Voice Memo

I was fooling around with my iPod.  I found something called Voice Memo. I tried it out. I recorded a message to myself. I was then able to play it back.

I showed it to Barb. She was amazed. Then she found a way to email a Voice Memo.

So she emailed a Voice Memo to Sarah. Sarah freaked out when she heard Barb's voice on an email.

Barb also found out how to send a Voice Memo as a iMessage text attachment.

Barb sent a Voice Memo to her friend Debbie saying how much Debbie liked to hear Barb's voice. So now Debbie could save the Voice Memo on her IPhone.  Then she could play it any time she wants to hear Barb's voice.

When Debbie got the email the next day, she freaked out, she was so happy.

Amazing Memory

Last year Sarah had a professor who prided himself in being able to memorize the names of everyone in his class of 300 students by the end of the semester.

Most students like Sarah had never gone to him for help. So she had never spoken to him. However, somehow by looking up the student records, he was able to figure out everyone's name and match it to their face.

The students were really impressed when he went around on the last day of class as he went around and named everyone in the class.

This year Sarah didn't have this professor. 

However, one day she was walking down the hall of the school. The professor walked by her. He said, “Hello Sarah”. 

Sarah was amazed that he still remembered her name.

Confusing Customer Service

I forgot my slippers. I had earlier lost my sandals. So Barb went out to buy me some new slippers and sandals. There was a two-for-one sale at the store. So Barb got the sandals for free.

The slippers fit so well and looked so good, we thought I could go out wearing them. They were like boat shoes. However, Barb thought it would be too dirty outside to wear my indoor shoes. So she decided to go back to the store to buy another pair of boat shoes for wearing outdoors.

She talked to the lady at customer service. Barb talked her into refunding the money for the sandals. Then she bought the second pair of boat shoes using the two-for-one sale. Then she bought the sandals as well. This was a good deal because the sandals were cheaper than the boat shoes. So the two-for-one sale was worth more.

The customer service lady gave Barb some change. Barb asked her if this was correct. The lady said yes it was right.

When Barb got home she looked at her bill more closely. Not only had the lady given Barb the two-for-one deal, she had also given her her money back for the sandals. So she made money on the return.

Walking to Ride the Stationary Bike

I sometimes use the exercise room in Florida when it is too hot to walk in the afternoon. I bring my book. I like to read while I ride the stationary bike.

I walk down because it seems silly to drive the golf cart to exercise.

The first day that I walked down to the exercise room I arrived to find Joe just starting to use the stationary bike. If I had driven the golf cart, I would have arrived a few minutes earlier. Then I would have beaten Joe to the stationary bike.

I just turned around and walked home. I decided just in case Joe used the stationary bike regularly at the time of day,. I would walk down later in the afternoon.

Gate Pass Code

In Florida, we live in a gated community. The gate is open during the day. However, it closes at night. We have a pass code that we use to get in.

Barb was going out shopping soon after we arrived. She was going out in the daytime. However, she brought the pass code in case she got home late.

She did get home late. The gate was closed. She was happy that she had the pass code.

The only problem was it was dark. She couldn't see the touch pad to key in the pass code.

Fortunately, she had our little flashlight in the car. She was able to get in.

Phone Trouble

While we were in Canada our phone and internet in Florida was on vacation mode. So it was only necessary to phone the company a few days before we were supposed to arrive and they were flip a switch to turn it back on.

When we got to Florida, Barb checked the phone. It didn't work. We were a little upset because the company had told us it would be setup by the time we arrived.

We walked down to the community center and use the phone there to call the company. They said there must have been a problem but it would be working by 7 pm.

When we got home, Barb looked at the floor under the phone.  She noticed that the phone wasn't plugged in. When she plugged it in, the phone worked fine.

What a Bad Idea

The night before we were leaving for Florida. I was on my computer. I got a message saying that some of my software didn't work because I needed to upgrade my operating system.

I decided to do the upgrade then. What a bad idea. Something went wrong with the upgrade. I panicked and stopped the upgrade part way through. There was a warning that if I stopped the upgrade at this point my computer might not operate properly. However, there was nothing I could do. I had already stopped the upgrade.

When I turned on my computer again, it wouldn't boot up. I tried a so-called Recovery program. That didn't seem to work unless I reformatted my drive. I was stuck. So I reformatted my drive and lost all my files and programs.

I was up until 1 am the night before we were driving to Florida. We were leaving at 3 am. Of course, I couldn't get to sleep because I was so upset. So I took a sleeping pill. Barb was furious at me. She thought I would be asleep all the way to Florida.

The next day I was pretty useless. Barb had to drive most of the day by herself.

I then spent the first two or three weeks re-installing my operating systems, recovering my files and installing my programs.

Dog's Tail

I was packing the truck of the car the day before we were leaving for Florida. I wanted to use every little piece of the trunk. So when I got the suitcases into the trunk, there was a little bit of space behind them. I climbed into the trunk with a flashlight and pushed our shoes behind the suitcases.

Barb laughed at me climbing into the trunk.  Only my bum and my legs were showing. It was like those funny stuffed animals that you can stick to the back of your car that appear to show a dog's legs and tail when the dog has run into the back of the car.

Barb's Volunteer Honours

The President of the Barrhaven Tennis Club decided to take Barb out for dinner to thank her for her many years of service to the tennis club.

It was supposed to be a surprise. It wasn't really a surprise. However, Barb was surprised to see not only the other executive there but also some of the court attendants even showed up. It was not just the adults.

Barb was given a nice framed certificate from someone she didn't know in recognition of her years of volunteering.

Tennis Documents

Barb spent a great deal of time putting together all of the material for the Barrhaven Tennis Club duties for the incoming executive. Her final act on the executive was to email the files to the incoming executive lady.

She sent the email with the attached documents. 

Later that night she got an email from her friend Harry. He said that she probably didn't mean to send him the tennis documents. In fact, he didn't even have any software to open the files.

It turns out that Harry shares his email address with his wife. His wife's first name is the same as the lady on the incoming executive. Barb didn't know either lady's last name. So she emailed it to the first name that came up.

Hey Baby

Barb made a bed quilt as a wedding gift for her friend Debbie's daughter. Barb was getting picked up by Debbie. They were going over to the daughter's house to give it to her. Barb was looking forward to it.

Barb was waiting with me in the living room. Barb saw a car come in the driveway. She said goodbye to me. She ran out the door. She yelled “Hey Baby!”

Then she realized it wasn't Debbie. It was Julia coming home from work. Julia thought it was so nice that her mother would come running out of the house to meet her when she came home from work.

Master Gardener

Barb doesn't spend much time on the flowers at the front of the house. She cleans up the garden in the Spring and in the Fall. Otherwise it grows pretty much by itself. Except she puts in artificial flowers to add some colour. Many people have complimented her on the artificial flowers. Sometimes Barb tells them the flowers are artificial and sometimes she doesn't.

Barb was cleaning up the garden to prepare for winter and our trip to Florida. She noticed a lovely sunflower had grown in the garden all by itself. She came in and told me how amazing it was.  She had never noticed it before.

Our next door neighbour is a master gardener. Barb was outside a few days later was telling our neighbour about the sunflower. The neighbour smiled slyly. Barb said “What?” Our neighbour said that it was artificial. She had planted it in our garden a few days ago. It was a joke because she knew that Barb had artificial flowers in the garden all summer.

Congratulations Never Come Too Late

Barb got home to a message on the answering machine from a old friend and neighbour. The friend wanted to congratulate Barb for winning a medal in Pickleball. Barb had won the medal in August. However, her friend had only found out about it in October because Barb's name was in the local newspaper.

Our neighbour down the street also stopped Barb when she was going to the mailbox. He wanted to congratulate her too.

Barb found the article in the newspaper. The title of the article was “Pair Wins Gold”. It didn't even mention pickleball in the title. You had to read the details in the small article to find out who and what they won. Barb was impressed with her neighbours' close reading of the local newspaper.

Like a Dog in the Car

I was living on the edge for many years with my glasses. I only had one pair. If they broke, I wouldn't be able to see. This was particularly dangerous in Florida.

So I was determined to get a new pair of glasses before we left for Florida this winter. I got my eyes checked They gave me a new prescription for trifocals. I also bought transitions.

When I picked up my glasses, they told me that even though the glasses were transitions, they might not become dark enough to drive with because of the tinted windows in the car. I might also need to buy sunglasses to put over them.

I went for a walk in the afternoon soon after I got the glasses. It was sunny outside. The transitions worked great. Everything was so clear. There was no squinting necessary.

Barb and I were driving a few days later. Barb noticed that the transitions were not very dark in the car. Barb told me to open the window and look out to see if the glasses would get dark. So I opened the window. I then stuck my head out the window like a dog. We were driving down the highway. Barb thought this was very funny.

Crystal Quilters

Barb was finally giving up the Barrhaven Tennis Club treasurer job after 15 years. So she had to give the treasurer's computer to the new treasurer.

We had been using the computer for quite a few years as a home computer. So Barb asked me to clean it up. To remove the personal files and the special programs that I had installed.

As I was uninstalling the programs, I noticed a program called Microsoft Works. I immediately remembered that Barb had received a file from a lady in Florida with the email addresses and phone numbers of all of the quilters at Crystal Lake where we live in Florida.

She could not open the file because it was written in Microsoft Works. Microsoft Works was incompatible with everything we had. I guess it was a special program that comes with the Microsoft Vista operating system.

I was able to finally open the file. I was able to re-save it as a Microsoft Word file. Barb was very happy to finally have the email addresses and phone numbers of the Crystal Quilters.

A Big Round Head

Barb knitted Sarah a beret for winter. Unfortunately, when she was finished it she thought it would be too small for Sarah's big round head.

However, Barb thought she could stretch it. She sprayed it with a little water. Then she got a volleyball. She stretched the beret over the volleyball for a day or two.

When Barb gave it to Sarah at Thanksgiving, it fit perfectly.

Sportsmanship Award Nomination

One of my fastball teams, nominated me for the sportsmanship award this season. I didn't win but I thought it was nice to be nominated.

Co-op Confusion

Sarah was very busy when she got back to school after Labour Day. She had all of the classes. She also had to look for a co-op job for the winter. She was sending out tons of resumes with individually written cover letters for each one.

Third year was so different from second year. She was getting all kinds of interviews. If she had to go to all these interviews, she would miss a lot of classes.

She had also just changed from Biological Engineering Co-op to Environmental Engineering Co-op. So she had a lot to do to arrange that too.

She had originally thought that the environmental engineers were all flakes. By third year, all of the flakes had dropped out. So that was no longer an issue. She didn't like biological engineering because all of the people in the program were interested in bio-medical work.  She wasn't.

One of her first interviews was with a lady from the Atomic Energy Canada Limited in Chalk River. Sarah didn't even say very much. The lady just talked about how great it would be to have her on the team with her biological background. They liked to have diverse teams. That was good because Sarah didn't know much about the job.

The next day she got an email from the lady saying that she was sorry.  Somehow she had not emailed Sarah the attachment with the information about the job that Sarah was supposed to use to prepare for the interview.

Sarah got the job. So now she doesn't have to look any more or go to any more interview. She was very happy.

It was neat because we know a lot of people from Deep River right next door to Chalk River.  They have winter places in the same park in Florida with us.

Who Am I Kidding?

My two fastball teams were in the playoffs. Both teams were in the semi-finals. One night both teams played on the same night and at the same time. However, one team was facing elimination and the other team was playing their first game of the series.

I went to play in the elimination game. Our best pitcher wasn't there. So we were in trouble. We had three pitchers try to get the other team out.  None of them were any good. We lost the game 19-13. I thought that when you score 13 runs in a game you shouldn't lose. But we did. And we were eliminated.

The next day I had off. I checked my email when I got up.  There was an email from the captain of the team that was still playing. He said that they won the first game but our pitcher hurt himself in the rundown play. He asked me if I would be at the game. He said I would have to pitch. 

I replied that he must be kidding. He said no it was true.

We had won the first game of the best of three series. So the game was not an elimination game. The captain thought that the pitcher might be better by the next game.

When I told Barb that I would have to pitch. She was furious. She said that I was going to get the ball hit back at me. I wouldn't be able to get out the way.  I would be killed. She said it wasn't worth it. We were going to lose anyway. We should just forfeit the game.

Later in the day, I got a phone call from the pitcher. He told me about his injury. He tried to talk it up. He said that if we can score enough runs, we could win the game. I might be okay.

As I was leaving for the game, She asked me if I was really going to pitch. Barb said it was nice knowing me.

 

As I was driving to the game, I thought to myself. Who am I kidding? I am going to get killed. It was stupid to be pitching. These guys were good hitters. Barb was right.

When I got to the game, the teams who had played earlier cheered me on. They called me Ivan "The Terminator" Taylor.

We scored a run in the top of the first inning.

I got the first batter out. Then the second batter hit a triple. The third batter hit a line drive to the second baseman. The second baseman threw to third base to catch the runner off base. But he threw wild. The runner tried to go home. The third baseman fired a strike to the catcher.  The catcher got the runner at home for a double play.  We got out the inning with no runs scored against us.

From then on we never looked back. We scored at least one run in every inning. I walked a lot of batters but we almost always got out of the inning without them scoring. Just one time they hit a based loaded triple and scored three runs.

We won the game 9-3 and were headed to the finals. The guys thought this was the greatest thing they had ever seen.

When I got home Barb said she was surprised to see me.  She was even more surprised when I told her I had won the game.

The president of the league who was watching the game said the next day in an email to the executive that he kept saying to himself that I might get through the batting order once but eventually they would adjust and then poor old Ivan would get hammered. But it never happened.

Our pitcher was back for the finals and we won easily.  We were the league champs.

Pretty in Pink

Sarah volunteered at the Run for Breast Cancer. She worked at a station handing out drinks to the runners. 

Most of the runners were married ladies. Sarah got a sore hand from giving high fives to the runners as they went buy. The ladies' wedding rings hit her hand.

Sarah got her picture in the Guelph newspaper in the pink beret that Barb knit for her. She posted the picture on her Facebook page.

A Costly Mistaken Identity

Sarah has been selling her used textbooks online. She had found a buyer for her Statistics textbook who was willing to pay a good price of $100. So she arranged to meet him at the elevators of one of her engineering buildings.

When she got to the elevators, there was a guy sitting in a chair and a guy standing. She went up to the guy standing and asked him if he was the guy who wanted to buy her Statistics book. He looked at the book and said yes it looked good. He got out his wallet and gave her $20 then got on the elevator and quickly left. Sarah was confused because the deal was for $100. However, this guy had taken her book and given only $20. There was no way to find him now that he was gone.

She later found out that the guy sitting was the guy who wanted to buy her Statistics book for $100. The guy who took her book was just a random guy waiting for the elevator.

How Can You Not Know Where You Live?

Since my Dad died, my sister and I have been busy handling his estate. Although my sister and my Dad had made everything very easy, we still had the difficulty of selling the family house.

There were many phone call, emails and negotiations. I had to run out a number of times to a real estate office and lawyer's office in Barrhaven to sign papers from Burlington.

This was all happening around my birthday.

I wanted to get a package of new recordings of The News for Lake Wobegon by Garrison Keillor for my birthday. So I ordered it on line.

When I looked at my receipt, I realized I had mistakenly written the shipping address as 705 Maple Avenue, my family home. I panicked. Barb couldn't believe I could make such a silly mistake. I had to phone the company a number of times to get the shipping address changed.

I was relieved when the CD package finally arrived before my birthday.

When the GPS Fails You

We have a GPS now.

 

Barb has found it indispensable when we are in Florida.

 

It will always get you to your destination but sometimes not the easiest way.

 

One of the things that Barb can never understand is why it will take us on one route going there and on a different route coming home. I tried to explain to her the subtleties of the mathematical concept of the “greedy algorithm” but that didn't seem to help.

The Truth Doesn't Hurt

I was riding my stationary bike in the basement. Julia and Dillon came downstairs to get some hot dogs for dinner. Dillon wanted to say 'hi' to me. So he came into my study. We talked for a long time about many things because he jumps from topic to topic quickly. He was just leaving but he wanted to tell me about his latest success story.

Apparently, a non-government organization that produces data for policy makers wrote a report about the positive impact they were having. I immediately thought of all the times that my organization at work had tried to justify their existence and the many times that I had tried to aggrandize my work for my Personnel Evaluation Report.

In this organization's report, they referenced people who had used their data. Dillon was proud of the fact that the first report they referred to was one he had written. I said in an off-handed way “They must have been desperate”. 

Julia was shocked that I would say such a mean thing but she thought it was very funny. She couldn't believe that I would put down Dillon so blatantly.

I immediately felt bad that I had insulted Dillon. Julia said that he wouldn't be offended. She asked him later about it and said that I felt bad. He said that he wasn't offended.

 

I guess for Dillon the truth doesn't hurt.

Unusual Family Rituals

We visited Barb's friend Barb Dankelson in Indiana for the August long weekend. 

On Sunday night, we had a big family dinner with her son and daughter and two grand children as well as Barb, Sarah and I.  Barb D. made her famous spare ribs and corn on the cob. 

The spare ribs were ready before the corn on the cob.  So Barb's son brought out the spare ribs.  He said we should start serving it up.  So I picked out a few ribs and started eating.  Barb's son said that he meant serve it up not eat it up.

When Barb D. finally arrived with the corn on the cob, we served that up too.  Then we all held hands in a big circle to say a prayer before we could started eating.

I am not used to these types of pre-meal ritual.

Out of Retirement

This year I played for the best team in the Glen Cairn Men's Fastball League. The team has the best pitcher in the league. We are not a good team but with him pitching we win all of our games. He is a big guy and an older fellow.

 

In the league tournament, we played one game on Friday night.  We were scheduled to play two more games in the round robin on Saturday.  Then the playoffs would be on Sunday.  We would need to play two playoff games to win the championship.

We won the first two games and were assured a playoff spot in the A Division.  Unfortunately, the afternoon game on Saturday was rained out. It was rescheduled for 8 am on Sunday morning. That would mean that to win the championship we would need to play three games on Sunday.

When I arrived to the ball park on Sunday morning, our pitcher came up to me and told me that I would be pitching.  It was a meaningless game in the round robin.  So he wanted to save himself for the playoffs later in the day. 

I had only pitched one game in the last two years. So I wasn't very excited about the prospect of trying to get people out.  I didn't even think that I would be able to throw strikes.

The first batter I faced hit a long home run. I walked a few batters.  They scored a few more runs in the first inning.

 

The outfielders were happy though.  Our regular pitcher strikes everyone out. So they never get to field the ball. They had to run around like crazy to field the balls the other team hit off me.

That same player who hit the home run in the first inning hit two more home runs off me in his next two at bats.

 

He came up for a fourth time in the last inning.  He hit a ball out of the park again.  It would have been a home run but it went foul. Eventually I walked him so that he didn't hit four home runs off of me.

We lost the game 9-5.

 

Then we lost the semi-final game in the A Division playoffs. We were eliminated from the tournament.

Barb's Computer Virus

Barb got an email from Paypal saying she had two suspicious transactions for $200 each. When she phoned the number for Paypal she asked how were they able to access her account. The Paypal lady said that the fraudsters must have her account number and password.  She said that she would start an investigation about the fraud and reverse the charges to Barb's account.

I checked Barb's computer. Her computer had a virus. I looked up the details about the virus. It said that this virus was able to access your financial information. When I used the virus scanner to remove the virus, it came right back when I rebooted the computer. Fortunately, Microsoft provides a one-time only scanner that could get the virus off permanently.

When I was telling my friend at the bar after fastball about Barb's problem, I said that Barb watches television through the internet. Sometimes she uses some sketchy websites. My friend said that was funny because it usually the husband that uses some sketchy websites.

Bank of America Fraud

Barb got a notification that someone had illegally used her Bank of America card number to purchase a $1 item in Burlington Ontario. She phoned the Bank of America to find out what it was all about. She was surprised that the purchase was in Burlington Ontario because that is where I grew up. The Bank of America said they would reverse the charge but Barb was supposed to destroy her debit card and they would send her a new one in the mail.

A couple of days later Barb received her new Bank of America card in the mail. When she looked at the bank account online she saw that the $1 purchase was reversed but the bank charged her $20 for an Express Post mailing of the card. So it cost $20 to reverse a $1 transaction.

Dreaming in my Blue Chair

I have been having trouble sleeping some nights. I wake up early in the morning.  I get out of bed quietly so that I don't wake up Barb. Then I go down to the living room where I read in my blue chair. Sometimes when Barb gets up for the day, I will go back to bed and try to sleep. Other times, I  try to sleep in the blue chair. One day I was up early.  Eventually, I went to sleep in the blue chair. While I was sleeping, I dreamt about going up to bed and sleeping.

Password Problems

We bought Julia a laptop computer for her birthday when we were in Florida.

She has been using the Barrhaven Tennis Club treasurer's computer for the past few years.

Barb wants to hand over the treasurer's job at the end of the season. So Barb will be returning the computer.

The new computer is Windows 8. I set it up for Julia when I was in Florida. As far as I could figure out, Windows 8 wanted me to snyc the laptop to a hotmail account. So I set up a hotmail account for myself. However, I never use the hotmail account.

We were back in Ottawa a few months before Julia's birthday. I hadn't touched her computer since i was in Florida.

After her birthday, I tried to set up a user account for Julia on her computer. I couldn't log in because it didn't recognize my password.

So I went to my computer and looked up on the hotmail website how to change a password. I asked for a new password to be sent to Julia's hotmail account.

Julia didn't look at it right away. So the reset expired.

When Julia was ready, I resent a request for a new password. Julia reset the password for my hotmail account.

I tried to log on to Julia's computer with the new password. However, Julia's computer was not hooked up to the internet. To set it up on our network, I had to be logged in. I had to use the password from last time I was on the her computer. I was panicking.

I tried my password again a couple of times. Finally, I got in. I do not know what the password was that worked.

I was able to set up the internet after a while. Then it synced with my hotmail account. Now Julia is all set.  

When will I learn how to keep my passwords straight.

Card Eater

Daphne and I set up a Visa credit card on my Dad's old bank account to pay for some of the expenses on the house until the sale closes.

Daphne brought me the credit card this weekend along with a letter with my starting PIN.

I went to the bank to change the PIN. Unfortunately, I didn't open the label that held the starting PIN before I left. I put the card in the Green machine. Then I tried to get the label off. I couldn't figure out how to get it off. 

I asked the lady at the information desk to help me. She couldn't get the label off either. There were people waiting to use the machine. The TD bank in Barrhaven is a busy place.

The lady said I could come to her desk to use her machine to set up my PIN. By this time, the Green machine had eaten my card. The lady had to go around and open the back of the Green machine to get my card out. That took even more time.

Finally, she got my card.  I went to her desk to set my PIN. All that and I will probably never need to use the card.  

Splash

Barb loves her iPod. She carries it with her all the time. Even more often than the portable telephone.

So the other day, Barb decided to go downstairs to sew. She was carrying a cup of coffee and a glass of her favourite cold drink (soda water and grape juice).

She decided to carry her iPod on top of the glass. As she was going down the stairs, the iPod fell into the glass of soda water and grape juice.

Barb freaked out. She was so worried she had ruined her iPod. She had all of her addresses in it, as well as, a lot of other important information. She was afraid she would lose everything.

She rushed upstairs to dry out her iPod with paper towels. She was afraid to turn it on in case it would short out.

She waited a few hours before turning it on. It seemed to work except for some of the sounds. Later, all of the sounds worked.

She was afraid to charge it because the charging plug had gotten wet. Finally, she charged it last night.  It worked perfectly.

Barb learned a lesson about taking care of her most valuable possession.

New Neighbours

My sister and her husband were visiting for the weekend. They arrived when Barb was out playing pickleball. So they parked in the driveway.

When Barb got home, she parked in the neighbour's driveway. The old neighbours had just moved out. There was no one living there.

Julia, Daphne and Truman were heading out for a bike ride. Julia came in.  She told Barb that the new neighbours were trying to park in their driveway. Barb said what is the chance. She never parks in the neighbour's driveway. So she rushed over to move her car.

When she got there, our new neighbour was just coming out of the house into the garage. He turned out to be Barb's old tennis partner J.C. Barb screamed at the top of her lungs. She was so happy. She yelled so loud and so often that the neighbour across the street came over to see what all the yelling was about.

Daphne told me that it looked like Barb knew our new neighbours. Julia thought it was funny that our neighbour across the street came over to see what Barb was yelling about while Barb's own family didn't pay any atttention to her yelling.

Jane and J.C. knew that they were moving into the house next to ours. Jane was going to write to tell us. Then she thought she would just surprise us. She definitely surprised Barb.

Problem with Pay As You Go

Barb and I share a Rogers pay-as-you-go cellphone. Barb puts $100 on it once a year. Then if she renews it before the end of the year, she can carry over any unused value. She last renewed the cellphone when we got back from Florida.

I use the cellphone quite a bit for my ball teams. I also brought the cellphone to Pike Lake when I was there for my Dad's funeral. The real estate agent who was selling my Dad's house would call me on the cellphone even when I got back to Ottawa.  This frustrated Barb but I didn't complain.

While I was in Pike Lake, I tried to check how much money was available. I didn't know the PIN number that Barb had put on the account. So I changed the PIN number to one I knew.

Later Barb tried to access the account. However, she didn't know that I had changed the PIN number. So she wasted a lot of time without getting through.

Then my sister visited for the weekend. She texted me to tell me when she would be arriving. I didn't get the text. My sister thought I was rude not to reply. I told her I didn't get the text. She resent the text, I didn't get it the second time either.  We thought she must have been sending it to the wrong phone number.  Daphne said she was sending it to the same number that she had in the past when it had worked.  It was very mysterious.

After Daphne went home, I phoned the cellphone account to change the PIN back to Barb's number. The administration site told me the cellphone had expired. Barb checked the amount of money available on the phone. She thought it said $8.20. She didn't have her glasses and the print was very small. I rechecked it. I found out that the amount was really $0.20.

Since it costs 40 cents to receive a text, Daphne's texts couldn't come through. So Barb went on line and put $100 on the account.

We were surprised that Rogers hadn't informed us that the cellphone account was running out of credit. However, we were happy to fix the problem. I might need the phone in the next couple of days for my ballgames.

Pickleball Trip with a Control Freak

Barb is really into Pickleball. She plays nearly every day.

She is even travelling all over Ontario to play in competitions. She recently travelled to Oshawa with three other ladies to play in a women's double and a mixed doubles competition.

The women who “organized” the trip is the so called Pickleball Ambassador for the area. A couple of days for the trip, Barb and the other ladies, who were travelling together, received an email for the ambassador. In the email, the ambassador explained every little detail about the trip: when they would leave, what they should bring, where they should eat, what they should bring to the gym. It was the work of a super control freak. One of the ladies told Barb confidentially that she might not be able to take it travelling with such a control freak.

Barb didn't let the control freak bother her. She won Gold in the women's doubles and Silver in the mixed doubles.

Sarah Badgers Through

I have a nickname for Sarah based on the Honey Badger. There is a video on Youtube about the Honey Badger. The Honey Badger is a bad-ass. He doesn't care about any kind of problem that he faces. He just goes ahead and gets whatever he wants. I call her Sarah Badger.

We were driving to Indiana to visit Barb's friend from Florida for the long weekend. It was a 12 hour drive. During the drive, Sarah was working on a poster for her summer job at the university. She had a moral quandary because she was supposed to show her experimental results. However, her experiment wasn't working and the methodology was not very well controlled.

I tried to help her while driving but I didn't know what to do. When we got to Indiana, Sarah was still working on her poster. She worked late into the night and then got up early in the morning and finished it up.  Then she emailed it to her supervisor at the university.

When she got back on Tuesday, she printed it out.  The competition was later in the week. The poster competition was for all of the undergraduate students who were working at the university. There were about 50 of them.

Sarah won third prize. I told her that it was great that she “badgered” through her problems and got what she wanted.

Adventures in Canadian Health Care

Laura's Ontario health insurance card expired on her birthday. Fortunately, she was able to renew it in Mount Forest before she left for England.

On the way back from South Africa, Laura began throwing up on the plane. When she got to Vancouver, she went to the hospital. They asked for her health card. She showed them her temporary card from Ontario. 

They also wanted to see identification. All she had was her Vancouver driver's licence. She had to explain the long story about working in Vancouver two years ago.  Then she went back to school in Halifax last year. However, her home address was still Ontario. Fortunately, they accepted her card.

She was diagnosed with urinary tract infection and given introvenous antibiotics. Then she was given a prescription for an oral antibiotic and released from the hospital. She had a bad reaction to the oral antibiotic. So she went back to the hospital the next day.  She got a prescription for a different oral antibiotic.

A couple of days later, she was feeling better. 

She was hoping to work on the new Tim Burton movie when she got to Vancouver. But by the time she was feeling well enough to work, the Tim Burton movie was wrapping up. We saw pictures of Laura at the wrap party on Facebook. She got to meet Tim Burton at the wrap party though which was a dream come true.

World Travelling Daughter

After Laura came to Mount Forest for my Dad's funeral, she left for London to volunteer at the World pole dancing competition. She spent the weekend in London with some competitors from Halifax. 

Then she started on an adventure around England and Ireland to visit my relatives.

First, she had to figure out the train system because she couldn't rent a car with her current credit card limit. She got to Preston first to visit with my cousin Ruth and her family. 

She was also able to visit with Ruth's brother Billy and his family. 

From there, she went to Whitby to visit my cousin Gail and her family. 

Then she was on to visit my cousin Stuart and his family in Hull. 

Then to Manchester to fly over to Ireland.

In Ireland, she visited Tipperary to meet my relatives on my mother's side of the family. 

Then she went to County Wicklow to visit with my aunt Carrie and her family and my aunt Violet and her family.

There were many pictures posted on Facebook by my relatives.  So we could see where she was.

Then she went back to England and met my cousin David and his family in Shepton Mallet. 

Then back to London where she had lunch with my cousin Paul. Paul dropped her off at Heathrow to fly to South Africa.

There she was planning to meet up with a school chum who was running an art school. She planned to volunteer there and see the sights of South Africa.

Then back to Vancouver through London. In Vancouver, she will be back working in film production and lighting.

Requiem for an Irish Man

My Dad was born in a little farm house in Ireland. He had six brothers and three sisters. The boys were wild and fought like cats. But my Dad had fond memories of growing up on the farm.

He never did well in school. However, he valued the education of my sister and I. He always said to me “Knowledge was no burden to carry”.

Later in life, he bought a set of World Book encycloypedias. He used to read them in bed. He would come down in the morning talking about canons and camels and castles. We knew he was reading the C book.

When my grandfather retired from farming, the Taylors moved to a big house in town. The boys became fancy dressers who loved big cars. They would come home from church on Sunday afternoon, open the hood of their cars and start changing the oil or fiddling with the carborator in their Sunday best. He continued to do this all his life. My Mom used to get furious at him.

He lived at home until he got married at the age of 36. Apparently, on his wedding night, he sat on the edge of the bed and cried about having to leave home.

Shortly after he married, he and Edwina came to Canada for the job opportunities in carpentry and teaching. He always regretted leaving Ireland. He went back many times to visit. He used to say to people that he has lived in Canada for 50 years but he only lost his accent 10 years ago.

When he left carpentry, he worked in real estate. He would get listings by going door to door. He would talk his way into the house and convince people to put their house up for sale over a cup of tea. One time he was forcefully told to go away in sign language by a deaf couple.

His most famous client was Tim Horton when Tim Horton was starting his famous business in 1966. I remember in 1967, my Dad taking me to the opening of the first Tim Horton's donut shop in Burlington. Tim Horton brought the starting lineup of the Toronto Maple Leafs there just after they won their last Stanley Cup.

He went from real estate into the hardware business. He bought a little Home Hardware store on the Hamilton Mountain. I used to help him on my summer vacations. My aunt and uncle and cousin lived in an apartment in the back of the store. One day my aunt gave us a mattress, she didn't need anymore. We put it on the roof of the car in the morning. In the evening, we got in the car and started to drive home. Pulling away from a stoplight outside the hardware store, my Dad cried, “Oh the mattress!” I looked back and saw the mattress bouncing down the road on its edge before being driven over by a bus.

He learned to play golf with my sister, me and my friends at a little executive golf course in Clappisons Corners north of Burlington. Little did we know that it would become his major passed time in later life. Before he retired and started going to Florida, he even played golf in the winter in Hamilton. He got his picture on the front page of the paper putting on a snow covered green. They had to shovel little paths with their clubs to get to the hole.

My high school friends in Burlington used to tell me about playing golf with a little Irishman who was telling jokes and singing songs who turned out to be my Dad.

His other favourite passed time was taking Sunday drives. He continued that tradition long after everyone stopped doing it when gas prices increased drastically in the 1970's. He loved to take friends and family on long drives in the afternoon to see the sights. He would often drop in unannounced to see old friends and have a cup of tea.

When he could no longer drive, he enjoyed Daphne taking him for long drives to do her errands. He passed that “going out” gene on to Daphne and at least one of his granddaughters. So we know his “going out” and his “love of golf” genes will live on through his offspring.

Die Dove

Ever since Sarah was a baby, Barb and Sarah have had a cute way of saying goodnight or goodbye. They say “Die Dove You” or “Die Dove” for short which is baby talk for “I Love You”.

Since Sarah has the Rogers My Ten on her cell phone, she can phone home any time of day to talk to Barb for long as she wants. She is working at University of Guelph this summer. She usually phones home to talk to Barb on her lunch hour when she is sitting outside eating.

One day she was talking to Barb but Barb had to go out of the house. So Barb handed me the phone to finish talking to Sarah during her lunch hour.

As I was talking to Sarah and heard the call waiting beep.  So I hung up on Sarah.  We had finished talking.  I picked up the waiting call from my brother-in-law Truman. He wanted to tell me about how my Dad was doing in the nursing home.

As Barb was rushing out the door, she ran over to me and yelled into the phone "Die Dove" thinking Sarah was still on the phone. I don't know what Truman must have thought.

Coaching in the Dark

I am managing the Manotick Blitz Fastball Club. The other night I was at the 7 pm game. Around the third inning, I asked one of the players to turn on the lights. He tried but he couldn't seem to get them to come on. So I asked another guy who I thought might know how they worked. He got them working. But I thought it was still very dark at the park that night.

A little while later, I was looking at the scorebook. It is easier for me to read fine print without my glasses. So I took off my glasses to look at the scorebook.  I realized that I was still wearing my clip-on sunglasses. It was funny that none of the guys on the team mentioned it when I was so worried about turning the lights on.

Glasses on a Chain

Barb always seems to be looking for her glasses. She has a number of pairs around the house for different purposes.

She likes to read at bedtime. So she has a pair of glasses in the bedroom she uses to read with. She always falls asleep when she is reading at night. So the glasses only have one arm now because the other one broke off.

The other day she lost these reading glasses. She couldn't find them anywhere in the bedroom. She looked all over. It didn't help that they have clear rims. Eventually after much frustration she gave up looking and got another pair from downstairs.

About two weeks later, I was changing into my fastball uniform. I had closed the door to the bedroom. As I was leaving the bedroom, I saw her glasses on the floor behind the door. They must have fallen out of her housecoat that she hangs on the back of the door.

Putting her glasses on a chain around her neck would avoid so much frustration.

Lights Out Coincidence

Barb and I went to Guelph to help Sarah set up her new place for the summer.

Barb had done everything she could to arrange the room for Sarah. She came down to the livingroom to tell me about it. Sarah and her roommate were still up in her room.

Barb felt that the livingroom was too dark. She tried to turn on the standing lamp. It didn't work. She noticed it wasn't plugged in.

She plugged it in and immediately heard a loud bang. We both thought that she must have blew a circuit.

We found out that Sarah had dropped a heavy mirror upstairs at the exact time Barb had plugged in the lamp. Barb didn't blow a circuit. The lamp worked just fine when Barb turned it on. It was an amazing coincidence.

A Wedding and a Funeral

Barb had to buy me new clothes for the wedding of the daughter of one her tennis friends.

We left a little late and got to the wedding just on time.  We sat with Barb’s tennis friends at the ceremony.  Somehow they were seated on the groom’s side of the room.  So unfortunately, we couldn’t see the bride’s face during the ceremony.

At the reception, the father of the bride made a funny speech.  When he reached into his pocket to get out his speech, a long roll of paper fell onto the floor.  He said that it wasn’t his speech it was the bill for the wedding.  Then we went on to tell many silly puns.

Barb and I enjoyed some of the dancing.  I remarked that young people don’t dance anymore.

Later in the evening, Barb was complaining that she didn’t like the music.  However, the young people were all up and dancing.  I guess they were waiting for all the old people like us to leave so that the DJ would play their kind of music.  

 

We do the same thing in Florida.  We have to wait for all of the old people to go home before the DJ plays the music from the 70’s and 80’s that we like.

It turned out that the clothes Barb bought me for the wedding would be useful soon after to go to a funeral.

One of Barb’s old volleyball friends’ son was attacked while protecting a girl from her ex-boyfriend. Barb followed the story on the news.  She also read all of the posts on his Facebook page.  The 21 year-old boy eventually died and the ex-boyfriend was charged with first-degree murder.

We knew the family well although we hadn't seen them for a while.  They organized get-together for families like us who all had babies at the same time.  We got together a few times with all the parents and kids.  Barb searched through her photo albums and found a couple of pictures of the group.

Barb and one of her volleyball friends went to the wake.  Then the next day, Barb and I went to the funeral.  It was a very nice ceremony.  One of the family friends, who we used to get together with back in the old days, was a pastor and presided over the ceremony.  He read a number of quotes from the boy’s Facebook page.  One of the boy’s friends played the guitar and sang two songs.  There were two very good eulogies.  Then one of the boy’s sisters read a touching poem that she wrote for the occasion entitled “My Hero”.

The death of someone so young helped put things into perspective for me.  My troubles with the fastball administration seemed very trivial in comparison.

Too Busy to Eat

I have been so busy working on my fastball leagues that I have not been taking time to eat.  I have lost 25 pounds since I retired.

Barb has had to buy me new clothes.  I fit into clothes that I haven’t been able to for years.

This week I had a doctor’s appointment to go over my blood test results.  The doctor said that my results were very good.  If I come up with similar readings at my next three month tests, he will start to reduce my medications.

The guys at fastball have noticed how much weight that I have lost. 

It was funny that on my Glen Cairn team, our pitcher is a big guy like me.  Julia said that we looked alike when she came to watch a game.  He had lost about 50 pounds in the off season and everyone was very surprised to see him this year.  We still look alike.

Barvan in the Annual CORA Hockey Pool

I was invited to join the CORA playoff hockey pool even though I am retired.

So I got out my playoff prediction program.  I ranked the players in the order that I wanted to pick them.

A couple of days later, Barb and I particpated in a conference call with the other poolies.  There were 11 of us.  Barb and I were exactly in the middle of the selection order.

Our first pick was a defenseman from Pittsburgh.  Then we picked a forward from Vancouver.

Our next pick should have been a Montreal player.  Barb and I couldn’t bring ourselves to pick him because we thought Montreal was a low scoring team.

We ended up skipping over him and many other players.  We concentrated on just two teams.  We ended up with 7 Vancouver Canucks and 5 Pittsburgh Penguins.  My reasoning was that with so many poolies, the only way to win was to pick the final two teams.

The pool organizer named us Barvan . I thought that was better than Ivarb.

There was one poolie, Benoit Arbour, who couldn’t make it to the draft.  So he sent his picks to the organizer.  The organizer picked 12 players for him from the leftovers.  The organizer then challenged the other poolies to beat Benoit.  He called Benoit’s score the “Arbour-Line”.

We lost all of our Vancouver players in the first round when they were beaten quickly by the San Jose Sharks.  So all we had left was our five Pittsburgh Penguins.  They are good players but Pittsburgh, as a team, is not playing well in the semi-finals against Boston.  We will have a hard time getting over the Arbour-Line.

One of the poolies lost all 12 of his players.  He had players from four teams that all got beaten in the first round.  He was the first victim of the Arbour-Line stigma.

Driving Our Little Blue Honda

At the end of April, I drove to Guelph to pick up Sarah and bring her back to Ottawa.  She was disappointed that she didn’t get a co-op job for the summer.  She brought home most of her stuff. The car was very full.

She still had hope that she might find a summer job.  She continued to get phone calls from prospective employers.  They usually wanted her to come in for an interview.  Sometimes they would do a telephone interview.  Sometimes they would do a Skype interview.

One day Sarah got a call from her professor at Guelph.  Her professor said that she had a colleague who might hire Sarah for a summer job in their lab.  Sarah arranged to have a Skype interview but it was just a formality.  She got the job on Friday.  We were heading back to Guelph on Sunday night.

This time Barb came with us to help Sarah set up her new room.  We drove to Guelph on Sunday night.  We stayed with our friends Karen and Max in Fergus for the night.  Then we drove back to Ottawa on Monday morning.

The next weekend was the May long weekend.  

 

It was also our wedding anniversary on Friday.  Barb and I went to Cora’s for brunch.  

 

Then I was back on the road to Guelph to pick up Sarah.  We both went to Pike Lake to visit with Daphne, Truman and my Dad.

That was a lot of driving in our little blue Honda.

Buying a Bike Rack

Sarah insisted on bringing her bike back with her from Guelph.  Barb thought that she might be able to buy a cheap bike for Sarah for the summer.  She couldn’t find anything reasonable.  So she looked on Kijiji for a bike rake.

There was one for sale the day she looked.  It was selling for $20.  I did some research on the internet.  I found that it was a pretty good deal and a pretty good bike rack.

Barb phoned the guy selling the bike rack. He lived in Barrhaven.  So within a few hours, we had decided to buy a bike rack, found one and bought it.

It would turn out to be quite useful.

 

Randy Likes My Guelph Dad Sweater

Sarah’s friend Randy is usually hanging around when I am picking up or dropping off Sarah in Guelph.  

 

He tells Sarah that whenever he sees me, I am wearing my red Guelph Dad sweater.  

 

He is right I like that sweater. I always seem to be wearing it when I go to Guelph. 

 

He might not realize that I wear my red Guelph Dad sweater even if I am not in Guelph.

Guelph Dad Sweater Seen in Barrhaven

When I got back from Florida, I enjoyed walking around Barrhaven in the afternoon.

Sarah would get a text from her friend Lauren when Lauren saw me walking.  Lauren texted that I was always wearing my bright red Guelph Dad sweater.   She even took a picture of me walking to the library.

One day I was walking around the box stores. Lauren texted Sarah to tell her I was out walking.  Lauren said that her mother was at the box stores wearing her Guelph Mom sweater.  

Slice

One of the reasons that I didn’t want to play golf in the park was because I can’t hit the ball straight. The course goes in between the homes and has very narrow fairways.

I went out to the driving range with my brother-in-law.  I consistently sliced my shots onto the road.

Barb told her friend’s granddaughter about my problem hitting the ball straight.  She said I needed to shorten my backswing.

I went out again to the driving range with my sister.  I tried using a shorter backswing.  I was amazed when all my shots went straight down the range.

Barb told her friend's granddaughter. She was very happy for me.  She said that now I can enjoy the great game of golf.

That encouraged me to actually try out the park course.  I went out one afternoon with my sister and her husband.

I used my newly shortened backswing and kept the ball on the fairway all afternoon.

Then on the last hole with houses on the right, I thought, "I have to hit the ball straight to not hit the houses".  I took my short backswing and sliced the ball.  There was a big bang when the ball hit a house.  One of the neighbours came out to see what made the noise.  We couldn’t find the ball and the owner of the house that I hit didn’t seem to be home.  I thought the ball had gone right across the street and into a house a long way from the fairway.

On the drive home, we looked for my ball.    We found the ball not too far off the fairway.  The house that I hit had obviously been hit many times because there were dents all over the siding.

I didn’t feel like playing again.

Blue

I did play golf with my sister and her husband once before I left Florida.  Barb decided to come out to watch us when she finished with her stitching group.

She drove around on the golf cart.  She drove past the people who we bought our place from.  They asked where she was going.  She said she was looking for me on the golf course.

They said, "Is that him in the blue shirt?"  Barb said, "Yes that’s him".  They said, “Does he where blue shirts all the time?”

When we got back to Canada, Barb went out and bought me some golf shirts in other colours.

Guessing

Sarah phoned to tell us how hard her bio-chem exam was.  There were 30 multiple choice questions with four possible answers for each.

She asked me to calculate the probability of passing the exam if she guessed at all the questions.

I quickly wrote a simulation.  I simulated 100 exams of 30 questions with a chance of 25% of getting the right answer on any question.

There were no cases in which the results were over 15 correct.

I calculated the number of cases with more than 10 correct answers.  There were 10 cases.  There were 80 cases of more than 5 correct answers.

I realized I could use the binomial probability distribution to calculate the exact values.  The binomial distribution confirmed the results of my simulation.

I developed a graph of the probability of having X of more correct answers in a 30 question exam.

I asked Sarah if she wanted me to email her the graph.  She said, ‘No’.

But she said she didn’t mind me blogging about it.

 

Pay As You Go

When we got back to Canada, Barb realized that we hadn't renewed our pay-as-you-go cellphone.

Barb and I share a cellphone. It is a deal with Rogers that allows us to pay only when you use it.

We almost never use the cellphone.  It is good to have when we are travelling in case of emergency. I also use it in the summer if I have to make calls from the softball diamond.

So Barb phoned Rogers and pleaded with them to renew her cellphone. They let her renew it.

I was at a fastball meeting last week. One of the guys asked me what my cellphone number was. I didn't have the cellphone with me. The guys laughed when I couldn't remember my number.

We were at a bar with wifi. So I got my iPod hooked in and emailed Barb at home. She emailed me back the cellphone number.  So I told the guys.

The next time I left the house I brought the cellphone.

Fun with FORTRAN

The fastball season was coming quickly.  I had to get back into my fastball administration. I found out about the player draft for my fastball league in Glen Cairn.

I had the schedule for the Greater Ottawa Fastball League.

 

I got out the FORTRAN scheduling program that I wrote last year. It tried to minimize the number of conflicts for the Glen Cairn league by working around the GOFL.

Unfortunately, my compiler in Windows didn't work anymore. So I got a FORTRAN compiler for Linux and copied my program over to it.  It was old-fashioned but worked fine.

I revised my FORTRAN program and made it even better than last year. I was able to get a schedule that had just one conflict for each team in Glen Cairn.

My team captain had  asked to play most of his games on Monday. I was able to schedule 10 of the his 17 games on Monday.

Then I ran the FORTRAN program again with my Trend Arlington league. Myself and another guy played in Glen Cairn. So I de-conflicted the Trend Arlington league with Glen Cairn.

As I expected, I had scheduled 10 Monday nights in which I would be playing a game at 6:30 in one league and a 8:30 game in the other league.

Designated Hitter

In the Glen Cairn Men's Fastball League, there is an equalization draft. The captains are allowed to protect 6 players from the previous year. The other players go into the draft. The last place team from the previous year has the first pick in the draft.

I got an email from my team captain. He wanted to tell me that he wasn't protecting me. He was getting a friend into the league who only played first base. So he didn't need me. He said that he appreciated me helping him manage the team. He said that I was one of the most consistent hitters on the team.  But he just didn't have anywhere for me to play because I was only a first baseman.

I said that if I was still available, he could draft me. I would be a designated player who didn't play defence but only batted.

Being on the executive, I was sent the team lists after the draft. I was picked by my last year's team captain. I guess I will be a designated hitter this year.

Getting Settled

Because of the two day drive, Barb was behind on her favourite television shows. One of the first things she tried was taping her shows on Rogers On Demand.

The VCR didn't work. So she tried another VCR. It didn't work either.

When Julia got home from work, she said that Rogers had figured out how to stop people from taping the On Demand channel.

Barb phoned Rogers to see how she could watch television on the internet like she did in Florida. She had to negotiate a new deal to get more bandwidth and a high speed modem.

When it was all straightened out, she was able to watch her shows on her computer in the evenings in the livingroom while I worked on the computer just like in Florida.

Small Consolations

We weren't back long before we noticed a few nice things about our house in Canada.

First, the toilets were more modern. We didn't have to hold the handle down until they had completely flushed. I still did though out of habit. Barb never figured out how to flush the toilets in our Florida place. She was jealous of my mastery of the toilets.

Second, the kitchen tap didn't drip. Our kitchen tap in Florida dripped badly. I had a particularly tough time figuring out how to get it to stop dripping. I would regularly fill up the water jug with the drips. Barb had the touch with the tap. She was able to get it to stop dripping.  She tried to teach me but I didn't have the touch.

Finally, the coffee pot in Canada poured without dripping on the counter. Neither of us could figure out how to pour coffee in Florida without it dripping all over the counter when we poured.

These small consolations made it feel better to be back.

Welcome to Canada

My sister said that she likes to stay in Florida until May.  The weather can still be miserable in Canada in April.

We thought about getting an extension on our medical insurance so we could stay another week or so. However, Barb's friends would be all gone. Barb thought that staying was simply avoiding the inevitable. So we left as scheduled on the 10^th of April.

On the second day of our drive as we were travelling through New York state, we went through a snow storm. It was slushy snow. When the trucks passed, it was hard to see the road.

We drove through the storm. It got nicer as we got into Canada. The rest of the drive was uneventful.

We got in on Thursday afternoon. There was a weather warning on the television. There was supposed to be freezing rain over night and all day Friday.

We were lucky that we weren't travelling on Friday. However, my sister was right. Next year, we will plan to stay until May.

Sketchy

We started planning our drive to Canada. I thought about booking a hotel ahead. I wanted a place that was more than halfway along. However, I wanted to get through West Virginia because I thought it was a little sketchy there.  I didn't end up booking a hotel but I found out the names of the towns about where we might like to stop.

On our route, when we were ready to stop, we looked at GPS "Betsy" to find motels close by. We found a Knights Inn that I thought would be nice but cheap. 

I had stayed in a Knights Inn in Orlando when I went to the fastball tournament.  I thought it was a good deal.

The Knights Inn was right off the highway.

I went in to the office and asked about the price. The man behind the desk said it would be $50. I said I thought it would be more like $40. He asked me if I had a discount card. I said I didn't. I turned to leave. Then he said he would give me the discount anyway. I got the room for $45 dollars.

I asked for a king-size bed. He gave me a key for a room around the back.

When I went back out the car, Barb said she didn't want a room around the back. We drove around back. There was a sketchy couple sitting outside their room smoking and drinking.

Barb didn't want the couple watching us unpack the car. So we went back to the office. I got a room in the front with double beds. Barb thought the room was nice.

We unpacked the car, had a little to eat, checked our email using the wifi and went to sleep.

The next morning we packed up the car.  We went to the lobby for coffee and donuts. Then we got some gas and hit the road.

It wasn't long before I saw a sign saying Welcome to Maryland. I realized that we had stayed overnight in West Virginia. No wonder it was sketchy.

Weird

Barb's best friend at the park had visitors from Indiana for a Spring Break. Her daughter and her granddaughter came for a week. They spent most days lying in the sun trying to get a tan. In the evenings, they invited Barb over for games.

Barb played games with them every night until past midnight. I was an evening bachelor.

They played card games that Barb thought were familiar put had slightly different rules than Barb was used to. Every time they told her an unusual rule, Barb said, “That's just weird”.

This became a habit for Barb after a week. From then on, everything that was unusual was “weird” to Barb.

It amazed me how much stuff was “weird”.

Almost Unstoppable

Barb played in a few Pickleball tournaments in the area. She met some good players from other retirement villages. Before we left for Canada, the people from the different parks decided to hold a little competition among themselves. Barb was the only player from our park.

It turned out that she was the big winner of the day. Everyone who played with her won.  Barb had the highest combined score for both the women and the men.

She got an email from a lady from Ottawa who was also in the tournament. The lady said she wanted to send the tournament scores to the Pickleball players in Ottawa to tell them how well Barb did.

The lady said Barb was almost unstoppable.

Barb's comment to me was what did she mean 'almost'. She was unstoppable.

Later when we got back to Canada, my sister phoned us from Florida.  She told Barb that her name was in the paper for this tournament. She said she mailed it to us, so Barb could show the Ottawa Pickleball players.

To Golf or Not to Golf

My brother-in-law gave me a set of his old golf clubs, some golf balls and tees. My sister took me out to the driving range. She said that I hit the golf too wildly to play on the tight fairways of the golf couse in the park. She wanted to take me to a golf course in town here in Florida. I didn't really want to but she is quite determined.

The next night I had a dream about decision trees. I started thinking about how I could use a decision tree to decide whether I should golf or not.

The first question I asked myself was “What would I like about playing golf?” 

The only thing I could think of was that I would make new friends in the park if I played on Men's day and Canadian's day.

From this, I concluded that if I played golf, it would have to be in the park. So playing on an outside course was of no interest to me.  Therefore, I would need to learn how to control my shots to play on the narrow fairways of the park 's course.

I was stuck with various pros and cons of playing golf in the park. So I decided to do a multi-criteria decision analysis.

I thought of four criteria: Making Friends, Wasting Time, Losing the Ability to Sleep In, the Expense.

Since there were only two options: Play Golf in the Park or Not Play Golf, I only needed to consider the options by the criteria as 0's and 1's.

	Weights	0.50	0.17	0.17	0.17	1
	Options
Criteria		Make Friends	Waste Time	Lost Sleep	Cost	Total
	Play Inside	1	0	0	0	0.50
	Do Not Play	0	1	1	1	0.50

Then I looked at the value of making friends compared to the costs of wasting time, losing sleep and paying fees. I figured that the three costs were equally valued. Then the value of making friends would have to be equal to the value of the sum of the costs for the options to be equally desirable.

Thus, to make playing golf worthwhile, making friends would need to be:

a.  more than three times as valuable as saving time, 

b.  more than three times as valuable as sleeping in, and 

c.  more than three times as valuable as saving money.

I don't know if this helps.

I know I like to sleep in. I have a lot of other things that I would rather spend my time doing than playing golf. Also, golf is very expensive compared to my other hobbies.

So how much would I like to make new friends?