Post 2950 - Oops!

Welcome to Saturday evening, folks.

I am sorry I didn't write on Friday. My body shut down around 7:30 last night. By the time I woke up, it was too late to produce a blog post.

Friday was crazy busy. I drove up to the Valley around 6am. I wanted to make sure I was at the house by 8 because I was expecting the guy from the phone company to show up any time after 8. He arrived around 9:20 and announced that, yes, the main phone line coming into the house was not working. The second line, which was never asked for, was working fine, so the decision was made to map that phone line's number to the original number for the house, the one whose line was broken. So, the house is back to one phone line, and the original phone number for the house is back in action. Also, the stupid voice mail that was added to the line in the last little while, without my knowledge or consent, has been removed. It is all good.

I had some other chores to take care of. I had discovered that the lawn tractor was not working, even though its battery had been cared for and nurtured all Winter long, attached for the most part to a trickle charger while sitting on a bench that was directly under a warm air vent. If I were a lawn tractor battery, I could think of no better way to spend my Winter.

I ended up taking the battery into a place that fixes lawn tractors, on Saturday morning. The battery is fine, so I drove back to the house, reinstalled the battery in the lawn tractor, and found that the lawn tractor started. Once. Any subsequent efforts to start the lawn tractor were unsuccessful. I may have to go back down  to the Valley yet again this week to have them pick it up and see what is wrong. Sigh.

I spent some time on Friday dealing with the overpayment situation on my mother's pharmacy account. We kept getting bills since her death saying that we owed a small amount of money, so my sister made good on that debt, and I reimbursed her. Then, in the last few days, we got yet another account statement that says that there is actually an overpayment. Not much money. A relatively small amount. But they gave me a phone number to call, so I phoned them from my car and they will mail a cheque to me in care of my mother's estate. And, doubtless I will get that cheque and see yet another account statement that indicates that this overpayment is actually a bill after all, and that we will have to cough up money.

As I left the pharmacy on Friday afternoon, into whom should I run but one of my blog's 4.7 readers, Ken Pineo. I have known him for years, and I am delighted that we have kept in touch. In his retirement years he has taken up the hobby of geocaching, and more recently has become a councillor for the village of New Minas. He told me that he won his seat by 3 votes, after the obligatory recount. He got in this year by acclamation.

I drove to the village of Canning after my experiences in New Minas. There is a grocery store there that we make an effort to visit whenever we are up. They have eclectic items there. They must do a hopping business, but I wish the owners would spend a little bit of money on the store itself. The floors are dirty, some of the freezer units are acting up, and the pizza they make and sell in the store is unspeakably bad. But they have some good deals on some items and we take advantage. They bring in pies from a local factory, seconds, and sell them at a price that makes me wonder how they make a profit. Yesterday they had Just Us! coffee at $5.99 a bag, stuff that had not sold at the regular price. We drink Just Us! coffee when we are not drinking McCafe coffee.

I ended up buying two pecan pies for $5 (for both, NOT for each), and two chocolate pecan pies (both for $7). I just had a sliver of chocolate pecan pie, and it is delicious. Those four pies cost less than the so-called dessert we got this week at a local farmer's market.

Anyway, I got back to the city early Saturday afternoon. We watched a few episodes of the new Lily Tomlin/Jane Fonda show on Netflix, and then we took a long nap.

This evening while Patricia watched "Orphan Black", I watched a live stream broadcast of the 2015 Stoker Awards. As usual, Jeff Strand was the host. He is an excellent host, funny, and does a great job of moving things along. My complaint about these awards ceremonies is that the host leaves the lectern at every opportunity, leaving it vacant until the award recipients or those who are bestowing the awards, show up and start speaking. Then, when they are done, they leave the lectern vacant again until the host comes back. This is a bad thing. You never leave the lectern vacant.

Tonight, this was not done, but for a technical reason. There was no microphone stand at the lectern, so anyone at the lectern had to hand off the mic to the people who wanted to use it. So, I got my wish. However, the quality of the audio was so poor that it reminded me of what you'd hear coming out of an old speaker you'd attach to your window whilst at a drive-in theatre, only the speaker had been damaged and fixed incompetently, so you could only make out every fifth word or so. That is the kind of audio those of us sitting at home had to endure this evening. I wish I could have enjoyed Jeff Strand's hosting duties more, but I just couldn't make out what the frig he was saying most of the time.

Next year, there will be the first annual Stokercon. I can say "annual", because they are already planning the 2017 convention. I am guessing that the Stoker Awards will move away from the World Horror Convention banquet over to Stokercon, but I may be dead wrong. Time will tell.

I live tweeted the Stoker Awards. Go ahead and read my tweets from this evening and you will see who won.

Been a long day. I think I will turn in. See you tomorrow.

Bevboy