The Squamidian Report – Dec. 19 / 15
Issue #708
Including:
From Russ
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Its winter at the gondola, in time for Christmas and it doesn't get
much better. Several feet of mountain snow makes for a winter
wonderland. The walking trails are well packed and relatively easy to
walk on, and they have set the 'back country' trails aside for skis and
snowshoes. We took Kyra up on both Monday and Tuesday and she had the
time of her life. The snow-line, at that time, was down at about tower
#6 and it was all we could do to contain her excitement from there on
up. She spent as much time as we could allow her playing in and eating
the white stuff. And don't worry, its all fresh and clean. Funny how
kids of all ages seem to love the first snows of winter. Everyone up
there is smiling from ear to ear these days.
On Wednesday 'The Wife' and I finally had a chance to try out the new
snowshoes we bought last winter. They were on sale for a price we
couldn't turn down. We still have our old, heavy wood and rawhide
snowshoes but they need new bindings and are just big and clunky and
out dated. These new ones are those high tech things with ice cleats on
the underside and built-in bindings that stay done up. They go one
easily and stay on. We headed back into the area behind the gondola
where the snow was deep and the trees all had a nice coating of the
white stuff. I was quite amazed at how well the new style of snowshoe
works. They don't have the same surface area for flotation but there is
no slipping, just walk along and enjoy the surrounding. We came back
tired and happy.
Next day we decided to just walk the Panorama trail, simply because the
weather was closing in and we didn't want to get too far from the
lodge. Some of you are familiar with that walk. So we left the
snowshoes at home and used our crampons. They fit tightly to the bottom
of your boots and have spikes sticking down so you don't slip on ice or
packed snow. Again, a very enjoyable outing. There was light snow
falling just to make it that much better. That evening, much to
everyone's surprise and some people's delight, Environment Canada put
our area, right down to sea level, under a snowfall warning with
expected amounts ranging anywhere from 5cm to 15cm. Cool. Next morning
we woke to a good foot of snow. West coast heavy packing snow. Now,
remember back over a month ago when I brought the snow blower out and
serviced it and parked it in the garage for 'gust incase', well, 'gust
incase' was here. That foot of snow put the old Toro through quite a
workout but she did the job. I just wish the local municipality would
'do the job' when it comes to ploughing our streets. They don't plough
the streets, they just make a big mess that drivers must then negotiate
in order to go anywhere. But I digress... all of a sudden we have a
winter wonderland all around us, not just up at the gondola and in the
high country. Some of the lower elevation snow might melt over the next
few days, or, it might all get added to, making for a white Christmas.
Time will tell. Its a sure bet for a white Christmas at the gondola and
a pretty good bet for at our place. Hard to say for down the hill and
in town. As long as we don't have any temperature inversions we are
looking good.
*
I guess this is the last Squamidian before Christmas,
as next week's falls on the 26th. So technically, this it the Christmas
issue. A big Merry Christmas to everyone and I'd like to thank Russ for
sending in his article below, and a big thanks to Greg for all his work
including his series on their Europe trip.
doug
****
From Russ
A PAIN IN THE BUTT
I have a pain in the Butt.....in fact, "almost everything below my
waist gives me a pain, and what doesn't hurt, doesn't work" (George
Burns)
Pain pills are useless, so I'm considering Marijuana. With Justin
making it legal across Canada, and Katherine wanting to sell it through
LCBO outlets in Ontario, "pot" is going to be "flying off the shelves!"
I used to smoke cigarettes years ago.....rolled-my-own to save
money.....do they still sell "Ogden's Fine-Cut"? I'll have to
practice rolling-my-own all over again, but wait; doesn't smoking
cigarettes cause Cancer? No one is suggesting smoking a "joint" causes
Cancer.......or does it?
Question: How come our Governments are urging us to quit smoking,
while at the same time encouraging smoking "pot" both for medical and
recreational use?
Answer: Another "Tax Grab"
I haven't had anything alcoholic except Communion Wine for 20 years,
but because I"ll be going to the LCBO for my "pot", I might as well buy
a "jug" while I'm at it. Those against making booze and pot available
in the same store, say "the combination of consumption of these drugs
can cause 'dangerous and unpredictable' results...like a
one and one-half oz. drink
plus two joints equals X (being
an unknown result)"
And with beer now on the shelves with our groceries, we can just add it
to our "Weekly grocery Budget", and as beer has "actual food value", we
can give it to our children without comitting an offence and without
feeling "guilty"
"Would you like a Blue-Light with your low-fat cheese and organic lettuce sandwich, Billy?"
The Government wants us to feed our children a healthy, nutritious Lunch befor they go back to school.
Health Science tells us that consuming large quantities of alcohol can
actually kill us! But, fortunately, our body has built-in safety
features that "usually" shut us down by vomiting or passing out before
death occurs. However, by mixing alcohol and marijuana, these
safeguards may be rendered ineffective, hence the dangerous and
unpredictable behaviour, like panic, halucinating, unconsciousness, and
even death.
So, if I seriously DID go back to drinking and smoking, and as a result
suffered irreversible, and extremely painful terminal illness, not to
worry, as "Doctor Assisted Death" is now an "easy way out", and I'll no
longer have "A Pain In The Butt!"
Written with tongue-in-cheek, by Russ.
****
THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
I’m just wondering how many immigrants from Syria our new PM is
personally sponsoring here in their new country? Just food for thought!
*
We’re still waiting for our
normal Canadian winter to strike here in KW but so far we’re
experiencing only rain and above 0c temperatures. Guess we’ll just have
to be patient! Maybe if we all start singing Bing Crosby’s famous
“White Christmas” it’ll make a difference. Somehow it just doesn’t seem
like Christmas is approaching without the white stuff on the ground. I
say if we don’t have snow by the 24th of December we should just cancel
Christmas altogether and jump right into “Spring”! No sense in
celebrating if the kids can’t make use of their new sleds and toboggans
on Christmas Day! In fact, the local news had some footage of the ice
rink in front of City Hall and it looks more like a swimming pool!
Guess they may have to turn on the ice-making machine imbedded in the
floor of the rink. I’m sure they were hoping that Mother Nature would
do that job for them and the city fathers could brag about how much
they saved the taxpayers by not turning the system on this year. There
is one bonus all the residents of Kitchener can be happy about and
that’s the fact that their gas furnaces haven’t had to run much so far
this season. We’ve been living with the heat our gas fireplace puts out
when we do need a little boost of heat. It’s cheaper to run the
fireplace for a half hour than it is to run the furnace. We spend most
of our inactive hours watching TV in the family room where the
fireplace is located and I installed a door on that room about a year
after we moved in to this house in 1998. It holds the heat in for the
remainder of the evening once I’ve had the fireplace burning for the
first half hour. Can’t complain about the gas bills with that being the
only source of heat used so far. I wouldn’t be upset if the rest of
this winter turned out the way the first couple of months has been!
It’s hard to believe its mid December. Our grass is still bright green
and it even seems to be in need of a mowing! If we make it to January
first without any significant freeze I may just whip out the lawn mower
and perform a first “mid-winter” cutting ever! Wouldn’t that be a
picture? I do remember a couple of unusual photos I’ve posed for over
the years but cutting the lawn would be a first for sure. I’ve posed
for a photo the day I took my motorcycle out for a spin on January 11th
a few years ago. Carole also took my photo one year back in the early
80’s on our green front lawn on Christmas Day posing with my snow
blower while wearing shorts and a tee shirt! Now that was a cool pic to
remember!
Speaking of photos, I don’t know if I
mentioned how many photos Adam took with his new digital camera while
we were in Europe in September. He was able to shoot picture after
picture of anything and everything that looked interesting while on the
trip and of course he was able to do so without ever having to reload
his camera with film like he would have back in the Kodak days! He just
kept snapping shots of whatever took his fancy and by the time we got
home to Kitchener we had no idea how many photos he had taken. After
being home a couple of days we sat down over a few evenings and looked
at about half of the photos from the trip. He showed us the pics in
living colour on our 48” big screen TV and it didn’t cost a cent to
develop or print them! What a change from the “old days” of photo
albums! The only way of seeing one’s photos in such a large format
years ago would have been to project them on a screen with a “slide”
projector! Don’t laugh I still have one of those too! I even have about
a thousand slides of family events over the past 43 years and before.
I’ll have to dig them out sometime and look back over the family
history! However, as I was saying about the modern way of photography,
it produces pictures with incredible clarity and proficiency. When I
asked Adam how many pictures he’d taken on the trip, he only had to
touch a button on the camera to give us a running total of the number
stored on the computer card within the camera. The total I believe was
somewhere around the 7,000 mark! We spent four whole evenings looking
at the photos from the trip and didn’t get half way through the total!
Guess we’ll have many more evenings that we can spend looking at the
photos. It’ll give us something to do if and when we get bored watching
TV! It’s amazing what today’s modern cameras can do and that includes
simply running a cord from the camera directly into the TV to view
whatever is on the camera memory card.
I’m sure you all remember the “Polaroid” cameras of
the 60’s. I bet you thought they had gone the way of the “Dodo”. Well,
they had for a number of years but I saw a commercial on TV the other
night showing the latest version of the “Polaroid” camera and you got
it, they’ve come out with a digital camera that prints your latest
photos directly from the camera itself and they don’t take 5 minutes to
show up on the paper, it’s instant! I haven’t seen one of these cameras
personally but I’m sure with the added feature of printing the photos,
there will be a cost for the paper pack that goes with each camera’s
ability to print the photos out! I’d say this process will be a tad
costly but at least you wont have to take the film in to a camera store
to have them printed. It’ll be interesting how well these new Polaroid
cameras catch on but my guess is they won’t be too popular when people
can already print their photos on a home printer!
The modern age of computers is indeed incredible and it makes you wonder what they’ll come up with next!
Guess we won’t have to wait very long to see what’s next!
That’s about it for this week folks!
Thanks for tuning in and I’ll be looking forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!
Bye for now … Greg
PS: Something To Think About>
It makes no difference where you are or what you’re doing just keep in mind “Smile! You’re On Candid Camera!”
****
Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.
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