SO WHAT THE HECK IS A ‘TOONIE’

Cool enough today for me to throw on a long sleeve flannel shirt over my short sleeve shirt.  Clouds, rain, & a few rare sun splashes in the afternoon.  Aside from taking a utility trailer load of yard waste to the dump I spent a fair chunk of my day inside not straying too far from my recliner.  Think we made it into the mid 60's today.  Nice.

In Monday's post I mentioned the word 'toonie' in relation to Kelly's purchase at the Lakeside Flea & Farmer's Market north of Goderich.  With the overwhelming majority of readers on my blog being American I should have explained what a 'toonie' was.  A number of years ago Canada stopped making paper one dollar bills & replaced that currency with a coin.  That coin has a Loon imprinted on it & soon took on the affectionate name of a Loonie.  Next bit of Canadian currency to be discontinued was the paper two dollar bill also being replaced by a coin.  Because it was a two dollar coin coming after the one dollar 'Loonie' coin it quickly became known as a 'Toonie.  I think if a survey were to be taken asking what Canadians think of that change one would probably find we Canadians love our Loonies & Toonies.  I personally prefer the coins to the paper bills.  And there you have it my southern friends:))

A LOONIE ON THE LEFT & A TOONIE ON THE RIGHT WITH A DIME IN THE MIDDLE FOR A SIZE COMPARISON

Remembered to upload my latest collection of barn photos to my OLD BARNS, SOME NEWER ONES & A FEW SHEDS ALONG THE WAY site today.  This link can also be found on my side bar.  With somewhere over 700 barns now I have to wonder to myself, when are enough barn photos enough barn photos.  Now that my mind & eye are attuned to barns I keep seeing barns everywhere I go & feel compelled to grab a photo of as many of them I can.  Old barns are a slowly vanishing icon in our rural countryside & in many of my photos their continuing & inevitable deterioration is sorely evident. 

Oh how I have grown to utterly detest TV commercials.  Any time I watch television nowadays I do so with my finger on the remote's mute button.   How many more times must I have to listen to George Foreman touting 'Invent Help'.  And whatever happened to that law or whatever that was a couple years ago about advertisers having to tone done the volume on their pumped TV commercials.  They are as loud & offensive as they always have been.  If I ever come into possession of a stop watch I'm going to sit down one day & time the minutes of commercials in a standard one hour long broadcast of CNN news.  I'm betting commercial ad minutes outnumber actual news minutes.  Ya Ya I know.......if I didn’t watch television I wouldn’t get bugged by TV commercials.

Clearing mid afternoon skies soon had Pheebs & I out of the house for a walk around our forest trail.  Luckily we went when we did as it soon clouded over again & drizzled rain.  If it's sunny in the morning maybe we can slip over to the Hullett Marsh in search of some new photos.  This sitting around the house for a whole day is just about enough to give a fella cabin fever!!

GROANER’S CORNER:(( I'm not keen on taking pills, so when my doctor gave me a prescription to lower my blood pressure, I asked him if there were any side effects.
"Yes," he said. "Longevity."

---

For years my husband and I had complained bitterly about the lack of sidewalks in our small town, observing often that if only we had sidewalks, we would walk daily and become models of fitness.   So we were thrilled when a community sidewalk project was announced, and watched eagerly as paving neared completion.  Then wishful thinking and reality collided. "Well, dear," my husband said, "What'll we use as an excuse for not walking now?"