Post-vacation - Sunday December 22, 2013:
Two
nights after landing in Toronto, we still did not have power or heat and it was
getting too cold to stay home any longer.
Finally, on Monday December 23, we booked ourselves into a local hotel,
the Comfort Inn in Oshawa. Kyle and Cathy took his two girls, Kaylee and
Jaime, up to see their grandmother, Trudy, in Innisfil, Ontario for Christmas
and Boxing Day. Meanwhile, Dave and I
had to stay in the Comfort Inn and keep booking more nights as we got news
updates from the CP24 TV channel on
the power outage situation. For some
unknown reason, our hotel was not affected by a power outage until Thursday
December 26. This is, by far, the
longest and most severe power outage I have ever experienced!
The
last time I experienced a power outage (blackout)in the GTA was in 2004 or 2005
when I lived in East Scarborough and that time, it lasted about 22 hours. But, that time was also different because it
happened in the summer….we weren’t living in sub-zero temperatures at home
then! Our frozen food at that time had almost
started to thaw, but thankfully, the power came back on/before there was any
irreversible loss. This time, however, we’ve lost all of our frozen food
because you cannot re-freeze it once it starts thawing right out. So now, it’s all garbage and we’ll have to
start all over again shopping for meat and frozen food, etc.
I
really do hope that my home insurance will cover our frozen food losses and our
hotel bills for this week. I am still here,
sleeping at the Comfort Inn for the fourth night this week! Dave went back to our place tonight
(Thursday) to check out the situation for the second time today and he decided
to stay overnight because the power has finally come back on at home. It’s still cold there, but he thinks he can
handle it. It’s costing me a lot more this month because we’ve had to eat out
much more often and Christmas time is expensive and the hotel bills are
definitely piling up. We’ve all been
told by CP24 that the power outages should be fixed soon and hopefully, that
fact is now coming true!
Today,
we finally did our laundry from our Jamaica trip and from the last week. That, at least, is a relief.
Tonight,
I am ordering in a pizza for myself for dinner.It’s pizza for the second time
this week. It’s certainly been weird
this week because, for Christmas dinner on Christmas Day, we had dinner at Boston Pizza and I’d ordered a Hawaiian
pizza then. Oh well, it’s a strange
world, isn’t it?
Post-vacation - Friday December 27, 2013:
Today,
we’ll be checking out of the Comfort Inn.
It’s been fairly comfortable staying here, except when we had a day-long
power outage yesterday until about dinnertime.
However, the power came back on and I am settling in for the evening,
alone for the night. Thank God, Dave
went home early because he was starting to get on my nerves, big time! You can always spend too much time with your
roommate…..maybe that’s why I still want to work for a living. Otherwise, we would drive each other nuts in
no time at all!
I
talked to my long-time girlfriend, Gerry Lenaghan, who lives in Brampton, Ontario. She has also been affected by this massive
power outage, but she seems to be coping with it alright. Yesterday, I talked to my also-long-time
girlfriend, Dale McDonough, who lives in Sudbury, Ontario. She, unlike us, was not affected by lack of
power and heat. Good for her because
Sudbury is definitely not a place where you’d want to be without utilities like
power and heat!
There
are some great TV movies playing at this time of year on the W channel, mostly to do with love themes
and families. This is the kind of stuff
I love to see, hear and write about because I’m still a romantic at heart and
would like to believe in “forever”. Thank
God though, Dave is not here to argue with me today anymore about
god-knows-what. He can be a little hard to
take sometimes, even at Christmas; despite that, I do care about him. His daughter,who just moved to Whitby, close
to us, lives with her in-laws (Yuk!) and her in-laws have decided that I am
much too opinionated for them because of something I said about a certain
member of their family. What I said about
him is the absolute truth, but that doesn’t seem to matter to them. According to them, he is not the kind of
person I said he was. What I really
meant is that he is not what I would consider a “forever” type of guy. In other words, he’s the kind of guy who’s
here for a good time, not a long time.
However, I am not one to keep quiet whenever I have an opinion about anyone
or anything, so when someone tells me I am not welcome at their home because of
a particular opinion I expressed, I feel that I do not want to have anything to
do with those people. This does not, by
the way, include Dave’s daughter or her two little girls, who are little
darlings that love me as much as I love them.Somehow, I’m just going to have to
develop a thicker skin from now on. Those
morons’ opinions of me don’t ultimately make any difference to me.
I
intend that my narrative here will make it into one of my author blogs one day
in the not-so-distant future, but for now, I’ll just have to keep my thoughts
to myself. When the time is right, I
will post this entry, along with my other thoughts about this particular
December and people everywhere will just have to accept that I will always have
my own opinions and that I live to write about them!
Post-vacation – Sunday January 5, 2014:
Well,
after the ice storm was over and had wreaked absolute havoc to the homes of
people who live all over the GTA and Durham Region, the insurance companies (at
least mine) came through with some money to replace all our lost frozen and
refrigerated food. There was no deductible
applied and the money is going to be enough to make up for our food
losses. Unfortunately, the insurance
company would not cover hotel bills for the nights we had to spend outside of
our home because it was too cold to live there – that sucks. And, the cost of dumping the wasted food into
the dump was not covered either.
However, since I was expecting some kind of a deductible, the fact that
there is none is a good thing – I can live with that. We actually had our “Christmas dinner” of
turkey and all the accessories on New Year’s Day instead.
Meanwhile,
I am still not welcome at Dave’s daughter’s in-laws living in Whitby, but I decided
that if I let them get under my skin, it would defeat my purpose. So, I wasn’t given the opportunity to see
Dave’s daughter and her two little girls during this Christmas break. But, after all, I am my own person; I tell
the truth whenever possible and, in this case, I just told the truth the way I
see it. Anyone else not related to them
would have done the same. That doesn’t
make me a bad person, just an honest one who cannot stand bulls*t or people who
spout it and, even more, believe their own bullsh*t!
Tomorrow,
on Monday January 6, I am returning to school and I’m looking forward to
it. Only problem is – I have developed a
cold recently and have been battling fatigue and plugged sinuses for a few days
now. However, I am devoted to my
students and will be there for them till the end of the semester and the end of
the year, ultimately. That’s what good teachers
do and I aim to be the best at this profession.
As
far as my newly published book is concerned, I have ordered 100 new soft cover
books that I intend to use for promotion purposes. My whole order includes a second (free) book
marketing kit, 20 free soft cover copies and 5 free hard cover copies; the free
copies were part of my original publishing package. These free copies will go to family and
friends only. The rest of these books
will be sold or given as gifts (through redeemed gift certificates I will give
out only to certain people). Finally,
later in January or early February, I will be initiating a publicity campaign
to promote my book in both Canada and the United States. This campaign via the media will help expose
my book to millions of people that I would never be able to reach on my
own. However, I am also in the process
of sending out a newsletter to the book retailers in the main cities of Canada
and five of the largest cities in the United States. Perhaps, I will also be able to do some book
signings locally and further afield.
Hopefully, something good (like getting some really good book reviews
and winning some writing contests) will help people to decide to buy my book
this time making me a successful, award-winning author. Only time will tell.
No comments:
Post a Comment