P Corners

I was listening to my Ottawa radio station on the internet and it has a lot of car commercials.  One of the car commercials was telling me how much freedom I would have if I bought a certain car.  I could take it wherever I wanted and named a few crazy named places.  One of the places was Punkydoodle Corners.  Punkydoodle Corners is near New Hamburg and I drive through it on the way to my ball games.  In fact, my jersey is sponsored by Punkydoodle Corners' Goat's Cheese.  How did a car dealership in Ottawa know about a little six house corner in the middle of nowhere?

Bad Gary Miller Once Again

The bad Gary Miller messaged Barb and said "I can play".  Barb wondered why he would message her to say he could play.  So she replied, "you can play" and he replied "I can not play".  I guess he had typed it wrong and left out an very important word.  It was good that Barb replied to him to confirm it.  The bad Gary Miller is very Bad.

Engage

Barb went to a pickleball party at the Elliot's.  They are a pickleball family and the husband/father makes pickleball paddles.  He is coming out with a new line of paddles that will be cheaper than normal and will be distributed by the sporting goods company Wilson.  Barb was talking to the husband/father and was telling him how much she liked her paddle which is called Engage.  They talked for a while and he asked Barb what weight of paddle she liked.  Then when Barb told him, he gave her two free Engage paddles.  It is like she is sponsored by Engage now.

Toque

Barb was at the pool on a cool night and a man, who was picking up his mail at the mailboxes beside the pool, was wearing winter clothes and a toque.  He saw Barb in the pool and stopped and asked her if she was a polar bear.

2012

I keep track of my hours for work in a notebook.  I have to keep close track of them because I have to keep inside a tight budget and not go over and not come in under.  I was going over all my days since January and predicting how many days I would use by the end of the fiscal year on March 31st.  I was writing down my hours along with the date and wrote 2012 instead of 2018.  2012 was the year that I retired.

You Haven't Played

Barb wanted to play in the Polk Senior Games but didn't have a partner.  Then she was talking to her best friend on the phone one day and her friend said that she was going to have to drop out of the Polk Senior Games because her partner had to go home to take care of her mother-in-law and could no longer play with her.  Barb immediately said why couldn't she play instead her friend's partner.  So Barb got to play in the Polk Senior Games like she wanted to and got to play with her best friend, who is one of the best pickleball players in The Villages.  They won a silver medal and had a great time together.  If either of them missed a shot, Barb would say good try, even to herself.  And her partner started saying Good Try to herself too.  That made them both laugh.  On the drive home, her friend told her that you have never played in a tournament until you have played with Barb Taylor.

Good News

Sarah messaged Barb with some good news.  She attached a picture of a black Honda Civic but didn't say anything else.  A few days later she phoned but Barb wasn't home and I talked to her.  She said the good news was that she got a new car.  A late model Honda Civic with low mileage on it.  The bad news was that her fiance's sister who was driving her old car got into an accident and that was why she needed a new car.

Palm

Barb went to the pool tonight and there was a lady sitting on a lounge chair beside the pool in the corner while Barb was doing her aerobics.  The lady was reading a book and didn't pay any attention to Barb.  Then the lady got up and left.  She had just left the pool area and Barb heard a crash.  A giant frond from the palm tree fell and landed on the chair where the lady had been sitting just a few seconds before.  What a lucky lady!

Skirt

Barb is wheeling and dealing in shoes.  A while back she bought a whole bunch of volleyball shoes that she thought would be lighter to play pickleball in.  But they didn't have enough protection in the sole for the rigors of pickleball.  So she was selling them to another lady at pickleball.  The lady took the shoes and said she would pay next time she saw Barb.  So a couple of days later, Barb saw the lady.  And the lady approached her raising her skirt.  Barb wondered what she was doing and then she pulled money out of her leggings to pay Barb.

Lamp

Barb always has trouble turning on the standing lamp beside my chair in the living room.  Today she was having a really hard time and thought the bulb must be blown.  So she took the bulb out and replaced it but the lamp still didn't work.  So she took the new bulb out and when she did she seemed to take out the thingy that the bulb goes into.  So she leaned the lamp down to see the inside the shade and the glass shade fell off.  The shade it the television table and smashed, breaking up.  It landed on her foot and bruised it.  The same foot with the achilles and blister.  Also the broken glass on the shade cut her left arm in a couple of places.  I guess the thingy that came out when she pulled out the bulb held the shade on.

Bandaid

Barb also has a blister on her big toe from her aerobics at the pool.  She found some blister bandaids and thought they would be great because they would stay on better than a normal bandaid.  She put the blister bandaid on the bottom of her big toe where the blister was and went out to play pickleball.  Then when she came home and took her shoe and sock off, the blister bandaid was on the top of her big toe.  I guess it doesn't stay on any better than a normal bandaid.

CPAP

I was warming up at the 9 am game today and the guy I was warming up with said "Oh a fellow CPAP user".  I said "how did he know".  He said he could see the wrinkles on my face where the straps dig in.  I said it is a great yoke because I sleep really well with it on.  I was glad it wasn't the 12:45 game because I sleep in and it would have been embarrassing to CPAP lines on my face in the afternoon.

Slugger

The captain of my team sent out an email telling all of the players when and where we were playing and noted that I would be missing the game because of my injury.  He said that they would be missing slugger Ivan Taylor.  Then the next day he saw me playing for one of my other teams.  I came up at an important time in the game with the score close and runners on base.  He was cheering me on from the side of the field.  I hit the ball hard and it went past the shortstop.  After the game, he came up to me and asked if I could play for his team the next day.

Insert

Barb got a terrible blister on her heel.  It was the same heel that she is suffering with her achilles.  She couldn't understand how she could get a blister.  They were not even new shoes.  Then she found out that her insert had moved which caused her heel to rub against the heel of her shoe.  Barb asked me to pop the blister and I tried poking it with a pin in the middle of the blister.  Then Barb read online that you should pop a blister on the bottom so that the stuff can run out of it.  It oozed for many days and took a long time to get better.

Triple

I have a nagging calf injury but I can still play softball for two of my teams because I play first base on one team and catcher on the other team and don't have to move much.  I can get a runner once I get to first base if I get a hit.  Today I hit a triple and turned it into a single because I wanted to get a runner and I would have to run for myself if I went past first base.  One of my teams, I can't play for because on that team I am an outfielder.  So I missed my first game for that team and they won.  It was there first win of the season.

Crazy Driver

Barb goes to the pool every day now to do her water aerobics.  Today, she almost got hit in her car coming home by an old guy in his golf cart who came zooming out of his driveway without looking.  There are so few cars driving in our neighbourhood that he probably never looks before he drives out.

Nickname

My coach and teammates on my Recreational League really seem to like me.  They have started calling me Ivy.  It is nice to be at bat and they are yelling come on Ivy get a hit.  And I usually do.

Nationals

Barb got talked into playing pickleball in the National Senior Games in Huntsman, Utah this Fall.  I don't think Barb realizes how far that is away from us in New Hamburg.  She will have to fly into Las Vegas, Nevada and drive two or three hours from there to Huntsman.  Anyway, Barb had to set her alarm for 2 am to get up and sign up for the games. The registration was starting at midnight Utah time and she was told that it fills up fast.

Grapefruits

We have finished all the oranges and grapefruits on our trees.  However, our neighbour still has a lot of grapefruit on his tree and he can't even eat grapefruit because of his cholesterol medicine.  So he said we can have all the grapefruit we want from his tree.  I don't usually pick them from his tree but every morning I look out the bedroom window to see if any grapefruits have fallen off the tree and if they have I go out and pick them up off the ground.  Today I went out to pick up some grapefruit and our backyard neighbour was sitting out in the sun on his deck.  I noticed that he had his artificial leg standing up by itself beside his chair.  I thought that was a little strange.

Wednesday Check In

I get paid every other Wednesday and I submit my hours for the next pay period on the same Wednesday that I get paid.  So I phone my supervisor on that day to tell him what I have been doing.  Today I told Barb that I was going to use the phone to phone my supervisor and she said fix your hair before to call him.  She forgot that I was using the phone.  She thought I was Skyping him.

End Table

Barb thought it would be nice to have a table beside the lounge chair that she is using to watch television.  She is using the lounge chair because she finds that the couch gives her sore legs when she sits there for too long.  So she bought a nice little end table at a local store and the lady at the cash register asked her if she was going to put a plant on it.  Barb said no she was going to use it as an end table.  When she got it home, she found that it was really a plant stand because it was about six inches too tall to be an end table.  So she just put it back in her car and brought it back to the store.  She didn't even bother to show it to me.

Calf

I hurt my calf muscle at softball today.  I can play first base and catcher but when I get a hit I need a runner.  Between Barb's achilles and my calf, we won't be going dancing at the Market Squares any time soon.

Voltarin

Barb has been trying everything she can on her achilles.  She is using ice and Voltarin and heat and heat rubs.  Barb couldn't believe that Voltarin is only available by prescription in the US.  In Canada, it is available over-the-counter.  However, Barb's Nasinex that she uses for her allergies is available over-the-counter in the US and is only available by prescription in Canada.

Video

Barb was playing in a tournament and one of her games was recorded by one of ladies on the other team's husband.  Barb wanted to see herself and see her third shot.  So she borrowed the memory card from the lady and she loaded it on her computer.  She couldn't find the file with her game on it.  In fact, she couldn't find any video files on the card.  I looked at it and found the files in a minute by looking for big files.  The files were big but they were still very short videos and she didn't see much of her game.  It was very anti-climatic.

More Returns

Barb also buys pickleball clothes online from Bealls, the clothing store.  When she has to return them, she just does it at the store.  Today she went to return some things and the old lady behind the counter took forever to do the returns.  So the next time she went to another store and just brought a few things with her because she didn't have time to be there all day.  This time there was a young lady and she was able to do the returns really quickly.  Barb was sad that she didn't bring all of her returns.  She would have brought them all if she had known that they could have been handled that quickly.

Coffin

Barb was getting three pairs of shoes online at the same time to get free shipping.  They came in a box the size of small coffin.  When it came time for Barb to return the shoes that didn't fit, she brought the coffin sized box to the Post Office and the lady behind that counter asked her what was in the box.  Barb said shoes and the lady laughed and said you must have really big feet.

Returns

Barb is always looking for bargains online on running shoes for pickleball.  Today she was trying on two sets of shoes that she recently got in the mail.  One of the shoes had free returns and the other didn't have free returns.  She was very happy that the one that had free returns didn't fit and the one that didn't have free returns did fit.

Merry Christmas

I sometimes sit outside on the driveway porch area in the afternoon and read my email or a book.  Today a Fedex truck came into the neighbourhood as I was sitting there and he stopped at a neighbour's house.  I thought that Barb would be disappointed that there was nothing for her.  Then he got back in his truck and drove about 20 feet and stopped and I thought great Barb is getting something too.  He got out on his truck with a box and walked up to the door where I was sitting.  As he came up I said Merry Christmas and he said Merry Christmas even though it was February.  That is a joke that Barb and I say to each other whenever Barb gets a package in the mail.

Switched at Birth Again

Barb has been binge watching Switched at Birth on Netflix.  It is a good show when they are not arguing with each other.  And because half of the people on the show are deaf, they talk in sign language and there are subtitles that Barb has to read.  That means she can't knit while she is watching.

OOMA

Barb's friend messaged her and told Barb that our phone wasn't working.  Barb's friend calls her quite often during our dinner time.  So Barb phoned her back and the phone seemed to work from our end.  So her friend tried to call her back and couldn't get through.  The phone just disconnected the call.  So Barb called her back and talked to her and then she phoned OOMA our phone company.  She had wanted to phone them anyway because I had noticed a $100 charge on our Mastercard and didn't know why we were charged.  Anyway, the guy at OOMA said he would do an adjustment.  He had wanted Barb to call him back on another line, so he could do his test with her live but since we don't have a cell phone, he couldn't do it live.  Barb hung up and he did his adjustment and Barb called her friend again and asked her to call us back.  The in-coming calls still didn't work.  So we went to bed and then the next day the phone seemed to work.  So I guess the adjustment just had to take a while.

Crash

Barb was out playing pickleball in the morning and I was sleeping in.  I was in bed and heard a terrible crash that I thought came from the kitchen.  I didn't know what it was but I also didn't get up to check it out.  When I finally did get up, I went to the bathroom and found out the mirror had fallen off the wall.  The cord that held it up had come out of the frame.  The mirror had crashed down on the counter but it didn't break.  It got wedged between the wall and the taps of the sink.  So I left it there to show Barb when she got home.  We had to figure out how to put it back up again.  We borrowed an electric drill from our neighbour and drilled holes in the hard wooden part of the frame which was up higher than the previous holes.  Then when we went to put it up on the wall, Barb noticed that the mirror was now too low for me to see myself when I was shaving.  Barb thought there was nothing we could do about it and I said it would be okay; I could squat down a little to shave.  Then Barb realized that all we had to do was raise the nail in the wall a little higher.  So we took the drill and made a hole in the concrete wall and put in a screw a few inches higher than before and it was fine.  We were glad we hadn't returned the drill after we drilled the holes in the mirror frame because it came in handy drilling the hole in the wall.

Sunday Night Tradition

I had been wanting to watch The Handmaid's Tale mini series on Kodi based on the book that I had recently read but we never get around to it.  So I finally decided to make a Sunday night tradition of watching an hour of television with Barb because my radio station on the internet plays bad talk shows on Sunday nights.  We didn't watch The Handmaid's Tale the first week.  We watched a movie based on a book that I had just listened to.  It was called The Oxford Murders and had a bunch of mathematics in it.  Barb noticed that the star of the movie was the guy who played Frodo in The Lord of Rings.  The next Sunday we watched the mini series based on the book Alias Grace which was another book that I had recently read.  We watched it because The Handmaid's Tale isn't on Netflix and Alias Grace is a Netflix original.

Fido

Laura bought a new phone and her Sim card didn't fit in it.  So she went to the Rogers store to get a new Sim card and of course whenever you contact Rogers, they want to change your plan because the salesman get a commission to change your plan.  So they told Laura she could get a cheap plan with Fido and get data on it and it would cost even less than her current plan.  So she phoned us from the Rogers store and asked us if it was okay.  We asked to make sure nothing would change to the other girl's plans that were all hooked together.  The man said nothing would change for them and it would just be cheaper for us.  So Laura switched.  Then she found out that she now had a 500 minute limit on her phone time.  She never had a limit before and never used her phone much but this month she was using her phone a lot because she was talking to her friend in Halifax about her hand problems.  That wasn't the worst of it though.  When Barb got an email with her monthly Rogers bill, it said $702.  Barb freaked out.  She immediately phoned Rogers and was hyperventilating as she asked how this could have happened.  She told him she was going to have stroke, she was so upset.  The man tried to calm her down and then he investigated and found out that Laura was the prime phone on the old plan and when she changed plans the other girls went to a pay-as-you-go status.  Their phone calls cost $2 a minute and their texts cost 50 cents a text.  They had just been using their phone as they normally do and it usually cost us $50 per phone for the three phones.  The guy at Rogers said that Barb couldn't go back to the old plan because they didn't have that plan any more.  But the guy cancelled the current charge and got Barb a new plan for the other girls.  He even gave Barb a $40 discount because she was so upset.  Before he hung up he asked her not to have a stroke.

Portugal. the Man

I really like this new band called "Portugal. the Man".  There is really a period in their name.  They won a Grammy award for best new band this year.  They have two singles that play on the radio that I listen to on the internet.  I usually listen to my Ottawa radio station with my headphones on all day while Barb listens to the local radio station on the home music system.  Today I was listening to both out of one ear each and the same Portugal. the Man song came on both stations at the same time.

Tall South Korean

I was reading the newspaper online about the Olympics and found out that there was a player on the South Korean men's hockey team who was from New Hamburg.  He was a 6 foot 5 inch guy who came from New Hamburg but was playing professional hockey in South Korea full time.  So I guess he was a South Korean citizen and was eligible to play for the South Korean hockey team in the Olympics.

Kodi

I meant to load the new Add-On for Kodi for Barb but hadn't got around to it.  I finally loaded the new Add-On called Covenant and it seemed to work better than the old Add-Ons that Barb had been using where she couldn't load her favourite shows.  It seems that when they make a new Add-On, the old Add-Ons no longer work very well.  So Barb was going to cancel Netflix after the free trial period and go back to Kodi.  But when she phoned to cancel she found out that it was too late they had already renewed it for another month.  So she is still watching Netflix.

Moving

It seemed like all three kids were going to be moving at the same time.  Laura moved out of her boyfriend's apartment because of relationship problems.  Julia was moving out of her apartment because of heating problems.  And Sarah was moving out of her apartment because of parking problems.  In the end, Laura did move out to a co-worker's spare bedroom and Julia and her husband moved to a more modern apartment on the 24th floor of a high rise but Sarah decided she could survive the parking problem by exchanging her fiance's sister's car for her own.

Eurosport

Barb wanted to watch the Winter Olympics on television but since we don't have live television she couldn't.  I said she should try using Kodi again.  I looked up online and found that the Olympics were being broadcast on the Eurosport channel.  So Barb found the Eurosport channel on Kodi and started watching the Olympics.  She was happy at first.  Then she found that when the stream stalled and she had to reload it, the Eurosport channel would come back with soccer or something instead of the Olympics.  It was frustrating.  So she decided to skip the Olympics this time.

45 Seconds

Barb has been trying everything to solve her achilles problem.  She looked online and someone said that using a roller pin on her calf for 2 minutes really helped.  So she started using the rolling pin but she didn't use a timer.  It seemed to help a little.  So one day she decided to use the timer on her Android. She found out that she was usually only rolling her calf for 45 seconds.  When she used the timer and rolled for 2 minutes, it did really seem to help.

Printer

Barb had bought a used printer at the Goodwill for five dollars.  She thought it would be a good one because it was just like the printer that we have back in Canada.  Unfortunately, we found out why the person had gotten rid of it.  It printed pages with streaks on them.  But we used it anyway for the printing we needed because it wasn't that important and if we needed a clean printout we could go down to the library and use their computer and printer.  Anyway, I had started working for DND and was printing out a lot of articles and reports.  So finally the ink cartridge started to run out.  I went to Staples and bought a new cartridge.  When I put the new cartridge in, I was shocked to find out that the streaks were gone and the printer worked perfectly now.  The problem was the ink cartridge and not the printer.

Bad Gary Miller Again

Barb and I don't have a cell phone here in Florida.  So no one can send us text messages.  I guess the organizer of the mixed pickleball league that Barb plays in with the bad Gary Miller sends text messages to all the players.  She told the bad Gary Miller that she doesn't get text messages and he should email her with any important news.  Barb accidently overheard today that the mixed league had changed their location from the normal place.  She was lucky that she found out about it accidently because the bad Gary Miller never told her about the change and she would have gone to the old place and no one would have been there and she would have had no way to reach anyone. So she emailed the bad Gary Miller and told him how bad he was for not lettiing her know of the change.

The Big Secret

Barb wanted to join the pickleball club and found out by accident that they were having a membership sign up on Saturday at 1 pm.  They were only taking a few new members so Barb was happy she found out about it in time.  She got to the sign up place at 11:30 to be sure to get in and as she was waiting she saw many of her friends come in to sign up.  She wondered why her friends hadn't told her about the sign up and why it was a big secret.

Not the Battery Again

So Barb did some research on the battery problem.  I looked up how to determine if the battery was bad.  Barb called Mr Lube in Canada to ask them what she could do about the battery replacement since it was so new.  The man at Mr Lube said he had never heard of a battery acting like that but he said they would send her a receipt and if she could find the exact battery in Florida they should replace it for free.  So she looked up the battery type and found out that the closest place to find that battery was in Orlando about an hour away.  So we weren't happy and were going to just buy another battery.  But then Barb found a place right in town that sold that battery.  It was a tire place.  So she took the car in the next day in the morning and said it wasn't the battery it was the starter.  So they replaced the starter and it cost $500 and took four hours to get the car fixed.  Barb was most frustrated with the fact that she had left her Sudoko book in the glove compartment and the car was up on the lift all day.  So she couldn't get it to play while she was waiting for four hours in the waiting room.  I was thinking that maybe we didn't need to replace the battery in Canada before we left.  It might have been the starter all along.

Header Again

I was at my softball game today and because I was the last batter in the batting order I was standing on first base when our left handed lead off batter came up to the plate.  He hit a screaming line drive right at my chest.  So I ducked down real low to get out of the way.  While I was ducked down, I tried to run to second base.  So I took a header and immediately fell down and then I tried to get up and fell down again.  I was rushing to get to second base before the outfielder threw in the ball.  The other team was shouting at me.  They were trying to tell me that it was a foul ball.  So I wasn't out and I got to go back to first base.

Battery Again

Barb went to pickleball and then shopping all over town.  Then she came home with all her stuff but she had to go back out to the Rec Center to sign up for a pickleball tournament.  She was in the Rec Center for about a half hour and when she came out the car wouldn't start again.  So she phoned me from the Rec Center and told me to go to the neighbour's house and borrow their jumper cables and come down to boost her car.  By the time I got there about 10 minutes later, I found Barb with the hood of the car up but the car running.  I thought maybe she had gotten a boost from someone else but no, she had just tried to start the car again and it started fine.  We were stumped by the car not starting sometimes and starting fine most of the time.  We asked some people and I asked my sister and they all said that it might be a bad cylinder in the battery.  So Barb went on a search for a new battery.

Charging

I couldn't get my Android to charge back up after the battery drained.  So I asked Barb to look at it.  She found out that I had only one prong of the plug in the wall.

Alarm

Barb uses the alarm on her Android to wake her up in the mornings when she has to get up early.  But she has to turn the alarm off if she doesn't have to get up or if will ring every day at the same time.  She didn't have to get up this morning.  But she woke up when she heard her alarm going off in the living room and had to stagger out of bed and walk all the way to the living room to turn it off.