29 January 2012
Winter Doldrums
29/01/12 12:36
OK, this week's letter won’t be as upbeat as usual. You see I’m fighting a cold. I’m definitely on the recovery side of it but still a January cold is a January cold and it’s not fun. How did I get this cold? Well you see one of my coworkers came in last Monday and he really looked run down. By Tuesday you could see he was obviously fighting a bad cold. He looked like heck, and sounded worse, but he had this big project and a bunch of meetings scheduled so he soldiered on. Well, he was out sick Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. No big surprise there. Also not a big surprise was that literally half the staff was also out sick Thursday and Friday. My cold started late on Friday and seems to be wrapping up. Which brings us to the lesson of the week: If you are sick, you are not doing anyone a favour by going to work. Not yourself, not your coworkers and not the company. Sick time is for the companies benefit, not yours. Take it.
You know, for a town as green as Nanaimo in a Providence as green as BC, we sure have a lot of trouble with recycling. I’ve mentioned before how we keep getting nasty notes because we put something in the recycle bin that shouldn’t be, like glass. And, if you remember a few weeks back I told you about the bottle avalanche in the car. Well, this weekend we made another bottle run. The basket was belted in. We thought we had everything sorted out properly. But as usual it ended up going sideways on us. Somehow scattered in the boxes of empties were several full bottle of beers. So we had to quickly sort through and take back the full ones. First off, the guys running the place were under age so they couldn’t take them. More importantly, they weren’t willing to give us any more than the regular deposit for the bottles.
One thing is continuing though. While we were out running errands Marsha kept running into people she knows. People she works with. Former neighbours. People she met once years before and hasn’t seen since, but she remembers them, their names, their spouses name, what they do for a living and the recipe for cookies they gave her. It happens all the time. I on the other hand never recognize people out of context. The closest I’ve come to running into people I know happened last week at the Save-On Deli counter. I had a ten minute conversation with a guy. We chatted about Marsha’s job, and me working at Aviawest, and Inuktun, what he was doing now, how his kids were doing, all sorts of things. He apparently knew us very well. I on the other hand haven’t the slightest idea who he was. But this is, as I said earlier, is not atypical. For me, out of context is out of mind.
Lastly, one of the big items here is Canada was the achievement of two kids from Toronto. They sent a gondola equipped with several cameras, and a Lego astronaut with a Canadian flag into space. It was really quite cool. Here’s an interview with them on a Canadian morning show
http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120126/toronto-lego-space-flight-120126/20120126/?hub=TorontoNewHome#.TyFk-ZUUKmA.email
And here is a link to where they posted the video on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQwLmGR6bPA
Like I said, kinda cool but then it’s January and not a lot else is going on at the moment. I'm going to go take a nap.
More next week.
Doug & Marsha.
PIX: Leftovers
The weather hasn't been all bad though. Someone was out sailing this week.
Geiger is a very patient cat. We got a little silly when we were putting away the Christmas stuff a couple of weeks back.
But he puts up with it because overall it's a good life.
One last shot of the snow.
You know, for a town as green as Nanaimo in a Providence as green as BC, we sure have a lot of trouble with recycling. I’ve mentioned before how we keep getting nasty notes because we put something in the recycle bin that shouldn’t be, like glass. And, if you remember a few weeks back I told you about the bottle avalanche in the car. Well, this weekend we made another bottle run. The basket was belted in. We thought we had everything sorted out properly. But as usual it ended up going sideways on us. Somehow scattered in the boxes of empties were several full bottle of beers. So we had to quickly sort through and take back the full ones. First off, the guys running the place were under age so they couldn’t take them. More importantly, they weren’t willing to give us any more than the regular deposit for the bottles.
One thing is continuing though. While we were out running errands Marsha kept running into people she knows. People she works with. Former neighbours. People she met once years before and hasn’t seen since, but she remembers them, their names, their spouses name, what they do for a living and the recipe for cookies they gave her. It happens all the time. I on the other hand never recognize people out of context. The closest I’ve come to running into people I know happened last week at the Save-On Deli counter. I had a ten minute conversation with a guy. We chatted about Marsha’s job, and me working at Aviawest, and Inuktun, what he was doing now, how his kids were doing, all sorts of things. He apparently knew us very well. I on the other hand haven’t the slightest idea who he was. But this is, as I said earlier, is not atypical. For me, out of context is out of mind.
Lastly, one of the big items here is Canada was the achievement of two kids from Toronto. They sent a gondola equipped with several cameras, and a Lego astronaut with a Canadian flag into space. It was really quite cool. Here’s an interview with them on a Canadian morning show
http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120126/toronto-lego-space-flight-120126/20120126/?hub=TorontoNewHome#.TyFk-ZUUKmA.email
And here is a link to where they posted the video on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQwLmGR6bPA
Like I said, kinda cool but then it’s January and not a lot else is going on at the moment. I'm going to go take a nap.
More next week.
Doug & Marsha.
PIX: Leftovers
The weather hasn't been all bad though. Someone was out sailing this week.
Geiger is a very patient cat. We got a little silly when we were putting away the Christmas stuff a couple of weeks back.
But he puts up with it because overall it's a good life.
One last shot of the snow.