Monday February 15th 2021

Fifty nine days from today we will be back in our coach! We have been out of the coach for three months already, and they are the longest three months I can remember. Oh it will still be cold when we move back to the coach but we should be past most of the snow … you know the sayings March winds bring April showers which spouts Mays flowers 💐 or at least it’s something like that. We will also be past the whole “in like a lamb out like a lion“ thing for the month of March and hopefully will be blessed by an early warm spring.

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While my expectations are that it will be another difficult year trying to keep everyone on track with the latest health board rules, and most likely another year of limited activities, I am looking forward to seeing everyone again. It has been a long, long winter, especially having been isolated up here in the snow belt. The coronavirus has taken so much away from us in the past year and will continue to do so until we can get enough people vaccinated to get to a level of herd immunity that will bring us out of the restrictions. As we struggle with the vaccine roll out, it again becomes very obvious that as a nation we need to produce more items in Canada as opposed to being reliant on purchases from other nations. As we struggle to get vaccines from the European block countries , and the United States is not allowing any shipments out of country either. Which just drives home the “Made in Canada” mandate.

Huron Perth Health Board states that this area of Ontario is going back into an “orange” pandemic classification on Tuesday, which means most things will be opening up, restaurants, small businesses, and the like, will all move back to where they were in November last year. Still lots of restrictions, social distancing, and of course the wearing of face masks, but our fear is that people will just become even more careless and inconsiderate then they are already which will force another lockdown.

It has been a year of watching some great people do great things to help others and then we have seen the worst of some people who cared for no one except themselves. Which I guess is just human nature, you are either a giver or a taker and that has been on full display over the last year.

It appears that the circus has just left Washington DC, as the world watched and relived the actions of the previous administration which led up to the political riots at the capital just a little over a month earlier, and if nothing else was accomplished it at least emphasized the total failure of the past president to step up and do the right thing.

Here in Ontario the public health department just announced that anyone eighty or older now qualifies for the vaccine roll out, now if there was any vaccine I guess that would be good news as now I’m only about a decade in age away from qualifying.

So lets take a couple of moments to talk about our fully furnished rental house. We were able to rent it for just five months which was a real life saver as most places wanted a one year lease. it is a small two bedroom wartime home, which by the looks of it still has the original furnace, an old natural gas fired convection furnace which means the heated air is not blown through the house to warm it. Most of you are accustomed to forced air furnaces which means that the heated air is blown through duct work to the cold outside edges of the home while the convection furnace has huge ducts and relies only on hot air rising and all the ducts go through interior walls to allow better convection currents of heated air, but that leaves the exterior wall all felling much cooler. When this furnace was built “high efficiency” wasn’t even a thought. The bathroom is smaller than that of our coach and gives a new meaning to the phrase “drive in, back out” and the purple colour is a nice touch as well. But all things considered we feel very lucky to have had a stick house to endure the winter. But just can hardly wait to get back to our home in the coach, our queen size bed, our full size shower, our gas stove and our comfortable furniture.

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My friends as always stay strong, be well, and stay safe!

Monday January 25th 2021

Rant Warning!

We have been in this coronavirus pandemic for close to ten months, I would have thought that we would at least have a clue what we should be doing by now … NOT!

But I am so very obvious wrong, first bring up the question what exactly determines what is essential?

Well every one has their own opinion as to what is essential to them, so beyond the obvious like food, medication, and then it turns into everyone’s personal needs.

So today my essential item was some safety salt to remove the ice from our walk and drive. Because of the weight and difficulty in moving a couple of salt bags, I decided to order two bags from a local store for “curb side pick up.”

My thinking was that I would drive to the store and maybe call a “Pick Up” number and some one would bring my order out on a cart, at which point either they or I would place them in the back of the pick up.

But I was so very very wrong! When I landed at the store I was surprised to see people entering the store it self. No information on how to proceed was provided, so I put on my mask and went to the door and found a employee holding another customer in a que line. The employee explained that they were allowed to have a maximum of five people in the store at a time. So I could of entered the store and just wandered around as if there was no stay at home order.

So when my turn came around I walked to the order desk to try to get the order that I had placed online on Thursday of the previous week. This was followed by confusion as no one seemed to know where my order was. So after some time and a couple of staff members it was decided that they had found the order and that it just had to be pulled from the storage pile outside. So we moved out side and were able to get two bags loaded in the back of the truck. The employee picked up one bag and I picked up the bag directly under the first bag, actually quite easily once they were able to figure out what I had ordered and already paid for.

Now looking back I should have picked up on a red flag 🚩 when the employee said in passing that the bag he had picked up was a little hard from being packed down. Duh!

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That line was just bull sh!t as it was solid because moisture had entered the plastic bag because the back of the bag was damaged. I tried dropping the bag on the garage floor to help unpack the product. You can rest reassured that that will be another discussion, along with my disappointment with the “curb side pickup” that I experienced.

Next issue came when Miss Laurie asked me to pick up some envelopes from the dollar store because I was going out anyway.

So would you classify envelopes as essential? Again open for discussion, so let’s just say I was amazed the dollar store was classified as essential, and my amazement continued when the sign on the store said that they were allowed 31 people at a time in the store!

Unlike the farm supply stone that was more square footage and allowed only 5 customers, this dollar store with narrow isles is allowed 31, who the he!! made that decision? The farm store had an employee to control customers entering their store, the dollar store did not! And of course no one pays any attention to the direction arrows and that was the isle with the envelopes … just saying

I also understand that the store staff can not tell people to abide by the guidelines for fear of upsetting the customer. But what they maybe should stop and think about is that if they enforced the guidelines just maybe more people would shop at the store … I know that I will not ever go back during or after the pandemic. I did get the envelopes and the safety salt whether they would be considered essential or not but it has become very obvious why there are many cases as there are.

And because I’m on a roll today I would be amiss not to take a kick at our internet provider.

Now it was suggested which company I should use in the area because I did not want to sign a long term contract, I just wanted to pay month by month and have good enough internet to be able to do all the things that I do on the internet and be able to stream some television shows or movies.

A local provider advertises up to 5 mbps download and 1 mbps of upload, and it is a monthly service that they refer to as “highspeed wifi”, we have had the service less than two months and I would have to rate the service as poor to very poor. Most reading today are download speeds of .84 mbps to 4.64 mbps with most falling in the 1.5 mbps. Now most streaming services work quite well with between 2 – 3 mbps and I don’t do much on the internet that has a high demand, so my expectation was that the only non contract service would most likely work.

Again I was so wrong so I called the technical support side and they “tweaked” my service that did absolutely nothing to improve it, and their suggestion was to upgrade to a better plan. I understand that a better service would solve my issue and I also understand the technical people are taught to upsell the better plans when someone has an issue.

So as luck would have it someone from the provider called to check how the service was … you know those touchy feelie kind of calls where they hope you don’t answer so they can just leave that flowery message. Well that didn’t happen, no they got a chance for me to tell them how poor the service was, and guess what they suggested … you guessed it they suggested I should upgrade the service. So I said ok lets provide a service that has a minimum 5 mbps as opposed to a maximum. Well to no ones surprise they offer no services that guarantee a minimum level of service even their most expensive plan, so I suggested that I would pay more for a higher level of service if I did not have to sign a contract.

No no that would not be possible because why would they want to provide a better service for more money?

That’s ridiculous, after all they have already invested on running the cable to the house, installed the equipment, rented me a modem. So why on earth would they just want to sell a more expensive service to me with no further incurred expense other than some one adjusting the limiter and some one else increasing my bill? These are the things that have never made any sense to anyone that wanted to operate a profitable business, yea I understand you want long term commitment, but I’m only here for 5 months, so you go to all the expense of trenching in the cable and only want to pick up the minimum return on your investment the only service that doesn’t need a contract, then why even offer it? If it was me I’d be thinking I can score an extra twenty bucks a month with no equipment outlay, so saying no to it make no sense to anyone with a brain.

But rules are rules and policies are policies, and we do it this way because we have always done it this way, and why would you want as something as foolish as profit get in the way of rules and policy … just saying.

That’s it for today, I feel much better having vented a little, and I just keep thinking it’s only eleven months till Christmas!

As always be well, stay safe and be strong!