Getting Settled

Because of the two day drive, Barb was behind on her favourite television shows. One of the first things she tried was taping her shows on Rogers On Demand.

The VCR didn't work. So she tried another VCR. It didn't work either.

When Julia got home from work, she said that Rogers had figured out how to stop people from taping the On Demand channel.

Barb phoned Rogers to see how she could watch television on the internet like she did in Florida. She had to negotiate a new deal to get more bandwidth and a high speed modem.

When it was all straightened out, she was able to watch her shows on her computer in the evenings in the livingroom while I worked on the computer just like in Florida.

Small Consolations

We weren't back long before we noticed a few nice things about our house in Canada.

First, the toilets were more modern. We didn't have to hold the handle down until they had completely flushed. I still did though out of habit. Barb never figured out how to flush the toilets in our Florida place. She was jealous of my mastery of the toilets.

Second, the kitchen tap didn't drip. Our kitchen tap in Florida dripped badly. I had a particularly tough time figuring out how to get it to stop dripping. I would regularly fill up the water jug with the drips. Barb had the touch with the tap. She was able to get it to stop dripping.  She tried to teach me but I didn't have the touch.

Finally, the coffee pot in Canada poured without dripping on the counter. Neither of us could figure out how to pour coffee in Florida without it dripping all over the counter when we poured.

These small consolations made it feel better to be back.

Welcome to Canada

My sister said that she likes to stay in Florida until May.  The weather can still be miserable in Canada in April.

We thought about getting an extension on our medical insurance so we could stay another week or so. However, Barb's friends would be all gone. Barb thought that staying was simply avoiding the inevitable. So we left as scheduled on the 10^th of April.

On the second day of our drive as we were travelling through New York state, we went through a snow storm. It was slushy snow. When the trucks passed, it was hard to see the road.

We drove through the storm. It got nicer as we got into Canada. The rest of the drive was uneventful.

We got in on Thursday afternoon. There was a weather warning on the television. There was supposed to be freezing rain over night and all day Friday.

We were lucky that we weren't travelling on Friday. However, my sister was right. Next year, we will plan to stay until May.

Sketchy

We started planning our drive to Canada. I thought about booking a hotel ahead. I wanted a place that was more than halfway along. However, I wanted to get through West Virginia because I thought it was a little sketchy there.  I didn't end up booking a hotel but I found out the names of the towns about where we might like to stop.

On our route, when we were ready to stop, we looked at GPS "Betsy" to find motels close by. We found a Knights Inn that I thought would be nice but cheap. 

I had stayed in a Knights Inn in Orlando when I went to the fastball tournament.  I thought it was a good deal.

The Knights Inn was right off the highway.

I went in to the office and asked about the price. The man behind the desk said it would be $50. I said I thought it would be more like $40. He asked me if I had a discount card. I said I didn't. I turned to leave. Then he said he would give me the discount anyway. I got the room for $45 dollars.

I asked for a king-size bed. He gave me a key for a room around the back.

When I went back out the car, Barb said she didn't want a room around the back. We drove around back. There was a sketchy couple sitting outside their room smoking and drinking.

Barb didn't want the couple watching us unpack the car. So we went back to the office. I got a room in the front with double beds. Barb thought the room was nice.

We unpacked the car, had a little to eat, checked our email using the wifi and went to sleep.

The next morning we packed up the car.  We went to the lobby for coffee and donuts. Then we got some gas and hit the road.

It wasn't long before I saw a sign saying Welcome to Maryland. I realized that we had stayed overnight in West Virginia. No wonder it was sketchy.

Weird

Barb's best friend at the park had visitors from Indiana for a Spring Break. Her daughter and her granddaughter came for a week. They spent most days lying in the sun trying to get a tan. In the evenings, they invited Barb over for games.

Barb played games with them every night until past midnight. I was an evening bachelor.

They played card games that Barb thought were familiar put had slightly different rules than Barb was used to. Every time they told her an unusual rule, Barb said, “That's just weird”.

This became a habit for Barb after a week. From then on, everything that was unusual was “weird” to Barb.

It amazed me how much stuff was “weird”.

Almost Unstoppable

Barb played in a few Pickleball tournaments in the area. She met some good players from other retirement villages. Before we left for Canada, the people from the different parks decided to hold a little competition among themselves. Barb was the only player from our park.

It turned out that she was the big winner of the day. Everyone who played with her won.  Barb had the highest combined score for both the women and the men.

She got an email from a lady from Ottawa who was also in the tournament. The lady said she wanted to send the tournament scores to the Pickleball players in Ottawa to tell them how well Barb did.

The lady said Barb was almost unstoppable.

Barb's comment to me was what did she mean 'almost'. She was unstoppable.

Later when we got back to Canada, my sister phoned us from Florida.  She told Barb that her name was in the paper for this tournament. She said she mailed it to us, so Barb could show the Ottawa Pickleball players.

To Golf or Not to Golf

My brother-in-law gave me a set of his old golf clubs, some golf balls and tees. My sister took me out to the driving range. She said that I hit the golf too wildly to play on the tight fairways of the golf couse in the park. She wanted to take me to a golf course in town here in Florida. I didn't really want to but she is quite determined.

The next night I had a dream about decision trees. I started thinking about how I could use a decision tree to decide whether I should golf or not.

The first question I asked myself was “What would I like about playing golf?” 

The only thing I could think of was that I would make new friends in the park if I played on Men's day and Canadian's day.

From this, I concluded that if I played golf, it would have to be in the park. So playing on an outside course was of no interest to me.  Therefore, I would need to learn how to control my shots to play on the narrow fairways of the park 's course.

I was stuck with various pros and cons of playing golf in the park. So I decided to do a multi-criteria decision analysis.

I thought of four criteria: Making Friends, Wasting Time, Losing the Ability to Sleep In, the Expense.

Since there were only two options: Play Golf in the Park or Not Play Golf, I only needed to consider the options by the criteria as 0's and 1's.

	Weights	0.50	0.17	0.17	0.17	1
	Options
Criteria		Make Friends	Waste Time	Lost Sleep	Cost	Total
	Play Inside	1	0	0	0	0.50
	Do Not Play	0	1	1	1	0.50

Then I looked at the value of making friends compared to the costs of wasting time, losing sleep and paying fees. I figured that the three costs were equally valued. Then the value of making friends would have to be equal to the value of the sum of the costs for the options to be equally desirable.

Thus, to make playing golf worthwhile, making friends would need to be:

a.  more than three times as valuable as saving time, 

b.  more than three times as valuable as sleeping in, and 

c.  more than three times as valuable as saving money.

I don't know if this helps.

I know I like to sleep in. I have a lot of other things that I would rather spend my time doing than playing golf. Also, golf is very expensive compared to my other hobbies.

So how much would I like to make new friends?