Flyer Friday – the good deeds edition

You can tell Christmas is coming. Charity groups ramp up the prize giveaways.

For a hundred dollars I could buy a ticket for the Knights of Columbus Dream Lottery and win a house I couldn’t afford to heat let alone pay taxes on. Failing the win of the Grand Prize, there are still 136 chances to go home with high tech gadgets. Plus, early bird ticket buyers get their names in for a 2008 Chevy Malibu Hybrid.

Money raised goes to good causes, though. The Children’s Health & Hospital Foundation would like to build a children’s hospital for this province. The Saskatoon Zoo and Forestry Farm will also profit.

Other animals in need of assistance are the ones in the care of the Saskatchewan S.P.C.A. which is celebrating its 80th year. This August, the SPCA interceded on the behalf of thirteen horses and one pig at a farm 60 kms northwest of Regina.

I don’t get the compulsion to own horses. Where I grew up, it seemed nearly every acreage near the highway had horses in pastures for what must have been status symbols. You never saw anyone grooming them or riding them or acknowledging their breathing in and out. It’s not cheap to keep a horse and it seems like a waste of money to have five or six and not be doing anything with them. It’s not like people are raising them for meat. One place that did use their horses was a farm owned by veterinarians who raised cattle and bison. They used the horses for herding when necessary. One of them also took part in the North-West Mounted Police Wagon Trek and Trail Ride one year. Not a trip for beginners, from the sounds of things.

SaskEnergy is promoting a good deed of another kind – trade in your flashy sparkly old Christmas lights that shine merrily while they suck all the energy out of the world, and get three dollars off the purchase of a string of LED ones that’ll glow like Rudolph’s nose on a foggy Christmas night and would require 140 of the suckers to do the damage one incandescent manages. The trade in runs two weekends (Nov 1-2, 8-9) at the Co-op, Home Depot, Home Hardware and Sears.

Couple other pieces of junk don’t fit the theme – Sasktel is promoting Voice Mail to Text Service via SpinVox. What’s a word that describes someone who’s not technologically advanced? I thought it was the name of a civilization or town or something — not philistines, but a word used in a similar way to mean backwards.. This Tip of My Tongue site is not helping as much as I hoped it would.

Moving on instead, TD Visa would like to help me move around with a handy dandy Heys suitcase, so long as I apply for a savings account. I actually plan on paying off the little that’s left on my Visa and then canceling it. Ha ha!

I’ll have to use my other credit card to take advantage of the grand opening of Indigo this weekend. I drove past it this morning and wondered if it was ready to roll. First 1000 people on Saturday get a reusable Indigo bag. They’re sure hopeful, eh? Maybe it’s a misprint. They could have meant 100, or 10. They don’t announce the hours of operation on this flyer, unfortunately, but since I’m an early bird by nature, maybe I’ll do breakfast at Smitty’s first thing in the A.M. and sit where I can watch their doors. Ooh, Indigo… I am excited!

Last thing to note – I wound up with another Shopper’s thing for Ms. Yama Yama this week and a second notice about a parcel that had a deadline for today. I didn’t go and pick it up. I really did consider it but wouldn’t that be tantamount to mail fraud? I’d be claiming to be this woman. I did resort to Facebook to message someone who had the same name, just to see if she lived in the city but I never got a response in time. Whatever it was will just go back to sender. I hope it wasn’t anything important.

I’m still wondering if I should also call the Shopper’s 1-800 number and let them know her address is incorrect. It’s not like I just moved in here. This weekend marks the 7th anniversary in this flat, as it happens. Who in hell knows where she lives? Her name is rare enough in this town that there aren’t many listings in the phone book. If I get more mail for her, I’ll try calling them and hope one of them knows her. Otherwise, I suppose it’s tough toots.