"Will our children know a world with tigers?" - I hope not, because that means I'd have to have kids.

The highlight of this past little while has not been learning that my gums are messed up due to no fault of my own, that I get to have braces again, that I get to have surgery to remove bone from my hip and then surgery to implant it in my gum. Oh, and the wisdom teeth get to come out, but that's not a major major surprise. No, the highlight came a few days ago when I heard that Canada is implementing a "Do Not Call" list. Many of you may think this is not big news. And many of you live in the U.S., where such a list exists already, whether you know it or not. Don't get me wrong here: This is not the "woe is me; someone called during dinnertime" reaction. This is bigger.

For the past several months, I've been getting four or five calls PER DAY from two phone numbers. (Thank you, free caller I.D.) No messages get left on my machine. Why? Some of those calls are robots/computers trying to find out when I'm home so that they know the best time to call me. There isn't necessarily anyone on the other end. Now, I've done a little research. One of these numbers is a call centre in Ontario. The call centre appears to do contract work for anyone who will hire them. Which is everyone. For example: When Columbia House wants to contact you to urge you to re-join their club, when you have credit card debt, when you have unpaid traffic tickets, whatever—this call centre will contact you on behalf of anyone and apparently harass you, if you happen to pick up and there's actually a person on the end of the line. The best part is that they call people who haven't been in a Columbia House club, people who haven't got credit card debt, and people who don't have unpaid traffic tickets. And they will never leave a message, so I figure things can't be that important. But why call so many times per day? What could be so important but not be important at all? The problem with having this number blocked, however, is that so many different groups call out from the call centre that you never know if it's something of relevance/interest or not. Grrrr.