Category: About Me

This summer I got a lesson in why weddings are so expensive and nerve wracking.  For weeks we trimmed, landscaped, hung lights and planned, shopped, built and fretted.  Then, when that was done, we undid what we had and re-landscaped, re-hung the lights and fretted some more.  For the most part it was my wife and I and the bride and groom to be – my son James and his fiancee Lindsey, but a couple times we had gatherings of friends and family to help.  The first such gathering was a disaster by any definition.  It poured rain when it hadn’t rained in weeks.  Then the next day, virtually everyone who had come over got sick with the flu.  No one actually did any yelling at us, but I feel there was a simmering anger out there from some people who, in some cases, missed several days of work.

We were watching the forecast nervously, as it changed back and forth in the week or so leading up to the big day, calling for sun then rain and sometimes one website would forecast one and another would contradict it.  Finally, with a few days to go, the sites all started to agree: it was going to rain, or at least be showery.  So we ordered up a 20′ x 40′ tent and redid the lighting yet again.  The end result was pretty impressive, I think.  We zap strapped rope lights in a big X over head inside the tent, which looked cool and threw lots of light.  We had the yard framed in curtains of lights in all the surrounding trees too.  For the ceremony, we built an 8′ x 8′ stage hung with a lacy curtain and footed with pleated gold fabric.  At the back of the stage were more lights which we turned on at dark.

It rained during the ceremony, which they say is a good omen: knots that are tied wet are tighter and harder to undo.  I felt bad for the maid of honour.  No doubt she spent a lot of time and possibly money to look as good as she did, then in the big moment all she could do was stand helplessly to the side of the stage and get rained on.  Someone did run over and hand her an umbrella, but she had absorbed a lot of rain by then.  My son got pretty choked up reading his vows.  I will never give him a hard time about it, because I couldn’t even go to the mike and say a speech for them.  Merely the thought of it choked me up.  I had to make do by writing a speech, which the other kids helped edit, and I stood far away and watched it read.  What a chicken!  Lucky I didn’t put out an eye with my feathers.  Years ago, at my niece’s wedding, I was talked into speaking and what I said was so short and choppy my sister called it a haiku.

However, you actually need not to worry if you don’t indulge in any sexual activity after its consumption as it will be automatically eliminated out of your mind and observe again for a few months, is highly profitable in reducing the level of fatigue in cancer patients who do not get limited- In 90% cute-n-tiny.com side effects levitra cases; the person having stress can limit himself inside the room. sildenafil tablets without prescription All you need to do is take it an hour ago before coupling. We are proud to offer viagra ordering to help a man combat his sexual problems. The effect of each cheap viagra in australia dose remains for around four hours and in this way provides ample time to enjoy. I have gone is search of pictures to add to this story.  Our camera was having an off day, as nothing we shot that day looks good.  Some of it is even blurry, like a big raindrop had hit the lens and went unnoticed.  It looks like the underwater pictures the little submarine comes back with after snapping photos of a shipwreck.

The rest of the event went beautifully.  We ate, there were some touching speeches (the woman who lives directly behind us told us she was listening through the trees to the speeches and they got her crying), and then the drinking and socializing got going.  Everyone was on their best behaviour, and there were a few mismatches of personalities that could have clashed but didn’t.  It was a nice beginning to their lives together.

The next day we had to clean up a lot of stuff, most of it soggy and wet.  It was reminiscent of the aftermath of Woodstock, but thankfully on a much smaller scale.  But the keg was still half full, and there were lots of leftovers to eat, so things were still pretty good.

Well my big summer of major distractions is coming to an end.  It was a beautiful summer, lots of hot days and sunshine for many weeks on end, but it didn’t really turn out the way I expected on a couple of fronts.

First, our house didn’t sell.  We had the paperwork all signed and we were busy ignoring our household maintenance jobs because the house was going to get bulldozed anyway – why waste the time and money to paint?  The City of Abbotsford was in the process of making new rules for increasing density in old neighbourhoods like ours – while we were shopping for mansions and laughing off our chores – rules that would ban townhouses which is what our house was going to be replaced with.  The bright spot in this failure is that the new rules permit smaller lots, and now our lot can be subdivided into three properties instead of two.  At half a million per lot, we still could laugh away our work and shop for gaudy homes, but that is not happening any time soon.

The next failure was the test I was supposed to write.  The test is overseen by a body that certifies Water Operators, and they have decided, in their holy wisdom, that I don’t qualify to be a Water Operator.  In so doing, I have wasted  hours and hours studying that could have been used doing something interesting or productive.  The dominoes that fall in this chain reaction are that I don’t get hired full time at the City of Surrey, as the test is a prerequisite to being hired.  In turn they have to hire someone else, who in all probability will be some 22 year old who won’t know a water meter from an avocado but will have seniority over me and will one day be my boss.  It also means I continue getting older and nearer my retirement without a pension, which is the main perk of this job.  The people who denied me my test also withheld some of my money when they refunded me after they denied my application, as if the other problems weren’t enough joy.  Yes, this has me rather upset from several angles.  Surrey has appealed their decision, so it might not be over yet.  Still, my partner at work is retiring in five days, so I still might be beaten in the race to become the next person hired in my department.

You will get complete satisfaction from the medicine. http://appalachianmagazine.com/2017/01/06/2017-solar-eclipse-will-darken-kentucky-tenn-georgia-carolinas/ purchase generic levitra cheapest tadalafil 20mg Potent herbs in this herbal pill offers effective cure for involuntary ejaculation of semen. Some other important vitamin supplements include vitamin D and cleansing circulatory help. order cheap viagra 4. The drug purchase generic cialis appalachianmagazine.com ensures smooth, strong and hard erections during lovemaking. Preparations for the wedding are going well, I suppose.  Our house has never looked better inside or out.  Our yard is strung with overhead lights and surrounded by curtains of lights in every tree.  I built an eight foot square stage for the ceremony itself, draped with lace and gold fabric.  I will probably write about the wedding when the time comes (next week!) and maybe I will provide a few pictures.

This summer was also frustrating watching the news from the Big Circus down south.  Trump infuriates me daily.  He is a pig of a human, with no decency, compassion or diplomacy.  He has lied so many times about so many things that he often lies about other lies he has told and contradicts himself frequently.  But my main frustration with him is his portrayal of Canada as being something other than a loyal ally.  He has put tariffs on steel and aluminum for national security reasons.  Really?  We declared war on Japan before they did after Pearl Harbor.  He says the US can’t allow Chapter 19 in the NAFTA deal, which allows Canada to challenge them if they break the deal, because it interferes with their sovereignty.  However, they can insist that we do away with our supply management system without seeing it as interfering with our sovereignty.  They have already indicated that they intend to rig the new NAFTA deal in their favour, without any compromises.  Is that bargaining in good faith?  Absolutely not!  It’s like trading hockey cards with the schoolyard bully and hoping to get a fair shake.  He says Canada has been ripping off the US for decades because the old deal was so unfair to them.  Really?  Actually, in 1994, the first year the original free trade deal went into effect, Canada’s gross domestic product went down.  Then, because we loved the deal so much, we voted out the Progressive Conservative party that negotiated it, dropping them from 169 seats and a majority government to 2 (!) seats, and virtually destroyed the party which had been in Canada since Sir John A McDonald.  These are sure signs we’re not ripping you off.  That first deal was so bad for Canada that I offered to bet anyone that, in time, Brian Mulroney would be shown to be an American agent, as no one faithfully negotiating on our behalf would have come back with such a dud.  No one would take the bet. The original deal said the US had access to our water “in all naturally occurring forms,” a clause I sincerely hope we do away with this time.   Since that deal, they haven’t come to take our water, but it came close.  The story I heard is one year (2002?) there was a drought in the US Midwest and the farms were drying up.  The US Army Corps of Engineers came north with the intention of making a pipeline from Great Slave Lake to the American heartland, and there was nothing we could’ve done about it.  Luckily, it got raining again and the whole thing blew over, so to speak.

Anyways, that was my pent up rant from two months or so of not writing anything.  Trump is facing his day of reckoning soon, so I shouldn’t let him get me crazy.  All the other stuff is temporary too.  Onward to fall and the wedding!

After I got interviewed about the Burns Lake 50/50 business in April, the town went through a little dry spell in May.  I was worried that maybe the attention had upset the balance of things and that their great run of winning was coming to an end.

Ha!

As much as they won in 2017, they won even more so far this year.  Between January and June ’17, Burns Lake won the BC 50/50 30 times for a total of $86,697.  In the same period this year, they have won 47 times for a total of $136,560 – nearly $50,000 more.  In the last 12 months, over a quarter million has been won there. And another town of around the same size, Pemberton, has started winning at almost the same pace.  In fact, in two of the first six months of this year, the Pemberton Petro Can station won more than Burns Lake.

First, let’s break down the haul.

January they won 8 times for $21,395

February they won 11 times for $33,576

March was quiet with only 4 wins for $16,903
You can use this drugs irrespective of your age and your impotency problem, your personal doctor will advise you any unica-web.com buying generic viagra one of these dosages. Even hypothyroidism, which is related to hormonal system, can lead to male impotence. viagra price australia Once you have found an herbal cialis generic from india supplement that has been helping men improve their virility. Avoid the use of grapefruit products while taking this medicine.Drinking alcohol can increase certain viagra cialis for sale.Avoid using any other medication, which is why you need to take the time to start popping those little pills with your daily vitamins.
April, when the attention came their way, they won 9 times for $23,919.50

May was atypically quiet, and was when I was thinking the bubble had burst, but they still won 5 times for $11,644

June was business as usual with 10 wins for $29,122.50.

The town has won about $755 per day so far this year, including days they didn’t win.  To win that much, they would have had to spend probably $1200 a day or more (it’s hard to know how much because spending more on a ticket increases your chances), which is astronomical for a town of only 2,000 people.

Meanwhile in Pemberton, the local Petro Canada station is selling winners galore now, too.  In both April and May that location won more than the town of Burns Lake.  The Petro Can sells nearly all the winning tickets in Pemberton, as there were only a few odd wins at the drug store to break up the monopoly.  The total for the first six months for them is $102,165.50.  While that is $34,000 short of Burns Lake, it is more than Burns Lake won last year in the same period.

Will any more small towns start spending wildly on the BC 50/50?  Powell River wins more than their share, too, but not crazily more – yet.  Strangely, Pemberton winning consistently didn’t eat into Burns Lake’s profits.  You’d expect with someone else racking up wins, they would be splitting their loot.  The answer to that, partially, seems to be that more is being spent overall, and the average prize has gone up considerably in the last couple years. When I first looked in on this, the average win was around $1600, now it is $2900.  Still these two towns must be buying tickets at a frenzied pace when compared to the rest of the province.  They combine for about 0.1% of the population and have won 10.6% of the draws, suggesting they are spending around 106 times more per capita than the average town.  And while the BC Lottery Corp doesn’t usually print 50/50 winners names from Burns Lake, they did  name and photograph a group who won large on the 649 lottery.

I don’t see me writing much in the next few months, as I am suddenly surrounded by big ugly distractions.  First, a developer came by and offered us way too much for our old house.  This has resulted in us suddenly having to think about getting a new house and moving and all the disruptive fun that goes along with it.  Also my son and his girlfriend are going to get married in about 10 weeks – in our back yard.  So along with the madness of being dislodged, we now have a yard to beautify and decorate and food and cake and seating arrangements etc. to obsess over.  Then, because nature abhors a vacuum, my supervisor at work has decided he wants me to take the Water Distribution Level 1 course, which wouldn’t be that big a deal except he wants me to challenge the exam in about 8 weeks and I am woefully unready.  He gave me a 600 page book, with more yawns and head bobs Erection problems are more common especially in this age and day when viagra without prescription uk stress, anxiety, worry or financial issues or relationship troubles have tightly gripped our lives. Also when purchase cialis from india you have decided that you would buy medicines from authorized web chemists that have physical presence. Smoking can release harmful substances that can affect men’s health, particularly in get cialis online this pharmacy shop their sexual capabilities. Sex therapySometimes there isn’t any physical reason for Erectile viagra sans prescription canada dysfunction. per chapter than any other book in the English language, that I am to commit to memory by late August.  I took a practice exam on line to see how I was coming along and I only got 45%.  The carrot on this pole is that if I pass, I will get a full time job, so it is worth my while to pay attention.

So I am now about to gear up for a summer of juggling various stressful activities, and on a good day I can barely whistle and piss at the same time.  So I don’t see this leaving me much time to write in my blog, or play chess or golf or probably many other things I would prefer to fritter away my time with.  Oh well, none of this will be fatal. This crazy summer will pass, and there will be days ahead again when I find myself sitting around picking lint out of my navel and contemplating things, and that will be fine with me.

I wrote recently about contrarians, those people among us who insist on disagreeing with others just to be a nuisance.  In that story I left out the most extreme case of a group being at odds with the world: flat earth believers.  My God, didn’t we put this idea to bed a thousand years ago?  Apparently not, as there are still people around who will subject themselves to ridicule by believing this completely debunked idea.  And this includes some celebrities like Kyrie Irving and Tila Tequila who aren’t threats to win Nobel Prizes any time soon.  Recently some guy in California built a home made rocket and risked his life to soar 1,875 feet in the air to ‘prove’ the world is flat.  Of course, he could have easily found a higher hill to look from, or taken a ride in an airplane to about twenty times that height, but how risky would that be?  Perspective-wise, he might as well have stood on the hood of his car.

Flat earthers also seem quick to dismiss gravity as a fact, but I couldn’t help but notice Mr Homemade Rocket returned to earth by way of a parachute.  So he must have been aware that he was going to be heading back down toward California at a dangerous speed – for some inexplicable reason.

I read on one of their websites that a really convincing argument for us living on a frisbee-shaped planet, is that if it is hurtling through space and you were on the back side of it, you’d fall off.  Therefore, the earth can’t be round because people and things on the other side would tumble off into the void of space.  Also they say that the behaviour of eclipses matches a flat planet and not a round one.  In their model, the north pole is the centre hub of the planet, the south pole is the outer circumference of the disk, and the continents and oceans lie in between.  I wonder how they explain day and night.  Why does the sun only shine on half of it at a time?  Why the hell is the centre so cold?  Why hasn’t anyone gone to the edge and had a peek over the side?  Why do all the photos from space show it as round, when most photos of a disk would look elliptical?  If the south pole is the outer edge, how come the circumference of the world in Antarctica isn’t 72,000 miles?  Why is practically everything else in space a sphere?  The Greeks knew, or firmly suspected, the earth was round about 600 BC, so let’s just accept this as fact already.

I tried to think of a dumb idea to compare this to, but nothing is as clearly wrong as this is.  There is a picture of some guy on a mountain pointing to a city in the background that is 16 miles away.  He is saying that if the world was round the city would have curved away below the horizon.  The trouble with that is, that distance is too small, and although he can’t see it, the buildings in the city would be less than a quarter of a degree tilted to his eyes.

After a child birth woman may experience pain or difficulty having sex. viagra shop usa click for source One such challenge men face in the warmer weather. discount viagra pharmacy Kamagra with its sildenafil viagra generico effective ingredient, sildenafil citrate improve the blood flow and give men potency of gaining erections. Prescription medications, penile implants, penile injection therapy, topical medications and vacuum pumps make up the list of treatment methods used order levitra that depend on the specific type of condition and health situation in every individual seeking treatment. I went on a couple websites devoted to this disturbingly stupid belief and I found that the flat earthers are a quick bunch to engage in name calling, as “spherists” are clearly mentally deficient and being deceived by anyone who wishes to lead them down the path.  It’s actually the internet and the ability to spread ideas freely that has brought about a resurgence in flat earth believers.  Ideas work in ways very similar to diseases: a disease flourishes when introduced to an organism that doesn’t have the necessary immune system to fend it off; likewise, a dumb idea can flourish in a mind that hasn’t the critical thinking capacity to fend it off.  In this instance it is a bizarre reversal where the duped feel enlightened and feel the majority of clear thinking people are being fed lies.  To what end?  Why would the powers that run our world bother to perpetuate the spherical earth lie?  Because it keeps us from feeling special, they say.  Maybe the flat earth people could elect from among themselves a really hard line critic to go take a ride in the International Space Station, and they could agree to believe whatever their harshest critic observes.  My hunch is, that person would be converted and may even feel special afterward.

Anyways, like most things, these people are allowed to believe this, I really don’t care.  The point is, this is a group of extreme contrarians who are probably fully aware of the holes in their arguments, but who continue to disagree with the world and get in some verbal abuse while they’re at it.  What fun!

Here is a recreation of the beginning of time, when God whipped up a nice pancake for us to settle on.  It remained cold in the middle, but the big guy never claimed to be a chef.

I’m a shy person.  My method of communicating is writing, if possible, and the very last thing I would normally do is speak publicly.  My mother joined Toastmasters and hinted I should join too.  She signed up and within months was running the place, as being in charge is my mother’s special gift.  Me on the other hand, I agreed to go once.  I did a pathetic u-turn in the parking lot and went home – I never even got out of the car.  I’ve daydreamed that if faced with imminent public speaking, I may be able to will myself into a coma on command.

So I started writing a blog.  Then one day I noticed Burns Lake was winning the BC 50/50 all the time and I wrote about it a few times, noting how many wins they had and how much loot they had won.  Some people commented on this little series of blogs, mostly people who thought the system was somehow rigged in favour of the little village.  One reader named Trudy sent my blog to Global News, with my permission, as she correctly figured it had some news worthiness to it.  And then my greatest fear came calling: I got an email from the CBC asking to interview me.  After a few phone calls the process began.  There was going to be an online story that went with it, so I met up with Manjula Dufresne and she took some pictures of me.  Also, they informed me that the story was going to go national in the morning, coast to coast.  I was a nervous wreck.  When the reporter called I paced around the basement with the phone, chattering like a squirrel on helium, my voice squeaking with dryness, not breathing properly as I spoke.  The small bit of that conversation that made it to air sounded as bad as it felt.  It was ok, I had survived and still had my health.  I carefully critiqued my performance, thinking if I ever had to do it again all the changes I would make.

A few days went by and I got another email, this time from radio station CKNW and the producers of the Simi Sara show which airs four hours a day.  I fretted, I worried, I considered calling them back and telling them to forget the whole thing.  I even called my Toastmaster mother for advice. But we had arranged a time to do it, so I bit the bullet and put on my bravest face.  I was at work, sitting at the side of the road in my truck on a quiet street.  Simi called very punctually at 8:40 and we taped a few minutes of us talking about the Burns Lake story.  And guess what?  It turned out pretty well.  That may have been the biggest leap outside my comfort zone I have ever taken.  People who are comfortable doing this sort of thing might roll their eyes at that, but for quiet me, hiding in the back row, it was a serious step.

And the best part was I never willed myself into a coma.
Let’s invite some of the frequently asked questions regarding Sperm Banking. best levitra price A basic dose helps in providing a person the best results and one would get over erectile dysfunction is start using amerikabulteni.com order generic levitra and imeediately stop the intake of cigarette and alcohol. But love does not do pharmacy cialis anything if the the male or female becomes irresponsible to the other. Our goal at the Male Health Center is free cialis samples http://amerikabulteni.com/2011/12/11/new-york-giants-come-back-from-10-down-in-fourth-quarter-beat-cowboys-37-34/ for restoring healthy physical and emotional outlook for the patient and improving his current condition.
https://omny.fm/shows/the-simi-sara-show/how-come-so-many-people-are-having-50-50-lotto-win

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/is-burns-lake-the-luckiest-place-in-b-c-1.4632282

You probably know someone who relishes in striking up pointless arguments all the time.  I sure do!  Every statement, however innocuous, is met with a quick rebuttal.  “It’s pretty cold this morning.”  “It’s not cold, you should go to Winnipeg!  This is nice.”  “Shawshank Redemption was a great movie.”  “I hated it, it was stupid.”  Followed by: “Pulp Fiction was a great movie.”  “I prefer Shawshank Redemption to that crap.”  And so on.

I’m all for people not following the herd and using their own minds, but being a contrarian is exactly as pointless as  following the crowd.  In either case your opinion is based solely on how others feel about things – you are either blending in and agreeing, or reflexively rejecting whatever is said.  Being a contrarian doesn’t make you smarter than anyone, or more capable of independent thought, it usually just makes you an asshole.

Through its way out, gas may open the valve between stomach and esophagus; move the stomach content up with severe heartburn. you can look here generic viagra prices Thus, medication viagra prices in usa should be taken under the guidance of a physician. Certain see that page best price on viagra medications are considered as the one branded product. brand viagra prices The first one is the reflex erection, which is achieved by using this mechanism. Which brings me to a local sort of contrarian that I know a few choice examples of:  Calgary Flames fans.  Now, don’t get me wrong, they are a good team and people who go to their games should have a good time and give them all sorts of support.  I live in BC, and almost everyone here cheers for the Vancouver Canucks.  They aren’t any better than the Flames, and really these things are simply a matter of taste and often geography.  The reason some Flame fans in BC are contrarians is that they aren’t actually fans of Calgary, but are just contradicting popular opinion in a confrontational attempt to be clever.  I’m sure there must be irritating Canuck fans in Calgary, too, driving the locals crazy with their failure to get along.  Also, there are probably a number of people born in the other city who have grown up cheering for the team on the other side of the Rockies before they moved, and I can respect that.  But the three or four people I have in mind may have never been to Calgary and are just enjoying being a pain in the ass to people around them.  These people need to have a sack pulled over their heads and get beaten with a stick.  And I stress – it isn’t cheering for the Flames that is annoying per se, it is the reflex contradiction with a hint of aggression that is annoying.  Of course, by becoming annoyed, I have given the contrarian what he was aiming for.

It’s no accident that our language uses the word like to mean both “similar to” and “fond of.”  Things we enjoy are “agreeable.”  Which isn’t to say we can’t also enjoy a good argument or having a little fun with someone being the devil’s advocate, but when it becomes a person’s automatic reaction, that person is to be avoided.  Trail blazers and innovators like Steve Jobs are sometimes described as contrarians for opposing norms and expectations.  That may be true in a sense, but I doubt Steve Jobs went around starting arguments all day long just to be a social irritant.  He would likely be better described as the independent thinker contrarians aspire to be.

I started writing this incomplete blog last summer, and I never published it because I didn’t want any of the people sleeping around the house and yard to feel guilty.  Since then, each of them has found a nice place to rent, and the basement and back yard are free from campers.  Now this is like a little time capsule of a manic summer gone by.  Looking back it was a little like what I’d expect spending a week or two in a lifeboat awaiting rescue to be like.  I’m sure they felt the same way and won’t be offended any more.  So what the hell?  Might as well send it off into the internet and get it out of my draft box.

Well so much for being empty nesters!  Looking back to March 2016… (insert harp music here) I was writing a sad little blog entry about the last kid leaving the house and how we never expected any of them to return.  Oh the long lonely nights I was going to be having!  I wasn’t saying necessarily whether I was going to be enjoying those nights or suffering loneliness, but they were on the way.
Fast forward to August 2017, and let me tell you, the nest is a long way from empty. Actually it started filling up again not long after the delusional aforementioned blog. At some points since that time, we have had as many as 8 people living here in our little house. We have two people living in the living room on the floor and another one in a tent in the back yard. The lawn is covered with toys and sprinkler devices and the guts of a trailer under renovation. Every walkway is an obstacle course of bikes, toys, hula hoops and junk. The kitchen is currently free from the usual teetering stacks of Tupperware, but only because I have devoted an hour or so to cleaning it. Still, the kids need various amounts of help, and we are obliged to provide it. And for the vast majority of the time, the company is enjoyable. We do a lot more laughing than complaining. It’s just that there is a certain feeling of being squeezed for space that is more likely to increase as the weather cools in the fall and sleeping on the lawn or in a drafty trailer loses its glamour.  Another threat to the availability of space is the youngest offspring is eight months pregnant. Soon there will be another person here, albeit a really small one. Our lives will soon be divided between times we are tiptoeing around and shouting to be heard.
Storing sildenafil bulk it in a dry place at around 20 to 30 minutes to get completely dissolved in the blood and react. The size and shape of the premises for which you are facing otherwise it would just check for source viagra price online turn out to be a waste of money. Doctors and researchers https://unica-web.com/archive/1999/1999.html purchase viagra in uk show that if you lack it for example , weight gain, sleep debt, moodiness, as well as other medical problems. viagra brand online The result-oriented, quality medicines and treatments have gained them the goodwill and name they have in the market. There are some cultures that really enjoy being crowded together. The families in those cultures live together habitually. The idea of only eight or nine people in the house would likely make them feel lonely.   I wasn’t raised in one of those cultures.  We silly white North Americans like to spread out and prefer junk-free lawns.

See?  That wasn’t so bad.  And here I am 6+ months later, and the nest is empty again.

Well, it’s been six months since I lasted tallied up the 50/50 winnings in Burns Lake, BC.  As a recap, the little town of 2,000, roughly 0.05% of BC’s population, has been winning between 5 – 10% of all the BC 50/50 draws, and hauling in a small fortune.  First let’s crunch the numbers.

July ’17: 10 wins, $17,701

August: 13 wins, $31,465

September: 7 wins, $15,527

October: 7 wins, $20.906.50

November: 6 wins, $13,070.50

December: 6 wins, $16,647.

Last six months of 2017: 49 wins, $115,317.
They found that Caucasian girls in the study were overweight, while half of them had a history of trauma to the hip or a plodding beginning of hip pain. online generic cialis In fact, experts opine that more men are known to suffer from ED. discount levitra cute-n-tiny.com Revisiting the natural point, you can be sure ordering viagra online visit that if your child is allergic to that or not. These tests are useful in identifying diffuse artery narrowing and focal narrowing, which limit blood supply cheap professional viagra despite their mild appearance or disease of the small vessels.
Grand total for the year: $202,014.

The average person in Burns Lake won $100 last year on this lottery.

I received quite a few comments on the previous blogs, mostly by people who think something shady is taking place.  I always kept away from saying I thought it was dishonest.  My position has been that there must be a huge amount of tickets sold there.  One person from Burns Lake wrote me to say there’s nothing much else to do there, and that I should concentrate on figuring out why so many million dollar jackpots get won in Ontario and Quebec.  That answer is easy: of the 36 million Canadians, about 22 million people live in those two provinces, and the winning of jackpots is distributed more or less the way you’d expect.  Burns Lake is to BC, population-wise, what Salmon Arm is to Canada.  If suddenly 7 or 8% of the 6-49 and Lotto Max jackpots were getting won in Salmon Arm, a few eyebrows would be raised, to say the least.

My question for the BC Lottery Corporation was why they aren’t printing the photos of big winners from Burns Lake like they do winners from other towns.  They used to publish a photo of anyone winning above $10,000, but now they seem content just to print the names of winners.  It was one of the first things I asked when I first wrote on this topic – is it a town-wide mania or are there a few people winning repeatedly?  Sadly (for curious people) the names of several $10,000+ winners from Burns Lake were never printed.  The only winner who got their name published was someone who lived elsewhere, but bought the ticket there.  BCLC  did write me back, but they only said the pictures and names missing was probably due to the winners not having picked their prizes up yet.  I hope the person who won $12,192 in March and never got named or photographed has picked their prize up, otherwise it will be expiring soon.

The response I got from BCLC came in October.  The woman who wrote the letter said there had been an inquiry into this situation, and that the town of Burns Lake buys between 6 and 8% of all the tickets sold in the province.  Since that matches their winning percentage, it would settle the matter.  She told me twice, in case I missed it the first time, that the numbers were drawn electronically in Kamloops and couldn’t be tampered with.  She also told me that if I wanted to know the identities of the winners, I could fill in a Freedom Of Information request, for which she sent me the link.  I stopped short of doing that.  Some kind of ‘stalker alarm’ went off in my head and I decided to let it go.  Why should I snoop on people whose only misdemeanour is being lucky?  I may reconsider, but it won’t be today.

 

 

When I was a kid, I had the same teacher for grades 4 and 5.  Her name was Mrs Davidson, but we weren’t related.  She was always on a rant about shopping Canadian, watching Canadian TV shows, stuff like that.  She hated how Canadians always seemed to measure their success by how they made out in the USA.  We had a national inferiority complex where we would always need to succeed somewhere else to be any good.  She never got too crazy because we were just kids, but looking back you could see it simmering just below the surface.  I had other people around me who were patriotic northerners, too, but I still think of her when I hear myself telling our kids not to shop at Walmart.

Mrs Davidson lived a long life.  The last time I heard, maybe six or seven years ago, she was still alive, but probably in her nineties.  She must have been aware of Gord Downie, and my guess is, if she understood his role, she would have thought of him as a hero.  Other Canadian musicians made it much bigger in the USA than the Tragically Hip, Gord’s band, but they did so partially by blending into the American scene and keeping their mouths shut about Canada.  I once asked an American friend of mine what Americans think of Canadians, and he said “they don’t.”  For Gord and the Hip, they started off by committing career suicide by singing a lot of songs with Canadian history and hockey as lyrical subject matter.  How where they going to break into the Big Time like that?  They weren’t, and they probably knew it, but they stayed true to their roots.  There are stories about them ‘touring’ in the states, playing shows in small bars to a lot of empty chairs, then on the Canadian leg of the same tour selling out sports arenas across Canada within minutes of putting tickets on sale.

Gord Downie died only yesterday as I write this.  It has been an emotional couple of days for me, and I’m sure millions of other Canadians.  The only bittersweet upside to the last couple days is that Tragically Hip music is being played all day on the radio. Besides his music, he will be best remembered, probably, for fighting brain cancer and raising money for research, and also for his advocacy for indigenous people.  Great causes, to be sure.  For me, the thing I will always admire him for is helping to slay the Canadian inferiority complex.  He was a great song writer and performer, backed by an excellent band.  He could have wound up in the California hills with Neil Young, sitting on a pile of money, but he chose to remain humbly Canadian and tell our stories.

Nature is benevolent when get viagra australia it comes to masturbation, whether they engage in a fast dissolving 100mg tablet. This results in end of romance between the two and finally resulting in problems in their purchasing this levitra 20mg canada day to day life. For work, women dress smartly with her hair and makeup done perfectly. viagra 25 mg There are many supporters of this concept as the solution of the problem is only gaining right manner of detoxification, the full release viagra generika of the body waste is the only act that can help you to get back the healthier lifestyle. Mrs Davidson and I think that’s a great legacy.