Overhead bins...

I travel a lot and in fact I’m on the road well over 200 days a year. Almost all of that travel is by air and it seems that every time I get on an aircraft more and more people are trying to cram more and more stuff into the overhead luggage compartments. Most of these compartments are made to hold nothing more than a computer briefcase and your jacket but I’ve watched while people try to stuff that briefcase, their parka, presents for their great grandkids, suitcase and even their walkers into these areas. The airlines seem unable to control these people and have tried a number different aircraft configurations to accommodate them. The CL-40-0 Skymonster could have been one of their first efforts followed by the Guppy, the Super Guppy and most recently the Airbus A300B4ST Super Transporter.

Personally I’m getting fed up with those travelers who think they have to carry most of the contents of their homes with them whenever they fly and I’m sticking with the train whenever possible. Happy trails folks!

On the road...

I’ve been off the air lately and just now getting caught up on everything. I’m up in Inukjuak, a community of about 1,300 in Northern Quebec doing a Store Manager Relief job. The house I’m in had no telephone and it took about 3 week to convince Bell Canada that the dwelling even existed. According to their records it was demolished several years ago and they could see no reason why I wanted a telephone installed in a pile of rubble. Finally I called one of their service representatives in Ottawa and asked her if she had a telephone. “Of course,” she said and I then asked her if she had a house. When she said yes I said “prove it to me” and I had my telephone the next day so my internet connection is now up and running.

I know, they have their systems to follow and we have ours. For example, we used to have control over customer accounts at the store level and now it’s all handled by our head office people. As a result when we may have someone we know is an excellent customer with years of loyalty to us who wants to maybe just charge that one more thing we can’t approve it. To be fair, when the stores had full control things sometimes got out of hand and we can normally also get in touch with someone at our head office to stretch limits a bit but it can be a bit inconvenient on a busy day to have a customer wait in line with 10 people behind them while we get approval. Would I like to go back to store control? Not a chance because this makes things a lot more smoother and also much easier to say no to an overdue or over limit customer when necessary.

Anyway, this is one of the nicest locations we have in our entire system which stretches all across Canada, into Alaska, the Caribbean and now all the way to Guam way out in the Pacific Ocean. If you want to see some great photos of the Inukjuak area just go to WWW.PITUVIK.COM and check out the photography area. This is one fantastic place to visit so feel free to contact the Pituvik people to see about your next (or first) vacation to the north. And to you Toronto people out there… NO, Barrie is NOT part of the arctic, get out in the real world will you?

Early Morning Puzzle...

It's 7:00 am and I’m just finishing up breakfast here at the Quality Inn on Carlingview in Toronto. Looking around the restaurant over my second coffee I note that there are around 100 of us here, all men. Where are the business women? Fully believing in the best person getting the job no matter whom or what they are I started wondering and came up with some theories. Maybe you can help me iron them out a bit and I welcome all comments from all sides of the fence.

One: All the business women are too smart to book meetings and travel for the early morning. They probably even got to wherever they had to get to yesterday so they could get a decent night’s sleep and rise the next morning at a reasonable hour, not 5:00 am as I did.

Two: The men are all so paranoid about the possibility of a woman taking over their jobs that they can’t sleep. This forces them to congregate in small huddled groups either before or just after dawn, pretending to enjoy the camaraderie of their equally paranoid competitors.

Three: Perhaps, as in my case the timing just wasn’t right. I would have preferred to take the train from Sudbury but on this occasion “time was of the essence” and a quick fly down and back was called for. Or…


Four: Maybe they are like me and just enjoy watching the world come alive with the sun over that first coffee of the day. Of course, here in Toronto I can’t say that the world ever comes alive. In the self-proclaimed “Centre of the Universe” all I see is dirt, slush, smog and traffic. Who in their right mind would ever consider this life? A life sentence maybe, but certainly not life. Give me the open skies and clean air of Manitoulin Life any day!

Memoirs?

Someone asked me this week if I was going to write a book when I retire. It’s certainly something I’ve thought about but the answer has to be no. The main problem with me writing a book about my 35 years with The Hudson’s Bay Company and The North West Company is that too many people are still alive. I can think of more than a few happenings that would make at least a TV movie but there is no way I could afford the certain lawsuits!


Actually I’m just joking as there are lots of little things that could be told. Things like me being lectured by a fellow in Mistassini because I cut down a living tree and learning that “you never kill anything you’re not going to eat” for example. How about the time we chased the bears up the river bank with only .22 caliber rifles and me finding out later that the bullet in the chamber was a dud and didn’t fire?

How about lighting up the muskeg with ski-doo headlights in the middle of a winter night so the DC-3 bringing the students back home from school for Christmas would be able to land? Along the same theme how about stuffing black garbage bags with snow and laying them out on the drifts so the Twin Otters with our grocery supplies could have some sense of depth perception while trying to land in the mountains of Salluit?

Having to go to work by helicopter when it was freeze-up or break-up time in Moosonee and Moose Factory… Seeing half the sky blacked out when the geese all took wing at the same time at the mouth of the Severn River… Watching 500+ white beluga whales feeding in the Churchill River one evening… Glaciers on Baffin Island… White-out on the Barren Lands… Fish ‘n Brewis with Scrunchions and Cod Tongues in Labrador…

Hmmm… maybe I should give that book some thought.

Why me...

As Watkins Independent Associates and members of The Summit Group we have access to an exclusive weekly conference call. This past Thursday the call dealt with “Why I Joined Watkins” and it made me think a bit.

According to The Summit Group web site (article 100310) the three main reasons people join Watkins are…

• To get high-quality Watkins products for yourself at a significant discount.
• To earn extra money by sharing catalogues or retailing products to friends, relatives, and coworkers.
• To build a large organization that provides the total time, flexibility and financial freedom enjoyed by successful Watkins leaders.

So, why did I join…?

First of all I remembered the Watkins Man coming around to my grandmother’s house when I was just barely old enough to climb on a chair and look out a window. He, along with the Fuller-Brush Man and the Raleigh Man were regulars along with others such as the chimney-sweeps and occasionally the Electrolux man. My grandmother always tried to buy from the Watkins Man as she said he had “the best” and looked forward to his visits especially when she was running low on vanilla or some other spice. Being a great cook she went through a lot of these things and I wish we had bugged her to write down more of her recipes for us. She was an old time "a bit of this and a dash of that and maybe some of those" types who, just like her mother before her kept it all in her head and not in a book on the shelf. I also remember when my grandfather had an accident down at the local Union Screen Plate factory and broke a rib or two. Guess what they would rub on to make his aches feel better? Yup, Watkins Red Liniment. Anyway, that was reason one.

Another was that yes, I’m looking to earn some extra money as both Gloria and I are hoping to retire in the next 2 or 3 years and I suppose like most we’re wondering if the reduced pension cheques will be enough to get us by into our old age. A little extra income wouldn’t hurt right?

The third reason sort of intrigued me but since at that time I didn’t understand much about it there wasn’t a solid reason for buying in. Network marketing was a hope, but not a reason. Now that we have been in for over a year I can really see the value in the creation of a personal downline but especially in helping the downline create a downline. There is a LOT of money to be made in this side of the business, not to mention the free travel and other perks. No, for anyone thinking the word out there, this is NOT a pyramid scheme and any bonus payments we receive have to be earned and comes directly from the Watkins advertising budget and not from any individual. Every single Independent Associate out there keeps every single dollar they earn and none of it is held back to line the pockets of anyone above them in the group.

This brings me to a question for you…

Why would YOU become one of our associates? If you are just interested in getting award winning products for yourself at a discount, wonderful! If you want to make a little bit of money on the side, great! If you are interested in earning a great full time income for putting in a few part time hours that you decide on yourself, fantastic!

If any of this interests you and there is anything I can do to help you reach any of your goals please let me know. I don’t have all the answers but I know where to get most of them so feel free to get in touch if anything is bothering or puzzling you and we’ll try to work it out.

In the meantime I’m really getting a kick out of being The Watkins Man! How about you?

Ouch, ouch, ouch...

I find myself getting very lazy over the past few weeks. I’ve been off work since late last October and it’s going to be very hard to hit the trail again shortly. I know I shouldn’t complain because I’m still collecting full pay (plus vacation pay!) while lounging around the house but the fact that the powers that be still keep sending me that cheque makes me feel a little guilty. I’m not the kind of guy who will easily take a handout and that’s what it feels like to me. I know, I know, they can still contact me at any time and I will be on that plane for them tomorrow but after a couple weeks this waiting sort of wears you down. The day I retire I will do so without feeling guilty but for now I’m just plain lazy.

This ties in the feelings about my gout, or pseudogout as it’s now been diagnosed. Someone asked me today if I could go on disability but that would be going a bit too far at this point. It may come to it someday but as long as I can still function adequately in some position or other then that’s what I’ll keep on doing. I regretfully admit that it’s a lot harder to unload the trucks and aircraft than is was 30 years ago and with my thumbs slowing locking up it’s getting harder and harder to count money but I can still do the job better than a lot of the young whippersnappers out there. My point is that I think too many people use any excuse they can to NOT work and it’s not fair to the rest of the population that these fakes are sitting back laughing on our tax dollars. If they can’t work then fine, I have no problem with that but as long as they can function somewhere, somehow they have a responsibility to not mooch off the rest of us. When the day comes when I legitimately can’t work myself then I’ll just have to accept it, but it won’t be easy.

Pseudogout by the way has all the same symptoms of actual gout but has a different cause. This one is a progressive build-up of calcium in the joints while regular gout is a build-up of uric acid crystals. Apparently there is no cure for the pseudo version so I’ll just have to get used to the occasional flare-ups, days of limping and nights of no sleep… (groan). If you read the web sites they will tell you that gout has been compared to the pain of childbirth or even a bullet wound and I guess that means I could stand being shot a few times over. I’m sure the women out there would debate the childbirth comment though. I just know it hurts, OK?

The good news is that I’ve discovered a new miracle drug, Indomethacin, which has taken me back 10 years as it reduces most of the inflammation in my joints. Gloria says there is a huge difference in the way I’m moving around the house but all I know is that I’m sleeping better, shoveling faster, have greater flexibility and generally feel like I’m back in my 40’s again, if not my 30’s. Normally I have to be on my death bed before I’ll see a doctor as I’m sure they have better things to do than pamper an old guy like me. Their time should be taken up setting bones or removing all kinds of nasty things from nice people who deserve better rather than humor old farts like me and I always feel guilty about taking them away from the hurts that really matter in the world.

Anyway, here’s to Indomethacin and if I’m lucky this prescription will last me a couple months and then I’ll have to feel guilty all over again about taking up someone’s time to pat my red, swollen, throbbing toe and say there, there, take a pill and you’ll feel all better soon. 

Anyone else hear that?

... about 11:00 this morning?

Dead Silence...

Up before dawn, waiting for the first birds to come into the feeder, smelling the coffee dripping, no stars today, too cloudy at the moment, cleaning the dusting of snow from the deck and driveway, not a sound but for an occasional tinkle of ice moving on the lake. There’s the first bird call now, and a partridge pecking at buds and branches, the glint of sun waking over the lake horizon, first coffee with cinnamon toast, maybe a little Nessum Dorma to start the brain juices flowing…


It’s going to be a great day, don’t you think?

Weather confusions...

This weather has everyone confused I guess. There have been Mourning Doves around for the past 3 or 4 days just cleaning up seed dropped out of the feeder by the Chickadees and Nuthatches. I don’t recall ever seeing one in the winter before, you?

Photo borrowed under a Creative Commons license (my camera batteries are dead) from “tattinstar2” THANKS!

Mmmmm...

"Recent studies have shown that just 1/4 tsp of cinnamon every day may help to lower blood sugar, fats and cholesterol by up to 30 percent! Researchers suggest it may also stave off the onset of type 2 diabetes in those at risk.

Watkins Purest Ground Cinnamon contains a high amount of essential oils for optimum flavor, aroma and health benefits! Try some every day on cereal, oatmeal, toast, apples and savory dishes. Place in coffee grounds before brewing for rich flavor and aroma." (taken from the detailed product description on the Watkins web site)

Personally I like it on my toast or oatmeal and here’s a fun fact… If you stacked all the containers of Cinnamon Watkins has sold since 1895, it would be 15,766 times taller than the Eiffel Tower.

Another bleary day...

Can anyone tell me why I spent all that time shoveling snow recently when it all would have melted by today anyway? The front lawn is mostly grass today, the driveway is completely clear of ice and is in its summer gravel mode and I can hear the ice patches on the lake crunching up along the shore in the light breeze.

Maybe it’s already time to start searching for that patch of field to plant a garden in this summer. I’ve never had a garden unless you count that patch of back yard I dug up in Eastmain years ago. I planted 10lbs of potatoes and got back about 80lb which tasted a lot better than the ones we planted so I guess it was a victory. The soil there wasn’t much for growing but it’s better than what we have here. Our present back yard is muddy gravel and the front yard is dry gravel, neither of which is much fun to work with or grow things in. Hence the search for some nice quiet place to start a little growth on and I’ve even considered buying a nice little lot in Manitowaning that would serve as a garden plot for now and maybe a nice little house or office in the future. The soil looks good and it is just down the hill from the fellow that currently sells all kinds of vegetables now so the area can’t be that bad for planting. We’ll see.

In the meantime if anyone has a “back forty” or some other little area that they’re not using…

HEY! Heard something outside that I haven’t noticed around here since last summer... the very distinctive sound of a Pileated Woodpecker. Yup, there he was pounding away on a stump. I wonder if his mate is out there somewhere or could this be one of the young they had just popping back to check out the old neighborhood. We’ll keep you posted.

A snow shovel’s best friend…

I know we’ve mentioned this before but just to remind everyone that the best helper you can get with the heavy snow shoveling is good old Watkins Cooking Spray.

Yup, all you have to do is put a good thick coating on your shovel and that miserable old wet snow will not stick. Why lift all that weight over and over again if you don’t have to, right?

Oh yeah, it also works great at coating frying pans and I think it tastes a lot better than that other stuff anyway. Of course, since it’s a Watkins product you can use a lot less of it and it works out much cheaper than those other brands because you can get about 1,600 servings per 397g can. That's a lot of pancakes!

PS: It will also work great on your satellite dish. The snow just keeps sliding off so no more getting up there with the broom after a big storm.

Boredom Tyler, Boredom...

That is what’s wrong with the world according to “Rosie” the Beaver flying bush pilot in one of my favorite movies, Never Cry Wolf. The story takes place somewhere in the western arctic and is filmed with a fantastic cast of Brian Dennehy, Charles Martin Smith and some really great actors from the north, Zachary Ittimangnaw as Ootek and Samson Jorah as Mike. In the movie Smith has been sent north to prove that wolves are responsible for the dwindling caribou herds and of course proves that theory wrong, as most southern hypothesis are. There is nothing quite as silly as some brand spanking new MBA trying to tell an old Inuk that the thousands of years of stories and history passed down from generation to generation together with what he has seen and learned for himself during a lifetime of living on the land is all wrong.

Wolves do take their fair share of caribou of course but these are mainly the old and sick or the very young that have become separated from the rest of their group. There is safety in numbers within the caribou as well as human societies.

Back to boredom... Personally I like boredom, it forces the brain to think and develop along a number of different lines and at least keeps mine active, even if it's only in a complaining state. I love being bored out on my deck just watching the world go by and wondering what the trees are thinking. What sites have they seen, what did they think of that deer that stopped by to rub it’s antlers on the rough bark this morning and what do they think of the woodpeckers that rat-a-tat-tat on their sides searching for insects. Are the trees grateful for this intrusion because the birds get rid of parasites or is it only an itch that they are unable to scratch. Strange thoughts, eh?

How about that wave that just hit shore on the beach? How far did it come, how do wave dynamics work anyway, did it travel here from Killarney or perhaps all the way from Christian Island or even Collingwood? What would it think of the artificial waves created at Wet and Wild in Wasaga that we have visited so often and hope to get back to with the grandson next summer?

That eagle that just went over… does it know that It is a sacred symbol or is it just cruising and wondering if it will get to eat today or not. Hmmm… “The Northern Lights have seen queer sights but the queerest they ever did see, was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge, I cremated Sam McGee.” You certainly can’t fault those strange thoughts by one of my favorite poets, Robert Service who no doubt had more than his share of boredom during a lifetime in the north.

What is that youngster thinking while rolling those cars about the room and parking them in the new garage that appeared under the tree last week? Does he realize he is building motor skills and taking early driver training or is he just having fun? Is he perhaps thinking up new ways to sneak up on me and go BOOP! while poking a finger on my leg or butt, a trick that I sometimes wish I had never taught him.

Ahhh… the ultimate sign of boredom… writing silly blog entries in the middle of the night. Working my brain cells or just destroying them from lack of sleep… I don’t know, but at least I’m not bored. Good night all!

(This was typed up after I finished shoveling snow at 3:45am this morning. I came in after 2 hours of clearing white stuff, took a shower, poured myself a glass of the good sherry and worked on this while waiting for sleep to kick in. Guess I'd better get a life, eh?)

Humbug...

Well I’ve sort of neglected the old blog lately but it’s just an all round nasty time of the year for me and I try to stay away from everything and everybody if I can. Sorry people, but I just can’t get into all these “festivities” and don’t understand them… never have and never will. Maybe it’s just an excuse but I think it’s got something to do with too many years in retail stores where you’re working 14 hours a day (most often seven days a week) for about a month leading up to the chimney creeper arriving. After you put up with all the crap (“I want to charge $1,000.00 even though I know I’m 10 months overdue on my account and haven’t paid a penny since June but it’s Christmas and you have to let me charge and don’t you care about my babies you prick?!”) for 30 or so years you just don’t even want to hear the word Christmas or anything related to it anymore. I know the family thinks I’m nuts and I probably am, but by the time I’m certifiable I won’t know what’s going on anyway so I’m not going to let it worry me.

Anyway, what’s new with you? I got the laptop back with its new hard drive a couple weeks ago and have been busy putting all my files back in. I think I mentioned that I couldn’t restore some of them from backups for some reason or other but that’s not a problem except for a couple of them… and those are things that are for the most part in my mind anyway. I’m thinking of some photos that had not been uploaded to Flickr and my collection of quotes that I had been building up for years but oh well, as I said these are things that live on in memory if not in bits and bytes. I actually don’t really mind having to input it all again as it’s been an opportunity to organize things a little differently. I had wanted to do it before but it just seemed like too much work to move it all around. Somehow it’s easier just to start from scratch, just like after a big yard sale, eh?

I’m keeping busy being at war with the Blue Jays and Squirrels who are just too greedy for my liking and don’t let the smaller birds eat in peace. I’ve also become hooked on “Puzzlebee” on Facebook and just HAVE to make a run at the daily jigsaw with my morning coffee. I also try to keep the brain active by doing an “easy”, “medium” and sometimes a “hard” Sudoku and after that there is a little addiction called “Drift ‘n’ Burn 365" at Shockwave that I have to earn my daily car at. Other than that and doing a little recruiting for my Watkins business it’s been a lazy month off. I don’t suppose it will last too much longer though as I expect an email any time now with a request to hit the road again for Northern.

That’s if for now, time for a nap.

All I can say is WOW!!!!

Have we got a deal for YOU!

Steve Bretzke, who is the head of the group of Independent Watkins Associates that I belong to, has just announced a special promotion for new associates who sign up between December 18th and 28th, 2007. Steve himself will send you a $60.00 Watkins Gift Certificate upon confirmation of your signup! We just have to let him know by January 5th, 2008 and I will help you with that. On top of his incentive I still have my own standing offer of a $20.00 Watkins Gift Certificate for new associates signing up at any time of the year.

So go to www.wikyinfo.ca right away to get registered (no sign-up obligation of any kind at this point) and I’ll get some more information on the way to you. Drop me an email at murray@ourmanitoulin.com or post a comment to this blog if you prefer, but either way there is no obligation, only opportunity. Our smallest starter kit is only $69.99 plus taxes and shipping and after you take into consideration the $80.00 that Steve and I are offering you how can you lose? I can even send you information on how to save the $69.99 if you want! Again... WOW!

PLUS! I can’t give any details on the following but… there will be a huge announcement coming from Watkins and The Summit Group within the next few weeks that is almost guaranteed to increase and quite possibly even double or more the amount of business and money that many Independent Watkins Associates are earning now. It will greatly benefit you as a new associate also. Can I send you information on this as soon as I can release it?

PS: Many of you have asked me how much money can be made by becoming an Independent Associate for Watkins and a member of The Summit Group operating your own home business… well, what if I told you that I know of people that are earning well into a six figure annual income? Am I making that much yet? Hah, no way… but I may be some day and YOU could be too. ASK ME HOW!

Progressing slowly...

This is Day 4 of reinstalling programs and files to my laptop after having to get a new hard drive put in. I have a number of programs that I feel are essential and these include a good virus checker like McAfee (which gets installed first) with “SiteAdvisor”, SpoofStick, and
OpenOffice. The latter is a full suite of programs that practically duplicate all the Microsoft Office products such as Excel, Word, Power Point and all the others.

The best part of OpenOffice is that it is all free! You are encouraged to make a donation but it is not required and you are free to use it for as long as you want and even get all the updates as they come out also. Not a bad deal at all I think.

I’ve got a number of other favorites such as LimeWire, Boinc/Seti, Flickr Uploader, and also my regular utilities such as the software for my Palm Pilot, a good spyware and malware program, a registry checker/cleaner and of course a very few games that I play semi-regularly.

These would be Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, Diablo, SimGolf and Railway Tycoon. Lately I’ve become addicted to Puzzlebee on Facebook and Drift ‘n Burn on Shockwave but those don’t have to be installed.

My real loss is some of my files as I have absolutely no idea why I can’t restore them from my backup CD’s. I can easily rebuild my Watkins files, I have paper copies of most of my web page business files and most of the photos I wanted to keep are already uploaded to Flickr. One big loss is my collection of quotes that I had been building up for years. I had close to 70 text pages of the ones I considered special or profound and although I will eventually remember most of them I’m sure there will be a few that are gone forever. I even had my epitaph in there!

I was going to look into one of those online backup services but I see that for the next 2 days Dell has a 320gig USB hard drive on sale for only $99.99 so I’m tempted to go ahead and order that. It would hold all the backups for desktop and the three laptops that are kicking around the house. We’ll study on that possibility today and decide about it tonight or tomorrow.

Anyway, back to work…

Withdrawal…

I see that several other people have had computer problems over the past week. LifeOnManitoulin and a couple others that I have heard about had their modems blow, and the hard drive on my laptop went. As near as I can figure this all occurred at about the same time. The repairman working on my laptop figures that it was a brownout because of the nature of the hard drive problem and tells me that he does a very good business because of these occurrences on Manitoulin Island.

This is the second time I’ve had this problem in the past three years and since I didn’t invest in a better quality surge suppressor / drop-off protector the last time I guess I’d better do so now. At least I’m lucky to have the old desktop to use but it’s just so miserable to work with after my little Dell that I’m anxiously awaiting the return of the latter next Tuesday with a brand new 120gig drive installed.

By the way, a couple experts I know have always insisted that all hard drives eventually fail. It's just fact of life so if you're not regularly backing up any important data you'd better start. Three sets, grandfather-father-son, is the old standard rule. Wish I'd followed it a little bit better myself as I've lost about a months worth of data. :-(