Date registered: January 6, 2016
Jan 01
|
Vital Statistics |
2008 |
2007 |
2006 |
| a Canadian dollar is worth | $ 0.82 US | $ 0.96 US | $ 0.86 US |
| a domestic postage stamp costs | $ 0.52 | $ 0.51 | $ 0.51 |
| a local call on Bell pay phone | $ 0.50 | $ 0.50 | $ 0.25 |
| a liter of Pepsi costs | $ 1.99 | $ 1.79 | $ 1.79 |
| a liter of water costs | $ 1.79 | $ 1.69 | $ 1.39 |
| a liter of milk costs (purchased in a four liter bag) | $ 1.29 | $ 1.19 | $ 1.25 |
| a liter of gasoline costs | $ 0.66 | $ 1.04 | $ 0.87 |
| a loaf of bread costs | $ 2.69 | $ 1.67 | $ 2.29 |
| a paperback novel costs | $11.99 | $12.99 | $11.99 |
| a weekly (Time) magazine costs | $ 4.95 | $ 5.95 | $ 5.95 |
| a comic book costs | $ 2.99 | $ 3.99 | $ 3.99 |
| a daily newspaper costs | $ 0.94 | $ 0.94 | $ 0.93 |
| a collectable card (Yu-Gi-Oh!) pkg. costs | $ 4.99 | $ 4.99 | $ 4.99 |
| a regular bus ride costs | $ 2.00 | $ 1.90 | $ 1.90 |
| a medium cup of coffee costs | $ 1.22 | $ 1.17 | $ 1.17 |
| a basic cable television package | $28.49 | $27.49 | $25.99 |
| a first run movie rental costs | $ 4.79 | $ 4.39 | $ 5.39 |
| an adult movie theatre ticket costs | $ 9.95 | $ 9.95 | $ 9.95 |
| a children’s movie theatre ticket costs | $ 7.95 | $ 7.95 | $ 7.95 |
| a babysitter (for Things 1 & 2) costs | $ 8.00/hr | $ 8.00/hr | $ 8.00/hr |
| a boy’s haircut | $ 12.75 | $ 9.95 | $ 9.95 |
| a adult man’s haircut | $ 15.50 | $ 14.25 | $12.95 |
| a medium combination pizza | $ 15.45 | $ 14.35 | $16.35 |
| a new home computer | $ 905.00 | $1387.00 |
Jan 01
Ma will remember 2008 as the year that she had no trouble getting Thing 2 off to School in the morning (that part from September to December when the Things were split off between different schools for the first time).
Pa will remember 2008 as the first year in history that he opened the New Year with money in the bank and zero debt.
Thing 1 remembers 2008 as the year he stayed in a mansion by the sea and more importantly the year he got his own laptop computer.
Most Memorable News Event: (Nothing but) Olympics & Elections
Favorite Show: Doctor Who (and Stargate SG1)
Favorite Movie: Ironman
Favorite Music: No one song comes to mind.
Thing 2 remembers 2008 as the year the North Atlantic surf pounded sand up his butt. He also earned his orange belt in jiu-jitsu and is still going strong at three nights a week.
Most Memorable News Event: The Saskatchewan Meteor.
Favorite Show: The Daily Planet (and Future Weapons).
Favorite Movie: You Don’t Mess with the Zohan
Favorite Music: Anything but Pa’s voice.
Jan 01
I will get out of the house on my own one night every week in order to stop bugging Ma’s butt and in order to generate some new stories to tell her (even if I have to make them up).
Ma will tame Thing Shrew of his attitude or die trying.
Thing 1 (and I) will join an archery club and he will try to be a little more sociable in the real world.
Thing 2 will pick his own things up off of the floor even though it may cause a reduction in demand for his highly lucrative back massage operation. He will also try to talk a little more and talk back a lot less.
Jan 01
It’s that elusive makeover for our kitchen, or else… a life supply of body wax for my Neanderthal pelt.
Jan 01
So there you have it. If you still don’t believe the end of days is truly upon us, what with the Swiss bankers lying down with Black Holes and the re-emergence of bone fide pirate states, the final harbinger of doom has to be the emergence of Newfoundland as a Have Province while Ontario finds itself in a position where it must “bank” on handouts from the rest of Canada. The world has clearly flipped polarity. In closing, and at the risk of causing the year to completely implode under the weight of so many International Year monikers, I will dub 2008 the year of the Pirate (and/or the International Year of Words ending in the long vowel e sound as in Ponzi, Piracy, Gimme, and proroguy).
Jan 01
The Chinese called it the Year of the Pig. The United Nations dubbed 2007 the International Year of the Dolphin. It was the year that Scouting turned 100 years old. 2007 also marked the 100th anniversary of the:
Hershey’s Kiss
United Parcel Service
Taxi cabs
The electric vacuum cleaner
Canada Dry Ginger Ale
Bakelite (the precursor to modern plastic)
Paper towels
Color photography
Paper cups
The gas station
The State of Oklahoma
The term “egg-head”
Looking back, 2007 was for the most part a pretty ho hum year; but although nothing much changed, there was no shortage of folks who were into diapers albeit not for the purposes of change. A lady astronaut launched the year by donning her diapers to travel halfway across the United States to make a rival in romance disappear. She was followed by a host of players (none of them winners) all attempting to get into the diapers of Anna Nicole Smith’s only living heir.
Jan 01
Chinese missile test prompts concerns
China opened the year with a very big bang on January 11, when they fired a ballistic missile that blasted one of their old weather satellites out of orbit more than 800 kilometers above the Earth. The Chinese satellite was about the same distance from Earth as U.S. spy satellites. The U.S. has been able to knock out satellites with missiles since the mid-1980s. The only U.S. test was conducted on Oct. 13, 1985. Later that year, the U.S. government implemented a ban on testing anti-satellite weapons.
Jan 01
MacLean Magazine’s Warren Buffet Interview by KENNETH WHYTE | October 15, 2007 | http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20071015_110163_110163&source=srch
Warren Buffet talks about his announcement in 2006 that he would give away 85 per cent of his roughly $50-billion fortune to charities. In a year that was rife with stories that ranged between the bizarre, irrelevant and/or darker side of the people and the news, this one really stands out as one of the few pick-me-up pieces that I can remember. The following excerpt is one of his nuggets of wisdom from that interview that we should all aspire to live by (even though some of us might not have a couple billion dollars burning a hole in our pockets):
K.W.: “You decided you didn’t want to leave it all to your kids. You have a line about that?”
W.B.: “Yeah, I want to leave them enough so they can do anything but not enough so they can do nothing.”
Jan 01
Canadian New Democrat MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis.
She proposed a private member’s bill that would effectively ban fees at automated teller machines in Canada. Of course the banks are claiming that, “Without this competitive pricing flexibility, it is unlikely that we would be able to continue to maintain a network of 4,000 plus ATMs – innovation and access would suffer and costs to consumers would rise”
In a related Story: The global consulting firm Deloitte reports that by 2010 banks will spend almost one-third of their collective IT Budget (which currently stands at $44 Billion – offshore).