instead of two separate ones. Well fine, ok, whatever. But then he has the nerve to send me the outline of this paper. He has to be joking! There isn't a journal in the world that will print a paper with 10 figures!!!!!! He tells me that my figures are the first 4, ok great, but then at least two of the other 6 figures will include my data, will he be expecting me to generate those figures too? He also wrote to say that I was expected to write up my section of the paper, and get it to him as soon as possible. Well excuse me, but I still don't have the data from the other group, they were supposed to get it to me in September, here it is in December already and I am still waiting, and whenever I contact them about it they say, oh yes, the tech is away, she will get it done when she gets back! So here I sit waiting. While my brain dead ex boss thinks that I am procrastinating and not getting on with the work that he is expecting me to do! I dont know, maybe I am being unreasonable, but I just don't get where his head is at.

P.S.

I forgot to say that Inglis have generously offered to replace the defective grill/roasting pan! Mind you we have to mail it to their offices in Mississauga, and they will send another by return. So it will still end up costing us money. Well not necessarily, I will email the woman and tell her that we find her company very generous, and hope that they will be refunding up the cost of postage. Watch this space for further developments.

Sunday

Sunday. Cold. Snowing. Windy. Not going out today. We have to clean the house anyway. My MIL is arriving on Tuesday evening. So I just rented a car, from a place called Value Rentals! That is if they have a car. They are the cheapest in town by far, the next closest is 50 bucks more for the week. And as we aren't sure how much driving around we need to do, it isn't worth paying the extra money. It is annoying that car rentals are so high, it will still cost us the best part of 200 bucks for the week, which is a ridiculous amount of money to have to spend IMHO, but without it we are dependent on friends and cousins to drive us around, and after a while you start to feel userous. Of course, the car rental places have to make money, but at this time of year they are probably renting a lot of cars out to insurance claim people. With the roads being slippery and dangerous there are lots of collisions, and people need to rent a car while their own is being fixed. But that shouldn't drive the cost of renting up.

Happy Sunday.

Dear Aardvark Al

The rabbit is not a pet, she is wild, or feral. Which is a weird word because it always makes me think of an animal with its teeth bared and foamy saliva dripping onto the ground, which doesn't really apply to a rabbit. Or a tortoise! I met a feral orange box tortoise once, well several times actually, when I lived in Maryland USA. I called her Sally and we would visit in the morning as I was walking through the National Park to my office. She disappeared later in the summer, and I was worried that the lawn mowing Mexicans might have run her down. I didn't think about it too much though. But back to the feral rabbit. She has been nibbling on the cabbage leaves quite happily I think, quite a lot of it has gone now.

As to your other question. I am going to assume that you have never actually driven the TransCanada from Ontario going west, because if you have you would know that you come to a HUGE sign that says Welcome To Friendly Manitoba! You then drive for two or three days, depending on how fast you dare go, before you reach Saskatchewan. Winnipeg is about half way across the Province, you can't miss it because you will literally drive into it, unless you take a wrong turn. Which is difficult, but I guess if you think you are in Saskatchewan you could very well mistake one of the farm roads for a continuation of TransCanada. Alternatively, you could take a map of North America (including the US) measure from side to side and top to bottom, then work out where the center of the map is, and there is Winnipeg :-D I would invite you to visit, but the fewer people who find out how wonderful this place is, the better IMHO. The city is about as big as it can afford to be without causing problems for the infrastructure. Well I guess you can come and spend your tourist dollars here. We do a great line in ice sculptures.

Hope your Christmas is fun and entertaining! And thanks for your email.

Amazing

Not only did Carnation email me to say that they will send me coupons to the value of the disgustingly salty hot chocolate drink that we bought, but Inglis got back to me about that bloody roasting pan! They said that they only use the highest quality products when manufacturing their products, and that their pan should not have had sharp edges like that! So if I would like to send the pan back they will replace it free of charge. I am more amazed that they wrote to me at all, let alone want to replace the pan. Mind you we have to send the pan to Mississauga, which will cost money, so we will be out of pocket! In the meantime, the nice French lady from the Inglis helpline hasn't come back to me yet. But I guess you can't have it all eh?

It is warm here today, +4 degrees, and Samantha has been out and about. In addition the rabbit has had a quick chew at the cabbage leaf that I left out there the other week! Samantha came and ate all the bread that K had left out for her, and then came and begged for more food, so I put out some sunflower seeds for her, she ate them all. LOL

Now I will go and check to see if the glue has dried on my end table, nail the legs back on and hopefully it won't be quite as shaky as it was!

Happy weekend to you all! Oh reminds me, I better go and phone my mother in law, find out when she is coming to stay.

Disposable Appliances

We recently bought a new stove. The old one died on us when the bake element went up in flames, and although I could have fixed that problem, there were numerous other problems with it and so we decided to just get a new one. After searching the internet, we chose an Inglis, because it has a coil top, is not a self cleaning oven, and is in our price range. Better still we got it in a Future Shop sale! So it was delivered. But damaged, there was a box cutter scrape on it, a big one, and the bake element was bent. Added to that it was incredibly unstable, amazingly so, even though I adjusted the feet as much as was possible, we still wondered if it was going to fall over on us. So we called for a replacement which duly arrived, and was in good condition. But then my wife cut herself quite badly whilst cleaning the grill/roasting pan, the edges of which were incredibly sharp, so we relagated that to the back of the cupboard, and thanked the stars that it wasn't her bad hand that had been cut. But then a single chicken breast, roasting in the oven, created so much splatter that the entire inside of the oven is coated in sticky brown stuff that won't come off even with Easy Off oven cleaner! In the meantime, it took over an hour for one chicken leg to cook properly! So I tried to follow the instructions on how to recalibrate the oven, and followed them carefully, but of course it didn't work. So I just called up Inglis, well Whirlpool, who own Inglis. The woman was as helpful as she could be, but her instructions were the same as mine, and of course didn't work, so she is going to have to call me back.. Yeah right. Well I won't hold my breath on that one. Anyway, the oven still needs to be cleaned, so we will have to try something else to get the gunk off, but what I want to know is, why are kitchen appliances like this made so cheaply? We paid over 400 bucks for this one, and it was 150 bucks off, so it isn't the bottom of the range (no pun intended) and yet we are already thinking that we will have to get a new one in a few years time! We would probably send this one back to Future Shop now, except for the fact that we can't afford a more expensive one, and it is nearly Christmas! But honestly, it is aggravating that we are put to this trouble, when we have forked out money on a big ticket item like this.

The woman also said that we should be able to just use regular oven cleaner, and that we have the wrong care and use booklet to go with our new stove. I am about to go out, so I don't expect her to call me back. We will just have to add 15 degrees on to all our cooking temperatures!

Daily Disappointment

Why is it that people can't keep their word? When they say they will do something, why do they then turn around a day or three later and say, "oh yes I know I said I would do that, but I have changed my mind."? And why is it always business that it affects? I am trying to start up my own business and I get clients, who are all gungho about using my services, I talk to them about the advantages of using a company to do the hard work for them, the ease of getting the work done, and they are all gung ho! "Yes yes" they cry, and then nothing, no contact that was promised. Or as just happened to me yesterday, I had even written up a quote for this one company, set it all out, started to work on the conceptual basis, and then they turn around and say, "oh we have decided to wait until after Christmas now." I just know that they will continue to put me off until I give up asking. Well I guess it was a good idea, it just isn't going to come to anything.

So I now have to come up with another money spinning idea. Perhaps I can shovel snow for the neighbours, 10 bucks a time for the paths. Do you think I would make much? LOL No me either.

But the sun is shining, glistening off the snow in the garden, there is little or no wind, so I will walk over to the pharmacy to pick up a fresh supply of medication, and buy some chocolate on the way home, then veg with Dr. Phil and Oprah this afternoon. Oh but wait, I have to clean the stove, and cook supper, which reminds me I have to get the chicken out of the freezer. Hmm, well perhaps I can still get some sofa time in, in between the chores. Ain't life great?

If you have 5 bucks, or even a loony to spare, please send it my way, all donations gratefully received.

Thanks.

A lack of simplicity on the net.

It is Saturday afternoon, well almost evening, and I am sitting here watching the garden get dark as the wind blows the snow around. It isn't that cold outside, only -4, and in about a hour my lovely wife will be home from work. So what have I been doing today? Well I have been surfing around the internet looking at web site designs. I would have thought that companies that design web sites would be aware of the fact that most of the world is still on dial up! But no, they are obssessed with flashy, all singing all dancing web sites, and these damned stupid things take forever to download at 44kbps (which is, let's face it, about as good as you can expect on a 56kbps modem). Hopefully the company will have a little link that you can locate rapidly and click through the flash homepage to the information. But more often than not these days, I guess people are getting fed up of paying thousands of dollars for flash animation that no one ever sees, there is not skip link! So you have to wait for it to download, the listen to the stupid jingle skipping around, as the image moves and dances happily across your screen.

That is not really the worst of it though. Once you manage to get past that stupid flash animation, you are presented with a web site that is so complicated you are lucky if you can even identify the company logo! There will be screeds of links, that their web master considers to be so important that they have to be there on the front page! There will be loads of tiny little print, that you can't read to tell if it is important or not, and invariably they will have overidden the users ability to increase the size of the text (hello people, not everyone who uses the net is 22 with 20/20 vision!) so you have no choice but to strain your eyes trying to read it, or ignore it at your own risk. Let's imagine that you came to this site to investigate the product or service that this company has advertised as providing. Can you quickly and easily locate the information you came for? Of course not, because if you just went straight to that information you would miss all of the wonderful coding that the web master has spent so long working on! All those lovely graphics that s/he created in image ready, and all the quirky little css, javascript and flash atrributes that make the page look as complicated and intimidating as it does. Severa times I have actually given up looking for something on a site, and written to the webmaster to tell them that the site design has put me off purchasing their product/service! OF course the web master doesn't care, they are paid regardless of whether the site is effective or not.

It is interesting to me that way back when people first started to make their own sites, and were using stuff like blinking text (OMG) and flashing images, and quirky little gifs that they had downloaded from freeicons.com, there was great outcry at all that movement being distracting! Take it off! Don't make the text blink at me! They cried as one. Then came along better technology, more complicated web design software, and all of a sudden movement, flashing and jumping images are all the rage again! I know that fads go around in circles, except perhaps parachute pants and the bob, but when did complicated be more attractive than simple? I don't know! I haven't yet met anyone who uses the net daily, who likes all that flashy stuff, and yet we are bombarded with it on almost every page we visit. Worse yet are the people who insist on having music playing on their site! ARGH!!! Admittedly it is better than the computer generated stuff that we used to have, and you can now have MPEG's of Ozzie singing the Star Spangled Banner, but come on people, who wants to wait for the music file to download before they can click away from that page? And what makes you think that music enhances your site? Whose HTML class were you in when you learned that little gem?

I had better start thinking about supper, if you have any ideas on what to do with hamburger, please feel free to let me know.

Feliz Navidad

Afternoon

It is getting close to Christmas, that wonderful time of year when we all bow down and worship the god of commercialism. I recently tried to buy a congratulations card for my niece, and couldn't find anything other than Christmas cards in the stores. I asked one of the assistants, and she looked at me as if I had spoken to her in Swahili. Ok thank you! I finally got one in the grocery store! But this is the price we pay I guess. That and having to listen to awful music like "The Christmas Shoes". ARGH I hate that song. Not quite as much as "Christmas Eve in Washington". That one had me running for the radio covering my ears and yelling lalalalalalala to drown it out! I lived in Washington DC for 4 years, and for a whole month between Thanksgiving and Christmas one of the local radio stations would play nothing but Christmas music. Which was fine, except that they only had a limited play list, and that bloody Christmas eve in Washington was at the top of the list, so probably came on once an hour! That and the Little Drummer Boy! Oh man is that song ever over played? When you consider how many great songs, and singers there are out there, I have to wonder why a radio station would play songs by tacky session singers? At least the radio station here in the Peg plays a decent selection of Christmas music.

And why does every shop you go into have Christmas musak playing over the PA? Crap musak, played on the xylophone, or worse still, computer generated! Every shop has different musak playing, and sometimes so loudly that you are bombarded from all directions by several different songs at once. No wonder people get frantic! I have to admit though, I do love the atmosphere of Christmas. It took me a long time to get over hating Christmas because of the trauma of living with abusive parents who got worse at Christmas, but nowadays I enjoy the season.

Now I love the giving, and receiving of gifts, when and only if, they have been purchased specifically with me in mind. I hate those stupid damn secret santa things, when someone who doesn't know you has to buy you something, and they don't even bother to try to find out who you are! But if someone has put thought, and consideration into the gift, then I love to receive. I love to spend time looking for gifts for other people too, finding something special that they want, that they will be pleased to receive. Of course, I also love the food, a good turkey dinner is a must. None of this tofurkey crap, and it has to have the trimmings, roast potatoes (no other form of potatoes thanks), brussel sprouts, bacon, stuffing, bread sauce, cranberry sauce, sausages (well chipolatas really), all smothered in good thick gravy. Yum yum! I also love the lights, tinsel and trees all decorated. It is great really. People around here really seem to go in for the light displays on the outside of their houses! When I lived near DC there were small pockets of lit up houses, but here it is virtually every house!

So if anyone actually reads this, I wish you a very happy holiday season! May you get everything that you wish for and deserve ;-)

Samantha the Squirrel 

Squirrels

Morning

Today we are tring something different. We have a squirrel that lives in a tree next to the house next door to us, and since July when I moved here, we have been feeding her peanuts and fruit and stuff. For the last few weeks we have been giving her hazelnuts, and then almonds. Only because they had gone stale and we couldn't eat them, but she loves them. Her name is Samanatha, and yes she comes when she is called LOL!. But anyway, we bought her some sunflower seeds yesterday, so today I put some out for her to eat. I also put almonds incase she didn't like the sunflower seeds, just a few, so we will see. She had come down to eat them, but something scared her off, I don't know what as there was nothing around, but she ran off. She will be back later I am sure, no squirrel will leave nuts lying around uneaten at this time of year. I am a little surprised to see her out there today, as it is -14C, cold for little furry animals, but I guess she is used to it.

We also have a rabbit that lives somewhere near us. We know because there are tracks in the snow. She has made a path across the lawn from under our deck to the back of the garden, and then one directly across the lawn to the side path which takes her to the front of the house, where she has gone under the car. The car is parked up for winter, covered in a blanket, and now a few inches of snow too. So she is safe under there. I just have to remember to check that she isn't in the engine, or hasn't created a nest in the engine, when I start the car up again in the spring.

Why is the car parked up for winter? Well you see, I can't drive it, legally, in this country until I am a landed immigrant, so the car just sits, behind a bush, under the snow, waiting. Which brings me to another annoyance. Why does it take so long to immigrate into a country? I mean, either you are suitable or you aren't! And the number of forms and evidence that you have to supply them (they don't even have to do any leg work!) means that they should be able to tell pretty quickly whether or not you are suitable! But they don't even let you know where you are in the process! You fill out all the paperwork and send it in, and then you hear nothing. Nothing. Not even a peep, after you get the letter saying, yes we got your application. So we have no idea how much longer we have to wait. No idea if the application fell down the back of someone's filing cabinet, whether it is even in a "to do" pile on someone's desk. They used to have a web site that told you how far behind they were on processing the forms, but they took it down. I guess because they were so far behind. But FFS why don't they take on more people? Or is there only one person making the final decision? My wife is Canadian, so they should be saying, ok this one is ok, and stamp the papers and send them back, but no, they have to do background checks, criminal history checks etc. For every address you have ever lived at! Crazy. A friend of mine, who is German, told me recently that it took him 6 months to immigrate 25 years ago, it seems that things haven't changed. And yet the Canadian Government recently made it easier for people to pass the test which decides if they are eligible to immigrate here! Which presumably means they want more people to come in to the country, especially to the less popular areas, like Manitoba. I mean face it, who wants to come to live here? It is always snowing! LOL That isn't true BTW, but is a common misconception. But I digress. The point is, they are encouraging people to try to move here, and yet the amount of time it is taking to process each application is getting longer and longer! It is still a damned site easier to move here than to the US, but even so.

So here I sit, with little else to do but watch a squirrel eating nuts with a backdrop of snow covered trees and bushes. Just as well it is a great place to live, because I can see how frustrating it would be to be living somewhere where you couldn't work, that wasn't a great place to be even though you can't actually do anything.

Samantha came back and ate the rest of the almonds, and then a few of the sunflower seeds, but she has left a small pile of them. I wonder if she will be back later? I will sit here playing patience and watching out for her. I will think about having a shower too, and then I have to put up some coat hooks and clean the floor. It is all go ;)

Oh and that other thing I was going to rant on about turned out to be old news, so I decided to let it go for now ;)

Day 2

Dear Reader

Are there any readers of my blog? I just read an article in an email that said that bloggers have a great influence on society. Yeah right LOL! I can see how they might think that they have an infuence, but is there really anyone who reads blogs and then takes notice of what they say? This article was concerned with the recent hooha about Target offering pot for sale. Apparently a load of bloggers immediately started to criticise Target, without realising that it was of course a book about Maryjo, and not the actual stuff. I did learn that Target is owned by Amazon, which is very interesting, because there is a rumour that Target is trying to buy out the Bay. Now I am not Canadian, I just moved here recently, but I think it would be a great shame if an American company was allowed to buy out a company that is older than the country! The Hudson Bay Company is essentially Canadian, and in my humble opinion I think it should stay Canadian. But I digress, my point is that it isn't Target who are buying out the Bay, but Amazon! Forgive me, but I am against monopolies, there should be someone stopping to look at this and saying, if you are going to buy out another company then at least have the decency to call yourself by the parent name of the company! Not "Target wants to buy the Bay" but "Amazon.com wants to buy the Bay". That way we would know where we stand! Soon the world will be nothing but Walmart, Google, AOL and Amazon owned! All American Companies! Hello? Why are we letting the USA take over like this?

While I am on the subject, let's revisit the email I got a few days ago. In this one, and it is incredible, the US President (Shrubbya) wants to stop stupid people from using the Internet (I guess that counts him out too then eh?). This email stated that the USA (ergo Shrubbya) wants to prohibit people from using the World Wide Web unless they are cognisant (sic) of security issues. In other words, they want to start issuing licenses to people, but only after those people have passed an exam (presumably online) to prove that they know about internet security. They claim it is in the name of anti-terrorism, yeah right, well ok, but how will they police this? Well they will try to tell ISP's that they can only provide service to people with a valid license (I can see the blackmarket gearing up already). This will work fine in the US, but how can they impress this on other countries? Well, simple! They will just cut access to websites in the USA unless a valid certificate stamp is sent to the website in advance (like a cookie). Will the rest of the world care? Probably, for as long as it takes Google, Amazon, eBay etc. to set up mirror sites all around the world. Of course it is a ridiculous idea, but it amazes me that the US Administration even came up with this idea!

There is something else that I will post up here, but I have to go get the details, and it is more of Shrubbya's insanity.

Catch ya later!

Day 1

So today I created a BLOG. Why? Because a friend of mine has one, and I thought what the hey. So here I am, getting ready to write down my thoughts on life and living in the Peg.

Day 1 of the blog. Well it is snowing, again, of course. But that is ok, I like snow. I will go outside shortly and shovel the snow off the deck, so that it doesn't collapse. And then put grit down on the steps, and along the path so that my wife doesn't slip and fall on her way home after work tonight. Then I will clean the house, do the laundry and tidy the basement. You see I am a housekeeper by profession. LOL Well not be profession because I don't get paid, but you know what I mean.

Yeah yeah, I see you wondering where the button is to click away from this blog, that is ok. Come back later, you never know, it might get more interesting!