Spare Keys

I went to get spare keys made to give to our neighbour Betsy to keep for us when we go back to Canada.  I tested them and they worked on the door knob, the deadbolt and the garage door.  So I took them over to Betsy's house to give them to her.  When I mentioned that I had keys for her, she said she still had keys from last year.  She showed me the keys and they were on a key chain that Laura had given Barb with a big 'B' on it.  I said I didn't know if those keys even worked and gave her the new keys that I got made and took the old keys with me.  When I got home, I checked the keys that Betsy had given me and they both worked.  So the effort to make new keys was all a waste of time and money.  And Barb had mentioned that we might as well leave a set of keys with Betsy which we will have to remember that we did.

Passenger Side Door

Barb left me a to-do list when she went to the US Open.  One of the things she wanted me to do was change the furnace filter.  I went out to buy a replacement filter at Home Depot and I decided for some reason to put the filter on the passenger seat by going around to the passenger side of the car and opening the passenger door.  I never go around to the passenger side of the car and Barb never rides in the Nissan because she hates the colour of it.  So no one ever gets into the passenger seat and no one ever goes to the passenger side of the car.  When I went to put the filter on the passenger seat and walked around the car, I saw a giant bird poop on the back passenger door near the handle.  There was no bird poop on the window.  So I never would have seen the bird poop unless I had bought a furnace filter and decided to put it on the passenger seat through the passenger door.  So I had another thing for my to-do list.  Clean the bird poop off the Nissan passenger door.

When Barb's Away

I found ants in my study today.  I told Barb who is in Naples about it.  She said why does it always happen when she is away.  It happened last year at this time too and Barb was in Naples.  When Barb's away, the ants will play.

Russian

We have been trying to watch the Stanley Cup Playoffs on Kodi to follow the games for our hockey pool.  Some days it works perfectly and other days it doesn't work at all.  Some days I just listen to the game using my radio streaming App on my iPad.  Some days I watch it on Kodi with Croatian commentators and other days I watch it with Russians.

Devil's Punch Bowl

I was messaging with Sarah and she sent me a picture of herself in front of the falls at the Devil's Punch Bowl, some kind of a nature park.  I messaged back that it looked cool and asked how far away it was.  But I never sent the message by accident.  I didn't realize that I didn't send it until Sarah messaged me saying that the park was in Hamilton or Stoney Creek anyway.  I told her that I had just tried to ask her if it was far away but had not sent the message.  She must have read my mind.

Naples

Barb messaged me from Naples saying she got there safe.  We were messaging back and forth for a while and then Barb asked me if she had left her hairspray behind.  I am sure she was in a panic but the message looked just like a normal question.  I didn't do anything and then Barb said that she realized that she had already unpacked it.  Barb could never have lived without her hairspray.

To Do List

Barb left me with a to-do list before she went to Naples because she wouldn't have much time to do anything when she got back before we left for Canada.  One of the things I was to do was give our spare keys to our neighbour to have while we are away for the summer.  We looked for the keys in the drawer where we keep all of our keys and only found my sister's spare keys.  Then we realized that one of the sets of my sister's keys were actually for our house but they had the wrong label on them.  Just to be sure, I decided to check that the keys worked on our doors.  I found that both keys worked on the doorknob of the house door but neither worked on the deadbolt.  If our neighbours had had to get into our house while we were away they would not have been able to open the door.  So another thing was added to my to do list.  Get another key made for the deadbolt.

ivantaylor@gmail.com

No matter how careful I am giving people my email address ivanwtaylor@gmail.com people keep making the mistake of leaving out the 'w'.  Then I don't get the email and have to phone the friend and correct it with them.  The emails don't bounce back though because there is an Ivan Taylor with a gmail address somewhere getting these emails by accident.  Today I got an email from my Church Fastball League.  It said "Hi, Please can I be removed from your mailing list.  I live in the UK  and will not be flying across the Atlantic to play.  Many thanks, Ivan Taylor"  I had finally found out who all those emails had been going to.

Dummy Light

Barb was driving home from pickleball and the oil light came on the Honda.  Barb realized that she hadn't changed the oil since we had been in Florida.  She was 3000 kilometers over the limit.  She was upset but she was very happy that the light came on two days before she was going to drive to Naples for the US Open and then as soon as she got back from the US Open she was planning to drive home to Canada.

Betsy Starr

Barb was at the pool doing her water aerobics and a lady was getting her mail and she recognized because she had seen playing pickleball.  She was very excited to meet Barb because she said she was a singer going by the stage name Betsy Starr and she sang at a buffet restaurant every Saturday afternoon when a large group of pickleball players came in after playing in the morning.  Betsy said she has great fun with the pickleball players in the audience.

Appointment

I got a phone call today.  We never get phone calls here.  When I answered the phone the lady asked is this Ivan?  I said yes and she said it was the KW Sleep Clinic phoning and she wanted to make an appointment for me to see the sleep doctor.  I asked if this was the follow-up from my sleep test and she said it was.  I was a little surprised because I had my sleep test in June 2017 and it was now April 2018.  She said that her first available appointment was September 4th.  I said fine and thank you.  When I told Barb when she got home from pickleball, Barb said that if she had answered the phone she would have had some choice words for the lady at the sleep clinic for making us wait so long.

Birthday Card

My sister emailed me to ask for Laura's new address to mail her a birthday card.  I looked it up in my address book and sent her the address that I had written down.  Then later Barb and I were going to send her a birthday card and I had written Laura's new address on a little piece of paper and given it to Barb when Laura sent it to me.  I didn't realize that she had also sent her new address to Barb separately.  Rather than looking up Laura's address on her phone Barb was going to use the address on the little piece of paper that was sitting on her side table.  Then she realized that I can be dyslexic with numbers.  So she looked up the number that Laura had sent her and indeed I had reversed the numbers on the apartment number.  I had written 310 instead of 301 on the note and in my address book.  So Barb decided to email my sister to tell her about the mistake just in case she hadn't mailed the card yet.  But the address that Barb had typed in her phone had the wrong postal code.  Barb had written an N where there should have been a M.  I had had the right postal code but the wrong apartment number.  Now my sister had the right apartment number but the wrong postal code.  It didn't matter because my sister had already sent the card.  Barb just had to change the postal code she had written on the envelope from an N to an M and then send the card.

Bootcamp

Barb and Cassandra went to the Bootcamp this year to prepare for the US Open.  Barb had gone with her partner last year as well but her old partner had had both her knees replaced and couldn't play this year.  The Bootcamp was mostly about the mental part of the game with a lot about strategy.  It wasn't a fitness thing.  They were going to use a video camera to film Barb and her partner playing a practice game and then the coaches were going to watch it with them and note anything they see that they can improve.  Barb excited about this because she has been wanting to see how she plays but she was surprised when she realized that the coaches had the camera on a drone flying over the court filming them.  That was so hi-tech.

Almost Divorced

Barb had been very critical of my program and my picks last year because I picked a lot of players from the same team even though they were very low scorers but I thought if they played enough games they would eventually get some points.  But they didn't.  So Barb had a new idea and she tried to explain it to me.  She felt that we should pick high scorers on teams that might not go very far just because they are high scorers and would be sure to get us some points.  So I changed my program to give the high scorers on each team extra weight and I didn't include low scorers on my list at all.  Then when we started the draft, Barb was whispering in my ear about who I should pick even though they might not be the first available on my list.  I got mad at her for changing my system and she kept trying to explain that I didn't understand the system that she had told me to use.  In the fourth round, I picked the highest scorer available but he was on a team that wouldn't go far and Barb got very upset because I didn't understand what I was supposed to be doing.  She blamed herself for not explaining her system correctly to me.  I told her that her system wasn't a system at all.  After that we tried to work together and we did much better and after it was all over she did a better job of explaining her system which tried to combine relatively high scorers on good teams in earlier picks and in the last few picks when most of the good players on the good teams were gone, pick a high scorer on a poor team.  I tried to change my program to implement her system next year but I couldn't figure out any way to do it.  So Barb wants us to have two lists next year, one with great and good players on good teams for early picks and another with great players on poor teams for later picks.  Its no use getting divorced over a hockey pool.

Trouble Sleeping

I had trouble sleeping and didn't get to sleep until 4 am.  My alarm went off at 11 am but I didn't get up right away.  I finally checked my email at 12:25.  I read an email from my buddy at work saying the hockey pool draft was going to be a 12:30 that day.  So I jumped out of bed and found a phone to use to call into the conference call.  I got on the conference call but I wasn't prepared with my draft list.  So as I was making small talk, I was updating my inputs to include that latest information from the night before and transferring the results to my spreadsheet.  Then I had to sort the players in order in using the sort function.  Then I had to print out the results of my draft order.  I got it all done in time and did the draft in my pyjamas but my heart was racing after just jumping out of bed.

Lowest Since Barrhaven

I broke the 230 pound barrier and was my lowest weight since I was doing the Fit For Life Diet.  Barb was also the lowest since we were in Barrhaven when she was working herself off her feet fixing up the house to get it ready to sell.  We don't know why we are losing weight but we are very happy about it.

Wins and Losses

I did all my calculations for the hockey pool using my computer program but the results were pretty bizarre.  I couldn't believe the wins and losses that I had input to the program.  So a couple of days after I did my calculations, I double checked my inputs and found another website to get the wins and losses for each team that made the playoffs.  I realized that my earlier inputs were all screwed up because I got them off the NHL website.  On the NHL website they don't show games lost in overtime.  So when I found the correct wins and losses, my results looked much more realistic.

Simplii

We used to do all our banking through PC Financial and then it was taken over by CIBC and it was now called Simplii.  The website and account numbers and passwords all stayed the same but they said they were sending us a new bank card in the mail and we had to activate it when we got it.  But of course we never got it because we don't get our Canadian mail forwarded to Florida.  So we were worried that we wouldn't be able to access our bank accounts on the internet after the deadline of Apr 10th.  Barb phoned them to see what they could do for us but they said there was nothing they could do.  So we waited anxiously until our current cards expired.  Then the day came and we could still access our bank accounts over the internet.  The day passed and we could still access our bank accounts.  So nothing serious happened to us which was good because I had to make a number of e-transfers for the hockey pools and for my summer fastball team fees and for Laura's birthday.

ABC

I read a newsletter from the Globe and Mail every morning that comes in my email.  I learn a lot about what is going on in Canada that way.  Today I was reading about the an ABC Judge who was making a ruling on the pipeline dispute.  Then I realized that it wasn't an ABC Judge it was A BC Judge as in British Columbia Judge.

Wrong Number

Barb found another cockroach.  This time it was a really big one and it was on her juice bottle on the kitchen counter.  Barb screamed when she saw it and I had to come to the rescue and catch it and kill it.  We saved the dead body to show the Bug Guy.  Barb called the Bug people and they said they would send a guy over tomorrow.  He was supposed to phone first to make sure we were home.  He never phoned and he never came the next day.  Then he came the following day but didn't phone ahead.  He said that he had been phoning all day yesterday and there was something wrong with our phone.  He showed us the message he got saying that he needed a calling card.  Then Barb realized that he was phoning our Canadian number.  She had no idea how he got our Canadian number.

Mike

Barb said to Mike at pickleball that she thinks of him every night.  He said oh really and a number of the ladies overheard her.  So Barb tried to explain.  You know the foot thing.  He said oh yeah the foot thing.  I don't think the ladies listening were getting the right idea.  Barb borrowed Mike's foot brace for her achilles problem and she wears it every night.  So that is what she meant but the ladies thought it was something else I guess.

Nissan

Our friend from our old park called today and said he was selling his place there.  We had been borrowing his car all winter.  He asked me if we wanted to buy his car.  We need a second car because Barb and I are often going different places in the mornings.  Me to the baseball diamonds and Barb to the pickleball courts.  I said I would have to ask Barb.  The car we are borrowing is a Nissan Sentra just like the old Nissan Sentra we used to have in Barrhaven.  Barb had never liked that car.  We had given it to Julia and then when Julia didn't need it anymore we sold it "as is" for $500.  I thought that the car was okay and I didn't mind driving it around the places that I needed to go in The Villages.  I also thought it was so convenient that we don't have to go out looking for a car and I thought it was nice of our friends to lend it to us.  So I wanted to buy it.

Close Game

We were playing a game in the Neighbourhood League and the score was tied 0-0 late in the game and the game was going by fast.  I was sitting on the bench beside the scorekeeper of the team and the guy sitting beside him asked when does Ivan come up, he can hit and run.  I ended the game on deck and the other team won the game in the bottom of the seventh inning 1-0.

Games Night

Barb's best friend invited herself and some of her friends, who were strangers to us, to our house for a night of board games and card games.  Barb thought it was a little strange and she had to run around the house and clean up and clear off the dining room table where things seem to accumulate.  But Barb had fun with her friends and some strangers.  I didn't play but I could hear them talking loudly while I was in my study.  I couldn't believe that Barb could play the games while at the same time talking loudly to her friends about pickleball.

Banking

I was doing my accounting to get ready to do my income taxes and found a ATM withdrawal in my Canadian bank account on the 11th of December.  I asked Barb how that could happen because we were in Florida.  Barb was about to phone the bank to tell them about it when she realized that I had gone Ottawa at the time to pick up my work computer and must have made a withdrawal while I was there.

Chirp

Barb's friend messaged Barb and told her that she had a bad back yesterday but she is feeling better today after she has seen her chirp.  The autocorrect had changed the word chiro to chirp.

Audio

The sound on our television doesn't work so we plug in little speakers in the headphone jack of the computer and listen to the television through them.  Today I was setting up the computer to watch television and couldn't figure out why the sound wasn't working.  Finally I realized that I had plugged the speakers into the jack for the microphone.  I told Barb about my mistake and she said she didn't even know there was a microphone jack.

Jack

We have to be at the ballpark 45 minutes before the game time because they pick the subs 30 minutes before the game.  So when we get there, we have a lot of time to wait around.  Sometimes we warm up for a while but it doesn't take that long to warm up because of the hot weather.  One of the players on the team, named Jack, is probably the best player on the team and while he is waiting he gets a ball and throw it up in the air and catches it and throws it up in the air above his head and catches it again.  It always reminds me of how little boys play around by themselves with a baseball.

Hard Time

I decided to empty the recycle box.  Here we are supposed to put all of our recycling in a clear plastic bag and to make it easier Barb clips it to a big box so it is always wide open and easy to drop things in.  I forgot about the clips.  So I pulled the bag out of the box and heard the clips fall in the recycling bag.  Then I had to dig around in the big bag of recycling to find the clips again.  Of course, they had fallen to the bottom of the bag.  I finally found them but I get so discouraged.  I have such a hard time doing even the simplest things around the house.

Netflix

Barb and I have been watching the adaptation of the book Alias Grace on Netflix every Sunday night.  We watch one episode a week.  Today Barb asked me to set up the television because she was comfortable in her lounge chair.  So she walked me through how to start it up and she told me that Laura had shown her how to do it but Laura had typed it Natflix and Barb had never changed it.

New Shoes

Barb has been going crazy buying running shoes online for her pickleball.  She is buying shoes of all different colours to match her skirts and her shirts.  I guess she was feeling bad about buying so many shoes for herself.  So she bought me a pair of shoes.  I didn't think I needed any new shoes but I guess it made her feel better so I thanked her and threw out my old shoes.

Must Be A Really High Level

Some of the retired people here in The Villages have parents that also live in The Villages.  Today one of Barb's friend's parents came to watch them play pickleball.  After the games, the mother came up to Barb and said that they must be playing at a really high level.  Barb said why did she think that?  The old lady said we used to play pickleball and it wasn't anything like that.

Android Alarm

Barb wakes up to her Android alarm clock.  She doesn't have to set the alarm every night like I have to set my iPad.  It stays set until she unsets it.  Today her alarm didn't go off and she couldn't figure out what happened.  Then she found out that it had been set for only Monday through Friday.  She didn't realize that the Android would expect her to want to sleep in on the weekend like a working person.

Friend Dan

The crazy shortstop on my team threw the ball to me way to my right and I had to change feet and stretch and catch the ball on a bounce.  After the game when we were shaking hands my friend Dan on the other team stopped me and said that was a great catch.  At the next game, the shortstop came up to me and said that he had forgotten to thank me for my catch on his bad throw.  He blamed the bad throw on his sore back but I think he just has a bad style of throwing.  I always worry where he will throw it when he fields the ball.  He is supposed to be an A player and I am a C player.  Each team has a limit of 3 A players and 6 B players and then fills the rest to the team with 3 C players.

Checking Email

I have been getting in the habit of setting my alarm on my iPad and then when I wake up I check my email in bed before I get up.  Today I got up and made the bed and just in time I noticed that I had left my iPad on Barb's pillow.  If I hadn't noticed it, I would have been looking for my iPad all day.

Brown Towel

Barb is very protective with her bath towel.  She says my towel starts to smell like my oily hair after a while because I wet my whole head every morning if I am not taking a shower.  I forget and just use the closest towel available.  Barb told me that I should use the brown striped towel and her towel was the completely brown towel but I keep forgetting and do not notice I am using the wrong towel until I have already dried my hair.

Black Pen

We had to sign a letter for the insurance company and I thought we should sign in black.  I said to Barb that I had a black pen in my study.  She went in my study and got the pen and was amazed that the pen was almost completely out of ink.  She said who uses up all the ink in a Bic pen.  I do it all the time and I keep the old empty pens for my collection.

iPad

I plugged in my iPad charger in only one prong again.  Barb always checks it if I say my iPad isn't charging.  Julia wonders how it is possible to plug in only one prong.  It happens because we have outlet extenders in a lot of our outlets.  So we can plug in as many as 6 things in 2 outlets.  But the extenders are square and it is possible to put just one prong into the outlet and the other prong goes on the side of the square.

Lightest

I woke up today really hungry and thought I should weigh myself.  I never weigh myself in the morning.  I don't think to weigh myself until after breakfast and I always weigh more then.  Barb weighs herself every morning as soon as she gets up and every night before she goes to bed.  Anyway I was 231.6 pounds.  That was my lowest weight since I retired.  When I was working I got up to 282 and about 4 months after I retired I was down to 232.  But now I was lower than that for the first time in 5 years.  Barb thought it would great if I could get under 230.  And a few days later, I did.  I got down to 228.6.

Reformatting

Barb was getting strange messages on her Android and it wasn't working very well.  For some reason, I wasn't able to move her Apps to the memory card.  So they were taking up a lot of space on the hard disk of the phone.  I thought maybe if I reset it to factory settings, I could get the Apps to go directly to the memory card.  So I reset it and set it up properly so it worked now but I should have transferred her photos to the computer because I had accidently erased all of her photos and she wasn't impressed.  I felt pretty bad because it would have been very easy to transfer her photos to the computer before resetting the phone.  But she does have lots of computer memory now but no photo memories.

Extra Sharp

Barb had been looking for 2% cheese for some time at the stores and could never find any.  Today she found some at the grocery store and they were on sale as a two for one deal.  So Barb picked up 10 packages.  Then a lady shopper came by with a friend and saw all the cheese in Barb's cart and said to her friend that she really liked extra sharp flavoured cheese.  Barb never noticed that the cheese she had in her cart was extra sharp and she didn't want extra sharp.  So she put 8 packages back and kept the only two packages that were regular.

Little Brown Thing

We were eating a steak dinner and Barb found a little brown thing on her skirt.  She picked it up thinking to put in her mouth and found out it was a bug.  She freaked out.

Sneaky

Barb bought a big box of ready made peanut butter on crackers.  It came in two halves.  I liked them and was sneaking them when Barb wasn't home.  When the top of the box was empty, I flipped the box over and opened the bottom half.  It wasn't until all the packages were gone that Barb figured out that I had flipped over the box.  Then there were no more peanut butter crackers left.  She was looking forward to having some and was very disappointed.

Solid

The shortstop on our team has real trouble throwing to first base.  He takes a big windup and throws the ball sidearm.  Between innings, he came up to me and told me that he thought I was solid at first base.  I thanked him for the compliment.  Then the next inning, I missed one of his throws to first base.  It was wide to my glove hand side and I stretched as far as I could and still kept my foot on the base.  The ball went off the end of my glove and bounced to the fence.  The runner was safe at first but couldn't advance to second because the catcher was backing me up.

Dorothy

We were playing softball and it was late in the game.  We were up to bat and I was on deck swinging a bat.  Our coach was beside third base.  All of a sudden, a little tornado went through the softball diamond stirring up sand on the infield from third base to the pitcher's rubber.  It took the coaches cap off his head and blew it into the middle of the infield.  We had to stop the game and everyone had to cover their eyes.

Collar

Barb has been cutting my hair since we have been Florida.  She has all the razors and scissors because she cuts her own hair.  So tonight, she sat me out on the driveway.  She wanted to do a little touch up.  So I didn't take off my shirt like I usually do, Barb just turned my collar inside out and put a towel around my neck.  She cut my hair until she was happy.  Then I went to Skype with my friend Stan.  After Skyping, I came out of my study and Barb noticed that I still had my collar turned inside out.

Just Out of the Picture

Barb and Cassandra came third in The Villages pickleball tournament.  That was not too bad but only the top two teams get there picture in The Daily Sun, The Villages newspaper.

R and L

One of the earbuds on my headphones broke.  So I was listening to my radio and books and music with only one earbud.  Barb went out and bought me some fancy new headphones.  They were noise reducing but they didn't feel right in my ears sometimes.  Finally I realized that the earbuds were different shapes and there was one for the right ear and one for the left ear.  Now I have to always check the earbuds for the little R or L before I put them on.