Reasons to be unhappy and Reasons to be Happy

 10:00 AM: Yesterday I went downtown Winnipeg and I was reminded again why I hate going there. I only go downtown when I have to, like going to the doctor or some other business, like a performance or something like that.

This time I had to visit my eye doctor. I was already annoyed when I got there. The parking lot across from the clinic is mostly used for monthly parking. I can never find a spot in there. The last few times I was lucky to find a parking spot on the street, but it costs $2.00 an hour and the limit is two hours. It takes nearly two hours at the eye doctor’s office, which means it costs me $4.00.

Paying for parking is one of the reasons I don’t care to go downtown. And you have to pay for parking everywhere downtown. There is no free parking anywhere. That’s why I and most people go shopping in the shopping centers on the outskirts of the city.

Today when I got to my doctor’s office location I couldn’t even park on the street where I usually parked, because they were doing roadwork and no parking anywhere. I finally found a spot on another street. I was actually lucky: A car stopped and the woman in the passenger seat handed me a ticket which was good for 1 ¼ hour. So I paid nothing for parking. I hope somebody returns that favor to them.

I don’t want to sound prejudice, but panhandlers, drunks, people who are unemployable and people who are employable but not working, hookers, bums, and other characters on the streets do not inspire confidence to leave a car unattended. When our son got married we spent some time in a hotel downtown. We had all the presents in our car and somebody smashed in the window and stole my wife’s expensive sunglasses and our flash for the camera. They would have gotten away with more had they not been interrupted by a couple of ‘Blue Bomber players’ who happened to walk by. This happened in the middle of the afternoon.

Yesterday, as I came up to a pedestrian crosswalk, one of these inspiring characters pressed the button to activate the flashing light and stepped onto the street without waiting or looking left and right. It was lucky I had been watching him as I came closer to the crosswalk or I could easily have hit him.

I should be happy. It is our #Golden Wedding Anniversary today. I can barely believe that I’ve been married for fifty years. What happened to all those years? We used to go to the City Park and the zoo on our anniversary, but we haven’t done that for a long time. There was always some reason, like babysitting or it was too hot. Today it is supposed to go up to 29 C, which makes it hot. It would be a good time to be at some beach or even do some fishing. But I can’t do that, because I have to cut the grass to make the lawn great-looking for tomorrow. We’ll be celebrating our anniversary tomorrow with the family.

4:30 PM: I just finished my shower after cutting the grass. It is 32 C outside and 32 in our sun-room. I think the only one enjoying the heat is Eddie, our Canary. On days like this I wish I had a robot for cutting my grass. It is murder out there in the heat. I should be watering my garden, but there is a thundershower in the forecast for tonight. I want the rain but not the thunder and the hail it may bring.

My grass used to be lush for a short time, now it is beginning to lose its deep green color. On the septic field it is already brown and not growing as well, only on the outside of the field. If it doesn’t rain tonight I’ll have to put up some sprinklers. Lucky we don’t have to pay for water out here; we have our own well. But our municipality is already planning something and I worry. We’ll be getting a sewage system soon and that will cost mega bucks, but I don’t want that treated water from Winnipeg. Our well water is clean and without any additives like chlorine and other chemicals they put into the Winnipeg water. Besides, we would have to pay for every gallon of water we use. Something we could not afford with our large properties here. We could kiss our green grass goodbye.

I always worry when governments make plans for the Good of the Citizens. It usually is costly and of little benefit to most people. There are always only a few who will fatten their bank accounts while the majority of citizens lose out.

It if rains today if will be fitting, because it rained 50 years ago when we got married. Even though we didn’t have the best weather, our marriage lasted this long and it will last longer. We had our ups and downs, like every married couple. Nothing in life ever runs smoothly, but we were happy (still are!) and we weathered all the things destiny threw at you. We had big plans; not all of them materialized, but we worked hard and got rewarded

 Now we are not young any more, our bodies show their age and they complain about the abuse we put them through. We ache and we tire easily. We fall asleep watching TV, mostly during the News, but life is still good and we enjoy it as much as possible. We are grateful and feel blessed to have had children to raise and care for; we cherish our grandchildren, and we treasure the friendships we formed during our lifetime. We even love and appreciate our relatives ☺; some of them are among our circle of friends.

Life without friends and family would be sad indeed and a waste of space on this planet—a waste of precious years. Friendships take a lifetime to form and develop; they need to be constantly nurtured. Family members need to be treated with love and care like the treasures they are. The best friend a man or woman can ever have is a brother or sister. Nothing can ever match the bond siblings share, but it can easily be broken if it isn’t laced with love.

Love is an important ingredient in every relationship. Without love there is really nothing. Without caring for each other there is nothing. Life is empty and meaningless. I am lucky to have someone to love and care for. I just wish the years wouldn’t fly by so quickly and I wish life wouldn’t be so cruel sometimes. Not everyone gets to celebrate their 50th Wedding Anniversary and I feel blessed and humble to be among the ones who made it.

Peace and Love to everyone who reads this. Stop and take some time out of your busy schedule and take a deep breath. Look around you and enjoy the moment. This moment will never come again.

Mishaps happen all the time

On my last blog I wrote about my problem with Microsoft Publisher. It seems I’ll have to live without it. Why don’t things run smoothly? Why do they have to go wrong so often?

I think the Universe is a joker and troublemaker. Just when you think everything will go smoothly from now on something else happens. Take our last fishing trip for instance. Things have not gone without a hitch on most of our fishing trips. The one last week was no exception.

My friend Rudi made up a new rig for keeping caught fish alive in the water, usually the Pike when fishing with the boat. We have a live-well for the Walleye. We lost one chain the same day when we forgot the key to the boat and had to fish from the dock and the chain got hung up in some rocks under the dock. On the next trip Rudi used a fish stringer with plastic hooks. Well, the plastic hooks didn’t last long. Most of them broke off because the plastic was too brittle. We lost fish. This last time we had a new stringer made from metal. Everything would go right this time. So we thought.

Things started out great. We had small waves and just a little wind. The sun was shining. A perfect day for fishing, even though the fish didn’t bite as readily as we had hoped, but we were on the water having a good time enjoying the outdoors. We have a contest going. Whoever catches and lands the first keeper Walleye into the boat gets a ‘Loony’ (One Dollar) from the other two in the party. I was lucky to catch the first Walleye and yelled for the net. “I’m looking,” Rudi said. “Hurry up,” I yelled again, getting excited, “I don’t want to lose this one.” “I can’t find it,” Rudi said.

Well, he couldn’t find it because there was no net. We must have lost it on the trip to the lake; it was probably picked up by a gust of wind and blown out of the boat. So we had to flip the fish into the boat. That’s okay with small fish but with larger ones it is more difficult. We had plenty of trouble with the large Pike we caught. When you fish with an 8 pound test line you have to be careful. You can’t just lift the fish out of the water without breaking the line. The fish struggle and they are heavy. Rudi’s son, who was the other member of our party, lost a couple of nice Walleye because he couldn’t bring them into the boat. By the way, he caught most of the Walleye and the two largest. One measured 50 cm and the other one 57 cm. We had to release them because they exceeded the allowable size limit of 45 cm. They would have made nice fillets.

The day ended well. We caught our limit on Walleye and brought home five Northern Pike. Not a bad day of fishing.

Rudi got a new net from his sons for Father’s Day and there should be no more problems, but I have a feeling the Universe is already cooking up some new stuff. We just don’t know yet what that could be.

Oh, there is something I just remembered. Last year I found a nice place near the Red River where I could fish for Goldeye. It is nearby and I could drive close to it. I spent quite a few afternoons there, comfortably sitting in my chair, enjoying the sunshine, and catching Goldeye. Well, that has changed. The Floodway Authorities (a government agency) who look after that part of the Floodway apparently passed responsibilities over to another department of the government. The people who work there decided in their incredible government wisdom to put a locked gate across to the access road. There goes my perfect Goldeye-catching-location.

Thank you, Government, for looking after your taxpaying citizens and denying access to property that belongs to those same taxpaying citizens. Thanks for taking away more of the few pleasures we still enjoy.

So much for today. I have to go out now and do some weeding in my garden. The weeds are beginning to take over.

The 57 cm Walleye

Father's Day

It is Father’s Day today. I should be happy but I’m not. Sort of not happy, if there is such a thing. It’s the damn computer, or more precisely Microsoft Publisher. I have Windows 7 on my computer but I’m running Microsoft Office 2003 on it. Transferred the program from my old computer.

I use Publisher for making cards for the family. I make one for every occasion. It is fun, more personal and it is cheaper than buying cards in the store, many of them are stupid anyway. We can never find one that is appropriate or attractive. The joke ones are dumb. If we somehow find one that we sort of like it is so expensive, we might as well use the money to buy another present.

Last week I was in the middle of making a card for my wife for our upcoming anniversary when the program acted up. The card I printed did not look like the one showing on the screen. I did some editing and that’s when I got the message: Microsoft Publisher has stopped working. Windows will look for a solution to the problem and notify me when it finds one.

I tried all kinds of ways to fix the problem to no avail. I searched the internet and there are quite a few Microsoft program users who seem to have the same problem. Microsoft has stopped supporting the 2003 version of Word and Office. Apparently, they also sent a little program on one of the updates that does something to old programs to prevent them from working properly or not at all. Just a rumor but I don’t doubt it. They want you to buy new programs every time you buy a new computer. Nothing personal, just Business. There were plenty of suggestions how to fix the problem but none worked for me. I did a System Restore to a time before the last update but that didn’t fix it.

So now I’m really ticked off with Microsoft. I can’t even print out any envelopes because they rely on Publisher. And I had such nice designs.

Happy Father’s Day #Microsoft. Enjoy what you’ve done to me and all the other ticked-off computer owners who use your products and made you rich.

Maybe the next time I buy a new computer it will have an apple on it. They don’t seem to have as many problems. One of my friends has an Apple Computer and he doesn’t even run a Virus program, because there are no viruses to worry about.

Otherwise it is a nice day. Warm if not a bit cloudy with rain, possibly a thunderstorm, in the forecast for tonight. Hopefully it won’t happen until really late. The kids are coming over and I’m barbequing ribs and chicken. I even bought a couple of bottles of the favorite beer my sons drink: Stella Artois. Expensive. I paid $2.75 plus tax per bottle and there are only 330 ml in one bottle compared to 341 ml in a regular bottle. (Don’t ask me where they get those odd numbers from!). And I treated myself to a bottle of Grolsch, imported from Holland. Even they cut down on the volume. They used to have 473 ml now they are only 450 ml in one bottle.

Alcohol in Canada is much too expensive compared to other countries, like the USA or Europe, especially Germany. Even the wine and beer kits are going up in price. Every time the liqueur prices go up so do the prices for the kits.

When I was at the liqueur store I saw beer from Mexico. They had quite a nice selection and I would have liked to buy a case, but when I saw the price I changed my mind. There must be a huge mark-up by the liqueur commission on that one. Greedy bastards! What ever happened to competition? I always thought price-fixing was illegal. Monopolies are against the law, but I guess it’s okay when the government does it.

Oops, I got myself back into an upset state. It is Father’s Day and I should be smiling and be happy. I’ll quit now and get the BBQ ready. The smell of barbequing ribs should put me into a happy mood. Seeing my grandchildren certainly will.

Happy Father’s Day.

Thoughts on a rainy Day

I should be cutting my grass right now instead of sitting in front of my computer, but I have a valid excuse: It is raining. This Sunday is Father’s Day and the kids are coming over for a BBQ, so I want the property to look nice with groomed grass. I started cutting this morning and managed to cut about 2/3rd of the grass. It was sprinkling a bit the whole time I was cutting, but I didn’t give up until the temperature dropped and I was getting chilly in my shirt. Besides, I was also getting a bit wet. It was lunchtime anyway.

Some people might wonder why I didn’t cut the grass yesterday since the weatherman predicted rain for today, but I had to go fishing. That is more important than cutting grass. We fished for Walleye and we managed to be successful—again, but it was more work this time and it took longer to get our limit. The fish were smaller than the ones we’ve caught previously. The weeds are beginning to grow at the bottom of the lake and you get hung up quite often.

I was using new walleye rig. The salesman told me it was a ‘killer’ bait. The guy who developed it used it to win fishing tournaments. It is called the ‘Deathroll’. The hook is twisted like a corkscrew and twists erratically on the bottom when you troll. It triggers even lazy fish in warmer water to strike. That is the theory. I bought a couple of them.

I caught two walleye with it, so I can’t vouch for its effectiveness. Actually, I was the first one from our party to catch a fish, but it took a long time to catch another one after that. A Pike decided he wanted it more than anything and bit the whole thing off. Good thing I paid only two bucks for it.

I just realized I used the words ‘salesman’ and ‘weatherman’. Apparently, nobody uses those words anymore, because it is politically incorrect. Crap on that. I am not politically correct. ‘Salesperson’ and ‘Weatherperson’ sounds stupid to me. I know, these days it is mostly women who forecast the weather on TV. Perhaps I should have written ‘Weatherwoman’ and ‘Saleslady’. So anyone who is offended by the words I use, change it mentally to the word that is supposed to be correct. No offense intended.

The world is going crazy anyway, with people getting overly sensitive to all kinds of things and putting everything that is said and printed under a microscope, hoping to find something they can criticise so they can stir up trouble. A few weeks ago we had a game in Winnipeg and one of the players didn’t perform. I wasn’t there, so I only know what I heard. The fans were calling him ‘Kathy Perry’. I guess that means he performed like a girl, whatever that means. Guys talk like that with no ill feelings toward girls. Some female Professor at the University found it disturbing and said if was offensive to women. Come on, Lady! What is your problem? I call people like that ‘Sh.t-disturbers’. They should be sent to a deserted island alone. Perhaps then they can put all their efforts into surviving instead of wasting it on looking to make trouble.

Terrible news from the USA. Yesterday, some disturbed young man shot nine people to death inside a church because they were black. One wonders what prompted him to do that. His father gave him a Colt 45 for his birthday. Why? I also wonder about his father. What kind of a person is he? Was he possibly the one who put all this nonsense into his head about black people raping women and taking over the world? What is this obsession Americans have with guns? I am a hunter and I have rifles, but I am not obsessed with them. I firmly believe that handguns and automatic weapons do not belong into the hands of civilians, registered or not. There is too much evidence that most people cannot handle the responsibility the possession of a deadly weapon carries with it.

So much violence all over the world. Even here in Winnipeg we have plenty of violence. It seems not a day goes by without hearing in the news that somebody was shot or a person was stabbed with a knife Many times it is women who do the stabbing. I ask myself this: Why would a woman or anyone carry a knife? Why does anyone carry a gun? When I carry my rifle I am out hunting. That’s it. The rest of the time my rifle is locked away. As is the ammunition. I don’t carry a knife. The only time I have a knife either on my belt or in my backpack is when I’m in the bush hunting or in my tackle box so I can fillet my fish.

Yes, the world is going crazy. The genes of the Killer Ape are still in humankind. We haven’t evolved at all. Perhaps some day we will go the way of the dinosaur and some other species will rule the world. How about insects? Intelligent insects. Will they be different? Will they have more respect for the environment, for the plants, and for other life forms sharing this planet? We’ll never know, because we will be gone and forgotten. All the problems we have now will mean nothing anymore. Nobody will worry if somebody says ‘Salesman’ instead of ‘Salesperson’.

Something to ponder. Anything that upsets us today won’t be important anymore in a thousand years. 

What 's in your Beard?

Apparently, beards are in. I’m talking about the Western World. Every guy in the Middle East and India has a beard anyway already. Something to do with their religion…I believe.

I just saw this in the news. Somebody did a research to see what lurks in a beard and the findings are unpleasant, to say the least. They took swabs from regular bearded guys and found… well…unpleasant things in those beards. It looked brown. They didn’t say what it was, but when they showed a flushing toilet it left no doubt about the origin of that brown material.

The question is how did it get into those beards? My only guess is that those guys did not wash their hands after going to the toilet. I’m always surprised and a little grossed out when I see guys leaving the men’s room without washing their hands after using the urinal, sometimes even the toilet. I have no idea why they don’t. You can’t make it any easier. There are taps, soaps, and towels or hand dryers. It only takes seconds out of their busy time. Maybe they wipe their hands on their beards…if they have a beard. That’s how that stuff ended up in there. Imagine, kissing a guy with a beard like that. I’m talking about women now. If as a guy you’re so inclined, imagine the same thing. So don’t gag the next time you kiss a guy with a beard and don’t think about what could be hiding inside all that curly growth.

This research was done in a civilized country. Just think what may live and hide in the beards of the men who live in countries that don’t have water and soap available as readily as we have, especially in those long, woolly, thick beards. Anything can hide in there. Those jihad fighters from ISIS who live in the desert certainly will have plenty of brown material in their beards. I’m quite certain they don’t wash their hands much, never mind their beards. Or the things that may live in other hairy body parts. Why any girl has the desire to join that bunch is incomprehensible to me. Of course she won’t have much opportunity to wash her private parts, either. Anything hiding in those beards will soon transfer over to her.

From now on I will eye every guy with a beard in a new light. I will always wonder about what a researcher may find in his beard. I may even ask him this question:

What lurks in your beard?

courtesy of http://www.fubiz.net

A fishing trip

Hard to believe it’s already June. What happens to the time? Pretty soon the days will be getting shorter already and we’ll be heading for winter. I just finished my garden. Things are growing nicely. The pepper plants I raised over the winter are not as big and green looking as the ones I bought and they look kind of sad, but I hope they survive and bear fruit.

Even with trying to get my garden seeded and planted and the yard spruced up I still managed to go fishing three times so far. The Walleye are biting now and you have to go if you want to take advantage of that. For Walleye we go to the Big Whiteshell Lake and most of the time we are successful. The limit is 4 Walleye, which in a way is too bad. It seems almost non-productive and irrational to go all that way for just 4 fish, but those are the rules. If I were a native, I wouldn’t have those restrictions, but that is another story.

Of course, we don’t just go for the fish. It’s the whole package. Being together with friends, spending time on the water and just having a good time.

Anyway, on our second trip things went not as smoothly as we anticipated. About halfway there, my friend discovered that he forgot the key to the motor. Without the key, the motor won’t start. Without motor no sense launching the boat. The waves were high that day with whitecaps and the wind was blowing strongly from the north. Obviously rowing was out of the question and we were left with only one option: to fish from land.

We stopped at a nice little picnic ground but caught only one Pike. Then we headed for our final destination and decided to fish from the dock. We had no other choice. To our surprise the fishing turned out extremely well. We caught Pike and Walleye. And they were of descent size, too. It was damn cold in the wind and we put on all the clothing we brought along.

Every negative side always has a positive side. I didn’t have to take a Gravol pill, which I surely would have needed with those high waves.

One little mishap almost caused us to go home with no fish. We had nine Walleye when to our dismay the chain with the fish got tangled up under the dock in some rocks and we couldn’t pull the chain out of the water. After about 30 minutes of trying to dislodge the chain with a long paddle we finally just tried brute force to pull it out. The chain ripped and we lost 2 fish, but we managed to catch our limit anyway.

So a day that started out unpromising and disappointing turned out okay. It proves again, you just can’t give up. Sometimes we have to change strategy and compromise and make the best of a situation. Crying doesn’t help.

We were fishing again last Friday. Even then it wasn’t smooth sailing. We didn’t forget the key to the motor and we made it onto the water. The wind was calm and the waves normal for the lake. We caught fish, some Pike. For the Walleye we have a live-well, but the Pike we put on a stringer. Since we had no metal chain we used a plastic stringer. Not a good idea. This stringer was only 2 years old, but the plastic was already brittle. We lost 2 big Pike when they broke the plastic hooks. Lesson: don’t buy plastic stringers!