Barb's Volunteer Honours

The President of the Barrhaven Tennis Club decided to take Barb out for dinner to thank her for her many years of service to the tennis club.

It was supposed to be a surprise. It wasn't really a surprise. However, Barb was surprised to see not only the other executive there but also some of the court attendants even showed up. It was not just the adults.

Barb was given a nice framed certificate from someone she didn't know in recognition of her years of volunteering.

Tennis Documents

Barb spent a great deal of time putting together all of the material for the Barrhaven Tennis Club duties for the incoming executive. Her final act on the executive was to email the files to the incoming executive lady.

She sent the email with the attached documents. 

Later that night she got an email from her friend Harry. He said that she probably didn't mean to send him the tennis documents. In fact, he didn't even have any software to open the files.

It turns out that Harry shares his email address with his wife. His wife's first name is the same as the lady on the incoming executive. Barb didn't know either lady's last name. So she emailed it to the first name that came up.

Hey Baby

Barb made a bed quilt as a wedding gift for her friend Debbie's daughter. Barb was getting picked up by Debbie. They were going over to the daughter's house to give it to her. Barb was looking forward to it.

Barb was waiting with me in the living room. Barb saw a car come in the driveway. She said goodbye to me. She ran out the door. She yelled “Hey Baby!”

Then she realized it wasn't Debbie. It was Julia coming home from work. Julia thought it was so nice that her mother would come running out of the house to meet her when she came home from work.

Master Gardener

Barb doesn't spend much time on the flowers at the front of the house. She cleans up the garden in the Spring and in the Fall. Otherwise it grows pretty much by itself. Except she puts in artificial flowers to add some colour. Many people have complimented her on the artificial flowers. Sometimes Barb tells them the flowers are artificial and sometimes she doesn't.

Barb was cleaning up the garden to prepare for winter and our trip to Florida. She noticed a lovely sunflower had grown in the garden all by itself. She came in and told me how amazing it was.  She had never noticed it before.

Our next door neighbour is a master gardener. Barb was outside a few days later was telling our neighbour about the sunflower. The neighbour smiled slyly. Barb said “What?” Our neighbour said that it was artificial. She had planted it in our garden a few days ago. It was a joke because she knew that Barb had artificial flowers in the garden all summer.

Congratulations Never Come Too Late

Barb got home to a message on the answering machine from a old friend and neighbour. The friend wanted to congratulate Barb for winning a medal in Pickleball. Barb had won the medal in August. However, her friend had only found out about it in October because Barb's name was in the local newspaper.

Our neighbour down the street also stopped Barb when she was going to the mailbox. He wanted to congratulate her too.

Barb found the article in the newspaper. The title of the article was “Pair Wins Gold”. It didn't even mention pickleball in the title. You had to read the details in the small article to find out who and what they won. Barb was impressed with her neighbours' close reading of the local newspaper.

Like a Dog in the Car

I was living on the edge for many years with my glasses. I only had one pair. If they broke, I wouldn't be able to see. This was particularly dangerous in Florida.

So I was determined to get a new pair of glasses before we left for Florida this winter. I got my eyes checked They gave me a new prescription for trifocals. I also bought transitions.

When I picked up my glasses, they told me that even though the glasses were transitions, they might not become dark enough to drive with because of the tinted windows in the car. I might also need to buy sunglasses to put over them.

I went for a walk in the afternoon soon after I got the glasses. It was sunny outside. The transitions worked great. Everything was so clear. There was no squinting necessary.

Barb and I were driving a few days later. Barb noticed that the transitions were not very dark in the car. Barb told me to open the window and look out to see if the glasses would get dark. So I opened the window. I then stuck my head out the window like a dog. We were driving down the highway. Barb thought this was very funny.

Crystal Quilters

Barb was finally giving up the Barrhaven Tennis Club treasurer job after 15 years. So she had to give the treasurer's computer to the new treasurer.

We had been using the computer for quite a few years as a home computer. So Barb asked me to clean it up. To remove the personal files and the special programs that I had installed.

As I was uninstalling the programs, I noticed a program called Microsoft Works. I immediately remembered that Barb had received a file from a lady in Florida with the email addresses and phone numbers of all of the quilters at Crystal Lake where we live in Florida.

She could not open the file because it was written in Microsoft Works. Microsoft Works was incompatible with everything we had. I guess it was a special program that comes with the Microsoft Vista operating system.

I was able to finally open the file. I was able to re-save it as a Microsoft Word file. Barb was very happy to finally have the email addresses and phone numbers of the Crystal Quilters.