Friday, November 28, 2008

Flyers

I get them. In fact I get a lot of them. Now I happen to like looking through flyers. I often find them more interesting than the newspapers they come in. So I would rather get flyers than not get flyers. But my goodness I get a lot of flyers! Some places send me two different flyers at different times in the week. Here's the list of flyers for this week:

1. London Drugs
2. Sears
3. Superstore
4. Zellers
5. Future Shop
6. Office Depot
7. The Brick
8. Toys R Us
9. The Bay
10. The Real Canadian Wholesale
11. Petcetera
12. XS Cargo
13. Dodd's Furnature
14.London Drugs (again)
15. AudioTronic
16. Sport Mart
17. Sears (again)
18. Mark's Work Wearhouse
19. Staples
20. Bentley
21. Home Depot
22. Rona
23. Ikea
24. Canadian Tire
25. Rogers Video/Wireless
26. Wearhouse One
27. Thrifty Foods
28. M&M Meat Shop
29. Home Outfitters
30. Save On Foods
31. Shoppers Drug Mart
32. Wal-Mart
33. Michaels
34. The Brick (again)
35. Safeway
36. The Source
37. Blockbuster Video
38. Country Grocer
39. Canadian Tire (again)
40. Rexall

I get two local papers per week. Each one is thick with flyers. Then, in addition to that, I get two separate packages of flyers delivered to my doorstep. There are more flyers than the newspapers can hold! They must be clearcutting mountainsides on my behalf, just to get enough paper to supply me with these flyers. I guess that's what happens when you live in the city.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Online Dating Rant

Dear Girls of online dating websites:

I have seen many of your profiles. And from a guy's perspective I'd like to offer you some tips. Note: this is a rant more than anything else, but it needs to be said.

1) Only sign up once. If you really insist on getting more free time, take your old profile down and put a new one up. When you keep several profiles on the same dating website, you remind me of my friend who always forgot his password (or didn't realize you could log in repeatedly with the same username). He would sign up again and again for online stuff. Don't be like that.

2) State your city (not just "Canada"). We're not all stalkers. We're not going to hunt you down if you state your city. What this will do is help the viewer in finding people that live in the same (or nearby) city.

3) Sign up on a dating website only if you are interested in dating. Don't sign up if you just want to "meet some people in the area". You're on the wrong site.

The next few tips are to do with the pictures you post. Digital cameras are plentiful. Get some pictures taken with a decent digital camera, in the daytime. Remember: put your best foot (or face) forward.

4) Don't post a picture taken with your webcam, late at night, in a dimly lit room. It's amazing how many people think this is acceptable photography. Get up from the computer, go into the daylight and take a picture outside.

5) Don't post a picture of you with your girlfriend and leave it to the viewer to guess which one is you. The worst ones are far away shots of you and a bunch of random people all at a party. You have to have at least one picture where it is a closeup of just you.

6) Don't post a cropped picture where it's obvious that the person you cropped out was a guy, especially if he has his arm around you (it's just tacky--take another picture!).

7) Don't post a picture of just you and another guy that looks like he could be your boyfriend. Even if you put in the caption "Me with my friend", guys will read "Me with my boyfriend". Even if it's your brother, it's just better to avoid those pictures.

8) Don't post a picture with you and a child. The reader will immediately assume it's your own. So unless you're looking for someone that wants an instant family, it's better if you don't post a picture with you and a random kid.

9) Spellcheck.

Thanks for listening and happy online dating.

Sincerely,

Jon

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Uncle

I gained a new title today. Through no effort on my part, I became an Uncle....Uncle Jon. It reminds me of a series of books :-)

On an unrelated note, it is also my 1 year anniversary at my job. Yay that.

On another unrelated note, it is also the 150th Birthday of B.C.

Busy day.

Mail

The previous owners of the townhouse in which I now reside, moved out and didn't tell a soul. As a result, I still get their mail, and I get a lot of it. Everything from bills to gov't cheques, I get it all....And I write "Moved, Return To Sender" and put it back in the mailbox, again and again. It's been 9 months now and I'm still receiving on average 3 pieces of their mail per week.

Wing Hong Chau, if you're out there...I'm still getting your mail. Canada Post would be happy to forward your mail to your new address for a modest fee. Please Mr. Chau, I'm getting tired of this.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Murchie

For as far back as I can remember, our family always had a cat. Motor was our first cat (on right), and I think he was my favorite. He slept on my bed most nights, and would lick my ear to wake me up when he needed to go out. It was a really sad day for me, when we discovered his lifeless body in the forest behind my parent's house, his life cut short by a BB gun.

Other cats came and went. We bought Boots from a pet store. He was the most misbehaved kitten we ever had. I figured he was possessed, and he ended up at the SPCA. Pushkin lasted for a number of years. He was a pretty good cat, but he ended up getting sick and barfing a lot. Way too much for any reasonable pet owner to handle. So off to the SPCA went he. "B" (short for Pushkin B) was a super friendly cat that appeared one day and adopted us. But a few months later he disappeared and never returned. Molly was a very energetic kitten but she lasted only a short time. She was let outside once and took off and was never seen again.

It was summer of 1993 when we drove to Mission to a hobby farm to pick out a kitten. I'm not sure how we did it, but we convinced my parents to let us take two kittens. We chose two brothers, Zipper and Murchie. Zipper was named for his energy, as he would zip around the house. It was also a somewhat appropriate name because he had a lot of gas, when he was getting used to the cat food we were feeding him. Murchie was named after the coffee shop that my parents used to buy coffee beans from. Murchie's belly had little brown dots that looked like coffee beans.

Zipper and Murchie were great cats, but very different in personality. Zipper was fearless and completely trusting. I think he ties with Motor for first place as favourite cat. Zipper was just cool. Murchie was much more fearful and reserved. I still remember the day we got them. Zipper was running around with us kids, chasing string. Murchie was hiding in a corner beside the TV. That about sums up their personalities. Unfortunately only a couple of years in, Zipper disappeared. It's unlikely he ran away. I suspect he tried to make friends with a raccoon and lost. Murchie's natural fear could be equated with street smarts, and it paid off; he didn't disappear.

Murchie's life wasn't perfect. He tended to do things that would make him barf. We would let him in and, without even an acknowledgement, he would race for the food, eat like he was being timed, and then barf only moments later (stupid cat). Sometimes he would bring gifts of birds or mice to the back yard door. Other times he would eat said prey, and it wouldn't agree with him.

But Murchie's virtues outnumbered his vices. He was a gentle cat. He didn't hiss, swat or scratch people. You could try to catch him and he would run away, but if you talked to him as one talks to a baby he would flop down on his side and start purring, and then you could just walk up to him. And he never lost his kitten-like purr. Right to the end, his purr was audible and he used it generously. At various times us kids would have the cat on our beds at night, and it was funny cause all you had to do was move and Murchie would start purring again.

November 4, 2008 Murchie, died of old age (about 15 years). He's the only cat our family ever had that stayed with us his entire life and actually died of old age. My parents are now true empty-nesters and they'll have to find something else to blame for the things that go bump in the night.

Grandma

On October 28, 2008 My grandmother went to be with the Lord. We knew her time was coming soon. Her mind, for all intents and purposes, had already gone many months before. When her body finally gave out, thoughts of her last two years faded away and the memories of the wonderful life she led, filled the forefronts of our minds. After the funeral, at the open mic, I shared some of my memories of my grandmother. For those that weren't there, I now share that with you.

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Memories of Grandma

I have many fond memories of my grandmother. When I was young, we would usually take a week in summer and visit "Grandma in Victoria". That was always exciting, especially since we had to take a ferry to visit her. Grandma's place was fun. She would make peppermint cookies, and she had games and storybooks that we didn't have at home.

Grandma made sure we knew that she loved us. When I was little she would say to me, "I love you. Do you know that?" Until one day I told her "I know you do, you don't have to ask me." From that day on, she never asked me again, but she never stopped telling me that she loved me.

From as early on as she could, she started teaching us songs about Jesus. I distinctly remember her singing "This little light of mine" and "Heavenly Sunshine" with me. She wanted us to know Jesus. I don't think I fully realize just how many prayers she prayed for me, and how much of where I am today is because of her prayers for her grandchildren.

In her day job, my Grandmother ran a successful fabric store. Grandma's store was cool. At the store, the grandchildren had special privilege. We could go to "the back" but the customers couldn't. The thing I enjoyed the most was the big boxes. When she got shipments of fabric, they would come in refrigerator-sized boxes, and she would save them for me so when I got there I could spend the week building myself a house.

Sometimes I even made a little money doing odd jobs around the store. I remember stamping hundreds of bags with the "Yards 'n' Yards Fabrics" address on it. One time I asked if I could look at the alarm system, because all the windows had a foil strip around the perimeter and I was interested in electronics. She took me to the back of the store, and bent down and quietly said to me "It's fake." My eyes widened and I couldn't believe that all this time my grandmother was secretly tricking all the potential robbers with a fake alarm system.

I asked her if she was going to get a computer for her business, but she said no, she had never used one before, and she doesn't need one. In fact, she NEVER used a computer, not once. And I think she was almost proud of that.

Grandma always kept herself busy. So even when she was watching TV, I remember she would work on her Crocheting. She taught me how to crochet. And for a period in grade 5, that was my hobby too.

In 1995 she moved to Abbotsford, and that was a treat. Now the grandmother we loved to visit was in our own town. She would join us for Saturday morning breakfast and I remember I could tell when Grandma had been to our house because there would be a tire track on our front lawn about 6" in from the curb. She like to make sure she was off the road as far as possible.

Some other facts about my grandmother:
-Grandma was a lefty like me, although at a young age she had to convert to right handedness.
-At thanksgiving, she always wanted the turkey neck, which was good, because nobody else did.

Grandma would invite me out for lunch from time to time. Just one-on-one with her FAVOURITE grandson, which is technically true, since (at the time) I was her ONLY grandson. She also extended a standing invitation to go for lunch anytime. If I have one regret, it's that I didn't take her up on it in my 20's as often as I could have. In those times we would talk about everything from what we were doing that day, to what it was like when she was a kid. I remember her speaking so fondly of her late husband, my grandfather. Their time together was so short, and yet it gave her enough good memories to last a lifetime. It has encouraged me to strive to be that kind of man.

I am really proud to say that Elizabeth Marshall was my grandma. She enjoyed life and had a positive cheerful attitude every time I saw her. She loved people and loved her family and loved the Lord. And I have been truly blessed by her.