TIME AWAY

      I've been away for a few days. I admit that I have not read blogs or commented. 

       I had the mother of all nose bleeds on Thursday  morning. I was off to the bathroom about 1 AM and felt a drip fall from my nose. When I got to the bathroom and got the light on my hand had lots of blood on it. I tried to stop it and saw that the bleeding was continuing very rapidly. I called the Micro Manager for help. We quickly decided we had to call the ambulance.

    The paramedic tried pinching the nostril and using a gauze plug. Nothing helped. 

    They decided it was emergency for me. So out I went out  to the drive way in sock feet and boxers. The paramedic pinched my nose all the way to the hospital and while I was waiting for a bed. Then they put a clamp on my nose which stopped the bleeding but didn't cure things. 

     About 4 AM they inserted an inflatable plug. It wasn't nice but stopped the blood flow. 

    I was released  about 10AM. I didn't have glasses or hearing aids. I didn't have shoes. The micro manager sent up a shirt, pants and jacket. I couldn't get the shirt over my head. So I was on my way home with no shoes or shirt. 

    So it was a long sleepless confusing night.

    I went back Sat AM  and got the packing out and fortunately the bleeding had stopped. It was a treat that a  former student was in the ER and looked after me.

    So it was a miserable time with lack of sleep, worry, loss of blood and a darn hard hospital bed to lie on for 10 hours. 

   Aren't you lucky that I'm not showing icky photos? 

    

AN EMBARRASSING MOMENT.

        Last June a new Peavey Mart store opened here. There was a lot of promotion for the opening. For those not familiar with Peavey Mart it caters to farm products. However, it does have things that are more than farm related such as supplies for bird feeding. They also have  excellent gardening supplies.

       Well, for the opening, the first so many people were given  $20.00 cash coupons. So guess who was there early enough for $20.00? That day the Micro Manager bought a broom and I bought some bird fat with our $20.00 coupons. 

       So five months later a flier came out advertising a couple of things we wanted. A bag of bird seed for $27.00. I could use my cash coupon! 

      So the birdseed I wanted was not on display. A kid went to the back and finally came out with a bag of bird seed. At this time we thought our coupons were for $40.00 each. However , we checked and couldn't think why there was so little left on the cards. The micro manager also wanted a snow shovel. Sadly we  discovered that the coupons were worth $20.. each rather than $40.00 each. 

      So with less than half our money left we had to decide what we really needed. We were discussing this just before the check out line. We were talking about small amounts of money. All of a sudden a kind lady approached and said I'll buy that for you! We were astounded. She had obviously overheard us and thought that we were poor and had very little money. 

     So we were embarrassed that we were identified as needy. 

     I guess the moral of the story is to do your discussion away from the check out line. 

     Have you had an embarrassing situation where you were taken as needing help?

THE AGE OF CONFUSION

     About once a week the micro manager visits with our daughter on messenger. And do they visit. From one to two hours of gossip. The usual time is 7:00 AM when suits them both. 

     Today the Micro manager was wondering if Janey was going to call so she was up about 6:30 AM to get ready on Facebook. 7:00 AM came and went and there was no call so I got up to check and see if the micro manager had things right. 

    I moved to where a call would come in and it said calling so I thought great. they'll have  visit after all. 

     Well out of the  gloom of an unlit room appeared a gray face! It was Willis, my friend from high School. Willis was confused. He wondered what the time was. Well, you know most of the world jumped one hour ahead this morning. However , where Willis lives the time doesn't change. Most things on the internet change times automatically. So Willis's alarm went off an hour early. I was wondering why I was talking to Willis instead of my daughter. I had not called anybody . Then I had to get my hearing aid so that I could hear Willis.

     Willis was happy that I had called. I was wondering why Willis called me!

     Well, we finally got ourselves sorted out  and quit laughing at our own jokes. We exchanged news and had a good chat. 

     Willis and I were in high school together and have kept in touch . We finished in June of 1957. 

    Well, here we are in gr. 10 . Willis is four from the left in the back row. I'm standing right behind the teacher. 

     This is when I'm 82 and  a half!

     I wonder how many other people were a little confused this morning because of the time change?

BIZARRE EVENT

     Sometimes things happen that are very hard to believe. Such an event happened to us this week.

     10:00 AM Tues. morning I answered a call from a furniture store.  Call display said name unavailable. They said they had something at the store for us. I said just a minute you can talk to my wife. I wondered if she might have asked about something in the store.

     Well, it turned out that they had a table waiting for us to pick up!!!  We hadn't been to the store for years. They were insistent that we bought a table 3 days ago.  No we didn't. They asked if maybe we had forgotten! My wife told them that she remembered that she definitely had not been in the store.They had all our information and that we had used a debit card. Now this story was really starting to stink. They were pushy and insisted we pick up the table. We were confused. We thought maybe someone was pranking us like sending  a pizza order to the house.These people were aggressive. They told us to check our account and see if anything had been taken out of it. One person said the table had been paid for and the other one said the table had not been paid for. Neither one of them backed down and said there might be a mistake. The call ended with my wife saying she would contact the police. They did not hesitate. 

    Now we knew some things were wrong. We don't have a debit card? That really raised our level of suspicion and anxiety.

    My wife did call the police and talked to a very helpful officer. She suggested contacting the manager before going further. We had been reluctant to call the manager for if he had been in on the scam.

    We did contact the manager and he said he would check it and get back to us. Several hours later he called back . He had solved the problem. A telephone number is used to call up all your information like address, names and more. The table was paid for. So what the manager found was that the phone number the sales man entered had one incorrect digit which of course, made it our phone number. The manager was much better than his staff. He explained the problem and apologized and we were much relieved. Then he had to trace down the people who had bought and paid for the table.

    If the first clowns had taken a deep breath and thought for one second that they might be wrong they may have prevented the situation from escalating. They really made us suspicious. We didn't know if it was a scam. 

    After two days it was a relief to have things solved.

    

I'd Make a Great Comedian

     I'd make a great comedian! I wish somebody would hire me!

     On my recent visit to Vancouver, if someone had been following us it would have been pretty funny

     We had a few things we wanted to see and do when we were in Vancouver. My wife wanted to take the Sky Train and Sea Bus to Lonsdale Quay on the north side of Burrard inlet. The Sky Train is something we never see so it's a fun ride. The Sea Bus takes 12 minutes to cross Burrard inlet and drop you off at Lonsdale Quay. 

    So all this sounds so simple that it's sickening. Wrong! We found a lot of simple things to mess up. If somebody had been watching they may have recalled the Beverly Hillbillies.

    First, we were told that there was Sky Train parking at the station we were using. We asked directions. Some people gave us directions but there was no parking lot where they sent us. Some people got a blank stare and said they had never heard of Sky Train parking. So the Sky Train parking turned out to be fictitious and we parked in a mall parking lot.

   Then we get to the sky Train station. People are rushing both ways. We have to find a ticket. Yes there were many ticket dispensers but we have to figure out what ticket we need and how to get it. There were two different lines and senior fares. My wife is very hesitant to drop her money in a slot. She thinks that the machine will steal her money. Finally, someone helped us to choose the proper line we needed and buy the ticket. My wife would not try a touch screen and it saves a whole lot of trouble if I'm patient and let her come to terms with the situation.

    We're not out of the woods yet. Where do you stand to catch your train. There are signs all over the place but they don't mean anything to us. Finally, some kind person tells us what to do. They also tell us how to leave the Sky Train and get on the Sea bus. 

    Now Lonsdale Quay is a large conglomeration of fast food shops and millions(well not quite) of junky little shops that sell an endless number of things a person just doesn't need. My wife likes to look at the little shops with jewellery. 

   Finally, it's time to leave to go back to the hotel. Darn, you have to buy a ticket back. Well, we know how to do that . Right? So the micro manager drops her $1.75 in the slot. Does she get a ticket? No. The message comes up that she owes another 25 cents. No way is she going to give that blankety blank machine another 25 cents. The machine says times up and drops the money out. Okay, she's got her money so try again. The machine has to give you a ticket. Same thing. The machine says it wants another 25 cents. Help! Some kind person comes to our aid. They pick up a quarter from the coin return and put it in the slot and voila we get a ticket. One quarter was not being accepted by the machine and dropped into the coin return. We couldn't hear it drop so didn't know our quarter was in the coin return. 

  The whole experience was fun but probably a lot more fun for somebody else watching.

   Am I the only one who lives in a small city that doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles and hoops to jump through? Am I the only one to get confused about something that millions of other people use on a daily basis?