Good old Canadian Prairies. Where, spring and fall are winter, summer is spring, and winter is five months of living hell.

It is just the grocery bags they are banning isn't it? I buy a box of cheap waste paper basket bags for cat litter and I use the newspaper bags my sister in law gives me to pick up after Loki outside. I rarely ever use plastic bags from the grocery store and you would be hard pressed to find one if you look where I keep my bags. Even when I go to the mall I rarely will take a plastic bag from a vendor for my purchases. I have fancy tote bags for other than grocery shopping and the vinyl bags and insulated cold/warm bags for my groceries. Anne

I live in Toronto. The current age for the SDM discount is 65. I am now 61. When I was 55, apparently the discount did apply to people age 55 and over - no ID required - something I would not have minded providing. I was in line at SDM behind another woman who was 55 and we were told we were wrong. She left her purchases, but I bought mine. I finally asked at my regular SDM and was told the age was 55 - at this point I was 57. I was at another SDM one day - it was not a "Seniors' Day" and after I paid and was arranging my bags, the couple behind me - also not regular patrons of this particular SDM, were offered free coupons at Swiss Chalet since they were "seniors" as perceived by the clerk. They were delighted. As they walked away I heard them happily mentioning how nice it was of SDM to offer the seniors' special to 50 year olds. So, I asked the clerk why I had not been offered the Swiss Chalet coupons(thankfully I hate the food there anyway) and she told me that I was obviously too young. So I decided to take that as a compliment. Recently I checked again and apparently the age is now 65 - and as another poster said, the Thursday discount does not apply to items on sale. A friend of mine whose mother is 66 gets very annoyed. She checks prices out on Wed. and then goes to SDM on Thursdays, only to find that the prices have been reduced, sometimes by only .01 - so that the discount can't be applied. Re the bagged milk - I hate it with a passion. Recently, in desperation I had to buy it - along with several other people at Loblaws due to date issues on the 2 litre cartons. I don't have the special pitcher and I don't want one. I want the milk to close. So I decided to lightly snip the edge of the plastic bag and pour it into my glass containers. Of course it spilled and splashed everywhere - all over me, the counter, the sink and the WHITE DOG. It is generally cheaper to buy milk in bags, but I won't do it.

John - thank you so much for your kind thoughts. We will be fin Sheila - Our furnace was about 25 years old, so not unexpected, although the timing could have been better! Our house is 119 years old, and there is some question about the ducts, so that is why we want to consult our usual plumber. Also, long covid is precisely why we asked for the Plaxlovid. An interesting aside - I have a niece who has 30 years experience in advocating for kids on the Austism spectrum, with fabulous results changing the laws in CA. She just got a job as the CEO of a non-profit which was created to advocate for those who have chronic fatigue syndrome (which the medical community routinely was telling people was all "in their heads". The non-profit has now added long covid to their advocacy, and accd to my niece, LC and CFS are almost exactly the same thing, although they were not able to ignore long covid as long as they ignored CFS, as there were way more people suffering from it. Her non-profit (years before she joined them) was able to finally get the US Govt to produce $1B in funding for research, and she told me that some of that is happening, and finally producing some papers & studies, etc. The CDC had a new group of diseases listed when I looked all of this up on the CDC website - they now call them "Chronic Symptoms After Infection", and are looking at other diseases which may be resulting in similar syndromes - Lyme's disease is one example. Jackie