I put my name in to the play in the Kitchener Fastball
League. I also searched the web and
found the Church League. I emailed the
president of the Church League and told him I was interested in playing in the
league. The first thing he said was “how
did you get my email address?” The next
thing he asked me was if I would be playing in any other leagues. I said I put my name in for the KFL. He said he would have to get approval for me
to play in the Church League. I said
that I wasn’t that good so he shouldn’t have to worry. But he said that the league has a rule that
you can’t play in two leagues until you have been in the league for three
years. I would be 61 by then. I said that there were about 30 players on
the waiting list for the KFL and it was very unlikely that they will call
me. He said great because there was a
team looking for players. I was
happy. Then a couple of days later I got
a call from a guy for the KFL asking me if I wanted to play on his team. I told him the story of the Church League and
he said he thought that was a strange rule that he had never heard of
before. So I had to turn him down. Then I emailed the president of the KFL and
told him that he should take my name off the list. I found out that my first game in the Church
League would be May 2nd the night after we got back to New Hamburg.
Saturday, 13 August 2016
Barb’s Chair
We had moved all the stuff and the guys who had helped me
had gone home. I was just checking
around the house and was shocked to find Barb’s quilting chair in the spare
bedroom. I guess Barb had put it there
when the real estate agents took pictures of the dining room after she took
down her sewing stuff. I was about to
phone Bruce to come back with his SUV. I
had the phone book out and then Daphne came up in her golf cart. I told her about my dilemma and she said we
could just put the chair in the back of the golf cart and bring it over that
way. Then I rode my old bike over to
Daphne’s house and got the keys to her house.
So when we come back before her we can pick up our stuff and bring it up
to The Villages before she arrives.
A Little Help from My Friends
I had recently helped John and Peter with their computer
problems and they said they could help me move my stuff to Daphne’s house using
John’s truck and Peter’s van. I had also
shared my ebooks with Bruce and he said that he could help me move as well with
his SUV. So when it came the day to move
the stuff, I had lots of help and lots of vehicles. We loaded up all the stuff quickly and had it
moved in about 45 minutes. I was very
happy and Daphne was very happy because they wanted to leave right after I had
moved my stuff.
Stuck
I was getting ready for my friends to come over and help me
move our stuff to Daphne’s house for storage for the summer. I thought I should check the weight of the
television. We have a big old plasma
television Daphne had given us when we moved in. We had it on a television stand we were
leaving with the house. However, when I
tried to lift the television I found it was stuck to the stand. I had to pry it off with a kitchen knife. I was worried it was stuck forever but it
wasn’t.
Biggest Loser
Barb and Deb came fifth in the skill category at the US Open
and thought she would do better in the age category. It was hot as heck there and she had a very
sore bum from her sciatic problem.
Unfortunately, they had to wait two hours to get started and they didn’t
warm up properly. So they came out flat
in the first game and lost to a pair of girls that they beat all the time in
tournaments. Then because they lost the
first game the best they could do was third.
However, they lost in the bronze medal game and came fourth in the age
category. It was quite an experience
playing in the US Open. She didn’t win a
medal in the skill category or the mixed category. Fourth place was her best finish and it is a
real disappointment for Barb. The one
consolation she had was that Debbie her partner’s husband is a pilot and is
used to staying in five star hotels. He
had booked their hotel and she got to stay in an amazing suite at a five star
hotel.
This Year’s Dilemma
Laura Facebook messaged us and said that her car was broken
into outside the pole gym where she was training. The robber’s had stolen everything including
her bags and wallet. She had lost her
passport just before she was supposed to fly to Halifax to start her art class on Monday. I quickly looked up on the internet what to
do if your car has been broken into and emailed the link to her. I told my softball friend the next day about
Laura having her passport stolen just before she was supposed to fly to Halifax . He told me that she didn’t need her passport
to fly in Canada
all she needed was a photo ID. Laura and
I were messaging that night and I told her about the photo ID. She said she had lost all of her photo IDs. She
was very upset and couldn’t think straight.
Then somehow she found her driver’s license and realized that she could
still fly to Halifax
as she had planned. That made a bad
situation a little better. However, she
didn’t have her credit card. So she
asked me to book her flight for her. I
looked up flights and she looked up flights.
She found a cheaper flight than me.
So I gave her my credit card information and she tried to book the
flight. When she tried it didn’t seem to
work. So she tried again and still it
didn’t work. So I said that I would book
her flight. Then I checked my email and
found that I had received three emails confirming my bookings. I looked at my credit card account on
line. I noticed that there were three
tickets purchased on my account. Two
were Laura’s bookings and one was mine.
So I quickly phoned the company that Laura had booked through. Fortunately, I got through to the right
person and they were nice enough to cancel Laura’s purchases. Then when I looked more closely at Laura’s
purchases I noticed that they were for Monday night and mine was for Sunday
night. She had to be in Halifax Monday afternoon for her course. She seems to be really having trouble
thinking straight.
Student of the Month
Barb gets the Pickle Ball Guru’s Newsletter by email every
month. She was scrolling down the
newsletter this month and found her and Deb’s picture with their gold medals
under the title student of the month.
There was a little note about them in the newsletter. The strange thing was that Deb uses the
Pickle Ball Guru’s paddle but Barb doesn’t and neither of them have ever been a
student of the Pickle Ball Guru.
Cable Internet
Our internet provider in New Hamburg emailed Barb and asked
her to phone them. They said they had a
problem with hooking up our internet again when we got back to Canada . I guess they use the Bell
telephone lines and Bell
had taken all the good lines. So the
only lines they had left would give us 3 GB download which was not enough for
Barb to stream her television shows. Not
only that but we would have to pay for 6 GB download. Barb asked the guy what she could do. He said she would have to find another
internet provider. So we did some
research and found a new cable internet provider. They could provide 15 GB download. Later Barb got a phone call from our original
internet provider and she told them our situation. He said we could get cable internet. Barb asked why the other guy had not
suggested that. Barb thought it might be
a new service but the guy on the phone said no they had been providing cable
internet for about 3 years now. However,
by that time, we had cancelled our previous internet provider and joined the
new provider. Their incompetence had
lost them a customer.
Cut Off
I have decided to listen to audio books that Barb has
already read so we can talk about them.
Barb likes mysteries. I have
cards for three libraries: Avon Park , New Hamburg and Ottawa .
They all have a great supply of audio books. I have found a way to get around the due date
problem with audio books from the library.
I can download the books using their software and then transfer the
books to my mp3 players and then copy the mp3 files from my player to my
computer for permanent storage. So I
spent quite a few evenings downloading all of Barb’s mysteries from the
libraries then after I had copied them over to my computer I was returning them
to the library using their software so that I could download more. I guess the library noticed this strange
behaviour and froze my account. I phoned
to find out why my account was frozen and they didn’t know. They told me to email the system
administration. I did and they told me I
had been downloading and returning too many books in a short period of time. I had to wait a week until they let me back
on the system. I will have to slow my
downloading.
Elizabeth Grant
Barb thought she was going to run out of her face
cream. So at Christmas time, she asked
Sarah to go to our house in New Hamburg and find her face cream and bring her
some more when she visited.
Unfortunately, Sarah brought the wrong cream. So Barb went on the Shopping Channel and
bought some more. In the last few days
we were in Florida ,
Barb noticed that she was still on her first bottle of face cream. She didn’t need Sarah to bring any down and
didn’t need to buy more on the Shopping Channel.
Friends
I got a call from two of my friends asking for help
installing software on a new computer.
So I rode over on my bike. I
installed all the software that they needed.
They were asking about my move to The Villages and were making fun of my
bike saying that it wouldn’t be allowed in The Villages.
Packing
We had only two weeks left in Florida and Barb was playing in the US Open
the last week we would here. We had
decided to put our house in Avon
Park
Fabric Sale
Barb has been trying to sell old quilting kits on eBay. She is not having much luck this year. She finally sold a kit but the lady said she
needed it delivered right away because she was leaving for somewhere. Barb didn’t think it could be delivered in
time but she mailed it right away. A
couple of days later, she got a nice compliment from the lady who really liked
the kit and said that it arrived just in time.
The Villages
Barb found a place in The Villages that looked good on the
internet. So Barb phoned the real estate
agent and made plans for us to come up to The Villages and see it. She called her friends and they said we could
stay with them for the weekend. We
arrived in the afternoon and looked at the place but Barb found it was not as
nice as it looked in the pictures on the internet. The real estate agent said he would look at
the listings and take Barb around tomorrow to see other houses in our price
range. That night our hosts took around
The Villages to see the sites. It is a
huge complex with over 100,000 retired people living there. It is made up of seven or eight smaller
villages with their own Town
Square .
Each Town Square
has a theme. There are little shops and
restaurants around the Squares and in the middle of the Square is a band shell
with live music every night of the year.
Every week they publish a newspaper listing all the clubs that are
meeting that week. There are over 2000
clubs in The Villages. There are many
recreation centers where the clubs meet.
There are beautiful pools and walking trails. A major highway runs through the middle of
the complex and it has all the big stores for shopping like Walmart.
So Barb played pickle ball on Saturday morning and then met
with the real estate agent to see more houses.
First she went to an Open House.
Then she saw a few other houses.
She didn’t like any of them and thought she would have to make do with
something less than perfect. As they
were finishing up their day, the lady real estate agent from the Open House
phoned and told Barb’s real estate agent that he needed to show her one of her
new listings. So they went to look at
it. Barb had actually seen pictures of
it on the internet but didn’t really like it.
However, when she saw it in real life it was much better than she
thought. She was so impressed that she
said I had to see it. I saw it later in
the day and I was happy with it too because I was going to get an office. So we put in an offer. The real estate agent made a mistake in the
arithmetic and put in an offer for $1000 less than we agreed to offer. Unfortunately, Barb didn’t get the email
telling her it was accepted and when we went over to the house the next day to
sign the papers she had to ask if they had accepted the offer. We were moving to The Villages next November
for the pickle ball.
IT Committee
There was a major dispute in the Home Owners Association and
many people resigned from the Management Committee. One of the people who quit
was the computer expert. So one morning
I was in bed and there was a knock on the door.
I got up in my pyjamas to see who it was and saw Boyd Nelson looking in
the front window. I answered the door
and he told me that the Home Owner’s Association needed me to fix one of their
computers that had a virus. I fixed the
computer but I had to tell them that I couldn’t join the IT Committee because
we were moving to The Villages. They
were very sad to see me go because they had big plans for what they wanted me
to do with the computers next Fall when I came back to the park.
Family Meeting
Barb’s pickle ball partner Debbie had a family meeting which
was just her and her husband because they have no kids. She raised the point of how unhappy she was
in Avon Park Avon Park
Balancing Books
For the past couple of years, I have been using this free accounting
software to keep track of all of our expenses and income. I only try to balance the books every spring
before income tax season. With our
investments and our rental properties, it can be quite difficult to get the
books to balance. Barb hates it when I
ask her about things she purchased on Mastercard months before so that I can
put the expenses in their specific accounts.
She gets especially upset when I ask her about her wool and fabric
purchases. Fortunately, this year she
didn’t do many purchases not because she has enough wool and fabric but because
the Canadian dollar is so bad in comparison to the US dollar she loses a lot of
money on the exchange. I always had
problems remembering what cheques I write because I forget to write notes in
the back of the cheque book. This year
we found out that we could actually see a copy of the cheques on line. That was a great help because I found that we
paid the land transfer fee twice for our property in Morningside. When we came back and told the park manager
and she couldn’t believe it. But Barb showed her a print out and the manager
noticed that it did look like her handwriting on the cheques. So after it was agreed by the headquarters,
we got a refund cheque for $350.
Ali’s Sins
I do the income taxes for Barb, myself and the girls. I am the representative for Barb, Laura and
Sarah. This year I don’t have to do Julia’s
income tax because Dillon is doing it for her.
I found out that as a representative I can get copies of all their T4’s
on line from the CRA website. That is
great because Laura never has her forms for me to do her income tax. This year Sarah asked me to do Ali’s income
tax. So he sent me photo copies of his
T4’s by email. When I did his, I noticed
that he had two different Social Insurance Numbers. Sarah said “typical immigrant”. I phoned CRA to ask what I should do about it
and they said it happens quite often to new immigrants. I was very surprised that it could happen at
all.
Predictions
When I started the slow pitch season in Florida , we played our first game and lost
badly because we made so many errors. I
told Barb that I thought we would not win many games this year because we were
really bad and I thought the other teams were stacked with good players. However, we went on to win 15 out of 20 games
in the regular season and win the regular season title. We won our semi-final game but lost a close
game in the finals. Daphne came to watch
the finals and there was a person announcing the batters and the score over the
public address system. He gave everyone
nicknames. I was Ivan the Terror. In the article about the game in the local
newspaper, they called me a ‘line drive machine’.
The Song
Barb and I have different tastes in music. She likes pop music and I like alternative
music. In Florida , Barb listens to a Lite music
station that is the only station that comes in on our home’s central radio
system. I listen to Live 88.5 from Ottawa using the
streaming service on the internet.
Occasionally, I hear a song on Barb’s radio station that is also my
radio station’s play list. Barb is
always surprised when she likes one on my station’s songs. When Barb is out playing pickle ball or
shopping I play my radio station on her computer and use the speakers that are
hooked to her computer. When she gets
home, she immediately turns off the speakers and turns on the house radio. Today she got home and the song X’s and O’s
was playing on my radio. She said that
it was one of her songs but she turned if off anyway. Then she turned on the house radio and X’s
and O’s was playing there too.
The Visit
Barb and Debbie went to play pickle ball with friends in The
Villages, a giant retirement city a couple of hours North of Avon Park. Barb got to play with all the great players
there. She fit right in.
She stayed with friends there and texted me one night and
told me about how good the pickle ball was.
I replied to ask if I should start packing. She decided we needed to move to The Villages
right there and then.
When she got home, she went on line right away and started
looking for homes for sale there. She
was up until 3 am after a long drive home and a whole weekend of strenuous
pickle ball.
Strange Bird
Julia and Dillon have been enjoying doing jigsaw puzzles
together. Julia told me she had just
completed a puzzle of animals and birds of Canada . She thought she had lost one piece and she
was so happy when she found the last piece.
Julia and Dillon tried to identify all the animals and birds in the
puzzle but were stuck on one bird.
Dillon said it was a penguin but Julia didn’t think it was a penguin and
they were arguing about it. So she took
a picture of the bird in the puzzle and iMessaged it to me and asked me if I
knew what bird it was. I didn’t know but
I quickly Googled “Penguin like bird” and a picture of a Puffin came up that
looked exactly like the picture.
Wikipedia even was more specific and said it was a North Atlantic Puffin. I replied to Julia and she thought I was a
genius. I hated to tell her it was
Google that was the genius.
Bic Pen
Barb bought a big package of Bic pens when we were in
Barrhaven. There were about 50 black
pens and 50 red pens and 100 blue pens.
I carry one around all the time so that I can write notes on my little
pieces of paper. I write a lot of notes.
I have been watching the ink in my Bic
pen because it is clear and you can see the tube of ink inside. It is slowly going down. I was very excited and couldn’t wait to
finish the ink. Well today it finally
ran out of ink today when I was writing a note at Fred and Ellen’s house about
a friend of Barb’s who was in the hospital.
Ellen went inside and got me another pen. I finished writing my note but I didn’t like
the pen. It was not a Bic pen. When I got home from my walk I was very proud
to show Barb that I had used all the ink in the pen. Barb said she had never seen a Bic pen run
out of ink. Usually you lose it before
it runs out. I got another Bic pen from
the package. This package of pens will
last a long time if I use them all until they run out of ink, probably the rest
of my life time.
April 2015
At the beginning of the New Year, it is always difficult
writing cheques because I put the wrong year on them. I guess I don’t write many cheques anymore
because when I went to put the date on the medical forms for Barb’s claim, it
was the first time I had written the date and of course I wrote 2015 on the
form and had to white it out and write 2016 over it.
Honeyed Chicken
Barb bought some honeyed sliced ham at the deli in Walmart. For some reason, I always think it is honeyed
chicken. When I call it honeyed chicken,
Barb never knows what I am talking about.
Then she realizes I mean the honeyed ham and she corrects me. I guess I have confused her enough that now
she is even calling it honeyed chicken.
Anyway its best before date was today.
So we finished it off and don’t have to worry about the name problem
anymore.
Month’s Calendar
Every month the Home Owner’s Association and the Park
Management put out a nice newsletter with announcements and a calendar of all
the events for the month ahead. The
newsletter usually comes out a few days before the beginning of the month. So at the end of the month, all of the
members of the community go down to the Office to pick up a new calendar. On March 31st, Barb went down to
the office and picked up the newsletter and calendar. She brought it home and was studying it for
quite some time before she realized that it was the March newsletter and
calendar and not the new one for April.
Grampa’s Puzzle
Barb goes to knitting on Tuesday nights. Her friend’s husband made a puzzle out of
wood pieces for all the girls at knitting.
It was the same puzzle that Grampa Taylor made and used to show us when
we visited him. You have to make a T shape
out of four pieces of wood. Barb
struggled and struggled with the puzzle.
She always likes a challenge and doesn’t give up easily. Eventually, she gave up and asked me if I
knew how to do it. I looked at it for 5
seconds and then did it correctly first time.
Barb was amazed and took a picture of it with her iPod and sent it to
her friend. Then she took the pieces
apart again and tried to repeat what I had done. She couldn’t do it. So she asked me to do it again. This time I couldn’t do it either. She said it was just luck that I did it
correctly the first time. Fortunately,
she had a picture on her iPod to help her do it again.
Surprise Delivery
We almost never lock our doors because we live in such safe
communities. Today I was sitting in the
living room in my pyjamas working on the computer and Barb was out playing
pickle ball and had the car. So there
was no car in the driveway and Barb’s friend must have thought there was no one
home because she just came right in the house without knocking to drop off a
pattern for Barb. Barb had volunteered
to make a couple of bears for some hospitalized children and I guess Barb’s
friend didn’t want to leave the pattern on the steps outside the house.
Double the Bruises
Barb is always getting hit by pickle balls when they smash
the ball. The smashes leave bruises all
over her body. Today she got hit in the
leg in the exact same spot that she already had a bruise. I guess it hurt twice as much as usual.
Ballpark Betty
Barb’s friend wanted me to put some audio books on her iPod
so that she could listen to them on their drive home to Nova Scotia .
She told Barb that if she had some audio books to listen to she wouldn’t
have to listen to her husband who talks all the way home. So I found out who were their favourite
authors and looked up some books on the library websites. I have access to three libraries: the Avon Park
library in Florida , the New Hamburg library at
home and I still have access to the Ottawa
library. For some reason, the Ottawa library
automatically renewed my card.
I found some audio books and downloaded them. I have a way to save them on my computer so
they don’t expire which is very useful.
Then I copied them to my mp3 player and rode over to Barb’s friend’s
house on my bike. I copied the books
onto her iTunes and then her iPod.
On my ride home on my bike, I was waiting for a car to pass
some construction vehicles and the car stopped and signalled to me. A lady got out of the car shouting “Ivan”. It turned out to be Ballpark Betty a fastball
fan from Peterborough
that I see at all the tournaments with her husband Jerry. They travel all over the continent watching
tournaments and I see them a lot. She
had come down to Florida
to help a friend from another park drive home and they had come over to our
park to visit a friend. It was quite a
coincidence that she was driving out of the park at the exact same time as I
was on the road riding my bike home from Barb’s friend.
Convocation Causes Cancellation
I was asked to present my work at Michigan State
University
Then Sarah told Barb that her convocation was scheduled for
11 am on the 14th of June.
The same day as my presentation was scheduled. I had to email the organizers and tell them I
couldn’t present. They were very
understanding and said it was no problem.
Lost Coffee
Barb spent a long time looking for her coffee cup. She searched the whole house and it is not a
big house, but she couldn’t find it. She
retraced her steps and still couldn’t find it.
She got another cup and poured a fresh cup of coffee. Then later she was putting something in the
microwave and found her full coffee cup there where she had heated it up.
Bookmark Solution
Barb is always frustrated when she falls asleep reading in
bed. She drops her book and loses her
page and then has to spend a lot of time looking for her page again. She can never remember where she was in the
book and has to reread a lot of pages until she finds her place again. She thinks she has found a way to solve this
problem. She now puts her bookmark in
her book before she starts reading the page and then moves the bookmark every
time she reads a page.
Redneck Heaven
Sebring has a racetrack and every year they have a 24 hour car
race on one weekend. My sister and her
husband go to see it every year. They
volunteer at the racetrack for the weekend.
So they get in for free. It is
one of the highlights of the winter for them.
My brother in law was working the first day of the race weekend when the
cars do there trials. So my sister
offered to bring me to the racetrack and get me in with my brother in law’s
ticket.
We saw the trials and watched them setting up the pit
stops. We walked all the way around the
track which I think is more than a mile.
There were a lot of crazy people setting up for the weekend. They were building platforms to sit up high
to watch the race. There were couches up
on the top of RVs. It was Redneck
heaven.
Inflation Problem
I got this really old and rusty bike from one of my softball
buddies last year. He just wanted to get
rid of it but I liked it and when we sold our golf cart both Barb and I used it
to get around the park. The tires kept
going flat. So I went out and bought new tires and inner tubes. They cost me $60 USD. So the bike was really quite expensive.
One day I noticed that my tires were a little flat. So I went to the maintenance area where there
was an air pump and filled them up. Then
I went over to a fellow’s house in the community to talk about Linux. He had been installing Linux on the old folk’s
computers because he thought that they shouldn’t still be using Windows XP
because Microsoft no longer supported it.
I left the bike out in the driveway in the sun.
After that I rode down to the Clubhouse. I just got there and my front tire
exploded. It must have scared all the
people in the swimming pool. I had to
walk the bike home and then the next day Barb bought me another inner tube and
I replaced it. When I went to fill it up
with air, I got help from one of the workers to tell me the air pressure I was
putting in the tire.
Go Pirates Go
I got a call in the evening from my softball buddy asking me
if I was free tomorrow and wanted to go to the Pirates and Red Sox pre-season
game. The Home Owner’s Association had
arranged a bus trip to Bradenton
to watch the game. I didn’t buy a ticket
because I thought they were too expensive.
My softball buddy told me that there were some people who had bought
tickets and now couldn’t go. So they
were giving their tickets away for free.
So I went. I had to get up early
to catch the bus at the Clubhouse.
I wore my Kanata Pirates hat and the Red Sox fans on the bus
teased me and my softball buddy wore his Blue Jays hat and jersey. He was definitely out of place. When I got to the game I tried to take a few
selfies. I am not good at them. Also my iPod screen was very hard to see in
the bright sunlight. However, I took a
lot of photos and was able to find a few that I could post on Facebook the next
day. I can’t even remember who won the
game.
Sola Vita
Barb and her partner had a pickleball tournament in a
community called Sola Vita. They were
impressed with the facilities. So when
they had some time off, they decided to look around at places for sale in the
community. The people who showed them
around said that they would really like the community. They assumed that Barb and her pickleball
partner were a gay couple. That was very
open minded of them.
Free Pancakes
There is a Facebook page for the Crystal Lake Community to
post things for sale. Barb had wanted to
go to the Pancake Breakfast the Home Owner’s Association was putting on. She had so much success with the New Year’s
Eve tickets she decided to post that she would like tickets to the Pancake
Breakfast. A nice lady replied and said she
had a ticket she wouldn’t be using. She
even brought the ticket over to our house and wouldn’t take any money for
it. That made the Pancakes taste even
better for Barb.
Hello This is Doug
We keep getting automated phone calls from the Republican
Party that ask for Doug. There are only
two answers they will take. Press 1 if
you are Doug and Press 2 if you are not Doug.
So we press 2 and the machine says thank you and hangs up. A few days later they phone back and ask for
Doug again. Finally after about four
phone calls, I finally said I was Doug and answered the questionnaire. It seemed to be from Rubio Marco’s
campaign. I answered the questions in
favour of Rubio Marco and said that I would vote for him. The questionnaire didn’t take too long and it
stopped phoning us back.
Lost Man
Barb saw an old fellow outside on the street. He was looking lost. He walked up to the neighbour’s door and then
walked back down the driveway. Then he
walked back and forth on the road.
Eventually, our neighbour came out to get her mail. The man approached her and Barb was out
getting our mail too. She heard them
talking and went up to them. The man was
lost. Barb asked him where he lived but
he didn’t know. Barb asked him what his
name was. He knew his name. So Barb hurried in to the house and looked
his name up in the phone directory and found that he lived on Hogan Street . When they were leaving the street, he said
that the bags outside our neighbour’s house were the bags he put the lawn waste
in. Barb said no he lived on Hogan Street . So she walked him up Hogan to his house. She asked him if he lived at this house and
he didn’t know but Barb saw the pile of yard waste on the side of the road and
told him this was his house because there are your weeds. Barb took him up to the door and his daughter
said that he must have gotten outside by himself.
Silver Medal
Barb doesn’t usually play mixed doubles because at her level
the men usually try to play the whole court by poaching the ball but she
decided to play in one tournament with a friend from Okeechobee. They didn’t get a medal but they got to play
spoiler. The only game they won was
against an undefeated team and they beat them quite badly. In fact, that bad defeat caused that
otherwise undefeated team to only get a silver medal.
Scavenger Hunt
Barb wanted to go on the Scavenger Hunt here in the park but
I really didn’t want to do it. I decided to go to watch the girls fastball at
the college. So Barb needed a partner
who had a golf cart because we had sold our old broken golf cart. She asked her friend Betty from knitting if
she would do it with her but she said that she had to go to Orlando with her sister in law but she would
love to and she would try to get out of it.
It turned out that her husband could take his sister to Orlando without her and
she could go on the Scavenger Hunt with Barb.
So Barb was very happy because Betty is such a hoot.
The first thing they had to do at the Scavenger Hunt was a
quiz. Betty was great at the quiz
because Barb didn’t know anything except the names of Santa’s reindeer. They had to do activities around the park
like get their picture taken with someone in their bed. Barb got in bed with this big fat man and got
her picture taken. It was so funny. She had go blindfolded into the lake to find
a golf ball while being instructed by her partner and her partner had to drive
an obstacle course blindfolded while being instructed by Barb. My sister was watching the obstacle course
contest and Barb told her about some of the other things they had to find like
a condom and a morning after pill. My
sister said why didn’t they make them.
They had to find Canadian who was celebrating their birthday. That was easy because we just over at our
neighbour’s house the day before at an early birthday party for a Canadian
friend.
Anyway, Barb and Betty won the Scavenger Hunt. They had 97 points of a possible 102. They won $30.
Barb was so happy and surprised but Betty couldn’t celebrate because she
had to run off to Walmart to order donuts for Monday morning coffee for the
Home Owners Association at the Club House.
Free Gift from the Sponsors
Barb often gets a bag of goodies at her pickleball
tournaments. The goodies are usually
from the tournament sponsors and most of them are useless but one good thing
she got was a coupon for a free jar of pickles.
She collected her free jar of pickles at Walmart using the coupon and we
enjoyed the pickles with our grilled cheese sandwiches.
Valentine’s Day Present
We found out on facebook that Laura had an accident while
snowboarding at Whistler
Mountain
They took a lot of x-rays to see if she had broken anything
but she hadn’t. They put some butterfly
stitches on the cut on her nose and she had a black eye. She was lucky that she didn’t hit her temple
or she might have been killed.
So she was off work for a couple of weeks. And she missed a few pole competitions. When she was feeling better she decided to go
for a jog. That wasn’t a good idea. It set her back another week or so. When she went back to work she felt bad and
had to go home. She is not good at doing
nothing. Barb tried to convince her to
rest but it wasn’t easy. Finally, she
could work part time and started getting better slowly.
Strange Strategy
Barb was very disappointed with her regular pickleball
partner because her partner wouldn’t be able to play in a tournament because
her partner’s husband wanted to go on a motorcycle ride for the day. So Barb had to play with another partner who
wasn’t as good. In the finals, she was
playing against a team of lobbers which is very unusual for pickleball but they
were very good at it. Usually the game
is won by playing at the net. So Barb
told her partner they should not rush to the net they should stay back. Staying back is very unusual for Barb but her
strategy worked and they won gold.
All Night
I sleep in in the morning quite late. Barb gets up early to play pickleball before
it gets too hot in the day. So she goes
to bed early. I have gotten in the habit
of staying up late and listening to my Ottawa
radio station, reading and working on the computer.
I turned off the radio and the lights and came to bed. Before I got to sleep I thought I heard some
noise in the living room but I didn’t do anything about it.
The next day when Barb woke up she found I had left the
radio on all night.
Coming to Sebring
Out of the blue, Barb got a message from The Pickleball Guru
asking when would be a good time to come to Sebring to play with her and
Debbie. He was going to be in Florida for a couple of
weeks running a Boot Camp. Barb thought
this would be a great opportunity and was very honoured to have him come to
play. However, there are no good players
here to play with. So Barb called and
emailed her friends from Okeechobee and invited them to come to Sebring to play
with the Guru.
She was getting it all arranged, then the Guru said he
couldn’t get away because of his kids and the Boot Camp. Then she got another email from The Guru
asking if her and Debbie could come to help out with the Boot Camp. Barb thought that the whole thing about
coming to Sebring was just a ploy to get some free help with his Boot
Camp. Her estimation of The Guru went
down considerably.
Lowball
Our real estate agent said don’t shoot the messenger but he
got an offer for our house in Barrhaven.
It was a real lowball offer. We
weren’t happy but I guess they thought we were desperate to sell because the
house was empty and thought they could get a great deal.
We felt we had priced the house to sell at the price we
listed at. So we were not happy with the
offer of $25,000 less than our asking price.
They said that the upgrades would cost them $40,000. We didn’t believe the upgrades would cost
that much but we countered by coming down a couple of thousand and removing all
the conditions that they had put on the offer.
They countered by accepting the conditions coming off and
came up $10,000. We countered again by
coming down a couple thousand again.
They seemed to really want the place.
So they countered one more time saying that we should just split the
difference between our two positions.
They also brought the closing date up a month. So we wouldn’t have to pay the expenses to
carry the house for another month.
So we came to an agreement and sold our house in
Barrhaven. Barb posted a picture of the
house on facebook and said there is no coming back now. Barb’s friends congratulated us but we didn’t
feel we should be congratulated. We
could have done much better taking the first offer we got before we even put
the house up for sale.
Separating the Girls
Barb found that the tournament in Naples with the 5.0 players really separated
the Girls from the other Girls. Barb and
her partner always win gold at the 4.5 level but I guess the Open 5.0 level is
something completely different. Barb and
her partner lost every game but Barb thought it was a great experience and was
happy whenever they could have a good rally.
A number of people came up to her and said they played really well. Barb’s partner was disappointed but Barb was
happy to get to play these top teams.
She realized that she would probably never be a 5.0 player because she
will never be 20 years old again.
Great Outdoors
Barb went to Naples to visit
her friend Paul from Kitchener
and play in a tournament with him. She
was excited because she would be playing against some 5.0 players that she
watches on the pickleball channel.
She and her partner were staying at the house that Paul
rents in Naples . It is a really big and fancy house.
One of the novelties of the house is that it has an outdoor
shower. Barb thought this is pretty neat
and decided to have a shower outdoors after the tournament. Even though it was outdoors it was very
private. So Barb wasn’t as daring as it
would seem.
Sony MP3
One of Barb’s sewing friends asked me to come over to her
house and install some music on her new iPod Mini. So I put some music from my collection that I
thought she would like on my memory stick and brought it over to her
house. It took a little figuring but in
a few minutes I had all the music on her iPod.
In exchange, she gave me her collection of eBooks which included over
2000 recent books from popular authors.
I was very happy and Barb even bought me a Kindle reader on eBay to put
the books on since she likes using my old eBook reader. Now we have two eBook readers.
A couple of weeks later, I asked her husband if she liked
the music that I put on her iPod because I thought maybe she wouldn’t like my
music. He said yes she did like it. He said she often hooks her iPod into the
television speakers and plays my music all over the house. She told Barb that she listens to my music
while she sews in her sewing room and sings out loud with her headphones
on. She said she doesn’t know how her
husband stands it.
A couple of weeks later, Barb gets a message from this
lady’s best friend asking me to put the same music on her iPod. I said okay.
She comes over and I find out that it is not an iPod, it is a Sony MP3
player. I thought okay this should be
easy. I load music on my MP3 player all
the time. So the first thing I do is
move all of her music over to my computer.
Then I reformat her MP3 player using Windows Explorer. Then I try to copy over my music but it
doesn’t work.
I look up Sony MP3 players and find out that you need
special software to load music on this type of MP3 player. So I found that I can update the firmware on
her MP3 player and I have to format the MP3 player using special software. But I find that Sony is no longer
distributing the software to load music.
So I search and search the web and I am up until 3 am and having no
success.
I told her I would bring the MP3 over to her house at 4:30
the next day while I am on my walk. I
get up at 11 am the next day and Barb is at a pickleball tournament or she
would have never allowed me to work on the problem all day long. I eventually find some software to replace
the Sony software but I can’t get it to work because it only works on a Windows
XP operating system.
I try using my Windows XP emulators but it still doesn’t
work. Then I find it on my Linux
distribution but that doesn’t work either.
Finally, I download the software in Linux using the Open Source provider
and am able to run the software using the command line. At 4 pm, I start loading music on her MP3
player and I have finished by 4:30 so that I can bring it over to her house
during my walk like I said I would. For
my troubles, she gives me a little jar of home made Salsa.
Pick Your Pitch
I was chatting with Sarah on iMessage tonight. Barb chats with her every weekend but I don’t
chat with her very often. I was telling
her about how I was having a very bad season this year in slow pitch. I was not batting very well. She was sad for me but she said don’t you
always say something when you are in the batters box to focus and
concentrate. I said yes I used to and it
used to help but I couldn’t remember what it was. Barb said wasn’t it ‘Clouds’ and I said no it
wasn’t that. Then Sarah remembered what
it was. I used to say “Pick Your Pitch
and Drive It”.
I told her that I would try it in my next game. It worked and I started hitting better. It doesn’t work all the time but I am
definitely doing better than I did before. At one game, I had a couple of good hits and I
was on first base. The first baseman was
the captain of his team. He said he
tried to get me on his team but I went very early in the draft. He said that I had a great swing and the only
reason that I wouldn’t get on base was if I swung at a bad pitch.
Ugly Christmas Sweater
Every year they have a CanAm golf tournament where the
Canadians play a match play tournament against the Americans in the park: all
the Canadians wear red and white and all of the Americans wear blue and
white. We don’t play golf but we go down
to the club house to see the score and have a hamburger and pop with all the
golfers and their friends.
Usually I wear the red jersey I bought at the Canadian
Fastball championship in St Thomas
but this year I decided to wear the red Christmas sweater that Laura bought me that
says “Fragile” and has a picture of the leg lamp on it.
Street Party
This was the first year that both Barb and I could go to the
annual street party together. It was a
potluck dinner for everyone who lived on Nicklaus Street . Every year the organizer reads a letter
signed from Jack Nicklaus because the street is named after him. We are a very golf oriented community.
At the start of the dinner, we are all asked to stand up and
introduce ourselves. When it came to our
time, Barb asked me to stand up and introduce us. I introduced us and told people about our
hobbies and sports. I guess a lady at
another table wasn’t happy with my humility.
After I sat down, she spoke up she said that Barb was a champion
pickleball player and everyone should become friends with her on facebook to
see all her pictures of her wearing the medals she has won at tournaments.
Owl on the Patio
Sarah posted some old photos she took in New Hamburg on her
facebook page. They were pictures she
took when we were assembling the patio furniture. She took a number of pictures of us sitting
on the patio love seat. There was one of
Sarah sitting between us and we were each kissing her on the cheek as she made
a funny face. She took one photo of Barb
and me sitting on the two individual chairs.
I noticed right away that I was sitting in front of the statue of the
Owl on the fence of our patio that is there to scare the chickadees away. It looked like the Owl was sitting on my
head.
Ottawa Mail
We had our mail from Ottawa being forwarded to
New Hamburg for four months and thought we had changed all of the addresses
with the people who regularly sent us mail.
Then we had our mail forwarded to Avon
Park from New Hamburg for six months
while we were in Florida .
I guess the four months of forwarding
the mail from Ottawa
had finished on the first of February.
Fortunately, our neighbour JC has the key to our Ottawa mail box and checks it once in a
while. So he was surprised to find some
mail for us in the mail box after all these months. There were magazines from McMaster and
Carleton. There was a statement for
Laura from PC Financial and there was some letters from CRA for Laura and
Sarah. There was also a letter about the
Line of Credit from the Royal Bank.
Barb was surprised to hear that
she got something from Royal Bank because she was sure she had changed the
address. She had received mail from
Royal Bank here in Florida . She found the letter and looked closely at it
and saw that it had originally gone to our Ottawa
address and then to New Hamburg and then to Avon Park
I tried to change Laura and
Sarah’s address with CRA but I found that you can only change the address using
the My Account logon. I had set them up
for Laura and Sarah but I couldn’t remember the passwords. So I couldn’t get in and change the address. So I found forms on the CRA and filled them
in for Laura and Sarah and mailed them to them to sign and mail to CRA.
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