The
Squamidian Report – Dec. 4 / 10
Issue #445
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
The eagles are returning, not that country rock band kind but the feathered kind. They are hanging out down by the river in their usual places as they do every year. Some of them are also hanging out by the highway. Those are the traffic eagles. They seem to like to watch the vehicles go by as they sit high in the trees. Many of them perch ever so perfectly so that anyone driving by with a camera can take advantage of the photo opp. Some of them seem to like to chase the cars that go by below them. They swoop down just behind the car and level out just above the roof where they follow for a short distance before pulling up and climbing back to their tree branch. The occupants of the car being chased are seldom aware of the fact but it can really startle the viewers in the vehicles following behind.
The sight of huge black wings that spread wider than the vehicles they are following tend to take the startled drivers by surprise. The bigger surprise is that there have not been any collisions as driver attention is diverted from the task at hand, which is driving. The birds with the black wings and bodies, and white heads and tails are adults. The ones with the brown gray all over are fully gown but not yet mature. I guess they would be the teen-agers. They seem to learn the traffic game from the adults and the cycle continues.
The eagles are concentrating along the rivers now, hoping for some good fish dinners. The salmon are not yet returning in big numbers but there seem to enough to bring the birds into the area. We have small a local population that stays all year but the big influx are birds from further up the coast. They come down to the Squamish Valley area to winter and show off to the tourists, and play with the cars.
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How the heck did it get to be December already? Its like a blink of an eye and the year has passed by with barely time to notice. Part of the problem is this semi-retirement stuff. I have never seen time pass so fast before. Heck, when I look at a clock I’d swear I can see the hands moving. (For people too young to know, in the old days we used clocks for telling time, and clocks had ‘hands’ which were pointers that pointed at actual numbers painted onto an actual surface. These clocks where mechanical devices that moved the pointes at a set rate to indicate the passing of time). I can even almost see the calendar pages flipping on their own. (Calendars used to be and to a limited extent still are graphical representations of all the 12 months of a given year, printed onto paper and bound together to form a small booklet that would then sit on a desk or be stuck to the front of a fridge by the use of magnets. As a given month would pass by, its representing page would be ‘flipped’ to expose the page for the next month. This ‘flipping’ was done by hand, you would use your actual fingers to grasp the corner of the page and then lift it up and away from the front, and bring it back down to the back of the booklet).
Many of these old timing devices could and would continue to work even if there was a power outage. They would continue to indicate the time, or the date regardless of conditions around them. The paper calendars didn’t even need to be wound. (Mechanical clocks were powered by something called a ‘spring’ which was a strip of metal that was ‘wound’, by hand, using a ‘key’, into a coil and would then the store energy which it released slowly as it ‘un-wound’). Calendars never needed winding, however, while being very accurate on a daily basis, they did not have the precision necessary for breaking each day into smaller increments. Incidentally, that ‘December’ page represents the last month of the current year. Where the heck did the year go?
doug
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THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
Is it summer yet? Shoot, I guess I’ll have to wait a while yet before that’ll happen! Oh well, we’re not even into Christmas yet and already we’re wishing winter away. I gather there are those of us who like winter and snow and that goes with it. I’d rather have the warm seasons of the year but I do manage to enjoy winter once it’s here. I think it’s all this threatening of snow and cold weather that gets to me. If it would only be that on a certain date in December every year “Winter” would happen including cold temps and tons of snow then it would be much more bearable. It’s all this uncertainty that bugs me. Let’s just get winter here and quit pussy footing around about it!
Once we know for sure there’s no more possibility of warm weather, we tend to accept winter and all the bitching is over with! I actually enjoy blowing the snow and because we know it’s going to be cold when we step outside it’s not so irritating! Blowing the snow is necessary and its kind of fun with a good snow blower to try to place the snow in a certain spot! For instance I like to try to land it right smack dab on the boulevard and day after day build it up as high as possible. It takes me back to when we were kids and there was no such thing as a snow blower. All that snow had to be moved by shovel and it was a lot of work! We had such high snow banks on the sides of the roads and walkways that after a couple of weeks of shoveling the sidewalks were narrowed down to where they were one lane at best! Even the streets and roadways around KW were down to one lane in a lot of spots. In fact, our little street in the North Ward of Kitchener was only plowed with a city truck about once a week if that! Those were the days when they really seemed to dump a whole street worth of snow into your driveway in one pass! With today’s winters being a lot less snowy that isn’t so drastic anymore. On the other hand, we still get lots of snow and maybe the fact that most of us have snow blowers rather than just shovels makes it seem that the plows don’t dump quite as much into our driveways. Never the less, it’s still annoying when it happens. Most of the towns and cities around southern Ontario already have a pretty good load of snow but KW has been lucky so far. No doubt we’ll be getting hit hard in the not to distant future and then we’ll be hard at the snow clearing. Seeing my blower sit idle under it’s cover just looks so forlorn and kinda gives one hope that the big storms won’t be coming at all this year. Of course we all know that’s a pipe dream! I only wish Doug and Sue lived closer so I could challenge Doug to a dual with our machines. I think that would be a lot of fun!
Guess I’ll just have to send him pictures of my snow blowing this year. Usually I can do that and make him jealous but of course this year so far he’s been into snow clearing already and just might out do us with the amount of snow they get for a change. Kinda looks good on him for a change after listening to him describe how snowless it has been most years out there in Squamish! Hahahaaa…. I’m sure he’ll enjoy the snow as he has indicated already and he’s lucky to have had the foresight to buy himself a good model of blower to do the job! From here on in it’s just a waiting game for our snow. I actually am looking forward to it now that I’m ready to admit it! C’mon “Old Man Winter”! Let us have your best shot, I’m ready for ya!
Guess I should dig out my boots before that happens!
I hope you’re all ready for the big blast this year and when you’re out there shoveling, take it easy! We don’t want anyone overdoing it and hurting themselves! Shovel, take a rest, shovel, take a rest and so on and so on till the job is done! Then go in and have that coffee, hot chocolate or that hot toddy as a reward! It’ll make all that hard work worthwhile!
Guess that’s it for this week folks!
Thanks for tuning in and I look forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!
Bye for now… GREG
PS: Something To Think About>
Don’t forget to have that first aid kit and blanket etc packed in your vehicle in case you get stuck this winter!
Oh ya…. And a couple of candles too!
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Have a good one..
the doug
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