Let it snow...let it snow...let it snow

I've posted this once before, but with all the snow we've been having, I wanted to share it again with my readers. I don't know who wrote it, but it is extremely funny:

Subject: Diary Of A Snow Shoveler

December  8 - 6:00 PM

It started to snow.  The first snow of the season and the wife and I took our cocktails and sat for hours by the window watching the huge soft flakes drift down from heaven.  It looked like a Grandma Moses Print.  So  romantic we felt like newlyweds again.  I love snow!

 December  9

We woke to a beautiful  blanket of crystal white snow covering every inch of the landscape.   What a fantastic sight!  Can there be a more lovely place in the whole  world?  Moving here was the best idea I've ever had!  Shoveled for  the first time in years and felt like a boy again.  I did both our driveway and the sidewalks.  This afternoon the snowplow came along and covered up the sidewalks and closed in the driveway, so I got to shovel  again.  What a perfect life!

 December  12 The sun has melted all our lovely snow.  Such a disappointment!  My neighbor tells me not  to worry we'll definitely have a white Christmas.   No snow on Christmas would be awful!  Bob says we'll have so much snow by the end of winter,  that I'll never want to see snow again.  I don't think that's  possible.  Bob is such a nice man, I'm glad he's our neighbour.

 December  14

Snow, lovely  snow!  8 inches last night.  The temperature dropped to -20.   The cold makes everything sparkle so.  The wind took my breath away,  but I warmed up by shoveling the driveway and sidewalks.  This is the  life!  The snowplow came back this afternoon and buried everything  again.  I didn't realize I would have to do quite this much shoveling,  but I'll certainly get back in shape this way.  I wish I wouldn't huff and puff so.

 December  15

20 inches  forecast.  Sold my van and bought a 4x4 Blazer.  Bought snow tires  for the wife's car and 2 extra shovels.  Stocked the freezer.  The wife wants a wood stove in case the electricity goes out.  I think  that's silly.  We aren't in Alaska, after all.

December  16

Ice storm this  morning.  Fell on my ass on the ice in the driveway putting down salt.  Hurt like hell.  The wife laughed for an hour, which I  think was very cruel.

December  17

Still way below  freezing.  Roads are too icy to go anywhere.  Electricity was off for 5 hours.  I had to pile the blankets on to stay warm.  Nothing  to do but stare at the wife and try not to irritate her.  Guess I  should've bought a wood stove, but won't admit it to her.  God I hate  it when she's right.  I can't believe I'm freezing to death in my own  living room.

December  20

Electricity's back on,  but had another 14 inches of the damn stuff last night.  More  shoveling!  Took all day.  The damn snowplow came by twice.   Tried to find a neighbor kid to shovel, but they said they're too busy playing hockey.  I think they're lying.  Called the only hardware store around to see about buying a snow blower and they're out.  Might have another shipment in March.  I think they're lying.  Bob  says I have to shovel or the city will have it done and bill me.  I  think he's lying.

December  22

Bob was right about a  white Christmas because 13 more inches of the white shit fell today, and  it's so cold, it probably won't melt till August.  Took me 45 minutes  to get all dressed up to go out to shovel and then I had to piss.  By the time I got undressed, pissed and dressed again, I was too tired to  shovel.  Tried to hire Bob who has a plow on his truck for the rest of the winter, but he says he's too busy.  I think the asshole is lying.

December  23

Only 2 inches of snow  today.  And it warmed up to 0.  The wife wanted me to decorate the front of the house this morning.  What is she, nuts?!!  Why didn't she tell me to do that a month ago?  She says she did but I think she's  lying.

December  24

6 inches - Snow packed  so hard by snowplow, I broke the shovel.  Thought I was having a heart  attack.  If I ever catch the son of a bitch who drives that snowplow,  I'll drag him through the snow by his balls and beat him to death with my broken shovel.  I know he hides around the corner and waits for me to  finish shoveling and then he comes down the street at 100 miles an hour and throws snow all over where I've just been!  Tonight the wife wanted me to sing Christmas carols with her and open our presents, but I was too busy watching for the damn snowplow.

December  25

Merry f---ing  Christmas!  20 more inches of the damn slop tonight - Snowed in.   The idea of shoveling makes my blood boil.  God, I hate the snow!   Then the snowplow driver came by asking for a donation and I hit him over  the head with my shovel.  The wife says I have a bad attitude.  I  think she's a fricking idiot.  If I have to watch "It's A Wonderful  Life" one more time, I'm going to stuff her into the  microwave.

December  26

Still snowed in.   Why the hell did I ever move here?  It was all HER idea.  She's really getting on my nerves.

 December  27

Temperature dropped to  -30 and the pipes froze; plumber came after 14 hours of waiting for him, he only charged me $1,400 to replace all my pipes.

 December  28

Warmed up to above  -20.  Still snowed in.  The BITCH is driving me crazy!!!

 December  29

10 more inches.   Bob says I have to shovel the roof or it could cave in.  That's the silliest thing I ever heard.  How dumb does he think I  am?

 December  30

Roof caved in.  I  beat up the snowplow driver, and now he is suing me for a million dollars,  not only the beating I gave him, but also for trying to shove the broken snow shovel up his ass.  The wife went home to her mother.  Nine  more inches predicted.

 December  31

I set fire to what's  left of the house.  No more shoveling.

January  8

Feel so good.  I  just love those little white pills they keep giving me.  Why am I tied to the bed?

#Hello 2017

I posted this same article on my FaceBook page, but not everyone reads it.

It has finally arrived: The year 2017. What ever happened to 2016? It seems the older I get the faster the years go by. Why is that? Everything else seems to slow down, like walking, thinking, talking, eating…

My wife and I spent last night at home. Last year we went out for supper and it was a disaster. We planned to go to the restaurant in the casino and got a huge surprise when we arrived there. The waiting time to get a table was three hours. My wife suggested we go home, get a Pizza out of the freezer and have that for supper. Did not excite me. I wasn’t going to leave 2015 eating Pizza. Instead, we went to Aaltos in the same building. We waited only one hour. I should have taken my wife’s advice to go home. The food from the buffet was mostly cold and what they offered was boring. We walked out with a large bill and unhappy.

The year before, we went to a restaurant near our place for supper and ended up with a terrible cold that lasted most of the winter. We figured they didn’t sterilize their dishes.

So this year we decided to stay home. We bought a couple of lobster tails and a box full of butterflied ‘colossal’ shrimp in garlic. To compliment that we had lettuce, fried rice and peas. My wife drank wine and I drank a bottle of beer. It turned out great and we left the table satisfied, even though the lobster tails were somewhat on the small size and the ‘colossal’ shrimp not as large as advertised. It didn’t matter, they tasted good and we had enough. The best part: No waiting in line to get the food, either.

After supper, we watched three episodes of Season Four of ‘Game of Thrones’ and finished the last fifteen minutes of 2016 watching the CBC channel on TV waiting for twelve o’clock and the new year to arrive. Those last minutes were spoiled listening to a band screaming what is called music these days. I call it noise. At the stroke of midnight, they had fireworks. The government spending our tax dollars, but it was good. We toasted each other with a glass of sherry and then we watched a couple of comedians telling their jokes for 30 minutes and then we went to bed. Boring, I know, but more relaxing and satisfying than the last couple of New Year celebrations.

This morning, when the radio came on (We listen to CBC) we were treated to more screaming ‘music’. We shut off the radio after two songs, that’s all we could stand. Perhaps, some day, music will be music again and not screaming steel guitars and drums and the singers will have pleasant voices and will actually sing beautiful melodies—melodies that soothe and are pleasant and enjoyable. I probably won’t see that in my lifetime. The whole world is crazy. Modern music is only one aspect of that craziness. We can only hope and pray some day humanity will find its way to normalcy and the insanity that seems to have gripped us will be put to rest.

My wish for 2017 is that people begin to realize that hostility, intolerance, and hatred only spawns more of the same. When you live by the sword you die by the sword. Let’s all think PEACE and strive for it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

#A Christmas Wish

We've already celebrated Christmas last night in the European Tradition, but that doesn't stop us from celebrating again today.

I hope everyone who reads this, has a peaceful Christmas and doesn't forget why we actually celebrate Christmas. It's not all about how many presents we receive or how much those presents have cost. It is much more important to spread Love and Cheer and Happiness and give from our heart, not because we feel obligated to send cards and presents, but because it makes us happy and we feel good. Even if the presents we receive are not always what we expected. As the saying goes: It's the thought that counts and it is better to receive than give.

We had a nice dinner with our children and grandchildren last night and then everyone opened their presents. We play Christmas music and it always brings back memories of Christmas celebrations from the past. We take a little bit of time and reflect. Many of our family members are gone now but we know they are with us in the spirit. Now we are old ourselves and the day will come when one of the children will carry on with the tradition and celebrate Christmas at their place, just as it happened with us when our parents passed away. Hopefully, that is still many years in the future.

I'm always grateful for having such a wonderful family. There is no greater pleasure than watching the grandchildren as they open their presents and reading the homemade card they made for us. It was made with love, and that is the greatest gift I can receive.

Merry Christmas

Tale about a truck that wouldn’t start on a cold winter’s day

 I’m a mechanic. Not a real mechanic, though. Actually, I’m a retired Electrician. I know about electric motors. I can find and fix problems when it comes to electrical stuff. But I know nothing about gasoline powered engines. They are a mystery to me.

So why do I claim to be a mechanic? Well, a couple of weeks ago, my truck wouldn’t start. It is not a new truck, far from it. It’s kind of long in the tooth, like 18 years long. Old trucks like that break down. I don’t use it much; only to go fishing and take garbage to the dump. Maybe take it to go mushroom picking. That’s about it. I don’t use it in the winter.

I had loaded up the truck with old branches and was ready to take them to the dump. When I turned the key, it didn’t want to start. It made noise but didn’t catch. I got out and opened the hood. Apparently, that’s the thing to do when a vehicle doesn’t start. I have no idea what I was looking for. It was a cold, wet morning, nearly freezing, so I figured it was probably the humidity. I tried and tried until the battery was run down. Then I gave up, put a battery charger on the battery and plugged in the heater. Anyone living in Manitoba and other places where the winter gets way below freezing knows what I’m talking about.

The next few days I repeated the procedure but without luck. The motor didn’t start. I talked to a few people about my problem and I got different advice: It could be the battery, perhaps the electrical connections. (The battery is only a little over a year old. I didn’t think that was the problem).  New spark-plugs might fix the problem. Perhaps it’s the timing chain. I faulty fuel pump could be the problem. It could also be a seized engine. A mechanic gave me a few hints how to go about checking out these possible problems. “Do your spark-plugs fire?” he asked. “I don’t know,” I said. “Well, bring her in and I’ll check her over,” he said. Mechanics talk hat way. I never thought of my truck as a ‘She’, but I wanted to sound professional, so I said, “Remember, she doesn’t start?” “Oh, that’s right.” He scratched his head and chuckled. “I guess if she’d start you wouldn’t have to bring her in.”

I could have called a tow truck, but that would have cost me more than what my truck is worth. It seemed I was on my own. First thing I did was check the battery. It seemed okay. Then I went and bought 8 new spark-plugs and replaced the old ones. The old ones looked good to me, but since I had bought new ones I put them in. Not an easy job when the temperature is below freezing. Some of the spark-plugs were difficult to get to, another design flaw, but I did it. I got away with only a few cuts and bruises on my hands. When I turned the key, the problem had not been fixed. So I removed the battery cables, cleaned them, put Vaseline on the terminals and hooked the cables up again. Even that was difficult. Why do they leave such little room? You can’t even get a ratchet in there. Had to work with pliers.

This time when I turned the key, nothing happened. Not even a sound. Just a faint click. Now I had a bit of an inkling what could be wrong. I suspected a faulty starter. My very first car, a 1953 Ford, had that problem. At the most inconvenient time and place the starter clicked and the car wouldn’t start. I learned how to fix that. The car did not have an automatic transmission. I put it into second gear and rocked the car back and forth until I heard a click. That’s when the motor started. Can’t do this with my truck. It’s automatic.

I crawled under the truck and looked for the starter. It wasn’t on the driver’s side, but I found something on the other side that could be the starter, but I wasn’t sure. I searched the internet and found pictures of what looked like what I saw under my truck. Then I watched videos on U-Tube. ‘It takes only about 30 minutes to change a starter’ one guy claimed. It looked simple. So I decided to change mine.

I disconnected the battery cables to avoid getting a shock or burning a hole into some part of the motor. Then I crawled under the truck. First thing that happened was a piece of dirt or rust or something fell into my eye. I went back into the house to wash it out. Then I put on safety glasses and took a light with me and a socket set. There is no room under the truck. I could only work with my left hand because you can only lie on your back with no way to turn. There are pipes and wires under the starter and it isn’t easy to get to it. Maybe it’s easy when the vehicle is on a hoist but not when you’re lying on gravel. Why on gravel? That’s when the truck decided to turn on me—when it was parked in the driveway and not even in a favorable position. At one time my quilted jacket bunched up and I got stuck under there. Couldn’t move back or forth. I don’t like tight places in the first place and was hit with a panic attack. So I just lay there on my back looking up at the underside of the truck, imagining all kinds of awful things that could still happen. After I calmed down, I wiggled myself free, not eager to get back under what could turn out to be a death-trap, but I had no choice if I wanted to get that starter out.

I spent three hours the first day under the truck. Removing the bolts that hold the starter in place took some time. I finally got them off, but I just couldn’t loosen the nuts on the terminals with the electrical connections. After all, they were 18 years old, which means they were rusted in and I didn’t have the right socket. Why do American vehicles have metric nuts and bolts? I don’t own a metric socket set.  I went and bought one, but the largest socket on the one I bought was 12 mm and I needed a 13 mm one. I discovered that when I lay underneath the truck. After three hours, I just couldn’t take any more. I was too frozen and too tired to work any longer. My left arm ached and my fingers were lifeless from the cold. You have to work without gloves.

The next day, I jacked up the truck on one side and secured it with a wooden block to give me more room to move. At least now I could use both hands. It still was difficult, because I had only limited movement room. Somehow, I managed and got the starter out. I took it to an Auto-Electric place and had it rebuilt. The guy there said it would be better, because my starter was original equipment and it would fit without worrying about shims. (‘Shims?’ I thought. ‘Where would I need shims?’) He also said I didn’t want to buy a new one, because it would only be some Chinese crap. I agreed. In the end, it cost me sixty bucks. I was okay with that. Way cheaper than a new one, anyway.

When I decided to install the rebuilt starter, it was minus 25 Celsius outside. I put plywood all around the truck and put a heater underneath. To make it more comfortable, I laid a piece of plywood with a carpet on top of the gravel and a pillow for my head. Even though, installing that rebuilt starter was no picnic. The heater just took out the chill and it was still friggen cold, especially the metal. You can’t work with gloves. I froze the tips of my fingers and had to thaw them in cold water to get the feeling back. With all those preparations, it took me 3 hours until I finally had that starter in place. Then I hooked up the battery again and prayed the motor would start.

I was like a kid opening up a present. The anticipation was hard to control. I turned that key and was rewarded with the rumbling of the motor. I felt elated and could have burst into a song had I not been frozen stiff. All that hard work had actually paid off. I was a mechanic.

If there is one thing I learned from this experience is this: I never ever want to replace another starter, especially not when it is so cold!

I’m okay now. I’ve got the feeling back in my fingers and my left shoulder and upper left arm are also getting better. The pain is nearly gone and I can move my arm again.