Ah yes, Ken Loach's Riff-Raff

I can hear thunder out there; Lloyd the Newfie used to say that's the angels bowlin'.

Kodak advertising campaign?

You press (not push) the button, we do the rest.

I was looking at BC Assessment website, and one unit sold recently for $900,000 in our building. Crazy considering its not even that nice of a building or even in that nice of an area,

Milky Way ice cream stand in Regina is an institution; local television stations report on it's first opening day and the day it closes as the beginning of Spring and ending of Summer, and they get a lot of free advertising as a result.
https://globalnews.ca/news/5058017/i..._campaign=2015
I wasn't expecting this though:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/bes...ream-1.4435505

We were bored today so went to an open house for apartments that are for rent. Good area on the Canada Line, small though 400-500sq feet, nice views on the upper northwest facing units though. While small they were nice looking apartments with all new appliances and redone for a modern style. (the building is old, but they gutted it and redid the interior)

Rent is a little much though $2,000-$3,000 per month depending on floor and size of unit.

Would be nice to live literally 1 block from a Canada Line station and walk to all basic needs and would be cool to live in a high rise....lol

This is a pretty neat time lapse of the demolition of the old Landmark Hotel in Vancouver's West End.

MSP rules are frustrating sometimes.

Doctor ordered 2 ultra-sounds. A renal ultrasound and an abdominal ultrasound. Apparently according to the ultrasound places these 2 tests cannot be done on the same day if you want MSP to cover them, each one has to be done on a different day.

Did you check ............. do those two ultrasounds mean that you have to ingest a different chemical for each one???

That might be a problem!

There is no chemical/medication involved.

According to the lab doing it, its due to MSP billing rules and no medical reason.

It's too bad the traditional work week is 5 days, working longer but less days really is nicest options for work schedules. 4 ten's with 3 off is pretty nice, but best is working 3 12.5 hour days with 4 days off, now that is the best schedule I have ever had, like a 4 day weekend every week.

That does sound a bit odd. Even here my wife had more than one thing done on one day a few times.

For reasons connected to the high cost of my wife's Remicade infusions ($7k every 6 weeks) we were granted some coverage for other prescription costs and full costs of testing and needle supplies for diabetes.

The test strips come in packs of 50 or 100. The 50s are not a good deal as they're about $55 while 100 is 'only' about $85.

The province can only cope with calendar monthly billing. We both had the same testing/injection regime, 4xdaily so 100 would last 25 days with any sensible person buying 100 every 25 days. But for the province that would involve some months with 2 bills which is beyond them to handle.

So they had to provide more than 100 every month. Since this was both of us needing 120 a month, they could have done couple or household unit billing for 250. But, no, they had to do one each. They could have done 150/100. Or even 150 each. But they did 200 each.

I tried to negate this waste by not ordering any at the pharmacy when the spares would cover the next month. But the province having no bill to pay when they expected one caused other problems including potential suspension of coverage - "you no longer need it?" So we just had to go along with it.

By the time I came off that system and had to pay myself we had so many spares by then - plus a continuing 80 spares a month they were providing for my wife - it was a long time before I needed to pay for any new ones.

I reckon they could have paid $2550 a year but instead 'happily ' paid $4080 a year. Just because of their billing procedure. That's $1500 a year too much and similarly another $750 too much for needles.

That must be a considerable sum when multiplied up for many of the province's diabetes patients.

Government billing can be peculiar at times.

I used to go to pharmacies with lower filling costs to save the government money, but now eh I just go to the pharmacy attached to the doctors office.

Its also weird at times what they will spend money on covering.

Because of our income and PWD we get supplemental health benefits which include partial coverage for:

• acupuncture;
• chiropractic;
• massage therapy;
• naturopathy;
• physical therapy; and
• non-surgical podiatry.

But they don't provide any coverage for psychological services. Weird.


I never paid attention to it as a kid, but having a parent who only worked 11 months of the year, made summer break fun, my dad worked for the local school district and for the bulk of my childhood he was on a 11 month contract so had the entire month of July off, no wonder we went on so many road trips in the summer without a/c...lol

I used to hate summers when I was teaching in England ............ we were on a 12 month contract, and were paid at the end of the month. But we got a double cheque at the end of July, ie pay for July and August.

That sounds great ............... but we then had to wait until the end of September before we got the next pay cheque.

Making 2 months salary last over basically 3 months was hard when you were living in digs, with no other income.

A couple of us planned to go to Yugoslavia during the second summer that I was teaching ............ but then had to cancel when we realised that we would have had no money for September. Luckily we had only paid a deposit, and cancelled before the rest was due so we didn't loose too much money.

I was glad to get over here, get out of teaching, and have a job where I had 12 month contracts!

He was paid monthly the entire 38 years he was there, my mom work year round as a paramedic, I would assume the months he wasn't receiving a check they lived mostly off my mom's salary, but paramedics back then (even today) were not exactly paid well though.

By the early 90's he was working year round contract, around 1992 the district starting switching schools to year round schedule while keeping some traditional.

That makes it hard for my step sister, one kid goes to one school and is year round, and the other kid in another school but traditional school year, same district but different schedules.

I think it worked well for my parents when we were younger in the 80's as we were still at an age where we would have needed daycare, so they didn't have to fuss with paying for daycare all summer.