Disappointment

Yesterday, a friend and I went to an event being held in a new art/antiques/crafts and funky furniture store. It was billed as a creative get together of crafters and artists - a time when we could create together, feed off each other's ideas and forge new relationships within London's artistic community.

It was NONE of these - it was a joke! And the joke was on us! I'll let my friend's email to the organizer explain in the way only she can - honestly and boldly.

"I would like to say the your 'Create with Me' event was a real letdown and as my friend said 'A total rip-off'. Please do not use the photo you took of us in any of your advertising. You need to polish up your communication and other skills such as punctuality and manners. A proper host should not show up late, stare at their phone most of the time, ignore their guests, forget some refreshments like milk (coffee & terrible mini muffins were offered), not explain anything about your business or your goals, not engage your guests in conversations and ignore us when we left without even getting your butt off the couch to say goodbye. An awkward, boring waste of time. We got all this for $7…please help me understand why we had to pay you this when we brought our own crafts? You are clearly out of your element as a host. Big fail. We felt so sorry for the man who showed up late and was left on his own to colour while you continued to gossip with your friend. I was so embarrassed that I invited my friend to this fiasco I ended up treating her to lunch nearby. We both would like a refund of our $7. You can leave it with Kate-who should seriously evaluate any future 'create with me' events at lost&found."

Needless to say we won't be going back. Oh yes, and I was the friend who said it's "a total ripoff!" Stay tuned to see if we get our money back!

In better news, my refund cheque arrived!! Yippee!! A whopping $204.22! Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick! AND all the snow and ice is gone from my patio!! I went out and cleaned up a little bit. I took the tarps off my patio furniture so everything could dry out and of course it's raining today. The kitties have been outside once and now mew piteously whenever I come near the patio door. They have spring fever! I was going to go out on my bike today - the tires feeling quite firm about a winter spent languishing in the basement hallway - but again, it's raining so will have to wait. 

BUT...spring IS in the air!!

On Track for Spring!

Yes, it's early to be predicting that SPRING has SPRUNG and I have been known to always be wrong before but there are SIGNS people!! I can see my snowdrops once again :)

And yesterday was such a mild day I went for a ramble in Kilally Meadows

and found lots of animal tracks like that of the White Tail Deer below!

I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for baby deer prints too! These

look like Mama Deer sized prints.

I'm sure that the "recliner" pictured below has been around since last year or years and come spring, when all is in leaf around it, it will be hidden away from hikers' view. I hope I can find it again.  

 

Oh no! Which way should I go? 

(I went left!) 

One of my landmarks - the curved birch - now I know exactly where I am!

On another note...I have stopped using cream and now use soy milk in my morning coffee.

To jazz up my drink I heat the soy milk and use my frother to thicken it into....

well....froth!

It is such a treat!! And healthy too!! Yum!

Last night I ate at an Ethiopian restaurant for the first time. I had heard about

this place before - people rave about it! You get tons of thin

pancake like bread that you tear up and use to scoop

up the food. No utensils needed! I shared a 

vegetarian platter for 3 and we couldn't

eat it all ($10 each). I will definitely

go there again! 

Here's how I know that SPRING is here for sure: the minute the temperature

rises above 0c young men turn to shorts and T-shirts and the

streets become clogged with joggers. Mr. Toque Head

didn't get the memo!

It's going to be even warmer today!! 

I'll likely see a few couches sitting on the front lawns of the local frat houses while

young men use beer cases as foot stools :) 

Gotta love 'em!

Just Another Money Monday

Not too much to say about the budget thus far. I spent $8 more than I should have (OMG!!) - my misc budget is $145/week and I over spent a wee bit. I used my snowflake $$ to purchase another 100 euros - I didn't have quite enough so used misc funds to complete the purchase. I am down to only $6 in my snowflake box but I have enough cash now for my trip to cover entrance fees to Blarney Castle and other attractions/souvenirs etc.

$400 was automatically transferred to savings and I withdrew $5,000 from my RRSP and put the $4500 that remained after taxes into my Tax Free Savings Account. Some interest has been received with another major chunk coming on the 11th. No sign of my tax refund yet though it will probably show up this week. I am able to check its progress on the Canada Revenue site and it has been assessed and confirmed so any day now.....

I think I mentioned that I over estimated my Union Gas bill by $22. As that doesn't come off til near the end of March I haven't really had the benefit of that yet. Hopefully my estimate ($75) of my electricity bill will be over as well. All of those little bits of $$ help me get through the month and expand my misc budget a little.

The other purchase I made during the first week of March's budget was a white microwave (on sale for $50). I've been meaning to replace my old black one for quite some time. It works fine (so I'll take it to a thrift store) but it really stuck out in front of my white subway tiles and my other appliances are white so now it sort of "disappears" - it's also a bit smaller which helps with my somewhat limited counter space.

The final purchase for the first week of March was some lighter coloured wool for Kazi's infinity scarf. My shoulder is feeling quite a bit better today so I may get started on that tonight as I watch TV.

I have used $38/$160 of my gas budget and $88/$280 of my food budget. I'm going to pick up a few groceries today (only what we need - it's a short list) but I won't need gas for quite a while yet.

And so goes the budget - no surprises so far - just the way I like it!

Lucky Lucky Ducky Duck!

I am a lucky ducky. I realize that. I have spent the morning being lazy  reading the Personal Finance section of The National Post's new E-Magazine (and it's free)!  The Donald can keep his billions, I neither want nor need them.  Not that I'm wealthy....I'm not!! To make it into the top 1% (in Canada) I would have to be earning $191,100 - even in my last years of teaching I wasn't making even half of that and now that I am on a pension I earn less than 30% of my former gross income. If I look at net income I make about 50% as I no longer have most deductions that made my teacher's paycheque look like it got hit by a land mine!

With that said I am still such a lucky duck with my employee pension for life! In Canada 47% of people between the ages of 55  and 64 do NOT have an employee's pension and of that 47% only 15% have enough money saved to live on in their senior years and the rest will live in poverty. Lower income folks, those earning between $20,000 and $50,000 have an average of $250 saved for retirement! Those of us with kids in their 20's know how hard it is these days to even get a job with health benefits let alone full-time hours and/or a pension.  It's a huge crisis!!

Now...I'm not saying I don't deserve my defined benefits pension or that I didn't work for it. I do and I did. And I contributed an average of 13% of every paycheque for the privilege. I lived on way less when I was working so that I would be comfortable when I retired. I don't have a huge pension but it's enough for one person. The poverty line in Ontario for a single person is just under $20,000. I'm in the $30,000 range now and would find living on $10,000 less possible, but probably not comfortable!

What is the answer? I don't know. The gov't of Ontario is creating a mandatory employee pension plan for those without one starting in 2017 with equal contributions from employees and employers. This has caused a lot of dissent as people will have to learn to live on less and many don't want to do that. Also companies aren't excited about it as that will be less profit for them. It's hard to look ahead to retirement when you don't have enough to live on NOW!

Conclusions:
1) I sure wish Kazi had gone into teaching instead of her current minimum wage jobs.
2) I'm thinking I'll open up an RRSP for her and make small contributions. Eventually I hope she'll be able to take over the contributions. People need to start saving for retirement as soon as they get a job!
3) I'm a very lucky ducky! And I'm in the minority, not the majority so I need to do my part. Part of that is being an activist in the $15.00/hour minimum wage battle currently being waged in Canada and the U.S. In Ontario the minimum wage is a whopping $11.25 per hour. A livable wage is considered to be $16.60 per hour. We're not even close.

Thoughts?

Pain Pain GO AWAY!!

The big pile of snow we received this week has given me a pain in the neck!! (and shoulder and back!)  I had to use a broom to reach the top of Dougie and had to put a lot of energy into it as there was a good inch or two of frozen rain under the snow. I could my muscles pulling but figured it would be fine once I was finished. Wrong.  It's like when you get up in the morning and feel you must have slept all wrong - hurts to turn my head or do neck rolls etc. It's in the same area as when I had that pinched nerve in my right shoulder a couple years ago. The only thing that helped then was acupuncture so I'll make an app't on Monday to get needled :)

Projects are lying all over the house.  I bought new yarn for Kazi's infinity scarf as black yarn is really hard to work with - can't see the stitches!! Shoulda listened to my seester...right seester?? My sculpture is half way finished and is calling out to me. I did some rug spooling for a couple of nights but that repetitive motion was painful. I haven't hiked (due to weather) but have ridden my bike and am doing yoga.

Grrrrrr....pain makes me mad!

I will leave you with Foto Friday's fotos since I didn't post yesterday: oh, what a surprise!! One year ago today I took more kitten photos! Some bunny wants a belly rub! Oh, it's Lily, with her pink tongue hanging out in anticipation!

 Whatcha waiting for??

  My tummy is right here!!

 Sigh...

 Oh, and I completed my first sculpture in a number of years!! And have been busy in the workshop ever since :)  

Thursday's Thang

Politics is not really my thang, however, there are times when one must declare one's opinions and this is one of those times.

My friend, Marilyn, lives in Oregon as she found it was WAY cheaper to live there instead of in Canada...she has dual citizenship. However, she is willing to absorb the extra costs of living rather than stay in a country that votes THE DONALD for President!! She is AFRAID!!

Before Marilyn told me that I was considering where on earth (literally) I would move to if Trump becomes president because I think Canada is a little too close to the U.S. for my own comfort under those circumstances!! I am AFRAID!!
I saw this today on Facebook - not sure if it is true or not: 
"In the hours after Super Tuesday polls closed, Google searches for “how can I move to Canada”spiked by 350% – by midnight, it grew by 1,000%"
(WHO the heck is voting for this egomaniacal blowhard??)
Then there was this article today in my local newspaper:
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-coyne-gop-war-against-donald-trump-not-about-ideology-or-personality-its-existential (the author, Andrew Coyne, is Canadian but has written for the New York Times as well as the Washington Post)
Especially this paragraph: 
 "This nomination race is unlike any we have seen in modern times, for the simple reason that Trump is unlike any other candidate we have seen: boorish, ignorant, pathologically dishonest, his message a toxic mix of authoritarianism, extreme nationalism and racial intolerance delivered with a Mussolini-like sneer. He is, quite simply, unfit for office. The GOP leadership is determined to block Trump’s nomination, and for good reason. This is no mere ideological dispute or personality clash. It’s existential. With among the worst favourable/unfavourable ratings ever recorded for any candidate of either party, he would almost certainly lead the party to a historic defeat, not only in the presidential race, but in the Senate and House as well." 

BE AFRAID!! BE  VERY AFRAID!! (me)

I won't say anything else about Donald Trump. I won't demean him, or make any hair jokes, or make note of his total lack of policy...I won't make any racist comments or call him a misogynist, rapist or thief, I will let the his record speak for itself. 

Wednesday in the Workshop

First I want to complain about the weather!! I just had a weather alert sent to my phone telling me that north London is under a snow squall warning. So IF I lived in south London I wouldn't be getting this additional whack of snow that I just cleaned off my truck?! Poo. Unless the band is moving south, it's a little hard to tell. The crappy part was the 2 inches of frozen rain that lay hidden underneath the 8 inches of snow - SURPRISE!!

Okay, I'm done. Sort of. I'm bitter because I went on a fantastic hike on Sunday when it was sunny and +14c and now THIS! Oh well, March came in like a lion so I EXPECT it to go out like a lamb. Ya hear me Mother Nature??

Sunday in Kilally Meadows - the snow was almost gone!

Something I can't complain about is my heating bill!! Again the bill only came to $52.00!! I checked my Union Gas bill online so I could compare to last year's bill - and last year I paid $83.00!! Looking at the average temperature showed why - last year the average temperature for February was -13c compared to a balmy +3c this year. El Nino, I thank you.

Ok, on to the workshop....this sculpture has been giving me all kinds of grief. I've been slimming down the rounded sections trying to get away from the phallic weird shape that evolved over the first week or two...

...I've worked in a spiral at the one end thinking maybe if I looked at it from another angle I would be inspired...but no, still not digging it.

 ...but now I think I'm getting somewhere - I am liking the swooping curves that are developing. I think it's on its way, finally! Stay tuned for sanding and polishing!