The Winner

We went to the park owners sponsored picnic which was indoors because of the rain outside.  There was a live band although they played mostly country music.  There was free food and drinks and cake.  The food was a roast pig which I thought was sort of funny because the owners of the park are Jewish. There were a lot of door prizes and the manager lady went around the large room asking people to pull names out a basket.  She came up to us and we were excited and then she walked right past us and walked up to an old fellow who had fallen asleep in his chair.  We all laughed and he woke up to draw a name from the basket.  We didn't win a door prize and we didn't like the music so we went home a little early.  The next day the management lady said we had won the prize for the scavenger hunt.  I guess they drew names from all the people who had identified all of the ornaments correctly and we were one of the names chosen.

Ivan

We were in Costco in Kitchener looking at something on the shelf as we were eating a sample.  This worker came up to us and said how good the sample was.  I noticed that his name was Ivan.  I was excited to meet another person named Ivan.  I can't remember where he was from but it was one of those Eastern European countries.  It was funny though that the last Ivan I had met was in a Costco in Florida.

The Sleep Solution

I had been having trouble sleeping.  I was staying up later and later and sleeping in later and later.  Some nights I didn't get to sleep at all and went to bed in the morning after Barb got up.  I found this book called The Sleep Solution in the audio books from the library.  So I listened to it right away.  The author said he had a foolproof method for solving sleep problems.  He called it the Ice Bucket Sleep Challenge.  He said you were supposed to pick a time to get up and then count back 5 and a half hours.  So I picked 9 am and counted back to 3:30 am.  He said you were supposed to stay up at least until 3:30 every night and get up every morning at 9 am.  If you didn't get up with your alarm you were supposed to get your wife to pour an ice bucket over you.  I got Barb to use ice bags for the cooler instead of an ice bucket.  Then after a few days of being really tired, you are supposed to go to bed 15 minutes earlier and do that for a few days.  And keep going to bed 15 minutes early until you can get rid of your daytime sleepiness and still get to sleep at night within 15 minutes from the time you go to bed.  I did it and it worked.  It was really hard to stay up until 3:30 am when I was getting up at 9 am.  But I was able to get to sleep every night.  Barb did have to threaten me with ice bags and sometimes she even followed through with her threats and put ice bags in my pajamas until I got up.

Taylor

We decided to go out for fish and chips at the chip stand in Kitchener.  The man took our order and asked me my name.  I said 'Taylor'.  And he said 'Taylor?'  I spelt it for him.  I guess he wanted my first name and thought that I was kind of an old guy to have the first name 'Taylor'.

CRV

Barb feels that driving all the way to Florida in the bucket seats of the Honda Civic makes her legs sore.  So she wanted to buy an SUV to sit up taller.  She did some research and decided she wanted to buy a Honda CRV.  She went to the local Honda dealer and he let her drive a CRV.  She liked it but she found out that it only came in white with a black interior.  The older models had more variety.  So she went online to look for used CRVs.  She found five possible late model CRVs with low mileage and a relatively low price.  There was one white one advertised in Burlington with a grey interior.  So the next day we drove to Burlington which is about an hour away to look at it and possibly buy it.  When we got there, the dealer opened the door and Barb screamed.  It had a black interior.  We took it for a test drive but we really didn't want a white car with a black interior.  So we drove home.  Barb was at darts and noticed that her friend Ross the handyman in the park was driving a green CRV.  She asked him how he liked it.  He said that it was great but that he was leasing it and would be turning it back in next summer.  He said that he could tell his dealer that we would buy it when he turned it in.  So Barb was happy she liked the colour and it was very low mileage and late model.  We decided to wait until next summer to get the CRV and we would drive one more year to Florida in the Civic.

Pay As You Go

We have a 'pay as you go' cellphone from Rogers.  However, whenever we want to change something in the plan, we want to talk to someone but the phone system that Rogers uses has no option to talk to someone about 'pay as you go'.  So Barb has to phone about one of the girl's cellphones and enter their cellphone number to get through to someone to talk to but then she has to explain that she is really calling about a different number and they have to transfer the call.  She spends a long time on hold and finds it all very frustrating.

Scavenger Hunt

The community management had a contest which was a sort of scavenger hunt.  We had seen people walking around the community and driving their golf carts around with papers in their hands looking carefully at all of the houses.  Barb realized they were doing the scavenger hunt.  So Barb went down to the management office and got a copy of the three sheets of paper with little photos of the lawn and house ornaments that we were supposed to identify and write down the address.  The first night we walked the whole park and found most of the ornaments.  We had a few that we didn't find on the first trip.  So the next night we went out in my car and drove around really slowly looking closely at all of the houses.  Finally, we had to find just one more ornament.  It was a little black and white cow.  We drove down this road slowly and saw two old people sitting on their porch.  They saw us driving slowly and looking out of the car windows carefully.  They asked if we needed help.  We said we were looking for a cow.  They said 'you lost a cow  Where did you last see it'.  We tried to explain about the scavenger hunt but they didn't understand.  They thought we were looking for a real cow.