392nd Post - Family Illness Day

I am very lucky that where I work I am allowed up to 5 family illness days a year. I had to use one today to take my mother to a specialist here in the city.

My parents came up here Saturday night. We went shopping on Sunday afternoon, and to Swiss Chalet for dinner. I don't really get that place. The food value is really not there in my opinion. Portions are not large, but the cost is. I am not rushing back there.

My father and I added a ledge to my computer desk last evening that accommodates my free-to-me scanner. I doubt it will see much use, but it is there when I need it.

I don't think I'd ever buy a scanner. For one thing, I don't have that much need of one (selling crap on ebay, or something like last night's memorial bulletin for my uncle). For another, most of the scanners today are the multi-function units, offering a scanner, fax machine, copier, and printer in one device. We should, as a society, be moving away from the use of paper. I still write grocery lists on paper, but ideally should be using my digital voice recorder to keep track of what I need to buy at Superstore each week. I have several hundred sheets of looseleaf here at my desk, and that paper will last me for years and years. To go out and buy bond paper to support an addiction to a fax machine, printer, copier and scanner device seems like an awful waste of finite resources to me. I am trying to downsize my life, people!

Anyway, we left the house around 8 this morning for my mother's appointment. We finished with it around 11am, and I promptly drove them back home, 75 minutes away. A quick lunch, and I returned to the city, as I was expecting a call from someone at CBC radio who wants to talk to me about freecycle and how I use it to get some things I'd like at no cost, but more importantly how I use it to get rid of things I no longer want or need. But the reporter was too busy to visit here today. That was fine. It just gave me more time to sleep, which I did. She may show up here tomorrow.

Back to work tomorrow. And the cottage this weekend. Two more reasons to continue living.

Bevboy