Happy New Year

Here is your 2009 income tax package!!!!!!!!!!!
How NOT to make me happy !!!!!!!!!!
I guess that is one of life's MUST DO, pay taxes and I don't even want to think of the other one :-)
That aside, today was a good day. It rained but driving was good. Cliff went to Duncan to buy some more stuff for the Pink Elephant. Except for my daily walk to the mail boxes I stayed indoors. I don't really know what I do all day but I am busy. Lots of little jobs and all of a sudden it's time to eat.
We have no plans to party tonight and I am sure we welcome the new year with a few zzzzzzzs. I want to see the ball drop in New York, so I have to stay up until 9 PM my time.
I hope the economy will pick up in the next decade and times will be happier.
I wish everybody a healthy and prosperous New Year.
Good night everybody :-)

Raining

It rained a lot today but not very hard. I only went to the end of the road to get the mail and our 2 local papers. One of the paper boxes was partly pushed over and the rain was able to go right inside which got all the papers wet. I wonder why people will have to ruin stuff ????
Talk about ruining stuff...
The first time we landed in Ujung Pandang (formerly the town of Makassar) on Sulawesi (formerly Celebes) we noticed a plane sitting a bit apart on the tarmac. It looked like it was broken in half. Later on we found out that it had a hard landing an that was the result. Glad I was not on that flight.
Since we had 2 holidays a year we flew out of Indonesia quite often. On a lot of those flights just before landing everybody was told to go to the front of the plane for landing or to the back, I forget which it was but I always found that frightening. On the whole I have never been afraid of flying.
The first leg of any trip was always with the INCO Otter, a small plane. I loved it because most of the time we flew quite low and we could watch the landscape below. Somehow I was always lucky to fly in good weather.
I am not so sure that I want to fly now though. Too much of a hassle.

Sulawesi

Good night everybody :-)

Shopping trip

We went to Canadian Tire again. This time we took the "pink elephant" and it went pretty good. Still needs tweaking but what else would Cliff be doing :-)
I have a lot of knifes in the kitchen but I still wanted one that was on special. Normally $ 19.00 plus and I got it for $ 4.99. It is super sharp and just what I needed :-) Nothing else appealed to me. I was thinking to add another MP3 player to my collection but when I looked at it I almost laughed. The thing was not even as big as a matchbox. No way would I go for that one. I am looking for one that has the capability of bookmarking. When I have an audiobook I like to stop listening, turn the player off and then get back later on to the same spot. One of these days I'll stop at Staples and London Drugs to see if I can find something.
We came home at around 1 PM which is late for our lunch but luckily I only had to boil a few potatoes, the rest was leftovers so lunch was not too late after all.
This afternoon I puttered around a bit and also started another book. This time it was not an audiobook but a fat paper one. I am not sure if I like it but time will tell.
Good night everybody :-)

Monday

Just a plain day with lots of laundry to do. I sure envy the snowbirds that are getting ready to go or those that are on the road already.
It was a cold night again but that is supposed to change. Warmer weather is in the forecast and maybe even a few snow flurries.
I am sure glad I have no plans to fly any place. The airports are madhouses. I feel sorry for the folks that have vacations booked and cannot get to their destination for days. Lots of people probably missed Christmas with their loved ones. It seems this happens every year.
We just watched the documentary I recorded last night. It was quite something to see. Afterwards we talked about what we should do in case of an earthquake and Tsunami. I don't think a Tsunami would hit us where we live but in an earthquake we would have to leave the house quickly because of the stone fireplaces. I hope it never comes although the prediction is that there definitely will be "the big one" just nobody knows when.
I had lots of laundry today and I still have to dry a load. The front loaders take so much longer to do especially if I give each load an extra rinse. I sure wish I had my old top load washing machine back.
No other topic comes to mind, so that is it for today.
Good night everybody :-)

After Christmas

We had a great time this afternoon with our friends. First I had to do battle with the "red carpet" :-) Having a fireplace sure is a lot of work but it is so very nice when all is done and we can sit by it so nice and warm.
It was quite cold when we got up this morning. Minus 6 C and there are still 2 little mounds of snow next to our driveway where Cliff shovelled it so that the car would not plow it when we left the driveway. That is quite awhile ago and the snow is gone except for those mounds. Hope that was all the snow we get this winter.
I made Focaccia bread just before our friends came. It is very easy to make and tastes great fresh from the oven. We had Hardy Buoys candy nuggets, cheese chunks and honey and garlic pepperoni to go along with it. Afterwards lots of Christmas tarts and cookies. Now I am too full to do the dishes. I guess they won't run away, so I'll wait till the morning to do them.
We are going to watch 60 Minutes and I will record "Shock Wave" Surviving the next big quake/tsunami predicted to hit Canada's west coast. That should be very interesting.
I hope everybody is recuperating from the Christmas season and getting ready for the next round "New Years"
Good night all :-)

Boxing Day

I hope everybody had a great Christmas. We certainly did. Went to the hospital for a visit first and then for Christmas Dinner at Cliff's niece. Great Dinner and great company.
This morning we decided to make a Boxing Day run to Duncan. Cliff wanted to get a dolly that was advertised at Canadian tire. We figured we better get there early. It was the first time we ever went shopping on Boxing Day since neither one of us like the crowded stores, but that dolly was too good of a bargain. When we arrived at Canadian Tire there were only a few cars in the parking lot and the store was nearly empty. So much for the boxing day rush. We carried on to Walmart to have a look there, same thing, hardly anybody there. Onwards to Superstore and Staples where we did not see too many people either. That sure was different to what we saw on the News tonight where there were line-ups at a lot of stores and the Malls were crowded.
All we bought was the dolly and an 8 GB memory stick pro duo for my Sony camera.
We had a left-over turkey dinner and I settled down to my reading again. All told it was a good day.
Good night everybody :-)

Christmas Eve

It will be a green Christmas with lots of sunshine.
All is well at home, waiting for Santa Claus to come tomorrow morning.
We were going to visit our friend in Victoria hospital but heard he was at that time having another operation so we aborted that trip. Hope all will come out OK. Apparently he had an infection where he had been operated before.
Since we were on the road we stopped at the library to pick up 2 more books that had arrived for me. Then home to sit in front of the fire.

Good night to all and again Merry Christmas :-)

No more White Elephant

My daughter informed me that since the "White Elephant" is now running I should call it "Pink Elephant", so that is what the car will be called from now on. We took it for a drive to Duncan today to visit our friend. Unfortunately he had just been taken to the hospital. He was getting weaker and weaker and they want to find out why. We just called and they are still running tests.
We stopped at Superstore to get a few groceries. It was very crowded but we were lucky finding a teller who was not too busy. I checked my bill on the way out and saw that the teller had forgotten to subtract my superbuck. It took quite some time to get that straightened out. It's not so much the money but the principal of it. I don't like to be cheated. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt though, maybe she just forgot.
About a month ago I bought a poinsettia and by now it nearly lost all it's leaves. I have never had that happen to me. I have not had the heart to throw it out. I call it the "Charley Brown Poinsettia" I will keep it until all the leaves are gone.



Today we had great weather and thankfully we'll have a "green Christmas"
I hope everybody is having a good time.
Good night everybody :-)

Dry day today

It was great. We went for our last shopping before Christmas. We only went as far as Mill Bay and that was to finally get insurance for the "White Elephant" Yes, it is finally on the road again. It was a long haul but I never waivered in the belief that Cliff could get it going. He has to tweak it a little bit but at least it is driveable now.
This afternoon Cliff went to town to fill it with gas and to visit our friend who is now in an extended care home. We like to visit once or twice a week. Hopefully he will be able to some day go home again. At 84 years of age that is not always a given. 
I stayed home in case something went wrong but everything went well.
The rest of the day went by quietly for me but Cliff fixed the bumper on his niece's son's car. It was nice to have a little talk with her later on.
It will be getting colder tonight. As of now it is just around freezing so we need a light on in the pump house. Good thing Cliff dug all our rutabagas yesterday. They were still OK.
That's all for now.
Good night everybody :-)

Beautiful Day Today

 

that is if you like fog and rain ! It could have been worse if it was snow instead of rain. I don't mind this at all, it lets me enjoy the indoors and Cliff does not have to shovel it.
I actually slept in until 7 AM and as usual coffee and breakfast was made. I played at the computer for quite some time again. It seems there are so many Blogs to read and if any Cities etc. are mentioned I fire up Goggle maps and have a look where they are.
It is getting closer and closer to Christmas and I still have to get one or two presents. I want to go tomorrow morning no later that 8 AM to avoid the crowds. I hope that is a good plan. We have been invited for Christmas Dinner so it will be a very easy day for me. 2 parcels are in the rec.room waiting to be opened. It will be fun. I will miss my Family. We used to have lots of fun on Christmas Day. My sister in law and family lived next door and we had a combined Christmas Dinner at her place and then we all came to our place played games and had a table tennis tournament.
Those were the days !!!
Now I will watch 60 Minutes.
Good night everybody

No News is good News

And that is what today was. Nothing new to report.
I slept until nearly 7 AM. Both fires were lit and nearly burnt down, my porridge was made and coffee brewed. Can life be better than that ?

I found 2 pictures of the ducks that I wrote about in this Blog today.
 


I fired up the old laptop and had a ball looking at all the pictures on there. I needed some for Christmas Cards I am making. It was a walk down memory lane. I was so engrossed that I lost track of time and when I finally came to it was 5 minutes before lunch and I had nothing prepared. Keep in mind that we eat our daily big meal at lunchtime. As you can imagine, lunch was a "little" late.

This is my contribution for today.
Good night everybody :-)

Another trip to town

In an earlier post I wrote that I hate to go shopping. That is true but you would not think so because we have been shopping almost every other day. What gives?????????? I hope that comes to an end after Christmas.
Another storm is in the making it will hit the Okanagan and so we will definitely stay at home for Christmas. I hate driving on the Coquihalla when there is snow on the road. On the News tonight people were warned to leave tomorrow if they want to get over the mountains before Christmas. Nobody knows what happens after Christmas either.
Superstore was not too crowded today. One can really notice that the economy is in a bind. The papers are full of advertising flyers. I hope things get better soon.
I baked some cookies this afternoon and already ate a lot. I have to make hay when the sun shines because after the New Year there will be no more sweets. I hope it will only be about 2 weeks of abstinence before my body stops craving sugar, at least that's what I heard. Now if only I could get my sorry butt in gear and do some exercises that would be great. A few years ago I belonged to Curves for 2 years but then I developed Shingles and that beat the stuffing out of me.
I hope you are all looking forward to Christmas.
Good night everybody :-)

Foggy day

We had fog all day and a light drizzle quite often. I went to the mailbox at the end of our road twice. The first time I did not need my umbrella but the second time I did. Christmas cards are coming in and I had to mail one first thing this morning before the mailman came by.
Here is a little taste of what our driveway looks like now

At days like this I would love to have an attached garage :-)
I tried a new dish for lunch, our main meal, and it turned out semi tasty only. When I was younger I used to scour the magazines and made different dishes. Cliff used to be the guinea pig at least that's what he said. Now it's mostly same old, same old but that's the way we like it. (That sounds almost like a song)
I finished another audio book this afternoon. I have a 20 GB MP3 player with lots of books downloaded.
Nicki wanted to know what I was knitting: 2 tone socks knitted from leftover Tuffy wool.
Time to finish this Blog.
Good night everybody :-)

Sad Day

It was a sad start to the day. I had a hairdressing appointment but we could not turn down the road to the shop because it was cordoned off by the police. An accident just took the life of a lady that was crossing the road. I have been thinking of that off and on all day. It must be so hard for the family of the lady but also for the driver who killed her. I don't know who's fault it was. I had to walk a ways to be able to get to the shop on a very slippery walkway and was very happy to get there.
Gypsy left a comment asking about my bread. I don't have a bread machine, just a 33 year old Braun kitchen machine. I use regular bread pans but make 2 balls of dough for each pan.  I even made this type of bread when we were snow birding in Arizona by hand. My stove held 3 loaf pans and I had enough room in the freezer to keep 4 little loaves, give one little loaf to our friends and eat the last fresh from the oven :-). We sure liked that. Before I freeze the bread I break the loaves apart. I did not do this at first and I could not pry them apart after they froze. Live and learn :-)
It was quite a bit warmer today but we still have lots of snow that is a soggy mess. It has been raining a lot today. The main roads are clear. It was hard to get up our driveway and into the garage. This is the normal weather pattern for Vancouver Island. We get some snow most years but it melts quite fast and the roads are clear again. Last year was a different story, all the moisture came down as snow. I hope that will not happen again soon.
We had to go to the library this afternoon. I had 2 books there for pick-up. Cliff had replaced the thermostat in our car and wanted to see if the car worked better. He bought a new one this morning when we were in town.
That is all for today.
Good night everyone :-)

 

More snow

This morning we woke up to this:

It was beautiful to see but just the same I can hardly wait until it is gone. About noon it started to rain a bit. I figured that it might turn into snow because the temperature was only around freezing. I hope it warms up enough to keep the precipitation as rain and not snow.
I was pretty busy baking. First I made a kind of cake. I peeled and cut up apples (from the tree above) placed them in a 9 x 12 glass pan, micro waved that for 10 minutes and then placed  little balls made from sugar cookie dough on top of that and baked it. This is the third time I made that concoction and it is my downfall; I cannot leave it alone. I told myself that it is the Christmas Season and I am allowed to eat but after Christmas that's it.... no more sweets. I hope I can stick with it :-)
I also made my usual 12 little loaves of bread. This should last almost 6 weeks. I like the little loaves of bread because this way we don't eat stale bread.
I also did one weeks worth of laundry. I usually do that on Mondays but I ran out of Tide which I bought yesterday.
I did all kinds of little jobs as well.  Now I will knit and listen to another audiobook.
Good night everybody :-)

SNOW

Yes, we finally got the snow that was forecast. There are a few inches on the road already but it is supposed to rain tomorrow so I hope it will all melt away.
We went to Duncan this afternoon to visit a friend who is in extended care for a little while. We took advantage of that trip and dropped in to Canadian Tire to get some motor oil. The store was pretty busy but not as much as I thought it would be. I guess the downturn in the economy has hit a lot of people pretty hard.
On the way back from town the roads started to get pretty slick and I was glad when we parked the car in the garage. Just as we started to turn into our road the car began to slide a bit and instead of turning Cliff decided he better go straight and turn around later on which we did. All is well that ends well.
It was so nice to get back, sit by the fire and sip Eggnog while watching the News.
Good night everybody

3 or 4 snowflakes

We finally had a bit of snow, not that I looked forward to it. It did not stick to anything though and that's a good thing. It was above freezing all day long too and that is also a good thing :-)
I have a hairdresser appointment on Wednesday and I am pleased that the forecast is for rain and not for snow. Hope the weatherman is right.
This afternoon I watched several programs that I had recorded. "All in the Family" I liked that sitcom when it was first broadcast and I still do. Archie and Edith are great actors. Today's segment was Gloria and Meathead's wedding. It was hilarious when Edith started playing the wedding march and Archie and Gloria were not coming down the stairs. Gloria called down that she was waiting for Archie and soon after one could hear that loud toilet roar... finally Archie and Gloria came downstairs to more of the wedding march, wrong notes and all.
Now I'll sit by the fire and watch "60 Minutes"
Good night everybody

 

Above freezing

Today is the first day in a long time that it was above freezing outside. No snow yet and I bet Rick and Paulette are holding their breath! They will leave shortly after Christmas to "fly" South.
As usual we were up early this morning and before I was able to have my shower I was drafted to help cart the firewood from the back to the house. I like doing that though because it is exercise. I should be doing more of that. When that was done I had to be a mechanics helper :-) The hood finally got put back on the white elephant. It looks like that is almost the end of the work unless of course something else crops up. This car sure was a challenge for Cliff but he thrives on that sort of thing. Then I was finally able to have my shower :-)
While I cooked and baked today I finished listening to my book. It was another great mystery by Sue Grafton. I have lots of other mysteries on my 20 gigabyte iRiver MP3 player and will start another one soon.
We had a visit from our former next door neighbour. It was great to see them again. They had their house on the market just a month too late last year. It did not sell because of the downturn in the economy but they were able to rent it out. They were called last night because there was no water in the house. Apparently the pipes in the greenhouse froze and broke and when it got warmer the water ran out long enough to empty the well. Everything is fixed now.
That's it for today.
Good night everybody !

Still listening

Too many interruptions and I still have not finished my book. I really like it and hope to get back to it right after I write this Blog.
Wandering Willy's Blog about the birds got me thinking about an incident 2 years ago. But before I describe that I must congratulate Willy on the beautiful bird pictures. Thank you Wandering Willy for that post.
In the summer of 2007 we noticed that we had an influx of flies in the house. Since we have screens on all the openings of the house we could not figure out where they came from. It was only a short time and the flies took over. We finally found out that they came  from the fireplace. Cliff went up on the roof and found that the stench coming from the chimney was almost unbearable. We believe that maybe a bird or duck fell into the chimney, died there and was food for the maggots and flies. We had noticed 2  ducks sitting on our chimney quite often so that was our first thought. I used a whole can of Raid all over the rec.room and was kept busy vacuuming up the flies dead or alive. It was a real battle but after about 2 weeks we won and did not see any more flies. I swear I had at least half a vacuum bag full of  dead flies when all was said and done.
It was not quite as cold here today and so far no snow. Sure hope it stays that way. Last year the snow started to fall on Dec. 13th. Earlier on I had looked forward to sitting downstairs by the fire watching the snow fall but it did not take me long to "delete" that wish. We had way too much snow.
Now back to my audio book.
Good night everybody

Listening to my book

While listening I did a lot of housework, cooking and in the end I finally got back to the knitting that I started the end of last winter. It seems that knitting is a winter occupation for me. As usual, it's another sock :-) Pretty soon I have so many socks that I need to retire some of the old ones, unfortunately they are still in excellent condition. That's the characteristic of home made socks, they outlast bought ones.
Since it is supposed to snow soon Cliff and I went on one more shopping trip. When we got home we both said: "Let it snow" :-) If it does I hope it will not stay on the ground too long. I have an appointment to get my hair cut next Wednesday and if the roads are not clear poor Cliff will have to take me to the hairdresser. I don't think that is his favourite pastime.
We brought a lot of wood down from the back woodshed so we should be nice and warm.
The white elephant is in the final finishing stages. No more oil leak, no more water leak. It will be on the road soon I think. Fixing that car sure was a challenge and kept him busy. Good thing he has a good stove in the garage.
It's my bedtime now
Good night everyone

.

A good book ?

A few months ago I heard that Sue Grafton's new book "U is for Undertow" is going to come out in December. I really like her books and have read all of them from A to T and was looking forward to the new one. At that time I checked British Columbia’s “Library to Go” and found it listed there. I put myself on the waiting list for it. Yesterday I received a notice in my email Inbox that I can download the audio book. I did so at once but had to finish another book first. Now I am looking forward to this new book. I hope it is as good as most of hers  have been. If I wanted to read a hard copy of the book from the library right now I would be No.217 on the waiting list.
It was not quite as cold as it has been the last few days and the sun was out all day. I only was outside to walk up to the mail boxes to get our mail and the local 2 papers. I always like to check on the flyers in there. Most people complain about flyers but I like them. I make my shopping list according to the sales I can find.
I have a unique shopping list. It is a little booklet that I print out from a website http://www.pocketmod.com/  It ends up to be 1/8th the size of a printer sheet after it is folded.
Now off to my audio book.

Good night everybody

A visit

Today Cliff's sister and husband paid a visit. It was so nice to see them again. I prepared a good lunch and we talked and talked :-)
They left fairly early to beat the rush hour traffic to Brentwood. I am already looking forward to seeing them again next week.
We had both fires going full blast. When they arrived they were wearing a short sleeve shirt/blouse so we really stacked up the wood; small price to pay for good company.
We got our second Christmas Card today. I don't expect too many since I have not sent any for several years except to the immediate family.
This is a short Blog, but that's what happens once in awhile :-)
Good night everybody :-)

Easy Day

Today was an easy day but a cold one. Cliff needed more parts for the "White Elephant" and I went with him to Duncan since I needed a few groceries. We had a phone call from his sister this morning. She and her husband will be coming for a visit tomorrow. I am really looking forward to that. We have not seen them for quite some time. They live in Lethbridge (the city that has an anchor on a chain for a windsock ;-)) but have rented a cabin in Brentwood for a month. I hope we will be able to see them quite a bit, BUT they have 2 kids and 5 grandkids living in Victoria so I think that will take priority over a brother :-) I hope they will stay for the whole day. I already made a cake for desert. By the way, I saw that the temperature in Lethbridge this morning was minus 33 C !!!  I bet they are happy to be here.
It looks like Cliff's work on the old Honda is slowly coming to an end. It was a real challenge but Cliff thrives on those. Right from the beginning I had full confidence in him. In all our 50 years of marriage I have never seen him give up on a challenge.
It will be a very cold week and we'll probably end up operating the fireplace upstairs and the insert downstairs at the same time. So far we got away with just using the upstairs one for only one lot of wood, then the insert would take over.
Time to go and read my book.
Good night everybody

No snow and lots of sunshine

We dodged the bullet so far. The snow did not hit us but it was very windy. Watching the News tonight we consider ourselves very lucky. The city of Victoria had a lot more wind. Scaffolding for several high-rises were blown down and sailboats that were moored off the waterfront tore loose and were shown on their sides. Makes me glad that we don't own a boat any longer. Our sailboat was moored in the lee of a little mountain at Maple Bay Marina and even strong winds did not affect it there. In the first year after we bought the sailboat we had a berth at Mill Bay Marina but that year we had a terrific south-east storm and the boat jumped up and down at the dock. We ended up with several  scratches on one side. As soon as the storm was over we sailed the boat around to Maple Bay Marina and kept it there for the duration of that winter. Later on we split the moorage, the summer in Mill Bay and the winter in Maple Bay. After a few years of that we left it permanently in Maple Bay. We had a longer drive then when we wanted to go sailing but it was a better marina.  
We had a good time again with our friends this afternoon and were back in time for the 5.30 News. Now it is time for "60 Minutes" so I will say

Good night :-)

The Cold is coming

It has been quite cold for the last two days but is supposed to get colder yet. We even have snow in the forecast. As long as I don't have to drive in snow I don't mind it because it's nice and warm in the house.
This morning I helped Cliff bring the wood down from the woodshed in the back. The walk there was frosted up and I slipped quite a bit. That is a feeling I don't like. My knees have been bothering me and I don't want to have a fall.
I went shopping and had another look at the Christmas Scene at Country Grocer here in Cobble Hill. The lady who does all of that by herself started at Remembrance Day. That is a long time working but it sure looks fantastic.
We had two great phone conversations with Sonja. It is a great way to keep up with each other's lives.
Those were the highlights of the last two days. That and hearing that Cliff's sister and husband  arrived safely in Brentwood Bay for their stay of one month there. It is great to have them close by. Hopefully we'll see lots of them.
I will now sit by the fire and read some more.
Good night everybody !

It happened again !!!

Burnt porridge this morning !!! It was too early for my brain to be in gear or maybe it was still frozen because it got pretty cold last night.
I have a great spatula that makes short work of cleaning burnt residue of a pot. Here it is

When I used it I thought about it coming  from Indonesia.
When we first got there all the household articles belong to INCO, the company Cliff worked for. If something broke or went missing all we had to do is go to supply and it would be replaced. Lots of things went "missing" and I guess it finally got too much for INCO to bear so from one point in time we were told that we "owned" everything but furniture and electrical appliances in our houses. When it came time to repatriate we could take it all. We gave most of it to our maid and garden boy but a few things I liked and we brought it home. One of those things was that spatula in the picture. It sure comes in handy when I burn food :-)
We bought quite a few rattan furniture on the local market and that came home with us too. We are still using that today.
The crates to ship it all home with were made by the INCO carpenters. The wood was mainly mahogany and Cliff could use a lot of it for various projects. Everything had to be packed to be waterproof. Glad the local movers were the ones doing that. I just had to hang around to make sure that nothing got "lost". We made sure to have the odd goodie to give to them. Everything also had to be fumigated because of the cockroaches and other critters that we had.  I swear the cockroaches were wearing wooden shoes because when I came in the kitchen in the middle of the night for whatever reason I could hear them running and hiding. They were at least an inch long. We battled them for the duration of our stay but they won :-(  I sure don't miss that part of our stay in Indonesia.
These are the crates going home

It was at least 3 months before they arrived at our door. Unpacking them was like Christmas.  Luckily we never found any hitchhikers.

Good night to all of you :-)

A quiet day

It's the quiet days that are hard to blog about.
I have been sitting here trying to find something worthwhile to blog about but nothing comes to mind.
Cliff had coffee and breakfast made when I got up and both fires were blazing away. It had been another cold night.
After that he brought in the wood for today and then went back to the garage to work on the white elephant. It seems that job is coming to an end soon. He started it up for the first time tonight. We'll see what tomorrow brings.
I made lunch and supper and puttered around the house. I also transferred a lot of files from my laptop to an external hard drive. Since the laptop does not work so well any longer I thought it might be better to have a back-up. I hardly ever use it now anyhow.
The last few times that I had turned it on I saw that I was connected to a DLink router. I don't know why that happens. Our own router is a Linksys and it is protected. Somebody in the neighbourhood must have a powerful DLink router that is unprotected. As soon as I saw that I switched the connection back to our own router.
While I was doing that I watched a few episodes of "All in the Family" that are being re-broadcasted on TV at the moment. I really get a kick out of that program. I enjoyed it when it first came out and really enjoy it again.
Good night everyone :-)

 

Should have had this cartoon on Thanksgiving!

Winter is coming !

It was cold this morning but the sun was out almost all day. I hope this winter will be milder with less snow than last year. That winter was long and cold.
I did quite a bit of house cleaning but also talked on Messenger with Cousin Eddie. It was fun. Later on I got a phone call from Nicki which is always welcome. We solved half the problems of the world :-)
Cliff is still working on the "white elephant". He stopped for awhile to get all that wood but now goes full force again. Unfortunately it's slow going but I am sure that sooner or later that old beast will run again.
I am still trying to figure that DVD player out. I find that sometimes the video stops for awhile before it resumes playing, or it skips. Looking up in the manual I see that I have to finalize the DVD when I record it before it will play properly on another DVD player. I always thought that after finalizing a RW DVD one cannot record on it again. I tried that out and I seem to be able to record again on a finalized DVD. I hope that stops the skipping and hesitating. Time will tell.
Just to get used to the idea, here is a photo of last year's winter. We still did have the 5thwheel and Cliff had to remove the snow from the cover many times. He is happy that he does not have to do that any longer.



and here is our long driveway that had to be dug out quite a few times.

That's it for tonight. Have a good evening.

Parcels sent

I had a happy day! My 2 parcels are on their way. It was fun buying the gifts but I am also glad that it is done with and I have great hopes the gifts will arrive in time.
After a little rain today the sun came out later this afternoon. It is supposed to get quite a bit colder but at least there is no snow in the forecast.
For the last few days we did not have a fire upstairs. I think that is going to change soon. Good thing we have lots of firewood of course we could always turn on the heaters. We like the fires much better.
Nothing else to tell you about so this will be a short Blog.

Good night all

Christmas Shopping DONE

I left the house this morning at 8.15 AM and was back at 10.30 AM. I hope I bought the right gifts but only Christmas will tell.
On the way I stopped at Farmer's Market to buy some bananas and oranges. The oranges are still a bit too sour. If they come from California they should not be ripe yet. I remember going orange picking after New-year. I hope they will be as nice as they were last year.
I like doing my Christmas shopping at Walmart because both girls have one close by. If I chose an obscure shop they cannot exchange gifts.
I also bought a DVD player for the TV downstairs. We record all kinds of programs upstairs and it is colder there so now we can sit in our "cozy room" to watch those DVDs.
On the way home I stopped at Country Grocer to take pictures of the beautiful display of gingerbread houses. A lady in the bakery bakes those every year. The display is absolutely stunning. After Christmas I believe they will be donated to a rest home. Have a look at some of them:

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When I got home I sorted out all the gifts. All of a sudden I realized that my DVD player was not there. Right away I knew what had happened. I had so many bags that I forgot about that one. Grrrrrrr I phoned Walmart and the player was at the service desk. Needless to say I was very happy and as soon as we had lunch I went back to get it. Early this morning the roads and the stores were nearly empty but this afternoon everything was crowded. I am sure glad I did my shopping this morning. I try to do that most of the time because I hate crowds.
Connecting the player was a real learning curve but I think I did it correctly.
Time to watch the News.
Good bye everybody

Ants

Wanderin Willy's Blog today reminded me of something that happened one night in Indonesia.
When I wake up in the middle of the night I don't like to turn the light on because it might wake Cliff up. I don't know what made me disregard that one night. I am so glad that I did though because when I got to the bathroom our white toilet was black with tiny little ants. It absolutely freaked me out thinking that normally without the light on I would have sat down right on top of those ants. Even now I shudder thinking about it.
We also had little Salamander types called chitchats crawl along the walls. One day I was standing in the tub having a shower when one of them fell on my shoulder. It was another heart stopping moment because it was so unexpected to feel something crawling on me.
I forgot all about those incidents until I started to think about Indonesia again. After all that is now nearly 25 years ago.
We had another pretty nice day today.
Now it's dark outside and I shall go and sit by the fire.
Good night to all :-)

Happy day

Finally the last load of wood has arrived. It is a truck load of tree branches up to 5" thick. They make for great fire starting once they are dry maybe next winter. Now I can concentrate on cleaning up that darn red carpet :-) There is saw dust all over the house. It came in with Cliff's clothes. We should have enough wood to last us for about 3 years. Dry wood burns so much more efficient than fresh wood. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday Cliff worked in the rain. I cannot imagine doing that. I really have to give him credit for sticking with it. He did not even complain. Great guy I have! 
Yesterday and today it was sunny but today it was cold. When we got up this morning it was only minus 2 C and there was frost on the roofs until past 11AM. It warmed up a bit later on.
I still have to do my Christmas Shopping and it has to be done no later than Monday or Tuesday because the gifts have a long way to go and time is getting short.
That's all for now. Good night to all

Sun again

We finally had a nice sunny day. I even went for a walk. After that I made lunch and waited for hubby to come home with another load of wood. That was the fourth load of really great fire wood. One more to go and then it will be done. All of it still has to be split, so he has his work cut out for quite a few days.

I make sure he has cookies to help him through the day ;-)
I spent the rest of the day doing odds and ends in the house.

I wish all my American friends a very good Thanksgiving. I hope your day was a happy one.
Good bye everyone

More about fishing

While we were on the ocean we saw lots of local fishermen catching fish from their fishing platforms like the one below

They fished a lot at night by having a light in the middle of the platform and scooping up the fish that came to the light.
Other times they set off a charge which stunned the fish and then they could also scoop them up. Not my idea of fishing but it got results for them.

We once hooked into a great big grouper. We thought we had a keeper when that grouper showed up instead. We were so stunned that we did not even take time to run for the camera. It had the lure in it's mouth and swam from the side to the back of the catamaran. It was as long as the catamaran was wide, 13 ft. We certainly could not do anything with that big of a fish. After a little while of watching us it spit the lure out and went on it's way. It was the biggest fish I have ever seen.
We were always glad when we got our lures back.

Here is a sailfish that some of the locals caught.



This is a sucker fish. The flat part of the head is attached to one of the bigger fish.

 

Here is a another big mackerel

We left Canada in 1981 and came back in 1985.  Of course all my pictures were taken with a film camera and have to be scanned into the computer and since they are in little albums in a shopping bag finding the right ones is pretty hard to do.

I will call it a day now. Good night.

Catching Fish

As I mentioned in an earlier Blog we used to spend a lot of weekends in Indonesia on our Catamaran on the ocean. When we first bought our share of it nobody did any fishing. That changed as soon as Cliff was one of the owners. He fished all the time and caught loads of fish.
Here is a large Spanish Mackerel

While we were reeling in the fish a shark or Barracuda would get hold of the fish and only left us with the head. We could always tell if it was a shark or Barracuda who was the culprit because a Barracuda would rip off the body of a fish while a shark bite looks like the body had been severed with a cookie cutter, no ragged edges.
Darn Barracuda!!!
 

One day our friend had what felt like a large fish on the line. He was playing it for nearly an hour before we finally were able to see it. It turned out to be a turtle but we still had to net it because we needed our lure back since we could not buy any in our little village. They were only available in Jakarta or Singapore.

We got our lure and let the turtle go again. When the local fellow who looked after our boat heard about that he was sorry that we did not bring it back since apparently they love to eat turtles, better than Kerbau (the local Beef) he said.
We used to give this fellow all the fish heads and lots of whole fish.

This is a Yellow fin Tuna



I loved to eat Yellow fin tuna and Spanish Mackerel and with catching so many we had fish several times a week. The maid and garden boy had their fill too. The maid cooked separately for herself and the garden boy and I found out why when I tried some of their food, my breath was on fire. I can eat spicy hot stuff but that was way too much.
I would really love to eat some of that fish again.

More about the fishing some other time.
Have a good night !  

A stay-at-home day

while Hubby got a load of wood. I don't know where he gets all his energy.
He came home and I had supper ready for him.
I did several loads of laundry and while doing that I thought of another "silver lining" of staying home for the winter. "NO LAUNDROMAT" I was always so happy when that chore was done. So often the washers were broken in the little towns that we went to. At home I always set the washer for a second rinse and when that is all done I give it another rinse. I hate to have any kind of soap residue on my clothes. That's probably overkill but better safe than sorry. Of course I could not do that at the Laundromats so that bothered me too.
It rained almost all day and there was no sun at all.
That's all I can think of at the moment.
Have a great evening.

Company coming!

We had a great afternoon with our friends. Lots of good conversation, food, a glass of wine (or 2) and a beer for the fellows (or 2). We try to get together on Sunday afternoons if other commitments don't interfere.

It was great to read Al's Blog this morning. I like his description of Bisbee very much. On our first trip South we passed through there but only stopped at the mine and the gift shop attached to it. What a shame we did not see anything else.
We travelled with another couple and were desperate to get to the good weather. We were headed to Florida. As it turned out it was the winter the area of Homestead froze up exactly at Christmas. We camped at a little waterhole called Monument Lake on the Tamiami Trail Hwy 41 in Florida. When we arrived in the area the mosquitoes almost ate us alive, it was not pleasant at all. Then the big frost came and that took care of the mosquitoes. Unfortunately it also killed a lot of the vegetation and quite a few of the orange trees. That area had not experienced a hard frost like that for a long time. It was also very humid and we were not used to that. At night it felt like we climbed into beds made with linen that came directly from the washing machine. Not a pleasant feeling. That was the only winter we spent in Florida. From then on it was Arizona or Mexico all the time.  
We met some very nice people at that camp and that made the stay very pleasant. Cliff even swam in the little lake but we had to have a look-out because it was the home of several alligators. We had seen them come up once in awhile, so caution was warranted. The people we met had a swamp buggy and took us for rides in the Everglades. Later on we visited them at their camp on the Kissimmee Lake where they had a houseboat and a bass boat. None of them were working and Cliff was able to get the motors going. We had a great time with those toys. I like remembering those days.
For tonight I'll say good bye and have a good week.

Cookies to go

Today I baked cookies because Cliff will be getting wood tomorrow if the faller was able to fall the trees today. It might not have been possible because we had some wind. We are always happy to get more wood and cookies are my contribution, lucky me.
We had some thunder and lightening yesterday and as a precaution I shut the computers off. Later on we heard on the local News that 300 houses had to be evacuated in the town of Duncan which is about 20 km from us. My heart goes out to the people. That area of Duncan  is on a flood plain so People expect a certain amount of flooding but this was much more than usual.
The water is over the banks of the Shawnigan river down the road from us too but so far no house had water inside. Our house is much higher and will not be affected. It did not rain all that much today so maybe the waters will go down quickly. .
Today we had to vote for or against the major renovation to our existing Arena plus the addition of a pool at the facility. It will be interesting to see which side could get the vote out. It would be a major tax increase for the residents.
We just got word that not all the trees were fallen today, so Cliff will wait for a few days. Now we have to eat the cookies!!! :-)
Good night everyone.