iTunes

I am getting impatient with dj's talking too much and the commercials on the radio. So I have been listening to iTunes on my computer and enjoying my own music. I am surprised at how much of it I have never heard before. I collect a lot of CDs and I download 10 songs a week from the library but I never get around to listening to them. So this is quite a treat.

Coffee

I set up the coffee pot with a filter and coffee grinds. I filled that pot with water but left the pot in the sink. Then after a while I noticed the coffee maker wasn't making any noise and realized that I had forgotten to put the water in the coffee maker. I had to wait for the coffee maker to cool down before I could restart it.

Lob

Barb's partner at pickleball today was going back to get a lob. So Barb bent over so as to get out of the way of her partner's shot and her partner hit the ball right at her butt.

Quilt

Barb posted two pictures of her new quilt on her facebook page. Our bedroom looked like some kind of show house. She got 300 comments about how beautiful everyone of her friends thought it was.

Dayta

Barb was talking to her friends at pickleball about why we don't have cellphones in the US because we don't want to pay of dayta.  Her friends said what is dayta. Barb said you know dayta like you're able to use the internet on your phone. Her friends said oh you mean data.

Game Winner

My Buccaneers softball team is either very bad or very unlucky. We have only one two games out of the 12 we have played. We are tied for last place in a league of 24 teams. We have lost a lot of games in the last inning but today we had a chance to win the game in the last inning. The bottom of our batting order is pretty terrible and I start the decline batting in the number 8 spot out of 12 players. I came up to bat with the score tied and a runner on second base and hit a single between the third baseman and shortstop to win the game. We were all very happy.

The Curse of Knowledge

Barb's friend Loretta asked for my advice about her pension plan. I did an analysis and made some beautiful graphs to explain the break even points for when to take out her pension. I showed my write up with the graphs to Barb before I sent it to Loretta and Barb couldn't figure out the graphs at all. So I decided to write the analysis up in tables instead of graphs. I had been listening to a book on nonfiction writing and it talked about the curse of knowledge where the author knows what he is talking about and thinks his reader will understand it as well but usually doesn't. The suggestion was to get someone to read your work before you sent it out. This was a perfect example of how it worked.

Front Door

Barb decided we should go out for dinner and use a coupon that her friend had given her for a two for one meal at the Sweet Tomatoes Buffet Restaurant. As soon as she mentioned it, I got up and put on my shoes and went outside. I was going to pick up some oranges that had fallen off our tree but Barb thought I was in a hurry to go out to dinner. I always go around the front of the house to get to the orange tree while Barb always goes around the back of the house to get to the orange tree. As I was walking I saw a package on the steps of the front door. Usually all of our packages come to our side door. So I picked up the package and noticed it was slightly ripped open. I was looking into the package to see what it was and all of a sudden I was face down on the ground on the pavement of our front walk. I had smacked my head on the pavement and bent my glasses. At first, I didn't know where I was. Then I got up and felt the blood on my head and went inside to check the cut on my forehead. I was just a scratch and so it didn't stop us from going out for dinner but I will go around the back of the house to get to the orange tree in the future.

Rebel

Our community has one of the few outdoor hot tubs and Barb likes to go there after a hard day of pickleball. Today she went and found the pool and hot tub were closed for maintenance. There was a man in the hot tub. So Barb asked him how he got in the locked gate. The man said the entrance through the dressing rooms was open. So Barb went through there and into the pool and hot tub area. She was in the pool cooling of after getting out of the hot tub when a Community Security Officer came by and told her she had to leave.

Brunch

I get together with my sister for brunch once a month. She drives her RV and I drive my SUV. I usually park in the restaurant parking lot right beside her. Today she arrived before me. I didn't realize that her RV is a lot bigger than my SUV and it has a lot of over hang over the curb. So when I tried to line up my SUV with her RV in the parking spot I crashed into the curb.

Finals

Barb wanted to watch the Men's Finals of the Australian Open but it had already started. She didn't put her glasses on and turned on the computer and asked me to tell her if it had just started but not what set it was in. I didn't hear the final details of the instructions because I had my earphones in and I said she was lucky it was in the fourth set. Barb was furious because she said I had ruined the surprise for her.

Etim

I volunteered to mentor a young person who was trying to build a System Dynamics model for the first time. I was assigned a young man from Nigeria and we had to arrange a time to video chat. I found out that time difference was 6 hours. So we meet at noon my time and 6 pm his time.

Doppler Chick

Barb used to call herself the Doppler Chick when we lived in Ottawa because she would always check the radar for me to tell me if it was going to rain when I went to my ball games in the evenings. The radar was very reliable in Ottawa but the radar is not very reliable in Florida. So she finds it is wrong more often than it is right about the timing of the rain. That doesn't stop her from checking the radar every time she thinks it might rain.

United States

We were at a house party playing games and I had to laugh at Barb's friend Gayle from Minnesota who thought there were 51 States in the US. And Barb said yeah even I know there are 52. I had to correct them both and tell them there were 50 States.

Walmart

Man at the Walmart check out was checking out Barb while she was checking herself out at the self checkout. Then he said Barb had good hair.

Roger

My sister showed me how to get live television on the internet. Barb was very excited because she was able to watch the Australian Open tennis tournament. But the time zones in Australia are a lot different than the time in Florida. Tonight Barb was up until 4 am watching Roger Federer come back to win in 5 sets.

Recreation Center

Barb went to a meeting of the pickleball club at what she thought was Laurel Manor Recreation Center. She had a terrible time trying to find a parking spot because the lot was so full. She finally found a spot and went in to find she was at Savanagh Recreation Center and not Laurel Manor Recreation Center. So then she had to find the actual recreation center and find a parking spot and got to the pickleball club meeting just as the meeting was starting. Fortunately, some of her friends were saving her a seat.

Google

My phone had a very dim screen. I could hardly read it. I had to look up on Google to find out how to lighten up the screen but had a hard time reading and following the instructions because I couldn't read the dim screen in the first place.

Pillow Case

Barb got a ride to a pickleball tournament with Dave and Helen. Helen is Barb's womens partner and Dave is her husband. When Dave was taking stuff out of the trunk of the car a pillow case fell out on the ground and a gun fell out of the pillow case. Barb had never seen a gun in real life.

Long John Silver's

I was having dinner at Long John Silver's seafood restaurant in Orlando. A father and daughter came in and were standing in line. The father asked the daughter what she wanted. The little girl who was about 8 or 9 was playing with her Playstation. I guess she didn't reply quick enough. So the father grabbed the Playstation out of her hands and hit her over the head with it. She told him what she wanted and then he gave her back the Playstation and she started playing with it again.

ETA

Barb was looking at the radar to see when rain was coming. Her mixed partner said he had an ETA of 10 minutes. Barb thought he meant the rain was coming in 10 minutes but he meant he would arrive in 10 minutes.

Buzzing

Laura and Sarah were messaging each other on the Famjam Facebook messenger group about the snow in Vancouver. Barb's wrist was burning from all the messages. I was happy my watch wasn't working.

Everything is a Math Quiz

Barb's Stephen King book ended with a discussion of the Bernoulli Probability Formula. She asked me if I knew the Bernoulli Probability Formula and I went into a long explanation about the Bernoulli brothers the great mathematicians from the 17th Century.

Spin Move

The other day I was playing first base and the shortstop threw the ball to me a little wide. So I had to come off the base to catch the ball. Then I was able to catch it and spin around to tag the runner before he got to the base to get him out. The coach wrote an email to the team to tell us about the next game and mentioned the good things about the last game and he said that Ivan made a sweet spin move at first base.

Buccaneers

Barb came to the ballpark today looking for me. She saw a Buccaneer player who was wearing a jersey like mine and asked him if Ivan plays on your team. He said no. I guess I am so quiet on the bench that my own teammates don't even know who I am.

Glasses

I have two pairs of glasses. I have the new ones that I wear everyday and the old ones that I wear to softball. I wear the old ones in case I fall. I wouldn't want to break my new glasses. Today I got home from softball and tried to put my new glasses on again but was still wearing my old glasses.

Not Gail

Barb gets certain associations in her head and can not get rid of them no matter how much she tries. For example, she always calls her friend Trish from pickleball Gail because for some reason Trish reminds Barb of her old friend Gail from tennis in Ottawa.

Not Raymond

Barb was looking for a male pickleball partner and heard from a friend about this fellow who was looking for a female partner named Raymond. Barb always looks up potential partners on the Pickleball Association website to see if what rating they have and if they have won any tournaments. She couldn't find this fellow named Raymond. So she checked with her friend who gave her the tip and she explained that his name was Rayjeung not Raymond.

No Hurry

Barb went to see the new paddles at the Engage store near The Villages. She was looking and looking at them trying to decide if she should buy one. The owner was talking to her about how great they were. Then he said you're sponsored by Engage aren't you. Barb said yes I am. He said oh here take two. So she got two beautiful new paddles for free.

Cape Cod

Barb only took geography in grade 9 and that was a long time ago. Today she met a new lady at pickleball. She asked the lady where she was from and the lady said Cape Cod. And Barb replied oh wow I'm Canadian too.

Computer Fan

I left my Linux computer in Florida for the summer and when I got back in the Fall my computer was making a strange sound. Then it would turn itself off. I checked the diagnostics and found out the fan was broken. Eventually, the fan stopped making any noise and stopped working completely. So I looked up on YouTube how to replace the fan. It looked complicated but doable. Barb ordered a new fan online and it arrived but I was afraid to open up my computer. When Laura arrived we made a plan to open up my computer together and replace the fan. I found the YouTube video and we watched it once then slowly we watched it again as we followed the instructions stopping the video as we watched. I was afraid to lose some of the tiny screws. So I pulled out a whole bunch of bowls and sticky notes. As Laura took the screws out, I put them in the individual bowls and put sticky notes to tell us where they would go when we put the computer back together. We took it apart and replaced the fan and put it back together and then the computer worked great again.

Pro-Enamel

Laura noticed that my toothpaste is called Pro-Enamel in English and Pro-Email in French.

Wrapping

Laura didn't want to open her Christmas presents because she thought it was so funny how I wrapped them. I can never estimate the right size of the paper to cut and I end up using all kinds of little scraps of paper and lots of scotch tape to cover the whole present. Sometimes I cannot even cover the whole present.

Alarm

I set my alarm on my iPad and when it went off in the morning I picked it up to hit snooze and it slipped out my hand and fell behind the headrest on the bed. I had to pull the whole bed away from the wall and it is a very heavy bed. Then I had to stretch a lot to reach in and get my iPad. The whole time my alarm was going off. Barb came in and wondered what I was doing. It was no way to wake up and I was still groggy and very unhappy.

Upholster

Barb had picked a couple of desk chairs out the neighbour's garbage for me to use in my study. They were nice comfortable chairs but they were shedding their fake leather and were always making a mess around the house. So Laura and Barb made a plan to upholster them. Laura did most of the work and Barb supervised with the idea that Laura would do one of the chairs and then Barb would do the other when Laura went home. Laura did a really professional job and my office chair looked and felt very good now. But Barb never got around to doing the other chair. So we just keep it outside.

Crossing the Border

Laura was telling us how much it cost her to get to the airport in Seattle. She said it cost her to get over the border to the US. Barb thought it was strange to have to pay to get across the border. She wondered what the world was coming to if you had to bribe the border guards. Then I realized she meant it cost her to take the bridge across the border.

Battery

Barb changed the battery in the key fob for the CRV but found the car wouldn't start. Then she took out her toolkit and took the key fob apart and realized she hadn't taken off the protective sticker on the that says Do Not Swallow.

Shining Light

A lady at pickleball today said that Barb was a shining light.

Toaster

I like to have a toasted cinnamon raison bagel and cream cheese for breakfast. I was having trouble with the toaster which is usually great. I couldn't get the toaster to stay down. I told Barb we might need a new toaster. The toaster had come with the house. Barb looked up how to fix a toaster on YouTube and it said that most toasters get clogged with crumbs. So Barb turned the toaster over and shook it and the crumbs fell out and then the toaster worked great again.

Library

I went to the local library to pick up a book that I had put on hold and when I got into my car to drive home, I noticed that my fly was down.

Policewoman

On the same walk, a policeman stopped when I was about half way around the neighbourhood and asked me how long I had been walking. I said about a half hour. Then she asked if I had seen a young man on a bicycle with lots of tattoos. I guess the old folks must have been suspicious of him in our closed retirement community.

Waving

When I go for my afternoon walk, I always wave to people in their cars and golf carts. Today I waved to a man in a golf cart and he stopped and got out. I thought he thought I needed help or something. I said I was just saying hello. Then he asked me if I knew where Rose Avenue was and I did know which is kind of unusual. I told him how to get there. Later on my walk, I saw him again riding back the way he came with a lady in his golf cart. They must have been on their first date.

Refund

Barb would not give up on the new mattress. She had phoned the company she bought it from and they had told her they had a no return policy but if she donated the new mattress and got a receipt they would give her a refund. So Barb had been trying to find a used furniture store that would take our new mattress but the Goodwill and Bargains and Treasures said absolutely no used mattresses. Barb thought she would try Habitat for Humanity but they would only take it if it had no stains on it. Barb said there was a slight scuff mark on the edge from when we put the mattress in the trunk of our car. So they said no they wouldn't take it. But Barb wouldn't take no for an answer and went to Habitat for Humanity with the mattress and they never noticed the scuff. She got a receipt for the mattress and emailed a photo of the receipt to the company she purchased the mattress from and got a full refund.

Text Message

Barb's friend Louis was coming over to fix a hole in the base of our outside wall in the back of the house. He sent Barb a text message saying he was at 1177 Marigold Ave and couldn't see any hole. Barb found a way to read the text message on our landline phone and called him back to tell him our address was 1744 Marigold Avenue. But Barb was happy to find a way to read a text message on our landline because most people use cellphones and don't use landlines anymore. We are too cheap to get a cellphone in the US and we have cheap internet landline numbers in the US and Canada. Barb's friends are always sending her text messages and she never knew how to read them.

Drafts

Barb never knew that her phone would save incomplete emails as drafts. When she found out, she checked her phone and had 140 draft emails in memory.

Furnace

It can get colder than you might think in Florida in the winter. Today we found out that our furnace was not working. So Barb called a furnace repairman to come over. He opened up the furnace and found nothing wrong with it. Then he came in the house and checked our thermostat. He fixed the thermostat with a turn of a screw that had come loose and our furnace started working again. He charged us $80 for a house call. And when Barb told her pickleball friends, they had a great laugh that Barb had a screw loose.

Barb's Birthday

Barb bought a new mattress for our bed to show off her new quilt. It came in the mail and was all compressed and rolled up. We opened the box and unrolled it and it expanded into a regular mattress. The first night we slept on it Barb was unhappy because it was too hard. So on Barb's birthday, we spent the evening driving around town with the mattress in the trunk of our car looking for some used furniture store to take it off our hands. We never found one.

Garbage

The new neighbour was cleaning out our old neighbour Jerry's house and put out a lot of garbage. Barb noticed that it had been picked over and mentioned that to the neighbour. The neighbour said yes but then mentioned that there was all this new garbage that was left behind. It was our garbage that Barb had put out with his but she never admitted it to our neighbour.

Plumber

The plumber was coming over to fix the drain in the shower which had broken just before we left Florida last Spring. The plumber was supposed to come over between 10 am and 1 pm. So I had to get up early. I set my alarm and when it went off I hit snooze and dreamt that Barb had come home and told me to go back to sleep. I almost didn't get up in time for the plumber.

Tournaments

Barb usually plays pickleball tournaments on Saturday and Sundays. Today was a Wednesday and she had a pickleball tournament. After the tournament she went to the Aldi grocery store. She asked the cashier when they closed. The cashier said 9 pm. And Barb said "On a Sunday?" The cashier replied, "I thought you meant today".

Toilet

Barb hates the toilets we have in Florida because they are always running on after we flush. We are always arguing about whether the toilet works better if you hold the handle down for a long time or if you just push the handle down for a short time. Today while Barb was out partying with her pickleball friends when her pickleball partner phoned and wanted to bring her husband over to fix our toilet. I ran around cleaning the house. I almost forgot to take down Barb's bras that were hanging on the hooks in the bedroom.

Ballroom Dancing

I went to computer club for the first time since I arrived in Florida. When I got to the location, I found that there were all these old people there doing ballroom dancing. Then I asked the lady at the desk about computer club and she said they meet on Fridays and it was Monday. I got up early for no reason.

Coke

Barb was amazed that I refilled the Coke in the fridge by myself without being asked. She usually does it before going to bed at night. Then she was even more amazed when she found out I went out to the garage in the middle of the night to get them. The next day she showed me where we keep the Coke in our Florida house. We keep them in the cupboard in the kitchen.