The Squamidian Report – Dec. 3 / 16
Issue #758
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
There were reassurance messages on social media this week telling
people not to worry about the bright yellow round object that was
visible in the sky several times, for a few minutes at a time, early
one morning. Apparently its a normal occurrence in some parts of the
world. Apparently it is the source of warmth and light. Some people
with long memories actually claimed to remember it. But alas after
being visible just long enough to get some people excited and others
concerned, it disappeared again, hidden by the heavy dark overcast that
so many have come to see as comforting and reliable. That bright object
was, and assumably still is, a star. A star that is close enough and
bright enough to be seeable during daylight hours should the ever
present overcast part long enough. Old stories passed down through the
generations often refer to it as 'the Sun'.
Did you know that our Earth orbits around that star? Of course you did.
For whatever reason it seems to take exactly one year to make one full
orbit which is very convenient when you think about it. Imagine, our
year coinciding with the time it takes to orbit our local star. Amazing
coincident. Another amazing coincident is that meteors that make it
though our atmosphere always seem to land in crater holes. Its a
fascinating world. And did you know that our Sun orbits around the core
of our Galaxy at a speed of about 100,000 km per hour? The whole galaxy
rotates but at different rates as you move further out from the center.
By the time you get to where we are the orbit takes somewhere between
225 and 250 million years to do that one orbit. If that solar year were
represented by 1 hour, the version of us that can be recognized as
'human' would have been in existence for about a 1 minute. Makes one
feel pretty insignificant.
But the big news this week is that the gondola has reopened as of this
past Thursday, Dec 1. (Could someone please tell me how its December
again already). It had been closed since the first week of November for
its annual maintenance. And a lot of the rain we have been having down
here has been snow up there. So, we got there just after the lift
started up and up we went, snowshoes in hand. There is several feet of
snow at the top and on the trails and our intention was to head out for
our usual walk along the Panorama, which we did. Its a winter
wonderland but there was a bit of a problem. Someone had walked that
trail a few days earlier, wearing just boots and not snowshoes. There
were lots of people up there each day working at the various projects
that must be done during the closer. Anyway, the someone obviously sunk
in to the deep snow and left holes everywhere they stepped. Those holes
then froze and left ice holes all over the place that made footing
difficult. We persevered and did the loop. Scenery was fantastic. Got
back to the lodge pretty tired as we aren't used to that kind of
slugging. Ran into some friends of ours inside, another set of
'regulars' and enjoyed a coffee while we sat and chatted. Thats a
pretty cool place to sit and have a coffee with the Sound way below and
the mountain tops way above us. Yes, its a hard life.
And then there was one day this week where we had a chance to do a dump
run. There always seems to be something that needs to be disposed of
and once in a while those somethings start to pile up, making it
worthwhile to load the stuff into the back of the truck and run it out
to the dump. Thats what we did. The dump is out toward the north west
end of the valley and that meant one of our choices to get there and
back puts us along the river and right past the eagle viewing area so
we pulled over and walked up onto the dyke along the river. Its
actually a very scenic place with the river running down out of the
Upper Squamish Valley between the mountains and Garibaldi taking up a
good chunk of the sky to the north east, and the rest of the mountains
all around. This area is perhaps 8 kilometers or so up stream from
where the river empties into the Sound. Its the eagle viewing place
because eagles tend to congregate there to munch on the salmon that
have expired during or after spawning. There were about 30 of the big
birds hanging around, some up in the trees on the other side of the
river, some down by the river squabbling over a fish, and others
perched on a log jam. There was a seal working the river as well, as
they often do. Its all good.
doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
Here we are on the first weekend of December
and still no snow! I guess it’ll come to pass shortly that we’ll be up
to our butts in the white stuff but I’d rather not have that happen
this early in the winter. It’d be nice to have it hold off until a day
or two before Christmas wouldn’t it? LOL! Speaking of Christmas, I
erected our “pre-lit” Christmas tree the other day and Carole always
likes to decorate it once it’s sitting in its place in the living room.
Over the years we’ve collected quite a few special tree ornaments and
she likes to be the one who places them in their designated spots. Not
being any sort of an artsie person, I’d likely not do anywhere near as
lovely a job on the tree as she does every year. When Adam was at home
and of course younger than he is now he used to help his mother
decorate the tree every year and I had the job of watching and making
the hot chocolate during the project. I don’t recall ever having a real
tree during our marriage. I guess it was just easier and less messy to
have a manufactured tree. I think Carole and I purchased our first
Christmas tree across the street from our first apartment. We lived on
the tenth floor of the high-rise apartment directly behind the Beer
Store on the corner of Weber St and Lincoln Rd in Waterloo. Our
apartment was located on the northwest corner of the building and it
overlooked the “Towers” plaza that faced Bridgeport Rd. We found it
quite convenient to do a lot of shopping at that plaza. There was a
Zehr’s Store for our grocery shopping and almost anything else we
needed was available at Towers huge department store at the other end
of the plaza. We were married on January 19, 1973 and I believe we
purchased that first tree on sale after the Christmas of December 1972
before our marriage. Of course we didn’t need a tree until a year later
but who can pass up a deal?
I could be wrong here but I do believe we didn’t celebrate our first
Christmas until we were in our third residence which happened to be an
apartment we rented after buying and selling our first house mid way
through our first year of marriage. We had purchased a semi-detached
bungalow during the late summer of ’73 and lived in it for only 8 weeks
before our real estate agent called one day to say he had a couple that
was interested in buying our house at a good profit! We talked his
proposal over and made the decision that same afternoon to entertain
the couple’s offer to purchase. The deal was made that evening and we
had to be out of our house by the end of that month. Talk about a quick
sale! We rented a two-bedroom apartment in Lakeshore district of
Waterloo and there we celebrated our first married Christmas! So before
we even had that Tower’s special tree out of the box, it had occupied a
space in three of our residences! Finally, we got to put that lovely
tree up for the first time and it stood in a place of honour right in
front of the main living room picture window of that little apartment
on Silverbirch Rd. We graduated from that tree that was nothing but a 5
foot broom handle with holes drilled into it that required us to stick
the individual branches in order of size into the wholes every time we
put it up to what was a great advancement about 20 years later to a
tree that already had the branches wired to the trunk. That second tree
was made of three sections of wooden pole that once screwed together
stood about 6 feet tall and then the branches had to be bent down from
pointing toward the top of the tree into a position that resembled the
branches of a real tree. This was an improvement but was still a pain
in the butt to adjust each branch and twig to resemble a full tree.
That tree again lasted us another 20 years.
By the time it was 20 years old, it was sadly losing tons of bristles
every time it was erected or disassembled so after the Christmas of
2013, we decided to donate it in it’s original box to the Salvation
Army and go shopping for a new and updated model. We were out shopping
about three weeks after that Christmas and decided to take a look at
the new Wal Mart that had just been built near the St Jacob’s Farmer’s
Market. As we toured the store, Carole noticed the big sale that was on
regarding the left over Christmas decorations. We walked the isles
looking at ornaments, as we rounded the corner to the next isle; she
noticed a lovely “pre-lit” tree on the top shelf of the rack. We both
remarked how real it looked and of course how expensive it must be. We
had seen others at the local nursery that were on sale for a couple of
hundred dollars and more and figured this one was on a par with them! I
checked the code number and found one still in the box that was marked
pricewise at an amazing $69.00! WOW! What a bargain so we decided to
grab ourselves a new tree! It was after Christmas so of course we had
to wait until the following Christmas to even open the box. This year
is our third year with this beautiful tree and it literally takes me
only 5 minutes to erect what turned out to be a perfectly shaped and
lit tree! No messing with strings of lights, no bulbs to replace every
year after spending hours searching the string to find the defective
one and no mess of needles off the wire branches to clean up after the
tree is back in it’s storage bag! I hope to be writing my Ontarion
about this same tree another 20 or more years from now and I also hope
that my same fellow Squamidian members are around to read what I write!
LOL! Good Luck on that one eh? Hahhahahaaa…
After all this Christmas talk, it makes me want to get out and do my
Christmas shopping! When one makes a point of getting out as early as a
few weeks before the occasion itself it’s much more enjoyable than
having to shop during that last few days when the malls and stores are
filled with last minute shoppers that have no time to be polite or show
patience to others who are in the same rush! When you can take your
time and walk leisurely through each store and actually think about a
meaningful gift for your loved ones it always makes for a good
afternoon or evening out. I think when people are in a rush and really
haven’t taken the time to think ahead about what they want to purchase
they get grumpy and consequently become rude and impatient! This makes
for a poopy experience for all involved and usually ends up with just
grabbing almost anything to give, just to make do! That sort of
shopping is so insincere and makes for less enjoyable occasion on the
dawn of Christmas Day. I think people can tell when you have actually
put a good deal of thought and care into what you’ve decided to give
them and when it comes across as “Special” it’s much more heartwarming
in both directions! I don’t know of anyone that simply wants a pile of
stuff for the sake of “Getting Loads” over receiving one thoughtful and
meaningful gift from a loved one! So this year while there’s still time
left to do so, get out early to do you shopping and make meaningful
decisions that can last a lifetime!
That’s all for this week folks!
Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!
Bye for now … Greg
PS: Something To Think About>
Meanness don’t jes’ happen overnight.
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Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
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