Lots of Snow

It has been a long winter and like everyone Craig & James getting winter blues. Nice trip to the lake to see how the reported heavy snow was doing at the cabin.

Here is a similar picture taken of the lake in December 2009. You can sure see the different amount of snow..

Quite a bit on the roof, but James had to look at the BBQ to make sure. Of course a wobble pop to help him navigate 🙂 Don’t think I would be able to cook up a steak on those BBQ today without a whole lot of shoveling.

Wow is there a lot of snow at the lake this year. This is probably the most I have seen up there for many, many years. I think the last time I saw this much snow would be back in the early 80’s when Craig, I and Wally took a trip up to the cabin to ensure the snow wasn’t too heavy for the roof of the cabin.

Seeing how I couldn’t make the trip to the lake and use the BBQ I did the next best thing. Thawed out a beautiful rib eye steak from Costco and fired up the BBQ at home for supper tonight. Maybe not quite the ambiance, but I also didn’t have to expend a huge amount of energy shoveling snow to get at the cue either 🙂

Canada Day 2012

The weather finally decided to smarten up and we had a tremendously nice weekend up at the lake. Just the two of us this weekend as the other party came down with a ‘sick day’ and was unable to make the trip. We did enjoy ourselves and I was quite happy that I was able to get a few things done that needed doing around the camp.

The beauty (and best part for me) was just sitting outside enjoying the scenery . . . Smelling the pine smoke and enjoying the quietness (for the most part) of the forest country.

I was also able to switch out a few parts in the washroom with the end result being that the bath and the toilet are up and running once again. Mind you, the bath is only cold water, but for the sissy people, you can heat up a bit of warm water on the stove 🙂 I did run the cold into the tub and yah it is a bit chilly, but definitely not as cold as the lake.

We also tried out the bedroom that we have been using for the last couple years on the first night, then on the second night we moved over to the ‘master suite’. Way nicer bed and I enjoyed the sleep. The other party wasn’t quite as convinced as I as it was a bit harder for her to sneak out of bed early in the morning. But we both enjoyed the extra room that James and Craig and I had created on our middle of June trip. It does wonders for the bedroom. So now we have to decide and claim which is going to be ‘our room’!!

My only complaint for the weekend was the number of sirens you could hear. Wholly smokes, you would swear we were in the city with the amount of fire trucks, police vehicles and ambulances tearing by on the highway at all hours. But then looking at the population that swells Emma Lake and the other beaches and lakes in the area it is no wonder. The road is quite narrow and curvey so it is nice that the emergency vehicles are annoucing themselves to curtail a serious accident. Of course being that it was a provincial holiday, there were lots of people out and about who probably partook a few too many wobbly pops!

All in all, great weekend and looking forward to lots more this summer . . .

You Gotta Luv It!

A Little Storm !!

All day Tuesday we were hounded on the radio and tv about tornadoes and crappy weather coming our way. Everywhere we went you kept an eye on the sky as you just didn’t know when it was going to strike.

We were just finishing up supper and the power went out and boom! it started to rain. I went and checked out the front window and was presented with a downpour.

Within a minute or so, the downpour turned into a hurricane (not really, but it seemed like it!).

Then it really started to come down !!!

I knew that it just could not keep up this pace and it didn’t. It started to slow down to just a normal summer rain. The wind came up though and when I quickly took a look in the backyard I knew we were in for ‘a storm’. The flag pole was already bent and the wind was getting stronger.

As the wind and rain started to subside I took another peek out the back and was so thankful that James ‘pride and joy’ was spared. Not by much mind you, but nary a scratch on the beauty.

I moved back to the front of the house and was presented with a big mess on the street . . .

At least the rain had almost stopped, so I grabbed my jacket and headed out to see how the rest of ‘main street’ faired. A quick glance showed that all was not well down the street. I stopped at the bank and took a shot towards the west. That is the bank fence across the sidewalk . . .

Oh great, here is the bank’s garden shed that used to sit in behind the fence. There’s the propane tank that normally resides on the propane bbq which just happens to be sitting in the interestion in a couple pieces. . .

As I slowly started forward I tentatively looked in the bank’s back yard. Yikes!

Now this really didn’t look good at all. This is the Elks’ Seniors building. The steel roof was lived right off and blown about a block away…

Within short order there were people at the Seniors putting up tarps on the roof, other people putting plastic sheets around cars/trucks that had their windows smashed out (6-7 vehicles). I continued my short walk and came across the house just down the street from me. This is looking at the front of the house…

My that tree had small roots for such a big tree!

This is the look from the side of the house . . .

There was more damage throughout the town. Trees down in almost every yard. Some actually fell on roofs. Lots of shingles blown off homes. A 65-70 foot mobile home was moved off it’s foundation, but it stayed upright but of course there will be damage to gas lines and whatnot underneath. I hear out in the country a few farms also got hit fairly hard with predominately wind damage.

But in it all, no one got hurt and that is the best news ever. All in all our power was out for the better part of 12 hours or so. It was out most of the night and then came back on only to crash and go out again in the morning. Even as I started to type this the power went out once, but from the looks of things SaskPower has done a tremendous job getting the Town back up and running.

Housing Activity Continues

For some, renovations are the answer. For others, buying a new house….

For others, building a new home . . .

For others, selling land for development . . .

Whatever is your method, we are having growth in our Town and that is a great thing 🙂

Finally Some Activity

This older house in town has dearly needed some TLC for the last couple years. The previous owner just didn’t have the time nor the desire to actually do any renovations. A new owner as of June 1st and already there are signs of greater things to come.

I sure like the activity as it sits on main street and was getting to be a bit of an eyesore. Hopefully the new owners will continue to upgrade…

Going Camping!

As I was browsing around the net I came across a picture that I found was just tremendous. Definitely would fit right in with our lifestyle… I’m not sure where I would go about getting the trailer, but it sure does look interesting 🙂

Of course that would handle Sam’s transportation but then I got to thinking, what about me? Then it dawned on me, sitting out in our shed (still in running condition) is my old flame. If I remember correctly it was probably back in the mid 80’s that I actually last drove the thing. But since we moved here I have started it up and it purred away. To get it ready for the road I would only have to bring it out of the shed, dust it off, change the oil, put in some fresh gas and away we would go …

What a way to go camping 🙂

Leg Cramps

For many years off and on I’ve had the problem of ‘leg cramps’ in the middle of the night. If a cool breeze happened to touch my leg while I was sleeping I would then get a ‘charlie horse’ in the worst way. To get rid of this ‘charlie horse’ I would need to stand on my tip toe and bounce a bit. It worked a way better if it is was a nice cool tile floor rather than rug, but then trying to get to the tile floor was a killer.

I talked to my doctor about this and he said drink lots of water, etc. So I tried gallons of water throughout the day. The only thing this did was that I had to pee all night long, but I still got the odd ‘charlie horse’. So the doc next said try calcium pills.

Didn’t work!

Then I spoke to someone and they advised that they had heard of people having this problem and they took cod liver oil pills. Now I haven’t taken cod liver oil since I was about 8 years old or younger. I remembered it was in liquid form and tasted like shit or what I supposed shit tasted like not having ever purposefully eaten it. So I really wasn’t all that thrilled about taking the cod liver oil. But on one trip to Wal Mart I spoke to the gal in the Pharmacy and she advised me there are now pills for cod liver oil. Hesitantly I decided to try them.

After a couple weeks I had no further leg cramps, but the odd twitch every now and then. We were improving for sure. The only problem I did find was at times when you burped you got this fishy taste in your mouth from the cod liver oil. Still better than cramps for sure.

Then I was browsing around and came upon the following write up from Snopes Oldwives Tale – Leg Cramps. I took a read on it and sort of laughed it off. Then I re-read it again and thought what the hell, lets give it a whirl.

The write up said that it didn’t really matter which soap you used but I had a bar of dove soap in the cupboard so that is what I used. I took the bar out of the box and placed it between the sheets. Of course I spoke to the good wife to inform her what the lump in the bed was going to be. After all I didn’t want her to find this bar of soap in the bed and wonder how in hell did that get there or figure I’d gone off the deep end. Even so, she did look at me a little peculiarly. I also ended taking the bar of soap with us to the lake where I’ve always had more problems with the charlie horses. This is probably because it gets cooler there at night then here at home.

Needless to say it has been a month and half and believe it or not I’ve not had one leg cramp since. Now I’m not sure whether it was the cod liver oil or the bar of soap in my bed or a combination of the two. All I know is that I haven’t had to try and scramble out of bed in the middle of the night and stand on my tippy toes to alleviate the pain in almost 45 days.

Of course this may not work for everyone, but so far it has worked for me. Hopefully it will continue to work as those charlie horses are just not fun at all . . .

Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

Well not quite, but I must admit a new innovation in our library system has made me quite a bit happier. The library system has brought in Library 2 Go which allows you to sign out ebooks from the library to your ‘Supported Ebook Device’. This can be to a computer or to a mobile device such as iPad, Libre, Nook, Kobo, Sony or to many smartphones such as Android, BlackBerry, iPhone or a windows phone 7.

I use a BlackBerry Torch which is a touch screen but I have also set it up onto a BlackBerry Pearl Flip. The beauty of this is that you can download an ebook from the library onto your smartphone and read it whenever you want. Even if you are in an area where there is no mobile coverage you can still access your ebook as it is stored on your phone.

When you download the ebook you have it stored on your device for 14 days. At the end of 14 days the ebook is automatically returned to the library system. Of course if you finish the ebook prior to the 14 days you can ‘delete and return the book’ earlier. If you have not finished the book prior to your 14 days, then you may be out of luck, however, I have had success in returning the ebook and then resigning it out right away for another 14 days. This works as long as no one has put a ‘hold’ on the book you are viewing as you need to have the book available for downloading again.

Prior to downloading an ebook you do need a few things. One is you need Adobe Digital Edition Account. It is a free and only takes a minute or so to set up your account. You need the account to authorize your ebooks to be downloaded to your device. If you are using a smartphone like BlackBerry then you need to download a free app called ‘OverDrive Media Console’. Once you have the OverDrive Console you open it up on your smartphone and then ‘Add in a Library’. Of course you will need an actual library card number to access your individual library. You can search through and find your local library and then be able to search through the system once you have signed in with your access.

I find it is a bit easier to search for new books by using a computer as the screen is a little easier to use as it is larger than the smartphones and it is easier to use a full keyboard. Once I find a ebook I want to download, I then open up OverDrive on my smartphone and do a search through the smartphone and continue on downloading it that way. The downloads are fast as it normally only takes less than a minute using the 3G network. Using 1X is a little slower but not by much.

Once the ebook is downloaded you can start reading. Individual smartphones utilize different methods of changing pages. On my Torch I can just use my finger to touch the screen and go forward or backwards. On the Pearl Flip you can use the ‘space’ key to go forward or the ‘p’ key to go backwards. You can also use the trackball for this. Either way is fairly convenient.

In my younger days I always used to carry around a pocket novel in my back pocket so when I had a few minutes to spare I could haul out the book and read a bit. Now a days pocket books have gotten so large they just don’t fit in a pocket any longer. I normally have my cell phone with me at all times I’m away from home so it is very convenient say when in a doctor’s office waiting room to pull out the cell and in seconds be reading my ebook.

I’ve found the font on the smartphone are quite readable as well and you can actually increase the size of the font to your liking. Even reading in the dark is no problem as the smartphone has a backlight to highlight the screen. The text is only black and white, but it is sufficient and quite easy to read.

As stated, almost ‘Best Thing Since Sliced Bread’ but not quite . . .

Is It Already Time?

As I was out sitting in the back yard enjoying some of our fine summer weather I was interrupted by a loud squawking above in the sky. Now I do have a purple martin house in the yard and have had a couple pairs setting up ‘house’ throughout the summer so I’m used to the martin’s squawking. However, this was a loud louder and a way more noise than normal.

It seemed like every martin in town came over to visit today and they were circling above my yard. Nope it wasn’t excessively busy with mosquitoes or anything like that and this was about 1:00 p.m. It took me a few minutes and when I glanced at the calendar I knew what was happening.

Yup the martins are getting ready to make their move to southern climes. Already? Gosh it just seems like we started summer and here the birds are getting to leave us for the winter months. By checking back a few years I see that the martins usually start to get ready to depart about this time of August. They are one of the first birds to make the migration south so this is not any earlier than normal.

I hate it when they start to get ready to leave though as I know we are getting the end of our summer. Hopefully though we will have a grand September and October. The good part about that is that usually the mosquito population also takes a nosedive. But in all honesty the mosquitos were not too too bad this year. Maybe a few more than normal, but nothing too bad.

Yup it is closing in on the middle of August and it is that time of the year once again – ‘Already’! 😦