1. My G1 licence (which I only have for ID) expired a while back, so today I went to Service Ontario at College Park to renew it. I was a good girl and arrived nice and early at 8:30. I was given a ticket with a number in the 50s. By 10:30, the numbers had only made it as far as 25. I had to be at work at 11, so I had to leave. All that getting up early and waiting in line for nothing! I've never before in my life been in a situation where two hours of waiting in line time wasn't enough to get a simple errand like that done! So now to add insult to injury, I'm going to have to take another day off, wake up early, and spend literally half the day waiting in line.
This is particularly annoying because for years I have been writing to provincial politicians encouraging them to create an ID card that has the same ID value as a driver's licence, but does not entitle the bearer to drive. I'm sure there are blog posts on this subject somewhere within the archives. They already have the resources to screen people and photograph people and issue this ID, and they could even make money off it because initially at least they could totally get away with charging the same fee as for a G1. This would solve the ID problem for people who are medically unable to drive, make the line move faster because they wouldn't have to conduct knowledge and eye tests of all G1 applicants, and facilitate the process of getting seniors to stop driving when the time comes (it's a lot easier to get Grandma to give up driving if she no longer has a driver's licence, and it's a lot easier to get her to let her driver's licence lapse if she doesn't need it to open a fricking bank account).
Few things in life annoy me more than when I've solved a problem and communicated the solution to the people who can make it happen, but still have to be inconvenienced because they won't make it happen and I can't do it unilaterally.
2. I recently started subscribing to Discovery Health because they have a morning exercise show. It's called All-Star Workout, and it's really quite good. Good variety, suitable intensity, easy to follow - totally worth the extra $2.79 a month on my cable bill. But now it looks like they're discontinuing that show come September, which means that there are NO English-language non-yoga exercise shows on in the morning on any of the channels Rogers provides. (Yoga is fantastic, but I put on weight if I do only yoga.)
What happened? There used to be a number of different ones to choose from, and now there are none. Surely I'm not the only one who finds this the most convenient way to exercise. You can do it in the privacy of your own home, it doesn't cost anything (other than cable fees, which most people are paying anyway), it provides far more variety than you'd get from DVDs and more innovation than you could come up with yourself.
So now, in addition to simply motivating myself to exercise, I have to come up with how to exercise. My entire adult life, I've just turned on the TV and done what it tells me, and it's worked well. But now I have to make my own plan, figure out whether to get DVDs or a Wii or what, and this for something that I absolutely detest doing. Exercise is the least favourite of all my chores!
In the US, they have a TV channel called FitTV that shows exercise programs all day every day. We should have that here! It would be beneficial to public health! We're always hearing about how people are too sedentary and need to exercise more, so why not make it as easy as humanly possible? You turn on the TV any time of the day or night, and someone is there to guide you through your workout. What could be easier? We could even just use the US TV channel, just have our cable companies carry it. They do carry some TV channels from other countries directly, and surely FitTV would be more beneficial to Canadian society than, say, Spike.
8 comments:
In your next letter about i.d. for non-drivers, you might mention that Alberta of all places makes such an option available.
FitTV is not a bad channel and some of the programs are OK but it is not exercise all day. Cooking, interviews and shows that are about exercise and sports but don't in any way have something you can follow along with abound. I am not trying to correct you; your point is well taken, but even FitTV has given way to the general schlock that has no meaning or benefit but fills the time slot.
Following your time-tested tradition of focusing on the least important part of any post, were you able to subscribe to just that one channel? If so, how does one do that??
As far as I can tell, Rogers only lets you subscribe to channels in groups. I would like a few more channels but they are each in separate categories/groups, and I don't want to pay for all the others that I'll never watch.
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Your driver's license experience sounds awful. It sounds like how everything works in NYC. One reason I enjoy living in Mississauga is because all those kinds of services are quick and easy to deal with. Since your issue is provincial, maybe you could go to a different Service office that is less crowded. I realize that brings up transportation issues but it might still be better.
Jay: That's good to know, thanks!
MN: That's unfortunate. I hate it when I choose TV channels for their mandate and then they stray from their mandate! I hope they at least have the decency to show exercises in the morning, when people need it most.
L-girl: I don't remember how I discovered it, but if you go here, choose the appropriate alphabet letters under "channel name range" in the left-hand column, then click on the little blue "show all" above the centre column, it will tell you (in the left-hand column) how much it costs to add that one channel. I don't know if you can do it with all channels, but some of them are there. It's really complicated to navigate and I ended up having to call the 800 number to add it because I couldn't make the thing work, but it's worth for just a single channel, as long as they don't go changing their programming on you.
Re: the service ontario offices, the real problem is that their office hours are the same as my usual work hours, and they all do get backlogged by the end of the day. So with the additional travel time, regardless of which office I go to I'll still have to take a day off and set an alarm to wake up early (waking up naturally - which is one of the chief pleasures of my days off - gets me there too late). There isn't enough time to go in before or after work on the days when my work schedule shifts. All other government services I've ever had to wait in line for, I've been able to go on a day off without setting an alarm or before or after work on a shift day.
Re channels: wow, thank you for that! I wonder if anything I want is available that way.
Re Service Ontario hours and end-of-day backlog: boo.
Income may also include investment income. I have always noticed that my married friends are far better off than even the single friends who have decent jobs. My theory is that early in the marriage, a chunk of the dual incomes goes into investments. The single earner still has to pay for rent, car etc. on one income leaving little over for investments.
Income may also include investment income. I have always noticed that my married friends are far better off than even the single friends who have decent jobs. My theory is that early in the marriage, a chunk of the dual incomes goes into investments. The single earner still has to pay for rent, car etc. on one income leaving little over for investments.
Income may also include investment income. I have always noticed that my married friends are far better off than even the single friends who have decent jobs. My theory is that early in the marriage, a chunk of the dual incomes goes into investments. The single earner still has to pay for rent, car etc. on one income leaving little over for investments.
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