I couldn't believe my luck! I won a free cruise!

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speakup

Little did I know that when I picked up the ringing phone on the afternoon of Friday, April 25, that ten seconds later (an unexplained pause) a voice would come on to inform me that I had won one of five free cruises to a dream destination in the Caribbean.

And all it required - after I pressed the #9 button and gave them my PIN and credit card number - was my permission for them to withdraw $100 (plus possible carrying charges) to nail down - I think the voice called it ‘register' - the free cruise. "I'm da man!" I said to my son as he got off the schoolbus. I explained that I would soon be basking - as a shark basks - in the warm waters off Bimini.

"What's that?" he said, pointing to the sky, "Is that pigs flying over?" How to deflate the up-mood of his male parent. To my great great surprise, others down at the club had had similar windfalls that day.

"But I wasn't dumb enough to send them a hundred dollars, Bob!" said Sandringham. That thought was voiced by several others, including Wayne Kleberson who had purchased part of the Confederation Bridge last August.

"I got news for you wise guys," I sneered. "It really only cost me seventy-five dollars. I fought like a tiger. I leave next Feb. 29 by the way, just when you guys will be suffering worst from winter blues."

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Other notes from a Spring that arrived very quickly after that long, LONG, winter:

Someday I must devote an entire column - with actual research and everything - to the way people put out their garbage every week. The ones I'm thinking of most are those who, week after week after week, put out plastic garbage bags and every week the neighbourhood dogs, cats, crows, raccoons and aardvarks tear the bags apart and spread the garbage all over the place. Every week. It just takes an old steel barrel or any wooden container to prevent this happening but it never seems to occur to those folks. On the other hand, if I'm so smart, why didn't I win that April 17 lottery that paid $14 million?

"You have to know some math to stay married," commented Red one night at the club. Allie agreed that a certain knowledge of numerals is essential when dealing with one's spouse. He didn't put it quite in those words - it was more like a grunt - but that was what he meant. Red continued: "Yeah, you have to remember that's it frowned on in certain QUARTERS to be seen by the better HALF conversing with a good looking woman TWO-THIRDS her age."

At a recent showing of a certain painter from the county I was standing there and heard one of the oldest clichés ever referring to art. One guy was saying to another: "I don't know art but I know what I like." I broke in and told them to quit using such hacknayed phrases. Was my face ever red! It turned out they were taking about Mr. and Mrs. Lake from Centreville. He had said: "I don't know Art but I know Wanda Lake."

I've been looking at different ways that don't cost an arm, a leg, and two canaries for me to get high-speed Internet. No doubt this isn't the least bit logical, but an Aliant cellphone tower is directly across the river from us, so why isn't there some way for me to get HSI from that? It's obvious that Aliant has no interest in providing reasonably costing HSI to anyone not in town and I've checked various prices and found they are all exorbitant so I'm thinking of buying my own satellite. Chili night down at the club would provide enough fuel to put it into space, but who would ride along to get the thing into its orbit?

I don't even know whether I should be mentioning this, whether it's a secret, but somebody said recently that a windmill power company, no doubt jealous of the Mars Hill windmills, has decided to put a whack of them on the hill south of Kincardine and Bon Accord. I can tell you right off the bat that I'm agin' it. That is, unless I get some sort of cut out of the deal. I'm thinking that the public approval of a famous columnist should be worth free electrical power for at least two decades and maybe even 20 years.

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Bob's website: http://personal.nbnet.nb.ca/lafrance/index.htm