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John,
My parents stopped on their way out to the valley two days ago and picked up some flowers to
give to my auntie Darlene. When my mom and dad got to Darlene’s place in
Mission, she and Graham were standing on
their next door neighbour’s front porch talking to their neighbour who lives there and who’s
name is John. John has cancer and they don’t think he’ll live much longer. And John’s also broke
up about Mackenzie, Graham use to take her over there and see him. And my mom thinks that Graham
was broke up a lot more than Darlene was when she and my dad were there two days, Graham never
had kids of his own and he really loved Mackenzie. Darlene told my mom and dad when they were
there that they first got a call from Walter last Sunday (on the 22nd) to let them know
that he had a call from one of his half sisters who lives up North where the accident took place
letting him know that she heard about the accident on the news and that a little girl had been
killed. And then Walter called them again later that same day when he found out that the girl
was Mackenzie. My mom saw other flowers and cards that people had dropped off for them and
Darlene showed my parents pictures that she had of Mackenzie. You asked me when you were here
two days ago if I had ever met Mackenzie, I told you that I saw her a few times. I think the
last time when I saw her was around five years ago. I also told you that I have a few pictures
of her myself, maybe I could scan them and send them to you sometime or I could just show them
to you one day when you’re here. You already know that I did print out one copy of that same
story you read online because my cousin Jenny wanted a copy, I’m thinking that sometime within
the next week might be a good time for my parents and myself to get together and do something
with Mac. I was already thinking about taking him out for a meal and if he comes over to my
place for a few minutes on the same day I could print out a large print copy of the story that I
can read to him and I could show him the pictures that I have of Mackenzie seeing how Mac
doesn’t remember Mackenzie. I remember Mac saw Mackenzie either once or a couple times. And when
I talked to Mac on the phone last Monday evening (in the evening on June 23,2008), he
told me that he’ll be going away sometime around July 21st.
Remember just before you left two days ago, you heard my dad ask me if I showed you my new
additions yet. I told you in the one message that I sent you at the beginning of this month on
Monday the 2nd that my dad put one of my female platies who looked big in the breeding cage on
my six gallon fish tank (the one upstairs in my bedroom). My dad who thought she wasn’t
going to have babies after her being there for three weeks was about to move her back into the
downstairs tank last weekend when he saw four babies swimming around in there. He counted an
approximate total of somewhere around eleven babies the next day. And then two days ago after
you left he took the mother out of the breeding cage, put her back in the tank downstairs, and
then he took another female platy from the downstairs tank who looked quite big and put her in
the breeding cage upstairs in my bedroom and she had her babies today. My dad quote “good timing
this time” seeing how the second platy had only been in there a few days. My dad now put this
platy back in one of the tanks downstairs and you will now have lots of new additions to see
when you come on Monday.
On Thursday just two days ago before you came, I heard my mom yell at Izzy because she saw
that Izzy had something in her mouth and thought that she had killed something. Not until after
she yelled at Izzy, she realized that what Izzy had in her mouth was just a large flower
petal.
My dad called me into the family room last Wednesday when he saw a story on the five o’clock
news about a litter of kittens that had been dumped on the side of the highway near Duncan on
Vancouver Island. Only two of the kittens have been found and there is a third one that is still
missing.
Also in the news this past week:
• Excerpts from story in the Peace Arch local newspaper after the guy who went
missing in White Rock (The one who took off for Mexico) had been found:
Date on which story was published in Peace Arch: Monday June 23,2008
Excerpts from story: ...He was in Acapulco and had been robbed...Bouchard's dad said his
son told him he left for Mexico Tuesday (June 10) morning to get away from "a lot of
pressures."
• Bouchard said he "wasn't sure" he would be coming home when he bought a one-way ticket to
Mexico and then a bus ticket to Acapulco. He chose Mexico because he didn't need a passport to
get there, he said.
• Bouchard said it took him just a few days to realize he'd made a mistake, but it wasn't until
Friday (June 20) that his family knew that he was OK. Robbed of his money, cellphone and watch
shortly after his arrival, Bouchard said he stayed a few days with a local family and then
walked for days along a beach until he reached an airport and could call his dad collect.
• Bouchard apologized to his family, friends, the RCMP and the community for the concern his
actions caused.
• Getting home wasn't easy. With only his driver's licence, Bouchard wasn't allowed to board a
plane in Mexico. Without a passport, he wasn't allowed to fly into the United States.
• It took help from Canada Border Services Agency to finally get Bouchard
home...Read the full story.
• My mom told me that she saw on the Noon News last Wednesday the story about the possibility
that Save-On Foods was suppose to go on strike tomorrow, luckily though she told me that she
heard on yesterday’s Noon News that they were going to negotiate some more. And the last we
heard was that Safeway’s still negotiating, but I hope they don’t go on strike seeing how you
know that I can’t live without my Chinese food if they end up going for a long strike. And I
plan to have a Chinese dinner tomorrow night BTW, my mom was at the Ocean Park Safeway this
afternoon and she didn’t see any of the Canada Day cakes there that we saw advertised or any of
the packs of six donuts. The only Canada Day donuts that they had there were just a few in bulk
and my mom thought they didn’t look good so she decided just to leave them, and the only Canada
Day cake of any kind that they had there were these packages of cupcakes that are iced together
at the top. I don’t know if you know exactly what I mean when I say “cupcakes that are iced
together at the top,” but I’ll tell you that it’s not my type of thing. I better have a dessert
for Canada Day. And if the Peninsula Village Safeway doesn’t have in any of the desserts that I
want when one of my parents goes over there tomorrow afternoon to pick up my Chinese food, I
hope that my dad will stop at one of the Safeway locations out in the valley and check if he
goes out that way tomorrow and sees our relatives.
I remember one time within the last few weeks you said something about we should do a little
something for both of our birthdays seeing how both your’s and mine are only two days apart. I’m
thinking we’ll probably end up having another Chinese food and pizza supper at my place with my
two friends, Mac and Kris, and for the dessert this time maybe we could have the cake decorator
at the Safeway bakery custom decorate one of my favorite round double-layer chocolate Safeway
cakes (I’d assume it would probably be either chocolate fudge or a truffle cake) for my 26th
birthday but I wouldn’t want to have that done at the Peninsula Village location. And again I
told you that our birthdays are still a little more than three months away from now so we still
got a bit more time to think about things.
And I also remember when I told you about the new Frosty flavours at Wendy's and that I don’t
like the only Wendy's location that we have in South Surrey right now because it’s a bright one,
you then said that we could drive all the way out to another Wendy's location and try one of the
new flavours. I think the closest one to me that is not a bright one would be the one in
Cloverdale on the North side of Highway 10 just West of 180th Street. And remember I told you a
few months ago in a previous E-mail that there use to be a darker Wendy's location in South
Surrey on 152nd Street at 17th Avenue but that one closed a few years ago, anyway I don’t think
that I’ll be going out for any snacks with you this summer now that Carol’s off work for the
summer holidays and seeing how I told you in the
message I sent you on Friday May 30,2008
that I don’t want to run into Carol (or anybody she knows) when out in public without saying
anything to her and I especially don’t want to run into her when I’m with
you...I’d rather run into
you when I’m out and about with
her. I don’t want to walk into Dairy Queen
with you for example and see Carol eating at
one of the tables with another child (or anyone else who she does respite for). I don’t
want to have to leave South Surrey and move away to somewhere else (such as either
Langley or North Surrey for example) only because I don’t feel comfortable venturing out into my
own community knowing that I could run into Carol or anyone she knows at any time. All the more
reason why I say that this relationship needs to be healed even after our extremely heavy
discussion that we had on Thursday the 19th of this month during which you said that you won’t
be addressing any of the Carol stuff, as of now it’s been more than ten months since the last
time I saw Carol and I told you in the message I sent you on Tuesday June 10th 2008 that
I would like to see her again
(in person) before I will have gone a whole year
in which her and me haven’t seen each other.
Now that you told me you’ve downloaded all four of the ZIP files from the Stunts Illusion
site, I deleted those and I finally got around to uploading the images that we cropped over our
last few sessions. You can get them all in one big ZIP file at
http://www.stuntsillusion.com/download/tempfile1.zip
Nimra.bmp - Orphaned chicks find unlikely friend
image49.bmp -
I never noticed that Seth Rogen has a tattoo on his chin in this image until we started working
on this one within the last few weeks. You couldn’t remember why I scanned this image, it was in
the message that I sent you on Saturday Mar.1,2008 when I told you that he played in a TV series
I use to watch called
“Undeclared.”
And I remember you thought that “maybe we should send to Seth some of our images that we
cropped ”
seeing how you thought that his E-mail address shouldn’t be hard to find though he might come
after us if we give him a mustache in this image.
image51.bmp - You said that you
don’t think I sent you this image yet.
I remember you said that you might start using some of my images as what you called your
quote “Window Screensavers.” I’ll tell you that you’re now getting quite a collection of images
from me including a lot of ones that you and I have cropped. I know you meant “desktop
background” when you said “screensaver,” just like two days ago for example when you said that
you were selling a “walker” I thought you meant the kind that a disabled person uses to get
around until you explained to \me that you meant “treadmill.” And just like I told you in the
message I sent you on Saturday May 10,2008 that the picture my friend Mac used as his desktop
background a long time ago is the one you saw of me, him, and my grandpa standing in front of
that truck. And sometime around the beginning of this month, my dad showed me the new desktop
background that he put on the laptop just a few days before (and it’s still the
background image on that computer now)...a picture of Izzy which I think was taken sometime more
recently.
When you were here two days ago, you asked me if I do anything else on the computer when
you’re not around besides compose E-mails to send to you. I also have fun spending time going on
the internet and finding images...to send to you, and I also find myself occupied when I watch
videos on YouTube on which I send you my comments about later on. Sometime on this long weekend,
I might finally download all of those videos and still pictures off my Sony camera. I still have
pictures and video on that camera from all the way back at Christmas, I haven’t plugged that
camera into the computer and downloaded anything from it since before Christmas. I also remember
one time within the last few weeks when you were here, you asked me if I have a binder in which
I’m going to put together all of the images that we cropped once I print out all of them or if I
still have to go out and get a binder. I don’t have a binder yet, but I’m looking for a certain
kind and you can read
this forum post
if you want to read more details about the kind I’m looking for. Now that’s another thing I do
on the computer when you’re not around, whenever I have a question about any of the things I
work on when you’re not around I ask for help by posting my questions on internet forums.
Also speaking about the things that we do on the computer, I remember a couple more questions
you asked me about “Windows Paint:”
• The reason why I always go 1x1 after I click on “New” underneath the “File”
menu and before I paste a new image is so that the drawing screen will automatically make itself
the same size as the image I’m pasting when I click on “Paste” underneath the “Edit” menu. I
don’t necessarily have to go 1x1, I just got into the habit of doing it that way. Just as long
as I don’t make the drawing screen any bigger than the size of the image that I’m pasting
in.
• And if you want to make the Width or Height of the drawing screen smaller by clicking on
“Attributes” under the “Image” menu, changing the “Width” this way will only decrease the
drawing screen at the bottom and changing the “Height” this way will only decrease the drawing
screen on the right side. I never thought until you thought up just within the last few weeks
about clicking on “Flip/Rotate” underneath the “Image menu,” then choosing “Rotate by angle,”
and then choose 180 degrees so that I can crop off the top and left of an image and then rotate
180 degrees again once I’ve done so that the image will be right side up again. Until you came
up with this trick, I’ve been clicking on “Select All” underneath the “Edit Menu” and then
zooming in up close and dragging the top-left corner of the portion of image that I want to keep
to the top-left corner of the drawing screen while just cropping the drawing screen at the
bottom and at the right side. Let me know if you need clearer instructions.
Remember you read in the E-mail I sent you on
Christmas Day that I got a 4GB memory stick for Christmas. When we
took the picture of my new pair of sandals just a few weeks ago, I used my 4GB memory stick for
the first time to transfer that picture to my desktop computer downstairs from the laptop once
my dad downloaded it onto the laptop from the cell phone camera. I also hadn’t even opened my
new memory stick until that day just a few weeks ago on which we took the picture of my sandals.
And a correction to that E-mail I sent you on Christmas Day in which I first told you about my
4GB memory stick, the memory stick that I used before I got my 4GB one wasn’t a 2GB one...it was
a 256MB one...and I still have that one now too so therefore I have two memory sticks
right now. My dad’s is the 2GB memory stick.
I think that my new provider, where I now host my website, will be better than Facebook. I
know you said that Facebook is 100% free while I have to pay $7.77 Canadian per month to host
with my new provider but think about it;
600GB of space, unmetered bandwidth... With
600GB of space and unlimited FTP accounts, think about how many websites I could host for people
who don’t like the free hosts and think about how much space each user could have. Did you find
a provider yet to point the bubzulu.com domain to? And if I decide that I still like my new
provider after a year or two, I might think about changing my payments from annually
(once every year) to once every ten years seeing how I would pay much less (only $1.67
Canadian) per month) if Idid so and maybe even upgrade to their “Developer's Heaven” package in
which I would get one terabyte of space. I think that 600GB though should be a good enough
amount of space for if I ever decide to host my own network of websites, and I shouldn’t run out
of space for a long time. I also remember you said that one advantage you like about Facebook is
that you can limit access so that only people you know instead of just anyone can view your
pages. I’ll let you know that I’d feel safe allowing anyone to view my pages, it would be
interesting to find out how many people don’t like the PT Cruiser. And the more names that I can
get on my petition to get a regular size A&W in South Surrey, the better.That YoVille that you
told me about also sounds interesting BTW. And I didn’t know that Flickr is owned by Yahoo until
you read me that story in the paper one of the last times when you were at my place.
Points about our walk two days ago:
• That was my neighbour, Muriel, who you met when we were leaving for our walk
and who was standing at the end of her driveway waiting for the HandyDART.
• Remember when we were in the park you read the sign that says the name of that park is
“Bell Estates Park” and then I said that I thought the other park that’s just a few
blocks away from that one is the one called “Bell Park.” I guess now we know that one
park’s called “Bell Estates Park” and the other one’s just called “Bell Park.” And “Bell
Park” was the one that was named after the Bell family who’s house was on that land before the
city bought the land and made it into a public park. I attached another map at the bottom of
this message so that you can see where exactly the two parks are located and how far apart they
are from each other. I also remember on this same walk two days ago you wondered about how long
it would take us if we had decided to walk all the way to Crescent Beach, that would’ve been
interesting to find out but I would’ve rather done something like that with Carol.
• That house we walked by on the corner of 136A Street and 18A Avenue (the one that
you said looks like a fortress) looked like the kind of place that I’d want to fix up to look
nice though I don’t think that I would want to live there for these following reasons:
-the garage is on the North side,
I told you that I’d want my bedroom to be on the North side at wherever I end up living and that
I don’t want my bedroom to be right on top of the garage. Perhaps if we could somehow “turn this
house around” so that the
garage is on the South side, then my bedroom would be on the North side.
-I don’t know if the street that this house is on would be as quiet as the street on which I
currently live seeing how the house is right on the corner of a “T intersection” and none of the
three roads dead end at a cul-de-sac, all three roads
go through to somewhere.
- I also don’t know if the street that this house is on would be as quiet as the street on which
I currently live seeing how the house is located halfway between two parks if you look at the
map at the bottom of this message.
I found out online that the address for this house is 1838 18A Avenue. And you’ll see below
the map that I attached an image of the house taken from Google Earth, notice in the image that
the lot behind this place has a swimming pool in the backyard BTW. If this were my place on the
other hand and if I could fix it up, you see that the yellow line is where I’d put up a fence
around the lot. See that I coloured a little gray strip along part of the road to indicate where
the sidewalk is, and the green indicates where you said that you thought a gate might be nice. I
myself think that maybe a trellis would look nice over top of where you’d walk through the gate,
or maybe not. Below this image is another one from Google Earth taken over top of my house which
is the one right in the bottom-left corner. I remember my dad said one time before
that if he owned that rancher across the street from us (the one which in the image has a
yellow line around it), hei’d build a fence around the side of the house where the yellow line
is so that a nice big grass area could be fenced in seeing how that house doesn’t have much of a
backyard behind (on the East side of) it. If only my dad could afford to buy that
property across the street from where we live if it’s ever up for sale again, then he could make
extra money by renting the place out to tenants. And there’s one more image down there, the
image of Stevie Wonder was featured yesterday on the myTELUS.com website. Remember I previously
sent you and image of Ray Charles that was featured on the same website a few months before.
Also if you look at the map, you will see that I highlighted a new route in red. Maybe one
day I could walk this route walk counter-clockwise either with my mom or with you and we could
take my mom’s cell phone so that we could take a picture; of the fountain, of the “fortress”
house, and of the house we saw for sale on 18th Avenue on which I told you that the garage is
not underneath any of the upstairs floor. Also notice on the map that on one portion of this
walk there are two different routes we can pick between which I highlighted in two different
colours.
• Remember another one of the houses that we saw up for sale on 18th Avenue is for sale by
some guy named Geof. I never heard of him, but another house you and I walked by within the last
few weeks that was up for sale is for sale by Mel Smith and he’s the agent who sold us our
house (the one that we’re living in now).
• Speaking about houses that are up for sale, when my parents were out in the valley two days
ago they saw that for some reason a lot of the houses on my auntie Darlene’s street are up for
sale.
Points about out walk on the Thursday before last (June 19th 2008):
• Remember we saw that pile of free stiff when we went for our walk that day (on
Thursday the 19th of this month) and you didn’t want to take any of it because you thought it
smelled like a cat had peed on it. We ourselves don’t put out our free stuff on the front lawn
as soon as we’re ready to get rid of it, we save it until our next garage sale. I remember six
or seven summers ago when we had our first garage sale at our house in South Surrey, we had a
separate table on which we set out all of our stuff that we were giving away for free.
My dad also has one of Wings’ albums on LP. And even though I don’t remember which of their
albums we saw in that pile of free stuff, I do know that it wasn’t the same one my dad has. The
one that my dad has is “Wings at the Speed of Sound” which was their 1976 album:
And then after the Wings album, the second LP that we saw in that “free pile” was a
Tears for Fears one. Remember after we heard their song “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” a
few months ago, you then asked me if I know which one of my parents would want to rule the world
more than the other one and then I said that I think I myself I would want to rule the world
more than either of them.
• I also remember on the same walk I heard you mention the singer who has the name
“Chris Cross,” and I thought that name sounded familiar until I remembered where I heard it
before as soon as you mentioned his song “Sailing” which I use to hear on the radio a lot.
• And when we walked by the poster of Toby, the missing cat, I couldn’t make out that the
picture on the pole was of a cat the first time when we walked by. Even though the picture had a
streak through it after getting rained on, I was still able to make out the second time that the
picture was of a cat once we had turned around and then walked by it the second time.
Other points about our most recent visit two days ago:
• When we were in on the computer doing our cropping just two days ago, I
remember you were singing “Hello Goodbye” by John Lennon. And another time within the last few
weeks when we were cropping, you sang Neil Diamond’s “Forever in Blue Jeans.”
• I don’t care for Austin Powers myself. I saw one of his movies with one of my classes when
I was High School and that’s all I’ve seen of him.
• I remember you told me that Dianne’s uncles are making a step up to the bathtub in Danae’s
bathroom at your place. When the bathroom in our basement in our old house in Whalley was built
when I was only a few years old, we had to build a step up to the toilet because that helped the
toilet to flush properly seeing how it was in the basement.
My dad was talking to Marvin and Marjoree, our next door neighbours on the other side of our
house, over the fence this morning and they said that Logan’s moving
out. He got a job somewhere out in Langley and he found a one-bedroom
apartment out there. Earlier this morning when my dad was outside painting our fence, he saw
those peoples’ cat, Meika, tied up to a tree in their backyard and then he saw Logan come
outside and untie it and then take it in the house. As soon as he took the cat in the house, my
dad heard the cat make a big loud “MEOOOW.” My dad therefore assumed that the cat didn’t want to
go inside the house and wanted to stay outside, he saw someone let it back out a while later.
My dad didn’t tell me until I said to him a few days ago that I noticed both of the vehicles
you would normally see parked in the driveway at the one house across the street from us
(the blue rancher on which you saw the Canada flag) have been gone for almost a week that one
day last weekend he was talking to the man who lives there and who’s name is Roger. I also
didn’t know until just a few days ago when my dad told me that he talked to Roger last weekend
that this is the second time my dad talked to them. I had always thought that my dad had never
talked to those people until just last week when my dad told me that he also talked to them once
along time ago when they first moved in. Now when my dad was talking to them last weekend, Roger
told him that they have friends from England who were coming over here to meet up with them and
then our neighbours were going to take their friends down to the U.S. for a month to visit
touristy areas. And as soon as I told my dad that you saw the Canada Day flag there speaking
about which, he remembered that he hasn’t put our’s up yet.
My grandparents might come down on Monday. My dad will take them out for lunch and then once
he brings them back to my place not long after you show up, my mom will join them and they’ll go
out to the Starlight Casino seeing how my grandma’s birthday is on the next day (on
Canada Day). And my mom wanted me to say to you not to feel bad because she won’t be going out
with them for lunch, she’s still feeling bad about Mackenzie and doesn’t want to go out much but
she’ll go out with them later.
See you on Monday at 1PM.
-Neil
P.S. Links for today:
Forum post: Buying office supplies in Canada
Peace Arch News story: Family vows to help others, after son's safe return
TV series: Undeclared *
Website: myTELUS.com *
Wikipedia page: New York International Auto Show *
* denotes the link that was in the PS of the
last message I sent you on last Tuesday
(the 24th).
• a green star (*) denotes a link that
I have sent you at least once before
PS2. I don’t remember what it was you said when you were here two days ago that Yosemite Sam said, I remember it was something that had either the word “chick” or “chicken” in it. But anyway, here’s an image for you of Yosemite Sam with Bugs Bunny:
PS3. Here is the map and the Google Earth images:
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