Returning to the Land of the Living - Part Two of Two

Things are slowly getting a bit healthier on this end.  When I think back to how bad it got, I just want to block it all out of my memory.

Writing about what I went through health-wise over the last year and a half is hard as I was in enough pain and doped up enough that the details are blurred.

Generally speaking though, it was the summer of 2009 that my body really started to rebel.  The emotional climate had been somewhat stressful leading up to that summer though.  The first shot across the bow happened when I was driving down Interstate 94, from Port Huron to Detroit, delivering some autoparts.  I heard on the radio news that Countrywide Financial could not rollover its commercial paper.  Although I'm no one's whizkid on money matters, I recognised that not being able to roll over its commercial paper was a bad thing for Countrywide. In essence, imagine making mortgage payments on your house or car payments and your lender says, "Sorry, we want our money back."  You won't be having a good day when that happens.

Sure enough, for me anyway, this was my beginning of the credit crisis.  Slowly but surely, auto parts deliveries slowed, meaning my income went down.  Cashflow or the lack of it, stresses me out.  Like the rest of us, I reckon.  By the summer of 2008, was sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring.  I don't wait well.  The placement agency I was with was able to get me another placement starting October 1st, 2008.  At least my cashflow stabilised but the bad news from the financial industry kept coming and the automotive sector kept getting slower.  All this bad news kept eating away at my insides.  Add to that some hardened C.A.W. types at the employers facility and I felt as if I was sizzling in a frying pan.  For me, I was quite frightened by watching the parts warehouse where I was shunting go through rounds of overtime and then voluntary and involuntary layoffs.  Always in the back of my mind, am I next? And the layoffs continued.  In June of 2009, My employer was feeling the pinch as well and had to reduce driver benefit package.

I got through the winter of 2008 and 2009 and the traffic at the parts warehouse was slowing down.  It don't sit well.  Sitting and waiting for something to happen worries me, even if I'm getting paid.  By August 2009 anything I ate just zoomed through me.  By September 2009, I was experiencing nausea.  Even if I only drank water, I would vomit, usually needing to stop the shunt truck to do so.

Several of my coworkers told me to go see a doctor.  (But all I heard rattling around in my little head was "Suck it up, don't be a weenie like those who run to the emergency department for a runny nose or an ear ache.  Suck it up!")  So I sucked it up.  Things continued to get worse.  Still, I was hoping that what was ailing me was a self-limiting pathogenic issue.  By late August 2009, blood started showing up in my stool.  Finally, in early September I saw my General Practitioner and he sent me off to the medical lab for a stool sample to be submitted.  The abdominal pain was enough that I was popping Tylenol 3's to deal with the pain.  Imagine rusty knives trying to get out of your bowels.

September 22nd, 2009 was the watershed night.  The abdominal pain was intense, the nausea relentless.  Then, as the gastric convulsions continued, I started vomiting blood.  At this point I'm bleeding out of both ends.  I finally called my mother to take me to the hospital.  I sucked it up as long as I could.  Now whatever had a grip on me was bigger than I was.  My dad died of colon cancer.  He bled out his backside before he was diagnosed with what would become terminal colon cancer.  He died September 2000.  Needless to say, my mother was a basketcase driving me to the hospital.  I navigated, she steered the car.  It was around 11:00 p.m., on September 22nd, 2009 that I was admitted to Guelph General Hospital.  Within minutes I was quarrantined and hooked up to a one litre bag of saline I.V.  Then the fun started.

Gratuitous Music Video

You are What You Eat

Valuplus 100% Whole Wheat Bread

• whole wheat flour
• water
• yeast
• sugar/glucose-fructose
• wheat gluten
• soybean and/or canola oil
• salt
• acetylated tartaric acid esters of mono and diglycerides
• calcium propinonate
• sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate
• monoglycerides
• ascorbic acid
• azodicarbonamide
• amylase
• xylanase
• may contain sesame seeds, egg, milk and other sources of soy not listed

Gratuitous Music Video

You are What You Eat

Ensure Meal Replacement
(in order of prevalence)

• water
• corn syrup
• maltodextrin
• sucrose
• calcium caseinate
• high oleic sunflower oil or oleic safflower oil
• canola oil
• soy protein
• corn oil
• potassium citrate
• sodium chloride
• calcium phosphate tribasic
• soy lecithin
• potassium phosphate dibasic
• natural and artificial flavour
• magnesium phosphate dibasic
• magnesium chloride
• sodium citrate
• carrageenan
• ascorbic acid
• potassium chloride
• zinc sulphate
• ferrous sulphate
• niacinamide
• dl-a-tocopheryl acetate
• mangenese sulphate
• cupric sulphate
• d-calcium pantothenate
• vitamin A palmitate
• pyridoxine hydrochloride
• thiamine hydrochloride
• riboflavin
• folic acid
• sodium molybdate
• potassium iodide
• biotin
• sodium selenate
• vitamin D3
• cyanocobalamin
• may contain potassium hydroxide

Gratuitous Music Video

You Are What You Eat

Kraft Dinner

Ingredients (in order of prevalence):
enriched pasta (from wheat)
cheese sauce
(cheese:
milk,
bacterial culture
salt
cream
lipase
microbial enzymes
calcium chloride
colour)
modified milk ingredients
salt
sodium phosphates
colour (contains tartrazine)
flavour
citric acid

Cell Phones and PDA's

Please ... I beg of you ... I want to live. So when I'm in a vehicle with you, please ignore your cell phone or PDA. Better yet, turn the damned things off and enjoy the ride.

I good friend of mine visited me from the Niagara Falls area and took me out to lunch recently. As of this writing, I'm still recuperating from a total of 5 surgeries since September 2009. I already have a very good appreciation for how fast vehicular mishaps occur and now I am acutely aware of just how quickly I can get sick and weak and bedridden. During the trip to the eatery, up the notorious Hespeler Road in Cambridge, Ontario, her Blackberry went off indicating a text message had come in. Whilst driving her behemoth Chevy Avalanche, she reflexively picked up her Blackberry and started reading, one eye on the text and one eye on the road, so to speak. I was sitting in the front, right seat; seatbelt over my incisional hernia, feeling helpless as all hell.

Visions of a near incident on Highway 401, across the top of Toronto, flashed across my mind. This happened a few years ago when I was taking a 53 foot trailer full of raw pick-up truck bumpers to the A.G.S. Automotive Systems plant in Oshawa. An executive type male, middle aged and slightly portly, was piloting his S.U.V. of some sort down the fast lane on the 401, coming along my left as I was in the middle express lane at the time. From my perch in the Kenworth, I could see that this man was keyboarding away in his laptop, which was hidden from view to other 4 wheelers, since it was resting on the passenger seat. The traffic was crawling along at about 40 kilometers or 25 miles per hour, when ... as the habit of traffic during rush hour, the traffic came to a sudden halt. I noticed that the traffic had stopped because I was looking out my front window. However, the executive type man, who is obviously smarter and wealthier than I, continued driving towards the stopped car ahead of him, as he was busy working his laptop. He looked up at the last second and instead of slamming on his brakes in a straight line, which would have made him rear-end the car in front of him, yanked his steering wheel to the left, put his S.U.V. onto the shoulder between the fast lane and the concrete divider. He came to a stop right beside the car that was once in front of him. There remained about 12 inches between him and the car to his right and him the concrete divider to his left. Since his wheels did not lock, I'll assume he had an antilock braking system.

I must admit I was impressed by his reflexes. Then I became infused with melancholy as I realised that people smarter and wealthier than I can have such a blatantly broken survival instinct and delusional sense of their own omnipotence. I'm a low-level tradesman ... a truck driver, a Proletariat labourer. I could never operate a laptop whilst driving, I'm just not smart enough. But the Bourgeiousie , be they Petite or Grand, are smart enough.

Now I'm blue ... pardon me while I pop a Prozac.

Editor's note: No Chevy Avalanches, S.U.V.'s nor Blackberry PDA's were harmed during the making of this rant.

You Are What You Eat

Ruffles Ranch Flavoured Dip

Ingredients (in order of prevalence)

water
vegetable oil
whey protein concentrate

seasoning:
salt
monosodium glutamate
garlic powder
spices
onion powder
natural flavour
modified tapioca starch
sugar
natural flavour (contains carrageenan)

glucono-delta-lactone
diacetyl tartaric acid esters of mono and diglycerides
lactic acid
sodium phosphate
xanthan gum
potassium sorbate

Gratuitous Music Video

Returning to the Land of the Living - Part One of Two

It's been a while since I last dabbled here. I've been rather ill and I'm looking forward to sharing all the gruesome details with you. Basically, I've lost about a year and a half and I am just now slowly getting back to the Land of the Living. The Land that you folks occupy. I'll never get all my strength back. So ... I figure I'll be getting a bit picky as to how I expend what energy I do have. Multiple hospitalisations and surgeries and complications have somewhat altered my view of modern medical protocol. Assistance during my downtime came from family, friends, the government and yes, even the kindness of strangers. Frustrations came as well. Stay tuned ... you'll end up feeling lucky, smug and superior. Talk to you soon.

No spend Days during July 2009

July was an exercise in and of itself. Between dental appointments and buying parts for the pick-up, I started to believe I might not match June's number of No-Spend Days. Then I came up with another idea. I have a 45 kilometer, 35 minute commute to get to work. This requires me to get gasoline twice a week, especially since my gas gauge is malfunctioning and I'd rather not run out of gas. So, by routine, I get gas on Mondays, same day of my mortgage payment and then Friday night, on the way home from work. I dug out of my garage a 5 gallon gas can and now on Mondays, I fill up the gas can as well. This means I will not have to stop and fill up my tank on Fridays. I can thereby include Fridays as No-Spend Days now. And that is how I got up to 18 No-Spend Days this July.

That brings me to the next point. At Ottaway Motor Express, there actually is an Ottaway family running the place. Son of owner Mark Ottaway, Peter, who always seems to have his mug glued to two monitors simultaneously whilst juggling land lines and cell phones, sometimes multiplexing between shippers and drivers at the same time, let me know that every once in a while he will enter Ottaway Motor Express into the search bar to see what the World Wide Web holds in store. Oops, he found my little blog and had good chuckle. He quizzes me constantly about my No-Spend Days. One minute Peter is worried that I will be depriving myself of life experiences if I don't spend any money. The next he wonders how I can get fresh produce if I only grocery shop once a week. Then he tests me by asking the difference between discretionary and disposal income and whether I even need to account for non-impulse purchases. So I stand there and mumble and babble. Standing and talking - not at the same time, please!

All I know is I'm getting tired of being a conduit for money. It seems my only real job, in essence, is to earn and spend it all. Even my political leaders tell me to do that. It rings rather hollow. After a lifetime of dispersing my earnings, what will I have to show for it all? This is what I need to tackle.

Coffee and Pensions

Well, it's Saturday again. Usually, I spend my Saturdays running errands, my day to unload all my cash into this highly integrated global economy. My job is to spend. I do so with reluctance. But, it is my job anyway. My political leaders have told me it is my job, as have all the economists out there. No has told me yet that spending all my money is not my job.

A coffee or two, first thing in the morning to jump start my sluggish disposition, well ... let's just say caffeine is my drug of choice and my employer likes it when I get to work on time. Oh, I used the 'drug' word. Coffee has become so deeply entrenched into our culture and other cultures, for that matter, that we overlook the powerful stimulative effects of the black brew. If coffee were discovered today, it would not get past the Food and Drug Administration nor Health Canada, without being branded a prescribed pharmaceutical. Luckily, the health watchers are looking the other way.

My concern with this can of coffee is not so much what it does to me and others within minutes of ingestion. My concern is the financial benefit of this can of coffee. Financial benefit? For those of you that imbibe this brew, the overwhelming majority will have concocted a cup or two at home, as I've yet to find a drive-thru that serves Maxwell House. So, right off the bat, you and I have
saved money by not having it ready made by someone else. Then if we can buy this stuff on special, at a 'discount' as the economists and accountants would say, we can save even more.

As you can witness by the scanned advertisement, I was able to buy not one, but six of these 925 gram cans for $4.69 each. Damned good deal, actually! The regular price at Sobey's or Zehr's seems to hover around $7.47 a can. I reduced my living expenses by $2.78 a can or $16.68 if we multiply by the six cans purchased. Yup, bulking up on special works.

Now for the real reason of this gripping insight into Grade 3 arithmetic.

What is the Future Value of my savings, this gigantic pot of $16.68?

A loaded question, for sure. First some assumptions. Economists love assumptions. Philosophers will argue using hypotheses. I'll stick with assumptions.

First, let's assume that I will take this huge glob of cash I saved and invest it wisely for my future.

Second, let us assume that I will not lend my money to a bank or a government, but invest it in the greatest casino on earth, the stock market.

Third assumption, since I have the intelligence of the clay brick, I will invest this glob of cash into some shares of Standard and Poor's 500 ETF's or Exchange Traded Funds as they are called, since I could not pick a winning stock even with both eyes open.

Fourth assumption, over the next 18 years of my working life, assuming I will retire at age 65 (and that assumption may be sorely tested), these ETF's will net me an average annual compound rate of return of 10%. I hold out no hope that the equity markets will do any better for me. And with the lunacy of the markets since the end of 1994, even 10% looking forward, over time, may be fanciful.

Fifth assumption, all this incredibly astute investing will happen inside of TFSA, or Tax Free Savings Account. It's a new Canadian tax treatment. A TFSA means I will not pay any income tax on my gains or withdrawals.

By saving $16.68 and compounding it over 18 years at 10% per annum, I end up with an extra $92.74 when I retire. I would gain nothing by only buying one can of coffee at the full retail price of $7.47 and using it up until I run out and then buying another can at full retail. By bulking up on special, an effort that requires very little energy to pull off, I sow the seeds of having a few extra dollars when I retire.

Or, to put it another way, the Future Value of $16.68 saved today, 18 years out, is $92.74. Another way of putting it, by NOT saving $16.68 by buying on special a commodity that I use every day, I will forgo $92.74 on the day I retire.

No Spend Days

Well ... the month of June 2009 is behind us now. We lost some people again, some near and dear, some larger than life. Some expectantly, some suddenly. With every passage, I personally, am reminded my own frailty, my own temporality.

Those who had the dubious pleasure of putting up with me over the most recent ten years or so, would have witnessed this writer as a burned out long haul trucker, a stay at home dreamer, a short haulin' day tripper ... mostly to Michigan and back, sometimes Oshawa, an increasingly exhausted home renovator, then a day tripper again, mostly to Michigan and Oshawa again, and now an Ottaway Motor Express shunter at the General Motors National Parts Distribution Centre in Woodstock, Ontario.

Throughout it all, there has been the love-hate relationship with money that seems to follow me around. One could argue that Bernie Madoff had a love-hate relationship with money, too. The years of 2005 and 2006 were nasty, dark times health wise. I got nailed with an iron-deficiency, long story, the end result being a sluggishness that did me no favours financially.

Savings and credit lines got depleted. Now I'm rebuilding.

One of the ideas laid on me by a concerned lady who was part of a group that helped put me back together again was that nearly all of us have holes in our spending where our money drains into and we end up seeing nothing for it at the end of the day.

For instance ... go ahead and spend just $1.50 a day on your favourite cup-a-drive-thru coffee, Monday through Friday. Go ahead. It ain't hard. At the end of the year that works out to about $378 spent, all with after tax dollars. That cup of coffee sure went down just fine, didn't it. Now ... how long did you hang on to it.  Usually, a person and their cup of coffee part company pretty quickly.

Now imagine all the other holes in one's spending. I recall an article in the Globe and Mail, several years ago, with the title 'Broke on a $100,000 a Year.' Yup ... it can be done.

So ... over the last couple of years, I've gotten most of my health back as well as some idea where I'm headed, fiscally speaking. It don't look none too good. No Golden Parachutes or $75,000 buy-outs for me. No collective agreement giving me Cost of Living Allowances.

All I know, I have to change my spending habits drastically if I'm going to be able to retire with any sort of dignity at age 65. And a good measure of luck. Think of those Bernie Madoff investors. Time for austerity measures.

One of my techniques in modifying my spending habits is to track how many days a month I DO NOT spend any money. No coffee, no newspaper, no pack of smokes (not that I smoke ... but my buddy in London loves his Marlboros), no gasoline, nothing! Then, being the visual guy I'm, I graph my No Spend Days on a chart and give myself a pat on the back for being disciplined.

Damn ... not spending money is BORING! However, I like being able to make my mortgage payments and not get cut-off notices from the Hydro and Gas folks. My darkest hour happened back in February 2007. Times were bleak. Now ... considerably less so. But make no mistake, nearly everyone around seems to be having more fun than I am. So it seems, anyway.

During the month of June 2007, there was only one day I did NOT spend any money. During the most recent three months of April, May and June 2009, I averaged 17 No Spending Days a month. I'm not out of the woods yet, but when motor oil goes on special, I can stock up.

Hopefully July 2009 I can do even better.

P.S. When I grow up, I want to be an Economic Subversive!

Pantry Recession

No sooner than I post about me hoarding Castrol Motor Oil and calculating the money I did NOT spend, than an article shows up in one of my favourite on-line newspapers, (I do NOT spend money on hardcopy, whenever possible) which furthers the argument that stocking up when items are on special is sound money management.

Copy/paste the following URL

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/the-pantry-recession/article1197536/

or click on the link to the Pantry Recession article.

We, as consumers, are enticed to pay full retail for our supplies, and in overheated markets, even engage in bidding wars, especially for houses. Since my motor oil haul, I've made other voluminous purchases on other household staples. I'll post about my little victories shortly.

The main thing to remember about buying anything on special is that the item must be something which you use as a matter of course. If you bought something only because the price was attractive but end up not using it, then you lose.

General Motors - a quick history

Those who have money ...

Those who have money, don't talk about it.

Something about numbers that gets rid of the hyperbole. I like Castrol oil. My dad used it, he changed his oil regularly and his engines lasted longer than his sheet metal.

Good ol' Canadian Tire had a special on recently so I scraped together some coin and went shopping. I bought a years' supply, between the two stores in town. I change the oil in my pick-up every 8 weeks and that is pushing it mileage wise.

So fun with numbers. If I bought a years' supply and I change my oil every 8 weeks, how much money did I save?

So ... some numbers. Each oil change needs 4 liters. An oil change every eight weeks is the same as an oil change every two months. There are 6 two month periods in a year. Six oil changes multiplied by 4 liters each oil change equals 24 liters of oil altogether purchased during my shopping spree. So now we know I bought 24 liters at $2.99 plus tax. That comes to $71.76. Add to that the P.S.T. and the G.S.T. and the grand total is $81.09.

That be a heap of money for this guy.

But wait a minute ... how much was the oil regularly? A huge $4.49 per liter. Now 24 liters times $4.49 plus tax comes to $121.77. Ouch!

By subtracting what I spent, $81.09, from what I could have spent, $121.77, we arrive at a difference of $40.68.

By watching the flyers and bulking up I did not needlessly spend $40.68.

There is something nefariously subversive about bulking up on items on special.

An Economic Subversive! Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Ottaway Motor Express Honoured

No sooner than I landed in an Ottawa shunt truck, here in Woodstock, Ontario, I read an article in the Truck News magazine that revealed that Ottaway Motor Express was selected as one of 16 third party carriers by Schneider Logistics of Green Bay, Wisconsin.

To earn this recognition, a carrier must be in the Top 1% of service providers working with Schneider Logistics. Of the 16 carriers selected, out of a field of 140 carriers, two were Canadian, and of the two, one was Ottaway Motor Express. Congratulations to the Ottaway family, to Shawn McMahon, V.P. of Operations and all the other guys and gals in the war room and the shop who keep the equipment and the freight rolling for a job very well done.

A Seasonal Variation

Although it might make perfect sense, it only made perfect sense to me after it was pointed out to me by someone in the know. There is a seasonal variation to the demand of service parts for motor vehicles. Say what?

Well, let's back up a bit. The automotive parts suppliers make two kinds of parts. The first kind is called Production Parts. A car is designed, mocked up, prototyped, tested, tweaked and approved. It enters production. If the car is exotic, the production may be in the hundreds or thousands. If it has mass appeal, the production run may be in the tens of thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands. For instance ... sales of the Toyota Camry in the United States peaked in 2006, with that nation’s most popular family sedan selling 448,445 units, according to http://most-popular.net/car-america. The production parts are trucked in from the parts manufacturers straight to the assembly plant, where the parts are used to build a brand new car. Some Camry stats for the curious: http://www.topspeed.com/cars/toyota/2006-toyota-camry-ar910.html . The production parts flow fairly consistently throughout the model year, perhaps the flow is a bit heavier in the beginning of the production year and a bit lighter near the end of the production year, but generally the production planners and schedulers have a pretty good idea of how many units need to be built and the work is scheduled accordingly. The two biggest factors affecting the the quantity of production parts shipped to the assembly plants are the popularity of the model and the general health of the economy.

Now comes the Service Parts. We don't hear too much about service parts but we surely expect them to be there. To further the example: assume you've bought that 2006 Camry, but it is now 2008. Someone at the mall backs into your car and takes off, leaving you with a nice ding. Off you go to the body shop for an estimate. Now depending on the extent of the damage, the ding may be worked out or the body panel or lighting assembly may need to be replaced. With what? That 2006 Camry is no longer being produced, so production parts are no longer available. Parts needed to replace or repair the damage do not get shipped in from the assembly plant. Those parts still come from the same people that made the production parts, but they are now called service parts and packaged and routed differently.

The number one source for service parts, reasonably enough, are the dealerships themselves. But, there are also secondary sources for service parts like Partsource, Napa, UAP, CarQuest. These are not the only sources for service parts, though, just some of the more popular ones.

I work at the General Motors National Parts Distribution Centre in Woodstock, Ontario. No production parts go there. Only service parts. The GM parts come in from the very same plants that made the production parts, but the these parts are destined for the GM dealerships and the collision and repair shops .

So where does the seasonal variation come in? Well ... what usually happens when that first flake of snow hits the pavement. The good people are still driving like it is summer out there and so off they go, sliding into each other and into the ditch. Reliably, the service parts industry gets busier in the winter and slows down in the summer.

Shunting for Ottaway at General Motors Distribution

Well ... I've just completed my first 4 weeks of shunting trailers at the General Motors National Distribution Centre in Woodstock, Ontario. One would think that driving an Ottawa shunt truck is straight forward and simple and to a certain degree, it is. But being useful to ones shunting colleagues is another matter. I occupy the overlap shift, from 1:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. I assist the day shift, which starts at 6:00 a.m., and then I assist the afternoon shift, which starts at 4:00 p.m. Both shifts have their unique duties and assignments. So, in effect, I had to learn to keep both camps happy. After four weeks, I'm slowly gaining some confidence in remembering all the names (more than I can remember) and keeping straight which trailers get pulled out of which docks when and which go into which docks when.

This Distribution Centre is quite large, built in the 1970's. It has two sets of inside docks as well as outside docks, for a grand total of 29 docks, only 5 of which are for street level trucks or rail cars. They were built for 40 foot trailers, yet, today we are backing in 53 foot trailers. This is where experience starts to show up real fast. My colleagues have been doing this for a while and as such they can back in any dock in one movement. At times the nose of the trailers, as they are getting jack-knifed in, are mere inches from the concrete block wall facing the docks.

I, on the other hand, am slow enough to bung up the works, so to speak. My speed is slowly improving but there are times when I feel the glaring eyes of impatient shunters wanting me to be faster. To my colleagues, I say this, "Please be patient with me, I'm trying ... really, I am. But if I go any faster, I'll start breaking things and scraping into walls and other trailers." And that just won't do!

Moral of this story: If this job were so easy, anyone could do it, for all of $8.75 an hour. But I don't see just anyone doing it, these guys have my respect.