Category Archives: What I've Been Up To

Highlights from Yesterday

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Here are my highlights from yesterday:

  • Snowstorm!
  • No power for about 11 hours
  • Melted snow to boil frozen tortellini’s in on the BBQ burner
  • I napped
  • Jeff cooked sausage and stew on the BBQ
  • We were toasty warm because we heat with wood
  • I finished reading The UV Advantage with my LED headlamp
  • Some people around here just got their power back today, after 24 hours – I’m guessing the heavy snow brought down branches and power lines
  • The world is vastly different here at night with no power and no yard lights. It is a nice treat!

Jeff plowed out the driveway yesterday morning when the snow was already getting to be pretty deep and heavy for the ATV. He just plowed it again this morning.

Here are some photos:

Feb 18 snowstorm

There was no wind when it was snowing heavily, so it just kept piling up on everything.

Feb 18 snowstorm

Feb 18 snowstorm

Feb 18 snowstorm

Feb 18 snowstorm

Feb 18 snowstorm

Feb 18 snowstorm

Feb 18 snowstorm

Feb 18 snowstorm

Feb 18 snowstorm

I just ordered a pizza delivery from 3 provinces away

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It is my Mom’s birthday and I was racking my brain what I could send her for her birthday. Something special. Something quirky. Something to make her smile. This year my Grandma is living with Mom and she has been sick so I wanted to do something for Mom that Grandma could enjoy too.

So I thought of a million different things, and settled on one.

I was going to make them dinner.

Only I’m in Nova Scotia and they are in Listowel, Ontario.

So I started my research last week. Who could I rope into bringing them food? Or maybe I could get a cake delivered? What about an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen? Who would deliver it? Bribe the kids who work there to swing it by Mom’s after their shift?

Nah….

I decided to go way simpler.

I remember once Mom and Grandma Stock came to visit me in the Sault and I went to their hotel room over looking the St. Marys River to play cards with way too much pizza and chicken wings and we had a riot.

So I decided I was going to surprise them with pizza and wings.

A couple days I started to narrow down the plan, and I found the menu to one of the local pizza places in Listowel that I knew wouldn’t lead me astray. I browsed all the specials and the menu and started the plot. How was I going to find out if Mom would be home and then how was I going to convince her not to cook?

So I started poking Mom with text messages, trying to find out what she was doing for her birthday. She had no plans, and no visitors.

So I told her I would be making her dinner.

That was a day or so ago.

Today all day Grandma has been telling Mom she is so silly and would she just take a pizza or something out of the freezer for dinner?

Mom said No. Lisa and Jeff are making dinner.

Oh you are so foolish, Grandma Stock said. They are in Nova Scotia. They can’t make you dinner.

All day long I was anxious. When would I call in the order? Will they answer a call from a different area code? Would they take payment over the phone? Could I put a tip on for the driver on the phone?

When it was close to the time, I put the menu on my computer screen, and the number from the pizza place’s website, and the address for Mom’s house.

Then I placed the call.

I was so nervous. What if I didn’t pull this off? Then it would be Mom’s birthday and she wouldn’t get anything from me!

Ring. Ring. Then it went to an auto answer and said it would redirect my call to their closest restaurant to me.

No!!! That won’t work! Click.

I remembered seeing another number for them on one of their website, so I dug around and found a new number.

A young foreign fellow answered the call. He was kind, but slow, and stumbled around. He took my order, and then asked for Mom’s address. I gave the house and street number, but then he wanted to know if it was North, South, East or West on that street. He said he wasn’t from there. I said I wasn’t either, and I calling from Nova Scotia, but I thought the street was short so the driver should be able to find it.

I slowly gave him my credit card number, and he slowly read it back out as I delivered it, with the expiration date, for everyone in the restaurant to jot down (garlic fingers on us I guess. haha)

7 minutes and 33 seconds after he answered the call, the order was complete and the pizza was on the way into the oven!

25 minutes later, like clock work, a jubilant Mom was on the phone. She said Grandma was in tears. Stuck between laughter and crying, Grandma couldn’t believe I just made them dinner, and she was off to fetch dinner plates. Mom sounded so tickled. Funny thing is – they were playing cards when their dinner arrived, just like that night in the Sault.

I got them 2 medium pizzas, BBQ wings, Caesar salad, 4 pops, and some Brownies.

Mom said they are full and have enough food for a couple more days (so if you are in the area, swing by :D ).

Travel between Ontario and Nova Scotia can be tricky in winter – at least for us

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So last time we travelled to Ontario in the winter, we spent Christmas in a small motel in Quebec with a broken truck and we had to eat Leonard.

Fast forward 4 years, and Jeff found himself working in Burlington last week for work.

He tried to come home on Friday, and the plane got all the way to the Bay of Fundy, but there was too much snow on the Halifax runway, so the plane turned around and took him all the way back to Toronto!

WestJet put him up in a hotel, but they lost his luggage, so he had no clothes, no toothbrush, and nothing to do.

They weren’t able to get him on another flight until Saturday at 5:30pm!

Luckily he made it to Halifax this time, and his luggage was waiting for him at the airport.

He sure was happy to be home!

Today’s bird party sponsored by….

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Brian & Leanne & family!!

They had a humongous bag of sunflower seeds delivered to our house for Christmas.

Today I filled up the bird feeders before I left for work with their seed.

I see the birds have already dug in!

Bird Party

Update: Argh. Looks like the cam might have froze on one pic. I’ll reset this afternoon, if it doesn’t fix itself.

-14°C and I forgot…..

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I was almost all the way to town this morning when I realized I forgot something.

The thermometer on the dash varied between -11°C and -15°C during my drive.

But it was a nice calm morning, no wind, just beautiful.

But I forgot….

MY COAT!

Oh well, I often just carry it from the car to my office in the morning anyway. As long as we don’t have a fire drill and the car doesn’t break down on the way home, I’ll survive :-)

Fascinated by the idea of daemons, and it’s official, I’m an open sensitive soul

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Have you seen The Golden Compass?

We watched it over the holidays, and ever since I’ve been fascinated by the daemons in the story.

In the world the movie is in, people’s souls are actually animals and everyone has one that is their constant companion. A person is metaphysically connected to their daemon and can never be separated. If one dies, they both die.

Sometimes I feel like Zeus is my daemon when he is following me all the time, but he doesn’t talk, well not much anyway.

I was just googling to learn more about the idea and the books that the movie is based on, and I found a link to a quiz that can determine what kind of animal my daemon would be.

The quiz is long, but the results seem accurate to me, and Zeus would qualify as a suggested form for my daemon!

It said, I am an Open Sensitive Soul:

You are an open, emotional person and very sensitive to the things going on around you. You are empathetic and make an excellent listener, but you also like to share your thoughts, feelings, and opinions with the world. You are not particularly extroverted, preferring time at home with a group of friends than a busy and stressful night out among strangers and acquaintances.

You wear your heart on your sleeve, and probably become upset when someone tries to give you constructive criticism. Your loved ones tend to accidentally hurt your feelings with their insensitive, off-hand remarks, and then accuse you of being too sensitive.

You are open and honest, and you do not do well at hiding your feelings, even when you try. You prefer to get things out in the open and resolve them, rather than leaving them to fester. Other people might sometimes frustrate you by hiding their feelings, shrugging and saying “oh well” instead of standing up for themselves, like you try to do.

Your daemon’s form would represent highly sensitive nature, your frank honesty, and your devotion to friends and family. He or she would stick close to you and whisper comfort and advice in your ear most of the time. When you or your loved ones needed defending, however, he or she would become as openly vocal as you, and help you in your protestations.

Suggested forms: Songbird, Dove, Swan, Domestic cat, Border Collie.

Want to try the quiz?
Go to: http://www.okcupid.com/tests/the-golden-compass-daemon-test

Good morning, slept in, Jeff is missing, and the birds are coming

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Awwww, the perfect Saturday morning.

It is after 10am and my hair is still standing straight up. I can only guess that Jeff woke up in the dark hours but I slept right through.

I was stumbling through a old mechanic’s shop carrying empty pop cans with my sister Julie trying to get to the ocean, and hoping Dad that was somewhere behind us talking to a guy of the last shop we snuck through would find our same short cut and catch up with us.

But by 9:45am I figured I should leave the ocean and wake up and shake off the dreams.

First thing I did was stumble outside and fill up the bird feeders.

We’ve been having bird parties every morning. Sometimes 30+ evening grosbeaks fly in! That bird species always seems to travel in packs.

Still no blue jay has showed up to tackle the new whole peanut feeder.

Last night when I got home from work there were two really large grouse in a tree behind the house. They were walking along the branches, eating something. Branch ends? Buds? There were on the hardwood trees. I tried to take photos of them, but it was getting dark and I couldn’t hold the camera still enough. Sometimes I think I should be keeping the tripod out of the box and ready to go.

Jeff can’t be found, but neither can his truck, so I’m assuming he went to town early to find a new tire for the ATV wagon. It is going up to +5 today so he’ll likely be itchin’ to get more gravel into the ruts in the driveway.

We also need to get another cord of wood in the basement to do it’s last drying before burning. Jeff is going to be in Ontario for a week later this month, so he wants to be extra sure I can survive on my own, and have plenty of wood to burn and keep warm.

OH! The first birds have arrived to the bird party. Let me take a photo for you.

–pause–

bird party

bird party

bird party

Oh and here is the least out of focus photo of one of the grouse in the tree last night:
grouse

Jeff is back. He had no luck getting a new tube for the tire for the ATV wagon trailer, so he will have to order the one from Princess Auto for $5, although it will also have a $5 shipping charge. And he might as well order two since the other one has been repaired too.

So much for that. And how do I summon a bluejay?

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We tried to take advantage of the non-frozen state of the world today by shoveling gravel into our ATV trailer and dumping it on the huge ruts the rain is carving into our driveway.

But we were only three loads in, and barely sweaty, when the tire on the wagon broke. The stem broke right off the tube so I guess that finishes that.

We got so much rain over night again the ground is completely saturated, the water has filled the drain of our sink downstairs, and I spotted 2-3 inches of daffodil growth from the first daffodils that bloom in the spring.

Where did you go bluejays?

Brian and family got us this really cool bird feeder. It is a spring/slinky like metal that wraps around a circle wire and hangs on a post. Then you fill the stretched out spring/slinky thing with whole peanuts in the shell.

Here is what the blue jays are supposed to do:

We always seem to have blue jays, and they are the first bird to discover I’ve filled the feeder, but they’ve been missing in action since I put the peanuts out there. I hope the peanuts don’t rot in the rain.

Boxing Day 2011

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Christmas 2011 was lovely, and technology made it so much easier.

With phones, and FaceTime I was able to be part of my family’s Christmases. It was such a treat to see our niece open her gift from us and to see how excited she was!

The weather was perfect. We got the perfect kind of Christmas snow covering. All the spruce trees were covered in snow, the ground is covered, there were deer tracks (or were they reindeer??) across the front lawn.

Here is our Christmas view:

Christmas 2011

Awesome Christmas socks my sister gave me. They have rubber monkeys on the bottom for grips!

Christmas 2011

Jeff prepping our turkey:

Christmas 2011

Christmas 2011

Christmas 2011

My new scarf and hat from my sister:

Christmas 2011

Monty was so tuckered out after Christmas. He is like a little kid on Christmas morning, so excited! He wants to help open all the gifts and sniff them all over. Yes, he even had his own stocking :-)

Christmas 2011

Today it is milder and the snow is turning to rain. Jeff just plowed off the driveway so we can get it back down to gravel as it melts. +10 and rain on the way for Wednesday!