It’s been too long since I’ve shared some photos!
Here are a few from our visit to the Cape George Lighthouse back in March.
It was the first time Monty came with us. Now that we have a back seat in the truck, and a seat cover for it, it is easier to take him on our adventures.
Jeff’s new ride:
Fly on the Lighthouse:
Blackflies arrived today.
I hate blackflies.
But I love this song:
The End.
Moneyball – I am not a fan of Brad Pitt, but I really liked this movie. And I think Jonah Hill stole the show anyway. This is a great baseball movie, but without being too basebally. Toss together some economics, and computer-analysis with that baseball and you have Moneyball. It is a true story based on Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane’s successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to acquire new players. I give it 4/5 stars.
Yogi Bear – I’ve had this one sitting on our PVR for months but hadn’t watched it. I actually assumed it was a cartoon movie, but it isn’t. Yogi and Boo Boo must be computer animated additions. I really enjoyed this movie. Probably the best part was the scenery. I hadn’t realized how much I missed a real forest and a campground – a place where trees are big and tall and thick. This would be a great movie for kids. Especially before a camping trip! I looked it up and it turns out the park where this movie was filmed is Woodhill Forest in West Auckland, New Zealand. Beautiful scenery!
Flipped Off – I was a huge Russel Hantz fan when he was on Survivor each time, but this new “reality” show he stars in with his brother on A&E is just not watchable. They are supposedly flipping houses, and have no experience. Not a piece of it seems real, the entire thing seems hokey, non-original, staged, and sad. I’m really surprised this show made it on A&E.
It seems that there are so many shows I don’t watch, but there are a few series we record each week with our PVR to watch (and fast-forward through the commercials):
Bering Sea Gold – There isn’t a likable person on this show, but we’re still watching them suck up the floor of the Bering Sea hoping to catch a few little gold nuggets in their sluice box on their barges. Maybe we’re just trying to keep a little gold in our TV life until Gold Rush comes back next season. Gold Rush is way way better than this one
Deadliest Catch – This show might be getting a little old, but it still feels like real reality and we enjoy watching the men risk their lives for our crab leg dinners.
CBS Mondays – I tape 2 Broke Girls, Two and a Half Men, How I Met Your Mother, and Mike & Molly on Mondays. I don’t know how CBS keeps viewers for these shows though because they only seem to air new episodes once a month. Back in the pre-PVR days this would have spelled instant failure. I hear May is another sweeps month though so maybe we’ll get a couple new shows. I like Ashton Kutcher on Two and a Half Men at the beginning of the season, but I’m just about done. I hate the woman playing his girlfriend, and it’s just so done and tired. 2 Broke Girls is still amusing, but it seems to have worn off a bit. It’s hard to remember storylines on all 4 of these shows when they are so rarely on.
Survivor & Amazing Race – of course I am still watching Survivor and Amazing Race. I am not that thrilled with this round of Survivor, but I always hang in. I think Chelsea is going to win. Amazing Race isn’t bad, but I could really do without Brendan and Rachel from Big Brother. Man do those two ridiculous people deserve each other. I love Mark and Bopper, but the show seems more and more rigged every time these fan favourites finish last on a non-elimination leg.
House of Bryan – We’re enjoying watching the mansion of a cottage Bryan Baeumler is building.
I haven’t worked in the woods for years, but yesterday I took a day off of work to hang out with a local forester and two of his employees.
It was a foggy, damp, rainy day. We spent about 4 hours walking in a couple areas that were harvested 11-15 years ago and are ready for the clearing saw crews this season.
Most of it was wall to wall balsam fir and spruce, higher than our heads, and so thick.
It was so good to get in the woods, smell the woods, smell the brush saw, gear up in my work boots, gloves, and hardhat, and hang out with like-minded folk for the day.
Now the next part here is just between you and I, so hush up about it.
I am desperately out of shape. Luckily I’ve been standing at work all day since November so I have some leg musculature again. My cardio and endurance is pitiful.
I started the day in Jeff’s raingear, because mine no longer fit. What a mistake. I couldn’t keep his rain pants hitched up high enough, and as soon as I had to lift my leg to walk over some slash, the crotch in the rainpants would be too low. That was what led to my right knee slamming into the slashpile the first time. No time for tears or whining, I am forester!
I eventually ditched the rainpants, for safety sake. Which meant I was just going to get wet. Which I used to do all the time. When I spent a summer on a clearing saw I never wore rain gear and I never wore sleeves. That was 1997 though, and now I’m an old woman and not nearly as tough. I also forgot that decent fitting cotton pants still need a belt when they are going to soak up all the rain. I was pulling them up all day and was afraid to stop for a pee because I knew I’d never get them back up again.
My feet stayed dry for a long time, but that battle wasn’t meant to be won.
We all took turns falling. It just couldn’t be helped. The trees were so thick you had to just push your way through. I pulled my face mask screen down in the front of my hard hat and charged. But you couldn’t see the slash left behind from the last harvest, so it was just a matter of time before the thick trees wrapped around your legs, or you got your leg stuck between two old logs, or your leg found a hole in a slash pile. I think I had the most ridiculous fall of the day when I slipped on a wet piece of wood. My hard hat flew off my head, the forester’s GPS I had in my hand flew in another direction, and since we were on a slope, I couldn’t stop myself from rolling down that slope like a log, gaining speed as I went. Real classy.
For the most part, I did a decent job keeping up to the guys, until we paired off and I had to follow the young 20′ish guy walk for a few kilometres, in what I swear was a series of circles. I was seriously running out of steam. If I stopped for a breather though, I’d lose the glimpse of his blaze orange gear in the trees and I didn’t have a compass, GPS, or map of my own so I had to keep going! Don’t tell anyone, but once I had to use my hands to help lift my left leg over a high hanging log.
By the time we were done for the day, my feet were swimming like goldfish in my boots. I was wet everywhere. I was hungry and thirsty but in a fantastic mood! Maybe because I knew I didn’t have to do it again tomorrow 
Maybe because it was April and there were no bugs yet!
However I am a broken mess today. My legs are purple and blue and scraped from above my knees to my ankles. My muscles are sore everywhere. I was so sore last night in bed that I kept waking myself up every time I moved, so at 3am I came downstairs and slept in the recliner with the leg rest pulled out. My shins are sore, my knees are swollen from being banged so many times on trees, my thighs are sore, my hips are sore, my ribs are sore, and oddly enough my forearms are sore. The only thing I can think that I did with my arms was grab on to trees to stop from falling. I started the day with a new pair of workgloves, but they got so wet I was squeezing my fists to drain out some of the water each time we stopped for a test plot, and by the end of the day one of my fingers had already ripped through the end of one of the fingers.
It was perhaps a great reminder why a desk job isn’t the worst fate a person can have.
But I’d do it all again.
Maybe not for a few days though.
So for all you regulars, you know Zeus was supposed to die almost a year ago. He is my grey tabby cat that is 12 or 13 but has a big tumor in his chest that was the size of his heart when it was discovered. He is miraculously symptom free with one prednisone pill every day with his supper.
I am the only person who loves this cat and wants him to live, so I treat every day like it could be his last. When it is nice weather I put him on a harness and leash and take him outside for a walk in the sunshine.
The problem with doing that is he likes it too much. He will spend the rest of the day meowing obnoxiously at the patio door, trying to get back out.
Today I took him to the front lawn and we sat in my big sunbathing lawn chair. He wouldn’t sit still though. He was stretched out between my legs in the sun, but it wasn’t good enough and then he was lying in the grass, then chasing the birds. Finally my patience ran out because I just wanted to relax in the sun so he had to go back inside.
Hours later, after I was thoroughly sunburnt, I was working in my office and Jeff was watching tv. I came in to the living room to tell Jeff something and it was so breezy I started shutting the windows. I went to the patio door to close it, and there was Monty and Zeus looking in from outside.
I opened the door and Monty ran in. I tried hard not to panic and scare Zeus but he followed Monty and came right in.
Zeus had 4 muddy paws and dirt on his face.
Jeff then told me that when he came inside about 15-20 minutes earlier, he felt something brush by his leg at the door, but he saw nothing (Zeus can be real fast when he senses freedom!)
So who knows what he did during his freedom. Thank goodness he came to the door and didn’t head down to the road. He is a house cat only! He doesn’t know about cars or bald eagles or bobcats etc.
How many lives does this cat have?
The deer already ate my crocuses, and they were sooooo beautiful, for a day.
And the tulips are coming up now.
So to prevent my future tears when the damn deer (and no you can’t shoot her Jeff) (yet) eat my tulips, I went on the offensive today.
But there was just no Deer Off in the stores.
Think I’m joking? It’s really a product! It is made with stinky eggs, garlic, and pepper and keeps bunnies and squirrels away too.
I thought about fencing the entire garden, but that didn’t seem logical.
So I surrounded the tulips with tomato cages.
Still doubtful this will work at all, I tied long strings of orange flagging tape to all the cages.
I’m still not convinced this is going to stop our mischievous deer.
It is a sunny Saturday morning. I am sitting on the porch listening to:
Monty’s nails click across the deck
A singing robin
A woodpecker banging on a tree
A car go by below on the road
A plane high up in the sky
A grouse thumping in the woods
A distant chain saw
A chickadee flick his wings as he flies behind my head
A mourning dove coo
The pretty songs of the finches thanking me for filling up the bird feeders
An ATV driving around across the lake at someone’s cottage
Three blue jays racing each other to the feeder
A dog barking faintly in the distance
The buzz of a dozen flies as they wake up for the day
The ticking expansion of the vinyl siding as the sun starts to heat it up
The wind in the tall spruce trees as the breeze picks up
Sheesh its noisy out here
My brother Brian contacted me this week from Moncton. He was there for work and had a free night.
Moncton is only about 3 hours from here so we decided to meet in Truro for dinner.
We met Brian and took him in our truck for some site-seeing and window shopping.
And by window shopping I mean driving the streets and looking at all the gross furniture, toilets, shopping carts, garbage, and random filth left on the curbs for bulk garbage day for old windows for Jeff’s chicken coop plans. Jeff scored a few good ones!
We went to Murphy’s for some east coast cuisine.
Brian and I had the fish and shrimp special. It was SO MUCH FOOD we could finish. Jeff had the seafood platter that had scallops, haddock, shrimp, and clams.
From the Giant Tiger parking lot:
I can’t believe how lucky I am to still see family once in awhile even living way out here! Come again Brian !
I’m spending on Saturday night watching tornados hit Oklahoma with live video.
Here’s what I’m looking at right now:
This is wild! I hope everyone is safe in their basement.
The station I’m watching has live video coming in from all over, funnels all over the ground, they even had a chopper in the air for awhile chasing them.
I’ve been flushing my nose and sinuses using a neti pot for the last few days. It is so easy.
I’m researching it and people are tossing away their sinus medications and allergy medications and are just flushing out their nose with this saline water.
This is what it looks like:
You CAN NOT use ordinary tap water. It has to be distilled or previously boiled. Why? Because there is a possibility of a parasite in tap water that can cause meningitis. Wikipedia says 3 people have died doing this.
I boil it in the kettle and let it cool until it is lukewarm. The little neti pot takes 8oz of the water, and then I add the saline powder and shake it around.
After I pour half through one nostril, I sniff in a bunch of times to loosen up my sinuses and then I gentle blow everything out. Then I repeat with the other nostril.
Some people say they never have to blow their nose all day every day because of allergies. I’m sticking with this because my nose has been running my entire life. I always have pockets stuffed with kleenex.
As for a sickness update, this is day #6, and my third missed day of work. I’m really sweaty. I keep showering but I’m stinky, so something is being flushed out. My sinuses are still full and my teeth and gums still hurt and my throat hurts and my face is flushed and I’m gross and icky. But I’m thinking I’m turning a corner, so hopefully I can return to work tomorrow.