NUMBERS

      Yesterday morning's local paper had an item about the school I taught in here. They had received an award for a special program they had participated in.

     This item started numbers running through my head. I taught in the school for 28 years. It was a very good school as the district was supportive of education and most kids came to school with the right attitude. Over the years we had 400 to 550 students. Sometimes we were a very good school and other times not. It depended on stars to align like administration, students, teachers and program. 

    I had no intention of staying in one school that long. I applied for transfers but didn't get anything nearly as good as what I had. So 28 years rolled by before I knew it.

    The next number was 26. That's the number of years I've been retired. My retirement time is almost as long as the time I taught in the school.

    The next number is37. That's the number of years I taught. 

    So the numbers have rolled along very quickly.

    I enjoyed my teaching time. Who would have a sad  time in retirement. If things go a little faster, my retirement will be as long as my teaching time. 

                                The beginning

                        First  class 1958

Towards the end

THE MICRO MANAGER GAMBLES!

      The headline is right. The Micro Manager gambled at the Casino today.

     Now I've never said that the micro Manager is not a gambler but those who've followed me for a while know that she is probably the last person to ever gamble. 

     So what happened?

     Well in this province there is a card called Winner's Edge. The government controls gaming and issues the Winner's Edge card which is something like a loyalty card. You can build up points on your card and redeem your points for meals, draws and gambling.

    The other day The Micro Manager got a card in the mail that they had put $20.00 on her card. So there's only one way to get your twenty bucks. You have to gamble. The worst that can happen is that you lose the twenty bucks. 

    The Micro Manager has absolutely no idea how any gambling machine works so one of the staff helped her. Of course it didn't take very many minutes and the $20.00 was gone except for a nickel and that was too little to continue. She took the coupon and got her nickel. That's it for her gambling experience.  I wish I'd taken my camera to show you all the fun the Micro Manager had. 

     While I was out for my walk today , I found a nickel on the road so between the two of us we made 10 cents today!

   It was fun while it lasted. 

SPAM

       Six months ago I did not know that you could check for comments that were spam. I had no idea what spam comments would be. 

      So for blogger if you go to comments , you will find a small triangle to the center left above comments. Click on that and you will find a list of spam. 

      Now the spam comes in many different colors, sizes and shapes. 

     For some reason other bloggers comments are sometimes judged to be spam. These you can identify and click on publish and the comment will be published. 

   Much of the spam is made up of my comments and replies to other blogger comments. 

    Then there are just plane unwelcome comments as some jerk who thinks that all old people should be put to death as they are a menace to the planet.

    I had not looked at older spams until this week. It seems that some comments made by new readers are identified as spam. This bothers me as I don't want to be considered rude as if I'm not publishing a comment. It also seems that some of my followers are quite often identified as spam. For example the blogs by Bill and Jenn are quite often flagged as spam. So for a long time their comments were not published on my blog. 

    So I would suggest that bloggers check the spam file often and keep it up to date. Comments are a very important part of blogging and we want all comments to be published. 

IT DEPENDS HOW YOU LOOK AT IT

      The last post with the plumber leaving his money on the table was  a  funny situation  in my mind. Okay, I'm not bragging about my humor. 

     However, some readers saw some great problems with the situation as I told it. I never thought that some people would see some very serious problems arise out of that situation.

     Maybe I should have said that the plumber gave me an invoice that said "Paid in full". Maybe I should have said that there was a GST number on the invoice. These were issues that I did not have concerns about in the post. It was humorous that the hard working guy left his money on the table. His fees were high, but he could have billed us for more.

    One thing was different was that all transactions were by phone. He printed the invoice and sent it to me by email as he was standing there. If I had a phone, I would have had the invoice paid in full in my hand as he was taking his money. 

     Then I started to think that there are situations where people are at risk in any situation where an unfair advantage can be taken. I never thought that some people could take advantage of this situation by having an opportunity to lie. It's sad that some people have to live with and deal with scumbags that would take advantage of you and cheat you. 

    Here, there are acceptable methods of doing business. Most of us follow the rules. It works well for all concerned. 

THE PLUMBER LEFT HIS MONEY ON THE TABLE.

     I recently had some plumbing done at my house. I replaced the bathtub taps and put a new sink in the half bath along with new faucets and drain. Plumbing in older houses can present a problem and this house was no different. 

    The resident do it yourselfer plumber has retired here. Plumbing and other tradesmen rates are too high for me but I have officially retired. A plumber was recommended and he gave me a solid estimate. In other words there would be no surprise additional fees. He came and did what he said he would do and did it well.

    We had asked before how he wanted to be paid. He didn't accept checks. He didn't accept credit cards. He would take etransfers or cash. So our only option was to pay him in cash.

     We got the $1156.00 cash. The Micro Manger had the cash in an envelope. The micro Manager counted out the cash and the plumber checked the cash. All was good. The plumber left. In about thirty seconds the door burst open again and the plumber said, "I forgot my money." The envelope was still on the table. We hadn't noticed that he left his money on the table.

    It seemed like a deal that was too good to be true and it was. 

    

HOW DID I SPEND EASTER AS A CHILD?

       I received a request. I've never had a request before so this is too good to miss. 

       Debbie asked how I spent Easter when I was young. Here's where all your predictions will fall apart. Some of it doesn't make sense.

      My parents belonged to a denomination that did not celebrate the sacred part of the Easter story. Why? Since the actual crucifixion date of Christ was not known, their denomination thought that it was not "right" to celebrate if the date wasn't accurate. They did remember the death and resurrection of Jesus in their daily devotions.  So there. That's the sacred part of my Easter celebration. 

    However, the non religious part of Easter took place. 

    When we were very little in the early years , the war was on so some of the good stuff (chocolate) was not available but the meal was a big deal. We had turkey and all the trimming that were available. Since we lived on a farm the turkey and ham was readily available. After that there were many other dishes. However, cranberries were not available.

    We would celebrate with my Mom's cousins. They had four boys and our family consisted of three boys and a girl. It was quite a gang. It was an all day affair. The big meal was at noon. The afternoon consisted of visiting for the men and hard work for our Moms. For kids, we had a ball. Lots of playing with cousins even though we only lived one mile apart. 

    After the war candy became available. I'm not sure when the bunny rabbit arrived. Our Grandma sent very nice chocolate cream Easter eggs. I will never forget them. Many goodies were produced by our Moms to go along with the meal. 

    This went on all day. We had a warm up meal about 6:00 PM. Just before going home at midnight we had a cold plate.

   It was a long enjoyable day.

   So I hope everybody has a happy Easter no matter how it is observed. 

A CURLING SURPRISE

       Now my last post was to set you up for this post. 

      I hope that somewhere in my last post you got the idea that in the rural areas curling was not very highly organized. Curling was only in the evening unless it was a bonspiel. So sometimes when kids got bored we would enter the curling rink, which was never locked and throw a few rocks. If somebody caught us we got kicked out.

     I came to Red Deer in 1969 and taught in a middle school of about 500 students. There were two other middle schools in the city. One was smaller and had just opened in 1969. The other school was not highly organized in  athletic activities. Our school had basket ball, volley ball and badminton and not too much opportunity for competition.

    So in 1970 I got it in my head to start after school curling for kids. Still being this naive country boy, I phoned the local curling rink and asked if kids could play after school. Did I get a surprise. In a city this size curling was highly organized. They had just never thought of kids curling.

    After a little discussion they agreed to let kids curl after school for free. So I had some great kids who either wanted to curl or learn to curl. The next year another teacher joined me and his idea was to teach curling and he was very good at it. 

    Curling continued for three or four years. I didn't have the time to give to it any more so I did not carry on with curling. . 

    However, there was something that happened that I had never dreamed about. This naive little farm boy had never heard of high school nationals in curling. You guessed it. One of my little guys continued with curling in high school and went to the Canadian National high school competition.

    Now I worked with Doug's Mom and see her since we've retired. She always reminds me of Doug and curling and you can tell that she's very proud of him. I see Doug about every 15 years and he always talks about learning to curl when he was a kid.