A/C

We had been having trouble with the air conditioning in the Honda.  Before we had left for Florida in the fall, we had had it serviced and thought it was fixed.  But then on the long drive to Florida, we found out it was still broken.  It works for a few hours but on a long trip, it eventually stops working.  So we got it fixed again when we got to Florida and thought it was fixed because it worked on the short drives we took everyday.  But on the long drive home, it stopped again.  Barb was roasting.  We usually get coffees when we stop for gas but with the air conditioner broken we didn't want hot coffee.  So we bought two big Slushies at the convenience store at the gas station.  I got a brain freeze before we had even paid for them.  Then Barb got a terrible brain freeze when we were getting back on the highway.  Fortunately, I was driving.

Poor Betsy

We were leaving the park and had to find the I-75.  Once we were on the I-75, it was straight driving to the Canadian border.  But we had to find the I-75 first.  Barb was driving and I had programmed our GPS.  It was calculating and calculating.  It was taking forever and Barb was driving along.  Then it finally gave me a message saying that it couldn't calculate the directions because the trip was too far.  We were panicking.  Just then I looked up and saw a sign telling us to turn to get to the I-75.  Barb had to cut over two or three lanes and turn left but she did it and we drove for a while and found the I-75 and were on our way.

Good Remembery

We were ready to leave Florida at 3 am and Barb was just doing the last few things to prepare the house for the summer before we left.  As she was doing that I remembered that I hadn't packed my address book.  I keep all my phone numbers and addresses in a little black book and kept it in a drawer between the couches.  So I went to drawer and got my address book and there I found the cable that I use to transfer audiobooks and ebooks to our devices.  That was a lucky find.  We use that cable all the time.

Second Notice

Barb got an email saying this was the second notice and that she owes $548 to the medical insurance company.  She phoned the medical insurance people and asked them what this was about.  They said that she had used the dial-a-doctor system last winter and it cost them $400 US and since we have a $5,000 deductible on our insurance, we would have to pay the bill ourselves.  Barb was furious because she had been told that she could use the tell-a-doc at no charge.  Last year when she called the insurance company, she had asked the lady about five times whether there was any charge and the lady said no there was no charge.  So she phoned the tell-a-doc and told him she had tonsillitis but he didn't believe her.  He sent in a prescription for her but it didn't work.  Now we have to pay $548 and there is nothing we can do.  When we got home we found the first notice  had come in the mail just after we left for the winter.

Bump

I was all alone in the house and I guess I was bumping off the walls.  I bumped off the wall in the hall and must have hit the thermostat.  I had accidentally turned the temperature in the house down to 62 degrees.  I didn't notice it but when Barb got home she said is it ever cold in here.  She went to look at the thermostat and noticed it was set at 62 degrees.  She reset it to 73 degrees and the temperature went back to normal.  Barb could not believe I didn't notice how cold it was in the house.

Ghosts

I was reading in bed one night while Barb was away and I thought I saw something move out of the corner of my eye.  I looked more carefully but I didn't see anything but then I didn't have my glasses on.  So I don't see things very well at a distance.  I went back to my reading.  Then my deodorant fell over and made a crashing sound.  I got out of bed and went to the chest of drawers and found a big green frog on the mirror.  So I went to the kitchen and found a plastic bowl with a lid.  I came back and the frog had moved but was still on the side of the mirror.  I went up to him and quickly put the bowl over him and he jumped into the bowl.  Then I quickly put the lid on the bowl.  Then I brought the bowl with the frog out to the side yard and dropped the frog on the grass.  I had no idea how a frog that big could get into the house.

Flying Ants

I have been working in my office in the evenings all winter but when Barb left for Naples I was by myself working in my office and there were all these ants flying around my lamp and crawling on the lamp shade.  I looked up and they were all over the wall and they were dropping on me, my computer and my papers.  I noticed they were coming out of a small hole in the wall where it met the ceiling.  So the next day I called the bug people and they said they would send someone out to look at it for me.  The guy came out in the afternoon but the ants don't come out in the afternoon, they only come out in the evenings.  The guy said that he had sprayed outside along the roof a few days ago and that the ants were probably coming in to get away from the spray outside.  He said they should be dead by tomorrow.  So he didn't do anything.  That night there were no flying ants.  So I thought he was right but then the next night they were back again.  So I trapped one of the ants under a glass and the next day I phoned the bug people again.  The same guy came out to the house in the afternoon and I showed him the bug I had trapped.  He confirmed that they were flying ants and put out a few ant traps around my desk and around the window.  I told him where I saw them coming into the house but he couldn't see the hole where the wall meets the ceiling because the hole was too small.  He assured me that the ants would be all dead.  I was worried because we were going home in a few days and I didn't ants all over the house all summer.

Ice Packs

Barb had to go to bed early so that she could get up early to drive to Naples.  She was worried she would forget the ice packs for the cooler because everything except the ice packs she had packed before she went to bed.  So I told her I would write her a note and leave it on the counter.  So before bed I wrote a note on my little piece of paper saying don't forget to get the ice packs.  When I got up I was making breakfast and saw my note on the counter and I read it.  It didn't say anything about the ice packs.  It was a note to myself about changes I wanted to make to my Fortran program and had a bunch of variable names on it.  I had put the wrong note on the counter before going to bed.  Barb said that she woke up and saw the note but wondered what I was trying to tell her.

Packing

Barb was going to Naples to play in the US Open Pickleball tournament at the end of April.  Then when she got back home, we had to leave Florida and get home by May 1st because of our travel insurance.  So she had everything packed and ready to go before she left for Naples.  While she was packing, she found the travel insurance envelope with my insurance card in it in her underwear drawer.  She had been looking for my insurance card all winter. It wasn't the box with all of our important papers.

Pep Rally

At the end of the boot camp, the organizers thought all the participants should come out and have a pep rally.  They said that they should bring their spouses.  So I got to go too.  It was a pot luck dinner.  So I knew there would be a lot of good food there.  The girls were supposed to dress up in a costume in their teams.  And the other girls were supposed to try to guess what they were dressed as.  So Barb bought a sequined bra at the second hand store and her pickleball partner wore a tiger striped bra over their pickleball shirts and they went out as Victorious Secrets.  I thought they had the best costume but Barb's pickleball partner's husband was shocked by his wife.

The Letter

When the pickleball boot camp was over, Barb wrote a nice email to the professionals who ran it to thank them.  Then she found out that all the other ladies in the boot camp gave the professionals thank you cards.  Barb was mad at herself for not giving the pros a card.  Later she got a reply from one of the pros saying that she thought the email was so nice that she printed it out and put it up on the wall in her office.

Draft Day

Barb went to pickleball early so she would be home in time for the hockey pool draft conference call.  When she got home, she heard my alarm go off.  When I got up, she asked me what I had set my alarm for and why was I getting up so early.  I said I was getting up for the hockey pool draft.  She had forgotten about it completely.

As we were doing the draft, I was picking the players and Barb was crossing them off her sheets so that we wouldn't look stupid by not knowing who had already been drafted.  Barb had particular trouble hearing and understanding Debbie because she had such a French accent.  Afterwards she told me about her trouble with Debbie's accent and I said Debbie isn't French.  Later, we realized Debbie wasn't in the pool this year and the lady in the pool was Suzanne who was French.  Barb had been calling her Debbie throughout the whole conference call.

Before the pool, the commissioner made a joke about someon realizing too late that they had picked a whole team of Washington Capitals.  It turned out that that person was us.  I picked 6 Washington Capitals out of our 10 players.  Barb was furious.  I was picking the 10th, 11th and 12th best players on the team and later we found out that they are almost never on the ice.  All those players do is fight the power plays.  So they never score.  Barb was yelling at me all during the playoffs and I agreed we should change my program next year.

Backup

I decided I should back up my computer.  So I set it up to run the backup over night and went to bed.  When I woke up and checked the computer, I found that Windows had installed an update overnight and restarted my computer.  So I lost my backup and had to do it again.  I have never seen Windows do an update while the computer was turned on.  Usually, it does its updates when I shutdown and I shutdown every night.  So I thought I was up to date.  What were the chances that they would update my computer on the same night that I was backing up my computer.

Crank Call

We don't get many phone calls now that we have the OOMA phone system.  We used to get a lot of crank calls when we were at Crystal Lake.  So we are happy with our new system.  One day the phone rang and the call display said Coast to Coast.  So I passed the phone to Barb and said it was nobody.  She answered the phone and starting talking happily to the caller.  It turned out the call was from Coast to Coast Jewelers and that her especially made pickleball earrings were ready to be picked up.  She had bought silver earrings in the shape of pickleball paddles with little pickleballs on the paddles.  So she was happy they had come in and she could pick them up.

Battery

My watch battery died and Barb said I should be a real retired person and not wear a watch anymore.  She has stopped wearing a watch but I still liked to know what time it was.  I wear my watch all the time.  I even sleep with my watch on.  The only time I don't have my watch on is when I play softball and when I shower.  So Barb went out to a jeweler to get the battery replaced.  The jeweler put in a new battery in a few seconds and then when Barb asked how much that would be, he said $17.  Barb said, "What?? The watch is only worth $15 brand new!!!"

CRA

I can do the taxes for all the family from Florida because all the necessary T3, T4 and T5 forms are available on my account on the CRA website.  So I was preparing to do the taxes and went to look up the forms on the website but they weren't there.  I understood that the bank didn't have to submit the forms until the end of February but it was now mid-April and the forms weren't there.  So I phoned CRA and they have a phone answering system that they say strives to get to your call in 2 minutes but the way they do that is by giving you a busy signal if the queue gets too long.  So I had to phone back again and again before I finally got through.  When I finally got through it did only take 2 minutes to get service.  I told the fellow about my problem finding the forms and he said have I tried refreshing the screen. So I refreshed the screen and there were the forms.

Just Enough

Our printer in Florida had broken last year and I threw it out before we came back home.  So I thought we didn't need a printer anymore because we could print out anything we needed to at the library.  But because we didn't have a printer, I wouldn't have any scrap paper to cut up into little pieces to write my notes on.  So last fall, I made a large supply of pieces of paper to bring to Florida.  We were just about to head back to Canada and I found that I was using the last of my little pieces of paper.  I had brought just enough.

Rewrite

I was preparing for the hockey pool and had to run my computer program that predicts who is going to win the Stanley Cup.  Then I got the stats to input into my program.  As I was running my program and checking the results I noticed that the format of the playoffs had changed from when I wrote the program.  Actually, they had changed the playoff format a couple of years ago and went back to a format like the old playoff system and I had originally written the program for.  I changed my program when they changed the format.  Now I had to change it back.  It wasn't that easy because I couldn't remember how the old program worked.  But then I thought how could I have won the hockey pool last year using a program based on the wrong format.

Cortisone

Barb's knee wasn't getting better fast enough.  So Barb asked around about what she should do and one of her friends told her about a Sports Medicine doctor in the area.  So she went to the doctor and he gave her a cortisone shot in her knee.  She just wanted to get through the rest of the month in Florida because she wanted to play in the US Open.  The knee felt a little better but later it got bad again.  I guess it just felt better for a while because of the placebo effect.

Volleyball Shoes

Barb was playing pickleball with her sore knee and figured out the she hurt her knee because she was running hard and tried to stop quickly to avoid running into the net.  She was wearing volleyball shoes and they didn't have enough give.  So she hurt her knee.  She was wearing her volleyball shoes because they were light and she thought she would be faster on her feet.  She has stopped wearing her volleyball shoes and is now wearing tennis shoes with heavy soles.  She may not be as fast but it is protecting her knee.

Maj Jong

Loretta was telling Barb how much she enjoyed playing Maj Jong on her computer.  So Barb thought she might like to play it too.  Loretta lent Barb her disk and I installed all her games on the Barb's computer.  Barb immediately tried to play Maj Jong but she had never played it before and didn't know how.  So she went over to Loretta's to find out how to play but Barb's Maj Jong game had Chinese symbols whereas Loretta's had Egyptian symbols on the tiles.  Barb thought all the Chinese symbols looked the same.  She found out that she would have to win Hoyle points to buy the Egyptian tiles.  Fortunately, later Loretta showed her how to get the Egyptian tiles.  Now Barb is addicted to Maj Jong and plays it all the time and I mean ALL the time.  She is not watching Kodi or checking her Facebook on her computer any more.

Email Address

I was preparing for the good old office playoff hockey pool again this year.  I got the first email announcement and I replied that I was in and Barb would be in it with me.  Then Barb got some emails about it but I didn't get any.  Barb forwarded the emails to me and I noticed that the commissioner was sending the emails to my old rogers email address.  So I got Barb to reply to him and tell him he had the wrong address.  He said that he just typed my name in the address box and my rogers email address came up.  So he clicked on it and sent the group email.  I was very lucky that Barb got the emails and that her address hadn't changed.  I wonder how many other people are sending emails to my old rogers account.

Announcing

On my last softball game of the season, my captain assigned me to be the announcer for the game after ours.  At all of the games, there are two players from the game before or the game after who act as announcers and work the scoreboard.  It is all very professional.  I had never been the announcer before and I was petrified because I am very bad at pronouncing names.  Our game went late.  So when I went up to the tower after my game, the game that I was supposed to announce was already started.  When I got there the two guys announcing were happy to see me and as I sat down, they got up and left.  I was all alone with the microphone and the scoreboard control box and I had no idea how to work the box and the microphone.  So I tried to announce a couple of names of batters coming up but I still didn't know how to work the scoreboard.  Just then one of the other guys on my team came up and sat down beside me and took over the microphone and the scoreboard.  So I just sat there and watched him.  He taught me how to use the scoreboard control box.  I was relieved but I wasn't looking forward to next year when I had to announce again.

Memory

I saw a post that one of my fastball friends posted on Facebook about a memory which listed the tournaments in Ontario.  So I got out my Google calendar and started writing them in.  As I was writing them in I noticed that all of the tournaments started on Thursday and some of them ended on Saturday.  I had them all recorded in my Google calendar, then I realized that my friend had posted a memory and the listing was for last year's tournaments.  So I went through and deleted them all.

Boot Camp

Barb was invited to a boot camp held by a couple of pickleball professionals to prepare for the US Open.  She was honored to be invited.  She still had a sore knee that she was resting but she still went.  It was an intense few lessons and a lot of talk about strategy and team work.  She really enjoyed it and was happy she went.

GoPro

Barb won a GoPro camera at one of her pickleball tournaments a while ago but she had never used it.  She wanted to video her third shot.  So she opened the box and we read the instructions.  She also got an SD memory card with the camera.  We tried to install the SD card but we couldn't do it.  Barb thought we had the wrong type of card.  So she went out to Walmart to buy another and she asked the salesman about it and showed him the SD card and the camera.  He looked at for a second and then plugged in the SD card.  Barb was embarrassed but at least she didn't buy another SD card.

Inbox

Our printer is not very good.  It prints dark black lines across the pages.  Fortunately, we can use the printer at the library if we only need to print out a few pages.  I had to print a couple of two page documents for our US income tax.  So I wrote myself an email and attached the documents to it.  Then I drove down to the library.  I had to wait to get on the computer.  When I finally got on I checked my email and there was no email from myself.  I was mad at myself because I realized I had written the email but I never sent it.  So I logged off and went out to the car.  I was driving out of the parking lot heading home to send the email when I realized that if I didn't send the email, it would still be in my Drafts box.  So I turned the car around and went back into the library.  I logged on and checked my Drafts box and there was the email with the documents attached.  So I printed them out and went home happy.

Andy

Barb's pickleball friend, Loretta, asked Barb if she wanted her old Android phone because she was getting a new phone.  Barb said sure and I asked Stan about Android phones because he has one.  We couldn't use it as a phone because it was locked to Loretta's service provider but Stan said we could use it with wifi the way I use our iPods.  So I set it up to work with our wifi and I started putting apps on it and starting using it for my email and Facebook messenger.  Then I gave Barb my old iPod because she had broken the screen on her iPod.  I also found out how to text using email which I thought was pretty cool.  When I emailed Laura the signature block said sent from Boost Mobile Android because that was the service that Loretta had.  Laura got all excited because I had an Android.

Mr Fix-It

Barb bought me a big office chair at the second hand store.  She knew that I needed a big strong office chair because I tend to break chairs a lot.  And even though this was a big strong chair, I broke the armrest.  We asked our neighbour if he thought we could fix it and he said he didn't think so.  But we didn't give up.  One night we took the armrest off the chair and we went to Home Depot to ask the guys there.  We looked in hardware but there was nobody there.  So we asked the plumbing guy and he said that he didn't think we could fix it.  But we didn't give up.  We searched and searched for the hardware man and finally found him.  He said sure we could fix it.  He found some braces and some bolts and some drill bits.  We went home and the next day we went back to our neighbour and asked if we could use his drill.  We were lucky because he was already packed and was planning to leave to go back up North the next day.  He got out his drill and made holes in the braces and in the armrest.  It was the hottest day of the year and Barb was roasting outside as he was drilling.  Then we went back in the air conditioning of our house and put on the braces with the bolts and attached the armrest back on the chair.  It is very sturdy now and Barb is very happy because the braces are on the wall side of the chair and you can't see them from the other room.