Checkered Lounge Pants

Just a quick post while languishing in a hotel room in Moncton. Its my last official week before I retire. I spend a few days next week handing over the office to my successor and teeing off with John and some employer colleagues (adversaries this week...LOL) who are treating me to 18 holes as a send off. The Windsor members (my adopted Union Lodge since leaving Winnipeg) had my beloved Val and I to the Union meeting last week and presented me with a plaque. Nothing really sunk in though, until, in the middle of an Executive conference call on Monday, when, the Chairman of the Board thanked me for the all my years of serving the membership. Flashbacks suddenly streamed by my mind's eye starting with the first time I was asked to steward a shift to administer the overtime work and do the calling.......over 25 years ago. I guess, after the call, I was noticeably time-travelling, because Val jarred me when she announced "has it finally sunk in?" It sure has. That is a lifeti...

Yawwwwwwn, Ohhhh I slept like a log. We just got back Saturday from almost 2 weeks of travel. I spent Father’s Day snoring on the couch. My beloved Val bought me a movie and some wine (was she hinting something???) for me to relax through the day, and, I fell asleep. A wee bit toooo relaxed, eh? My bad. Its ok though….we never sat still the whole 2 weeks (at my age, OY) and drove over a thousand kilometres (my Dads poor car) seeing the grandkids and attending my nieces wedding and catching up with Dennis and Bubba, grabbing some jerky at OG’s, brekky at the Salisbury House, meeting Val’s birth parent and spouse, meeting my sons girlfriend who flew in from Boston, as well as the usual/unusual family customs (and role in some work meetings to boot). The wedding was a grand event. It was outdoors and the weather cooperated (although wedding eve was looking calamitous) and everyone was dressed to the nines and all the kinfolk was well mannered and cleaned up nice. LOL It was off to Toronto...

My beloved Val and I took the customary 90-minute drive today to the Rez (Delaware First Nation) in Maroviantown to stock up on cigs for Val. It seems like only a few weeks since I made the last run. I took Joe’s son, Simon, with me last trip. I told him we were going to tour the tepees when we got to the Rez. Needless to say I was spinning a yarn to rev up his imagination for the ride, He was bummed when we got there and he saw the driveways filled with Hummers and Harleys instead of the stereotypical images I had yarned for him. I soothed his youthful imagination with a gift of a couple scratch tickets from the store(here he sits as we plan and map the best trail home). HEY…the Ontario Indigenous Nations do pretty good, trapping and hunting smokers and gamblers with $10 to $20 bags of smokes (200 in a bag). Considering a tariff carton is some $80 under the feds, the market is better than historically traditional sustainability for the Rez, and for smokers, its not a bad deal either. ...

Krystle's getting married next month. Going home for the wedding. Yup, going home. Its the first wedding of the Y generation of our clan. Krissie is my niece. Traditions have changes so much from us boomer's. I was the oldest sibling and I got married first and had the first kids.......lets see, Krystle is the second born, daughter of the third son in the lineage from my generation. What does that tell me?? That the Y boys are milking the cow for free. Anyhow, Cams birthday on Sunday. That would be the 28th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helen's. I sent him a singing card. I thought it appropriate, a graphic of a neo-audiophile settled in a recliner awaiting the assault of a wall of monitored and speaker equipped tunes accompanied by the melody of "Play that Funky Music". I inserted a Blockbuster gift card for two new releases of his choice. He will appreciate that more than treasures immeasurable. Grammy sent him a card depicting a neolithic humanoid a...

So, what is the price of gas in your neighbourhood today? I drove by the local gas bar (pictured facsimile) that borders the local dealers cartel (price fixing at its best) and it was $1.18. I slowed to pull in, but the pump area was a mirror image of the chaotic streets of Italy and Greece from my backpacking days of the 1970s. It had all the ingredients of the bumper cars in the summer fairs. I decided to drive by, when; I noticed the cabby’s from the neighbouring town also lined up for fuel. Well, that was a signal or omen I could not ignore. Speaking of high prices, if you have been paying any attention at all this week, you will have undoubtedly heard about raising prices in rice, milk, wheat, Soya and corn. OMG, I used to reel in revulsion at the thought of the marketeering of water. But the agri industrialist price fixers have taken a page from the petroleum marketeering hogs. The media reported that the rice producing countries were copying the neoglobal industrialist business ...

Well, the phone woke me up from a dead sleep in my hotel in Montreal. No getting back to sleep anytime soon. Dont you hate when that happens?? Gonna be a long night. Speaking of long nights....downtown Montreal is still a little skittish from the post game festivities after the first round festivities from the playoffs earlier in the week. Philly is in town tomorrow for the start of round two and the Centre Ville is beefing up security tighter than Independence Day in Baghdad .*cymbal crash* I don't get to leave town until Saturday (2 more nights) so I will keep my sorry self indoors this trip, thank you. Which brings me to current events..... This has been a hell of a month. The miracle is no one was hurt from these two pictures. Val rolled the car dodging a deer on the county road to town, and, a rare southeast gale off the lake blew my elm tree over onto the house next door. I am still trying to determine if rolling the car or my tree falling on the neighbours house,...

Earth Day 2008 is a memory......but what a memory. I was laying over in Winnipeg at my folks place when Ma announced we had to switch off the lights to save the planet. "Hey, I am all for saving the planet" I said, so, *click*. I spent the week working in Vancouver and crashed at my com padre Gerry's place. We went to the Casino in Coquitlam twice (we had good luck on an earlier junket) and the picture will tell it all. Nonetheless, after my work day was done, we did have a gas visiting his grandkids in their new house in Mission and commandeering the air-hockey game Santa gave his son Dan, and, watched Dan and Danielle riffing through Guitar Hero, while "us grampas" enjoyed the kids. It was a great evening. Its obvious, our age is getting the best of us. I remember a time when we would have frequented every road house and pub in the nearby neighbourhood, but now we run straight to the favourite neighbourhood Chinese restaurant for the dinner special. LOL. Work...

So like I am shovelling out the car from a drift at the lane where the mail box stands just before the road, FOR the third time today………when is it going to end???? Now I have to rush Val to work at the Kingsville grocery. Lets see, that means I have to revisit the drift on my return, and, one more round trip to retrieve Val after her shift. Oy-Ya-Yoy. I read somewhere, where spin-doctors were trying to remedy the “global warming” hysteria by re-coining the phrase to “climate change”. I tend to agree with the word smithies that love to hoodwink the masses with spinning the truth (or “Greenwashing” as its come to be known). I am hard pressed to believe there is a warming incline of Mother Nature’s planet. Speaking of greenwashing….BBC reported last week that Virgin Atlantic has flown a jumbo jet from London to Amsterdam fuelled by bio fuel derived from a mixture of Brazilian babassu nuts and coconuts. But is this really green progress, or just greenwashing? Virgin Atlantic called the fli...

This is turning into one lion of a winter, eh? Its –7 here today and the snow has languished on the ground like a cat curled up in the sun. That’s unusual here in Colchester. Snow rarely sits for any length of time. Heck, two Fridays ago, I walked out to the car leaving for work and had to navigate around a big ole puddle in the walkway. I remember thinking that was a good indication that we were done with winter. That, and the arrival of a few thousand migrant workers to the region for the greenhouses had me believing it was so. It was only a matter of days when the regular wave of workers were leaving homes with 26C and arriving in –26 with the wind chill. Thrift stores had a run of winter clothes that week. The Coast Guard ice breaker had to bust up the the ice at the mouth of the Detroit River to free up for docking. I like to facebook now and then to keep in touch with the family younglings. Conventional means of communication are not frequented by the y generation, and, I find I ...

Now thats it, for January........and bout time. Record cold temperatures resounded around the country. The extreme cold brought to mind a tune, this morning, I used to play when the kids were small and I was getting them off to school on a cold winter's day back home called "Sabu sent to t he Twin Cities" by John Prine that goes something like "...where the man sent the child actor into the land of the wind chill factor." Whew...even saw some block heaters plugged in, on the odd parking lot. in the county on the drive into town. The young ins here don't even know what a block heater is. The mercury got so low, the railways suspended service in the west. That is unheard of in the Canadian rail industry. Anyhow....its been a quiet month travel-wise. I spent more time in the dentists chair than an airplane seat, which is not enviable either. Seems to be a good time to get all my ducks in a row for the retirement thing I am planning later this yrear. Not everyt...

Hope this finds all is well with you. So this is 2008, eh. Kewl. Spent New Years at our friend John's place in Dresden Ontario. Hauled over a couple steaks and spuds and wine and cooked up some good ole meat and potatoes for New Years. John cooks his steaks in a red hot cast iron pan. Smokes up the house right good. Cooks up right good too. Announced to my Executive Board that I would not be seeking another 3-year term for the Union, last week. That pretty much leads me to retirement when the national elections are complete. I am so ready for that. That is about as much as I want to talk work on my blog. Joes Ma is in the hospital in Sydney, Cape Breton. I wish I could accompany him to visit his Ma and kin but work is a hard taskmaster…did I raise work again. Sux to be me. Val is still working at the local grocery in Kingsville and likes it. I drove by the other day and parked outside to watch her for a spell, and, she was gabbin and chattin with all the customers at the checkout,...

“And there it was, gone!” was a line we used back in the day, when we had to do rush jobs in the shops. That seems to apply to Xmas 2007. It was a good one though, in spite of not being with family. Lots of Xmas cheer, great turkey dinner (why do people insist on canned cranberries, when the real thing makes the turkey and dressing scream out with festive flavour and blessed tasty delight?) and made my annual Xmas call to my aunt in California. I really must call her more often. Have you ever had an aunt that would smother you in hugs and kisses when you were a kid? That’s my Auntie Mary. Man o man, my brother and me had to spend hours washing off the lipstick smudges when Auntie Mary came to visit. She was going for chemotherapy when I called, but she sounded great. There was always a family debate between my mother and aunt Mary about the Winnipeg winters and the California earthquakes. The day I phoned, she said it was 30 F in Camarillo and it was 35 F in Windsor. Need I say more? T...

Hey yall, wassup?? Got all the Xmas shopping done? Good thing about living 1000 miles from home is no one knows the gifts were purchased at the Boxing Day sales. OOOOPs did I say that out loud. Yikes. Not to worry, better valued presents when the après madness prices are ticketed. I am streamlining my Xmas gift list this year. Everyone is past the kid stag e so it’s just the ritual gifts for Moms and Dads this year. My buddy Gar got right in the spirit this year. He teamed up with the Grinch and they Ho Ho Howd right through his workplace in Vancouver. What kind of Xmas is that with no snow (do they have snow in Vancouver????? no eh? just rain, eh?)? Anyhow, had to sign off for a spell and now I am back. We got snow. We got one heckuva dumping of snow. Had to shovel, we got so much snow. Had to follow the neighbour’s SUV trail to get out, we got so much snow. OY, we got snow. Going to plus 9 on the weekend though. Oh well, it looks like a green bloody Xmas, eh? My dad is back at home. ...

Its snowing its snowing the old man is…. errrr, in the hospital. Pops had to be taken to the hospital earlier this week. Test showed he had water on the lungs and he has to visit with the medical staff until it’s cleared up. I have to be there for work next week so he better up and about so we can hang for a spell. What with, the medical system being what it is, its good to be in the observation unit. I had cause to take my buddy Gar to the emergency in Surrey on a recent visit (not that recent) and we sat in the emergency room for hours…some emergency frequenters go to any lengths to get free dressings and aspirins rather than spend $5 in the pharmacy. Too bad it clogs it up for legitimate medical emergencies. Ohhhh well, the alternative to social medicare is not very appealing either. Nuff on my rambling...get well Pop. Lets get back to the snow. It snowed here last night (see the picture). I got up early to witness the white powder before it melts. Time to get the Xmas tree, now tha...

How was your week? I had an interesting workweek. I purposely do not post work stuff on my blog because I use the sight for my personal time. You see, I (and my beloved Val) moved here for work and most of my activities here are work related, so I use all the tools at my avail to make up some, for, lost quality time that I would have enjoyed had I never moved. This week however, I managed to make work a less professional schedule. I had some managers scheduled for meetings at my office, and, decided to include a Detroit flavour to the meetings. I took the Michigan I-94 route to a meeting we had scheduled at the Union facility in Port Elgin. We crossed the border at the Ambassador Bridge and proceeded to Sarnia to re-cross the border and slice an hour off (which back-fired on the return trip with a 1 hour wait at the Sarnia crossing, so we went the long way) our travel time. After all was said and done, we returned back to Windsor in the late evening and planned to regroup the next day ...

Greetings, time for me to get outside and rake leaves. Man o man this yard can generate some huge pile of leaves. Its nice to live on the lake and have the shade in the summer, though. I just cant get used to the cycle that this over-treed yard goes through. Thats a lie.....I am used to it, and I like living on the shore. I JUST DONT LIKE raking leaves. Is that an ironey....or a paradox?? What’s the definition of irony? (It’s a rhetorical question, eh!) How about an Arab gas station owner getting shot dead in America while America’s foreign affairs is commandeering oil in the Middle East. YIKES. Did you see the news (again rhetorical). Gas price war turns deadly in Detroit Owner of station killed rival who cut price by 3 cents a gallon, cops say. Norman Sinclair / The Detroit News DETROIT -- A price-cutting war over gasoline turned deadly Friday as the owner of a southwest Detroit station was shot dead during a brawl touched off after one station dropped its price 3 cents below that of...

Hi all, how you is?? Everyone seems fine on my end. No newz is good news, eh?? Ha Ha. Well, I never recovered from the mechanical woes that been haunting me since the summer. The car was retooled with an engine that was a few years newer than the host body. trying to fit the car and the computer seems to be like trying to slide a MAC program i n a MSN processor.......nuttin' happen in. Anyhoooooo, put that headache to rest with a new car. Just got a puddle jumper to fill in whilst my Olds is getting it all good. Called my mech-anic and told him to treat the Olds like a restoration now. Tride and true.....tried and true....tryed and true. The bike will have to get slid into the porch so I can do a tranny kit over the winter. Hey, did you know the guys who are preaching that global warming is not supported by facts are the same crew that worked for the tobacco companies in the 90s. Some public programming had the behavior psychologist that did all the spin doctoring for the elusiv...

BOOOOO. You are getting schleeepy, schleeepy. I'd like a cup of BLOOOOOOD. Trick or Treat. Ha Ha. All that stuff comes to mind when Halloween is right around the corner. Folks in this neck of the woods get right into it. Lots of pumpkin jack o lanterns, corn husks, straw scare-crows, ghosts and goblins and now, what with computers and lasers and all, there is some really ghouly light shows on garage doors and houses at night. We had the grandkids last year so we got a batch of pumpkins and gourds and watched the decorations appear. I dont think we have had on trick or treat since moving out to the solitude of the Erie Shores, and we used to stock up, only to munch on sweets and chocolate ourselves. NOT THIS YEAR. I am going to keep a bag of apples on hand, just in case, and itll be apple pie if no goblins come to call. Ha Ha. Not much to report this month. Amanda is still on the coast. I keep apprised of her progress via facebook. Val is still job searching and my Boyz are working ...

YOUCH…slid on my shoes for mountain biking this morning and by the time I went to lift my leg over the bar, there was a sharp pain shooting through my foot. Darn wasp was going el quaida (that should trigger some google hits, eh?) on my toes. He had smuggled himself into my shoe and…well, the rest is rhetorical. Neat ride, pedalling while those customary tingles, following a sting, shudder up my leg. YOUCH. Anyhow, all in all, it’s been a good week. Cam is still working, Kevin started work at a Union shop (CAW no less) and my beloved Val has been pounding the job market doors. I don’t know why, but a couple months ago I started having mood-altering anxiety attacks about nobody working after decades of abuses of excuses. It suddenly activated my own personal panic attacks that were forcing me to consider some form of sanity-saving isolation to survive the onslaughts. Anyhooooo…all seems redundant now. Face booked with Jeffy (my brother Dougie’s son) and he wants to go to his folks cabin...

Hi there, whats new with you. If you cant bear to hear someone vent, then skip this post. I read a post by a colleague on her blog and realized this might be an exercise of some value, blog venting, I mean. The months barely over half done since my last post and the more things are the same the more they change (or is that the other way around??). Mechanically, this month can pack up anytime and ride off into the sunset. My car (that I got for $1.....I know what yer gonna say about a $1 car and deserving what I pay for, so don't go there....I need to vent) blew a motor. So the buck I spent along with the $1000 to get safety and emission ed is a fart in a windstorm. My bike is giving me gas 2. I have replaced wiring harnesses, rewired ground connections, replaced spark plugs wires, coil and, STILL, I cant rid my self of the missing spark at cruising speed. The next move is stators and regulators and I cant afford that after losing my motor (which I cant afford either after covering ...