some more snow

Well, all the weather forecasts agreed on some semblance of a storm, and they happened to be fairly accurate for a change. Sunday morning I looked out the window and thought it had been yet another overenthusiastic forecast. But I guess my third-floor view can make even the snow cover seem puny.

We headed off to church through at least a few inches of freshly fallen snow. Everyone was driving was pretty slowly. Except maybe one car. On the freeway (and all other divided roads), everyone seemed to stay in the right lanes, but since the plow trucks tend to throw snow right rather than left, the leftmost lane was in the best shape. The car seemed to tend floatily toward various incorrect directions but after some time I realized that was the doing of the wind and not a slippery surface.

We got to church only 6 minutes late and rounded out the morning's attendance of 25 souls (a third of the usual). After church we had to reschedule a planned visit due to the weather and did a less rural visit instead. The snow kept coming down, so to wait for it to be over would be futile (or at least rather lengthy). Heading home later that afternoon, the freeway was almost invisible due to drifting snow. One thing I'm not crazy about seeing glimpses of in those rare bare patches of road is the solid white line on the left side of my car.

The drive home wasn't terribly fast, but again the leftmost lane was the best of the bunch. (Oh, and I've reaffirmed my belief that the sensation of speeding is relative: it felt rewarding 'zipping' by all the other cars at over 70 km/h.) More than once we'd 'zip' by a freeway on-ramp, and there would be 8 or so vehicles lined up and stopped; a handful of people would be pushing the lead vehicle through the mounds of plow-displaced snow until it could carry on under its own steam, after which they would get behind the next car in line and push some more...

We disturbed some snow mounds getting through to our off-ramp, and then stopped to help a minivan that had gotten stuck. Then off to home, adventure over.

Or not. Our common paved area on the condo grounds hadn't been plowed yet, so we got hung up fairly quickly. I had suspected this would happen, but there was no harm in trying. So off I went to trade my Sunday shoes for boots. A few friendly neighbours were outside shovelling, and they came over to help. Another neighbour took his all-wheel-drive Subaru and broke a trail to my carport, and without too much effort we had the car parked in very little time. Yay for nice neighbours!

By the time it was over, it was a 37cm snowfall. Not too bad in my books, although it's still a little short of the 95cm we had in a single snowfall four years ago in Halifax. Good times, good times...

Accumulation on some garden furniture in our backyard...


Some blurry pics showing accumulation on the deck...


So Elaine, I imagine your hubby wasn't as impressed as we are... :)

Pictureless update

Okay, I couldn't do a completely artless post... bear with my fantastic drawing-with-mouse skillz...

Life's been relaxing and fairly routine. Carrie's mom was in town for a conference so she stayed over for a couple of weekends. Our first out-of-town visitor... and after living here only a month!

I got a little addicted to websites for used stuff over the last few weeks. I tried to sell some things online but have managed to sell only one item so far. Buying stuff, on the other hand, goes a lot easier. Among the things I picked up is a fake Christmas tree. (Let's face it -- being from where I'm from, I couldn't very well stoop to paying for a real tree!) Our first tree! It's a little bare but I have big and exciting plans: each year buy $5 worth of junk to hang on it, and within a few decades it will be as well decorated as the best of them. My only regret is that our living room is 10 feet high and I only bought a 7' tree. But I guess that means we can take it with us if/when we move. Oh, and if I come across a big fat 3-foot star it will make a great tree-topper.


Last week Saturday we thought we'd go cross-country skiing in Gatineau Park, which is just across the bridge on the dark side in Quebec. It's maybe a 20-minute drive so rather convenient. But it turned out that the rental place there wasn't renting skis until this weekend, so our other option was to go snowshoeing. Unfortunately the footwear I'd chosen for the day were my Nike runners since I expected to be changing into ski boots. And though I've heard often enough that my shoes could double as skis or snowshoes, I wasn't eager to test that theory. By being a little cautious and staying on the semi-packed trail, I didn't get too much snow in my shoes. The outsides got very wet, but I was surprised to find that they were quite waterproof indeed.


After a short excursion we went for a drive to see the area. We drove along Meech Lake. (I heard of this back in current events classes in school back in the olden days, but hadn't--and still largely haven't--a clue what that was all about.) We had an old disposable camera with us that was a relic from our Europe trip, so went about about filling it that day. No sooner was it full than we had several up-close deer sightings. Oh well, we now know that there's some sizeable wildlife not far from the city.

Once we get the film developed (wow that sounded strange and old-fashioned) we'll finally get to see how our pictures turned out from the Cinque Terre, five villages on the northwestern coast of Italy. These towns are connected by rail and hiking trails, and we found that area to have some of the most beautiful scenery we would encounter in Europe. And I had to go and forget to take my real camera that day.

Our minister and his family have moved to Taber, AB so there were multiple Christmas-program-slash-farewell evenings to see them off. Ottawa was his first congregation and he's been here nine years; it's clear they will be sorely missed.

It's been snowing off and on so there's a fair bit of snow and it seems to be here to stay. We thought we'd take advantage of this and go snowboarding on 2-for-1 Tuesday evenings at a local ski hill in Gatineau Park. We had driven by the ski *hill* on Saturday and I must say I wasn't exactly eager to hit those quasi-slopes, but Carrie's mom managed to bring both our snowboards from B.C. when she visited, so we're quite determined to use them one way or another. A friend of mine quit work early and headed over to our place; sadly the fact that it was snowing out (and people must still not be too steady on their winter legs/tires) meant a usually-40-minute drive took him two hours! Meanwhile Carrie had headed out with our car to the hill with a coworker; what should have taken maybe 25 minutes took over an hour, and that only got them to where she hit the ditch. Another hour wait for a tow truck (a booming business that night), and finally off to the slopes for a couple hours of fun. (Since they ran aground not 3 minutes from the ski hill, it was a no-brainer to decide to carry on with the original plan. Plus on 2-for-1 night a lift ticket costs $12.50 a person so that's not so bad.) Since the 2-hr-drive friend's tires were even worse than our car's, we decided to enjoy the après-ski beer and pizza without the ski (or board) element.


Our inside-scoop unofficial weather guy from church has me pumped for the snowfall expected tomorrow. I expect many feet of fluffy goodness. Okay, maybe half that, but hopefully lots anyway. It will interesting to see what the driving conditions will be.


Well that post was way too long.