#+ a move would be no longer than 2-3 years. unless i meet the canadian love of my life.

[lunasilvis]

Toronto

[righttrackfitness]

Here Comes The Snow...

December is here and so is the colder weather,  as Canadians we are proud to be from the “True North” but  when the cooler weather hits, we run for the indoors.  As children I remember our parents could hardly get us inside regardless of the weather…they dressed us to stay warm. Why should the kids be the only ones to play in the snow? Working out outdoors can be a fun, safe way to stay healthy for all ages, if done right.   Forget that many gyms closed and that many people are not comfortable going back indoors thanks to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and make outdoor fitness year-round your new approach to staying healthy.  

Think how fresh air and nature can rejuvenate your sole and ward off the winter blues, think of how it can boost your energy levels  and prevent weight gain during the time of year most of us add some extra insulation! I know what you are thinking “BUT IT’S COLD OUT”…why is that we dress our children to play outside and stay warm but we don’t invest in the right clothing as adults to do the same?  No, I’m not saying to come out in a full snow suit with a scarf wrapped around you hardly able to move…that would be overdressing for your workout. But with a little preparation, precaution and a perhaps a small investment in some winter workout attire, it’s definitely possible to keep fit and enjoy working out year round with RightTrack Fitness.  Here are my  tips for when the colder weather hits:

Get the right gear

The most important thing when doing, well, anything outside in colder temps is to make sure you are dressed appropriately. You will want clothes that fit you right for whatever the activity is, and you’ll want to make sure that you’re prepared for the cold air.  

The quickest way to lose body heat is to get wet. Water is an efficient heat conductor and will quickly move heat away from your body to the cold air outside.  Wet fabric next to your skin will give you an unwanted chill.  Let’s face it getting wet will quickly leave you chilled and miserable and when you are cold and wet you will cut your workout short, not to mention you also increase your risk for hypothermia or even worst you increase the chance for getting frostbite. I know that sounds extreme but in extreme weather you need to make sure you are being safe.

I always tell the folks at my classes to consider layers that can be taken off and added back later For our active workouts.  This allows you to more comfortably — and safely — balance rising body temperatures with the cold air temperatures. The layer closest to your skin should be a moisture-wicking material, like lightweight polyester, nylon or polypropylene, to wick away moisture about 50 percent faster than cotton from your skin to the outer layers to evaporate.

Your second layer is the insulating layer, which should be wool or polyester fleece. You also need layers to trap warm air next to your body and keep out the elements like rain, snow, and wind.  The third, outer layer needs to be wind and rain-repellent. Depending on the weather, your outer shell can be a lightweight nylon windbreaker or vest, or a heavyweight, waterproof jacket. Remember the more water-repellent the shell, the less it will allow moisture from the inside (your sweat) to escape, even if you’re wearing the proper base layer.  When exercising in the cold, this third layer should be removed unless it is raining, snowing or very windy. You can always put the top layer back on during rest times outdoors.

Fingers, ears, noses, and toes are affected most by colder temperatures because blood is shunted to the core of the body, leaving less blood, and subsequently less heat, in your hands and feet.  To keep your extremities from freezing, wear a hat or headband. There are caps and winter hats made to help wick away sweat while retaining heat. Likewise, be sure to wear gloves to protect your hands and fingers. If exercising in extreme cold, consider combining gloves and mittens or a liner under your gloves.  Waterproof or water resistant will be important when doing push-ups, planks, and other fun ground exercises!  You can always take off your gloves or mitts and tuck them in a pocket if you get too warm.  All these add-ons should be wool or synthetic, rather than cotton, to help keep sweat off your skin. To block out biting winds, consider keeping your face covered with a running mask or scarf, something that you can easily breath through but that also shields your skin from the elements.

Don’t forget to put on your thick socks to keep your feet warm.  If you find your toes getting particularly chilly, consider the design of your shoes. “Running shoes are designed to let heat escape, but in chilly weather the cold comes right in. Shoe covers, which you can find at a skiing or hiking retailer, can help lock out the cold. You can also visit a specialty running store to try on shoes that are specially designed to withstand the winter elements. Your running shoes should feature: grippy rubber outsoles that mimic the lugs on a mountain bike tire, and a Gore-Tex lining to protect from cold/wet conditions.  For workouts on snowy, icy surfaces, attaching snow or ice spikes to your running shoes will help you maintain traction to reduce the risk of falls but it’s important to stay off pavement if you’re wearing spikes. They’re designed to pierce snow or ice, so on paved surfaces they can impede balance instead.

I remember as a little girl being dressed in my bulky snowsuit and big boots looking and felling like a big marshmallow.  As I was dragging a toboggan up the hill I was so hot and sweaty.  I didn’t dare unzip my jacket or take off a layer for fear of catching a cold.  When I stopped moving, or tipped over from all the bulky layers, it felt like I instantly froze.  

The biggest mistake in dressing for cold weather exercise is overdressing with too many layers and not peeling them off in time. Exercising will warm you up, and you don’t want to get really sweaty in subfreezing temps.  This will put you at risk of everything from dehydration to frostbite.  Start to remove layers as you feel yourself warming.  Keep the layers close by so you can put them back on if you start to feel cold.  When you start your cooldown and stretching start to put layers back on.

Do not forget to have a headlamp or a toque with a built-in headlamp for evening workouts!  Wearable flashlights are great because they improve visibility for you, and those around you, to help prevent missteps and falls.

Here are 2 great articles to read for tips on dressing for our winter workouts.

https://www.verywellfit.com/how-to-dress-for-winter...

https://www.everydayhealth.com/healthy-living/fitness/easy-winter-exercise-tips-help-you-stay-fit/

Drink your water!

That’s right even in the cold weather we need to hydrate while exercising.  The problem is, when we are outdoors in cooler weather, we don’t have the cues of sweat to remind us we are still losing water. In fact, most people associate dehydration with summer heat and humidity but, dehydration also occurs in the winter.  Here are a few ways we dehydrate without realizing it:

We tend to go for longer periods without water.  Did you know that breathing cold and dry air causes the body to lose significant amounts of fluid?

Unlike in the warmer weather, sweat turns into vapor and isn’t directly on our skin, so there is not the excessive perspiration that acts as a visual cue for us to drink.

During cooler weather we feel about 40 percent less thirsty, but the need for water is unchanged regardless of how warm or cold it is outside.

Here is a great article to read about staying hydrated in the winter months.  https://www.summitmedicalgroup.com/news/living-well/stay-hydrated-cold-weather/

Warm up and Cool Down

No matter the temperature outside, the need for a good warm-up does not change.  In fact, it’s especially important to prep for cold-weather workouts. A dynamic warm-up including low-intensity movements that mimic the exercise you’re about to perform will increase blood flow and temperature in the muscles to help decrease the risk of injuries.

“When exercising in colder temperatures, you’re at increased risk for sprains and strains,” says Debi Pillarella, an Indiana-based personal trainer and spokeswoman for the American Council on Exercise. Think of it like stretching a cold rubber band. It easily snaps, right? Warm it up, though, and it becomes more pliable and less likely to fray.

Save the static, bend-and-hold stretches until the end of your workout.  Although the temperature is cold, it’s still important to cool down your body properly. Incorporate static stretching in your cool down to help slow your heart rate and relax your muscles. A static stretch after your workout will improve range of motion and flexibility for future workouts.

Don’t let the children be the only ones to enjoy the outdoors during the winter.  Take back the outdoors this winter by incorporating these tips to have a safe workout outdoors and reap the benefits of the fresh air, calming effects, and fun nature brings during the winter months.  Come out to one of our 3 weekly classes, feel the crunch of the snow under your feet and maybe even do a few snow angels!

Class Info:

All classes meet by the bathrooms at Zwicks Park in Belleville 

Monday 5:30pm Body Weight Tabata

Wednesday 5:30pm Bootcamp & Washboard Wednesday

Thursday 5:30pm Suspension Training 

[ruby-dear]

all of them except 77, 78, 81, 92 and 96

Ember, I know this was you. I’m doing it, but that’s 93 questions you’re asking for so they’re going under a cut. 

1. Talk about your first love. There have been a lot of those, so let me talk about the first one I really remember. I was in eighth grade, at the time, and she wasn’t exactly a great person looking back but she was cool and confident and she liked me, and she called me her best friend, and probably the best school-related memory I’ve ever had was her tackle-hugging me from across a classroom. I didn’t even realize I liked girls until she’d pretty much left my life completely. Maybe I’m looking at it through rose-tinted glasses now, but I think that’s okay, sometimes.  2. What’s the most beautiful songs you’ve ever heard in your opinion? Most of my favorite songs are Owl City, especially the older stuff. It has a soft, dreamlike vibe to it that I find really pretty even when it’s depressing. 3. How’s your heart feeling right now? Pretty good, I think? 4. What kind of self care is your favorite to do? The fun stuff. Bath bombs, makeup, fancy shampoo. Retail therapy actually works pretty well for me, even if a lot of the time I don’t even buy anything. 5. What’s your skincare routine? Um... Shower? 6. How did you get to be so beautiful? Natural talent and carefully learned confidence. 7. Do you have any stuffed animals? Oh, do I. I have like, seventy Webkinz, and that’s without getting into anything else. You could say I collect plushes, even if I don’t do it as actively now. I have a couple of Eevee plushes, too - I’d say I want to own all of them one day, but I’m like, 95% sure that’s not possible. 8. Best trip you’ve ever been on? Once, we went to Prince Edward Island for a week, and my mom surprised me by meeting up with my best friend’s family, who happened to have gotten a room at our hotel for one night. I think that probably wins. 9. Favorite thing about your room? That it’s starting to look like it belongs to me, even if I want to move somewhere else. 10. Opinion on love? It takes work, but it’s worth it.

11. Are you affectionate? Around people I’m comfortable with, definitely. 12. Who do you look up to? The people who have enough confidence to be unapologetically be themselves.

13. Favorite poet? Robert Frost. When I was eleven, I found a book of his poems, and I loved that book so much I didn’t pay any attention in English class at all.

14. Song that makes you happy? How about one that calms you down when you’re in a bad place? There’s a lot of songs that make me happy. Hard to go wrong with the Pokemon theme, though. As for things that calm me down... It’s Alright by Mother Mother and Misguided Ghosts by Paramore have both got me through a lot.

15. Do you play an instrument? No. I was supposed to learn piano in seventh grade, but I couldn’t read the sheet music so they never let me play, and I tried to learn guitar multiple times but it never stuck for the same reason.

16. Do you do art? Using what (pencil, watercolor, etc)? I paint, though not as often as I’d like to! Using acrylics, usually, but watercolors sometimes.

17. Do you dance? What style of dance? I took ballet as a child, til they kicked me out of class, and I still enjoy dancing but I don’t remember any of what I learned.

18. What’s your zodiac sign? Do you believe in astrology? Gemini. I think it might have some kind of truth behind it, but I’m not really one of those all-or-nothing people. It’s just for fun, you know?

19. Favorite old film? I don’t watch a lot of them. Does The Aristocats count?

20. What’s your hairstyle? It’s long and wavy. I’m getting blue highlights soon.

21. What weather is the most beautiful, in your opinion? Light rain. The kind that dries off before you get inside, when the sky is perfectly clear, but it starts falling anyway and it stops just as quickly.

22. What upsets you most about the world? That however hard we try to fix it, we’re unlikely to get very far.

23. Are you in love right now? Yes. At least, I think so.

24. Do you have a crush? If so, talk about them! I have a girlfriend. Is that the same thing? She’s cute and funny and she thinks the same things about me for some reason, and she knows exactly how much of a disaster I can be and hasn’t run away yet.

25. Do you have pets? Talk about something sweet about them! I have a cat, Little Prince. His sister died about a month ago, and she was the one who usually kept me company (total lap-cat), but ever since he’s usually either close to where I am or comes when I call him over.

26. Do you have a lucky number? Any multiple of seven, but especially fourteen. They’re my favorite numbers for the same reason.

27. Have you ever wished on a star? What about on a fallen eyelash? I try to wish on stars, when I see them. Eyelashes I’m usually more annoyed about than anything.

28. Do you believe emoji spells to work? I think anything has the potential to work, given the right amount of effort and intent. That said, I don’t think you’re going to accomplish anything drastic.

29. Do you believe in magic in general? Oh, definitely. Just look at the world we live in. How can you not believe in magic when it’s all around you? The night sky without air pollution, the sunlight dancing on the water, candy cane white hot chocolate - it’s everywhere, in everything.

30. What’s the most beautiful thing in life, In your opinion? Everything. There’s something beautiful in everything, if you look for it. Today, let’s say the feeling of sliding around on a hardwood floor in fluffy socks, dancing along to one of your favorite songs.

31. Opinion on the color pink? What about baby blue? As a kid, I hated pink. I like it now, though. Blue is my color, light blue especially (particularly with star patterns), so I’ve always liked it.

32. What instrumental sound is your favorite? Am I alloawed to say wind chimes? I’ve always thought they sounded super pretty.

33. Do you like the sound of wind? What about the sound of rain? I love them both.

34.Who makes you happy? My friends. All of them, in different ways, the people who are still in my life for various reasons. I love them.

35. What makes you happy? Light rain, strong wind, good music. My cat’s soft meow when I wake him up by accident. White peppermint hot chocolate. Fall colors, string lights, Halloween and winter holidays. Ice and snow and skating, dressing up for no apparent reason. The trick to it all is finding new things every day.

36. Imagine your ideal life, the life you wish to make, what will that look like? A house big enough for a family. A degree of some kind hanging on the wall. A life where I’m making things because that’s what I love, and I can try new things just for fun, where I don’t have to worry about money so much. The chance to get married someday, maybe.

37. Do you wear makeup? If so what’s your favorite type of makeup or specific makeup product? Favorite store to buy makeup? I do! Unless someone else is doing it for me, I generally keep to lipstick and eyeshadow. I’ve never been especially picky about what brands I use, but I usually go to Nyx because it’s on my usual route when I go on shopping trips, and I’m kind of attached now. Plus, nowhere else I’ve been in person has as many bold colours.

38. Do you wear dresses? If so what’s your favorite dress you own? I like wearing dresses. My favorite that I still have is a longer black dress, and it’s in serious need of either repair of retirement, but I got it for $20 as a cosplay outfit last year and it served its purpose. I wear it around still, sometimes, because it’s generally an easy fix.

39. Ever been heartbroken? How do you deal with it? Yeah, a few times. I vent to my friends, usually, and then I eat ice cream and listen to gnash for a while and eventually I start to feel better.

40. Who’s your closest friend? What do you love about them?

41. Introvert or extrovert? Kinda both? It’s complicated.

42. Do you like MBTI? What’s your MBTI? Is that... Fuck, is that the one with the letters? I think I got ENFP last time, and when I was younger it was INFP.

43. Would you be a fairy, a mermaid, a vampire, a siren, a or an angel? I’ve had people tell me I have ‘fae vibes’ before, so let’s go with that and hope it’s not offensive.

44. What’s the best song a friend has ever introduced to you? I don’t remember enough of them to feel good about picking one. I basically only listen to music I’m recommended now.

45. Parlez-vous français? A little, by virtue of being Canadian and having driven through Quebec. Not enough to carry on a conversation.

46. Most beautiful place you’ve been to? Prince Edward Island, hands down. It’s gorgeous.

47. Where/when do you truly feel at home? When there’s a light breeze, and the perfect song is playing, and the people I love are there. When we’re laughing with each other.

48. Does smiling put you in a better mood? Try it right now, you’re smile is gorgeous! I don’t think it does, honestly? But it does tend to happen when I’m happy.

49. Favorite shoe you own? These ankle boots I got secondhand that have little metal stars on them. I’m gonna be so upset when they finally wear out and I need new ones.

50. Can you walk in stilettos? Do you like them? God, no, I’ve tried. Any heel that’s too sharp or pointy or tall is a major problem for me. It’s part of what makes finding shoes such a pain.

51. Do you feel loved? Not always, but yeah. When I remember, or when I ask, or when I’m reminded.

52. How do you express love to those you care about? I try to tell them, but I’m also the type to engage in constant teasing. I’m the friend that punches you in the arm as a show of affection.

53. Favorite term(s) of endearment? The more creative ones. The basics don’t do much for me, honestly, but it’s more about the person saying them anyway.

54. Most romantic thing someone’s ever done for you? Make me feel like I don’t have to try so hard to feel like myself.

55. When is the happiest you’ve ever been? Walking the downtown city streets in winter. It was cold, sure, but it was gorgeous and I finally felt independent for a while.

56. Are you happy right now? Yeah, I’d say so.

57. What makes you smile? Bad jokes, among other things.

58. Do you laugh a lot? Yeah. A lot more than I used to.

59. What’s your favorite kind of aesthetic? Punk/scenecore. They’ve really influenced my more recent style choices.

60. Do you want to marry for love or for some other reason (like money)? Love, definitely.

61. What would your dream wedding look like? Do you want to get married? With someone I love, and the other people I love there too. Somewhere beautiful. I think I do, someday, but it’s not something I’m so worried about.

62. Favorite flower? Roses. Blue Moon Hybrid Tea Roses, in particular, are especially pretty.

63. Favorite artist? I don’t really have one. I do enjoy looking at art, though.

64. Favorite music artist? Owl City.

65. How kind do you think you are? Is kindness important to you? I don’t know. People seem to think I’m kinder than I believe I am. It’s important to me, yeah, to try and help people and to do nice things.

66. Ever made a playlist for someone? A few times. They were never anything special, as far as I’m concerned.

67. Do you have anything you do to physically comfort you when your sad? Such as a favorite blanket? Or a relaxing bath? Long, warm baths and cuddling with my cat. Warm blankets and stories with happy endings.

68. Early bird or night owl? Night owl. I’m a night person.

69. Morning routine? Wake up, do nothing for a while, actually get out of bed and figure out breakfast. While that’s going on, try and figure out if anything important is happening today.

70. Night routine? Get comfortable, then write or daydream til I fall asleep.

71. What is the most lovely quality a person could have in your opinion? Self-confidence and a willingness to help others.

72. Do you cry often? Does crying help you get the emotions out? Do you feel better after? I tend to hold back my feelings til they all fall out. So I end up crying at least twice a month, usually. It helps, yeah.

73. Do you like hugs? From people I feel comfortable with.

74. When was the last time you kissed someone? On the lips? Never.

75. Are you small or tall? Small. I’m 5′0.

76. Do you like wholesome memes? Yes. They’re cute.

79. Have you ever lived in a different country than you currently live in? Nope. I’ve never lived outside this city, only been on trips.

80. Do you like plane flights? Airports? I’ve only flown once, and I was two, so I don’t remember it very well.

82. The beach or a forest? Sand or bugs? Depends on the day. Today, though, forest.

83. What time of day do you tend to be in the best mood? Evening, usually.

84. Do you push yourself to act together and in a good mood even when you aren’t? Yeah, when I’m stressed.

85. Favorite kind of tree? Either maple or pine. I’m Canadian, what can I say?

86. Do you care about the health of the Earth? Yes, but there’s only so much one person can do.

87. What did you like most about your childhood, if anything? Field trips. Adulthood is sorely lacking in field trips.

88. Do you read a lot? What’s your favorite book? I used to. These days I still read, but it’s mostly fanfiction. My favorite books, though, are Tamora Pierce’s Emelan series and the first two books of Kenneth Oppel’s Silverwing trilogy.

89. What are you most nostalgic for at the moment? Trick-or-treating.

90. What’s your favorite personality trait you have? I try to let the people I love know that I love them.

91. List at least ONE thing you love about your appearance. I have pretty great hair.

93. Do you worry a lot? Constantly.

94. The dazzling lights of the city or the relaxing countryside? The city. The countryside’s nice, but the streetlights and the city skyline are what make me feel at home.

95. Ever changed the shoelaces on one of your shoes? For what reason? I actually don’t know how to tie laces, so no. I’ve never been able to pick it up. I might get someone sense to, if I could find cool enough laces.

97. Do you like doing little acts of kindness? Yeah. It feels good to make people happy, you know?

98. How’s your day/night going? Pretty good! I did just spend over an hour on this, but I finished it, so that’s an accomplishment of its own.

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Essay: The Broadcast History of Strange Paradise on WKBF-TV (Cleveland, OH)

WARNING: This essay contains spoilers for several episodes of Strange Paradise, the latest being Episode 94. If you do not wish to be spoiled, disable images and reload.

When Krantz Films’ now-obscure Gothic soap Strange Paradise premiered in the United States in September 1969, the company’s president Steve Krantz expected it to be a hit much like the similar, wildly popular serial Dark Shadows. “You thought every possible idea for a daytime drama had already been used?” one copywriter wrote in a trade magazine. “How about Colin Fox playing the dual role of a millionaire industrialist and his 300-years-dead ancestor, in a show set in the Caribbean, involving voodoo? Don’t laugh. Wait until you see the ratings.” Despite this initial optimism, Strange Paradise’s ratings failed to live up to anyone’s expectations, leading to an early cancellation in most American markets. The Cleveland, Ohio station WKBF-TV (Channel 61), an ultra-high frequency (UHF) channel owned by Kaiser Broadcasting, was no exception. The broadcast history of Strange Paradise in Cleveland provides a typical example of the quick decline and premature cancellation that the show saw on most networks that carried it in the United States.

In this essay, we will use the Cleveland newspaper The Plain Dealer to trace the short broadcast history of Strange Paradise on WKBF-TV from its beginnings in the 7 p.m. prime-time slot to its cancellation. After that, we will examine an anecdotal account of a second run of the show’s first arc in 1971 and determine whether the series aired again in Cleveland during that year.

Strange Paradise in The Plain Dealer

Banner advertisements for Strange Paradise from the Friday, September 12, 1969 issue of The Plain Dealer (pp. 107, 110, and 118, respectively).[1]

In the lead-up to its premiere on Monday, September 15, 1969, Kaiser Broadcasting promoted Strange Paradise heavily in the Friday, September 12 issue of The Plain Dealer. Banners appeared at the bottom of the television schedule’s pages, referencing the show’s voodoo theme and encouraging the newspaper’s readers to “meet Quito and Raxl,” two of the show’s major characters. The Selections section of The Plain Dealer’s Friday TV guides ran episode summaries to entice viewers to tune in. The show aired in the 7 pm timeslot, pitting it against Gilligan’s Island, Truth or Consequences, and other popular programs.

Excerpt from the TV schedule for Monday, September 15, 1969, from The Plain Dealer (September 12, 1969), p. 110. In this listing and all subsequent others, the listings for WKBF/Kaiser/Channel 61 appear in the far right column.

Summary of the pilot episode from the same issue, p. 117. The timeslot is listed inaccurately as 7:30 pm.

In theory, Strange Paradise’s original timeslot put it in a position to get good ratings. Bryan Gruszka writes that “initially, the series enjoyed strong ratings,“ but this seems unlikely to be the case in Cleveland. As a UHF channel, many televisions (particularly older sets) did not pick up reception from Kaiser, leaving the viewership low for all of its programs compared to the very-high frequency (VHF) “Big Three” networks of NBC (Channel 3/WKYC), ABC (Channel 5/WEWS), and CBS (Channel 8/WJW).[2] Every one of the Top 30 highest-rated programs of the 1969-1970 season aired on the Big Three television networks, further suggesting a low viewership for WKBF and other UHF channels. Disappointed by the show’s ratings, Kaiser moved it to daytime and scheduled Star Trek reruns in its place, which attracted far more prime-time viewers.[3]

3 pm listings from the TV schedule for September 29, 1969, from The Plain Dealer (September 29, 1969), p. 39.

Episode 11 summary from the same page.

Strange Paradise made the move to daytime television by Monday, September 29, when WKBF rescheduled it at 3 pm. In this new timeslot, it competed against two other soap operas, Another World (NBC) and General Hospital (ABC), which attracted 9.6 million and 8.5 million viewers, respectively, during the 1969-1970 season. Ratings for Strange Paradise do not appear on the list of soap opera ratings for this season, although it aired on the Big Three networks in some other markets. Because of this, it is impossible to know exactly how it fared against its competitors, but it most likely attracted few viewers.

During this period, episode summaries continued to run on the Selections pages of the weekly TV guides released on Fridays. Many of these are identical or nearly identical to the “Lost Episode” summaries from the Newport Daily News and The Fitchburg Sentinel documented on Curt Ladnier’s blog Maljardin: Tales from the Desmond Family Crypt. These summaries described early drafts of the episodes before the show’s producers mandated major rewrites, meaning that the events described in the listings did not correspond to the plots of the broadcasted episodes. Notable changes included the death of one character whom the summaries indicated originally remained alive, the omission of a flashback nightmare sequence about another character’s previous incarnation, and the focus of the main plotline shifting to the discovery of a mysterious black rabbit with a bloodied locket around its neck (which the summaries do not mention). The “Lost Episode” summaries continued through Episode 50, after which the published descriptions once again accurately reflected the episodes’ contents.

Summary of the original Episode 36, from “Monday Selections,” The Plain Dealer (October 31, 1969), p. 121. The description nearly matches this “Lost Episode” summary on Ladnier’s blog.

The original Episode 37 ("Tuesday Selections,” p. 125). The description is similar to the one discussed in this post, save that this version indicates that Holly is unaware of the Temple’s purpose.

Episode 46 (”Monday Selections,” The Plain Dealer (November 14, 1969), p. 84).

Episode 50 (”Friday Selections,” The Plain Dealer (November 21,1969), p. 76).

In early December, the series disappeared from Channel 61′s schedule, most likely because it struggled to compete against General Hospital and Another World for viewers. The show is absent from the "Television Today" guides as early as Tuesday, December 2, although summaries for that week's episodes appeared in the weekly guide from the previous Friday's issue and the other schedules from the same week still listed it in its 3 p.m. timeslot. The paper for Tuesday, December 9 included a summary corresponding to the plot of Episode 62, despite Strange Paradise’s replacement with The Huckleberry Hound Show. By the release of the Friday, December 12 paper, the show no longer appeared in neither the TV schedules nor the selections, indicating its cancellation.

Episode 62 summary from “Tuesday’s Selections,” The Plain Dealer (December 9, 1969), p. 30.

The revised schedule for 3 pm, according to the schedule on the same page. Note “Huck Hound” in the far right column.

After a month of absence, Strange Paradise returned to the channel on Monday, December 29 in the new timeslot of 11 pm. Airing resumed with Episode 56, which may indicate that Episode 55 was the last to air the previous year. Over the course of the next two months, WKBF broadcast the conclusion of Maljardin, the series’ first 65-episode arc, and began showing the second arc, the overtly Dark Shadows-inspired Desmond Hall.

However, the show’s viewers would not get to watch Desmond Hall through to its conclusion. On February 10, 1970, television columnist William Hickey wrote, “’Strange Paradise,’ the strangely bubbling soaper, will disappear from Channel 61 tomorrow night at 11 and will be replaced by reruns of ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents.’”[4] This cancellation coincided with the introduction of the character Agatha Pruitt and the beginning of a new subplot centered around her blackmail and attempted seduction of protagonist Jean Paul Desmond, leaving that plot unresolved, not to mention the second arc’s overarching plot about the mysterious disappearance of Jean Paul’s brother Philip.

Summary of Episode 87, the last episode confirmed to have aired on WKBF, from “Tuesday’s Selections,” The Plain Dealer (February 6, 1970), p. 95.

Nevertheless, episode summaries of Strange Paradise continued to run in the highlights sections of the paper’s TV guides over the next week. The last episode summary to appear in The Plain Dealer describes the plot of Episode 94 and is noticeably more detailed than most previous summaries:

Summary of Episode 94, originally scheduled to air on Thursday, February 19, 1970. From “Thursday’s Selections,” The Plain Dealer (February 13, 1970), p. 103.

Strange Paradise’s run on WKBF ended abruptly in the middle of the second arc, leaving all of its plots unresolved and many viewers uncertain of the fates of Jean Paul, Agatha, Raxl, and others. WKBF-TV would disappear from the airwaves in 1975, leaving Cleveland-area fans unable to watch the series again until its release on VHS in the 1990s. That is unless an anecdote about its first arc re-airing in the Cleveland area is true.

A Second Run?

After Strange Paradise finished its original run in May 1970, a handful of stations available in the United States, including Canadian and Mexican stations based near the borders, rebroadcast it in syndication. It is possible that WKBF may have also rebroadcast it, but we have only anecdotal evidence. In a 2007 post on the Strangeparadise2 Yahoo! Group, user Larry M. (larmic1) claimed to have watched syndicated re-runs of the series’ first arc in 1971. He wrote,

I was living in Cleveland, Ohio [in 1971], and the "new" show came on about 7 or 7:30pm weeknights, so that leads me to believe it was syndicated. I believe that time is also when I used to watch Strange Paradise, so the station was obviously after that audience. It was just such a surprise when I finally came across the show after coming home from winter break from college, and totally pissed that I pretty much had missed the whole series! It was probably on for all of 3-4 months total. Seems like nobody else watched it either!

If the show did indeed air again in Cleveland in 1971, no evidence exists of its rebroadcast in The Plain Dealer’s listings. Here is an excerpt from the evening schedule for Wednesday, January 6, 1971:

And here is another from Tuesday, December 28 of the same year:

Although the schedule writers abbreviated the names of most shows, one can still tell in most cases what shows they refer to: “Jeannie” must be I Dream of Jeannie, “Hogan” Hogan’s Heroes, etc. (It helps that many of these shows are still well-known today, largely because of re-runs on various networks.) Given that neither Strange Paradise, any abbreviations of its title, nor anything to the effect of “Island of Evil” appear in these listings, one can safely conclude that no Cleveland-based stations re-ran the show during that period.

Even so, evidence exists that residents of northeast Ohio could tune into broadcasts from the Windsor, Ontario-based Canadian station CKLW-TV in the early 1970s. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) records from the 1970s indicate that CKLW-TV, based near the Ontario-Michigan border, was available in the Cleveland-Lorain-Akron market on Channel 9 in 1972 and possibly earlier as well. Larry M. most likely would have viewed Strange Paradise on this Canadian channel in 1971. However, even this is doubtful, because, thus far, we have been unable to uncover any evidence of its re-airing in 1971 on CKLW or any other Ontario channels.

Conclusion

For five months from September 1969 to February 1970, the Gothic serial Strange Paradise aired on WKBF-TV (Channel 61) in the Cleveland area. Premiering at 7 p.m. on September 15 after heavy promotion, it changed time slots twice--first in the same daytime slot as two more popular soaps and then in the late night--before its cancellation on February 11. Part of the show was allegedly re-broadcast the following year, but thusfar no evidence exists of listings of Strange Paradise on any channels based in the Great Lakes region in 1971. Although it quickly fell into obscurity in northeast Ohio, Larry M.’s post is evidence that it had local fans and that, even long after its cancellation, it was not forgotten.

Notes

[1] All clippings from The Plain Dealer come from the NewsBank InfoWeb database Historical Cleveland Plain Dealer (1845-1991). They are all reproduced under fair use for the purpose of education.

[2] Many people alive in this era, the author’s parents (born 1964) included, insist that “there were only three channels” in Cleveland in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This attests to the obscurity of Channel 61.

[3] According to Wikipedia, “the most popular and most profitable program on WKBF were syndicated reruns of the original Star Trek. It was well known that WKBF had rebroadcast the entire 79-episode original series in the exact order of play that had been originally shown on NBC when it aired on that network, and had also paid out of its own pocket for the special high-contrast black-and-white prints of the show in order to do so. In another bold move for the times, the show also ran in its original length, without additional editing for commercials.”

[4] William Hickey, "Tony Winners Promise a CBS Drama Delight," The Plain Dealer (February 10, 1970), p. 20 (6-B).

[silentauroriamthereal]

So. I met Benedict Cumberbatch the other night. 

I’m still processing, honestly, and the big thing that I need to write is another letter to him, one which I assume going in that he will never read (I can’t even imagine the volume of fanmail he must receive!), but I’ll still write it because I need to say it, even if it’s never read. In this post I want to talk about some of the stuff I want to say there, so I’m just kind of working through my thoughts here. 

This is going to be long, and a little emotional, so I’m putting it behind a cut to spare your dashes (among other things!). 

I have a few different things to say about the entire thing. First, let me just go through the evening as it unfolded: 

I managed to buy a ticket to the New York debut of Letters Live. I’ve adored the concept of this event since the first time they held it and when I found out they were doing one in New York right during the tiny window of when I was going to be there, I jumped at the opportunity, though the tickets were uncomfortably expensive for me. There is literally no other living person that I would have been more excited to see perform and potentially have a tiny chance to meet, though, and the timing seemed almost foreordained, so I did it. 

The event was phenomenal. A gigantic wall of a human was seated in front of me - an unpleasant man who was approximately 10 metres tall and 5 metres wide, and I’m 5′4, so... yeah. I waited until after the first act and managed to slip into a much better seat, hahaha! The performance was so well-planned, I thought. The selection of letters was specially curated for an American audience, with most of the content written by Americans. To hear Rose McGowan read her own letter to the Hollywood higher-ups was chillingly powerful, as was hearing Toni Morrison’s letter to Barack Obama. There were several letters funny enough to make me cry with laughter, and to my pleased surprise one of these was read by another well-loved actor of mine, Tom Hollander (who I keep feeling so sorry for these days - people must confuse him with Tom Holland all the time, and they’re not remotely similar, lol). Benedict’s first letter was an absolutely hilarious one that just went around facebook about a month ago, written by a Canadian man apologizing for having absolutely trashed, via a flock of seagulls, his hotel room in Victoria eighteen years ago. He also read one of the Chris Barker/Bessie Moore exchanges with Loo Brealey, and finished the evening with Stewart Stern’s incredibly stirring and moving letter to the family of James Dean following his death. 

Listen: seeing Benedict perform live, with my own two naked eyes, breathing the same air as him - it may sound ridiculous, but that alone was profoundly moving to me. Just seeing him, period. Then seeing him perform - breathtaking. And then hearing him read this particular letter was just - it’s hard to even put it into words. I felt a little as though I was hearing him read what could be his own epitaph. Listen to these words: 

A star goes wild in the places beyond air — a dark star born of coldness and invisible. It hits the upper edges of our atmosphere and look! It is seen! It flames and arcs and dazzles. It goes out in ash and memory. But its after-image remains in our eyes to be looked at again and again. For it was rare. And it was beautiful. And we thank God and nature for sending it in front of our eyes. So few things blaze. So little is beautiful. Our world doesn't seem equipped to contain its brilliance too long. Ecstasy is only recognizable when one has experienced pain. Beauty only exists when set against ugliness. Peace is not appreciated without war ahead of it. How we wish that life could support only the good. But it vanishes when its opposite no longer exists as a setting. It is a white marble on unmelting snow. And Jimmy stands clear and unique in a world where much is synthetic and dishonest and drab. He came and rearranged our molecules.

I mean, this is exactly how I already feel about the nature of Ben’s talent, the privilege I feel at being allowed to experience it in any way, in any medium. He has a talent that lights up the cosmos and I’m just so grateful to the universe that this talent exists and has been given a place to be seen and witnessed by the rest of us. His talent blazes, and my life is the richer for being able to experience it. 

I tried really, really, really hard not to hope too much to have a chance to meet him at the stage door after. It’s kind of impossible not to hope, but I told myself sternly that I already never thought I would have the chance to see him perform in person, and it really would have been enough. I’d joked to my friends before leaving for New York that if he so much as laid his own two beautiful eyes on me and actually saw me, heard my voice, any of that, that I could die in peace. I’ve never expected that, though, to have any sort of fleeting brush of contact like that. It’s not the nature of the way a person like him relates to a person like me. In fact, allow me a tangential paragraph here: 

Being a fan can feel one-sided. I know everything that a person can possibly know about a person whom I have never met. I can guarantee that I have seen, read, or listened to every interview he’s done, ever, with very, very few exceptions. ALL of the press junkets. I could have written his imdb page. Like many of us! I know every line on his beautiful face. I know the freckles on his skin, the tendons of his forearms and calves. I know every part of his physicality that’s ever been shown to the public, and with him, that’s a fair bit! His voice is my ringtone (it’s a clip of Sherlock saying “it’s a text alert; it means I’ve got a text”) and his voice is more dearly familiar to me than most of the people I know personally. I know his facial expressions, though he’s constantly reinventing the way the muscles of his face can move for every new role he plays. I’ve analyzed his accents from a phonetics standpoint. In short, I know everything that’s possible for someone like me to know about someone like him. And he knows nothing about me - not my name, not what I do, not what I eat, not my voice or my talents or my eyes or fingernails or passions or pet peeves - not of my existence, full stop. But that doesn’t mean that our relationship - and bear with me on that word - is one-sided. This is how it works: he gives. He gives and gives and gives. Benedict doesn’t phone it in. He BLAZES. He burned through so much energy playing Hamlet (any wonder, have you seen him in it???) in the summer of 2016 that one of the reasons Dr. Strange had to push back its filming schedule was to give him the chance to bulk up again after the play’s run. Benedict commits, and like the aforementioned star analogy, he radiates energy to every possible point of contact around him. THIS is his side of the relationship: he blazes out his talent/energy/love/passion/commitment, and we receive it, and the appreciation and love and passion we feel in return for it is something that we share with each other, not with him. That’s how fandom works: it’s not a direct thing. Not in the standard, interpersonal way. He shines; we turn to each other rather than to him, to talk about how it made us feel, how it moved us, how it excited us and made us laugh and inspired us. Somehow, this entire experience crystallized this for me perfectly. 

Now, back to the stage door: there was an absolute CRUSH of people at the barricades. I don’t want to talk about this part too much because it was extremely unpleasant. We had to wait for a long time. I would have stayed until he left the building, no matter how long it took, unless it would have made me look like a total creep, because that’s not something I ever want to do to someone I admire. He did come out eventually, and that’s when the pushing and screaming started. I once said that I would never scream at a celebrity, and I didn’t. The crowd, unfortunately, was a mix of three groups of people: 1. aggressive paparazzi 2. aggressive fanboys who had brought comic book shit for Ben to sign so that they could sell it on ebay 3. genuine fans. Guess which group was not at all problematic?? Turns out I was standing right in a knot of #2′s, and because they were hollering at him, like screaming at him to get over there and sign their shit, Ben went over to the other side of the barricade to sign stuff there. He told off one of the paps and said he was there to be with the “real people”, which I appreciated. He did come back near us, and I had the briefest of moments to talk to him. I thanked him for not having become a lawyer, and he laughed. Everyone was thrusting stuff in his face and yelling. I just had my little ticket from the show, and the comic book manchildren kept putting their stuff on top of mine. Ben finally said he was going back inside, that his wife was there waiting for him, but he turned back toward me and I managed to ask (possibly plead) if he would sign my ticket. He looked me in the eye then, smiled, and said, “Of course”. 

I stammered out a congratulations on Patrick Melrose and he smiled again and said thank you, while he was signing. But that one moment of eye contact is all I wanted. He looked at me, and he saw me. And I made him laugh. 

I was literally almost suffocated by the awful people around me, none of which were: a) female, or b) actual fans. I’ve thought sometimes, while watching videos of Benedict on the red carpet, with all of those media folk screaming at him to turn this way, smile into their camera, all of that, that it feels very much like harassment. I know that people in his position know that it comes with the job, that the fame and riches are supposed to be the offset of having no privacy, of being followed by media and fans alike, quite literally, of being shrieked and barked at like they’re trained performing animals (which I don’t like, either!). I know he knows that, but it doesn’t mean that it’s pleasant in any way. He handles it like a pro, because he is in every way a consummate professional. But it can’t be pleasant for him. He’s incredibly, extraordinarily generous with his time. As a performer myself, I know how I feel when I’ve just finished a solo concert or an opera - I feel like taking off my heels and fancy dress, putting on pyjama pants and relaxing every muscle I have on a couch somewhere, preferably with a tall drink in hand. Performing Hamlet is considered one of the most demanding male roles in the English theatrical repertoire, yet Benedict would not only perform it a stunning eight times per week, but then sometimes spend up to THREE HOURS signing autographs and taking selfies after. If he chooses to limit how long he gets screamed at by aggressive, even violent paps and shitheads who just want to use his signature for money, good for him! I respect that, even if I felt incredibly sorry for the people further back who didn’t get to have that, one brief moment of contact with this person we all admire so very, very deeply. And so, because of this, because of seeing firsthand how gross people are to him and just the sheer volume of what he puts up with for our sake, so that some of us, at least, can have that tiny moment, I don’t think I would do it again, if only to reduce that volume by one teeny tiny amount. I got my one, deeply, deeply hoped-for, fleeting, searing moment of contact. It’s all that I could have asked for. He saw me, and I had the chance to say some tiny part of my gratitude to him for what he gives of himself to all of us. That’s all I wanted. 

The wait, the near-suffocation, all of that, was worth it, to win that one precious moment. I clutched my precious ticket and fought my way out of the crowd and wandered dazedly off toward the subway, through late Friday night Times Square crowds, feeling so much that I didn’t even know how to process it. I felt like I was about to burst into tears and I couldn’t have even said why or whether I was happy or sad or possibly a cornucopia of every human emotion ever. I felt - and still feel - a bit like I just had a brush with an actual, blazing sun. It was shattering, and I will be forever changed by it. I am so grateful. 

[andrewuttaro]

New Look Sabres: GM 53 - CAR - Chasing Two

We meet again, Canes of Carolina. Your 53 is our 53 now as we meet for the 53rd game of the season. We already did playoff trash talk for the Canes but I got a feeling there will be more coming down the stretch here. Why do we hate the Hurricanes so much right now? The Skinner stuff is behind us and I suspect his extension will soon be as well. It’s probably the gull of a team as consistently bad as Carolina, perhaps longer than Buffalo has been bad, deciding this is the season to get in our fucking way. Unless one of Pittsburgh, Boston or Montreal hits the skids real hard down the stretch it’s you, me and Columbus for the one wildcard spot left in the East. So fuck you Carolina: this Sabres team has been shit for a solid two months straight but whatever hope I can muster that they still got a chance at the playoffs this year I will sharpen into a fine shiv and run into this cage match with. That hope could have died tonight. For some of you reading this it may have. This game was about chasing two straight wins – two straight wins which would be this club’s first two wins in a row since December. Perhaps they ultimately didn’t get there because they were doing too much chasing so to speak. But what occurred last night was not the performance of a club accepting its fate and tapping out of the playoff race. What happened last night was enough to make the Spartans at Thermopylae proud. Sure, once you explained ice hockey to them and they observed it long enough to understand what being good at it looks like they may have had some thoughts on the Sabres first period and most of their third; but CHIN UP I say to you! Chin up because this Sabres club is not going down without a fight! Honey, we’re going down swinging!  

The Carolina Hurricanes came out shooting like lax southern gun laws to start the first: every puck that a Sabre was not on was scooped up by Hurricane and blown into the zone closest to Linus Ullmark (Thanks Coach, I knew you would make the right goalie decision). The Canes did what any team who watches this Buffalo club knows is the Sabres biggest weakness as of late: turnovers, unforced and not. The team from south of the Mason-Dixon Line capitalized in this brutal stretch when North Carolina’s favorite soft boy Sebastian Aho served up the juiciest pass from behind the net to a streaking Justin Faulk. Ullmark couldn’t get to the other post in time and Faulk buried it. Well beach bodies: up here in New York we got this thing called ice, the game is actually played on it. What followed shortly after the Faulk goal was a penalty on definitely-moonlighting-as-a-vampire Jaccob Slavin which led to a powerplay for the home team that froze Carolina up like a Buffalo Ice Storm. The powerplay was fruitless but the Sabres poured shots on Curtis McElhinney for the rest of the period. Teuvo Teravainen tallied a second goal for Carolina early in the second period. At this point in the night I’m listening to the game on the radio driving up the 190. WGR 550 has these musical interludes as the broadcast returns from break and at this 2-0 dire moment in the second period one of those interludes was a section of “Slide” by Goo Goo Dolls. My throat got real dry and I shed a tear. Is it because I’m an emotional wreck paying attention to the Sabres these days? NO! But a good guess. NO, it’s because I visualized the playoffs like Jack tells us to and I felt it slipping away! But then what happened? Jack’s team came back.

HUT HUT, FIND A HOLE! The McElhinney wall has to come down! FIND A HOLE! Ristolainen from the line: save; puck to Conor Sheary in front: save; puck to Evan Rodriguez who holds and sweeps that puck into the hole like the beautiful Canadian Sniper he is! Now the Canes really froze up like they’d never seen ice before because seven minutes later resident Dad-Bod Jason Pominville collected his own rebound and tapped an equalizer past McElhinney. Tie game you fair weather mother fuckers! Believe it or not it’s hot here for a couple months in each year and you know what I spend that time doing? Oh, not going to the playoffs? You’re funny: you’re a real piece of work for giving more of a shit about NASCAR than the variable 1970s strong man competition of a gun show y’all have for a lineup! Oh, but when hockey players clap a little and slide down the ice into the goal like it’s a slip-and-slide after wins all you guys come running to the arena! I hope y’all don’t make the playoffs just because you’re a bunch of fucking ungrateful slow talkers who like Duke! The game was tied! It was tied going into the third! And then what happened? Well: a relative menagerie of frat-boy-looking Hurricanes capitalized on the Sabres doing Sabres things like turning over the puck and chasing it around like they’re fishing catch-and-release! First it was wrestling team captain and beer-pong champion of the Carolinas Greg McKegg who polished in a loose puck behind Ullmark after being giving ten fucking years to put it in and still bounced it off the post! Then Jeff Skinner had a fucking hulk moment and realized the profundity of the situation he was in and flew off on a breakaway to guide the puck in like a clumsy baby giraffe. Oh no, I know it was art. Please sign soon, Jeff.

Stop those warm feelings for sweet sweet Jeffery because Fergus, Ontario’s High School Quarterback and favorite ginger son Brock McGinn cleaned up a Jordan Martinook rebound right in front of Ullmark to get the visitors ahead 4-3. Do they even have American Football in small town Ontario? Whatever because here comes the President of the punchable face club Nino Niederreiter to capitalize on the powerplay and put the Canes up 5-3 with five minutes left in regulation. Now here is really the moment when I realized this team isn’t going down without a fight: down by two goals (again, which is a concerning problem all its own) this team did not quit. Jeff Skinner emerged from the box beaten but not defeated. But before he gets his time against his former team it’s time for irony to a drop kick you in the balls. Marco Scandella, in a move that will certainly earn him starts for the rest of the season over far more deserving defensemen, gets the puck from Sam Reinhart and shoots low. The puck went in and it was a one goal game now. Irony has a name and it is Marco Scandella. Perhaps it was too late as time now ticked into the double digits in regulation with the Sabres down by one. Guess who you butter-binging, Trump-voting motherfuckers: JEFF MOTHER FUCKING SKINNER! Collect the puck, toe drag, bender: tie Game! It’s like the third act of fucking Miracle beating the team in the red jersey! There was 56 seconds left on the clock! This one goes to OT. And there, well there Teuvo Teravainen streaks into the Sabres defensive zone 2-on-0 and dekes out Ullmark for the game winner. That’s the way the cookie crumbles in this league: one good rush in OT and it’s all over. Carolina wins 6-5.

The Chase for Two straight wins falls flat; but you know what didn’t fall flat? Yea, the Buffalo Sabres. Yeah, they really stunk up most of the third and looked like they were playing hot potato with the puck for most of the first but you know what: that was one hell of a comeback, two if we’re counting game deficits here. Imagine Jeff Skinner pots the OT winner for a hat trick and the Sabres get two points out of this game instead of just one. It’s a whole different conversation then, isn’t it? I’m not rationalizing the many mistakes or playing the what-if game. I’m calling the glass half full and I don’t know about you but I’m not holding my breath tomorrow waiting for Jason Botterill to make a trade as if 95% of the trades he could reasonably make would have any effect on this team down the stretch. We got what we got right now folks and trust me; I am dying for the playoffs too. What happened last night was not nothing and we didn’t get nothing for it either. Carolina, you better watch your back because we’re breathing down it and every game between now and March 16th is going to be an assault on your chances to take that spot from Columbus. The Sabres can certainly get three points out of this weekend’s two matchups and Carolina only has one game in that same stretch so there’s a scenario where we’re sitting here Monday morning and the Sabres are 1 point back of that playoff spot and ahead of Carolina again. Yea, I’m not broken yet and neither should you be. Honey, we’re going down swinging.

Of course everyone in the locker room is going to be disappointed with that result and that emotion is good even if Savior Sam is misdirecting it at Ullmark. Phil Housley was the only postgame interview I was at all embarrassed by. He’s the one misusing players out the wazoo and throwing forward line combinations at Velcro board and seeing what sticks. Put out your best lineup, Phil. This is the team now and I’m not saying it is good enough to make the playoffs having won 9 of its last 28 games but teams not good enough make the playoffs all the time, you can ask New Jersey about that. And I refuse to hop on the locomotive of self-loathing Sabres twitter seems to be on. This game just gave me too much to chew on. Well like, comment and share this blog even if you think I am insane. With this team: sometimes I feel like it. This frickin team! They hurt me over and over and lord knows I’ll still be watching them at my in-laws this weekend. This frickin eternally ass team: Oh the shit I would do for a playoff berth. OH THE SHIT I WOULD DO! Go Sabres! If they make it by one point this game is going to be my masterpiece. Oh god I need them to make the playoffs. Go Sabres! I’m going to repeat it like I’m trying to remember it: Go Sabres! Go Sabres! Don’t go breaking my heart.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. Sara Civ is a great follow on twitter. She is one of the better hockey beat reporters out there and if it weren’t for her covering that frickin team I’d probably be mentioning her more.

[inthedarkofficial]

Stats at 21

A three year update of this post because feck, how times have changed

Novels Written: 2 and a half

Novels Finished: 1, for sure, it’s done

Rejections: seven for sure and counting

Acceptions: coming soon to a novelist near you!

Books planned: 15 novels, 4 short story collections, 2 epistolary collections, 1 encyclopaedia. And She Will Play Lilith.

Other writing projects: Enough to keep my happy and busy, let’s say.

Characters: way to many to count that this point

Characters killed: shhh

Lives lived: Mine, and isn’t that great

Life path chosen: Writer, no matter what

Books Read: so many more than I could have guessed

Books to Read: On a Literature Degree? Goodness

Books Loved: Only the best

Concerts seen: 25

Plays seen: 14 (I think, mostly this year)

Grades in piano: (still) 3

Art to be discovered: I’ve barely scratched the surface

Memories: treasured, but the best are yet to come

Time: Always in abundance if I remember to breathe

Nickname: I finally have one! Padfoot

Clothes: Worn, but unmistakeably me

Style: ‘Androgynous trouser goblin’ meet ‘I need a shower chic’ meets ‘passive aggressive leprachaun’, so clearly amazing

Friendships: smaller in number, spread farther, and healthier and stronger than I could have dreamed of

Parents: closer than ever even with distance

Family: loved, loving, and not bound by blood

Enemies: why would I bother with that sort of thing?

Sexuality: bisexual, and god damn proud!

Gender: apparently my mum knew from my infancy that I was an androgynous, bisexual whatchamacallit. I’m happy to be ‘she’, but also a little bit of a, what JM Barrie called, “little silly”

The Highschool: a mixture of angels and bastards, and I forgive them

Colours I have dyed my hair: I have genuinely lost count, it has been at least 10 in the last year alone The University: Not what I necessarily want, but what I’m sure I need Education: A in 11+, 2 A* and 8 A GCSEs, 1 A* and 2 A A Levels, 2.1 Average at uni, learning more every day Piercings: fuck, no, no more, never again, earlobes are enough, between the rejected brow and Frances’ helix, nope. Tattoos: two that I love, and... there will be more Continents visted: 3 Continents lived on: 1, unless you count my brief stint as a Canadian fetus Countries visited: 10 Countries lived in: 2 Cities visited: 30 Cities lived in: 2 Houses lived in: 8 Globe trotting: only started Romances: Forgetable Heartbreaks: Discarded Standards: High, and why not? Tears shed: oceans worth Laughter: daily Jobs: 2, hopefully another soon Readings: Solidly five in public Clean: Over a year now, and nowhere near relapse Mental health: Better than ever Height: Still 5′2″ (157.48 cm ), practically the only thing that hadn’t changed Shoes size: 3 (uk), actually the only other thing that hasn’t Weight: Healthy, last I checked Puns: an every increasing number Beliefs: Life is good, we are made of love and stardust, I worship my Muse, give milk to the faeries so they don’t steal your earrings, don’t ever hurt Hawthorn trees, tarot cards are pretty clever, there is a lot more to the world than meets the eye, but looking is a good start How the ‘Things I wanted to accomplish at 18 and the summer I turned 18′ turned out: I got an unconditional offer and a scholarship to study at UEA, I am currently submitting to agents, I graduated high school with top grades, recieving prizes for all my subjects and special prizes, I have made so many memories, and I have fallen in love with Northern Ireland and hate leaving it behind. I eat and drink well, I have learned to cook, I have taken up yoga and krav maga, my relationships with friends and family have changed, but only for the better, I have had 3 great Prides since and have another in 4 weeks, and I did that Classics homework and only love Classics more. Things Discarded: Only that which no longer served me Countries I can now drink in: Everywhere it’s legal!

Happy memories: a scale overflowing with diamonds

Hardships: worth it for all I’ve learned

What the next year has in store: finding an agent, learning krav maga, finishing my third novel, graduating from university, moving out of Norwich and back to Belfast, finding a job (jobs), writing a Harry Potter disseratation, seeing Hamilton in the West End, putting more hats on Cicero, starting a TEFL, continuing to live this beautiful life

Life at 21 years: wonderful and intense and like nothing 18 year old me could have dreamed of. I’m proud of you kid. What a ride!

“Thou art enough for me;” - Julian of Norwich

[ahlnandco]

Welcome to AHLN &Co

I am launching this blog AHLN&Co as a way to help myself brainstorm and navigate through these "muddy waters" we call life; as well as, to share personal Canadian experiences with an online community in hopes to create positivity and perspective on various aspects of living with a focus on health and wellness.

Although 2018 was a strangely unique and exciting year, first full year post graduation, first full year living on my own in a new town, single, with practically 1 or 2 friends and no family out here, there were a lot of highs and lows this year, and things I hope to change for next year!

Highlights for 2018:

-Started and ended my first ever 3 month online relationship

-Started and ended my first ever network marketing company while meeting multi-million dollar mentors in Memphis, Tennessee

-Successfully went to the gym almost daily and am finally able to 3 chin ups and 10 push ups and run for 10 minutes straight

-Went on my first full family vacation in the last five years to Dallas, Texas for my cousin's wedding

-Started in my first ever musical production of Rodger and Hammerstein's Cinderella

-Started Piano Lessons and had my first piano recital

-Went to Vancouver, British Columbia to celebrate one of my best friends wedding with a group of my besties

-Went to Winnipeg, Manitoba to run Mud Hero 2018

-Wrote the MCAT on my Birthday that I started to study 1.5 months before and epically failed (30th Percentile)

-Rode a Pontoon for the first time and got to go tubing for the first time and participated in my first ever boat parade

-Went to Niverville, Manitoba to celebrate another one of my best friend's wedding

-Visited home for many weekend trips and reconnected with friends and celebrated birthdays

My Top 2018 Moment

- was Vancouver, British Columbia- it was truly a relaxing Vacation with absolutely amazing company, started out with walking around downtown Vancouver, riding a ferry, eating food, hikes up through Lynn Canyon, Whitewater rafting in Squamish ,British Columbia, learning Black Pink's Boombyah Dance ,hitting The Red Room a nightclub in downtown Vancouver, making a day trip to Seattle and checking out the Public Market Centre, harbor and riding the Ferris wheel, then getting lost getting back to downtown Vancouver and just missing the Vancouver night market, but finding an amazing late night Asian food place that had super cheap food, having late night heart to hearts, then taking morning runs through Kitslano and up and down Jericho Beach, and experiencing the first of my immediate friends getting married with an amazing reception, with the drunk after effects of my friends as well, then spending an amazing day with friends exploring downtown Vancouver, and a day at the pool and an amazing night in where we got 100$ of free food due to an order mishap, honestly one of the best trips ever!

My Worst 2018 Moment

-was probably my Birthday, the day before I was a wreck stressed about the MCAT cause I still had 60 percent of materials to cover and failed a bunch of the practice questions, was scared I was going to be debilitated by the difficulty of the MCAT, so much so I could no longer study, then was stressed out visited my sister and played games and ate fried chicken all night, then MCAT day honestly it wasn't as bad as I thought, I just didn't know my stuff well enough, then after all the excitement of the test, the rest of the day felt mediocre but got to spend it with family so that was nice...to be honest it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either it would have been really nice to go dancing or karaoke or even spend the night with friends, cause that night I realized my family had out grown me, being a single mid 20s new grad, I am extremely single and ready to mingle whilst being the youngest in my family, despite my niece and nephew, it is very easy to feel left out, but I was glad I had them at least!

Overall though, I don't want to seem ungrateful, but 2018 was a great year looking back, but as I lay here writing and reflecting about moving 6 hours away from home and making my first 6 figure salary, half which went away in taxes( fyi joys of being Canadian) and the other quarter went back to payoff my line of credit for school, which I am officially one paycheck away from paying off (another joy to being Canadian, living at home and going to school, lower student debt), then a chunk going to car payments, rent, and insurances, does leave a fair bit amount for travel and shopping compared to someone making less, by moving to a new town with less to do and eat, I should be able to save money, but with less than 700$ in the bank, and not enough days to visit family, travel, explore, experience and gain new skills, I really want to go back to school to become a doctor, the perks of being a doctor in Canada, their high fee for service pay, and the lack of physicians in rural areas, the diverse nature of the field with a lot of growing potential, and the flexibility of hours depending on the field of medicine, disadvantages to being a physician may be the hours, the patients that don't really care about themselves, you work alone, and you don't get paid vacations or benefits, or pension. Currently, I work a steady Monday to Friday job 8 am to 415pm, I get 4 weeks of vacation, 2 travel days, benefits and pension, and make a six figure salary but after taxes it definitely 5 figures, I live six hours away from home, and if I moved back home the job market is severely lacking, would be making less meanwhile going back to a higher stress and more competitive job market!

To someone that end up reading this, I apologized, as this post if it was visually perceived my life would seem interesting and great and to be honest, I think I would be okay if I wasn't single, possibly married and had kids, because my life right now has a sense of balance. But as I lay having only been kissed once, single af, in a rural community, that has limited opportunity for me to pursue my interests such as Kpop dance classes, or classes for haikaido, and limited opportunities to meet people, meanwhile being so far away from my close friends and not being able to implusively go on road trips for the long weekends with friends and family. I need to move back to the city, but logically I can't if the job market means me having to work harder for less, so switching careers is the way to go!

Being a student has its perks, yes school is hard and you are constantly stressed by studying, and life passes by, but with 3 months of summer to catch up on or work, I call that balance and you are working towards self improvement and a finite goal! Although being a physician in my opinion has one of the best payoffs as a degree, there is a downside to my dream, my grades are mediocre for medicine, so I have to almost perfect the MCAT in order to be eligible, if I'm serious about this career move I may need to go back to school to boost my gpa, which means more money!

But that is the reality, as a Pharmacist, yes I may be able to learn the stuff a physician knows and apply it to an extent, but I will never have the full rights to use my knowledge, and unless I own my own pharmacy I will never truly be able to dictate my own hours, that is why becoming a physician is my goal. Becoming a physician is such an challenging process as they work for the right to apply their knowledge and provide direct care for patients as primary providers, meanwhile until the public is aware of allied health and the other health care providers there will always be a shortage of physicians and a demand for them! Same thing to any profession though, you are vetted and tested, such that you may have the right to supply information knowledge or care, but physicians are one of the few that can be incorporated.

As I continue this post by airing out my thoughts, my goal for 2019:

-ace the MCAT

-lose weight and reach my goal of 180lbs (currently, 196lbs to 198)

-get abs and be able to do 10 chin ups, 20 push ups, and run for 20 minutes straight

-apply for medicine (goal is to get an interview)

-save at least 20-25% of my income (redirecting the money I would have spent paying student loans)

- consistent posting on this blog, if not daily, weekly, so by the end of 2019, I can see my year in review and track my progress!

When I think about it, people are going to hate me and hate this Tumblr cause it is literally first world problems, but when people say TIME IS MONEY it literally is! We all have the same 24 hours in a day, and it is up to you how you choose to spend it, and hopefully I spend mine wisely! #Self-Care #Self-Improvement

Ps. Physicians if they worked full time in a northern community they could make 3-6x more than a Pharmacist, just saying (perks of being Canadian) but the goal is work less get paid more so... Work one-third of the year for the same amount of pay! #TenYearGoal

[blogdangerousobjectcollecto-blog]

Highland Home Alabama Cheap car insurance quotes zip 36041

"Highland Home Alabama Cheap car insurance quotes zip 36041

Highland Home Alabama Cheap car insurance quotes zip 36041

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Highland Home Alabama Cheap car insurance quotes zip 36041

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Highland Home Alabama Cheap car insurance quotes zip 36041

Highland Home Alabama Cheap car insurance quotes zip 36041

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What are the requirements for getting a license and driving in Tennessee, age,insurance,cost,et cetra.?""

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How much does minimum cover motorcycle insurance cost monthly in California if your 19 years of age?

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we have a 2003 2-door Oldsmobile Alero and a 2006 2-door Chevrolet Cobalt, the alero is automatic and the cobalt is stick shift. they said i can have whichever insurance is cheapest on. idk if this helps but they are both paid off""

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I was wondering if you guys could give me some advice about house insurance. We've been paying insurance as if our house is worth 224,000 still however it is worth about 175,000 ...show more""

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What is the cheapest car insurance you can get for young drivers?

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I am 32 (married, 1 daughter) and am looking to have about 700,000 in life insurance. I can get most of this insurance in a 30 yr Term Insurance at a good rate. My question is: within 30 yrs, my kids will have finished college and moved out. If so, would my Term Insurance suffice or should I look at getting some Permanent Life Insurance? Why would I need permanent life insurance? I read on the internet that Permanent Life Insurance is used for burial costs and to pass money on to my heirs. What if I can accomplish both of those through just my personal finances? So my question is: why would one ever consider permanent life insurance""

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I was wondering if in MA I have a leased car in my name and registered in my name can be put under my husbands car insurance policy. His premium is less than mine, and our insurance would be cheaper to pay for both on one policy rather than two. Any help would be appricated thanks in advance!""

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Highland Home Alabama Cheap car insurance quotes zip 36041

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fairdale-west-virginia-cheap-car-insurance-quotes-zip-peggy-barnhardt/"

[rebeccahpedersen]

Closing Day Etiquette

TorontoRealtyBlog

I went to the beach with my wife, mother, and 19-month-old daughter on Saturday, and it was great!

I managed to close a condo sale, and write this blog post in my head, as my family wished that I knew how to relax and partake in some semblance of normalcy.

Today I want to talk about what you should do when you sell your house or condo, and lock the door for the very last time.

And how come there’s sand everywhere in my condo?  I barely left the beach blanket, how come sand manages to stay with you for a week?!?!

Last week, I wrote a blog post called “Open House Etiquette,” where I laid out ten scenes that take place in an open house, and whether or not they’re offside.  Most, as you might assume, I concluded were offside.

Most of the readers concluded that the etiquette lessons I was providing were simply a lesson in common sense.

I can’t say I disagree.

So today, I figured I’d go back to the well, and provide a “To Do” list for when you are closing on your house or condo, and once again, much of this is common sense.

Now before I start, I’d like to go off on a not-so-closely-tied rant about common sense, since that is the topic of the day.

It’s about common sense………….and soccer.

The World Cup is now upon us, and while I think I might have ranted about this four years ago, it bothers me so much, that I’m going to do it again.

Soccer is a beautiful game, with the most passionate and engaged fans on the planet.  It truly is the only “global” sport, and the game reaches every single country on the planet.

However, despite all this, I simply can’t respect the sport, or understand how people continue to turn a blind eye to the fact that flopping around on the ground and pretending to be hurt is an accepted part of the game.

Where’s the common sense in that?

Common sense would dictate that with the advances in technology over the past 10-20 years, it’s no longer reasonable for a player to embellish, or straight-up fall over for no reason to try to show the referee that he was hurt.

I played soccer competitively until I was 18-years-old.  I was actually pretty good, and a better soccer player than I was a hockey player, which is rare for a Canadian kid.  Growing up, our game was very different from the professional game, as I learned when I first watched the World Cup in 1994.  I had never seen “diving” before, and watching the game with my uncles – who can remember being led into the school gymnasium in 1972 with the rest of the student body to watch Game 8 of the Summit Series, was eye-opening.  With every flop, drop, and roll of the players, my uncles went nuts, yelling at the TV, throwing their hands up in the air, and just being absolutely disgusted with the antics.

24 years later, nothing has changed in the game.

On Monday, I watched about 15 minutes of Brazil versus Mexico, and that is the last soccer I will ever watched.

This “Neymar” fellow, who apparently is a great player (but hardly a role-model or ambassador for the sport, as I’ll explain) was already laying on the ground, clutching his head from all angles, as though he just got a magic bullet through the back of the neck, when a Mexican player, who had enough of Neymar’s nonsense, came over and grabbed the ball from Neymar, touching his foot to Neymar’s ankle in the process.

Neymar then began to roll around like a worm being burned with a lighter.

He was screaming in fake-pain, clutching every part of both of his legs.

And everybody just stood around and watched.

Why isn’t that a red card?  Why isn’t that an ejection?

Until a referee has the guts to kick somebody out of the game for that, nothing will ever change.

NHL hockey players put themselves through an all-out war every spring, and when their team is eliminated, we hear about who had a broken wrist and played through it, who had a separated shoulder, and on, and on, and on.

Football players routinely play through real pain, and leave everything out on the field.

Basketball, which isn’t thought of as a “physical sport,” has 7-foot-tall, 280-pound men throwing the full weight of their bodies up in the air, to meet the full weight of another man’s body.

And here we have soccer players, who think it’s “part of the game” to fall over and play dead.

I think it’s shameful, and the only thing worse are the soccer apologists who say not only is it “part of the game,” but that “a player who can fake at the right time and draw a call is a skilled player.”

Ugh.  Nonsense.

Imagine if Roger Federer pretended to fall down and sprain his ankle every time Rafael Nadal hit the ball past him?

What if Michael Phelps fake-drowned in the swimming pool to get the race stopped when he was trailing?

WHY IS DIVING PART OF SOCCER?

It lacks common sense.

End.  Rant.

~Fin.

Okay, so you’re closing on the house or condo that you just sold, and you’re getting ready for the final days or even hours in the property.

What should you do?  What’s the “right thing” to do?

What makes you a Mensch?

Well, let me sum it up for you – it costs ten bucks.

Ten bucks, and you can call yourself a good guy or gal.

Let me explain through the first two points, and then go on a few points more…

–

1) Have the property professionally cleaned.

This is a no-brainer, and yet maybe only 40% of sellers clean the property before they leave.

It’s common sense, and dare I say – common decency.

You’re probably asking, “But wait a minute, you just said it costs ten bucks to be a property-selling Mensch!  Cleaning a condo costs a hundred bucks!”

True.

But in most cases, you’re moving somewhere, right?  And that somewhere is a place you would also like to have cleaned?

This is a classic case of “do unto others,” as spending $80 to clean your condo before you move out, will come back to you in kind when the seller of the house you’re moving into spends $80 to clean that puppy too.

Even if you’re not moving into a new property, like, let’s say you’ve sold your house to move into a tent, it’s still just the right thing to do.

A client of mine closed on a century-old cottage in Cabbagetown, which he and his wife truly ‘cherished’ even before they closed and took possession.  When they got the keys, they were shocked the condition in which the house was left.  There was garbage on the floors throughout the home, a disgusting fridge, carpets clearly not vacuumed, rotting trash under the front porch, piles of sand in the laundry room, and storage items left behind, ie. some random shelving unit they didn’t throw away.

What was even more disappointing to my client was that the owner of this property owned 4-5 adjacent properties as well, and had owned the block for thirty years.  This wasn’t some one-off closing where an overseas seller forgot, or didn’t care enough, to have the property cleaned before closing.  This was somebody who still has a horse in the race, or a foot in the door, as an owner of multiple properties in this row of homes.  My clients were almost more upset that the owner didn’t respect the house – a unique, timeless, vintage, and historical property.

In the end, unless there’s a clause in your Agreement of Purchase & Sale instructing you to do so, you’re under no obligation to have the property cleaned.

But I don’t think that’s an excuse for decency.

–

2) Leave  hand-written note, and a bottle of booze.

Here’s where you see the ten bucks at work.

If you spend $85 to have your property cleaned before you move out, and the property you move into has clearly been cleaned for a similar amount of money, then spending $10 on a bottle of booze, and leaving it on the counter with a hand-written note, is how I come up with my ten-dollar figure.

You don’t have to buy Dom Perignon.  Just grab a bottle of Yellow Tail Shiraz if need be.  Buy the cheap 2018 stuff.  Or the 2019 if it’s available!

It’s not so much the taste or quality of the wine, which will likely be re-gifted, but rather the gesture.

A hand-written note, that takes 3-minutes to produce, goes a long, long way, in the eyes and hearts of new buyers.

I recognize that this doesn’t apply to everybody, but if you’ve been living in a house for a few years, I’m sure you respect the property.  It’s your home, and now it’s going to be somebody else’s.  Ignoring investment-properties, and/or hands-off owners, surely handing the keys over to a new owner has to mean something to you, no?

Clean the property – your home, and leave a cheap bottle of wine, and a few nice words on a piece of paper.

Dear Jenny & Stephen, We hope you love living here as much as we have for the last five years! We’re so sad to be leaving, but knowing that we sold to really good people who will cherish the home as we have, makes it so much easier! All the best in your new home, have a drink and celebrate! Jake & Samantha

It’s not rocket-science, folks!

–

3) Ask if they want the paint cans, case of hardwood flooring, and box of tile.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on the receiving end of this email:

Hey David!  We’re in the house, everything is great so far!  Quick question – can you ask the seller if they remember the paint colour in the living room?  We’re trying to match that colour through the kitchen and down the hall.  Thanks!

Was it “Inner Peach,” or “Apricot Beige?”

Twilight Dreams, Arizona Canyon, Mountain Hideway, Warm Cognac, or Baked Clay?

The possibilities are endless.  And we all know that even though we learned to split the atom eighty years ago, we will never be able to “colour match” to the exact specifications of an existing paint colour.  To try, is simply to fail.

So just as “common sense” helped us with points #1 and #2, you can see how asking, “What would I want, if I were in their position?” helps with a lot of the other points on our list.

If you have paint cans from 9 months ago when you did a fresh coat of the basement rec-room and upstairs bedroom, ask the buyer if they want them left behind.

I say, “ask the buyer,” because for the first thirteen years of my career, I always told sellers to leave them.  And then in early 2017, I actually had a sale not close because of a paint can, and a box of tile.  No joke.

My clients had renovated their home shortly before putting it on the market, and I told them the could leave the three paint cans and box of leftover hardwood flooring (I also frequently get asked, “Can you find out what type and style of hardwood was used on the main floor?  We put a huge gauge in the wood moving in our sofa, and we want to replace the one board!”) upstairs in the unfinished attic of the house.

The buyers went nuts.

They refused to close until “proof that the leftover garbage had been removed” was provided to the buyer’s lawyer.

The deal closed a day late, and I was shocked.

Live and learn, I guess.  This was the only time I had ever seen a buyer have a problem with this, but that will teach me, moving forward.

For the rest of you, think about how this is helpful to you.  Have you ever had to replace the flooring in an entire room, because you didn’t know what type of existing flooring was there, and you only needed like three replacement boards?

–

4) Leave the appliance manuals behind.

If you have them, leave them.

And strangely, most people have them.

I know for a fact that up above my microwave, next to the vent, there are appliance manuals for all the appliances in my condo.  They were up there when I moved in, and seven years later, there they remain.

I don’t know why I wouldn’t throw them out, but I guess I don’t know why I would either.

And for some odd reason, buyers love manuals!  I get asked about them all the time, just like paint colours, and types of hardwood flooring.

The most common need for a manual is with respect to warranty, although you could probably just Google the make and model too.

Manuals for electronics, or even assembly instructions can come in handy too for new buyers.

–

5) Don’t play God with the lockbox and key.

Raise your hand if you wanted to visit, or “inspect” the property you purchased in the days leading up the closing, and your real estate agent told you that you can’t, because there’s no key?

This happens a lot.

And while I’d say it’s the agent’s fault a large percentage of the time (ie. either because they want to remove their precious lockbox, or they don’t advise the seller to keep a key on site), it’s also the seller’s fault for not realizing the buyer is entitled to a visit right up until closing.

We often get in these back-and-forth’s with the lawyers, where the buyer is insisting on a visit, the seller says, “I’ve already handed the keys over to my lawyer,” and then the listing agent, seller, and seller’s lawyer all offer, “If you want to do the inspection, fine, but you’ll come pick up the key at the lawyer’s office.”

And rarely, if ever, does a buyer do that.

It’s very, very simple, folks: leave a key in a lockbox right up until the day of closing.  In actual fact, this can help facilitate a smoother closing.  Once upon a time, the buyer would get the keys from the buyer’s lawyer, via the seller’s lawyer, via the seller.  Nowadays, why not just leave the keys in the house, leave one unit or door key in the lockbox, and release the code upon closing?

–

6) Forward your mail.

Some of you are thinking, “Who doesn’t do this?”

But I assure you, the answer is, “Many.”

How many times do you think I get this email:

“Hi David, can you kindly ask the new owners to keep our mail aside, and we’ll come pick it up at some point this weekend?”

I have no problem helping my seller-clients; that’s not the issue here.  The issue is that I don’t have the contact information for the buyers.  I’d have to go through their buyer-agent, and you can see how one more step makes failure or confusion more likely.

I recently sold a house to buyers, and I got this email from the listing agent:

“Hi David, my clients have ordered something from Amazon.ca to the house and they’d like to come pick it up.  They won’t be in the city until the weekend, so we’re hoping your clients can take it inside and keep it for them until then?  Thanks!”

So first of all, why didn’t they update their address on Amazon.ca?

But more importantly, why wouldn’t they think this is an imposition?

I know I’m talked about being a Mensch, and “doing unto others” in the sections above, but this is something different.  This is asking others to make up for your laziness, because you didn’t call Canada post and have your mail forwarded.

Time and time again, I find myself facilitating the collection and delivery of mail for buyers and sellers alike.

–

7) Cancel the alarm system, and/or other contracts and services.

This cuts both ways.

The nice thing to do, as with the paint cans, is to ask the buyer if they’d like to take over your alarm system monitoring, so that they can save whatever setup fee might exist.

Having said that, the seller should cancel all services and contracts associated with the house.

I had a client close on a house and receive a landscaping bill.

The sellers had moved out 6 weeks before the deal closed, but didn’t tell the landscaping company, who continued to mow the lawn.  When the new owners moved in, the landscaping company continued to mow the lawn, and eventually sent them a bill – with the balance owing.

Now there are a few problems here, and questions as well.

Is it the responsibility of the sellers to pay for lawn care when they’ve moved out?  Maybe, but probably not.  It would be nice for them to keep up the maintenance of their asset right up until closing, and not simply let the grass go brown.  But either way, if they do have the landscaper show up for work, they’re supposed to pay for it; not just dump it on the new owner.

Secondly, if the landscaping company continues to mow the lawn, after closing, are the new buyers on the hook?  Legally, no.  Practically, yes.

The sellers should have thought of this, just as any seller should think about the alarm system, or cable and internet, and ensure that they’ve notified Toronto Water, Hydro, Enbridge Gas, et al about the change in ownership.

–

Geez, this thing got really long, really fast.

Maybe my epic soccer rant had something to do with that…

The name of the game today, once again, is “common sense.”

All seven of these points relate back to some level of common sense, and yet the issues arising therein are, themselves, extremely common.

Just as the saying goes: “The simplest answer is usually correct,” I might also add that “The most common problems arise from the least-important issues.”

I feel like having to tell somebody to pay $80 to clean their $750,000 condo before closing is a wasted breath, but as you read above, it usually isn’t…

The post Closing Day Etiquette appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

Originated from https://ift.tt/2KC9zoa

[yahoo-puck-daddy-blog]

Puck Daddy Bag of Mail: Expectations for Rinne; Shattenkirk's final destination

ANAHEIM, CA – MAY 12: Goaltender Pekka Rinne #35 of the Nashville Predators takes a drink from his water bottle during a break in play of Game One of the Western Conference Final during the 2017 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Honda Center on May 12, 2017 in Anaheim, California. The Predators defeated the Ducks 3-2 in overtime. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

Hey everyone, with the NCAA season over, it’s time to roll out a new feature for the summer. It’s a mailbag column. People love those.

Okay it’s another mailbag. Things are chugging along in the conference finals, and crazy as it is to say we’re really very close to the season being over.

That always fills me with a weird kind of existential dread, I have to admit. If I’m not watching hockey most nights, what am I even doing? I imagine that’s what, like 75 percent of Canadians feel like, once they all get off the Ottawa Senators bandwagon.

Just kidding. No one cares about the Senators. Anyway, question time:

Rian Shaefer asks:

“Is it harder to obtain a No. 1 D or a No. 1 center?”

Obviously this comes with the caveat that they are both difficult to acquire, but it’s all about the scarcity of the resource.

While there are technically 30 No. 1 centers and defensemen in the NHL, players who meet the various criteria we think of as being No. 1s are obviously harder to come by. Is Rasmus Ristolainen an actual No. 1 defenseman in the vein of a Zdeno Chara or even Hampus Lindholm (who still doesn’t get as much credit as he should for being an elite defender)? Obviously not. Is he a No. 1 defender because Buffalo doesn’t have anyone better? Yeah.

Same for centers. Travis Zajac was New Jersey’s No. 1 pivot, but any half-decent team would at least have him on the second line, if not deeper in the lineup.

[Follow Puck Daddy on social media: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Tumblr]

With all this in mind, I would say it’s probably harder to get a No. 1 center because at least with defenders you can get a guy with a lot of talent on either side of the ice, as long as you’re not trying to fill a need. Those guys just don’t get traded (unless they’re P.K. Subban) or hit the open market (unless they’re Chara).

Defensemen are such a hot commodity in the NHL these days that you need to trade Taylor Hall to get an okay No. 2. It’s wild.

TJ Peterson asks:

“What should we expect from Rinne in the rest of the playoffs?”

People seem to have gotten a bit scared by Game 2 against Anaheim, in which Rinne gave up four goals for the first time in these playoffs. It was only the third time in 12 games he gave up more than three.

And hey, it happens.

I think we can all agree that he’s probably not going to keep going .940-plus for the rest of this postseason, but even if he settles down quite a bit in the next handful of games, going from outstanding to merely very good, that’s going to keep Nashville in a good position to win this series.

Let’s be honest: Just about everything went right for Anaheim in Game 2, and that’s not likely to continue either.

As long as Rinne is .920 or so, the Predators are going to be in a good position to win. Let’s not forget, John Gibson was only .909 and the Ducks got outshot by a decent margin in that game (minus-6).

This is a Preds team that’s good enough to win even without top-flight goaltending, so the odds Rinne completely tanks it are slim.

Paul Lang asks:

“Will Jim Benning see out the rebuild?”

Most GMs don’t see out their rebuilds when they’re the ones who started them, and the Canucks really do seem to want to win sooner than later even despite this newfound commitment to maybe not being good next year. On purpose this time.

With Benning in particular, though, it doesn’t seem like he’ll be around for much longer. He wasn’t brought in for a rebuild in the first place. This organization thought he would make them competitive. It’s tough to see how he lasts long-term since they thought he’d be getting into the playoffs every year.

John Payerchin asks:

“How should the Penguins handle their goalie situation? Do you see any landing spots for Fleury?”

You gotta get rid of Fleury. He’s older and more expensive. I know he’s Sid’s buddy but that can’t be any sort of guiding principle for the franchise.

The obvious move is to hope he gets claimed in the expansion draft, but if that doesn’t work (which I still think it will) you have to find a trade partner. Does Calgary want him to be their 1a the next two years? I can see that. Maybe Winnipeg?

The weird thing is that most teams all of a sudden seem fairly locked-in goaltending-wise, so there just aren’t as many options as there were even last summer when it comes to teams shopping for help. You probably can’t even pawn him off on a team like Arizona that would normally delight in taking on money to hit the cap floor in exchange for a pick or a prospect.

With that in mind, I can see the Penguins just kind of figuring they’re stuck with him for next season, unpleasant as that might be. That would obviously hurt their chances to re-sign a bunch of guys (they need defense badly) but it might be what they’re stuck with.

WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 23: Kevin Shattenkirk #22 of the Washington Capitals skates against the Columbus Blue Jackets during the second period at Verizon Center on March 23, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

Matt asks:

“Where do you think Shattenkirk is going to land, and can he be a No. 1?”

The problem with this question is that a lot of teams who would need a player like Kevin Shattenkirk either have too much money committed to defensemen right now (the Rangers, for example), or will need to give out huge contracts in the next few years (Toronto and Edmonton).

But to that end, one team I think would be a great destination for him has a need on the blue line, a relatively solid core coming back without too many guys to re-sign, and relatively little in the way of long-term commitments. They also happen to have a new GM who will have cash to spend and whose old team was apparently in heavy pursuit for Shattenkirk’s services before the trade that took him to Washington.

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Yeah, the Buffalo Sabres could really use a puck-mover. Shattenkirk would instantly be their best defender.

And I think they can make the money work unless the player asks for the moon here. They only have $50 million committed for next season, with only a handful of RFAs to re-sign this summer, and only Robin Lehner should be particularly expensive. Yeah, you have to cut Jack Eichel a big contract for 2018-19 and beyond, but other than that, there’s not a huge hurdle to overcome here.

Buffalo should absolutely do this. Wonder if Shattenkirk, who by the way is from New York originally (but like, Westchester), would be interested.

David asks:

“What should Vegas’ real goals be with their expansion draft? Should they be good enough to draw fans, have cap room to trade, get vets for three years, etc.?”

Yeah I think they should try to acquire a veteran core that’s signed for the next few years, but that also kinda sucks and therefore is going to guarantee them a few high picks in the next few years. The fans will be there because it’s Vegas and one imagines attendance absolutely won’t be a problem, or at least, selling tickets won’t be.

The goal here should absolutely be to take bad contracts afterward, via trade, to accumulate the assets to build a meaningfully competitive team through the draft and prospect trades. No team is going to let you get an actual good player, which is why I think this team will kinda suck. That should be the goal anyway.

The NHL’s insistence on making this team Competitive right away was always confusing to me. The goal for this team should be to lose every game 3-2 or 4-3. You’re right there but you’re still not good enough to get anywhere except the draft lottery.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All stats via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)

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