Clean doggy

As you can see, the day turned out awesome in our little neighbourhood. Emil and I took a x-country ski down the railroad tracks to Sunshine Bay Park, and back... seemed like an hour's ski, but was much longer...so much longer that my legs felt like jelly afterwards! (We remedied that by having a hot-tub tonight!)
Tomorrow morning we are hooking up with the Sharon and Bud and Sue and Pearl to see if we can find our way onto the walking trail that borders Slocan river, for a ski up that way. I'll let you know how it goes.
"The Creator"

S'now Place like Home...

 

See, the groundhog was right...spring is on it's way!

Joyce met me after work and we took our tour of the two new exhibitions at the Touchstones Museum and Gallery ...one was filled with Hockey Memorabilia outlining the history of Hockey in Nelson, including a whole section on the Ladies Hockey team, the Blueliners. Joyce knew half the people they were talking about, or knew their families, through her work at the Mount.Many players who were highlighted from the Trail Smokies,were also names we both recognized, such as Seth Martin and Addie Tambelini.The old team photos, and jerseys on display are worth taking in the show. Ted Hargreaves and Ernie Gare were mainstays in the hockey history of Nelson, and I am sure that their names will always be associated with their love and promotion of the game, here in the Kootenays.

The big gallery showed off the talents of the the Design group called Freshly Squeezed. It gave everyone a new outlook on how products are marketed.. using, emotion, fact, or future promises. Many of the installations were interactive, giving everyone a chance to get involved with the piece.
We had fun choosing options on a computer and how our choices compared to other people. Also we COULD have drawn all over a whole wall, but a few young people took over the felt pens and we were left high and dry with our expert opinions and catchy phrases that could have made up part of the installation. Next time, we'll head for the felt pens immediately!
Okay...ta-ta for now. I talked to Sonia dn apparently there were no earth tremours that she could feel. Apparently the threat has been down graded. Good.
Also ,she and Annette took in the Barenaked Ladies Concert ...best concert she had been to!
Also,Sonia took part in a clothing exchange..some friends each brought ten pieces of clothing or jewellry to exchange with the other gals... Great idea eh? Sonia unloaded her stuff and came home with new and fun things. She was happy, and they were too!
Nighty night...skiing will come early.

Happy Ground hog day...read all about it

Eric Shackle's eBook - Will Punxsutawney Phil wake up too soon?

Greetings from Punxsutawney!

Greetings from Punxsutawney!
Happy Groundhog Day and Happy Birthday to Terry and Chris.

China too plays sillyhuggers

Eric Shackle's eBook - China too plays sillyhuggers
The latest craze sweeping the world...Hugathons!
Scroll to the bottom of the link I gave you and then click on Juan Mann's link to see his You Tube video.

Maytag Recall

Maytag Recall
You can check this website to see if your Maytag dishwasher is part of a nationwide recall. It would have to have been purchased 1997-2001.. and at this website,you can check the model and serial numbers to see if yours is in that catagory. Mine is. Apparently a fire hazard can result.
I'll call about it tomorrow...1-800-675-0794.

Congratulations Richard and Jenna

 

Thanks Roseanne, and Glen for passing along the wedding photos of Richard and Jenna...Looks totally beautiful, in Hawaii! Congratulations to them!

Bootiful Bouquet

Thanks Lynn for the lovely spring flowers. Soleil thinks they were meant for her! I am so thrilled with the beautiful tulips...usually they go all droopy the first day, but look at these beauties...Now, if I could only grow them.
I think I am too tired to blog much tonight...Cheers everyone!

Sun setting on the Purcells..

 

Sphinx Mountain

 

To the right of the photo ,you can see Sphinx mountain all all lit up...about th e only time of the year ,you really get the sun setting so radiantly on it, like that.

Happy Week-end

 

Cheers to the Week-end...It was a good one! Lynn came out of a nice visit, bringing me all kinds of wonderful yummy edible things, including a beautiful bouquet of fresh spring flowers! Thank-you Lynn, for your kindness and generosity...I always appreciate it!
We were in the middle of draining our hot-tub of the Bromine contents. I gave up on trying to keep it balanced. When the alkalinity was right, the Ph was high. When the PH was right, the Alkalinity was gone. So we cleaned it all out and started afresh with Chlorine...back to where we were. I couldn't stand tubbing in a tub full of froth. Froth isn't good in a hot-tub. Froth= Bacteria.
Maybe it was too much Victoria secret Body butter, but I don't think so...I think the jet action was too high for Bromine.
Get over it B.

Needless to say, after our visit and our dinner, we migrated to the fresh tub and whaled away under the 3/4 moon until it was well past eleven. We still came in and had a snack and yapped for another hour or so.

At 8:30 am, Sharon was on the phone to announce that her and Bud and Sue would be coming out to ski the tracks ...starting at our house! Good idea! (They skied Balfour on Saturday and it was icy).
Lynn and I ate a french toast and bacon breakfast,then got suited up. She wore my skis,and I wore Emil's skis and before you know it, Sharon and Bud and Sue had arrived,all ready to ski. Now, skiing down the train tracks, wouldn't normally be my first choice of locations to ski,considering we do actually see a train or two pass by once or twice a day. "They come at night, don't they?" says Sue. Then Sharon says "ahhh, they come late in the afternoon only!" I knew that they came both at night and int he late afternoon, and one should be comfortable knowing that you know when the trains come, but it is a different matter when you are skiing around a corner, smack dab in between two rails of steel,and there isn't what I'd call a real special place to jump into, should one hear a train coming...or the Pilot truck coming. Face it, we'd have been five spots in a row with ski-prongs hanging out in front and back of each of us, had a train ever rounded the corner!

Aside from that small deterrent, it was perfectly level,and pretty much easy to x-country ski on. Bud and Sharon led the way ,with Lynn and I bringing up the rear, and Sue, in the middle.
Do you know that after less than an hour of skiing we,were long past Sunshine Bay Park-putting on good mileage. At that point, Sue had to find a tree to wee behind, and as we were waiting, I nearly keeled over when I shifted the big body weight. My knees were tired, so I suggested that at least Lynn and I head back home. No, everyone concurred, it was time to turn back. Bud showed us a few ski tricks, to help get us in a good ski rhythm and in no time we were back to our end of the bay.
Everyone came in for a hot-rum ( with or without the rum) and a plate of natchos and cheese with yummy toppings of tomatoes, red peppers and finely chopped onions. Dunked in my homemade salsa, it was the perfect way to end a good ski day.
Nothing ever totally ends around here!
The X-country ski gang left, and then Lynn and Emil and I had some of Lynn's good soup and a little sandwich to top off the natchos which were only a good appetizer!
Lynn packed up and left, and in an hour or so, Emil's co-worker, Janice, arrived.
See, no dull moments around here.
We snacked and blabbed, then Emil fired up the Barby and grilled some Rainbow trout steaks. Yum! With my garden green beans that I had frozen this summer and the Orange Strawberry (almost) salad, it was another good meal. ( I didn't mention that we made roast beef and Yorkshire puddings for dinner last night.
At 9:30 we all decided to go for a hot-tub. Now I am petering out. Everyone else is in bed,including Silky, s o that is where I ought to go. After all, it is work tomorrow. Have a good week!

Happy Robbie Burns Day

 

Way to go Correna for keeping the spirit alive. Note,she won the prize of Shortbread for being "The Most Tarten"..Probably for also being the most redhead...Is this your alter ego? I love that C. always has the fun gene in her!
I am thinking that I was happy to not be eating Haggis for my dinner last night.
Have a great week-end ...I am sooooo late for work. I need breakfast in a big hurry.

More Snow...Echhh!

 

The trees were even droopier this morning as the snow piled down as tho it were snowing in Vancouver...You know...those big fluffy flacons that make your previous shovelling efforts disappear in ten minutes. Emil left right in the middle of the biggest snowflake deluge,around 7:30 am. At 8:30, he was on the phone to me, saying he was waiting for the tow-truck, as the car(Dynasty) ( with him in it) spun out at four mile.
I asked if he was ok, and he said he was. No other cars involved so that was good...and so he was still on his way to work.
When I drove in, I nearly drove off the road myself when I saw the tracks in the snowbank at the edge of the road...yes, he failed to mention it was at the LAKE side of the road! In fact, it looked like he was the car was in teeter -totter position.
And tonight,the real story came out...the car did a 360* and was heading straight for the bank going down to the lake...no houses here, just lake. He checked to see if his seatbelt was on, and felt relieved that it was as the car spun out of control. He thought it was t*ts up, but due to the huge amount of snow lately, the undercarriage of the car got hung up on the snow at the banks edge. So there he was ,at a crazy angle with the nose of the car and one side,balanced so nicely. His first thought,as he peered out the windshield at the lake below, was "Should I move?" He decided it was in his best interest to try to get the heck out of the car before someelse came sliding off the road.
So all in all, he was very lucky that he never ended up doing a Polar bear dip.
The car is fine and so is he... and needless to say, I drove into work very carefully. The roads were quite ugly...snow,slush, slop and ice and freezing rain coming down. Not a good blend at all.

Oh, did I mention that the RCMP gave him a little blue warning to put winter tires on the back wheels...He has seven days to do it, but they are already on the car now!

I cam home from work and shovelled a ton of the wet stuff, hardly able to push it more than a couple of feet! Silky had a blast ,jumping for snowballs and then crashing the big snowball that I rolled, into a million pieces. She seems o havve a little destructive streak in her! She had fun while I sweated!

Last night, Leah had her PArtylite party that she booked from me, and it was fun. Her and Rubin ( Wendy 's son) live in a cute little house that they have fixed up very nicely. Leah did so well with the party, that she is interested in selling Partylite now, in Nelson! They have no consultants in Nelson, so she could find a good little niche here.
Thus she needs to book six parties in the next couple of weeks...Anyone interested in having a party for her? There is lovely new product with some great Hostess specials, incuding an Aromatheraputic burner, for $11.95.
There are new scents and many beautiful new candles in little hurricane jars which make for a great gift,as they can be used indoors or out.They sell between 29.95 and 35.00.
Okey dokey...time for early bed tonight. I was up way way too late last night, putting in my own order for 2nd Nature,as I sold some of that at the party also.
Have a good one...don't strain anything if you are shovelling!

glumbert.com | Cyril has a fishy card trick

glumbert.com | Cyril has a fishy card trick
This is an amazing trick!
Watch through to the end to be astounded!
Go to the home page at Glumbert for more great video clips.

More Snow!

 

 

Last night, the snow continued to fall, and today, we were faced with more shovelling and clearing. The belt on Emil's tractor/snowthrower broke which meant he was at the mercy of Bill's snowblower that you push. Well, first he had to get the beast going. He had to drain the gas out of it and put in new gas before it would start. Meanwhile, I shovelled the top balcony off...about 14" of snow there, and then I proceeded to the back patio. I couldn't even push it from one side of the patio to the edge! I cleared as much as I could, into the middle of the patio, so that Emil could finsh it with the snowblower, which he did, later.

I threw the snow,shovel full by shovel full, over the rails of the deck, off of our bedroom. I think it was a million cubic meters of snow...What a load! My back was grateful when I finished !
Emil and I both headed for the hot-tub for a little soak, then we had lunch,followed by a NAP!
Yep, you heard it right, Bea had a nap!

Elli and Peter invited us over to play Texas Hold'em with them and Bill and Marlene! With only the six of us playing , some great hands cropped up, like four aces, and many full houses. We all felt the swing from bad cards to good, or visa-versa.
In the end tho, we all had a big laugh as the confusion arose over how much money we were owed or lost. Seems like everyone kept at least 8 thousand dollars,as no one had ventured to play those big 500 dollar and one thousand dollar chips!( We all started with ten bucks) When it came down to the nitty gritty, each pair of us was only up or down by fifty cents or so! All along when we were betting, we kept saying it was ten or twenty dollars, when it was only ten or twenty cents, because Peter and Elli, in their infinate wisdom decided that our ten dollars was worth ten thousand dollars!!!
Too funny...It kept all of us low rollers away from even betting a measely 50 cents! I guess the laugh was on them as we pretty much all walked away with our same ten bucks that we came with.
In the old days, we played with five bucks worth of chips,but the deminations were closer to reality.
We'll rethink the program for next time, or if anyone has it all figured out, let us know!
Texas Hold 'em is a fun evening if you aren't sitting for too long ...we were at it for five hours...about an hour and a half too much for my numb bum! The great part was the lemon and apple pies that Elli served...from her apples that froze in her outside fridge.

As a side note, here is a tip from both her and Sonia today....you can freeze both oranges and lemons...just cut them into wedges, and put in freezer bags or tupperware, then thaw slightly in the nuker, to eat them immediately. ( Elli's oranges froze in her outside fridge also.) Sonia's tip came from the Tupperware Lady at the Tupperware party she just attended.
Good advice, since the orange crop has frozen, south of the border, so stock up on your citrus fruits, and be prepared for sharp increases in other produce...it could all double or triple in the next month advises Steve.

Ok, bedtime I guess, since it is 1:30 am...I wasn't really tired after having napped today.
Have a good Sunday. I think we will go for a x-country ski, as the neighbours took a swing by our beach with the skidoo, laying down some pretty decent tracks...Thanks Dave!

Yep, Plenty of Snow

 

This is our front walk after Emil shovelled ,this morning.

 

 

 

Out came the sun...