Nov 19 - more shopping

I forgot to mention that Sandy also did some shopping yesterday -- spices, turkey, roasting pan etc. so that she can make Thanksgiving dinner here -- Bill and Collette will be with us.

As for me -- I'd also ordered, online of course, a replacement car charger for Sandy's phone and a headset adapter. This afternoon I'm going to do some brick-and-mortar shopping at Home Depot -- looking for plumbing parts for my pre-filter-softener pipe for garden watering. I haven't decided yet whether to simply put a hose connection outside and use the existing battery-operated timers or to put in a proper watering timer. Either way I have to run a pipe under the sidewalk because right now there are two controls attached to two hose bibs. If I use the proper timer I'll have to have valves, pipe, backflow preventer, some sort of flow control for the drip hoses ... hmmm. I don't want to turn this into a major project !!

Speaking of shopping, I also ordered, online of course !!, some CD wallets and more DVD-Rs for the video copying project that I have underway. I've also been doing some Christmas shopping.

Starting either today or tomorrow I expect that we'll see the Fedex & UPS men on a regular basis. Unless I'm in a real rush, it costs less to have something delivered than the gas that I might use to get to the store ... and when I take into account the tax savings, in some cases ...

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I'm back from Home Depot and I bought the parts necessary to do a minimal sprinkler installation -- pipe, fittings, timer, two valves -- all intended to hook up to the existing drip hoses. We may replace the drip hoses with proper in-ground sprinkler heads at some point since they can be tuned to each shrub and use less water. Where I did spend money, however, is on piping for the humidifier up north. I've looked all over up there and could not find 8" fittings -- a T in particular but lo and behold I found one down here so -- T, reducers, 6" flexible pipes (3x25'), and ceiling diffusers all add up. Actually, come to think of it, the sprinkler stuff was probably 2/3 of the bill ...plus I got and installed a programmable thermostat for the furnace & A/C. I'll ponder the sprinkler stuff and may change my mind yet. That's the good thing about HD -- returns are no problem.

Sandy's out picking up dinner -- let's see what the fish store has for us today.

I see that the stock market has closed down for another day. The Dow doesn't want to get much over 8,000. Every time it tries it drops down again. There is some good news though -- my bond funds have been creeping back up so that chunk of my investments is in decent shape. However, guess who has the best investment results over the past few months -- me or the "professionals" who invest the money in my Towers Perrin 401(k) -- yup, me. I was tempted some time ago, before the current financial debacle, to move the money from the TP funds into a self-directed IRA ... of course hindsight is great isn't it.

There are two other positive things, from a financial standpoint, at least from my perspective -- 1st, the U.S Buck now buys $1.25 CAD -- that means that the 1/2 of my annual expenses (or more) that I spend in Canada have gotten substantially cheaper -- this because, of course, most of our money is in the U.S. The other item that helps us considerably is that the price of gas has gone down. Gas is one of our major annual expenditures, between trips to/from Florida and when up north, trips to Sudbury/Toronto/Parry Sound etc. On the way down this time I actually paid $1.82 at one station ... and that will be less, if trends hold, for our trip back north.

I'm really stretching to find things to be optimistic about, when it comes to the stock market these days. If I had the guts it's time to buy -- go all out on margin and buy -- but I don't have the guts !! Since the price of failure is going back to work for a long time, perhaps the rest of my life, I'll pass on this "opportunity".

One of the things that I just paid, or actually scheduled to be paid through Quicken, is our Florida property/school taxes. Guess what -- they've gone down ! They have re-assessed based on a drop in property values and we have actually gotten the benefit of that. So, I wonder how they make up their budget ? Does somebody else pay more ? Who would that be ? Do they reduce services ? If so, what services ? There is probably someone who knows ... I am curious.

No biking today, I had the HD errand to run and spent a good two hours in the plumbing aisle, believe it or not. Sandy was wondering if I'd bought out the store. I wasn't sure what to do about the sprinkler stuff. Tomorrow will be my day on the bike -- it's supposed to hit 68F -- yaaahhh -- that's my kind of riding !! Give me 75F and I'll be really happy.

Once Sandy is back from grocery shopping we'll watch another of the videos. I'll report on that later. I've copied 9 of them already (5 copies) and have 13 more to go. I'll copy many of these for cousin Sue as well but will get through the stack at five-per before making any more copies. I see that the next one in queue to be copied, but not watched, is one that is labeled 94 Phil & Ruth and 96 Stef Wedding -- I think that 94 was some sort of renewal-of-vows or something like that for my Uncle and Aunt. I saw a bit of this one when I was making the original copy and it's a party at Michael's. We were not there because we moved to Philly that July. 96 Stef Wedding is probably self-explanatory. It will be interesting to watch -- I've never seen it. Of course this is the first time seeing any of these videos !

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It's morning again -- time to start copying more videos.

Sandy came back with Shrimp so I had the night off as far as cooking goes. Shrimp, asparagus, rice -- another great meal. The shrimp down here are really fresh and crunchy when they're cooked. Of course they are high on calories, cholesterol etc. but we don't have them that often, than goodness.

We did watch another video -- this one from Aug 89 to Nov 89. It was fascinating because it was almost all our family. That summer you'd think that we were at the cottage all the time -- Philip too -- but of course that's just because we were interesting subjects. There is a shot of me scuba diving, lots of Meghan -- on the deck, in the house, in the paddleboat. There is one brief shot with Jeffrey playing with Jason's three boys -- Mike, Gavin and Kyle. Mike has a frog ... Karen (nee Robinson), husband Jack and their daughter show up.

Then there is Stef's fishing video -- take 1, take 2, take 3 ... and yes, take 4. It's hilarious. All about bass fishing -- lures, weather -- did you know that bass have sensitive eyes and so the fishing is better when it's overcast ?

The video moves to the surprise 40th anniversary party that we held at our place for Mom & Dad. Jack & Dolores, Willie & Flory, my Uncle Phil and Aunt Ruth, my Uncle Rog & Aunt Joan, cousin Michael & Karen and their newborn, cousin Kelly & John, Juliet -- our nanny, Joyce -- Sandy's cousin and my grandmother.

Back at the cottage again -- more of Meghan, AGFA 60 leaving again -- I've noticed that Philip only leaves, never arrives. Willie and Flory make it to the cottage -- Willie is playing with this little horn throughout. Just like a kid, I half expected Flory to slap his hand. My grandmother is there too, it seems that she came up with Willie and Flory.

Bob and Marg Simms show up on their 4-wheeler. Then there is a long stretch of Alex and me skeet shooting and Dad joins in at one point. We all get a turn using Alex's black powder shotgun. Jean and Sandy show up at some point obviously bringing Jeffrey because he's out there helping to "pull" for the skeet shooting. Lastly we're all gone, but Alex and a friend of his show up during deer hunting season to visit. Alex used to deer hunt in the area from a camper parked by the road.

Sandy is getting bored watching these videos. I'm less bored because I have the controller in my hand. They are time-consuming to watch but they have many classic moments in them. My dad would be pleased that they are getting some viewing. He always wanted to edit them but did not have the equipment and once he did, he had lost the patience or the focus. Ah well.

It's daylight again. I talked to Bill Nelson last night and they're all ready for the trip. I will get out on the bike today, probably won't start the sprinkler work until after Bill leaves.

That's it, time for breakfast. I'm later than usual.