Do you want a discount?

The following is from a number of websites that offer seniors an opportunity to find out what discounts they have. I am listing some available in Canada and a link to a couple of pages where you can find more information. If you are not in Canada, I suggest a Google search Senior discounts (your country or state)

If you are a senior here are some general points about discounts, which I have pointed out before. From bus fare to movie tickets, senior citizens are discount-eligible almost everywhere in Canada. Here are a few sites where you can get more information https://dealhack.ca/blog/canadian-senior-discounts, https://carleton.ca/cura/wp-content/uploads/Canadian-Senior-Discounts.pdf, https://www.theseniorlist.com/senior-discounts/

To get the discount:

Always ask!

Senior discounts are not always openly advertised. It is recommended that you ask about whether or not the store offers a discount every time you make a purchase.

See if you qualify?

Most senior discounts are open for everyone, but please note that some discounts require memberships in some association or other

Carry ID!

Always carry ID so you can prove our age when asked. Every discount in has a required minimum age so if you have id you can prove you qualify for the discount.

Here are some places that offer retail discounts

Home Hardware: 20% discount on select days. Contact your nearest outlet for more information.

Rexall Pharma Plus: 20% discount to CARP members. Exclusions apply.

Value Village: 30% discount every Tuesday at participating Value Village thrift stores. Seniors citizens with valid ID are eligible. Contact your nearest outlet for availability.

RONA: 15% discount if you are 50 years or older when you present a valid ID. For online purchases, use promo code 5015. Available on the first Tuesday of every month.

Lawtons Drugs: 20% discount once a month depending on store location to seniors who are 55 years old and above.

Exclusions apply.

Reno Depot: 15% discount to seniors who are 55 or older every first Tuesday of the month. Valid ID is required.

Giant Tiger: Customers who are 60 or older are eligible for senior discounts. Availability and discount depending on the store.

Goodwill Alberta: 15% discount every Wednesday to seniors who are 60 years old and above.

Goodwill Amity: Seniors who are 65 or older can get a 10% discount every day of the week. Bring valid ID

65 and older

British Columbia Transportation System: The whole public transportation system in British Columbia offers discounted fare rates and a bus pass program to seniors 65+. A valid BC Services Card must be shown to the driver when you pay

Calgary Transit: Seniors age 65+ are eligible to apply for Calgary Transit’s Regular Senior Yearly Pass and Low-Income Seniors Yearly Pass

Go Transit: For passengers age 65 and above, a single-ride fare is half the adult single-ride fare

Toronto Transit Commission: TTC offers discounted fares and passes for seniors 65+.

Ottawa Transit: Ottawa Transit offers free rides for seniors every Wednesday. Discounted monthly pass and lower cash and PRESTO e-purse fares also available

St. John’s Metrobus: St. John’s Metrobus offers discounted rates on their 10-ride pass and monthly/30-day pass to seniors age 65 and over.

Winnipeg Transit: Winnipeg Transit offers discounted fare rates for seniors age 65 or older. A valid identification card must be shown to the operator when boarding.

Greiving is like an altered state

Mourning is like an altered state of being and grief has to be endured.
The following is from The Long Goodbye, The moment I heard my mother's diagnosis. By Meghan O'Rourke

The clinical literature on grief is extensive. Much of it reinforces what even the newish mourner has already begun to realize: Grief isn't rational; it isn't linear; it is experienced in waves. Joan Didion talks about this in The Year of Magical Thinking, her remarkable memoir about losing her husband while her daughter was ill: "[V]irtually everyone who has ever experienced grief mentions this phenomenon of waves," she writes. She quotes a 1944 description by Michael Lindemann, then chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. He defines grief as:

sensations of somatic distress occurring in waves lasting from twenty minutes to an hour at a time, a feeling of tightness in the throat, choking with shortness of breath, need for sighing, and an empty feeling in the abdomen, lack of muscular power, and an intensive subjective distress described as tension or mental pain.

Intensive subjective distress. Yes, exactly: That was the objective description I was looking for. The experience is, as Lindemann notes, brutally physiological: It literally takes your breath away. This is also what makes grief so hard to communicate to anyone who hasn't experienced it.
One thing I learned is that researchers believe there are two kinds of grief: "normal grief" and "complicated grief" (which is also called "prolonged grief"). Normal grief is a term for the feeling most bereaved people experience, which peaks within the first six months and then begins to dissipate. ("Complicated grief" does not—and evidence suggests that many parents who lose children are experiencing something more like complicated grief.) Calling grief "normal" makes it sound mundane, but, as one researcher underscored to me, its symptoms are extreme. They include insomnia or other sleep disorders, difficulty breathing, auditory or visual hallucinations, appetite problems, and dryness of mouth.

Researchers at Yale recently conducted an extensive study of bereavement and found that Kübler-Ross' stages were more like states. While people did experience those emotions, the dominant feeling they experienced after a death was yearning or pining
I thought this was an interesting article.

Every thought of hosting an event to help at XMas

Hosting an event in your neighbourhood, school, workplace and place of worship is a great way to build connections and have fun.

Each year, hundreds of caring individuals and groups raise money and collect food for SHARE Family and Community Services in their own creative way by hosting Independent Special Events. These events include everything from bake sales and lemonade stands to golf tournaments and food drives. Are you ready to organize your own fundraising or food drive event for SHARE? All it takes is a little creativity, some careful planning, and the desire to make a difference in the lives of the people around us.
Get more information here.

So easy to do!

Hosting an event in your neighbourhood, school, workplace and place of worship is a great way to build connections and have fun.

Each year, hundreds of caring individuals and groups raise money and collect food for SHARE Family and Community Services in their own creative way by hosting Independent Special Events. These events include everything from bake sales and lemonade stands to golf tournaments and food drives. Are you ready to organize your own fundraising or food drive event for SHARE? All it takes is a little creativity, some careful planning, and the desire to make a difference in the lives of the people around us.

To host a food drive or fundraiser:

1. Come up with an idea – no matter how big or small, make sure it’s fun for you!
2. Develop your strategy – what has to be done by when and who is going to do it?
3. Contact Heather to tell her about your event. We’ll post it on our website.
4. Make it happen!
5. Throw in a competition, involve your workplace and neighbourhood, get your friends involved.
6. Have Fun!

If you’re hosting a food drive, it’s very helpful if you bring your food directly to the depot. It allows us to direct money to the costs of distributing food rather than to paying for gas. The Food Depot is located at 2615 Clarke Street, Port Moody and open from 9:00 – 4:30 Monday through Friday.

If you have collected so much food that you are unable to fit it in your vehicle … CONGRATULATIONS! Call us at 604-529-5107 and we will arrange our driver to pick it up.

Thank you for your support

Right Speaking

I thought this article was interesting and to the point.  Enjoy

Right Speech  by  Thanissaro Bhikkhu  © 1999–2010

As my teacher once said, "If you can't control your mouth, there's no way you can hope to control your mind.' This is why right speech is so important in day-to-day practice.

Right speech, explained in negative terms, means avoiding four types of harmful speech: lies (words spoken with the intent of misrepresenting the truth); divisive speech (spoken with the intent of creating rifts between people); harsh speech (spoken with the intent of hurting another person's feelings); and idle chatter (spoken with no purposeful intent at all).

Notice the focus on intent: this is where the practice of right speech intersects with the training of the mind. Before you speak, you focus on why you want to speak. This helps get you in touch with all the machinations taking place in the committee of voices running your mind. If you see any unskillful motives lurking behind the committee's decisions, you veto them. As a result, you become more aware of yourself, more honest with yourself, more firm with yourself. You also save yourself from saying things that you'll later regret. In this way you strengthen qualities of mind that will be helpful in meditation, at the same time avoiding any potentially painful memories that would get in the way of being attentive to the present moment when the time comes to meditate.

In positive terms, right speech means speaking in ways that are trustworthy, harmonious, comforting, and worth taking to heart. When you make a practice of these positive forms of right speech, your words become a gift to others. In response, other people will start listening more to what you say, and will be more likely to respond in kind. This gives you a sense of the power of your actions: the way you act in the present moment does shape the world of your experience. You don't need to be a victim of past events.

For many of us, the most difficult part of practicing right speech lies in how we express our sense of humor. Especially here in America, we're used to getting laughs with exaggeration, sarcasm, group stereotypes, and pure silliness — all classic examples of wrong speech. If people get used to these sorts of careless humor, they stop listening carefully to what we say. In this way, we cheapen our own discourse. Actually, there's enough irony in the state of the world that we don't need to exaggerate or be sarcastic. The greatest humorists are the ones who simply make us look directly at the way things are.

Expressing our humor in ways that are truthful, useful, and wise may require thought and effort, but when we master this sort of wit we find that the effort is well spent. We've sharpened our own minds and have improved our verbal environment. In this way, even our jokes become part of our practice: an opportunity to develop positive qualities of mind and to offer something of intelligent value to the people around us.

So pay close attention to what you say — and to why you say it. When you do, you'll discover that an open mouth doesn't have to be a mistake.

Provenance: ©1999 Thanissaro Bhikkhu.Transcribed from a file provided by the author.This Access to Insight edition is ©1999–2010.  "Right Speech", by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight, June 5, 2010, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/speech.html .

Think about the Food bank

"I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act."

Bill Gates

Think about it and I know you’ll agree that Bill’s statement is true. Charities have used tv and film to make sure that we know the problems. They also show us how we can make the lives of the people who need help better. It may not be just money either. For example, charities donations can be tinned foods or warm clothes for bitterly cold nights, or spectacles to help people see. You can even make a charity car donation to be used or sold by the charity. Things we don’t have a use for any more but are still too good to throw away. This way we can make a difference easily and feel that we are helping in a way that doesn’t mean we have to give money.

If you like to give money, do you give charity donations regularly or just when you see a disaster has happened on the news? If you donate money to charity regularly, I expect you have already decided on the area that is most important to you, such as Cancer or Food Bank. I also expect you have discovered the tax benefits too. The tax that you have already paid on charities donations can be reclaimed by the charity
If, like me, you  have a ‘favourite’ charity, it is a good idea to plan your budget for the year and then decide how to help. Charities like the SHARE Family Services. are known in their communites and I think it that it is better to help with charity donations closer to home. Sometimes the best and most satisfying things to do is be involved with fund raising at a local level. When I had a young family we gave money to Foster Parents and as well we communicated with our Foster child the festival was over the food would go to a local charity for the homeless.

Now the children have grown up and we have moved to a different part of greater Vancouver.  That doesn’t mean I have stopped helping. It just means that I do it differently. In recent years I have chosen two areas to support. One is cancer research as it affects my family. The other is being on the Board of Directors of SHARE Family Services. In this way I get the satisfaction of believing my financial help to the charities donations makes a better future.

here are 21 things to remember

I am not sure who gave the following to me, but I have it pinned to the wall in my office and I read it every day I hope you enjoy this

21 things to remember

1. No one can ruin your day without your permission

2. Most people will be about as happy, as they decide to be.

3. Others can stop you temporarily, but only you can do it permanently.

4. Whatever you are willing o put up with, is exactly what you will have.

5. Success stops when you do

6. When your ship comes in....make sure you are willing to unload it

7. You will never "have it all together."

8. Life is a journey....not a destination. Enjoy the trip!

9. The biggest lie on the planet:  "When I get what I want, I will be happy."

10. The best way to escape your problem is to solve it.

11. I've learned that ultimately, "takers" lose and "givers" win.

12. Life's precious moments don't have value, unless they are shared.

13.  If you don't start, it is certain you will not arrive.

14. We often fear the thing we want the most.

15. She or He or laughs.........lasts.

16. Yesterday was the deadline for all complaints.

17. Look for opportunities...not guarantees.

18. Life is what is coming..........not what was

19. Success is getting up one more time.

20.  now is the most interesting time of all.

21. When things go wrong......don't go with them.

I HOPE YOU CELEBRATE AND HAVE A GREAT CANADA DAY

Port Coquitlam, where I live, every year hosts a series of wonderful celebrations of our National Day.
Port Coquitlam Celebrates Canada Day, and every year I join the thousands of others in Castle Park to watch the Fireworks, I invite you to join our wonderful community salute Canada Day.  If you are not in the area, I recommend you find out what your community is doing and join in on the celebrations. We live in the best country in the world and we should be celebrating this fact.  Events listed Below

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Fishing Derby in Lions Park  8 - 11:30am
A great opportunity for youth 12 and under to test their fishing skills. Prizes and lots of family fun! Breakfast available on site by the Port Coquitlam Lions Club.

Lions Club Pancake Breakfast in Lions Park  8 - 11:30am
Enjoy a great start to Canada Day with a delicious breakfast served by the local Lions Club.

Castle Park  12 noon - Dusk

• Opening Ceremony
• Community Showcase
• Musical Entertainment
• International Bazaar
• Grande Finale Fireworks

Opening Ceremonies & Cake Cutting 12:00 Noon

Community Showcase: 12:30 -5:30

Children’s Activities: 12:30 -5:30

International Bazaar: 12:30 – 5:30

Firefighters’ Salmon Barbeque: 4pm start

This Canada Day favourite is being served once again by our local firefighters. Proceeds go to the Burn Fund

Evening Entertainment: 6 -10 pm
 TBA

Grande Finale Fireworks: Dusk

Enjoy the spectacular thrill of fireworks coordinated by the Port Coquitlam Fire & Emergency Services.

Free Shuttle Service
A free shuttle bus service will be provided between Castle Park and the West Coast Express parking lot on Kingsway Avenue, every half hour from 11:30 am to midnight. Extra free parking is available at the Port Coquitlam Recreation Complex, 2150 Wilson Avenue

Happiness

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. - Buddha...

How do we share happiness? I think the first step is to define what happiness is and that is not an easy step and one that we have been wrestling with for, I suspect, thousands of years. Some ideas that have, over the years, shaped by thinking on this topic follow.
First, have the attitude that the glass half full rather than a glass half empty as you explore the day to day activities of life
Second, trust that people have good intentions, (sometimes not great delivery of those intentions) trust that people are good, most of the time.
Third, when you have to make a decision, make your list pros and con's talk to people weigh the evidence or whatever you have to do then trust your instincts. 9.5 times out of 10 you will be right.
Fourth, build close personal relationships that are meaningful to you and try to stay connected to the people that you feel close to
Fifth, put on a happy face, smile or force a smile when you dealing with people that you are having difficulties with and remember that people are good most of the time and just trying to get by
Sixth, learn to  listen to the voice in your head that says the good things about you and life--this voice is hard to hear sometimes because it is being drowned out, at times, by all of the other voices telling us how wrong, lazy or bad we are.
Seventh, be content with who you are in the moment but have the courage to dream about what you soon will be
Eighth, hold the assumption that the world is yours for the asking
Ninth, remember the song we're were for a good time, not a long time. Life is short, and for some of us life is getting shorter so let the "good times roll"
Tenth, life involves taking risks most of them will end positively. Some will not, that's what defines risk, but if you don't take risks, you will be at your death bed, thinking what if .... and you want to be there thinking what's next?

Once you learn to be happy then you can start to light the candles and spread the joy and your candle when it goes out, will have benefited many others. Boomers are about taking risks and enjoying life, seniors are about waiting for the end of days, I'm a Boomer not a senior, don't worry be happy!