Crabby Bills - now at:

Make Me An Offer

2003-09-15T21:39:00.000-06:00

This site "for sale"

2003-09-15T17:08:00.000-06:00

The Bankruptcy Odyssey part 4

Well as you may or not be aware, I am moving to

http://stupidangrycanajun.typepad.com/crabbymrbill

So this is going to be my last post here. I figure that I will try and finish up the bankruptcy odyssey here and then start fresh at the new location. The writing of the odyssey was to help me get over some of what I consider to be stupidity, it has been a chance for self therapy, and I must admit, I am feeling better about having written about it. There are still un-resolved issues with my brother, and at some time in the future, I may or may not confront him and deal with them. But that is a whole other story. Here is the ending of the Bankruptcy Odyssey...

Ah yes, I was talking about my little nephew (he who shall not be named), I had taken the Mrs into hospital, she was complaining about difficulty in breathing, and had spent most of the night there with her, when the doctors finally decided that she could come home I went and picked her up. Because she had spent the night in emerg, she hadn't got a whole lot of sleep either so when we got home, she went to bed and I figured that I would get myself something to eat. Went into the kitchen and there is the bimbo and the little shit, I tried to get something out of one of the lower cabinets, and there was something blocking the lazy Susan, so I get down on all fours and try to get what ever it is that is blocking the lazy Susan out of my way. and my brother's dog has to see what I am doing and gets into my legs and feet, I tried to get her to go somewhere else, but I guess that I was more interesting then anything else in the house. Meanwhile the couple of idiots are standing there sorta in my way as well and instead of getting the dog out of my way, they just ignore what I and the dog are doing, so once again I am forced to take matters into my hands and deal with it. I put my foot on the side of the dog and push, My little nephew takes a bird and yells at me about kicking his dog, and gets right into my face about it. Now here I shall give you a bit of a description of myself, I am 5" 8' tall and weigh in about 250 pounds, people have referred to me as a biker, (I am not I might add, but I do look like one), you know the shaved head and the tattoos, that whole thing. And my little nephew stands about 5" 2' maybe a bit more and weighs in about 150 pounds, now with everything that we had been through up to and including the Psychiatrist and the bankruptcy, I think I showed remarkable restraint in not beating the living shit out of the little prick. And I'm pretty sure that no one in my family really knows what stopped me, I will tell you all here and now, that the only thing that stopped me, was the fact that I respected the fact that I was in my brothers house and not my own.
Had this of happened in my house, I would have beat the little shit to with in an inch of his life, and I'm not sure even now, if I would have stopped there. Of course there are many more incidents then just that, but that was the big ending of us living at my brothers house. This little incident happened on Thursday I believe that by Saturday we were moving out of there and into my sisters place. This starts a whole other life for us, which compared to living at my brothers, was all ice cream and berries. To this day, both my wife and I will not be at any family gathering where the little shit is in attendance. Since I am no longer living at my brothers, I am afraid that the little shit will say or do something, and this time there will be no stopping me! I really don't need the record that bad.
For the most part this will end the Odyssey, like I said before "I am feeling much better now".

Thinking about writing this story, has given me the opportunity to think about what really caused us to declare Bankruptcy, there were circumstances beyond our control, which, had they of occured at another time, might have been handled differently. A few suggestions for anyone who may find themselves in a similar predicament.

1) If you own your own house,(or more precisely, share ownership with the Bank), put the for sale sign on your lawn yourself, this way you sell it for fair market value, and have a way to at least pay off some of your bills. In our case, had we sold the house ourselves, we could have paid off all of our bills. We wouldn't have had a place to live, but at least we wouldn't have declared Bankruptcy.
2) A while back the Mrs and I were talking about nothing in particular, and she mentioned to me that the average person is with in 2 or 3 paychecks of going broke. That is a very scarey thought to me, in our case we were able to continue living and paying all of our bills for about 4 months. To avoid this pitfall, try putting 10% of your wages away for a rainy day, if the 10% is out of reach, at least put something away, try to have 2 or 3 months rent and utilities in the bank. This way, if the unfortunate happens, you can have some time to get back on your feet.
3)Do not under any circustances, blame yourself or your partner. Some times we have to just accept that "the Universe" is sending us messages, and we have been too busy to hear them, so the Universe is smacking us up back side of the head to get our attention. I really hate the "woulda, could, shoulda" thing, you know well meaning friends, bankers etc, saying you "shoulda done this", or "I woulda done that", "you coulda done something different". As well meaning as they are trying to be, it really doesn't change anything, maybe at the time you were going through the shit, you couldn't see the forest for the trees
4) If the worst happens and you do declare Bankruptcy, don't get into the " if, if ,if " thing, don't be saying if I had of not bought that pack of smokes...or what ever, it doesn't help and doesn't change anything. IF, IF, IF, if your aunt had balls......she could be a juggler, or your uncle. It really doesn't change anything, and all you're doing is torturing yourself. The Mrs and I still get into that, and one of us has to remember that it is not helping at all.

2003-09-11T17:07:00.000-06:00

New Links Added

Like the title says. Enjoy.

2003-08-31T08:36:00.000-06:00

The Bankruptcy Odyssey part 4

Okay so we had a delivery up in Fort Saskatchewan in the morning and another delivery out in Spruce Grove in the afternoon, (okay Fort Saskatchewan is north east of Edmonton and Spruce Grove is out west of the city) well we ran into some problems at the first delivery, the truck broke down! We ended up waiting at the dealer's till 5:00pm before someone came to pick us up, and when we got back to the store, we were told that we still had to go and make the other delivery (arrangements had been made to have a guy with a truck and trailer deliver the hot tub and gazebo out to the customer, and my partner and I were going to install it that night). When we got to 2:00am I called it quits and told the customer that we would be back the next morning after 10:00 to finish the setup. The next morning both my partner and I were back in the shop at 10:00 am, for the first time the boss was shocked to see us, he didn't figure that we were going to make it in till much later in the day. We finished that delivery finally much later in the day, and then made a bunch more trips out there to try and fix various things that the customer complained about, in the end, the BIG boss bought the tub and gazebo back from the customer.

Okay, so I figure that I should tell you a bit about moving in with family. Just before we left Ontario, I called out to my brother and asked if it was ok to move in with him and his family till we got back on our feet a bit, being family of course it was ok, (I should also mention that my brother is a minister and we were going to be living in the manse.) Some time just before we arrived in Edmonton, my brother had gone to the elders of his church and advised them of our impending arrival, which on the surface was the right thing to do, however when one digs down a bit, one realizes that my brother made arrangements with the church that we were going to be paying $100.00 a month to help out with the utilities. That was just great, the Mrs. is out working for minimum wage and for the month of December she brought home a whopping $120.00, you do the math people, that meant that we were left with just $20.00 for our self's to play with, and purchase Christmas gifts for the both of us and try to buy gifts for the rest of the family as well. In talking with a friend of my brothers who is also a member of the church, we found out that had my brother told the church of our little plight, we probably wouldn't have had to pay anything for living there for the first little while.

I think that my brother made this arrangement with the church because his son, who I will tell more about later on in this little odyssey, also moved back in with my brother and his wife. This is my nephew who was kicked out of the house for a bunch of different reasons, all of which I really don't know and wouldn't tell you about anyway. Anyway this nephew of mine is the sort of asshole that will wash a single pair of jeans, because he likes them and wants to wear them all the time, and heaven forbid they would be dirty, and then not only would he wash them, but then he throws them into the dryer, (of course why just wash a single pair of jeans, may as well dry them as well) gee I wonder why the power consumption was outrageous in the manse. After a bit of time this same nephew wanted his girlfriend and her son (from a previous marriage) to move in as well, being the great father that he is, my brother agreed. (I must add at this point that my brother refused to have our uncle, my fathers brother stay in his house with his girlfriend, because how would it look, a couple sleeping together and they are not even married?) Well you can just about guess what happened, my nephew's girlfriend got yes that's right, pregnant!! I just don't get it, my brother refuses to allow our uncle, who is 65 plus years old stay in his house with his girlfriend, who is about the same age as my uncle, but allows his son to sleep with his girlfriend and knocks her up. Is it just me or does everybody see a problem here? Of course maybe my brother didn't want my uncle and his girlfriend in his house because my brother didn't think it right that my uncle should be seeing someone after the death of his wife, I don't know, I'm not in my brothers head. I always thought that ministers should have an open mind and not judge, isn't that what the BIG book says "judge not lest you be judged" and no I don't know form which chapter that is from, (if you know where in the BIG book it says that, drop me an email and I will make the necessary changes)

Anyway once again you know the drill, this is it for now, I will get the Mrs. to help me later and put the link in for the email just above.
[Update: The email link is now active]

2003-08-27T17:01:00.000-06:00

The Bankruptcy Odyssey part 3

Sorry about yesterday's digression, I had a really horrible week at school Monday and Tuesday….(okay so it felt like a week) Trying to get a project to work and just getting more and more frustrated when everything we tried didn't work. (On the plus side, we got 100% on the project but lost 5% for being a day late)

Okay so where was I, oh yeah first night stopped in North Bay for the night, and since it wasn't too long of a drive from Oshawa to North Bay we were able to stop early for the night and get a decent dinner. Woke up early the next day for the long drive from North Bay to (and I will correct myself here it was "big Thunder" Thunder Bay not Sault St Marie) Thunder Bay. I'm here to tell you there is some amazingly beautiful country up in the north of Ontario. It was a very long drive, we could just do the speed limit the way we were loaded down, and it took a long time to get up to the legal limit, so here we are bombing along at a whopping 80kph (about 45 mph for those not familiar with the metric system) and all of a sudden we have to slow down for the town of Moonbeam Ontario. Now I would like to be able to tell you that it is a big town, lots of gas stations and restaurants, but I can't. The only thing in town is a replica of a flying saucer. We go from 80kph down to 40kph for a stinking replica of a flying saucer, then no more then a kilometer later we try to get back up to the legal limit. What a friggin waste of time that was, it wasn't even a good replica of a flying saucer.

After that little waste of time we continued on our way to Big Thunder, we probably pulled into town about 10:00pm after spending close to 16 hours on the road, went through the unloading thing for the night and grabbed a quick bite to eat then fell into an exhausted sleep, slept in a bit the next morning because the next phase of the drive was just to Winnipeg, probably no more then about 8 hours. In Winnipeg we ordered out for food and jumped into bed early, we figured that we would try to make it to Edmonton from Winnipeg so we wouldn't have to do the unloading and loading thing again. We arrived in Edmonton sometime around 11:00pm and after trying to follow the directions to my brother's place finally gave up and called him to come and find us and then we would follow him to his place.

It felt real good to be able to unload the dog and bird for the night and not have to worry about reloading the truck in the morning. In the morning we unpacked the bird cage (the big one) and the dog crate and took the rest of the stuff over to my sister's place to be stored in her basement. Once all of this stuff was taken care of, we then started the usual stuff of finding a Credit Union, and started the daunting task of trying to find jobs. Just before Christmas, the Mrs. found herself a job at P J's Pets. Where she would earn the amazing sum of $5.75 an hour and work about 20 hours a week. (as she puts it, it was her equivalent of shoveling shit to help the family out). In my case, I wasn't able to find a job till about March, and then it was no great shakes. I was working for a company called Artic Spa's as the delivery guy. I guess looking back on it now it wasn't all that bad of a job, except that I was advised when I started that my hours were going to be 10:00 to 7:00pm, that wouldn't have been too bad except for the fact that they kept making delivery appointments for me after 7:00pm, and I had better not be late in the morning, oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, the boss didn't like to pay overtime either. When I would go out of town to make a delivery, I would get the company credit card for gas for the truck, and more often then not, I would end up putting the gas purchase on my debit card cause the boss had gone over the limit on the card. (oh yeah, what a blast that was!!!) And why you ask yourself would I use my debit card for the gas, because I wanted to go home after the delivery.

By now you should know the drill, I am going to stop here and tomorrow (ya right) okay maybe on Friday I will continue the saga of working for Artic Spa's, and regale you with the tale of the truck breaking down and having to do a delivery out in the country at an irate customer's place.

2003-08-26T16:51:00.000-06:00

I HATE FUCKIN' PROJECTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you......I feel much better now

2003-08-24T18:17:00.000-06:00

The Bankruptcy Odyssey part 2

In this, part 2 of our little Bankruptcy Odyssey, I will try to cover the packing up of all our belongings, going to see the Trustee, arranging for the U-Haul truck, and probably the first couple of days on the road.

The first thing that the Mrs. and I did was to sit and discuss what our options were. Were we going to declare Bankruptcy, did we have any money hidden away somewhere that we could use to pay the mortgage and renew it and keep us going for a while longer. After this little discussion it was decided that our best option was to declare bankruptcy and let the chips fall where they may. We made the appointment with the trustee, and started to pack. (Gawddam we had a lot of stuff to pack)

On our first visit to the trustee, she advised us that there was a $1200.00 fee for declaring bankruptcy, (we had just advised her that we had no more money, if we'd had $1200.00, we could have paid the mortgage and continued living in Ontario) Is it just me or is this one of those times when you want to say, "you're a moron, here's your sign" You've just graduated (refer back to the questions from Broad at Bat). Anyway enough of the digression, there were a lot of other decisions that we had to make after our chat with the trustee, which I will not bore you with, suffice it to say that we made another appointment with the trustee for Thursday to "officially" sign the papers.

After a few calls out to Mom and Dad to "borrow" some money to pay for the truck and what ever else, it was off to U-Haul to make the arrangements for the truck, (do you want a 17' truck or do you want a 16' truck, since I was going to be towing a car with us the only truck from U-Haul that could do it was the 26' truck) And yes just a quick note to advise that I had made some inquiries around town about prices on trucks and U-Haul was the cheapest.

Now we got down to the nitty gritty about what we were packing, we went through all of our stuff lickety split and started the packing on Friday night, spent all day Saturday finishing up and then just the last few pieces on Sunday morning. A few of our friends gave more help then what we could ever thank them for, one couple in particular knew that we weren't eating and would invite us over to their place for dinner, (we were living on caffeine and nicotine) Late Sunday morning, after the tearful goodbye's we finally hit the road. It was decided that we were only going to drive up to if I remember correctly, North Bay the first day, then day 2 we were going to do the drive to Sault St Marie, a very long and tiresome drive, there are only a few gas stations on the way and no place to stop for the night, it was a very long 16 hour day in the truck, and we did stop a few times so Sinner (the afore mentioned German Shepherd) could do his thing. Let me tell you, when we did stop for the night, we would go into the hotel, make sure they would accept animals, then take the bird cage in for the night, take a "portable" dog cage in for the night, then take our suitcase in, and in the morning, the whole process was reversed, (note to self….if you are ever going to do this again, hire movers and fly), once again in the truck, we were living on caffeine and nicotine. Our friends had given us a bunch of Tim Horton's certificates, and every place where there was a "Horny Tim's" we would stop and fill up on coffee and either doughnuts or bagels.

Once again I will take a break here. Next part will be the final push on the road to Edmonton, and moving in with family

2003-08-21T21:28:00.000-06:00

Just a real short note to apologize for not writing anything yesterday, we had to go to the hospital to see my dad and drive mom home, but the start of the odyssey is here now and all going well and the crick don't rise I will continue the story tomorrow.

2003-08-21T21:25:00.000-06:00

The Bankruptcy Odyssey part 1

It all started innocently enough….. (great start), a bit of history is needed here so you can follow my thoughts. The Mrs. was working for the Ontario provincial government, in their IT department, she was helping to setup help desks, write policy manuals, run the help desk, you name it, she had her fingers in the pie, and she was good at her job! As for me, well I was working for the North York Bored with Education as a caretaker, (read shit house cleaner….etc), (I am not going to get into the part about being good at my job…how would you judge, a shiny bowl ?)
Anyway Mrs. got sick and was off work for a long time, to be honest it was just short of 6 months, I know because on later reflection, we came to the conclusion that had we waited a bit longer, the Mrs. could have applied for long term disability coverage. Anyway, I guess that I was very concerned about the state of my wife’s health, because I ended up being diagnosed as suffering from depression and anxiety. After advising my stupidvisor of my condition and the fact that I was taking meds and attending therapy, I figured that I would have a concerned stupidvisor and he would want to work with me to get through this little speed bump. Boy was I ever mistaken, they were riding my ass like there was no tomorrow, every time I turned around it seemed like I was being called into “the office” to be disciplined. And the union I had on my side…well let’s just say that when I went into managements office, I was on my own for defending myself, it was a case of 3 on 1 and I was the one. There was also the incident of being “fired” by my shrink, ya that’s right, my shrink didn’t want to treat me anymore. I tried it on my own for a while but I was sinking back into the abyss of depression, so I spoke to the family doctor and another shrink was found for me, this one at least was willing to treat me one on one instead of in a group session. I was getting better with new meds and new treatment, and then I was called into management’s office again for discipline, this time it was going to be a written warning, which is the start of them firing you if you really don’t get down and kiss their asses. Once again my ever vigilant union was there playing switch, ( it is a game where you put one thumb in your mouth and the other one up your ass, and then when someone says switch…well you get the idea) anyway once again I had to defend myself and advise management that they could not give me a written warning on the basis that they were trying to, the 2 previous discipline attempts I had won and were supposed to be removed from my record, and could not be used in this case. The union reps just looked at me like I was from outer space and that was the end of the meeting.

Either the next day or a couple of days later I went back into the family doctor and explained the situation to her, and advised her that it was time for me to quit working for the bored of education, and that what I wanted from her was a letter explaining to management that I was going to be off work sick for the next 2 weeks. I had explained to the doctor that I was just hanging around on the payroll of the bored till after July 1st, this way I could qualify for my vacation and since I hadn’t taken any vacation, I would be entitled to the 3 weeks pay. On or about the 4th of July I went into management’s office and handed in my letter of resignation. PARTY TIME, what a relief that was. By this time Mrs. had a contracting job working for Bell Sigma, and all was supposed to be well, ya right! Her boss didn’t like my wife and her contract was cancelled. A couple of month’s later, in the middle of October, we received either a phone call or a letter from our mortgage holder saying that they couldn’t renew our mortgage because we had missed the last payment, (this call or letter arrived on a Wednesday) and by the end of the next week, we had declared bankruptcy, packed up all of our belongings and were on the road for Edmonton.

I am going to call it quits here for now, tomorrow, I will regale you with the exploits of getting everything packed up and the drive across Canada with a 150lb German Shepard, and a Scarlet Macaw.

2003-08-19T19:51:00.000-06:00

The Bankruptcy Odyssey

Been sitting here thinking about what next to write about........decided to write about the odyssey of declaring bankruptcy, and moving across Canada. Including the "thrill" of moving in with family, (because we had just declared bankruptcy, and had no money or jobs to support ourselves initially). I also figure that due to the move across the country, and the related experiences, that I have a bit of an idea of what it feels like to be a "refugee". I did not move into an other country like the true meaning of refugee, I just moved from one side of a country to the other. And in the process had to "adapt to another way of life", the language was/is different; English is still spoken here, but a totally different dialect of English then what we had been used to. The customs that you get used to and are natural to you, have no place in the reality that is called Alberta. I think in large part this is due to the fact that there is a rather large Ukrainian population, and just like any other group; they have their own way of dealing with life. Not saying that their way is wrong, only different from what we had been used to. This is going to be a continuing story, mostly because there is lots to say, and I really don't feel like skimping out on some of the details, I think that this will probably be good therapy for me, it may be an opportunity to get some of the "venom" out of my system, I don't think it will totally get the feeling of living with MORONS out of my system, but I hope it will be a step in the right direction. Not sure how interested any of "you", my faithful readers are going to be in this, but, this is after all MY blog, and I can damm well write about anything I want.

Having said that, I will leave you in suspense till tomorrow night when I will have more time to sit and put my thoughts to paper…..(or computer as the case may be).

2003-08-18T18:58:00.000-06:00

Here are the requisite rules for a bloggy interview. I don't have comments so I "borrowed" the rules from a Broad:

1) If you want to participate, ~~leave a comment~~ send an email saying "interview me."
2) I will respond by asking you five questions (not the same as you see here).
3) You will update your blog/site with the answers to the questions.
4) You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5) When others ~~comment~~ respond asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Questions (courtesy of Broad at Bat) and my brilliant and understandably lengthy answers:

Q: If there was a School to Teach Idiots, and you got to decide what classes needed to be taught, what would five of the required courses be?
A: What IF? There IS a School to Teach Idiots. Isn't there? Dear God, you don't mean people are naturally stupid, do you?
1. I AM an IdIOt 101; 2. What, Me Signal? And Other Driving Secrets; 3. Who Needs A Sense of Hearing, Anyway? And Other Accoustic Party Tricks; 4. More Stupid Things to do Online; and I think four is quite enough for stupid people, who frequently have trouble counting to five.
On graduation day, to paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy, "Here's yer sign."

Q: If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?
A: On a mountaintop, so I don't have to physically interact with morons. My wife says morons can't climb … they're morons dammit!

Q: What do you think of drivers with "Baby on Board" stickers in the window?
A: Holy shit, how do you get the baby to stay on the board? And what is the purpose of putting the baby there anyway? And where's the next exit so one of us gets off this road?

Q: Do you have a nickname and, if so, how did you get it?
A: Yes, I have two. The first one, from high school, is "Stubby" (one solid inch of quivering fury; they don't call me Stubby for nothing) – but I don't respond to that one any more. I have GROWN up. The second one, of course, is Mr. Bill, given to me by my current wife.

Q: What is your favorite joke, and why?

Forrest Gump Goes to Heaven
The day finally arrives: Forrest Gump dies and goes to heaven. He is met at the Pearly Gates by Saint Peter himself. The gates are closed, however, and Forrest approaches the gatekeeper. Peter says "Well, Forrest, it's certainly good to see you. We have heard a lot about you. I must inform you that the place is filling up fast, and we've been administering an entrance examination for everyone. The tests are fairly short, but you need to pass before you can get into Heaven."
Forrest responds "It shore is good to be here Saint Peter. I was looking forward to this. Nobody ever told me about any entrance exam. Sure hope the test ain't too hard; life was a big enough test as it was."
Peter goes on, "Yes I know, Forrest, but the test I have for you is only three questions. First: What days of the week begin with the letter T? Second: How many seconds are there in a year? Third: What is God's first name?"
Forrest goes away to think the questions over. The first thing the next morning, Peter returns to the gate to find Forrest already there waiting for him. Peter smiles warmly and says, "Now that you have had a chance to think the questions over, tell me your answers."
Forrest says, "Well, the first one - how many days of the week begin with the letter 'T'? Shucks, that one's easy. That'd be Today and Tomorrow.
The saint's eyes open wide and he exclaims, "Forrest! That's not what I was thinking, but... you do have a point, and I guess I didn't specify, so I give you credit for that answer."
"How about the next one: How many seconds in a year?"
"Now that one's harder" says Forrest, "But I thunk and thunk about that and I guess the only answer can be twelve."
Astounded St. Peter says, "Twelve! Twelve! Forrest, how in Heaven's name could you come up with twelve seconds in a year?"
Forest says "Shucks, there gotta be twelve: January second, February second, March second....."
"Hold it," Peter interrupts. "I see where you're going with this, and I guess you're right. It wasn't quite what I had in mind, but I'll give you credit for that one, too. Let's go on with the next and final question. Can you tell me God's first name?"
Forrest replied, "Andy."
"OK, OK," said a frustrated gatekeeper, "I can understand how you came up with your answers to my first two questions, but just how in the world did you came up with the name Andy as the first name of God?"
"That was the easiest one of all," Forrest replied. "I learned it from the song! 'Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me, Andy tells me I am his own...'"

2003-08-17T21:57:00.000-06:00

WHITE PUNKS ON RAP

What is with the kids of today?....Listening to that RAP CRAP......and, at a volume that could wake the dead, hard as it is to imagine.....I too was once young.....and I listened to "MY" music loud too.....only difference, back in my time we didn't have all those fancy smancy 5 gazillion mega watt amps and all the rest of the shit to make the car throb to the beat. I really could care SHIT what YOU want to listen to, just do us all a favour,....don't subject the rest of us to your choice of music (tho that is not really what I would call it). If you persist in subjecting me to your choices in music.....I may have to subject YOU to my way of turning your SHIT OFF!! (trust me you will not like my way of turning your music off!!)

ED DUH MONTON DRIVERS

What is up with the drivers in this town? I used to be a professional driver for a while, (got out before I killed someone....accidently or otherwise), and some of the stuff I saw while driving around town makes me wonder if the drivers out here all got their licenses off the back of a cereal box. My truck would be loaded to the max, and I would get cut off by some inconsiderate driver, and then they would have to come to a full stop...so too would I of course (the light had changed to red), and being as I was in a truck, I could look down into the back seat of the car that had just cut me off, and what to my astonished eyes would I see......a small child in a baby seat. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING LADY? You must be hoping that my brakes have super stopping power, (like I said above, I haven't killed anyone yet....) I have also seen people take a lane that legally allows them to continue through a red light, as long as they are going to follow the road around the bend to the right, only to jump back into the left lane and continue around the bend to the left, just to avoid having to stop for the red light. I will also add here that there is also a double solid line, back when I was learning how to drive, that meant that you didn't cross it. Back of the cereal box licenses, that must be it!!

A few years ago, the Mrs and I were living in the big smoke called Tarrana (Toronto for those of you who are not Canadian), and someone got the brilliant idea of trying photo radar, there was such an outcry about it that the governement did the right thing and cancelled the program. Everybody cried that it was just a big cash grab (which it is....unless you have in place agreements with all of the states and provinces that your tickets are going to be honored like they had been issued in the vehicle's home state or province). Well here in Alberta, they have the photo radar vans and red light camera's, everybody I think cried CASH GRAB and the government did what it wanted and like usual ignored the people. Just heard recently that the government is thinking about installing photo radar cameras, with the red light cameras, because they have determined that there are vehicles going through the lights at over 120 kph (once again for those not in Canada, works out to be around 65 to 70 mph, all this of course in a 50kph zone, about 30 mph). What do the drivers think they are doing? I too did the speeding thing way back in the days of my youth, now I sit behind the wheel and figure that I too could go that fast if I wanted to, the big question on my mind is, HOW DO I STOP?

And one more thought for you to digest.....heard this one on the radio the other morning on the way to school....some redneck yutz down in one of the southern states, was annoyed with the television station for cutting short some car race, got the great idea to write a computer program to continually send emails of complaint about pre-empting the race. First off, where did the redneck learn to program....wasn't sure there were too many computers in the back woods southern states. And lastly, did he really think he was going to get away with it?.......Must be a really proud day for his folks.......oh wait they are probably his siblings too!!!!

2003-08-16T15:06:00.000-06:00

W T F

Just got off the phone with a lady who had advertised a Senegal Parrot for sale in one of the online newsgroups, being animal lovers, and having had some experience with breeding birds, I was interested in giving the bird a good home. (plus the fact it is our anniversary and I figured on giving the Mrs a bird of her own) We made arrangements to go and see the little guy on Thursday night, and what a little bundle of joy he was......he allowed both of us to come over and give him pets, as well as letting us run our fingers down his back, (side note here: the bird has to really trust you to allow you to do this as this is usually where his enemy's are going to get him from). It was getting late and I had gone back over to see him one last time, he jumped up on my finger and was extremely happy to be there, it was decided by the owners that maybe it was time to put the birds (there was the Senegal and there was also a Quaker), into their cages for the night, so since I had the one on my finger, it was decided that I was going to have the honor of putting him back into his cage, well dammed if the little guy wasn't interested in going back into his cage, I would put my hand with him on it into the cage, go to the perch and try to convince him to get back onto his perch, all the little blighter did was to tighten his grip on my finger and decide that there was no way in hell that he was going to jump off. We went though this dance a couple of times before he decided that it was ok to go back onto his perch, much to the amusement of all.

Anyway back to the point of this rant.....I was advised by the lady that her son's girlfriend had decided that instead of the bird going to strangers, that she was going to take him. I am happy that the little guy is going to be going to a good home...(I hope), but for shit's sake.......if you're not really interested in selling the bird......

DON'T PUT THE ADVERTISEMENT OUT IN THE FIRST PLACE

AND

DON'T INVITE PEOPLE OVER TO SEE THE BIRDS

It kinda tears at the heart strings.......you like the bird....it seems to like you....and then the people decide not to sell at the last minute, could you have not thought of this before you put the ad in the newsgroup?.....Not invited us over to see the little guy and make it look like you are interested in selling the little guy. God dam I hate this kind of shit........Now I have to find something else to buy for the Mrs!!!!!

2003-08-11T14:08:00.000-06:00

Nothing New

As the title says......Nothing New .....sometimes you have a spell where there is nothing to complain about......YA RIGHT!!!!!!!! there is always something to complain about! Like going to a restaurant for breakfast yesterday (with my wife.....she probably already wrote about this little funny), and on the menu there was a "hand dipped milkshake", what the hell is a "hand dipped milkshake"? When our little "PERKY" waitress first approached our table, she asked if there were any questions about the menu, since we hadn't had a chance to open the menu's, let alone, read anything on them, we of course said no. When she came back to take our order, I asked her "whose hand was dipped in the milkshake"? She looked at me as if I was from another planet, so I showed her the menu, her response was that no one's hand was dipped in the milkshake, she figured they were refering to the fruit that MAY be in the milkshake. I figure that what they were trying to say is that they use "hand dipped" ice cream....you know the hard stuff, instead of soft ice cream.....I don't know....but I know for sure that I won't be trying a milkshake there.

Just a note to those who may want to follow this blog......I DO NOT WRITE IN HERE EVERYDAY, I write here when I have something to say, one of the things that I have to do is to go back and read the first couple of posts I wrote, and figure out what I was trying to say and finish those thoughts. So those of you who are interested in the continueing saga of the Banks here in Canada, stay tuned....i will get around to it. It's just that I am in school and I swear that sometimes it seems like they are trying to teach me Greek, I just don't get all of the information they are trying to impart to me, and I find myself having to read and re-read all of the information to try and make sense of it. But I promise I will try to keep up with the goings on around here......just be patient.

Thank you

2003-08-03T23:17:00.000-06:00

OMG a post, an actual post! ~~Not a very long post~~ Thanks for posting, dude! Here's to the first of many, many more rants and raves. Lord knows you have enough material!

2003-08-03T22:37:00.000-06:00

Hmmmm last post from me was way back when on March the 6th..........got pissed off with this stupid blogger shit..........spent an inordinate amount of time spilling my guts about what I no longer remember, only to loose it when I went to publish it. Realizing that this is a free site, I guess that I shouldn't expect too much from it, but GODDAMN it, if I or anyone else spends a whole lot of time thinking up this stuff, and then even more time writing it all out, then the least that the, and I'll try to b polite here, people running this site could do is allow me or anyone else to publish their shit. Not hit the publish button and loose it all.

Whew, had to get that off my chest, now I feel a bit better....but only a bit.

So I guess that by my being here tonight and letting go with the verbal diahrea...or how ever it is spelt, that I am going to give this thing a try again....but only till they piss me off again.

Well it has been a long day again today....time for the beauty sleep.....more later.......if they don't screw up again!!!!!

Are you listening blogger staff??????

2003-03-25T18:15:00.000-07:00

gurgle I ... am ... waiting ... patientcoughchokely ... really I am.

2003-03-14T23:29:00.000-07:00

Patience is a virture. Thank you for helping me to develop patience by not posting for almost an entire week.

2003-03-08T19:02:00.000-07:00

Can't wait to see how this turns out. Will Customer Support find a phone? Will they know how to make a phone call? Will they understand the process of having a conversation using a phone? Will you ever have access to your money, or will the bank find a way to make a legal claim on the money to cover the cost of installing a phone system and training staff on the use of phones?

Do tell.

2003-03-06T15:31:00.000-07:00

Ah banks....a license to steal.....what is it with banks, you go to open an account and they say that you have to make an appointment, yes this is just to open an account, then you finally get your account open and you get told that the only access you have to your money will be through a teller!! they are willing to give you a ATM card, but the only thing you can do with this card is deposit your money. If you want to withdraw your money or use your card to pay for something at the store, the answer is no, sorry you can't have access to your money through the use of the ATM card we gave you. You ask how long is this restriction going to be on your card/account for and no one can tell you, figure to call the president of the bank since you were told that this is bank policy, that all new accounts have this restriction on them, only to find out when trying to get a hold of the president, that this is not bank policy, this is something that the branch has impossed. And wait it gets better, there is no way to get a hold of the president of the bank. Well who the hell can I speak to about this little problem? Since I have been told that this is BANK POLICY when opening the acount, isn't bank policy made by the president and the board of directors? So how the hell does one get a hold of them? (do you see a pattern here?.....and I thought that you weren't paying attention!) All I want to do is talk to someone in authority to see what they say about this, and for that matter, is it just me, or do you the reader see something inherently funny with the fact that I cannot have access to MY money except through the process of talking to one of the "lovely" tellers. And please understand I am not pissed at the tellers, they have been very helpful, though even they don't see the humor in not being able to access MY money except through one of them. Am I making this point clear, we are talking about MY money here. In talking to various people today, they were all helpful, and again I am not annoyed (ha ha bet you thought I was going to say pissed again eh?) with any of them, except for the gentleman who kept saying that I had to talk to my branch, and even went as far as to connect me with my branch, ( now here is something ironic for you to think about, I call Toronto on a toll free line, and then get transfered back to Edmonton to talk to the branch, I believe still on the toll free line, I wonder if they could transfer me to some friends in Toronto on the same line?) The bank even has customer support people, but they have no phone number so you can call them, they have to call you back, supposedly in 2-3 business days, I wonder how they are going to do that with out a phone line? Or is their phone line restricted as well? I wonder if they are annoyed about that? I also wonder if they want me to mention something to the president of the bank about that when I finally get to talk to him/her? Another one of my upcoming rants about the banking system will be about the obscene profits they make, and in my opinion, on the backs of their customers. Then I guess I will have to get into being rejected by another BIG bank when the Mrs and I went in to open up a savings account. ( and again this bank makes obscene profits every year, and all we wanted to do was open a savings account to put a little bit of money into, and no they are not the same banks)
As I said at the begining of this post, Banks.......a licence to steal!!!

2003-03-03T15:22:00.000-07:00

You know, you really need to update more often. Even if you do rant about wrestling. ;)
And when are we going to rent those videos? Eh? Eh?

2003-02-26T17:15:00.000-07:00

Your head? I thought these were from your rectum. Glad you cleared that up.

2003-02-26T13:57:00.000-07:00

Hmmmm.......... "rectum.....I damn near killed um"........ something to think about
when wrestling is on TV......hmmm maybe I think all wrestlers are ASSHOLES.....
wait a minute...it is not just a thought..it is fact.....at least in my world......I think
that I really lost interest in the "entertainment" of wrestling when a rather famous
wrestler lost his life in a STUNT that went horribly wrong. Up until that time....
the thought was over paid ex football stars who are willing to sacrifice the body for
a few scheckles, as long was it was their bodies....what did I care.
In our current society, an accident takes the lifes of a couple of students, tragic yes
but then we send in the grief counsellors, to help the friends cope with the loss......
I wonder how the people in the arena felt....they had basically front row seats to the
accident....what about all the little people (children) that were in attendence, to whom
maybe this wrestler was their idol....who was there to help them cope. And what about
the second NASA accident....who is going to help all the people who watched that disaster
on TV, or worse, you go out into your back or front yard and you find a piece of astronaut.
Who is going to help that person?? In the not too distant past, we pulled ourselves up by our
boot straps, talked to mom and dad, and got on with our lives. What has happened to society?
We don't pray in schools any more, we don't sing our national anthem anymore and we don't
celebrate CHRISTMAS anymore. The low life scum that we have elected to run our country
is catering to a few "minority groups" that may not pray the same way that we do, and may
not celebrate the same holidays that we "christians" do. PISS ON EM I say, if you left your
country of birth, to come to MY country to make a better life for you and your family, then maybe
you should abide by the way that we do things in this country, and not try to turn MY country
into a mirror of yours. Remember, YOU left your homeland for a reason, if you succeed in turning
my country into yours, (with the help of our spineless, low life scum called politicians), then where
is the next place you are going to move too ? And once there, are you going to try and change that
country too? Where does it all stop?

Just some thoughts from my head

2003-02-23T19:00:00.000-07:00

Hmmm so many things to ponder and not enough time.......

2003-02-23T17:56:00.000-07:00

Created a PG-rated blog?

2003-02-23T17:40:00.000-07:00

Oh shit...what have I done now!!