Life in progress

Tag Archives: paper route


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whereswilly.com – The $20 Blog Post

“Do you have change for a twenty?”

That’s how it started – with those words.

“I think so,” I replied, juggling gloves and newspapers to dig into my pocket. I pulled out a couple of receipts and a five dollar bill and then went into the other pocket. Just as I was about to give up, I found a ten.

“Yes!” I exclaimed.

All right, maybe I wasn’t quite that excited. I was just collecting for my paper route after all.

It was while I was walking back down my customer’s driveway, my gloves still tucked under my arm, that I saw the writing on the $20 bill.

“Yes!” I exclaimed, for real this time. “It’s a blog post!”

This is what I saw.

whereswilly

I couldn’t wait to get home to check it out.

When I googled whereswilly, I saw a Wikipedia entry for it, so I decided to go there first — in case it was some kind of hacking thing. It turns out it wasn’t.

According to Wiki, the “Willy” refers to Sir Wilfred Laurier, past Prime Minister of Canada. There are apparently close to 4,000,000 bills in circulation with this message, and you can, in fact, register on the website to see where the bill has been AND be emailed to find out where it goes. It’s based on a “Where’s George” site in the U.S., to track currency there, and has been used by researchers to track the movement of pandemics, such as SARS.

Isn’t that interesting?

I’m only the second person who has tracked this particular $20, but I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes. According to the website, I can do this with any bill, any time.

You can check out the Wiki page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where%27s_Willy%3F

Have you heard of this before? Have you ever come across a bill with a website written on it? Do you want to start one? It’s so cool!


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Stream of Consciousness Saturday Fe22/14

The wind blows where ever it wants to blow. It’s warming up outside and so the gusts are fierce. It’s days like today when branches weakened from the weight of snow and ice come down on roofs and cars (two things I’ve been having problems with of late). Times like this I listen to the creaking of the trees around my house and I want to say to the wind:

Wind, dude, stop blowin’ already. Get outta my trees. C’mon man. Ye’r makin’ me nervous, dude.

But you can’t reason with the wind. It blows where ever it wants.

Like ice. It forms when it snows, and then the snow melts and the water sits there until it freezes into sheets of slippery pavement that have me flailing as I deliver my newspapers. Like the wind, I want to say to the ice:

Ice! Stop being so damn slippery!

But you can’t reason with the ice. It keeps on being slick. So much so that I thought this morning, as I slid around the block not moving my feet because the wind was blowing me on this ice, maybe this combo ain’t so bad after all.

Dude.


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Newspapers Hire Editors

Apparently the editors at the newspaper I deliver have a head-start on the holiday. They’re already drunk.

drunk editors

(click to enlarge)

 

P.S. Family Day is Monday February 17th.


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Adventures on My Paper Route – Strange Formations and a Pretty Bird

Brave, hardy birds, cardinals are. Today was cold and crisp – a pleasant 9 degrees C, (16 degrees F). I heard him singing first – they have a very distinctive song.

cardinal2

But the thing which has puzzled me for the past few weeks is this odd way the icicles have been forming… or leaning after they’ve formed. It seems they only do this if they begin above a window, so the only reason I can fathom is it has something to do with the heat from inside.

lean2

lean

The first is an east-facing wall, and the second is a north-facing wall, so the sun has nothing to do with it.

Any ideas?


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Thank you to all!

I didn’t want to go to bed tonight without saying at least a broad thank you for all the congratulations on my blogaversary, and to all those who visited my fiction site and read the first installment of my story. I’ll be back tomorrow to say thank you in person… yes, I will be knocking at your door. 😉

I’ve been away from the computer today because I was busy retrieving my mother from hospital after a five day stay with pneumonia. Trust me, pneumonia is not a nice thing to stay with. After that, I had to drag 124 newspapers through the snowbanks around my neighbourhood to get them delivered. The good news is (apart from my mum being well enough to come home) I got a picture of the same old house I posted a photo of last week, but at night.

Enjoy!

nighth

Thanks again!


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JusJoJan 24 – Adventures on my Paper Route – Weather

In winter, it’s rare that walking around the block on my paper route isn’t an adventure. Between the ice, the slush, the snow, the temperatures that freeze my nostrils shut on contact, and days like to today when we have a miniature snow storm, there’s always something to make me rather stay in my pyjamas.

storm

It’s all part of being Canadian. Our weather is a source of national pride. It’s what we endure to live in a country as free as this one is; with all its faults, at least we’re able to say we weathered a storm or two and came out the other side with a smile. Most of the time, anyway.

And so it is with that same pride that I walk around the block, braving the elements to deliver the news.

As difficult as it can be, I do love this country.

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Post on your site, and join Just Jot it January. The rules are easy!

1. It’s never too late to join in, since the “Jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post) counts as a “Jot.” If it makes it to WordPress that day, great! If it waits a week to get from the sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. If you write a JusJoJan post on your blog, you can ping it back to the above link to make sure everyone participating knows where to find it.
3. Write anything!
4. Have fun!


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Old Houses

Well, I did it. I risked incarceration to bring you a picture of two of my favourite houses that I walk past every day on my paper route.

Hope you like them.

houses


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My Neighbourhood

I love old houses. Today while I was slogging away on my paper route (it’s the big one on Thursdays – flyer day) the sun came out, even though big flakes of snow were fluttering down. Unfortunately the snow didn’t show up well in the picture, but I did get a shot of one of the many 100+ year old houses I deliver to.

owl


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JusJoJan 3 – Frost Quake Fallout

Frost Quakes are continuing with the rapid decline in temperatures. I didn’t actually hear one here, but I have photographic evidence that we had one.

This is what I woke up to on the ground beneath the tree and all around my hedges, here at home and all around the block on my paper route.

frost quake ice

Frost Quake icicles

The trees are bare of their previous coating of ice, and now the icicles lay all over the ground like tiny transparent straws. Interesting, yet as slippery as sheer ice to walk on.

Unlike earthquakes, frost quakes are close to the surface and are therefore undetectable by seismic equipment.

So if you live in the widespread area of plummeting temperatures right now, and you hear a loud booming noise, it may not actually be a car hitting your home. It might be a frost quake.

 

Post on your site, and join Just Jot it January. The rules are easy!


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EDDD 27 – Random

It’s taken me twenty seven days to run out of things to say, which isn’t bad I don’t think. Okay, so I cheated for a couple of days when my dear friend Navigator1965 posted for me. But I would have come up with something excellent to blog about. Honest.

One little bit of good news – the kids are being picked up by their dad for the weekend, so I’m getting some time to myself, for the first time in four weeks! This will be my fifth weekend off since August. I want to spend as much time reading my manuscript as I can, since I haven’t looked at it for almost two months. I wanted to give it time to rest. Apart from that, I think sleep will be a priority.

And wine and chocolates. I have a box of Godiva truffles to wade through, which is nice, as I have insanely expensive taste in chocolate. Hey, go big or go home, right? The wine is a different story. I’m going to save the good stuff for a grand occasion, like when someone’s book hits the best-seller list. Which it will. You know who you are.

What else? Oh, I went back to delivering my papers today for the first time since my accident. It went well – not too much ice underfoot, nor any branches dropping on my head. No giraffe encounters either (Joey), nor did I see Megan Fox (Paul), so it wasn’t a perfect outing.

My next door neighbour lost his back fence to a fallen tree that stood about five feet tall laying down (the trunk’s diameter), so that was pretty exciting. I missed it actually falling, but I was sitting at the kitchen table when it happened, so I caught the cloud of ice dust that surrounded it when it hit the ground. It missed the other neighbour’s shed by inches. I’m glad I wasn’t standing under that. Surprising, considering my luck this holiday.

Alex seems to be doing well. I’m not sure why the doctor only treated the symptoms of his pneumonia and didn’t mention removing the piece of food from his lung. Maybe it’ll dissolve? I can’t find any information online one way or the other.

Here’s some more ice, in case you haven’t seen enough this week.

iceice

 

 Blog post of December 27th, in honour of Every Damn Day December. Check it out!