Ruthie the Fan

Our neighbour Ruth asked Barb about her pickleball.  She wanted to come out and watch her.  So Barb arranged for her to come out and see her play at the Badminton Club.  Ruth brought a few of her friends with her.  She got to watch a little of the games but unfortunately the guy who runs the pickleball club got talking to them and stood in front of them for an hour or so.  They couldn’t see Barb because this guy was standing in the way.  Barb says he really likes to talk.

Telephone Calls

We still haven’t sold our house in Ottawa.  We took it off the market for the month of October hoping to make a private deal with a neighbour but that didn’t work out.  So we started thinking of putting it up on the market again.  I had heard about real estate agents that guarantee to sell your house or they will buy it.  I looked a few up on the web and submitted my email address and phone number.  We got calls from all three companies.  Barb told one of the fellows to phone back at 3 pm the next day.  So I waited around the phone the next day at 3 pm.  Then a call came in and I talked to the guy and told him my situation.  I just hung up and got another phone call.  This time it was from the guy who had made the appointment.  The first call was just a coincidence that he phoned at 3 pm.

Sleeping Pills

We have had problems getting a general practioner in New Hamburg.  Fortunately, we have prescriptions from our Ottawa doctors to last us in Florida.  Barb got the pharmacy to transfer the prescriptions down to New Hamburg from Ottawa.  The only problem was my sleeping pills.  We didn’t have enough of them.  I had an old prescription but they wouldn’t renew it because the pills were considered narcotics.  So in desperation I went to the clinic in Kitchener on a Saturday morning.  I got there at 7:30 and it didn’t open until 8 am.  There were already 30 people waiting outside the office when I got there.  I saw a sign of the door saying the clinic would not renew narcotics.  So I was worried.  When I saw the doctor, I showed him my pill bottle and he asked me how often I used them.  He said once a month and I said no more like once a week.  He said that was too often and wouldn’t renew my prescription.  He said the pills were bad for me and would only give my 20 pills for the whole winter in Florida.  He said you won’t die of not sleeping.  I told him I could get sick but he wasn’t impressed.

Certificate

I read this long article on the computer over a few days.  It was about computer coding.  It was a good article and funny too.  It had a running fictional story about a manager trying to figure out what his computer programming staff were doing and why it was costing so much money and taking so long to make a website for the company.  The article also had a lot of factual information about programming languages and the software development.  As I was getting to the end of the article, I got a message saying a website wanted access to my camera.  I said it was okay.  Then when I finished the article, the website said congratulations I had read 38,000 words in six days.  It said I was incredibly slow but it gave me a certificate of completion with my picture on it.  That was why it had asked to use my camera.

Printer Fixer

The office called me to help them fix their printer.  It was making a funny grinding noise.  I went to the office and tried to figure out what was wrong.  I had to move the printer.  After I moved the printer it didn’t grind anymore.  So I moved it back and it grinded again.  So I moved it back to where I had placed it before and fixed the problem.  I am not sure why it fixed the problem or if the fix will last but they seemed happy.

Computer Fixer

Barb got a call from a fellow in the park who needed my help with his computer.  I had told the ladies at the office that I was good at fixing computers and the fellow had phoned the office to ask for help and they gave him my phone number.  I went to his house and found out that he had installed Windows 10 and now he couldn’t get into his computer.  I guess like Windows 8 you have to have a Hotmail account to sign in to the computer.  He didn’t have a hotmail account.  So Windows set one up for him.  However, he didn’t know the password for the account.  He tried all of his old passwords but they didn’t work.  I tried to get him a new password but I found out that he had to do a lot to verify his identity.  He had to list five addresses he had recently emailed.  He didn’t know anyone address because they popped up automatically when he wanted them.  He had to list five folders he uses to save his emails.  But he didn’t use folders.  It was impossible to change his password.  So I couldn’t help him.  I gave him the name of a professional company who fixed computers in the park.  They have probably seen this before.  I don’t know if he ever got his computer fixed.

Thermostat

One day, Barb noticed that there was a strange message on the screen of the thermostat.  We couldn’t figure out what it said.  So Barb found the manual that the lady before us had left behind.  She read it and found out the message said Lo Batt meaning low battery. Barb went out and got a new battery and fixed the thermostat.  We were lucky that it happened while we were still here and not when we were in Florida.