Happy New Year!!!!!

Happy New Year everyone! Ours will be a quiet evening at home watching the Ball drop at New York midnight (our 9:00 PM) on TV. After that it will just be wait and see how long we stay up!

Christmas Letter 2018

Man, is it Christmas already? This year has gone by so fast but they say that is what happens in your mid seventies!

We had no big home projects this year other than Norma's ever present struggles with her gardens and lawns which always seem to take up as much time as she wants to spend on them. The drainage on the rear bank is still corralled by all the drain pipes and sumps we had installed a few years ago to send it on it's way down the driveway, under the road and into the ocean. I just have to climb up the bank every three or four months to ensure all three sumps are empty of sand. We really enjoy having that year round stream behind the house but it does require maintenance.

Brooks' fencing and deck business is doing very well, in fact he is almost getting too much work which is OK because it lets him refer the jobs he really does not want or does not have time for to other people.  He and LindaLee have been on several mini vacations, this year's destinations have been Seattle, Nashville and Vegas.

We, on the other hand, only got away once and that was to our great niece Karen's wedding in Lacombe, Alberta. The groom is Irish and their home is in Ireland so as you can imagine the wedding had it's share of Irishmen (and ladies). The venue was on Karen's brother's farm and it was a blast that lasted several days! We made a slow trip out in the motorhome and an equally slow trip back. The return trip would have been longer but the forest fire smoke forced us to cancel our planned time in the Okanagan. As it was, we were gone almost a month!

The grandkids made it up in the summer. They are both incredibly busy but Jayde took time off to come up from Vancouver with Brooks and Sierrah caught a ride from Victoria with Caroline, her other grandma. It was a fun couple of days and so great to see these young adults (and fun to see Carolyn again)!

Norma had one eye worked on to remove a pesky cataract and add a new lens and I had a minor heart thing, A-Fib, which they tried to get back into rhythm with an electric shock. It didn't work but my specialist assures me that no one has ever died from A-Fib so I have added a blood thinner a day to my diet and am living with it. Not a big deal as I didn't know I had it (or even how long I have had it) in the first place.

I don't know where the rest of the year went. I know we spent more time relaxing, or "chillin" as they call it now than we used to but that is probably a good thing.

We are staying home again this winter for a couple of reasons, the primary one being my reluctance to spend any of my hard earned Union pension in a country governed by Trump.

So, Merry Christmas to all and as always, "Life Is Good"!

Norma's Two Week Eye Checkup

We drove down to the eye doctor at noon today and the verdict was, "Your left eye is 100%! Do you want the other one done?" The right eye is in better shape than the left one was so they decided to wait until January to make the decision. She has an appointment on January 3. She is feeling much better about the whole thing and is not using her glasses as the prescription for the left eye is now way off.

November 22, 1963

Cataract Surgery Day Three

It has been three days since Norma had the surgery on her left eye. The vision recovery has not been as quick as we (I) hoped for as some articles I read indicated results should be noticeable within hours or by the next day. Such was not the case as she still had an opaque "film" over the eye and it looked like she was looking through a shower curtain. She was still experiencing a "gritty" feeling on the eyeball. Her friend Kelly and I convinced her to call the doctor this morning if it did not improve overnight.

Well, it seems to have improved a bit. She says the film is almost gone and she can read the guide on the TV screen this morning and can read the print in a magazine so it is a definite improvement over yesterday. She wants to wait until after the weekend before she calls.

So far it has been a positive experience even with recovery being a little slower than I had hoped for. Everyone's eyes are different so everyone's experience will be a little different I suppose. Stay tuned!

Norma's Cataract Surgery

Norma had her nervously anticipated cataract surgery today! We are back home and she is issuing orders! It went without a hitch. It was cone at the new hospital in Comox as that is where our eye doctor is. The actual surgery took about twenty minutes and she is now sporting a nice new Bausch & Lomb lens in her left eye. She has to take a month of eye drops but in a week or two she should start seeing the positive effects of the new lens! 

They will then discuss doing the right eye which is not as bad as the left one was.

Mid Terms

The election is over. Am I happy? I am happy the Democrats regained The House which will help curtail the madman in charge so that is a positive step. I cannot understand people voting Democrat for the House and Republican for the Senate but I seldom understand Republican voters anyway.

I am sad about the outcome of a few races, Texas Senator, Florida Governor, Georgia Governor and a few others. It was refreshing to see so many young, progressive, female Democrats elected to the House, that is a step in the right direction.

I would not really be happy unless every Republican is escorted form the building with their personal belongings in a cardboard box but this was a step in the right direction.

Voter suppression was rampant! The worst cases were the First Nations people who were prevented from voting because their villages lacked street addresses and Dodge City where the polling place was moved to a mile outside the bus routes. There will be many more like the polling place that had no way to plug in the voting machines.

Fall Back

Unless you are in one of a couple of states or in Mexico, it was time to set your clocks back last night. I forgot to do it but we are retired so what is the difference anyway? Well, it's done now!

We Planted The Sign!

It has been a long time since Brooks gave us this beautiful plasma cut stainless steel address sign he made for us but we finally got it planted at the end of the driveway! It started out as a Christmas gift but we never got a chance to pick it up so it turned into a birthday gift for me in April and then a birthday gift for Norma in July! We finally pecked it up a few weeks ago.

I tested the dirt at the end of the driveway and found it to be hard packed with large rocks and very tough digging, it was going to take a younger back or some heavier equipment. We contacted the guy who is going to do our lawn cutting next year and he said he would be happy to dig the holes. And yesterday he did just that!

We (Norma and him) carried the sign down while I ran to the hardware store for some quick set concrete that we poured in around the legs and added water. That sign is not going anywhere.

It is a great addition to our house. Thanks Brooks and LindaLee!

It still needs a bit of landscape work but here it is!

Lawn Mowing Economics And Donald Trump

We brought home our EGO 56 Volt Rechargeable lawn mower and our ECHO 58 Volt trimmer yesterday, giving our bank balance a $1,300 hit. Our friend Rae pointed out that we were paying our lawn mowing service just under $50 per hour for doing it this summer. This was emphasized yesterday evening when two of them showed to give it the last mowing of the season. I started timing when I heard the mower and trimmer start and they were done in a record eight minutes! The bill for this will be $52 after taxes. Two guys for eight minutes is sixteen minutes work which amounts to almost $200 per hour! Enough is enough, I could probably hire a lawyer for that!

The best move would have been to buy the equipment next April when we need it rather than now as that would have started the warranty period six months later. The woman who sold us the equipment explained that as there is no lawn mowing equipment manufactured in Canada, they have to buy from the USA and Trump had just put tariffs on this. If we waited until after the new year it would cost us at least 10% more.

I think buying our own equipment and hiring a $20 per hour guy is a better deal in the long run. Who knows, I might even push the mower around myself the odd time (it is self propelled so it might pull me around). I will not tackle the steep bank though, I have already fallen down it a couple of times.

I am also hoping the simplicity of the heavy duty rechargeable electric will pay off. No hassle with gas, oil, tune ups, etc. Plus the mower can be folded up and hung on the wall. 





The ECHO trimmer comes apart so a hedge trimmer or a blower can be added. Those items may be Christmas gifts for each other.