Fires, peeing and childhood memories

I was chatting with dad this evening and he told me a story about his dad as he doesn't remember much about him. He does remember getting a spanking from him for burning down a lumber yard. It wasn't big and it was part of the general store. He doesn't remember much other details of this incident.

The general store was owned by his childhood buddies parents. He remembers the two of them stealing candy from the store and easting it in the woods.

This friend of his also lived above the store. It was a French family. His buddy had his own room and dad remembers his buddy used to stand on his bed and pee on the walls. Nice friends dad!

They used to go swimming and fishing in the river all the time.

Dad has a whole bunch of stories like this that I wish he would write down, but he won't. I will try to capture them as best as I possibly can.

Highs and Lows

What a day of highs and lows. I was on the internet this morning and dad & I got the lottery numbers. We didn't check the ticket. Mom saw the numbers and got excited. She didn't believe the numbers so went to the 'net herself and verified them. We got 5 out of 6 numbers! We were all excited and tried to figure out what we won. Dad said about $10 and I thought about $200. We checked the webpage and saw we won 4.75% of the pot. Here we figured we won $712,500!

Excited we called Jacki. I even made sure she was sitting down. She couldn't believe it and was going to look into it when she went to Brenda's office. We hung up the phone and had breakfast. Making all these wonderful plans was exciting. After breakfast Jacki called back. I went to have a shower and never got to talk to her. When I came up dad said not to hurray as we didn't win the huge amount we thought. Jacki had looked into it further and found out that there were 175 winning tickets that had 5/6 numbers. Our spoils shrank. So instead of winning $712,500 we won about $2,100. Divided by the four of us, that was $500 each. There goes the down payment on my condo!

We were all gloomy after that. Oh well, guess I have to go to work tomorrow now. :(

GlobalFest Fireworks Finale

I took mom and dad to the fireworks finale at Elliston Park last night. I was worried mom wouldn't be able to go, but she did great. With all the walking we did, we'll see how she fairs tomorrow.

I hope and think they had a good time. The fireworks were OK and I've seen better, but it was their first time. The only complaint was that it was just too short. A half hour does go by fast.

I was impressed by the bus transportation to and from the event. They were quick and efficient. All in all it was a good time despite the little rain we got hit with.

Mom's Surgery

Today was mom's surgery on her legs. I thought they would be home from Canmore around 5pm, so I left work early to have the dogs settled down and to help dad. Well 5pm came and went. I tried calling mom's cell but there was no answer. At around 6pm dad called saying that they weren't releasing mom but all was OK. Of course I worried.

At 7pm mom called and said they were on their way home and should be there in a couple of hours. She sounded groggy.

They finally got home at around 9pm. Mom looked horrible and reminded me so much of Grandma it was freaky. She also was this horrible grey colour. We got her into bed and I fed dad. We were all in bed by 9:30pm. It was a long day for all, but I think dad had it the worst. He had to sit around all day waiting and worrying by himself.

Jacki had called several times throughout the night so I kept her updated. I am very disappointed in my brother who never bothered to call even after I called and left him a message.

My Dad meets the INTERNET!

A funny story..... This evening, as soon as I got in the car, dad said something about wanting me to teach him to use the computer. After all his shows were watched, I took h im into the office and showed him how to use the computer and get onto the internet. He did really wll for a one finger typist. He got notes, asked questions and got excited when he knew how to do something. We got 2 bookmarks in there and found some information he was looking for.

Dad, being the loving goofball he is, even created himself a sticky note with the word GEEK on it. He stuck it onti his shirt.

So dad is now on his way to surfing the internet. Look out world (OK mostly mom!).