Double Her Money

Sarah is organizing a team for Relay for Life again this year.  The team consists of Atomic Energy co-op students and call themselves the Nuclear Power Rangers.

She set her goal to $500 and asked Barb and Ivan to send out the link to her personal page to their friends.  Barb thought Sarah had set her goal too low.  Sarah soon had more than $500 in donations.  Sara raised her goal to $1000 dollars.  She soon had more than $1000 in donations.

Barb got a note from her friend Linda Becker saying she had donated to Sarah’s cause but had doubled her original donation when she read Sarah well written personal cause based on her story of Gramma Taylor’s fight with cancer when Sarah was a baby.

Memorable Barb

Sarah needed a car in Deep River.  Barb and Sarah went out one weekend and found a 2003 Honda Civic with low mileage and no rust.  It was private sale from an Indian lady named Panda.  Panda was selling the car after only owning it for a few months because her husband had found a job in United States.

Sarah bought the car but wouldn’t get it until Panda was moving.  Barb had to sign the paperwork as if she was buying the car to get the license and the insurance.

Just before Sarah was coming to Ottawa to pick up the car, Barb went out to get the license.  The lady at the Service Ontario remembered Barb from many years ago when Barb bought her Honda Civic.  Barb must be very memorable.

Barb bought license plates for Sarah.  The ladies behind the counter competed to see which one of them could pick the most memorable license plates.  One lady found one with BTXW 499 on it.  Barb thought she would remember 499 because that was a common sale price for the things she buys.  She could remember BT because it stands for Barb Taylor.  But what would XW stand for.  One lady said Ex Winner.  Barb took offense from that saying she was still a winner.  Then the other lady said Extra Witty.  Barb agreed she was extra witty and took the license plates.

Julia’s Baby

Barb was out and Julia was home.  Ivan had to go out to get a cheque signed to pay for the umpires for his fastball league.  He asked to borrow Julia’s car.  Julia affectionately calls it her baby.

Ivan drove to Kanata to get the cheque signed.  When he left the fellow’s house, Ivan found he couldn’t start Julia’s car.  He knew the wheels had to be aligned to turn the key.  But he couldn’t straighten the wheels.  He became worried he had broken Julia’s baby.

Ivan sat out in the driveway trying over and over to straighten the wheels and turn the key.  After about fifteen minutes, Ivan went back to his buddy’s house and knocked on the door.  He told his buddy he couldn't start the car and asked him what he should do.  His buddy came out to the car.  He said he used to have a Nissan Sentra.  He got in the car.  Giggled the steering wheel and turned the key and it started first time.  Ivan felt very relieved and very embarrassed.

Bobby Dubbs

Sarah has been working at the Atomic Energy Canada facility in Chalk River for four months.  It is only two hours from Ottawa.  She is living with 14 other co-op students.  One of them is from Ottawa and comes home almost every weekend.  So Sarah bums a ride off him and comes to Ottawa most weekends.

One weekend when Sarah was home, she asked Ivan about Bob Walker the President of Atomic Energy Canada.  She had just found out that Bob Walker had worked in the Department of National Defence before he came to Atomic Energy.

Ivan said yes he knew Bob Walker.  Ivan had worked closely with him on the High Arctic Research Station Location study.  Sarah said that she thought Bob Walker was cool.  All of the co-op students lovingly called him Bobby Dubs.

The Man at the Kiosk is Psychic

When Ivan came back to Ottawa, he had forgotten how to use the bank machine.  He put in his Mastercard and tried to withdraw money.  The machine wouldn’t let him.  After trying a few times, Barb told him that he needed his debit card not his credit card.  He looked around the house for his debit card and couldn’t find it.  So the next time he was out, he went to the PC Financial kiosk and got a new bank card.  The man who gave him the card said it would probably turn out to be somewhere obvious.  With the new bank card, Ivan withdrew some cash.

A couple of days later, Julia knew Ivan was going to walk to the bank to deposit his tax refund.  She came to Ivan to give him a cheque for her Zumba classes that Barb paid for her over the winter using Mastercard.  Then she looked in her purse and pulled out Ivan’s bank card to return it to him.  He had left it with her for the winter in case any cheques came in for him while he was in Florida.  He had forgotten.  The man at the kiosk was right the bank card was someplace obvious.

Podcast Confusion

Ivan likes to listen to Podcasts when he goes for his afternoon walks.  Today his Podcast sounded funny.  It was playing faster than it should have been and the people’s voices were high pitched.  Ivan thought there must be something wrong with the iPod.  When he got home from his walk, he hooked up the iPod to his computer.  The iPod wouldn’t connect.  He tried to restore the iPod to the factory settings and it wouldn’t restore.  So he searched the web to find out what to do.  He tried reinstalling iTunes.  That didn’t help.  Then he looked at Windows Updates.  After updating Windows, he was able to restore the iPod to factory settings and it worked properly again.  The next day he went for his walk listening to his Podcasts and the problem started again.  He pulled the iPod out of his pocket and noticed a small indicator light on the iPod that said 2X.  When he pushed it, the light went out and the iPod flipped back to normal.  So it didn’t need a restore or a Windows Update after all.

Another Coffee Story

When Ivan went out, he noticed the coffee pot was half full.  When he came home, the coffee pot was still half full.  So he decided to make another pot.  He took the coffee pot off the burner and poured what he thought was old coffee down the drain.  But he noticed that something was funny.  The coffee was still hot.  Then he realized that Barb had just started another pot.  The half full pot was new coffee which he had just poured down the drain.  When Ivan told Barb what had happened, Barb was amazed he hadn’t noticed the difference between old cold coffee and new hot coffee.