Monday, January 29, 2007

New Customer

Just as I was sitting down to watch some fine TV viewing tonight with 'Prison Break', '24' and 'Heros' the phone rings. The caller was having some computer problems and wanted to know if I could help. As she sounded a bit frantic I sensed that she wanted some immediate help. So I said I could be right over.

I was over at the residence in a minute or so and found the problem appeared to be with the printer. It had been working fine, however, it just stopped working with this particular program. I went to the manufacturer's web site and downloaded the correct printer driver and did an uninstall and reinstall of the printer driver.

The driver went in fine and all programs were working fine except the program that was needed to print a report. I felt that it could be the actual program that got a glitch and needed to be reinstalled. Of course nowadays most computers come pre-installed with all the programs they need. The backups are on a 'Restore' disk which is a pain in the butt to use to reinstall just a single program.

I was fortunate in that I had the program at home on a separate disk. I drove home and got the disk, returned and reinstalled the program. All was well once again with the program and the printer. However, while I was doing the printing I noticed there were some errors in the report. The report was created by using a spreadsheet and there were errors being shown where the equations were not working properly.

With a bit of searching I got the errors fixed up, but then found some more errors. It looked like every line of the report would have to be gone through with a fine tooth comb. Sadly the owner was not a spread sheet expert, but at least she had the report all printed out. She could go through it and see if she could fix up the errors on paper.

While I was working I was speaking to the folks about slowness of their computer and how they should be maybe looking at some anti-spyware software, etc. Then I asked if they had cleaned out the junk (extra files) out of the computer lately. Well yes, they had the computer in to get cleaned only a year or so ago. I then quickly downloaded Crap Cleaner and did quick check. The computer only had 670 megs of junk sitting there so we cleaned that up for them and recovered the real estate on the hard drive.

I then re-explained about spyware and whatnot that they should be looking at. I could tell that we were overshooting the knowledge base on this one. So I asked if they would rather have me do the installing and cleaning. This was definitely a better plan than them doing it themselves. So now I have a date to go work on their computer on Wednesday.

Gee, word of mouth in a small town is great :)

Curling Day

As today was a Monday, I had curling again. Of course last week was a first in that the team I was on actually won the game. This wrecked my perfect record of losses though, but then I thought I might just be on a roll.

Just prior to the start of the game the skip came up to me and told me I was going to be the 3rd today. I normally play the 2nd stones and know diddly squat about what a 3rd does. With the flu going around, the 3rd decided 10 minutes prior to the start of the game to call in that he was sick and wouldn't be coming. Of course this didn't leave us any time to call in one of the spares, so we went with only 3 players for the game. The lead and myself got to throw 3 rocks each end instead of the normal two.

The first end came together quite nicely and we scored 2 points (almost had 3). It looked like we just may have a chance of staying in front of the other team. On the 2nd end we scored another point to be up 3-0. However, on the 3rd end, they scored 3 points. Then on the 4th we scored another point and the score was 4 to 3. On the 5th end there were all kinds of rocks in play. Darn if at the finish of the end there were 4 counters. Sadly it was for the other team. So now of course we were in a big hole at 7 to 4 for the other team.

We oned them on ends 5, and 6 and they scored one on the 7th. The score was 8-6 going into the last end with our team having the hammer. We put our rocks right where the skip wanted them to allow us to get extra scores, but sadly we only ended up counting one on the end. The final score was 8-7 for the other team.

But at least I feel better now that my record is back on track. It was bothering me to have that one big 'W' under my belt. My hat was getting a bit tight and all that so it was gratifying in getting back to where I belong, 6 Losses and 1 Win.

Boy did I have a short roll, however, being that we were one team member short meant that we had to sweep harder to get the same result. That meant more exercise for me and of course that is the whole point of going out for curling.

Exercise and fun, that is the reason for the 'Senior Curling League'.

Saturday, January 27, 2007

The Hype is On

It seems that everywhere you look in the last couple of days, all you see is ads for Microsoft's new operating system Vista. This system is going to be a bit different in that it will have more flavours than we are currently faced with in the XP version.

I have been searching around and doing some reading on the pros and cons of the system. On the surface, the system sure does look nice, but then tell me one thing that doesn't look nice when it is a brand new?

For anyone that hasn't yet checked their system out to see if they can actually upgrade to Vista, here is a link to check Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor. You need to download a 6.7 mb file and then run the program to install it.

Once installed, you run the program and it checks your computer for any glitches it may find as it pertains to Vista. I have read that it most definitely does not find all the problems you may have with hardware and software on you systems. So those that are contemplating upgrading, do some homework first. As well Microsoft says that you need as a minimum 512 mb of RAM. From what I'm seeing, I wouldn't even be thinking of upgrading without a minimum of 1 gig of RAM. 512 RAM is about the minimum amount of RAM that you need to run an XP system with any proficiency. The system will run with less RAM, it's just that with all the upgrades etc, the system has a tendancy to run like a snail.

If you want to get the 'hype' on Vista from the horses mouth so to speak, you can go to Microsoft's own site of Windows Vista and read all about it.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Trip to Calgary

James departed Hanley yesterday afternoon enroute to deliver his load to Calgary. At about 8:15 p.m. last night he called to advise that just outside of Hanna, Alberta he smoked a deer. There was damage to his bumper and driver's side fender but other than that no problems with the truck and he was continuing on with his trip.

One interesting thing was that James called 911 to report his accident. In Saskatchewan we don't report accidents with wildlife as long as there are no injuries, the animal is deceased and the vehicle can be driven away from the scene. Mind you hundreds of folks do still call and attempt to report the accidents every day. The folks down in Regina have it down pat answering that 'no if there is no injuries, deer is dead and your vehicle is drivable, you do not have to report to the RCMP. You just report to SGI and they take it from there. There are just too many deer accidents everyday to have the police respond to these type of accidents that end up essentially being SGI reports. I wasn't aware that Alberta did not have the same policy, but I guess not.


Of course the operators in Regina have to ensure that the deer is off the road and not a traffic hazard. If not they advise the caller to remove it to the side of the road. The operators can then advise the Department of Highways of a deer along the side of the road for pickup. However, from my travels into the city I would say the Department of Highways leave the carcasses for the most part to the coyotes and ravens to clean up. Mind you these animals may be from the result of accidents that happen and are not actually called into the Regina Communication Center RCMP.

Anyhow when James called 911 from his cell phone to report the accident. After he hung up he tried to call someone else and his cell phone would not work. He got a notice that his phone was 'restricted to emergency calling' (or something similar). What he had to do was actually power down his phone and then power it back up and the phone would be back in business. Now I'm not sure if this is a phone specific thing or all cell phones that call 911 are restricted in the same way.

It's funny, but I have never had to call 911 in my life. I've answered thousands of the calls, but I've never actually had to call one in myself. In actual fact most people have probably never had to call 911 in their lives. Then there are some people that seem to have the number on speed dial as they use it 4-5 times (or more) a day. When I was working we used to call these folks the 'frequent flyer' callers. They misuse the 911 system for everything from minor thefts that occurred weeks (years ago) to stupid calls such as 'their 10 year old kid won't go to bed' and wanting immediate police action.

Of course all calls have to be answered and dealt with as you don't know what the call is going to be until you have actually spoken to the complainant.

Monday, January 22, 2007

Finally A Win

As it is Monday once again I had curling this morning. Lo and behold I finally get to show a 'W' beside my name. Mind you, the game certainly was not won on my skills today. I couldn't get my weight down at all. One rock would be too light and then the next rock would be too heavy. It just wouldn't come together.

It was 7 to 6 for our team on the last end. We had the hammer which was a good thing. On the 8th end I finally was able to place both of my rocks where the skip wanted them. We ended up scoring another point on the 8th with our skip not throwing his last rock.

I just could not for the life of me get things going today. But now my perfect record is broken. 1 Win and 5 Losses. I guess I'll have to give it another try next Monday to see how the wind blows. Who knows, I may be on a roll now...

I doubt it, but you can always hope :)

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Busy House Arranging

Just after speaking to James, I had a call from Wendell. I guess Sheila, Wendell and the girls are heading up this way to visit with us this weekend as well. We'll have a full house this weekend. It also means that I had to do a bit of cleaning up downstairs and set up a semi bedroom. That means moving boxes in my work room around to allow for a bedroom to be created out of the room. There is a bedroom downstairs, however, James has dibs on that one.

I know for sure that come this summer, there is going to be a lot of junk that either hits the garbage or at least gets repacked and moved out to the shed. I'm getting tired of moving everything around whenever visitors come for a visit. The idea was that I was going to sort through it all after we got settled in and get rid of what we could. Any of the saved articles that we wanted and could be, would be moved out to the shed. That way I could have a nice bedroom in the basement for visitors and also I could have a small work room that I could putter around in.

I lost the bedroom to James and I never did get around to sorting the boxes after we moved in. Then before I knew it I ended up with a couple truck loads of James belongings. When Craig made the move back north I also ended up with some of his extra boxes. They also ended up in the basement.

Hopefully I can get some of it sorted out this summer to allow some extra room downstairs.

Out of the States

James is steaming northbound attempting to get out of the US prior to the next big storm coming through. I spoke to him at 10:40 a.m. this morning and he was just entering North Dakota. According to NOAA, there is a large snow storm moving into South Dakota today however, James will be long out of that area prior to the storm hitting. Mind you, the majority of his trucking time is down into that part of the country, but for this trip he has safely traversed the ice and snow.

If all goes according to the plan, James should be up in this neck of the woods by about 5:30 to 6:00 pm tonight. It depends on whether he is going to take his unit right into the city and let it sit there until Monday or stop here in Hanley for a day or so and then carry on. The load is destined for Calgary and James was scheduled to take it all the way for delivery early Monday. Of course plans change.

The idea would be that he would take the load up to Calgary, pick up something else and make it back to Saskatoon for Thursday. He would then get a few days off at home rather than sitting in a foreign place such as Houston. Mind you as he sits, his mileage stays at zero which means less dollars. But I don't really think that the monetary reward is where his thoughts are at this stage of the game.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

And He Is Off

I had received a call from James this morning and he was still sitting waiting for the go ahead to depart. It would appear that there were a few more hoops to jump through prior to his permits being in order.

The bad part was that even with the permits the weather in north Texas is horrible. Ice storms are coating the highways and snow was in the forecast. From what James had heard from other truckers, the highways north towards Dallas were being closed down due to the unsafe driving conditions. The talk was that the roads were going to stay closed until about Saturday.

James was seriously thinking of just walking away from the truck and catching a flight back to Canada. Just sitting doing nothing is wearing heavily on him. The boss advised him that he would reimburse him somewhat for sitting last weekend, but with the weather being an act of God, it is unlikely there would be any payment for lost miles since Monday. So once again just sitting making no miles strikes at James pocketbook.

At about 1:15 pm James called back to say he was finally on the move and heading northbound. He has no idea how far he can travel before the road conditions shut him down, but at least he is moving a bit. I did do a search for road conditions in Texas and Oklahoma and it definitely does not look very promising. The rain falling is freezing and coating everything a couple inches thick. That does not bode well for the roadways themselves. The temperatures are right around freezing at around 30F so the ice is not likely to melt right away. I'm not sure if they actually use salt on the roadways or just use sand. If it is just sand then of course it won't be helping with the melting.

I'm just hoping James doesn't get stuck out in the middle of nowhere or worse yet parks in a ditch. Sometimes a little patience goes a long way to getting to your destination.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Another Day - No More Dollars

It would seem that in Texas trucking is handled a bit different than the other States. The State allows everyone to enter, however, to load up and depart the State requires extra steps that the other States do not require.

In James case, he is overweight and possibly over height. In the other States you get a permit and pay your money and away you go within the limitations of the permit you acquired. In Texas you can't just pick up a permit and pay your dollars for the right to drive, you must get a broker and then still jump through a bunch of hoops. The end result is that James is sitting in Texas for another day. He is hopeful that maybe tomorrow he can leave, but there is no guarantee.

As he sits in the parking lot he noticed that there were 6 trucks with Saskatchewan plates parked there. On speaking to a few of the other drivers he certainly found out it is not worth the hassle of being overweight or height. The hassles are just so complicated. The other drivers are loading up with their legal loads and departing back to the Great White North.

So James gets to sit another day and of course seeing as he is sitting and not making any miles, he is not making any money. On a normal day a trucker can drive for 11 hours. If the speed limit is maintained the trucker would be making somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1100 kilometers or 687 miles. At 41 cents a mile that works out to be about $282.00.

In James case he as been sitting since bright and early Friday morning, so for 4 days. That works out to lost revenue of about $1130.00. Mind you if he takes his weekend off (even though it was not at home), then he only has lost 2 days or $564.00. That is still a chunk of change. I don't believe anyone would like to just loose $564 off their paycheck for the week. However, that is the life of a long haul truck driver. If you have to wait for a load or whatever then usually the boss pays you some down time, but it no way adds up to your lost revenue.

Seeing how James was away from home for the weekend, he wants to take a few days off when he gets back to Canada. That may be during the week, so he will again loose a couple days pay when he takes those days off due to not driving. Whether the boss will put another driver in the truck and try and recoup some of the lost income from the truck is another matter. After a few times of replacing the driver with a replacement, maybe the replacement driver gets to take the loads and the original driver gets to sit waiting for an opening in the driver's seat.

I'm hoping this doesn't happen to James, but from the track record of the company he works for nothing would surprise me.

Monday, January 15, 2007

Stuck in the South

When I got home from curling I had a message waiting from James. He wanted me to give him a call when I could, so I returned the call. He did get loaded, however, now he is over weight and needs permits. He is now sitting on the north edge of Houston.

The boss was trying to line up some permits for him to start trucking again and hopefully would have them today. It was interesting that the boss suggested that maybe James would be able to leave this evening sometime. That gets me to thinking... permits and evenings.

To my thinking, most of the scales are closed in the evenings. So if he is wanting James to travel in the evening/night, then maybe the permits are not actually there, and he wants James to bypass a few scales. That doesn't sound too cricket to me.

James did comment that he was tired of driving at night and wanted to do some driving during the daylight hours. Some truckers like driving at night, and others prefer the daylight hours. I know that James was looking at another job where he would be just driving within a 2 hour limit of home (or so). As well it would be just a Monday to Friday driving job.

It would appear that he is comparing the two jobs and leaning more to the one around home (if it actually materializes). He wouldn't get to see as much country, but hopefully there would be some stability in his life.

My thoughts are you don't throw away something without first having a heck of a good replacement first. Hopefully it all plans out for him.

Perfect Record

I was up bright and early this morning so I could head down to the curling rink for the Monday curling match. This was to be my fifth game since we started curling on December 11th.

Today we started out great guns with a 4 ender in the 2nd followed by a 3 ender and then a single. It would seem that the game was going our way. But as it normally happens, the plan fell apart and we just couldn't make any shots for the rest of the game. They didn't beat us too terribly badly, but the other team did come out on top.

So that makes it a perfect score for me. Five games played, five games lost :(

Of course the curling is just for the fun and for a bit of exercise. Actually I find it is such a wonderful way to meet fellow citizens of the town and vice versa. I don't really care what the score is.

I do have a few games to go prior to the end of the season, so I'm hoping I will be able to come out victorious in at least one game for the year.

Time will tell.

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Houston, We Have A Problem !

The problem is that there is one extra long haul truck driver parked just outside Houston in the small community of Brookshire (just west of Houston) with nothing to do. Yup, it is James and he has been sitting in Brookshire since early Friday.

Originally James was to get loaded Saturday morning and then head for home, however, the company needs a crane to load the trailer and there were no cranes available until Monday at the earliest. With no real other choice, James gets to sit and bide his time until Monday morning. The sitting idle has not pleased James too much, but then he can't really zip home for the weekend and then back again for Monday morning as it is nearly 3000 kms to Houston from Saskatoon.

James has amused himself by watching a bit of TV, a couple dvd movies and he even went for a long walk. While he was out walking yesterday it started to rain. However, he was able to make it back to the truck prior to the real downpour. He got a bit damp, but nothing too serious.

I talked to James Saturday night and he was pretty bored with the whole situation. He was able to find another truck stop that sold cheaper wobbly pops though than the one he was parked at. If I remember correctly what he said, he could buy 6 king cans of Keystone Lite for about $4.80. He had picked up a movie, some Chinese food for eats and 6 king cans and was settling in for the evening.

He still has all day Sunday to go, so you could fairly well say he has had about enough of south Texas. I took a quick peak at the temperature in Houston just prior to starting up this blog and the temperature was sitting at +22C. Then I looked at my temperature gauge and it is showing -29C. Let's see, where would I rather be?

The one good thing about sitting in Houston for the weekend is that most of the ice storms that are going through the north of Texas and into Oklahoma should have moved on prior to James travelling northbound. From the weather reports from the south, the ice was snapping off telephone poles as it coated everything and then the wind was so strong. From the weather reports, most of the storms should have dissipated by late Sunday. There may be the odd icy section on the highways, but nothing like what it was like late Friday, early Saturday.

As of yesterday, James was not certain where he would be heading when he leaves Texas. He thought the load was destined for Calgary and was hoping he could take it all the way there to unload. With another quick run to the States (down to Iowa or Missouri) and home and he should have enough miles for the month that he could maybe get a couple days off back in Hanley.

The boss may have different ideas though so we'll have to wait and see what transpires.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Down in the Banana Belt

I spoke to James just prior to 6 pm tonite and he had cleared Victoria, Texas and was enroute to Houston to pick up his next load. The bad part was that he would be arriving in Houston tonite however, he can't get loaded until Saturday. So he will get a whole day in Houston with nothing to do. I told him to play tourist and just bum around. Afterall, it is not every day you get to visit Houston.

The weather down in Texas is in the mid 50's, however, the locals are finding it cold. James was walking around in a tee shirt and was sweating a bit. I filled him in on our weather and told him to enjoy what he had. He could have been up here driving (or should I say parked in the ditch) in freezing temps.

It is unknown when James will be back into Canada, however, if he loads on Saturday, he could probably be back early Monday. It all depends where his load has to be delivered to.

We Survived

That definitely was one heck of a blizzard that blew through this country yesterday. I can honestly say that I haven't seen anything near this bad since I was last up in the arctic in the mid 70's. The last official blizzard that was supposedly worse than this one was back in 1955. At that time I was living in Drayton Valley, Alberta so I missed out on it. About all I can remember back that far was that we had a huge snow fall that year with the snow banks almost up to the telephone/power wires.

We didn't seem to get an over abundance of snow out of the recent storm though. Sure the snow was blown up into drifts, but there wasn't an awful lot of extra snow around. Mind you I took out the snow blower and cleaned up the driveways and sidewalks around the house this morning and it took me 2 1/2 hours where it usually only takes about an hour.

The reason that it took so much longer to snow blow was because of the snow drifts and the snow was packed in very solidly. Along the side sidewalks the drifts were over the top of the snow blower (3 1/2 feet or so), so I had to be a little more careful.

It also took a bit more work trying to move the blower around today because of the packed snow. The cold weather certainly didn't help at all either. I didn't find it too bad outside as I was dressed for the -30 C temperatures. However, my lungs let me know later when I came in that they had been attacked by breathing in the colder than normal air. My lungs usually act up with the cold weather and it brings on fits of asthma for me.

So for the rest of the day I've been coughing trying to clear out my lungs. I do have an inhalor that I take which does help when this happens, but it still takes awhile to get back to normal once again. I'll probably finish this blog off and then take a few puffs on the inhalors and hit my pillow. Hopefully by morning I should be back to normal.

But we made it through the blizzard no worse for wear. No I think with the cold weather we are just going to hibernate for a couple of days. There is always the boob tube to watch, the internet to play on or just read a book or two.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Travelling Southbound

I spoke to James at 5 pm and he was just going through Newton, Kansas. This is just a bit north of Wichita. So far the roads are great, but he has run into some wind today.

Actually the wind was so strong that it broke his driver's mirror in half as he was driving so he had to stop and get another one installed so he could see out the back. It's a good thing he isn't travelling up in the Saskatoon area as he wouldn't need a mirror at all. He just wouldn't be able to see out the front, to the rear or to the sides with all the wind and blowing snow we are presently facing.

James is hoping to make it to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma tonite before he parks. The distance from Newton to Oklahoma City is about 300 kms, so he is going to have to boogie before his 11 hours of driving time is up. But he is travelling on I35 which is a 70 mph road, so he should make it okay.

WOW! Is This a Blizzard or What?






You sure have to hand it to the weather folks this time. They nailed this blizzard right on. It has been blowing and snowing since about 8 pm last nite here in Hanley. At least last night you could still see down the streets a bit. Today it is just unreal.

I had to go to a customer's house for 1 pm today. It is 3 blocks and seeing as I was taking a brief case with disks etc in it, I decided to drive. I made it to the house at the scheduled time, however, when I went to depart at 3:30 pm the weather had really deterioated. I was driving down the street and you couldn't tell where the street ended and the sidewalks started.






I just crept down the street hoping that I was staying in the center of the road and praying that no one else was coming towards me. I caught the sign post for the corner for a second and turned otherwise I would have continued right into a fellows yard. At this turn I was turned around and heading for home (3 blocks away), but you just could not see the road or anything else.

I finally made it one block closer to home in about 5 minutes and turned down the street so at least I could see a bit. Thankfully after going down the block I could make another left turn and the houses were blocking a bit of the blowing snow so I could creep home.

Three blocks took me over 10 minutes to navigate home. I was certainly felt a ton of relief when I turned into a driveway and found that it was actually my own. There should be no one out on the highways in this. If it is this bad in the town, I can only shudder to think how bad it would be out on the highways.


All three pictures were taken out of the garage doorway at 4:30 pm. today. The first one is looking across the front yard towards downtown and the other two are the houses across the street.



Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Where's the Trucker?

As of this past Sunday James headed back to work. He had to drive through the horrible weather and road conditions on his way to Edmonton to pick up a load. He was back in Hanley this morning at about 7:00 a.m. and departed at about 7:30 a.m. heading south bound.

James called at 8:00 p.m. tonight to advise that he was approaching Jamestown, North Dakota, but he had a few more hours of driving to go before the day was done. He is enroute to Rhome, Texas (just north of Dallas/Fort Worth) and is supposed to be there by noon on Thursday. In Rhome he gets to drop part of his load and then continue on to Victoria, Texas. There supposedly is a load to be picked up in the area and then he gets to head back north. Mind you, I doubt whether he'll make it back up this way until probably Monday or Tuesday.

Hoping James will have blue skies and clean highways on his travels.

Still Living

I sure haven't been around the computer for the last week or so. As it turns out, we ended up with 24 teams for the Legion bonspiel. That is a way better than the 7 teams that we had a week ago Sunday. Mind you, that is still down from previous years, but even in the cities they are having a hard time getting people out to curl this year.

So with some last minute running around on Friday, we got the 'spiel going Friday evening. That meant getting to the bar and getting our liquid refreshments picked up and then stocking the fridges, etc. After it was all said and done I got home at 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning. It was a very long day. I don't think my eyes felt that gritty since I last worked a night shift in Regina.

I was up at 9:00 a.m. and down to the community center to get the bar set up for the Saturday festivities. We opened up the bar again at 1:00 p.m. with the local curling club manning the bar, however, I was in the area at all times in case they needed something. Of course I had to run to the hotel and replenish the beer and ice supply every now and then.

On Saturday night we had RJ and The Boys come in and play for the evening. As per normal, the band was excellent. Our crowd was down from previous years. It seemed after the great roast beef supper we had, most people went home or in some cases over to the local watering hole. With about 30 minutes left in the dance people finally started to get up and dance. The only problem was that the crowd had thinned out considerably by this time. It was decided that we wouldn't extend the band for an extra set, so the band wound up playing at around 12:30 a.m.

The bar stayed open until 2:00 a.m. with yours truly manning the counter once again. At 2:00 a.m. we still had about 8 people sitting sipping and swapping tales, but at about 2:10 a.m. they were gone. I was able to clean up and restock the fridge etc and headed home to work on the expenditure figures. Once again it was right around 4:00 a.m. when I finally found a pillow.

I got to sleep in a few extra minutes on Sunday and was back at the hall by 10:30 a.m. to get ready for the Sunday crowd. Actually Sunday was a good day for the sales at the bar (thanks Larry :-) ). Much better than Saturday was for sure. It was looking darn right glum at the end of Saturday night, but with the Sunday sales we might actually make a profit on the 'spiel.

We were able to close down everything by 9:00-9:15 p.m. and head for home. Once again I got to play with the numbers to see how we were doing. I finished up just prior to midnight and took a walk down to the bank to make my final deposit. It is nice that the bank is only a block away from the house so it didn't take too long. A nice little 3-5 minute walk and a quick deposit and back home again. I immediately crawled into bed and was fast asleep within minutes.

I had to get up early once again on Monday as I had to curl in the senior's league. Prior to heading to curling I had to make up a loaf of sandwiches for the noon lunch as it was my turn to supply some food for the lunch. I figured I'd serve the noon lunch, do my 2 hour curling game and then start on cleaning up with returning the unused liquor, beer etc. Thankfully one of the other Legion members was in the hall having a morning coffee and he offered to handle the return of the beer bottle empties, return the unused beer and liquor and return the extras to the Legion Hut. Man did I jump at his offer.

I helped him load up his truck with as much as we could and helped out in the kitchen until my game time. By the end of my game at 2:30 p.m. all the returning was done and I was free to head home which I certainly did. It was sure nice to just sit down on a comfortable chesterfield rather than a hall chair for a couple of hours. In between answering a few phone calls about how we made out at the 'spiel, etc, I got to actually watch a bit of TV once again.

As I was sitting watching the boob tube I only fell asleep 2 or 3 times before I got smart enough to find my pillow for the night. Both Sandra and I got to sleep in until just around 9:00 a.m. and then we got ready and headed into the city. With the oncoming blizzard coming our way, I wanted to get to the city today so that I could replenish the fridge as well as pick up our prescriptions for the oncoming month.

The roads in and out of the city were just excellent today. I didn't see one bit of ice on either side of the road. The blowing and drifting snow the last couple of days didn't stick onto the highway which was great. With the strike of our SGEU highway workers going on at present, I'm sure hoping that the next couple days will be a repeat for the highways. However, I did hear on the news that the union was going to allow the highway workers to return to work if the blizzard actually started to cause problems. Nice of them to think of the traveling public with the strike going on.

With the trip into the city behind us, we are ready to hibernate for the next couple of days as the blizzard and then the cold sets in. I do have a computer customer to visit tomorrow (Wednesday), a few more bills to pay from the 'spiel, but nothing too taxing. Of course I can walk to everything so I don't have to worry about driving around.

It will be nice to sit back and catch up on a few books I've been reading but haven't had a chance to open lately, maybe read some of my numerous email messages that I have acquired, and just generally get caught up with what is happening in the world. I think just sitting back and just taking it easy for a couple days will be great.

Then it will be time to head out and tackle the snow on the sidewalks, driveway again. Oh yes, just as I'm about to publish this blog I looked outside and the snow is starting to come down quite heavily. I'm ready for it so bring it on!

Monday, January 01, 2007

Another New Year Starts

Happy New Years to everyone!

Our household quietly brought in the New Years last evening. As per normal, we had a nice bbq steak for supper yesterday evening. I was a bit worried that I would run out of propane prior to the supper being done, but the worry was for naught. I definitely will have to get the tank refilled in the not too distant future though.

We had a leisurely supper with James and Johanna and then just basically sat around shooting the breeze for a couple hours or so. Sandra fired up the boob tube and watched a bit of TV from Newfoundland and then at about 10:30 pm we hit the pillows. James and Johanna were off to do their thing and Sandra and I just retired to slumber land.

The whole town was fairly quiet last evening from what I heard. From what I gather this is the first year in quite some time that there wasn't a New Years eve dance in the hall. I guess folks just are not that interested in dancing anymore. Mind you, when I have been out walking the last couple of nights, I noticed that many many homes in town were in darkness. The folks had apparently gone away for the holidays. So I'm just not certain if it was just that the people were away or just there was no interest.

Another problem is fast approaching with people though. The local Legion has their annual curling bonspiel set to go next weekend (Jan 5-7). Of course we had to get a liquor permit, line up the food, order the liquor, etc. The one huge problem we have is that as Sunday afternoon we only had 7 or 8 teams signed up to curl. Normally this bonspiel has 20-24 teams. It would be darn hard to really have a decent bonspiel with so few teams. So now we are sitting in the spot 'do we cancel' or 'do we go ahead'?

There is a Legion meeting on Wednesday, January 3rd, and I imagine we'll have to make up our minds at that time. But of course we can't wait until then to order up the food which has to be ordered before hand. The same goes for the beer and liquor. Mind you, if we cancel at the last minute, I'm sure the hardware and the hotel will be able to reuse the liquor and beer. But for the food, we normally can't return that.

It does seem to be coming down to just a lack of interest by folks. Nobody wants to get involved or commit themselves. I believe out of the 67 or so folks in the Legion, we probably have about 10-12 that show up at meetings with any regularity. Of course the other folks still pay their dues and that certainly helps. It is just that the active members have been carrying on the branch for awhile and some members are getting tired and wanting others to assist. There just are not that many new people around that are interested in joining and assisting.

With more and more of the actual veterans passing on, there appears to be less of a reason to keep the Legion going. Hanley is not the only branch that is having problems. Legions all over the country are going through the exact same problem. In our area we have had a few Legions actually fold up over the last couple years and I'm sure we'll see more in the future.

The Legions have certainly done their bit to assist with returning vets throughout the years. We do have our members in the military serving in combat areas at present, however, even the ex-members of the Canadian Armed Forces are not signing up in the Legions. It is just a different world out there now and people are not quite as active in clubs and what not. It is a sad thing to see, but you certainly can't force people to be part of an organization and you can't force them to be active participants in the organization even if they do join.

Possibly, the Legion and other clubs have done their service to our returning veterans and it is now time to move on. Time will tell.