Monday, March 30, 2015

Monday, March 30 - a sure sign spring is coming

Conditions at 5:20 am: -8' with clear starlit skies
Expected later: 3' and a mix of sun and cloud

What a great weekend. The weather was actually pretty good and some slow melting is taking place so no risks of floods as yet. More should take place today with the sun and milder temperatures.
Saturday morning I worked after meeting Lloyd for coffee at Tim's on the way in. Well, he had coffee, I finally chose not to. Not sure why it seems so inefficiently run, but after waiting in line (there was no line, only me) for at least five minutes, I still hadn't been served by one of the seven people behind the counter. They were all bustling around but I'm not sure just what they were doing. In the end I chose to spend my time sitting with Lloyd and waited till I got to work for my caffeine fix.


All week long Lloyd's been  busy fixing our BBQ. It's facing it's 7th summer here on the island, as we bought it our first summer here. Parts of it were rusted away and it just didn't work very efficiently anymore. But we like the size, it's much bigger than most and the fact it has four burners. So he picked up some stainless steel and fashioned new pieces for
those that needed replacing. Now it works just dandy and should last at least a couple more years, if not longer. So since it was finished on Saturday afternoon, we had no choice but to give it a trial run. I had taken a smallish chicken out of the freezer to thaw, so that was our first victim. Oh, my, gosh! It was absolutely delicious. But then the first BBQ of the new year always is.  Now that it's fixed and out of the garage, on the little piece of patio stones that doesn't have any snow on it, I suspect it will be well used.

Sunday dawned a little dreary but later on in the day the sun came out and it was lovely. I spent part of the day doing mundane things like vacuuming and laundry, and making brunch while Lloyd was outside in the garage. Once my chores were done, it was out to the craft room to play for a while. Before long it was time to get ready to go to the rec centre for the volunteer appreciation dinner. BBQ steak and baked potatoes - yum. And a little too much dessert, but that was totally my own fault.

After supper the Van Gaals joined us for a trip into town for a slide show of photos taken by John Sylvester, a very well known island photographer. A good many of them brought back some great memories for Brenda and Bernie as they'd been there a couple of years ago. It was a stunningly beautiful collection and now Iceland is on our list of places to visit. The hiking trails looked really interesting as well as the rugged scenery. Not to mention the spectacular water falls.  Another location to add to the bucket list. The place was packed to standing room only so obviously it's on a lot of people's lists. Although it was surprising, when asked, just how many in attendance have actually been there.


 It wasn't a great weekend for air travel in the Maritimes. Fortunately no one we knew (at least we don't think so) was on a flight from Toronto to Halifax that made what was termed a 'hard landing'. I've experienced a hard landing before and this was obviously so much more. 23 people were taken to hospital but none with critical injuries. It's going to take some time to determine exactly what happened but thankfully no one was killed. They were very, very lucky. I'm sure it was extremely upsetting for people on the flight but whenever you can walk away from a plane crash, that's an extremely good thing. I just saw on the news, after checking for updates, that it's not considered a crash, although the photos seem to tell a different story, because the plane was being controlled as it came down. A flight no one aboard will forget for a very long time. The scary part is that's a flight that Patti often works but fortunately she was otherwise occupied. Her comment was" I guess you always have to be prepared"

Congrats to the Holly Hugh's Dance Team who participated in a competition in Burlington on the weekend. Looking good girls! (I'd share the photo but can't figure out how to get it off Instagram!)



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