Great Outdoors

Barb went to Naples to visit her friend Paul from Kitchener and play in a tournament with him.  She was excited because she would be playing against some 5.0 players that she watches on the pickleball channel.

She and her partner were staying at the house that Paul rents in Naples.  It is a really big and fancy house.

One of the novelties of the house is that it has an outdoor shower.  Barb thought this is pretty neat and decided to have a shower outdoors after the tournament.  Even though it was outdoors it was very private.  So Barb wasn’t as daring as it would seem.

Sony MP3

One of Barb’s sewing friends asked me to come over to her house and install some music on her new iPod Mini.  So I put some music from my collection that I thought she would like on my memory stick and brought it over to her house.  It took a little figuring but in a few minutes I had all the music on her iPod.  In exchange, she gave me her collection of eBooks which included over 2000 recent books from popular authors.  I was very happy and Barb even bought me a Kindle reader on eBay to put the books on since she likes using my old eBook reader.  Now we have two eBook readers.

A couple of weeks later, I asked her husband if she liked the music that I put on her iPod because I thought maybe she wouldn’t like my music.  He said yes she did like it.  He said she often hooks her iPod into the television speakers and plays my music all over the house.  She told Barb that she listens to my music while she sews in her sewing room and sings out loud with her headphones on.  She said she doesn’t know how her husband stands it.

A couple of weeks later, Barb gets a message from this lady’s best friend asking me to put the same music on her iPod.  I said okay.  She comes over and I find out that it is not an iPod, it is a Sony MP3 player.  I thought okay this should be easy.  I load music on my MP3 player all the time.  So the first thing I do is move all of her music over to my computer.  Then I reformat her MP3 player using Windows Explorer.  Then I try to copy over my music but it doesn’t work.

I look up Sony MP3 players and find out that you need special software to load music on this type of MP3 player.  So I found that I can update the firmware on her MP3 player and I have to format the MP3 player using special software.  But I find that Sony is no longer distributing the software to load music.  So I search and search the web and I am up until 3 am and having no success.

I told her I would bring the MP3 over to her house at 4:30 the next day while I am on my walk.  I get up at 11 am the next day and Barb is at a pickleball tournament or she would have never allowed me to work on the problem all day long.  I eventually find some software to replace the Sony software but I can’t get it to work because it only works on a Windows XP operating system.

I try using my Windows XP emulators but it still doesn’t work.  Then I find it on my Linux distribution but that doesn’t work either.  Finally, I download the software in Linux using the Open Source provider and am able to run the software using the command line.  At 4 pm, I start loading music on her MP3 player and I have finished by 4:30 so that I can bring it over to her house during my walk like I said I would.  For my troubles, she gives me a little jar of home made Salsa.

Pick Your Pitch

I was chatting with Sarah on iMessage tonight.  Barb chats with her every weekend but I don’t chat with her very often.  I was telling her about how I was having a very bad season this year in slow pitch.  I was not batting very well.  She was sad for me but she said don’t you always say something when you are in the batters box to focus and concentrate.  I said yes I used to and it used to help but I couldn’t remember what it was.  Barb said wasn’t it ‘Clouds’ and I said no it wasn’t that.  Then Sarah remembered what it was.  I used to say “Pick Your Pitch and Drive It”.

I told her that I would try it in my next game.  It worked and I started hitting better.  It doesn’t work all the time but I am definitely doing better than I did before.  At one game, I had a couple of good hits and I was on first base.  The first baseman was the captain of his team.  He said he tried to get me on his team but I went very early in the draft.  He said that I had a great swing and the only reason that I wouldn’t get on base was if I swung at a bad pitch.

Ugly Christmas Sweater

Every year they have a CanAm golf tournament where the Canadians play a match play tournament against the Americans in the park: all the Canadians wear red and white and all of the Americans wear blue and white.  We don’t play golf but we go down to the club house to see the score and have a hamburger and pop with all the golfers and their friends.

Usually I wear the red jersey I bought at the Canadian Fastball championship in St Thomas but this year I decided to wear the red Christmas sweater that Laura bought me that says “Fragile” and has a picture of the leg lamp on it.

Street Party

This was the first year that both Barb and I could go to the annual street party together.  It was a potluck dinner for everyone who lived on Nicklaus Street.  Every year the organizer reads a letter signed from Jack Nicklaus because the street is named after him.  We are a very golf oriented community.

At the start of the dinner, we are all asked to stand up and introduce ourselves.  When it came to our time, Barb asked me to stand up and introduce us.  I introduced us and told people about our hobbies and sports.  I guess a lady at another table wasn’t happy with my humility.  After I sat down, she spoke up she said that Barb was a champion pickleball player and everyone should become friends with her on facebook to see all her pictures of her wearing the medals she has won at tournaments.

Owl on the Patio

Sarah posted some old photos she took in New Hamburg on her facebook page.  They were pictures she took when we were assembling the patio furniture.  She took a number of pictures of us sitting on the patio love seat.  There was one of Sarah sitting between us and we were each kissing her on the cheek as she made a funny face.  She took one photo of Barb and me sitting on the two individual chairs.  I noticed right away that I was sitting in front of the statue of the Owl on the fence of our patio that is there to scare the chickadees away.  It looked like the Owl was sitting on my head.

Ottawa Mail

We had our mail from Ottawa being forwarded to New Hamburg for four months and thought we had changed all of the addresses with the people who regularly sent us mail.  Then we had our mail forwarded to Avon Park from New Hamburg for six months while we were in Florida.

I guess the four months of forwarding the mail from Ottawa had finished on the first of February.  Fortunately, our neighbour JC has the key to our Ottawa mail box and checks it once in a while.  So he was surprised to find some mail for us in the mail box after all these months.  There were magazines from McMaster and Carleton.  There was a statement for Laura from PC Financial and there was some letters from CRA for Laura and Sarah.  There was also a letter about the Line of Credit from the Royal Bank.

Barb was surprised to hear that she got something from Royal Bank because she was sure she had changed the address.  She had received mail from Royal Bank here in Florida.  She found the letter and looked closely at it and saw that it had originally gone to our Ottawa address and then to New Hamburg and then to Avon Park.  So she phoned Royal Bank and got our address changed.

I tried to change Laura and Sarah’s address with CRA but I found that you can only change the address using the My Account logon.  I had set them up for Laura and Sarah but I couldn’t remember the passwords.  So I couldn’t get in and change the address.  So I found forms on the CRA and filled them in for Laura and Sarah and mailed them to them to sign and mail to CRA.