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6- The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday October 7, 2006 www.oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5567 Classified Advertising: 845-3824, ext. 224 Circulation: 845-9742 The Oakville Beaver is a member of the Ontario Press Council. The council is located at 80 Gould St., Suite 206, Toronto, Ont., M5B 2M7. Phone (416) 340-1981. Advertising is accepted on the condition that, in the event of a typographical error, that portion of advertising space occupied by the erroneous item, together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for, but the balance of the advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate.The publisher reserves the right to categorize advertisements or decline. Editorial and advertising content of the Oakville Beaver is protected by copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Commentary Guest Columnist IAN OLIVER Group Publisher NEIL OLIVER Publisher TERI CASAS Business Manager JILL DAVIS Editor in Chief MANUEL GARCIA Production Manager KELLY MONTAGUE Advertising Director RIZIERO VERTOLLI Photography Director CHARLENE HALL Director of Distribution ROD JERRED Managing Editor WEBSITE oakvillebeaver.com Metroland Printing, Publishing & Distributing Ltd., includes: Ajax/Pickering News Advertiser, Alliston Herald/Courier, Arthur Enterprise News, Barrie Advance, Caledon Enterprise, Brampton Guardian, Burlington Post, Burlington Shopping News, City Parent, Collingwood/Wasaga Connection, East York Mirror, Erin Advocate/Country Routes, Etobicoke Guardian, Flamborough Review, Georgetown Independent/Acton Free Press, Harriston Review, Huronia Business Times, Lindsay This Week, Markham Economist & Sun, Midland/Penetanguishine Mirror, Milton Canadian Champion, Milton Shopping News, Mississauga Business Times, Mississauga News, Napanee Guide, Newmarket/Aurora Era-Banner, Northumberland News, North York Mirror, Oakville Beaver, Oakville Shopping News, Oldtimers Hockey News, Orillia Today, Oshawa/Whitby/Clarington Port Perry This Week, Owen Sound Tribune, Palmerston Observer, Peterborough This Week, Picton County Guide, Richmond Hill/Thornhill/Vaughan Liberal, Scarborough Mirror, Stouffville/Uxbridge Tribune, Forever Young, City of York Guardian All good things come to an end Wilma Blokhuis Oakville Living Editor he time has come for me to say goodbye. Yes it's true; I am 55 and retiring early. After 31 years and two months I am leaving The Oakville Beaver and moving to New Brunswick. Oct. 27 is my last day. I'll be driving `home' and settling into a small house I bought near St. Andrews-bythe-Sea, a lovely resort town with a burgeoning arts community with lots of opportunities for kayaking, sailing, cycling, hiking, cross-country skiing and creating beautiful art from stained glass. I arrived at the Beaver not quite fresh out of school ­ I already had three jobs, all of them at newspapers ­ before coming to Oakville. Ironically, I never applied to work at The Beaver ­ my application was scooped out of `pool' and brought to the attention of the late Bill Leeder, publisher at the time. The interview was in the basement of his house. I had bought a new dress ­ it had something to with making a good first impression. He wore a Molson T-shirt and shorts and offered me beer ­ libation I politely declined fearing drinking during a job interview is not a good way to make that first impression ­ not to mention I had to drive back to Orillia that night. I was working for the Orillia Packet and Times, a Thomson newspaper at the time, and yes, you had to turn in your stubby before you were given a new pencil. Notebooks were sheets of newsprint, cut and stapled to a piece of cardboard. I had been there for about a year-and-a-half and I was ready to escape Orillia. I had already spent close to eight months working at the Packet's competition, a small weekly newspaper, and before that, two months at a summer replacement for an even smaller weekly paper owned by Bill Doole, one of my former journalism instructors at Sheridan College. I wish to mention two of my other instructors, Ben Rose and Josephine Kleimeyer. I arrived here on Aug. 11, 1975, to the small upstart community newspaper in downtown Oakville. Our competition was the former Oakville Journal Record, which after 150 years of local publishing history, disappeared when its parent, Metrospan purchased Inland, in 1980 to create Metroland. Oakville's population when I arrived was about 60,000-70,000 people. Harry Barrett was mayor. Ann Mulvale was launching a day care centre. Erchless was still in private hands before the Town of Oakville bought it to create a museum. The big controversy of the day was the preservation of the old Granary, the last surviving stone granary on the north shore of Lake Ontario. A developer wanted to build a condo project and an agreement was finally hammered out to preserve the historical stone structure. Garbage and recycling were hot topics ­ and still are ­ as landfills are filling up and despite the efforts in blue box recycling and composting, landfill sites are still getting full as a permanent solution to a growing garbage problem still needs to be solved ­ some 30 years after I wrote the first articles about Halton Region council considering incineration. Another of my first articles dealt with the algae problem along Lake Ontario every summer ­ hey, it's still a problem. My, how some things have changed while others have remained the same. When I started here I was banging out my stories on an old Underwood typewriter. The first computers and fax machines arrived during the mid-1980s and eventually the composing room gave way to desktop publishing. Now thanks to e-mail, the fax machine is almost obsolete as are film cameras ­ everything has gone digital. A high-tech colour Wilma Blokhuis RECOGNIZED FOR EXCELLENCE BY: Ontario Community Newspapers Association Canadian Community Newspapers Association Suburban Newspapers of America T THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: United Way of Oakville TV AUCTION See Saying page 9 Strategies and techniques to help facilitate fake sick days Where was Ellie Bishop, The Angel of Absenteeism, when I really needed her? Back when I was young and restless ­ dating from high school right up until I retired from the real work-world (where I was, according to my last employer, "a square peg in a round hole") to become a freelancer ­ I was forever playing hooky. Which meant I was forever searching for interesting, innovative and, most importantly, credible reasons why I could not possibly make it into school or work that day. I became quite adept at being AWOL. I once took an entire week off from a job I truly despised with a mystery virus that evolved, or so I informed my boss, into something altogether more awful (and ominous). In my defense: while I was never really as sick as I let on, the very thought of having to go to work did indeed make me nauseous! Suffice to say, I missed so many days at that particular job, it reached the Ferris Bueller point: that is, if I was going to miss any more time, I would have had to "cough up a lung." While I profess to being pretty proficient at skipping out I was never as meticulous and methodical in the art of work-evasion as the aforementioned Ellie, who has actually written a handy hooky handbook: The Sick Day Handbook: Strategies and Techniques for Faking It. Like so many sad souls, Ellie once found herself in a job she abhorred. She was a secretary. She wanted to be something else altogether. In an interview in Maclean's magazine, she admitted to being "rather undependable" back in those days. She began playing hooky and was recurrently AWOL. Andy Juniper Alas, apparently Ellie wasn't always meticulous and methodical about skipping out. Her problems began not when she started missing work, but, rather, when she started getting her excuses all tangled. Or, when she found herself forgetting her lies completely. In one year, she took time off for the death of a grandparent. Five times. Her boss started catching her in her own web of deceit. So, Ellie became more serious about skipping out. She started creating strategies that would become the foundation for her book. Strategies? Absolutely! Like being sure to lay the groundwork for future illnesses when you start a new job! Let `em know up front that you suffer migraines. And assorted allergies. A key, she says, is to not overdo it and come off looking like some sort of bobble-headed bubble-boy. She also advises to shoot for the odd, but not too-exotic: conjunctivitis and Lyme disease are perfect, and something like Irritable Bowel Syndrome is sublime. "Nobody at work," Ellie reasons, "wants to hear about your bowel troubles." Amen. To that end, she adds, "Don't over-share (your problems): don't talk about how your meal went right through you." Amen. I could have made hay with this book back in my days (daze) of being gainfully employed, and always on the make for a little unscheduled time off. I always loved so-called mental health days, and "stickin' it to the man." But as a self-employed person, I guess I'm now "the man." When I play hooky, I'm technically stickin' it to myself! And as stupid as that sounds, it didn't stop me from taking Tuesday off. I had, ah, IBS troubles, you see. And baseball playoffs were on TV! Andy Juniper can be visited at his Web site, www.strangledeggs.com, or contacted at ajuniper@strangledeggs.com.