Stealing gold, drinking wine and gossip!

So it is indeed time to catch up here. It is one of those things that nags at me. I keep telling myself to put something new on “the blog”. I do so much writing at work that at times I think I have nothing new to add.
That’s not the point of a blog, I believe.
I think the point is to add interesting things. Timmins is changing. I noticed this morning while driving on the back road how much it has changed since I arrived here back in the 1970s. There are so many of the old gold mine headframes gone. The Paymaster Mine, the Buffalo Ankerite, the original Dome No. 8; they’re all gone. I was thinking of this in light of the fact that Kevin Vincent, a colleague, has written a new book about highgraders. Anyone who lives in a gold town knows that highgraders are the people who steal gold and sell it off to organized crime figures.
There have been so many gold thefts over the years in Timmins, I was thinking that if anyone came back to town after being away so long, they wouldn’t know their way around.
Speaking of which, the big Timmins High reunion happens this coming week. What a party that will be. The city is celebrating the official centennial so there will be plenty of fun things going on.
On matters of fun, Jennifer was in town for a quick visit this week. It was a joy to see her of course. She was dropping in to join a family barbecue at Sue’s place. Lorraine and Helen also showed up, as did the gang from here in Timmins. Gerry and John also made the trip to Timmins.
We all missed Tasha of course. I say that because I know that “Ta” drops in here to read every now and then. But seriously, Jenn and I told Helen chatted with Helen and yes, we do miss seeing Tasha. I feel guilty because I, for one, have not made the trip over to Red Lake.
John Bradley also dropped by and that meant smiles and laughs for everyone. John is everyone’s favourite Ex-Brother in law. I know how that feels! Almost!
Anyway it was fun to see Jenn getting ready for the dinner. It was like seeing her back in school again, getting ready for a night out on the town. Getting her clothes ready, make-up, hogging the mirror, the works! So it was a nice night out. Got home at midnight and was ready for bed, but No! Jenn cracked open a fresh bottle of wine and so we sat and gossiped for nearly an hour! It was the best.
Jenn was back on the road the next morning to head back to Sudbury to get ready for her big vacation. She and her guys are all heading to Newfoundland for two weeks. I am confident they will have a fabulous time. She will be getting to meet Scott’s side of the family as Scott’s dad is from The Rock.
Well I am going back to working on this computer for awhile. It was running slow and I think I might have grabbed a virus or something. So on Thursday, I rebooted the entire system with my recovery disks. That means I have been spending hours re-entering all my data and programs. But the good thing is that I got rid of a lot of programs I have not been using. I also found some old games. Last night I spent two hours playing Scrabble against the computer. I lost the first game, but I won the three games after that!
The only thing that bothers me is that all my income tax info from the past year was in a special file and I fear I didn’t back it up. I have all the raw info and hard copies, but it now means I have to re-enter everything. Arrghhhh.