Share Your World 2016 – Week 23

Here are my answers to Cee’s Share Your World questions for week 23.

What was one of your first moneymaking jobs (other than babysitting or newspaper delivery)?

I got my first non-paper route job at 13 thanks to my dad’s brother. It was a summer job doing deliveries at a restaurant/diner in his neighbourhood that was owned by a friend of his.

Every morning that summer I’d get up and be on the city bus by 7:00 to do the breakfast shift from 7:30 to 10:00, then I’d head over to my uncle’s a few block away to hang out with my aunt and my younger cousins until the lunch rush from 11:30 to 2:00.

People working in neighbouring businesses would call in their breakfast and lunch orders and I’d do the deliveries mostly on foot, but sometimes on bicycle if they were further away.

Legally I was too young to be put officially on the payroll so he paid me with free breakfast and lunch, plus I got to take home leftovers from the lunchtime specials too. And hey, this cute, clean-cut little kid who was willing to hustle made a killing in tips that summer averaging almost $30.00 a day; which for a 13-year-old in the late seventies was some serious coin.

The young ladies who worked at the hair salon across the street were my favourite customers; they were awfully purdy, tipped well, ordered often, smelled nice, and seemed to like to make me blush by calling me handsome or cutie 😀

My least favorite delivery? The morgue at the nearby hospital. Most other hospital departments were fine but delivering breakfast sandwiches and coffee to the staff in the basement morgue every day gave me the willies! No I never saw a body, but I just knew they were in there somewhere – I still shudder whenever I think about it.

Overall I have very fond memories of that summer. I was the richest among my circle of friends and I came home with lots of great stories to tell.

What is your favorite month of the year?

September. It has always been my favorite time for taking vacation too. By then the summer rush is over so you can go pretty much anywhere without worrying about crowds, and yet the weather, at least in our part of the world, is still warm but bearable. October can be nice too.

What three things in nature do you find most beautiful?

What only three? Ohh I could go on for hours about the beauty to be found in nature.

I can’t hike at altitude anymore because of this heart failure business but gawd how I love mountains.

Dense dark forests are amazing too. I especially love the wet musty smell as the sun breaks through the trees warming everything up after a nice heavy rain.

And don’t even get me started on the therapeutic value of a mirror-calm lake at sunrise or sunset, with the call of a solitary loon echoing across the water…

…umm sorry about that, I guess my Canadian is showing 😉

List at least five of your favorite spices? (excluding salt and pepper)

Curry, thyme, rosemary, basil, and chili powder seem to get used most often for my favourite recipes – not all at once of course.

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

This past week I was grateful for the internet and the amazing ability we have nowadays to look up just about any piece of information you could possibly want at the drop of a hat.

To make a long story short: The drum bearings just crapped out on our barely 6-year old front load washing machine. After calling around to a few repair centers and describing the problem we came to the conclusion that it would cost almost 70% the value of a new machine to have someone come out and fix it. Thanks to Google and YouTube, in a matter of minutes I found not only the service manual, parts diagrams, and a local place to buy the parts, but also a slew of videos on how to do the repair myself.

So this week I’m looking forward to getting the parts and finishing the repair – potentially saving hundreds of dollars and scoring like a bazillion good hubby points with Honey.

And if there’s time left over I may even write a nasty letter to G.E. for the poor design and cheap bearings used in their machine.

Thanks to Cee for this terrific weekly challenge – it’s a lot of fun. And thanks for reading, if you haven’t played along yet, you might want to give it a try 🙂