Organizing

 Barb is always complaining that she can't find anything in the freezer because it is so full. So Laura decided to go out to the freezer in the garage and organize it for Barb. She pulled everything out and laid it all on the garage floor. Then she came in to get a piece of paper to make a list of all the stuff. After she was in the house for a little while, I asked her about the freezer and she realized she had gotten distracted and she had completely forgotten about the freezer and all the frozen food was still sitting on the floor of the garage.

Television

 I get an email every week from the New York Times about television shows. Every week I forward it to Barb because she is the only one in the house who watches TV. Sometimes I make a mistake and reply to the email instead of forwarding it and I get a message from Gmail when they can't deliver my email.

Coincidence

 Laura woke up crying about a dream she had where I fell and broke my arm. Then that night when we were walking in the dark I tripped over a speed bump on the road and Laura had to catch me.

Delete

 Laura was watching me in amazement using the computer and said she had never seen anyone use the delete key before. She and everyone she knows only use the backspace key.

Trailer

 Sarah messaged us tonight saying she randomly saw Laura in a movie trailer on Netflix tonight.

Positive

 Laura woke up to 3 missed calls from Ontario with no message. She was scared she tested positive for COVID but they were just crank calls.

End

 I have an Excel file called World.xls with the COVID data for a whole bunch of different countries. So after we update the COVID data every day, we say that's The End of the World.

Executive Assistant

 Laura set up the living room coffee table in my study, punched holes in my papers, filed them in binders, and made fancy labels using my label maker to put on the binders.

David

 David Shaw got 16 points in one night in the playoff hockey pool and knocked me out of first place. That must be a record for the most points in one night.

Punk

 We watched Laura in a Punk Rock Film Festival Movie in which she had a supporting role. Barb had to eat popsicles to stay awake. And she was awake to see Laura Mayhem Taylor's name in the credits.

Nose

 Laura got Barb to go with her to get a COVID test today. They put a swab up their noses. Barb got them to use her non-nose spray nostril.

Little Neighbours

 Laura and I saw a skunk, two toads, and several bunnies on our walk tonight.

Sitting

 Laura and I went for a late night walk around the neighbourhood in the dark. She was spooked by an old couple sitting silently on their porch close by the road as we walked by.

Leagues

 Today, Barb and Laura both won Yahtzee tournaments at the same time in different leagues. Laura won 20 dice and Barb won 60.

Auntie

 We watched my Auntie's funeral from Ireland on Zoom and her daughter mentioned how her Dad and Mom and my Mom and Dad used to double date before they were married. She also mentioned how great my sister had been to her mother.

Birthday

 Jeff Barber, an old acquaintance from Ottawa fastball, liked a birthday wish I sent him on Facebook. I didn't send him a birthday wish this year. The message was actually from 2019.

Dragon

 Barb bought Laura a big stuffed animal so Laura wouldn't have to bring George to New Hamburg every time she comes to stay. It was a big round dinosaur. Laura named it Dominic the Dragon.

Jonathan

 Laura was chatting with Jonathan in my office and he commented on the book on my bookshelf behind her called The Idiot's Guide to Physics.

Stuffed Animals

 Laura wanted to bring all of her big stuffed animals with her to visit but she didn't have much space in her luggage. So she vacuum sealed all of them in a small plastic bag.

PST

 My Pakistani colleague was setting up a meeting and wrote down the time in PST (Pakistan Standard Time) but when I looked it up PST I found out it stood for Pacific Standard Time which was the American West Coast, 3 hours behind. Pakistan time is referred to as PKT and is 9 hours ahead.

Colombians

 Laura got very good at running my COVID programs. So she was able to write the instructions on how to run my models for the Colombians I was working with.

Back and Forth

 Laura always wants to do everything. So she was going back and forth between Barb's Yahtzee and my COVID modeling all day everyday.

Travelling

 Laura was taking no chances on her flight from Vancouver to Toronto. She made herself a whole Hazmat suit to wear on the plane.

Digits

 Barb had to rush to pay for a pickleball tournament and she looked up her credit card number in her records instead of getting up and getting her card. The payment wouldn't go through even though she was very careful putting in the numbers and checking them over and over. Then she found her real card and realized since it was a fairly new card the three digits on the back of the card were changed and she hadn't written the new number in her records.

Habit

 I have a strange habit I never knew I had. After my walk, I lock the door when I come in house. I don't even notice doing it. I don't think we even need to lock the door here in the 'hood. Tonight Barb came home from pickleball in the evening and was locked out of the house. She had to ring the doorbell. I let her in. She was mad and asked why did you lock the door. I said I didn't lock the door. It must have locked itself. Of course, a bolt lock can't do that.

Hockey

 For a short while, I was in first place in the playoff hockey pool. That encouraged Barb and me to watch hockey on TV. Barb says she doesn't know why she watches hockey because it makes her so mad. She says they don't know how to play properly. She is always yelling at them to shoot the puck and stop just passing it around. Neither Barb or I have ever played hockey.

Walking

 I made the mistake of turning all the lights off in the kitchen and then trying to go to bed in the dark. I walked right into the kitchen table and gave myself a Charlie horse. It hurt for weeks.

Phone

 Barb was saying how I never use my phone. And I said I use it all the time ... to charge it.

Gift

 One of the games in Barb's Yahtzee App is called the Gift Grab. She thinks there is a system to beat it but I keep telling her it is random. So I wrote a computer version of the game. It was difficult because I had never played the game and Barb wasn't very helpful at explaining all the rules. Anyway, I finally got a version of it working on the computer and got Barb to try it out. When she played it, she was yelling at the computer the same way she yells at her phone App when she loses.

Family

 Barb joined a virtual family in her Yahtzee App and they told her all the ways to beat the system. Now she sets her alarm for 3 am and 7 am to play her tournaments every day.

Visitor

Laura is coming to visit. I had to phone the office to see if it was okay because of COVID. I asked how long she could stay. They said the park policy was two weeks but since she was coming from so far away they said it would be okay to stay 3 weeks. She eventually stayed a few months.

Oops

 Barb found a trick in her virtual Yahtzee game. If she misses the deadline to send in her game for a tournament, she can send it in late as an Oops. Apparently, it is easier to win that way. Today she wrote an email to the makers of the Yahtzee App complaining about not getting her dice in her Oops win. The makers wrote back saying it happens sometimes when you enter late and you should try not to do that. Busted. Now instead of getting her games in on time if she doesn't get her dice every time, she just decided not to complain.

Alarm

 I set my alarm wrong twice in the same day when I was trying to make it to the virtual sessions. Once I set it for 4 pm when I meant to set it for 4 am. And then I set it for 11:30 pm when I meant to set it for 11:30 am. So when Barb was going to bed my alarm went off.

Virtual

 There were a limited number avatars to choose from at the virtual conference. So at the virtual banquet, I made a point to talk to the other scuba divers who I saw.

Sneaking

 I was trying to sneak out of bed in the early morning to attend another early morning session of the virtual conference from Norway and found Barb sitting in the living room in her chair playing Yahtzee on her phone.

Time Zones

 I was quickly having trouble adjusting to Norway time for the virtual conference. They are six hours ahead. So the first day, I was watching an early morning session and fell asleep in my chair holding a cup of coffee and spilled it all over my computer.

The Graduate

 At the Virtual System Dynamics Society Conference, they had a social space to meet people. You were able to create your own avatar from a group of options. I chose my avatar to be a scuba diver. I liked it because it reminded me of the opening scene of the movie The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman. I thought it was so funny.

Pages

 I get my COVID data on Florida from a report put out by the state government. I download the report every day. Then I cut and paste a table from the report into my Excel spreadsheet. I found it was taking longer and longer to download the document and I was wondering what the problem was. Then suddenly it was much faster to download the report. I compared the new reports with the old reports and I noticed that the old reports contained an appendix with a list of all the past COVID cases with one line per case. That made the old reports 2500 pages long. They finally realized this was not going to work. So in the new reports they didn't include the appendix.

Insurance Again

 Barb was thinking she would get home from pickleball in time for my dentist appointment. But then she forgot about my dentist appointment. I had to drive my car without any insurance to the dentist. I drove very carefully. When I got there I found out I was mistaken. I didn't actually have an appointment.

Chips

 Barb has a terrible problem with chewing noises. They drive her crazy. So I have to leave the room to eat my potato chips. I have to go to my room and I even have to shut the door. I can eat chips when she is also eating chips but every time Barb stops, I have to stop too. And then when she restarts. I can restart too.

Deathly

 I was congratulating Sarah on her investment strategy of contributing money every month to her Tax Free Savings Plan. She said yes she was paying herself first just like the Deathly Barber says. I said you mean the Wealthy Barber.

Milk

 I always complain that someone is always leaving the milk jug empty and I yell about it. But I am the only one in the house who drinks milk. So it is always me. It is a joke.

Norway Time

 Sarah and Ali and I were planning to go to the System Dynamics Society conference in Norway this year but then when COVID started they canceled the live conference and decided to do it all virtually. Just now as I was going through my notes for the blog, I found some little pieces of paper from my System Dynamics notes got into the pile. I came across a list of the presentations I wanted to attend in Norway time and translated into my time zone.

Lettuce Again

 Barb was cutting up the head of lettuce that our friendly neighbour, Hands, gave us and a snail without its shell fell out of it.

Virtual Appointment

 I had a virtual appointment to get sized for a new CPAP mask. The guy who tried to measure my head over the Zoom call was really incompetent. Barb thought he is was crazy but she also thought it was very important for me to get a new CPAP mask right away. He said she could come right away and pick up a new one for me. Barb got all ready to leave and then he said that he was actually out of stock. Wow, what incompetence.

Guelph

 Barb's friend lives in Guelph. So Barb thought it would be a good idea to give her friend a box of bread crumbs for Sarah to pick up at her house. Sarah was so embarrassed when she came from work in her scruffy work clothes and her cheap car to pick up a box of bread crumbs at this lady's $3 million home.

Nightmare

 I had a nightmare last night about having to save my little brother. I don't even have a little brother. It was a real nightmare because somehow I forgot and left my computer in the university library. When I went back to get it it was gone.

Radio Show

 Barb decided to go for a walk on Saturday night and everyone she met asked about me because I am usually the one walking around the neighbourhood. Barb had to always try to explain that I was at home listening to my radio show.

Hands

 We have a neighbour named Hands, not Hans. Anyway, Barb was out barbecuing hamburgers on the porch and Hands drove by in his golf cart coming home from the community garden, He stopped and gave Barb a big head of lettuce which was great because it went well with our special sauce.

Prickly

 We have a couple of prickly bushes in our front garden. Barb thought she was so smart when she bought a new pair of cow hide gloves to garden with. Then the next day she found her old pair of cow hide gloves that she thought she had left in Florida.

Little Friend

 Barb was out picking weeds in the garden and a toad jumped out under her hand and scared the pants off of her.

Day of the Week

 I told Barb I had an appointment to get a new CPAP a week from now. She said a Thursday and I said no a week from now is a Friday. Later in the day, Barb was wondering what time No Frills was open until and she rushed out of the house to get there before it closed. When she was at the cashier, she asked the lady if No Frills was always open this late. She said yes and Barb said really on a Saturday. And the lady looked at her strange and said today is Friday.

Charlie

 Barb likes to sit at her sewing machine in the dining room and look out the window at the people walking their dogs. The people can see her too and often wave at her. I was sitting with her in the living room, reading and I said there's our neighbour Charlie. Then Charlie knocked at the window and scared the life out of Barb.

Explosion

 Barb made a pot of coffee which she almost never does. Then she forgot she had just made the coffee and poured herself a cup and heated the hot coffee up in the microwave. The coffee boiled over and made a terrible mess in the microwave.

Butt

 I butt dialed Julia on my phone and then tried to answer my own cell phone. Hung up and phoned again thinking Julia was trying to reach me and got no answer. Later Julia messaged me and I told her the whole story. She said it was such a 'sad' thing to do. I wrote back 'sad Dad'.

A Pair

 Barb was upset because she needed a pair in her Yahtzee game and got 2 pairs of 2's but the program wouldn't accept it because it said it was four of a kind.

Phone

 Last night, I accidentally slept all night with my phone in my pajamas pocket.

Driving

 When we came back from Florida, we decided not to reinstate the insurance on my car because I wasn't going to be driving much and if I needed to go somewhere I could take Barb's car. Today, Barb asked me to take some bags of leaves to the yard waste bin down by the Village Center. So I packed the bags in Barb's car and drove for the first time in 3 months at the local speed limit of 15 km/hr. It took about 15 minutes.

Watering

 Barb hates gardening but she spends a lot of time at it. She likes the house to look good. Today she was out watering and threw the hose on the ground and it landed nozzle handle down. It started spraying all over her from the ground until she was finally able to pick it up again.

Florida

 Barb is playing Yahtzee with a good friend in Florida. Her friend goes to bed at 9 pm and then she regularly wakes up at 1 or 2 am, she starts playing Yahtzee again. Barb sees her playing because Barb has been playing all night and hasn't even gone to bed.

Conversations

 Barb and I sit together in the living room all day long. Barb playing Yahtzee on her phone and me doing my COVID analysis on my laptop. Barb gets so excited about winning Yahtzee and is always trying to explain to me all the complicated prizes she is winning. While I work on my COVID analysis and talk excitedly about how great my computer programs are. We carry on two separate conversations all day long and don't care if the other person listens.

Energy Security

 I am mentoring a Nigerian guy who is studying renewable electrical energy. The electrical system in Nigeria is terribly unreliable. Many days he has no power and is working off his computer battery or his phone in the dark. We can only work until his battery dies. I hope his research helps the country solve this serious problem.

Automation

As I work with the COVID data and my models, I have to repeat the same commands over and over in Excel. So I have started trying to automate the process of adding the daily data and doing the analysis. After spending many hours programming and debugging my programs, I finally had some Excel macros so I don't have to repeat the same commands over and over again every day. Now I just have to push one button and my programs do all the work. This took all the tedious work out and made my analysis more fun and so much easier. Now I look forward to analyzing the new data coming in every day. Also I make less mistakes. The only mistakes that occur are the mistakes that my programs make.

Commas

I have been studying the COVID-19 crisis using my modeling and simulation methodology and trying to see where the pandemic is heading. I found data on all the countries of the World, all the United States, all the Provinces of Canada, all the cities in Florida, and all the cities in Ontario. So I have been sharing my work with many of my friends and colleagues in Canada, Florida, and around the World by writing short papers. I am trying to make the model and the data easy to understand and so I tested it out on Barb. She read over my paper and suggested I add a lot of commas because of my long complicated sentences. Here are a few extra commas for good measure ,,,,

Cut and Paste

 

I thought I had to check the daily reports on COVID and then I realized I could download the entire historical record which a big spreadsheet that contains the data for every country in the World. Now I instead of doing a cut and paste for every country, I can automate the whole process.

Our World in Data

 

I have been following the data on the COVID pandemic and developed a System Dynamics model to make projections into the future. I can download data for any country in the World and put it in my computer model and generate graphs. I developed a template report where I can cut and paste the graphs and write some observations of the crisis in different countries. Then I can send my analysis to friends in many different countries around the World.

Back and Front

 

Barb is working hard on our flower garden. The garden goes around the whole house and we have a road in the front yard on our cul-de-sac and a thru road on our back yard which is busy with drivers and walkers. More people see our backyard. Only our immediate neighbors see our front yard. So Barb is always calling the backyard our front yard and vice versa.

Front Porch

 

Barb and I watched Laura in a virtual pole competition where she did her routine on the front porch of her house in Vancouver. Barb's friend, Loretta, watched it live from Florida as well.

Whiter

 

Barb is back playing pickleball. Now outdoors in Canada. And she is getting browner and browner like in Florida while I am getting whiter and whiter.

Sharing

 

I have been sharing audiobooks and ebooks with Sarah from my collection. The ebooks I can email her. The audiobooks I have to upload to my Google Drive and share a link for her to download them.

Book Club

 

Today I participated in a book club meeting with the librarians from the Florida library using Zoom. There were two librarians, myself and three old ladies. None of the old ladies had read the book we were discussing. I had listened to the audiobook.

Weekly Report

 

I run all my papers through this software online to check my grammar. It keeps track of all of them and sends me a weekly report. This week it told me I used more unique words than 95% of the users.

Mask

 

Barb enjoys wearing her mask when she goes shopping but I don't remember why.

Monsters

 

I sent Laura a funny article in the mail about parenting tips for parents when kids are afraid of monsters under the bed. It suggested the parents needed to fight the forces of evil to the death. We had a great laugh during a video chat when we read it together.

Radio

 

I listen to the local community college radio station which has students as DJs. Many of them are just terrible to listen to. I was glad that the station did not have any DJs during the early days of the COVID pandemic when the college was closed. They just played music.

Grampa

 

Barb was unable to unscrew the nozzle on the garden hose so that she could put on a new nozzle that she bought. She said she needed a vise grip or something. I said I think I have one and found the little toolbox that Grampa had given me when I moved out in the 1980s. There was a perfect vise grip in the toolbox and it worked perfectly to get the nozzle off. Barb was so amazed that I still had the toolbox and I remembered what was in it.

Breakfast

 

I often eat potato chips for breakfast if I am too hungry to take the time to make something. Today I was making instant coffee and almost put a spoon full of instant coffee in my chip bowl. I had to put the breaks on.

Air Conditioning

 

Barb thought the air conditioning in the SUV was broken. Then she moved the fan on my side of the car and realized the car had separate systems for the driver and the passenger and on my side of the car the heat was on.

Proof

 

A class-action legal case needed proof that we owned Honda and Toyota cars to get a refund on some auto parts where the companies producing them tried to fix the prices illegally. We had to prove we had owned several cars over the years. They said insurance policies were okay proof. I found a file folder in my filing cabinet that was 3 inches thick that contained all of our car insurance policies since 2000.

Nigerian

 

The fellow from Nigeria who I am mentoring sent me a file by email while we were talking and it arrived in a minute. I told him that it is crazy to think about technology.