Telemarketers. They call constantly, and usually manage to call right around suppertime or early enough on Saturday morning to interrupt a good sleeping in. Even though I’ve had a bad experience, I find it against my nature to be rude to them, but sometimes it’s downright frustrating trying to deal with them. Here’s how the typical solicitation goes when I answer the phone:

• Me: Hello.
• TM: Hello. I wonder if I may speak with Mr. Steve Meelay. (mispronounced last name)
• Me: Speaking.
• TM: Mr. Meelay, I’m calling on behalf of [blank] company. I would just like to inform you that this call may be recorded for quality assurance reasons. The reason I am calling you, sir, is to introduce you to a one-time offer only presented to our most preferred customers…
• Me: (interrupting) I’m not interested.
• TM: But, Mr. Meelay, this amazing offer is available to you at no cost for thirty days and no commitment to continue beyond thirty days. You will have a full month to enjoy benefits such as [blank], [blank], or [blank]. If after thirty days you don’t want to continue receiving this service, simply call us up and we’ll cancel your service, no questions asked.
• Me: Sounds wonderful, but I’m not interested.
• TM: Mr. Meelay. Do you own a [blank] , or do you intend to [blank] or [blank] over the next several months?
• Me: Nope… and like I said, I’m just not interested. Do you want me to hang up on you?
• TM: Thank you for your time Mr. Meelay. [blank] company values your patronage. Have a nice day.

Now… that seemed rather painless right? Wrong. Try doing that 5 or 10 times every night and pretty soon “I’m not interested” turns into “Piss off!”.

In comes our great Canadian Government to the rescue. No longer will they tolerate their citizens being verbally trespassed by the pestering persistence of these tele-solicitors. The government created a federally monitored “do not call list” or DNCL and telemarketers would be forced to abide by the wishes of those not wishing to be called. To register your number on the list, all you would have to do is call 1-866-580-3625 or visit LNNTE-DNCL.gc.ca and they would suffer no more. Wrong again!

The volume of calls and hits on the website was unanticipated. Within 9 hours, the website crashed and the phone lines were down. Only 200,000 people were able to register. (Perhaps the DNCL employees registered their own number!) Now it’s back to the drawing board. I think the DNCL should hire telemarketers to call every household in Canada asking if they want to be added to the list.

I think we might be stuck with doing what our son does. He picks up the phone and lays it down in front of his computer speakers blasting rap music.

I’ve written about procrastination before. It was a short post and I intended to come back to the topic to expand. I just never got around to it.

Seriously. Procrastination is a real problem for me. There’s plenty of stuff, particularly around the house, that needs to be done and that I keep putting off. They say that the first step to a cure is admitting you have a problem. Uhm… I could write a post a day for a year, each on a different topic, and not get past that first step on any of them. But, I’ll try not to let that get me off topic. Actually, that IS the topic.

One of the main reasons I procrastinate is that there are so many projects I want to start and so many chores that need to be attacked, that I sometimes get simply overwhelmed and don’t start any of them. It’s simply so much easier to make a peanut butter and jam sammich, pour a glass of milk, grab the remote control and watch reruns of Two And A Half Men. And while the food is yummy and it’s fun to watch Charlie make a fool of Alan, it doesn’t get shit done.

If the first step to a cure is admitting you have a problem, then the second step must be to make a list of the things you must do to fix the problem. In my case, that list is my anti-procrastination to-do list. So… here goes:

• Finish scanning my photos: I’ve done this in spurts, but it’s been on my mental to-do list for two years.. Lately I’ve started it up again, but there still plenty that need to be done.
• Organize my basement and shed: I’ve also done this in spurts. Occasionally, I’ll spend an hour or two or eight in one or the other, and “find” a couple of garbage bags worth of junk or “organize” enough so there’s room to navigate the area without having to climb over stuff. But for some reason, I stop there. Or I’ll decide that something needs to be built or renovated to make it easier to be organized. The efforts I put into avoiding or delaying the actual work truly amazes me.

Note that I’ve mentioned the above two items before. My New Year’s Evolutions post 8 months ago promises that I’d progress on these.

But there’s more:

• There’s a few handyman jobs around the house that need a finishing touch. Whether it be sanding down the rough edges on cupboard doors I’d shortened 5 years ago or nailing a baseboard back on the wall in the living room from my hardwood flooring project 6 years ago, I’m guilty of not putting the finishing touches on some of my projects.
• There’s a couple of repairs necessary that I’ve been putting off. My driveway has a couple of major cracks and a pothole that needs filling. The light on the side of the house needs replacing. I’d replaced the light once, but after a month it failed. So, that’s kind of only half-procrastination. But the driveway… I bought the pavement patch in May. It’s still sitting in my shed, probably hardened and useless by now.
• I’d been planning a couple of creative projects as well. My neighbour has a mini-deacon’s bench in her front hall. She has promised to loan it to me so I can replicate it for my own front hall. It it takes is a little lumber, a weekend, and gumption. I also have every intention of putting in a stamped concrete from pathway. I borrowed the stamp two years ago… Nuff said.

Ok… I’ll stop there. I’ve sufficiently exposed my list. On the off chance that my wife will read this, I’d better keep the list a little short. Trust me, there’s already enough on this list to ensure she cures my procrastination forever.

While that might sound good, given the topic of this post, I’d rather not rush it.

Saturday. Sometimes I have the day to do absolutely nothing, nada, nudding at all. On those days, I might sleep in, get up, shower, get a coffee, have a leisurely breakfast, and then maybe cruise around to the local hardware store or Costco or wherever looking for an excuse to spend money I don’t have.

But today… well that was a different story. Last week I started staining my fence and deck and I was set to finish that this week. My plan was to get up early, go for a haircut and then I was going to stain all the uprights on my deck and give the floor of the deck a quick once over with a roller as a second coat. Then I was going to go over to my neighbours and to some odd jobs for them… They needed some bracing installed along the bottom part of their fence and they wanted to have landscape ties installed around the flower beds out back.

That was the plan. A good honest handyman’s day’s work, a cool shower, and a good feeling that I didn’t waste my Saturday. But that’s not what happened. Not exactly.

Last evening my son asked if we could go to a couple of car lots in the morning looking at cars before he went to work. Sure, I said. I’ll just inject that little task into my plan… perhaps I’ll postpone the haircut. We left this morning around 9:30, picked up one of his friends and headed to the Dodge dealership. From there we went to Tim Hortons to get a coffee and went to the Hyundai dealer. After a little looking around and kicking tires, I decided we would head home. It was 11:00. I dropped my son’s friend off at his place of employ, and headed home. We were almost there, when we saw something cross the road. From a distance, it looked like some sort of bird, but it looked a little different, somewhat out of proportion. As we got closer, we realized it was a duckling. A single solitary duckling, in the middle of a subdivision. Nothing but concrete, asphalt, and lawns. No ponds, no marsh, and no sign of momma duck and/or a string of other little ducklings. This little guy was stranded. So, my son got out and chased the little bugger down and scooped him up.

“Can we keep him?”, said my 17-year-old son. Uhm. I don’t think so. It’s a duck. We’ll be calling the SPCA for some advice. So, that’s what we did. The SPCA took my name and number and said someone would call us back. In the meantime, my son laid the duck down on the back deck and it saw an escape opportunity and made a beeline for the edge of the deck and leaped off the edge to freedom under the neighbour’s deck. While my son was chasing it down, the forest ranger’s office called. (All I could think was, I don’t want to tell this guy that, in the three minutes since I left my name with the SPCA, the duckling outsmarted us and got away.) I explained to the dude how and where we found this little bird and asked for advice on what to do with him next… something that didn’t have “a l’orange” in the answer. He said to bring it to the nearest pond, perhaps Centennial Park, and set it free. Perhaps it will merge in with another family, grow up to be a strong healthy adult duck, and come back someday to rescue us from a fire or something.

So, off we went to the park. It was 11:30 by now. On our way there, I remembered that there was a big car show at Centennial Park. The Atlantic Nationals were in town and 1600+ antique and scooped up cars were going to be strewn about all around the park. Shit. That’s ok, we’ll go to Jones Lake. It’s a nice lake with walking trails all around it. Super.

Then suddenly, my cell phone rang. It’s my neighbour, Rennie, calling from my house. Hey Steve, where are you? He explained that he and his wife, Lorraine, had gone to Kent Building Supplies to pick up a couple of sheets of lattice, and couldn’t get them into his car. So, he left Lorraine at the hardware store and came back to see if I would go back down with him in my van to pick up the lattice. Oh, and hurry up please, Steve, cuz Lorraine is pissed at me. Ok, Rennie. I’ll be just a few minutes. But why don’t you go pick up Lorraine and bring her home. Kent will hold the lattice until we get there.

So, we arrive at Jones Lake. Yup, it does have some really nice walking trails around it, but not much of an easy access to the edge of the lake, at least not where the other ducks are hanging out. We drove up a little side street bordering the lake, got out with our little boxed duckling, walked to the edge of the tree line and peered into the woods lining the lake, looking for an easy path to the shore.

“Excuse me. Sir. Can you come over here?” I turned around, and there’s an old lady on her front porch across the street, waving me over. Ok… now I’ve got to explain to this old lady that we are just rescuing a duckling, not looking for a place to dump a body, or worse yet, potential recyclables. Turns out, she simply wanted me to take her flower box off her front rail, get two different pairs of pliers, and attempt to re-bend her wire flowerbox holder so it wouldn’t lean too much. “My husband is disabled, so I figured I’d watch for the first handsome young man to come along and ask him to help.” So, did you get tired of waiting? I fixed her flower box wire-thingy, but not before I skinned half the skin off several knuckles. It’s so hard for me to slam my fist into a metal railing after a vice-grip slips and NOT curse and swear.

After some chatting and several “thank yous” I was back on my mission to free the duck. We found a place that brought us to the water fairly easily, but it was nowhere near any other ducks. This place will have to do. It was after 12:00 and my son had to get to work by 1:30. That same duck, who, when placed on our deck bolted like he was racing in the Kentucky Derby, just sat in the box when we tipped it on its side within three feet of certain freedom. After about 5 minutes of gentle coaxing, the duckling was on his way. Once he splashed into the water and swam just off shore, he chirped gleefully as if to say, “Thank you, nice gentlemen. Hey, where the quack is my mommy?”

Now, I still need to rescue two more ducklings. The ones who attempted to fit two 4 by 8 sheets of lattice into a Hyundai Sonata. I rush home and Rennie is waiting for me on the front step. He’d gone and retrieved Lorraine already. “So, Rennie, I don’t understand why Lorraine would be mad at you.” Well, Steve, I tried to tell her before we left that the lattice wouldn’t fit. But she said we got it in your van before and the stuff bends fairly easily. “Don’t tell me, Rennie, that you used the I-told-you-so words…?” Well, kinda. “Rennie, Rennie, Rennie. You are 65 years old, and married more than 30 years. Don’t you know that you have a choice? You can be right… or you can be happy. Never both at the same time.” Sigh. Yeah, I know.

We went to the hardware store, picked up the lattice and came back home. I sat, had a glass of Pepsi, and headed out to start my busy day. 1:30 pm. Start by busy day? Start? Then why am I so exhausted already?

So, I stayed out in the yard, staining my deck until after 7:00 pm. It’s now, Sunday morning, and I’ll have to go out and start the rest of my Saturday list.

As I looked in the mirror this morning, I thought two things. I wish it had rained this weekend and I need a haircut.

I never noticed if I’d ever used this word, or even if I ever heard it regularly in conversation. Sure. Seems like a pretty ordinary word. At its base, its meaning is fairly positive. [Physically secure and certain, non-failing, reliable; "Yes, of course".]

Then why does my wife get pissed off when I use that word?

“You wanna change the laundry over?” Sure. “Grrrr… I hate when you use that word”.

“You wanna go out for a drive?” Sure. “Grrrr… if you don’t want to go, then just say so!”

I think it’s because there are connotations of informality in its use, and that informality implies a diminishing of the certainty of the commitment derived by the dictionary meaning of the word. Does that sound smart? Sure it does.

But what the heck. I figured I’d try to stop using the word. It’s not such a big deal, is it? Surely, I can manage that. I found myself using the word involuntarily and then tagging on a little extra to reinforce my commitment to be certain. “Sure… uhm… I’d love to clean the bathrooms.” “Sure… er… I’d be happy to start the BBQ now.” All those extra words were starting to piss me off.

Then I started noticing how often the word gets used. Everyone apparently uses the word on a regular basis and I’m pretty sure that they use it in a pretty positively intended way. “Hey, wanna go to the park?” Sure. “Yo, dude, can you skateboard on someone else’s parking lot?” Sure. “Mister, is it ok if I clean your windshield?” Sure.

And guess what? Wifey uses the word quite often herself. AND she uses it in a mostly agreeable way. Sure means “ok” to her. But that’s not how I take it. Not anymore! I choose to take it in a negative way.

“Hey, darling-wife-o-mine, you wanna go for a coffee?” Sure. “Jeez, you don’t have to be so saucy. I was only asking a question!”

“Hey buddy, can you put the receipt in they bag?” Sure. “Jeez… can you believe how rude that guys was?”

Heh heh… I’m such an asshole.

Am I having fun? Sure. Is my wife? I’m not so sure.

Sure.

Townie Bastard is a self proclaimed “arrogant, yet charming” gentlemen from St. John’s, currently living in Iqaluit, Nunavut (That’s directly north of Labrador). I read his blog on a fairly regular basis, entertained enough to continue to subscribe to his RSS feed. He usually goes on about life in the north, politics (yawn), curling, weight loss attempts, etc holding no bars, editing no expletives, and resisting the urge to be brief. On top of all that, he is the father of Anna’s baby. While I am freezing in New Brunswick, his rants and observations of life within the Arctic Circle makes me feel warmer, relatively speaking. Makes me feel better knowing someone else is having a tougher time staying warm.

But I think he finally cracked. His brain froze or something causing some sort of atomic reaction and he suffered a meltdown. Over what? Canadian Idol.

Actually, I agree with him. Here’s an excerpt from his blog:

“I want Newfoundland to be respected more by the rest of Canada. We all do. However, Canadian Idol isn’t the way to do it. I would argue that the more stories that get out about people lining up at pay phones to vote, telecommunication systems being snarled by the volume of voters and people bitching and whining on the websites and Open Line shows about conspiracies to deny Newfoundland it’s God given right to have a Canadian Idol winner, the more fucking ridiculous we sound.

So this is one small way to gain back some respect – ignore Canadian Idol. Completely.”

But you know, these days, we all get rather worked up over the “entertainment” industry. Anna Nicole Smith death and custody battle, Britney’s shaved head, Britney’s other shaved parts, Mel Gibson’s drunken “sugar tits” tyrade, Michael Richards messed up comedy act… all capture our attention and passions. There’s a freakin’ war going on for Christ sake!

At least This Hour Has 22 Minutes has it right:

Can’t wait for spring. I think my brain is freezing too. Besides, Canadian Idol starts in April… just in time for Townie’s brain thaw. Imagine how entertaining his rants will be when his brain cells have the nourishment of a warm flow of blood.

Talk with family and friends across the nation without watching the clock. Stop counting minutes and talk as long as you like.

These are the catch-phrases for HBC Connections unlimited long distance plans, offered by The Hudson’s Bay Company.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
–adjective

1. not limited; unrestricted; unconfined: unlimited trade.
2. boundless; infinite; vast: the unlimited skies.
3. without any qualification or exception; unconditional.

---

HBC Connections defines “unlimited” as: twelve hundred. That’s the number of minutes that families in Canada apparently get too tired to talk anymore in any given month, according to their studies. A couple of months ago, I got this telemarketing call imploring me to change my long distance provider. The gentleman on the other end of the line promised me “unlimited” calling within Canada, day or night, for $19.99 per month. “Unlimited?” I said. “So, there’s no fine print, no tricks. I can make as many calls, within Canada, for as long as I want, and I will only ever be charged 20 bucks?” YES SIR! That’s right. Just let me verify your identity and we will take care of making the switch for you. You don’t even need to call your current long distance provider.Grrrrreat!

Several weeks later, I received two bills. One from HBC and one from the phone company. When I complained to the phone company, they told me that they will not, and legally can not, switch my long distance plan without me contacting them directly. After a couple of phone calls and some pressing, I was able to secure a credit from the phone company for the additional charges.

Now, this week, I received a bill from HBC Connections for sixty dollars. $60!!! Well, of course I called them. The nice lady on the other end politely explained to me that when they say unlimited, they mean that, according to their studies, 1200 minutes is more than enough to cover them. So, they feel justified in telling me that they are offering me unlimited minutes. I “politely” explained that the English definition of the term is slightly different, hence my confusion in the contract I entered into with this fine, upstanding corporation. The lady explained to me that there was nothing she could do, so she would have her manager call me back in 24 to 48 hours.

Three days later, no call. So, I call them back. The lady I got this time explained that the salespeople were trained not to inform prosepective clients that the limit is 1200 minutes unless they question them on the meaning of the term “unlimited”. They freakin’ intentionally mislead people!! Jeeeeezuss! I informed her that I did indeed ask them to verify the term “unlimited”, so she said that they would have their QA people review the tapes.  She then proceeded to tell me that there was nothing else she could do for me. I asked her to put me through to her manager, if he or she exists.

She told me that her manager would get back to me in 24 to 48 hours.

Needless to say, I highly recommend dealing with this company for your long distance services. NOT!

In their own words:

Hudson’s Bay Company (Hbc) fully intends to conduct its business in a socially responsible manner and we are determined to build our business with our business partners and their employees based on the highest ethical principles of trust, teamwork, honesty, and respect for the rights and dignity of others.