duct tape love

It started at a pretty young age - the boy's love of duct tape.  To this day he has a rainbow of duct tape - all the colours of duct tape ever made.  Including camouflage.


This is some of his collection.

I remember when he was just little......I had asked him what he was up to and he replied "Looking for something to duct tape."   Another time when a friend came over, I heard him ask if he wanted to go and duct tape something.  


Hey, what can I say, he's a smart & creative kid.  He even makes the odd bit of money here & there by making wallets out of duct tape.  Yes, he takes orders. 

skulls on children's clothing

This is just wrong. Skulls on young children's clothing?  This is in the girls section, too.  Not to generalize, but what kind of parents want their children in these clothes?  What statement are they making?  I know life isn't all puppie dogs and pig tails but skulls are not necessary nor are they tasteful at this age.  

one of these things is not like the other

So now we have two mailboxes to choose from.  One if your letter's destination is local to the island and one if it has to leave the island to get to its destination.  


For the past several years Canada Post has been ridiculed for sending all of our mail off-island to Vancouver to be sorted, thus taking local job away. This includes mail that has to come right back to the island to be delivered.  They said it made fiscal sense.  hmmm


Apparently they want to take even more local jobs away by making us sort the mail for them.  Does it really save that much money?  I'll bet you a good percentage* of the mail will end up in the wrong box and have to be shipped either off or back onto the island.  


We'll see how long this lasts.**  


--
* My guess is 20% 


** My guess is less than 1 year

well, that's one way to solve that problem, but seriously, I can't believe in this day & age we'd resort to banning bicycles to avoid traffic accidents.

Published on Friday, June 18, 2010 by The Guardian/UK

That's All, Spokes: Colorado Town Bans Cyclists
by Helen Pidd and Agencies

A town in the US has banned cyclists on most of its streets, punishing anyone who gets caught with a $68 fine. Black Hawk in Colorado, which has a population of just above 100, is thought to be the first town in the US to make cycling illegal after a change in civic law.

The curious decree has been introduced for "health and safety" reasons, said administrators of the former goldmining town, which in the 1990s decided to develop gambling to prevent the place vanishing altogether.

Michael Copp, Black Hawk's city manager, admitted there had not been any accidents to prompt the ban, just concern over potential collisions between motor vehicles and bicycles on 19th-century streets that were designed for horses and carriages.

The town started enforcing the ban on 5 June, five months after it passed the law requiring cyclists to dismount and wheel their bikes through the town. So far eight tickets have been issued, said Copp.

Copp, who does not cycle himself, said the council passed the ordinance after the town experienced a surge in traffic – buses, delivery trucks, and motorists – following a law that increased the maximum betting limits from $5 to $100 once it chose gambling as its raison d'etre.

The ban applies only to the narrow 19th century thoroughfares in a town that is lined with historic buildings and new casinos, not the few residential streets. Cyclists riding in on Colorado highway 279, a main route through the town, would have to dismount and walk about 400 metres, Copp said.

"This ordinance is necessary for the preservation of health and safety and for the protection of public convenience and welfare," says the law, which is set out on the Black Hawk website.

"The rules will allow bicycle traffic that originates locally to continue to operate with City Manager authorisation, while still assuring that such traffic can operate in a manner that is not incompatible with vehicular traffic," says another clause.

Cyclists' lobbies are gearing up to challenge the law, which they say is illegal.

"The danger here is the precedent," Dan Grunig of Bicycle Colorado, an advocacy group, said. "We don't believe it's right or legal and we want to make sure it's addressed before it's spread any further."

Grunig's group, which claims 7,000 members statewide, has appealed to national groups to help.

"An outright ban on being able to ride a bicycle through a community is unheard of in any other community in the country, said Charlie Zeeger, director of the Pedestrian and Bicycling Information Center at the University of North Carolina.

But Black Hawk seems proud to be first. "At this point the council has no intention of repealing the ban," Copp said. "They believe their actions are what's best for its citizens in Black Hawk, which are casinos and their patrons."

srsly?

52 minutes? That's the best you could do for a dollar?

docked marks

The teenboy came home with a near-perfect grade 8 math quiz.  19 out of 22  =  86% is nothing to sneeze at.

However, he was a little choked at the reason for the loss of 3 points and I can understand why.


He got one question wrong, the one shown below.  He got the math correct but he didn't specify the unit of measurement (cm2).   For this he drops from 100% to 86% which is a significant drop.  All of the questions were based in the same unit of measurement, so it somehow makes it even less significant.  argh

If I were the teacher I would have docked him a point for missing the unit of measure, two at the outside max. But this teacher gave him no points whatsoever for this question.


I do not agree but I'm not one of these parents to go running to the teacher to cry foul against my child on every single thing I hear about.



I'd love to hear your thoughts on this - especially if you are a teacher  :D

pay what it's worth...

Have you heard of this restaurant and its ground-breaking concept of "pay what you think it's worth"?  

I admit it does go right along with my socialistic tendencies but even I would be uncomfortable throwing in any old amount - I need to know the estimated value of the food so that I can contribute a fair amount.  

There are those who will abuse the concept and probably kill it before it really gets going.  But kudos to these guys for giving it a shot!  I hope we get an update a year down the road to see how well it's going.

OCD or too much time

Is it just me or does the produce guy at 

The Market have too much time on his hands?  

Either that, or a little OCD.

a woman's right

Has this happened to you?  

You pick out the clothes you're going to wear for the day and then hop into the shower. 

Once you're out of the shower you totally don't feel like wearing the clothes you just picked out 15 minutes ago?  What's up with that??

Happened to me again this morning.  Not sure why, really.  What happened in the shower to change my mind?  Sure, I got wetter (and cleaner) and now I don't want to put on clingy, warm clothes that I thought would be a good choice pre-shower.

It is a woman's right to change her mind, but even this change puzzles and slightly annoys me.  

What about those uber-organized women who choose their clothing the night before?  I'm pretty sure they stick to their choices or it would throw their whole morning out of whack.  Thank goodness I'm not that organized.

c'mon Telus, you're smarter than that

So, I've been paying my bills online for years.  Telus still insist on sending me a monthly paper bill telling me not to pay it because the money will be electronically removed from my account.

The real kicker?  They send a self-addressed envelope for me to include my non-payment back to them.

I suppose there is a way to log into Telus' website and let them know the obvious, that I don't require a paper confirmation not to send them any money, but, c'mon Telus, you can do better than that.

how often do you change your bath towel?

Gotta ask you something. 

How often do you wash your bath towel?

You're presumably clean when you dry off with it so how dirty can it get?  I understand about molds or mildew but if you have a little heat on in the winter months it will dry out fairly quickly.  

My teenage son insists on a brand new towel each time he showers.

I am thrilled he's finally at the stage where he showers everyday without any reminders but a new bath towel every day?  It just seems wasteful to me, both water wise & detergent.  Not to mention the fact that I use a coin operated laundrymat.

Personally I use mine an average of 3 times before grabbing a new one.  

Maybe I should suggest he uses a smaller hand towel to dry off instead of the large beach-sized towels if he insists on a clean one every time.