Santa Cruz, California, October 28th, 2014

Santa Cruz, California, October 28th, 2014

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

A vlog! A vlog! I recorded a vlog!! Oh....yay.



HEY KIDS!

Record amounts of the words 'umm' and 'really'!!



Bad hair!



AND??!?!?

PASTY white "is it really summer how come she's so WHITE?" skin.


Commence the thrills....



Tuesday, July 22, 2014

For Miss Lori, the Most Patient Woman Alive!!!


I shot off my mouth in 2013, and FINALLY ... I made good on the promise.


For Lori...

I sure hope it wasn't enough to damage your hearing for the rest of your life.
Thank you for your generosity, patience and kindness. 

Oh, and we even filmed it. for the free world to "enjoy".

This was filmed on my tablet, so my apologies for the tinny acoustics.

And thank you to my pianist, Ruth Wood!!



This might not be up for long...I'm somewhat nervous sharing this... 






Sunday, July 13, 2014

Soooo, I didn't actually fall off the face of the earth, but it was kinda feeling like it...






On July 5th, Hurricane Arthur headed up the East Coast.
We're used to storms in Atlantic Canada. Or, I should say, the COAST is used to storms.


 www.jacksonville.com
I do not live on the coast.

I live about an hour's drive inland. See that first big red circle/storm icon? And the black line? That's sorta where we are.
Oh, just so you know, Canadians do not refer to distance in miles or kilometres, we refer to distances in terms of hours to get there.

Okay, so Artie was SUPPOSED to track as predicted in this map.
But he didn't. Plowed across the Eastern Seaboard, realized we had nothing to do on the 5th and at about 6am, turned left and came UP the Saint John River Valley. See where it says "Jul 05 11am EDT"? Yeah, umm...BAM!!    

Winds gusting, and frankly, STAYING, at 65 mph hit us all day and into the night. Now, 65 mph is an 11 on the Beaufort Scale, basically a tropical storm.  A hurricane is a 12.

Fredericton does not get hurricanes, like I said, we're an hour from the ocean. Or tropical storms. Usually all the storms come up the coast, hit the cooler waters and go pffffffft. 

But, Artie must have wanted to see what it felt like to smite a small town who were told, by anyone with a TV network and a barometer, that we should prepare for heavy rains and not to worry about high winds. Nova Scotia was getting the winds.

Ummm. Yeah. About those winds...this house had 10 poplars. each was about 35-40 feet tall.


author photo

Now it has a new lawn.


We lost power at 8:20 am Saturday and had it back at 9:50 am on Thursday (Hubs reminded me it was not Wednesday as previously reported...by me). We got our phone line up again on Friday at 10pm.

It was estimated that on Sunday, July 6th, 140,000 homes in New Brunswick were without power. There's still 5000 homes in the dark.

We had running water, many homes did not. 

Our grill has a side burner, so we could cook and more importantly, I could make EARL GREY TEA!!!
Therefore...no arrests were made.

It was an experience, to say the least. And yes, all kinds of people said "Now you know how the (insert name of people group who survived withouth electricity) felt."

A) There WAS NO ELECTRICITY in 1822 when Great Grannie Melba Toast walked backwards across New South Wales!!!  
 B) see A.

Please don't guilt trip me about missing something by reminding me that the ancients did fine without it. They also didn't have sunscreen, toilet paper, or dental floss. 

Think about it...

TOILET PAPER.

I would rather go powerless, than paperless.



The ONLY people I'd give props to for living in a modern age without running water or electricity are A) those who have no choice...B) and those who do.

My hat's off to you, Mark and Rachel Charles. (https://www.facebook.com/wirelesshogan?fref=ts)


And now, we're wired and rolling, and already I miss the quiet evenings and the long chats with Hubs and #4.

Sigh.

Weird, eh?




Maybe, just MAYBE, we could unplug?