Optimum Prime

Chicken Little

With the discovery of the fish and chip batter mix from Bulk Barn, we have been really enjoying Fish Fridays for the last couple of years. For those of you who might not know, a mythical carpenter had a bad day on a Friday, and people remember the cross he

Fight Club

So, the big news around here is we bought a car. Oh wait, who cares? It's a car. The really big news is we got Maddie a little brother! A final determination as to the name, has not yet been made. My excellent suggestion is facing resistance, and

The Sweet Spot

Does your Optimum dashboard have these sorts of numbers? ... and while that might seem pretty good, the reality is when I retired in the spring of 2022; I had just over a million points for the preceding five years. A result that I suspect is common among Optimum cardholders. Since

Health Nuts

They surround us. The governments of Alberta and Florida are great examples of administrations that spout garbage about vaccines and lockdowns. For the record, Florida had double the mortality rate when compared to Canada. Remember the videos of them crowded in the bars having a great time when the rest

The New Colossus

I think it is fair to say that Canada (i.e. the Liberals) has made some mistakes with our immigration policy over the last few years. It's a delicate subject to tackle without sounding like a racist. Like I care how I sound. In Ontario, it seems that

One Last Kick at the Can?

So, I'm probably going to purchase one more new (er) car. I know I keep saying each motorcycle is the last, but that has been a relatively inexpensive indulgence. The bikes I buy are old and cheap, just like me. I only have to pay the sales tax,

Summer Breeze

My Great Aunt Gladys owned and ruled (with an iron fist) a family restaurant called the K&W in Minden. I lived up north with her the summers I was fourteen then fifteen and worked for her in the restaurant. It's all a little hazy now, but

I'll Be Back

Hang around with me long enough and the weather will come up. I think it's a senior thing. I didn't give a shit when I was twenty. I put on my jean jacket and went out. Might be pouring rain, might be eighty and sunny, might

Yeeeerrrrr OUT!

One of my best friends asked me about the Three Strikes law being proposed by newly re-installed leader of the loyal opposition. Wouldn't that be a good thing to support? Three strikes (serious crimes) and you "come out (of prison) in a box" to invoke Conservative

A Bad Scene

Apologies in advance for going on and on this week. Get a coffee. As you know, we look at the competing flyers each week, and I would be the first to stand on a soapbox and say that Zehr's does not always have the best prices. I would

Caution: Amphibian Crossing

My first experience with the concept of gerrymandering came in 1972 at the tender age of 15. They built a new high school north of my childhood home, and my sister was going to attend it the following year. I had already completed grades 9 and 10 at Stephen Leacock

Subtitles

Other than a couple of obscure references in Job, and one notably bright star leading three wise men to a manger, both the Hebrew and the Christian Bibles spend very little time naming any stars. I promised last week to suggest the 2nd reason the constellation Orion is important. Here&

Bettlejuice Beetlejuice sept 11

My dad and his buddy Doug had this running joke they would use when the wives were nearby. "Tramp's Breakfast this morning, Doug. Really? Wha'd ya have? A piss and look around", he would answer. They'd laugh like four-year-olds while their wives

Nothing's Changed

Groceries were fun last week? If you followed our list, you spent $500, got $600 worth of stuff and got back 100K in points. That's 33% right across the board. Walmart is not beating that. Giant Tiger is not beating that. As most of us know, you do

What A Maroon

I really felt like that last week about ten seconds after I hit the "publish" button on my Ghost site. They say if you want to be a writer, write ... all the time. So I do. This blog, Letters to the Editor, an outline for a book, I&

Surprise, I'm Early

If I wake up anytime early on a Wednesday, I get up. I've usually had about five hours at that point, so I take a break (from sleeping) and shop the flyers. They all come out just after midnight. This is just a quick callout as Zehr'

Fourth Time, Unlucky

With all due deference to Terry Bollea and John Osbourne, this month's version of "A Life Well Lived" goes to John Lovell. Born in Cleveland in 1928, his father, a salesman for a coal furnace company, died when he was still a child.  This forced a

You Had To Be There

So0o, SWMBO gets home from our nation's capital and about an hour after she arrives, a light goes on and she says, "Oh, you painted the closet door, cool." I take a moment to reflect on my six days since she went away: Day One -

Pass The Envelope Please

So here is the promised thought experiment: Tropical island, bomb shelter, life sentence or a spaceflight to Europa. Where you are going isn't really important. The point is ... you are going to be isolated ... like forever. However, the fickle finger of fate has decided that you may take

Superman Never Made Any Money?

A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed Thunderbirds and lamented that lately, there had been a glut of superhero movies. I remember reading that it wasn't just the ultimate escapism yearned for by a society no longer able to deal with ... well; society; it went deeper. We needed

Don't Blink

Prime Minister Carney is currently in cottage country, meeting with First Nations representatives to talk about access to indigenous lands. Then, he and the Premiers are going to talk. I am pretty sure pipelines, fossil fuels, potash and softwood lumber will come up, but the meeting is in Ontario. Auto

The Sword

Live by it. Die by it. I hate hypocrisy. You got to hand it to our American friends. They get so many things wrong, and yet, they are adamant that "no one is going to tell us what to do." Of course, we all love it when that

Ruminant Rhythm

It is fairly easy to drag me down the Paleo diet highway. Humanity evolved eating whatever they could get their hands on and faced the almost daily prospect of starvation for 90,000 years. When we domesticated livestock and crops, 10,000 years ago, we doubled our life span. I

Sparks Joy

I'm dieting. I saw this ad on Facebook for an app called Simple with a bunch of testimonials and clicked on the trial. The app is well named. No calorie counting, in-depth analysis, pee in a bottle crap. It's an intermittent fasting tracker with a pretty

Full Circle

There's a few threads here, so bear with me? My personal vocational journey was, I suppose, like many people ... completely random. I did not know what I wanted to do. I watched John Glenn's Mercury flight when I was five, and was stuck on becoming a