Decisions, decisions....good and bad. Really bad!

decisions_06Life is full of decisions, little ones like what to wear today or what to eat for breakfast, and big ones like buying a house or getting married or having another child. In my life I've had to make all those decisions and many more. I've learned that there are two basic things about making decisions. One, no matter how hard you try to think of all the good and bad points of a decision you can't think of all the unforeseen things that can go terribly wrong and, two, every decision, good or bad, has consequences. I've learned of those the hard way.

When we are born and continuing through those early years most of our decisions are made by others, usually our parents. What to wear. What to eat. What school to go to. Soon we start to make our own decisions, like what to wear, often poorly done and what to eat for breakfast, also poorly done when chocolate cake comes first. One of our first major decisions is who will become our friends. During those formative years we are all naive and think that the friends we make will be for a lifetime. It's the same with our first love. When I met Roxanne Rollings in Churchville I believed that we would get married and live happily ever after. Little did I know.

decisions_01Sometimes we are just the victim of circumstances, for example, when I was only twelve my parents decided to move out of Toronto to the middle of nowhere, to a farm in the country north of Streetsville. I went from being able to ride my bike almost anywhere, or taking buses and streetcars to wherever I wanted to go and never getting home before dark, to being so isolated, miles from anyone. Even when I met some friends at public school in Churchville I could never see them or do anything after school because it was literally a five mile walk. My father and mother both worked so they were seldom available or were just too tired to drive me anywhere or pick me up. Once in a blue moon, usually because of Roxanne, I did do the major bike trip to Churchville. Soon I moved on to the high school in Streetsville, which was even further away, too far to even think about biking. My teen years were basically spent with my brother and sister, who I also cared for because my Mum worked so I cooked dinner every night.

As we get older and start having that burning desire to control our own destiny this is difficult for our parents to handle. They don't want to let go and they rarely agree with your decisions, but they also know that the only way you will learn is by making mistakes so they have to trust you at some point. My first issue was joining the band. It quickly became the only thing I cared about and nothing else, like my schoolwork, really mattered. I didn't have any dreams of becoming famous but I loved every minute of playing in the band. Back then I had no idea that it was going to be such a major part of my life for the next ten years. Like most kids I wanted money and a car, especially after all those years of being stranded. I decided to go on a split program with high school, taking half my subjects one year and the other half the next year. That didn't work out as planned. I got a job delivering newspapers to carriers around Mississauga and Streetsville. It was hard work but I loved getting my first paycheques. At one point as the driver rounded a curve a little fast I fell off, sliding maybe thirty feet on the pavement. What saved me was the fact that it had been raining so hard and the road was very wet. I got away with no road rash but it scared the crap out of me.

decisions_03Once I had decided that continuing in school wasn't going to work for me my mother suggested I apply at the bank where she worked. I had no desire to get into banking but the thought of a regular full-time paycheque was attractive, even at fifty dollars a week, a fortune way back then. This led to my next major decision - a car. I happened to see an ad for an MGB that sounded perfect. I loved the idea of driving a sports car and paid no attention to the fact I wouldn't be able to drive it in the winter without killing myself. Turned out this rich guy had gotten it from his parents as a graduation gift and he wanted to go on a trip to the Caribbean and needed the money. He had no clue what it was worth and was asking an absurdly low price. I was driving my mother's car to get to him in Toronto and to my considerable surprise he said I could leave her car with him and take the MGB. I was in total heaven driving that car and took the very, very long way home. I was only eighteen or so at the time so I couldn't sign for my own loan. I needed my Dad to co-sign. To this day I have never forgiven him for refusing to cosign the loan for the best car I could have ever had, well, until the winter at least. Dad made it all the worse by bringing home a horrible Vauxhall Viva that he paid a hundred dollars for, which was ninety-nine dollars too much. It was a car though, bad as it was, and I remember painting the dash flat black for some unknown reason that made sense at the time. Shortly after a drunk hit me on Queen Street in Brampton and totaled the car, almost totaling me as well. That led to another major decision when I decided to buy my first new car, an Austin Mini.

ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/75f92316699024ad6e77a55f3d86d338.jpg">Getting the new car led to one of my first really stupid decisions. At the time I was working at a branch in Weston, one of the nine I ended up working at during my short career with Toronto-Dominion, and worked with Steven Vass. I'm not sure how we started talking about car rallies but I soon signed us up for the Skylon rally, having no clue what this rally actually meant. The rally was just over a week away so my dealer told me to put a thousand kilometres on the engine so that it could be tuned before we went on the rally. Not only did I drive the long way home but I went touring just about everywhere to put the mileage on. After they serviced the engine off we went to the rally. When we got to the start we learned that this was one of the national rallies in the country and it would be challenging. The other drivers were all chuckling at us when they saw my car. They were all sponsored and had thousands of dollars of extras in their cars. They also had crews that would service their vehicles on the route. We had nothing. First we had to have a safety check which did not go well. The official gave us a long list of things we needed to be able to enter the rally, like fire extinguishers, map lights, on and on, so off we went to Canadian Tire to buy everything we needed. We passed the safety, although it was very clear that we didn't stand a chance to finish the rally. At every pit-stop we got our time, which was always way behind, and instructions for the next leg. They were different for each leg and obviously the professional drivers understood what they meant. We didn't but the drivers and pit-stop crews were very helpful. Just one example was they gave you a map with all the exact distances between roads. You were to take whatever roads were not shown on the map. This was a twenty-four hour rally, which even with two drivers, is tough. We finally pulled into Niagara Falls, hours late, but we made it. We were welcomed with cheers from the other drivers who couldn't believe that we had actually done the whole course. We learned that more than a hundred drivers had failed to make it, many of them pros. Quite the experience.

Sometime in this period I met my soon to be wife. I was at a party with my then girlfriend, Bev, when Janice walked down the stairs with her friend Lynn, who had just finished warning her that I was a sucker for blondes. As soon as I saw her I left Bev and approached Janice, asking her to marry me. It said a lot that she told me to "f" off. I kept insisting that we were going to marry and wouldn't leave her alone. I soon learned that she had been going with this guy, Doug, for three years. He turned out to be an asshole and he wasn't pleased that I was out with his girl. As I drove her home one night he came screaming up, jumped out of his muscle car and started yelling at Janice. Her mother soon came out of the house to see what all the noise was about. That was the minute that Doug made the very stupid decision to spit in Janice's face. Her mother went ballistic and told him never to come around again and that basically ended their relationship. Despite how our marriage turned out I still believe that she would have been miserable with him.

Sometimes you get to consider all the facts to make a decision. Sometimes the decision is basically made for you. That's what happened with Janice and I. I never doubted that we were going to get married but I didn't have any details and we never discussed it, mostly because she was only fifteen at the time. We did love each other deeply and we were soon on dangerous ground physically. We were at my parent's place which they had rented when they moved out west, but the tenants had moved out so no one was there and we ended up in the bed in the master bedroom. Well, no surprise what happened next, but we had no protection. Stupid! Really stupid! It wasn't long before she was pregnant which back then was the kiss of death, so we got married August 16th, 1969 and Chris was born March 27th, 1970. Sure, we made the decision to get married but was there any real choice? Neither of us even talked about abortion. Her parents were devastated but they never questioned if we should get married. It was the only choice.

Here I should also touch on another one of those times where decisions are basically made by other people or circumstances. My parents had traveled out west on a vacation and when they returned they had decided to move. They put the house up for sale and started planning to move. I was working at the bank at the time and had no clue about living out west where they were going, but I also didn't like the idea that my family was leaving me alone. No doubt we would have had a deep discussion about what I could do for work out west, but it never happened because they could not sell the house. Winter was approaching so they decided that they would stay until spring when they would put the place up for sale again. Fate stepped in because then I met Janice. Any thoughts of moving with my family went out the window. Then she got pregnant. We got married then my parents rented their place and left for the west. It was the start of some very tough years because when Chris was born I had no family there to share my joy.

My first trip out to see them was in 1972. They were living in a rented house on Marshall Street in Kelowna. My Dad was working at Western Star in the factory, which was quite the shock because he had been a real estate broker back in Streetsville. He showed me their truck which had a camper, where I slept actually and their big boat that he was working on. It was a former tugboat on the coast and had been owned by a scuba diving club. It had two massive V-8 engines that he was rebuilding. My mother had gotten a job at the Bank of Nova Scotia pretty well the day they arrived in Kelowna. Looking back I wish I had paid a lot more attention to how their lives had changed and how happy they were. The old "live to work or work to live" adage. Dad said he loved getting off work at three-thirty, forgetting about work and going off to have fun. He had really changed from the workaholic he was before, something that I was well on my way to becoming. I went back home beginning to question what I was doing with my life, but I had a wife and a new young son, so what choices did I have?

From day one my marriage was abysmal. My Dad had got us a motel room for our wedding night. We were leaving for Cape Cod the next morning for our honeymoon. That night was certainly not what I had pictured for my wedding night. Janice would not even let me touch her. All I remember was sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed wondering what I had gotten myself into. The honeymoon wasn't much better. There was no romance and she started getting morning sickness. I felt she had brought it on herself so that she didn't have to make love to me. Little did I know or even dream that this was going to be the way our future was. Not what a hopeless romantic, which I am, needs.

The next major decision was buying our first house. Before I got married my buddy Russ and I lived in a very small apartment in a house on Main Street in Brampton which my father owned. I remember we had a TV and two lawn chairs. I don't even remember where we slept. After I got married of course Russ moved out and Janice moved in. Soon we also had a baby to take care of and the apartment felt even smaller. One of the tenants in the main part of the house moved out so Dad suggested that we move in, which we did. I think we went from paying ninety dollars a month to a hundred and fifty a month. Dad has some major challenges with their house in Streetsville. The people who had rented it had not paid the rent for several months and then moved out, leaving no oil for the furnace in the dead of winter, so the pipes froze and burst. It was very frustrating for my Dad to handle being on the other side of the country so he just wanted out of it, including the place we lived in. He suggested that we buy it. Being only twenty I had no idea if I would be able to get a mortgage or where I would come up with the down payment. My own bank wouldn't help me, as would no other bank or credit union. I finally managed to get private mortgage financing, a first mortgage and a second mortgage, both at much higher rates and we had to pay finder's fees on both, which were rolled into the mortgages. We paid Dad's asking price of nineteen thousand dollars, with a whopping hundred dollars down.

Living there was okay, but it was a challenge sharing a bathroom with the bachelor apartment, especially with a baby. I had done some work on the place, like refinishing the floors in our apartment and replacing the lead drainage pipe in the kitchen. We started looking for a place of our own and our agent, Andy Anderson, found a place on Fairglen Drive in Brampton. He said it was really rough but they had been trying to sell for months and they had just reduced their price a lot. I convinced Janice to at least take a look at it, but as soon as Andy opened the front door, the smell and the heat knocked us back. I thought Janice was going to refuse to step any further. That it was "rough" was an understatement. There were rugs nailed down to the floor in the hallways, which also smelled of urine from the animals. The living room was the ugliest black velvet wallpaper I had ever seen. The bathroom was half renovated with the sink propped up on two by fours. All the bedroom doors looked like they had locks that had been broken off so at one point it must have been a rooming house. The exterior had army green siding and the foundation had been painted bright purple. It was some ugly! Although it had a very large backyard, it backed onto the railway tracks which was a mainline. When a train went by you couldn't hear a thing. Janice wanted no part of it but I convinced her that we could renovate and make some money so we put in an offer and we got it - cheap. I did a lot of work over the years we were there. I think we bought it for something like $42,500 and we sold for something around $59,000. 

The next decision that was made, greatly affecting my life, but not one I was allowed to make, was when Janice learned she was pregnant again. She simply told me that her and her mother were going to a hospital in Toronto for her to have an abortion and that I had nothing to do with it. I was incensed that we weren't even going to discuss it, insisting that I had a legal right to be involved in this decision. She didn't give a damn. When I think what has happened with my kids I always wonder what this other child would have been like with me, but I'll never know.

We ended up buying or renting houses until the last one before we split. At every one of them I busted my butt doing renovations, all of which earned us more and more money, growing our original one hundred dollar investment. The last one was what had been the builder's home on Mara Crescent. It had a lot of upgrades, like a Jacuzzi in the bathroom, ceramic tiles, upgraded cabinets, french doors and a very large deck out back. I did a lot of landscaping, front and back, turned one of the bedrooms into an office with all tongue and groove paneling, added a door between the kitchen and the garage, built all kinds of shelves and a workbench in the garage and did a whole lot of decorating. Of course, as with all of our houses over the years, Janice never so much as picked up a paint brush. I did everything. When we bought the place it was a somewhat unusual deal. The owners wanted to build a home in Caledon so they wanted as long a closing as they could get, so we gave them six months which helped us to get the deal. We had sold our townhouse for the highest amount ever in that neighborhood and the buyers had no problem with the long closing. The old "buy low, sell high" saved our bacon on the last place. We bought at around $179,000 and by the time we moved in the same home, without all the upgrades, was going for $221,000, in fact, that's what our next door neighbors paid. After a year apart and paying all her bills I had had enough so we put the place up for sale. We got $189,900, a large drop from what they were before the crash, but we still didn't lose anything on it because of what we had paid.

For all the years we were married my wife had always said if we split everything would be fifty/fifty. I always wondered about that because every cent we had earned on the houses we had owned was exclusively from my work. She never did a thing. But I also hated lawyers so I knew I wouldn't challenge the fifty/fifty split. Suddenly when we sold the house, in which we now had about a hundred thousand dollars of equity, plus I had paid every mortgage payment on any houses we owned, she decided that she needed more to "support our daughter". Remember that she had sat on her ass for the last two years, not even looking for a job, so I had paid for everything plus I had done all the work. Regardless, she knew I would never agree to go to lawyers so she milked that to the hilt. I basically took my last cheque from my last client and gave her the rest. She got about ninety-five percent of everything plus things like Heather's IKEA furniture which had cost some three thousand dollars. She also took all of my Rosemond prints and even my thirty-five Charlie Brown books, something she had never even looked at. I was just happy to be done with it all.

The next major decision involved my mother. In 1991 she had been diagnosed with fifth stage melanoma and given a less than five percent chance of living more than six months. It was devastating news to the family. I had been apart from my parents for more than twenty years. My marriage was over. I found myself making appointments to see my kids. I was living in Markham where I didn't want to be. My work with my last client was coming to an end after six months. I made the difficult decision to move out west to be with my mother for whatever time she had left.  I just wanted to spend as much time with her as possible and wasn't really thinking beyond that. My parents came down with me, helped me sell some of my stuff and traveled back to BC with me, arriving in July of 1993. For some seventeen years they had been going south to Yuma for the winter, sometimes renting their place out while they were gone. We really didn't know if Mum would be okay to travel that October but she insisted she was. It was the last year they went because now that Mum had been diagnosed with cancer the health insurance was absurd, I think more than three thousand dollars just for her. After all the stress with Mum and moving the day they left for Yuma was one of the best days I've ever had. They left early in the morning. I was still in my pajamas. Had my coffee in my hand and sat down in Dad's chair and for the first time in my life didn't give a damn about anyone but me. I think it was the very first time I finally believed that my life was now up to me. No more doing everything for everybody else. It was wonderful.

Although things were fairly good it didn't take long for me to figure out that I had to find work pretty quick. My very expensive custom van sat in the driveway just waiting for the day they would come and get it because I could not afford the eight hundred dollar payments every month now. That lead to an almost fatal decision in January to drive to Ontario despite it being the dead of winter. I had a very expensive DJ system that I needed to sell and a guy in Bolton who owned a music store said he would sell it for me. I also really wanted to see the kids so off I went. I had talked to Heather to tell her I was coming down to see her. I knew that it was only a matter of time with the van so I might as well use it while I could. The drive was a disaster and I've covered it elsewhere so I won't go into all the details again but I almost didn't survive the trip. After all that after I dropped the system off in Bolton I couldn't find my daughter. I learned that they had hidden Heather away and were not going to let me see her. I ended up staying with my son for three weeks, hoping I would get to see her but nothing changed and I drove home through the tears. That was over twenty years ago and I have not seen or spoken to her since. I miss her every single day. On top of everything else the idiot in Bolton sold my three thousand dollar system and ripped me off for every dime.

I ended up staying in the Okanagan for fourteen years, most of it while my mother was amazingly still with us. She sure beat the odds. As I said earlier, sometimes you get to make your own decisions and sometimes they are made for you. That was the case when my Dad passed away in May of 2005. My mother had advanced Alzheimer's and could not be left alone. My brother and sister never offered so I had no choice but to move in to care for my Mum, what turned out to be the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I really had no choice other than to give up any thought of having my own life until she was gone. Through a number of incredibly dumb decisions by my sister my mother got a lot worse and finally died in late 2007. I was so angry with my sister that I could not go to my Mum's remembrance ceremony because I wanted to kill my sister. We have not spoken since.

After I had sold their place and gotten Mum into proper care I took over the mortgage on a manufactured home that was a disaster. I worked day and night, seven days a week, completely gutting it, redesigning the layout and rebuilding everything. When I was close to finished I talked to a few Realtors, all of whom said it was the nicest one anywhere and that it would fetch a really good price. Then disaster struck. The day before I was to list it one of the local Indian Chiefs came out in the local paper saying that anyone who bought a manufactured home on native land was "stupid". He said that the ridiculous prices that they were selling for was only because of Realtor's greed. He reminded everyone that there was no tenancy on any of the parks so they could be redeveloped and everyone thrown out with nothing. Overnight the market crashed. No Realtor would touch it for fear of being sued. No lawyer would touch it. Even the private mortgage I had arranged just in case I couldn't sell fell through. I was screwed. I owed money to people like Canadian Tire, Home Depot, Home Hardware and I had borrowed ten thousand dollars from my friend Crystal's parents, who saved my ass because I had no money to finish the place. With no possible sale, no mortgage to pay the bills and no way to survive now the stress was literally killing me. My doctor told me to find a way to get out from under all this stress or I would die. I was diabetic and stress kills.

After much thought and research I decided to go to Panama. I transferred the ownership of the place to my friend, Wade, to try to protect it from being seized by a creditor. My electrician had just broken up with his wife so I offered him a place to stay. After I decided to go to Panama I asked him if he wanted to rent the place by just paying the pad rent of three hundred and fifty dollars a month and he agreed. One thing I did warn him about was the roof. Although I had reinforced it wherever I could and coated it with a new material to stop leaks I told him that these roofs cannot take any snow load, especially if it is melting and getting heavy. I told him to keep an eye on it and clear it off of any snow buildup, as my father had done for thirty-five years with their place. I get a call in Panama from Wade telling me that the jerk had never touched the roof and it had caved in. He estimated it would cost about twenty thousand dollars to replace the roof, which obviously I didn't have. He ended up selling it to a young guy who was going to fix the roof himself. He was borrowing money from his parents and he needed me to take back a five thousand dollar mortgage which I really didn't want to do because I was selling it to him for less than half what I would have gotten before the crash. I didn't have a lot of choice though so I accepted it. Of course a few months later Wade phoned to tell me that the guy couldn't pay the five thousand so I lost that on top of everything else.

Panama was my first experience in a foreign country. As much as I had done months of research before I left it still doesn't really prepare you because it rarely talks about the bad stuff. I had decided on Boquete in the mountains, partly for the climate and how much it looked like BC.  I was developing a number of city portals for Panama and had registered domains for most major cities. The sites had many local features, such as classifieds and local photos but one of the strong points was local news. I knew that my limited language skills would never work for selling advertising or for getting into the local community to learn what was going on. This is the fateful point where I met Verushka playing pool. She would change my life in ways I could never imagine, not one of them good. Although she was only twenty-one and looked very sweet, she was actually a master criminal. At one point she was very down and I asked her what was wrong. She said that they had been evicted from their home and could not get into their new place for two weeks. When she said that meant they would be on the streets for two weeks I told her that they could move into the penthouse as long as they helped me with some of the painting. Within a couple of hours in moved her mother, two sisters, three children, two parrots and a dog, plus about a hundred boxes of whatever.

The two weeks came and went and she was just full of excuses as to what was going on. To make a long story short they ended up staying for two months and I only got them out by telling them we were going to fumigate so they had to leave for a few hours. Then we changed all the locks on the gates. They returned with the police in hand, telling them all kinds of lies and before I knew it I was arrested and handcuffed in the paddy wagon. Only my poor Spanish saved me when they realized that she was lying about everything. The police gave them until the next day to move out and when they left they stole everything from the penthouse apartment right down to the batteries out of the TV remote. I spent hundreds of dollars with the courts and translating and the police trying to get everything back but got nothing and was forced to return to Canada because I had twenty-one dollars in the bank. I had invested over eleven thousand dollars in the house I was renovating and hadn't seen a dime so I sold everything in the house to raise money to get back home.

I certainly appreciated the roof over my head that my cousin in Toronto offered me when she learned of my troubles in Panama, but I knew it was short term and I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I still couldn't go back to Kelowna with the mess I had left everything in. I didn't want to live in Toronto. I happened to meet Denise online and soon I moved to London, Ontario to be with her. I was so in love with her and thought we would be together forever. That ended badly when she made the choice to go and visit another guy in Ottawa that she had also met online. It really hurt and I was now at a loss as to what I was doing in London. After living in my car and at various homeless shelters I got a job at Home Depot and soon had an apartment and furniture and life was okay. I hated London though and knew I had to do something.

Modesto Penaherrera street, Cotacachi

As I approached retirement age and would receive my pensions I knew I could not afford to live in Canada. I was so sick of winter now, mostly because I wasn't snowmobiling, downhill or cross country skiing anymore like I did in BC so now winter just sucked. I knew I would never return to Panama so I started researching countries that were warmer and where the cost of living was less. After months of research I decided on Ecuador for a host of reasons. Obviously it was one of those major life decisions because I was leaving my home country. I would not see my kids or my five grand-kids, ever. I would no doubt die in a foreign country not surrounded by anyone who knew me for any length of time. There also was a sense of adventure with improving my Spanish and discovering a new country a lot different than Canada. And no more winter!

Although I made my share of decisions in Ecuador, like where to live, most of the things that happened, none of them good, were the result of decisions made by other people, whose goals seemed to be just to rip me off as much as possible not caring one bit about my well being. Numerous reasons forced me to return to Canada and that hasn't worked out well either. I am only surviving thanks to the good graces of a charity that is providing me a place to live at an amount I can afford for now.

Having learned a lot about how you can't possibly control everything in life I am far more cautious about what I do from here. I believe my choices are to return to the Okanagan, where I was truly happy although things would be much different now, or I'm looking at the Lake Chapala area in Mexico. There's about thirty thousand Expats there now, both Americans and quite a lot of Canadians. The question is whether I can afford to live there because our dollar is still absurdly low at around seventy-three cents, plus I will lose one of my pensions after I'm out of the country for six months. Regardless of my poor experience with Ecuador I'm researching if I can create the same type of city portals to make a little extra money to replace my lost pension. Stay tuned.


If I had a million dollars...

Remember the song by the Barenaked Ladies? I wasn't sure about writing this post, only because it will either jinx me or make for a most interesting story. I hope the latter.

We all question our dreams and those somewhat scary deja vu experiences. When we sense that we have done this before is it a parallel universe or we've been here before? Who knows? I think we all try to connect with movies we've watched or people we've met, anything to make sense of the experience. A few weeks ago I woke up with the most detailed, vivid memories of a dream in which I won the sixty million Lotto Max lottery. Not only did I win it but I was the only winner. I remember people saying over and over, "I can't believe you won sixty million dollars!" I do have a memory gap on how I actually got the money, but not on what I did with it.

The first thing I did was put twenty million away in a certificate that I couldn't touch, just so I wouldn't blow the whole thing. Next I chartered a private jet to get me back to Kelowna where I stayed in the most expensive suite at the Delta Grand Hotel. My first call was to Leanna Morgan who I had met on Facebook. We had talked for several hours about her divorce and her kids and I had told her that if I won a lottery I would hire her as a personal assistant. We met in my suite and I laid out the plan for what she had to do first.

She was to book the hotel's ballroom for the first available Saturday night. She was to try to get either the Foster Martin Band or the Mavericks to play for us if only by offering them an obscene amount of money. Next she was to arrange with the bank to put forty envelopes together, each with ten thousand dollars in cash in them. She was to contact everyone I knew and invite them to the party, telling them only that it was an event for me and nothing else. I figured that those who were good friends would show and those who were pretend friends wouldn't so the money would go to those who deserved it.

The night of the event quite a few people showed up, no doubt just curious as to what this was about. They were all busy munching on the free food and drink and dancing to the band. When the band took their first break I took the mic and thanked everyone for coming. I told them I wanted to talk to each of them, but before that I wanted to give them a little gift from the night. Leanna had recorded their names as they came in, then she wrote their names on the envelopes that contained the ten grand. I told them that I would call out their names to come up to the stage but that the only rule was that they were not allowed to open the envelope until they left that night. I didn't want to spoil the surprises nor did I want to put anyone in danger of being robbed with all that cash around. The first name I called was Cheryl Blum, someone I had actually never met personally but we were friends on Facebook. Again, memory is not clear but I think I gave out all the envelopes.

Other than that event I don't have a clear memory of what else I did. I do vaguely remember giving fifty thousand dollars to the churches in London who fed me back when I was living in my car. A hundred thousand to the Unity Project in London who gave me shelter. I wanted to do something for the older folks who came to the soup kitchen for breakfast in Cotacachi, Ecuador when I volunteered on Fridays. I understood that many of them were homeless, abandoned by their families. I wanted to provide housing and meals.

Although not part of my dream, I do know that I have always planned to give away most of whatever I won. I do struggle with what I would do for family, mostly my kids. They have abandoned me for twenty years and denied me access to my five grandkids, through no fault of theirs, but do they suddenly connect with me just because of the money? My parents are gone, of course, but do I give anything to my sister and brother, neither of whom deserve a dime? I really don't know. I guess I'll figure it out if I actually do win anything.

I'm not a deeply religious person, although I do muse on the mysteries of the universe. I do believe that there is a higher power but I don't like the fact that most of the wars in the world are based on religion, or people's interpretation of religion. Doesn't make sense that a God would allow these terrible things to happen or not punish the people who perpetrate them, like ISIS. I do hope that if someone or something is deciding things for us that they will shine their light on me this Friday and allow me to win if only because I plan to do a lot of good with the money. Here's hoping.

UPDATE - well, so much for deja vu or dreams. Obviously I didn't win the sixty million. I did win two free plays but they didn't amount to anything either. Now I just need to wait for the prize to be sixty million again, I guess and hope the dream comes true a little later. It's amazing to think about how many more things I would do if I won. Mostly more people and more worthy organizations I would give to so maybe sixty million isn't enough? lol

UPDATE - when you are hoping for something like this you look for a sign, right? I went out to our patio for a smoke Friday morning and turned on the radio, just in time to hear an interview with a lady at the lottery corporation talking about the big sixty million dollar jackpot that night. Well, I took that as a sign. I emailed one of the announcers and told him the story and promised them the lifetime membership at Tim Horton's he mentioned if I won. He replied with a request to buy him a nice lunch. For the first time in the twenty-seven years I've been playing the lottery I figured I had to go for it and increase the odds of winning, so I bought ten tickets plus I almost forgot to play the same numbers as I've been playing for all those years. Very princely and unaffordable fifty-five bucks, but what the hell.

Wrong! Not only did I not win but in all those tickets I only had one number at best. I also got a first look at my Quick Pick numbers and they were just horrible! Three numbers in a row. Duh! Last time I do that. As I said earlier though my dream was clearly that I won sixty million. Nothing less so the fact that there were two winners last night at thirty million each doesn't fit the dream. Oh, well. Maybe next time, right?

 


When BIG isn't BEAUTIFUL

Decades ago, back when I started to dabble in the computer business, everything was DOS based, the IBM operating system. It was awkward, cumbersome, counter-intuitive and basically just a pain. Getting anything done involved a knowledge of cryptic commands that took forever to learn. Bill Gates realized that we all needed a better way to interact with computers and helped to developed the Window's GUI (Graphical User Interface) based in large part of the work of Xerox and Apple. Windows 1.0 was born and would soon become the dominant desktop interface on more than ninety percent of the world's computers. Soon Microsoft starting flexing its wings and got involved in a growing trend to have local networks linking computers together with a central server. At the time the dominant player was Novell who had the majority of the networking market.

Back in those heady days I got involved in installing local networks. My first was using Novell, which came with thirteen extremely thick and complex manuals on how to setup a local network. I started on page one and six weeks later had a working office network. Over the course of several subsequent installs and although Novell was somewhat helpful, the best help came from Microsoft. Support was always free and incredibly responsive. On one install at midnight our time I had two Microsoft engineers on the phone helping me install a network card that wasn't working. Their research showed that I had to cut a track on the card, which back then cost over three hundred dollars. As we were discussing the potential danger of destroying the card I went ahead and cut the track. It worked and we all shared a laugh at my gutsy move.

Yes. Those were the "good old days" when Microsoft focused on their customers and did everything humanly possible to help them. Not only did they release better and better versions of Windows over the years, but they also developed a flagship desktop software program, Office, which also quickly became the worldwide standard in desktop productivity software. Among it's many integrated systems, Word and Excel quickly became the standard.

Over the last few years, ever since Bill Gate's departure as Chief Software Engineer, Microsoft has made a number of missteps. They completely missed the boat on the huge potential of search engines, effectively giving the market to Google. Their foray into music sharing with Zune was a disaster, giving the market to Apple's iPod and iTunes. They completely missed the obvious growth of smart phones and tablets. Even Windows now has a ridiculous amount of versions, and not since Windows XP, the de facto standard for years, have consumers readily understood what Microsoft is doing. Their branding has been pathetic and inconsistent at best. Their next version is widely expected to be Windows 9 and hopefully they'll be smart enough to roll all other versions into that moniker, such as Windows 9 Professional for business.

Besides all these obvious missteps the biggest change at Microsoft has been their total lack of concern over customer complaints, best illustrated by the disaster that is Office 2013. For some completely unknown and unexplained reason, the Office team took a giant step backward and released only three themes for this version, all of them virtually unusable. The response from the prerelease focus groups was terrible. No one liked the themes. Everyone found them to be very hard on the eyes, with many visually challenged users stating they could not distinguish the "colors" of grey and they developed serious eye strain. Despite this clear feedback Microsoft decided to unleash these themes on the public. Corporate users, who, partly because of volume licensing agreements that included upgrades, but more out of habit, began rolling out the "upgrade" to Office 2013, only to be met with howls from their users that they HATED the lack of themes. At great expense they were forced to roll their thousands of computers back to Office 2010. Hundreds of posts began showing up on Microsoft's forum under the heading "how to change the themes in Office 2013". The early post from Microsoft ignored what users were saying and simply showed how to select from the three themes, all of which were horrible. Soon visually challenged users were complaining that they couldn't even use the new version because of the lack of contrast. Most damaging were the posts from corporate IT people saying they would not roll-out Office 2013 until the themes from Office 2010 were restored. New users quickly began insisting that their new computers came with Office 2010 and not Office 2013.

You would think that with this massive and predictable response to the lack of themes that Microsoft would jump on this and get the Office Team working overtime to restore the themes, right? Not so. Instead the second post from Microsoft was that they were measuring "pain points", but did not anticipate releasing any upgrades to restore the themes. The frustration and anger being expressed on this forum topic is unprecedented in Microsoft's history. Many people are predicting the demise of Office and even Microsoft itself, but Microsoft continues to show incredible arrogance by refusing to respond to the complaints. There are even suggestions that so many programmers have left the company that they no longer have the resources to solve the problem, regardless of how pressing the issue. No one is asking Microsoft to reinvent the wheel here. They just want the previous themes to be restored. How difficult is that?

Microsoft grew to be the behemoth it is today by listening and responding to the needs of customers. Without the vision of Bill Gates the company has clearly lost its way. They've invested millions, if not billions, in failed ventures, often long after the market has already been captured by others. Witness Bing. Internet Explorer, once the dominant browser, has now fallen to the least used browser, allowing Chrome to now dominate the market. Apple has run away with the iPhone and iPad markets because Microsoft failed to pay attention to what customers wanted. With the release of the first iPhone Ballmer stated that it wouldn't capture more than one or two percent of the market. Yeah, right. How's that for "vision"?

Are we really watching the fall of the once mighty Microsoft? They may well still have billions in the bank to keep them afloat, for now, but if they continue to make the same costly missteps even money in the bank won't save them. If I were a Google I would be investing every penny I could in developing an Office alternative. That would sound the death knell for Microsoft because it has always been their cash cow.


The lonliest time of the year

Although the popularly held belief that suicide rates increase at Christmas time is a myth, it can be a very difficult time for those of us alone at this family time of the year.

With the increasing divorce rate, blended families, non traditional families and family members spread all over the globe, the idea of mom and dad and the kids waking up Christmas morning to see what Santa brought is also becoming a myth. Most holiday movies show the wonders of being in what was a traditional family and the joys of being all together at Christmas. This is not the reality for millions of people.

Divorced Mums and Dads struggle over who gets the kids when, often one for Christmas Eve and one for Christmas Day, or Christmas Day is split between having the kids in the morning and the Christmas dinner. It would be great if Mom and Dad could put their differences on hold for just one day of the year and spend it as a family, but this is just too awkward (who gets presents for who?) and may well create a false hope in the children that Mom and Dad are getting back together.

With the divorce rate in Canada fifty-four percent that means that over half the population faces a Christmas season changed drastically from that they had as a family. This can turn what was the most joyous time of the year into the most stressful and depressing time. Traditions are gone. The family unit has been ripped apart. Friends don't know who to side with and usually opt for no one. Kids are shuttled around between parents. Who gets the better gifts for the kids? Who comes to dinner?? Even the weather can become a factor if there is long distance travel involved.

Personally, Christmas was one of my favorite times of the year for so many reasons. It started with the tree. In twenty-three years of marriage we always had a real tree. For me this wasn't an option. Although lots of fun, I started a tradition that became very expensive over the years. Not only did we have to have the biggest most gorgeous tree, but every year I decorated it with a different theme. I was never a fan of the traditional red and green lights and a mishmash of ornaments. Our tree had to be special. Our house was always the gathering place for friends and family and they looked forward to seeing what I had done this year. The problem, of course, was that, unlike most people who drag out the decorations from storage, I had to go out and buy all new everything once I decided on a theme. And, of course, no one would ever let me get away with repeating my themes. Some years it was just a complete change in colour and I rarely mixed them unless they were complimentary. Then there were tress like an Angel tree, a Charlie Brown tree (my favorite), all birds and many, many more.

Christmas Eve was always a hoot. Although my parents, brother and sister had moved west right after we got married, we always had my much opinionated Aunt Ann and the in-laws. It was never officially Christmas Eve until my aunt and my darling father-in-law got into a heated argument over something. It never amounted to any animosity and I think they looked forward to the challenge of a good debate. In later years the kids got to open one gift on Christmas Eve. After everyone was gone Santa got to work assembling whatever gifts he brought.

Christmas morning, which always came far too early, had many traditions as well. The kids knew they weren't allowed downstairs until Mum and Dad were up, so waking us was the first job. Then we would all rush downstairs and the kids would be squealing with delight when they saw their gift from Santa. I'd get the coffee and Bailey's, another Christmas tradition, for Mum and I and we would then open our gifts, one at a time. Chris was originally in charge of handing them out so that we each took turns and the mantle was then passed to Heather when she was older. We were careful to note who the gifts came from so that the kids could thank them.

As the kids played with whatever they got and the wrapping paper was gathered up so that no one would step on anything and break it, I cooked a huge Christmas breakfast which included the traditional Malt toast. Usually another coffee and Bailey's, then the turkey went in the oven and the clean-up started, getting ready for dinner. I cooked most of the Christmas dinners, but I do remember going to the in-laws a couple of times over the years.

For several years we also had a Boxing Day tradition of going to our friends, Zak and Joyce, where they always had a good crowd of people, most of whom we didn't know. My two favorite Boxing Days were the year we had got Chris the football player who kicked field goals. I'm not sure the kids ever got near it because all the fathers loved it. The other was the year Zak got new cross-country skis and told me to go ahead and try them. What he forgot to tell me was about the river at the bottom of the hill. In the pitch dark I went zooming down the hill only to become airborne as I launched off the river bank and ended up lodged in the snow on the other side and then heard the horrible crack as the skis snapped under my weight. Walking back to the house and presenting him with the pieces of his new skis was not a great experience. I did offer to replace them but I can't remember now if I ever did.

Christmas changed drastically after we separated, but, in a good way I had moved west so everything was going to be much different anyway. I don't think I could have handled being alone that first Christmas if I had still been in Brampton. I had new traditions with my own family and that helped. My parents still went south for the winter so I never got to have Christmas with them but going up to Revelstoke to go snowmobiling at Christmas became a new tradition. I still missed my kids terribly and Christmas Day was always a depressing time for me no matter where I was.

Christmas, 2007 was spent on a bus to Vancouver and then planes to Boquete, Panama. Arriving in Panama on Boxing Day I was very surprised to see just how many Christmas lights and decorations there were everywhere. It was something I had certainly not expected. That year and the following year though, Christmas without snow is just not Christmas.

Since my return to Canada Christmas has not been great. Last year and this year in particular I spent it totally alone. I did put some dollar-store decorations on my door and railings, but I have nothing in my apartment. No tree. Nothing to say it's Christmas. Why would I? No one is going to see them other than me. It's mostly seniors in my building so they're all going to be with their families for Christmas. Not me. Knowing that I have a son and daughter and five grandchildren who I've never met. not that far from me here, makes Christmas all the more difficult. My children seem to have forgotten all the wonderful traditions we had for twenty-three years and they deny me the same joy.

If you know someone who is alone this Christmas, give them a call just to say hi or maybe even invite them to your Christmas dinner. They will really appreciate it. I know I would.

Merry Christmas!


Never give up

In these days of horrible customer service and big companies who try to throw their weight around and ignore their customers it's important to never give in to their tactics and just keep being a pain in their ass until they eventually listen to you. This past year I've had some real challenges but I can quickly become a pit-bull when people try to ignore me. These are just some of the fights, some large and some small, that I won by persevering.

logo_streamWrongful Dismissal

Stream Global Services wrongfully dismissed me from my lousy job as a call centre agent last November. They claimed to have fired me for cause, which was a lie. They tried to get my EI denied, but I filed an appeal with the Board of Directors with EI and it didn't even get to a hearing. They approved my claim immediately.

I filed a complaint under the Employment Standards Act for their failure to pay me notice and just over a year later I got not only my two weeks' notice, but a portion of the commissions they didn't pay me.

Self Employment Program

logo_SEB_programThis was one of the most protracted fights I've ever had. After applied to take the program in London I was met with the most arrogant, ignorant man I have ever met in my life. He lied about emails and phone calls that never happened, all just to protect his ass. I appealed to the Ministry of Colleges and Universities and they bought all his lies and confirmed my denial into the program. I filed a complaints with the Ontario Ombudsman's Office and, at first, they bought the lies passed on from the Ministry, but after an hour and a half phone call with a senior official at the Ombudsman's office they went back to the Ministry and a further investigation turned up all the lies that had been told. I got a letter of apology from the Ministry and they allowed me to apply again through the St. Thomas office and even paid my cab fare there. I have now been approved to take the course at the St. Thomas office and they are paying my transportation for the entire course. If I am approved for the program I will receive $423 a week to aunch my business, which will certainly help.

 

Bell Canada

logo_BellLike all the big telecoms they are raising prices, nickel and diming us to death. I guess they need us to pay for their takeover of Astral and Maple Leaf Sports. We already pay some of the highest rates for TV, cell phones and internet in the world. Bell had a license to print money by having a monopoly for decades, all on the back of the taxpayers but their greed knows no bounds. They assault us with a ridiculous amount of advertising and force us to buy packages with channels we don't want. Thanks to their cronies at the CRTC everything they wat is virtually rubber stamped. Bell has killed hundreds of good customer service jobs in Canada and gone with cheap offshore call centres. They are one of the worst corporate citizens out there.

I was sick of these ongoing charges so I contacted another company who, of course, were going to provide an even better service at a much lower cost. Having worked at one of Bell's horrible call centres I knew the games they play so I called to cancel. The next thing I know they are sending me a new HD-PVR receiver for free and dropping my bill an astounding $40 a month with no change in service, in fact, they increased my data cap to 95GB, twice what I had. It pays to fight.

logo_RexallRexall Drugs

They are right around the corner from me so naturally I have been dealing with them for almost three years since I moved here. Not sure it's a great thing, but all the staff know my voice on the phone. Their delivery driver, Nancy, was great and always brought me extra things like a bag of milk or a loaf of bread when I needed it. Most of my medications are covered under my drug plan, but my needles aren't, and they're expensive so I've always put them on my MasterCard with no problems. Monday I phoned to order my needles and was told that they can no longer charge my credit card. I could only write a cheque, which I don't use, or pay cash, which I rarely have. The local staff were getting a lot of complaints about this new policy, no doubt instituted by some bean-counter at Head Office.

I called their customer service line and had a pointless conversation with an agent who didn't even know they had changed their policy. After putting me on hold forever she promised that either the local store manager or their Regional Manager would call me back "right away". I was out of milk so I said I needed to know if they were delivering or not. Naturally I got no call.

I walked to the closest pharmacy, Shoppers Drug Mart, and met with the pharmacist. He was very pleasant and said there would be no problem charging anything to my credit card or bringing me things like milk or anything else. I bought my needles and he threw in a sample box of needles which really helps. He said he would phone Rexall and get all my prescriptions, just over seven hundred dollars a month. Wednesday I finally get a call from the Rexall Regional Manager and I told her it was too late and I had moved to Shoppers. Ironic that she did not offer to change their policy back. I suggested that no company in this economy, especially those in depressed London, could afford to lose customers and she agreed.

logo_DellDell

Way back in May of this year I was having an incredibly tough time trying to get a new keyboard for my Dell laptop. This is a computer I have had for seven years and seven keyboards have had to be changed because the writing wears off. Finally I managed to reach a lady in Michael Dell's office and the next day I received a new keyboard by courier, free. In one of our conversations she asked if I was considering getting a new computer, but I said there was no way I could afford it. I then got a call from a sales rep in Toronto who offered to sell me the computer I wanted at less than half price. An offer I could not refuse. I got the computer a few days later, and the trouble started. I could not adequately describe all the problems I had but they were things I had not seen in thirty years of computer consulting. Thus started the long and very trying saga with Dell.

A gazillion emails, two replacement computers, hours on the phone with Tech Support and it looks like I finally have a functional computer. I figure I've wasted at least three hundreds hours transferring data back and forth, transferring and registering my programs and on and on. Dell's own backup program, which would have made all this much easier, didn't work. Three months of back and forth emails on this one issue and we got nowhere. The backup finally worked yesterday. I hated not having a backup since September 13th. Things do go wrong at the worst possible time so I was very nervous all the time.

While this sounds like a litany of complaints about Dell, what I do sincerely appreciate is that they never gave up on me. Some were more helpful than others but no one tried to blow me off. They worked tirelessly to make this right and I sincerely appreciate it. If you bought a dud at a Future Shop I highly doubt you would get this kind of amazing warranty service.

Yes, it's sad that we have to fight so hard for our consumer rights. That's why a recent survey showed that ninety-five percent of people are unhappy with the customer service they receive. It's no wonder.


Reflections on my 64th birthday

I suspect that, like many people, I am not where I expected to be at this stage of my life. In my romantic thoughts of youth I expected to have a loving family with a partner by my side, my kids and grand kids sharing their lives with me and maybe some travel once in a while. From the age of nineteen I worked hard both at my career and renovating whatever home we were in, building equity for that day in the future when we would downsize.

One of my favorite sayings has always been "life is what happens while you are making other plans". My life has been that saying personified. Although we are in control of some things in our lives, like what we do for a living or where we live, most things are a result of things beyond our control and how we deal with what happens unexpectedly.

After a life best described as what most would call "normal", a long term marriage of twenty-three years, two kids, a nice home and two cars, two things happened to change the direction of my life. The first was realizing that I was trapped in a loveless marriage that had no chance of getting any better. After a year of living apart but paying all the bills for our last house, while my wife sat doing nothing to help, not working and not even filing for unemployment, I knew it was time to end it. The other was my mother being diagnosed with fifth stage melanoma and being given only a five percent chance of surviving more than six months.

My parents, brother and sister, had moved out West in 1970 and had I not met my wife and she got pregnant I might well have gone with them and my life would obviously have been completely different. Given where I am today it would have no doubt been a lot better, for many reasons. Back then the Okanagan was full of so much opportunity, mostly in Real Estate. The prices compared to Ontario were insane. I wanted to form a syndicate, buy up properties, renovate them and put them up for rental. Homes on the lake that I could have bought for less than two hundred thousand dollars were soon selling in the millions. They weren't making any more lakefront so I knew demand would force the prices up and I was right.

With the exception of a couple of visits back and forth and taking the whole family out to Expo 86, I missed having my parents be part of my life. It wasn't my decision to move away from us but my feelings about that all changed when my mother was first diagnosed in 1991. The thought of losing my mother and not spending whatever time she had left with her made me feel selfish and guilty, especially when my own life in Ontario was falling apart. I made the decision to move out West in 1993, partly accepting that my failed marriage was over and partly to be with my mother during her last days.

When I left Ontario I naively thought that my kids would come out to visit us, especially because of my mother's failing health and because we had such a wonderful time when both of them came out for a three week vacation in 1986. As I said a tearful good-bye to my daughter I was shocked that she told me to stay out West because she knew how bad my marriage was and she said she had never seen me happier. I didn't listen and returned to Ontario mostly because I couldn't stand the thought of being apart from her. It was a mistake.

What I never anticipated was that my kids would abandon me for the next seventeen years, something I have deeply regretted every single day since I moved. My mother did beat all the odds and lived until 2007 although she suffered from Alzheimer's the last few years.

The next truly life-changing thing that happened was when my Dad died in my arms in 2005. Not only was this the most traumatic time in my life but it also sent my life into a downward spiral of bad decisions, bad timing and incredible bad luck.

Although prior to his death my father had struggled with caring for my mother, he had done nothing to get her into a care home where she belonged. His drinking escalated and he called me every night crying, telling me that he could not take this anymore, but he was consumed by guilt at putting my mother in a home. Finally he agreed to sell their place although he had no plan as to what to do when it sold. Their home was very dated and he asked me if I would renovate it for sale. I spent four of the toughest months of my life working long days, seven days a week, with them calling me from Revelstoke where they were staying with my sister, constantly pressuring me as to when they could come home.

After my father passed away and given my mother's health we decided it would be traumatic for her to lose her husband and move, so we took the house off the market. I was elected to move in to care for her, although I hoped this would be short term until I got her into a care facility. It wasn't. For months and months I did everything humanly possible to get her into a care facility with no luck. Her condition was deteriorating rapidly and she was put on an emergency first available spot basis. Unfortunately there were three hundred and fifty people on the same basis, so I had to spend my days harassing anyone and everyone who could get her into a facility. Finally I got a call that there was a spot for her and as much as it broke my heart I had to lie to her to get her to go. The day I left her there was the saddest day of my life.

How my sister ended up killing our mother by pulling her out of the care facility is another story, but it's enough to say I have not spoken to her since and I don't forgive her.

After the house sold I moved into a place where, no sooner had I got there than the by-law officer told me I had to move. On short notice I couldn't really find anything decent, but I did find one basement apartment that wasn't terrible in Kelowna. I was on my way to give the landlord the first month's rent when, for some unknown reason I checked my email. There was an email from my Real Estate agent telling me about a place In the Princess MHP that was about to go into foreclosure. He said it was a mess but I could probably just take over the private mortgage, renovate it and sell it for a nice profit.

I ended up losing my deposit on the basement apartment in Kelowna and I moved into the disaster in Princess. Even with the pad rent I was paying less than the basement apartment and I had a place of my own, albeit a mess. Thus began fourteen months of very long days, seven days a week, completely gutting the place and redesigning the layout and rebuilding it from nothing but the shell. As I neared completion I started getting opinions of value from several local Realtors. Without exception they all said it was one of the best manufactured homes in the valley and they all priced it around $159,900. At the time I had been researching other places to renovate and had found three ideal properties so I wanted to sell quickly and firm offers on at least one of these other properties. I listed the place for $139,900, much against the wishes of my Realtor.

The day before it was to hit the market one of the local Indian Chief's came out in the local paper stating that anyone who bought on native land was "stupid" because there was no long term tenancy and all the parks would be closed for redevelopment with no compensation to the owners of the homes. Overnight the market collapsed. No Realtor, lawyer or bank would touch a property on Native land. Even worse, the commitment I had for a private mortgage, just in case the place didn't sell, fell through. Even the Band's own credit union wouldn't touch financing. My world fell apart and the stress was killing me.

My doctor told me to get out from under this stress or it would kill me. The cold, grey winters were starting to get to me so I started researching somewhere warmer and settled on Panama. Another huge mistake. I left my place in the care of my electrician friend who I had let move in when he split with his wife. Another huge mistake.

Long story, but I ended up getting ripped off for everything I owned in Panama, plus the guy I left in charge of my place back in Westbank let the snow build-up on my roof, something I had warned him about, and the roof collapsed resulting in twenty thousand dollars worth of damage. If the place was unsellable before, it sure was worse now. I ended up getting less than half of what I would have gotten if I'd sold it before the collapse.

I managed to sell everything I had left in Panama and returned to Toronto to stay with my cousin. Another long story but I met a girl from London on the internet who eventually came to Toronto and for me it was love at first sight. I ended up moving to London to be with her. Another huge mistake. She ended up screwing around on me with, surprise, surprise, a guy she met on the internet. My world had been shattered yet again and now I found myself stuck in a place I loathed.

London has not been kind to me. My wacko landlady threatened to seize all my stuff so I ended up moving out with no idea where I was going. I ended up sleeping on the vacant office floor of a friends and finally got into the Centre of Hope, only to be turfed out because Ontario Works screwed up my paperwork. I then went to The Mission men's shelter, a disgusting, filthy, dangerous place. After also getting kicked out there I ended up at the Unity Project, a wonderful place full of caring people. With their help I managed to get a job at Home Depot and eventually got my own apartment. It didn't last. My contract ended at Home Depot and I was laid off along with a whole bunch of other people. I couldn't pay for my apartment but I got a call from London Housing that a place had opened up in my current building.


The Wake-up Call

For most of my adult life I have woken up at 6:00 am. Not 5:59 am or 6:01 am, but on the dot of 6:00 am. It is a phenomenon I have never understood, despite much research on the internet but with no answers.

When I moved out West back in 1993, traveling through Canada's various time zones, I woke up at 6:00 am wherever I was at the time. For several months after arriving in Westbank and staying with my parents, sleeping on the beach, I woke up at 6:00 am despite the three hour time difference. When I moved to Panama, where the time zone is one hour different, I still awoke the first day at 6:00 am in the hotel I stayed at, despite having slept several hours on the bus trip from Panama City to Boquete. When I returned to Toronto in March of 2009 and stayed with my cousin I woke up at 6:00 am the very next day even though I had not managed a wink on the noisy bus to Panama City or the flights to Toronto on the same day.

Another confusing fact is that it does not matter what time I went to sleep or how much sleep I've had, even if I have napped during the day, fallen asleep watching TV or stayed up late. When I worked a factory job out West, starting at 7:00 am and finishing at 3:30, I would come home, have a couple of hours sleep, then go out, often not getting to bed until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, yet I still woke at 6:00 am.

Last night we put our clocks back one hour and one would think that I would wake up at 7:00 am, only yesterday what was 6:00 am, but this morning I woke up at exactly 6:00 am new time. How my body is aware of the one hour difference continues to puzzle me.


Best birthdays

Having had sixty-four of them you would think more of them would stand out in my mind. Obviously where you are, who are your friends and your family situation all affect how you celebrate your birthday. Maybe it's the ravages of aging but I don't remember any particular birthday as a kid or even during my marriage.

My first memorable birthday was while I was first staying with my parents in Westbank. My Dad came and woke me up early and said there was a phone call for me. It was my darling friend, Lenny, calling me all the way from Turkey to wish me a happy birthday. Now that's special.

No sooner had I hung up the phone on her than I got a full-face cream pie from my Dad. My BFF, Wade, had put him up to it. Nice start to the day. Only Wade could dream this up and I wondered what he had in store for me for the rest of the day.

At the time I was working at a client, Central Valley Trucking and I didn't even think they knew it was my birthday. Sure enough Wade had delivered a pie the day before and they nailed me with it. Made for a stinky day at work and I was happy to hit the shower when I got home.

The plan was to meet at the Corral so naturally I was on my guard. The darling manager, Meryl, said she wanted to see me in the back pool room. You guessed it. They nailed me with yet another cream pie. The problem was all I could do was wipe off what I could. What was left just turned sour and stunk like hell. My lovely dance partners kept telling me how gross I smelled. Thanks, Wade.

The next memorable birthday was my fiftieth. Unbenounced to me, my friend Karen Falloon had worked tirelessly to arrange a surprise party for me at the back of what I think was Dakotas. The ruse was we were meeting my parents for dinner. When we got there she asked me if I wanted to play some pool at the back while we waited for them. The doors opened and there was my parents and at least fifty of my friends, some of whom had traveled a long way to be there. It was a wonderful surprise and one of my best birthdays ever.

Another great one was at the Corral, of course. Lots of my close friends and my dance partners were all there and insisted on buying me a shot. After about thirteen of them my memory of the rest of the night is very fuzzy. The funniest part was a couple of days later went I went to the Corral everyone was congratulating me on how well I rode the mechanical surfboard. The only problem was I had no memory of it. Amazing that I was so drunk and still managed not to fall off.

cake_03Yet another one of Wade's excellent cakes.

Birthday celebrations have certainly gone downhill since I left the Okanagan. The only birthday I had in Panama was spent having a few beers and playing pool.

Since returning to Canada and especially in London where I have no friends birthdays have just been another day with little meaning except that I'm getting older. No fun at all.


Diabetes - PLEASE heed this warning

Nine million Canadians are living with some form of diabetes. An estimated two million Canadians are undiagnosed. The number of people diagnosed with diabetes is projected to increase 56% over the next ten years. Juvenile diabetes has increased forty percent over the last ten years, mostly because of poor diet, physical inactivity and obesity.

Back in 2004, after I had crashed my dirt bike, tore up my ankle and couldn't do any physical activity for a year, I gained fifty pounds and I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. When I was able to return to my many activities I lost the weight quickly and my diabetes was managed with only Metformin.

In late 2007 circumstances led to a high level of stress and my sugars were literally "off the charts". My doctor put me on high doses of insulin and my sugars moderated. He told me I was a poster boy for a heart attack and I needed to get out from under the stress or it would kill me. I moved to Panama and my diabetes was managed with Metformin and daily insulin in relatively small doses.

Circumstances led to my return to Canada and, at one point, I found myself living on the streets, unable to afford my medications for six weeks. I did not know at the time that I was doing irreparable damage to the nerves in my feet. I developed severe diabetic neuropathy, a burning, excruciating pain for which there is no cure. A host of medications, plus huge increases in my daily insulin, do little to mitigate the pain. The only "relief" is when I sleep, but obviously I can't enjoy it because I am asleep. I wake to the vicious cycle of every step being painful.

I have gone from a healthy, ridiculously active person who hiked, biked, danced, roller-bladed, skied (cross-country, downhill and water skied), played racquetball and tennis, and even para-glided, to someone who can barely walk with the aid of a cane. All this in only a couple of short years. My doctors offer little hope and just tell me to learn to live with the pain.

I cannot urge you enough to get tested, regardless of your age. People often think that diabetes is an old person's disease, but this is not true. Diabetes can reduce your life expectancy by more than ten years. It can result in amputations. It is a leading risk factor for heart attacks. If diagnosed early enough diabetes can be managed, not cured, but the risks of amputations and early death can be greatly reduced. Don't ignore the warning and be part of that two million people undiagnosed. It is much better to know and be able to manage it.

 


So Much for the "Power" of Social Media

There was a job back in Kelowna with a company owned by the son of a colleague I had done business with many years ago. I thought it might be interesting and maybe help me get the job if I asked all my friends and colleagues to send a simple email to him with the subject line "Hire Gary Jones".

At the very least I thought getting maybe thirty or forty emails would help to get me noticed. Okay, so some of my 136 friends on Facebook don't know me well enough to send what looks like a recommendation, but a lot of them do. Not only that but a lot of them are friends I have helped out when they needed it; everything from help with moving to renovating to taking them out on my boat. A simple one-line email wasn't too much to ask, I thought.

No such luck. It backfired on me big time when all he got was TWO emails. That's right - TWO! If he read into it that I had asked all my many friends and colleagues in the Okanagan to send him a simple email, and the response was a big fat TWO, then it's not surprising that I never heard from him again.

Given my current desperation to get the hell out of London and back to my beloved Okanagan, this experience sure brought me down, which is the last thing I needed right now.