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Issue #1186
Including:

Russ

Nova Scotia Sus

Doug

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Hi Guys, it is with great sadness that I must tell you that Greg passed away last Tuesday, Feb 11, at St Marys Hospital. At this point that is all the information I have to pass along. Please keep Carole and Adam in your thoughts.

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From Russ

Valentine's Day

Let me take you back 80+ years to a country school in the Village of Centreville. It's soon to be Valentine's Day, and we were allowed to give our home-made Valentine's to our special friends in school. From about Grade 4 to Grade 7 we made paper valentine's, always inscribed - "Be my Valentine" and gave them to our best friends and, us boys always made and gave one to the prettiest girl in class. It wasn't fair as she received by far, the most valentines. The 'plain Jane's got very few (or none) By the way, we gave valentines to our boy friends as well.

I'm sure most of us kids didn't know why we celebrated Valentine's Day - do you?

According to Wikipedia - we learn the following: "Valentine's Day, also called Saint Valentine's Day, is celebrated annually on February 14th. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring a martyr named Valentine, and through later folk traditions it has also become a significant cultural, religious and commercial celebration of romance and love.

There are a number of martyrdom stories associated with various Saint Valentines connected to Feb.14th, including an account of the imprisonment of Saint Valentine of Rome for ministering to Christians persecuted under the Roman Empire in the 3rd Century". (Something like Trump is doing to Mexican's today)

According to early tradition, Saint Valentine restored sight to the blind daughter of his jailer.

Numerous later additions to the legend have better related it to the theme of love; tradition maintains that Saint Valentine performed weddings for Christian soldiers who were not permitted to marry by edict of the Roman Empire. The Emperor figured single men made better soldiers than married men.

"An 18th Century embellishment to the legend claims Valentine wrote the jailer's daughter a letter signed "Your Valentine" as a farewell before his execution"

Saint Valentine's Day, or The Feast of St. Valentine is observed in many countries. My church, St. Luke's Anglican, and the Lutheran's along with Traditionalist Catholicism also honour this Feast Day.

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For the last 10 years of my wife's life I made her a personal Valentine complete with a "mushy message" which she much preferred to a commercial one. Her Birthday, Feb.4th, and St. Valentine's Day were very close so I was frugal and included "Happy Birthday" along with her home-made Valentine.

The coldest part of winter still remains the warmest part of my heart - although she's been gone 15 years.

Russ😭

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From Nova Scotia Sus

We are under another storm warning today . It looks like pretty messy weather for anybody driving somewhere. I have one client booked for this afternoon for a haircut that probably won't happen. Also the temperatures lately have been quite cold for anyone being outside. This morning we woke up to minus 18! and a very red sky! That old saying "red sky in the morning/sailor take warning!

We had a fairly hot fire in our woodstove yesterday. Some of our firewood is cedar and the bark on it makes for a hot fire. We have a heat detector on our pipe that helps to keep us just the right amount of fire needed.

Our stove pipe goes straight up from the stove to the roof with no elbows to collect creosote and keeps our pipe clean. So everything was okay I just kept my eye on the detector and saw the level dropping slowly to where it should be. I was relieved . we have never had a flu fire thank goodness.

Sue

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From Doug

How’s it going…..eh?

For those of you who is familiar with our area, due to the rather cold temperatures we have been having, Shannon Falls is frozen. The water is no longer falling, it is stationary.

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I’d bet you don’t know what this is a picture of, so I’m going to tell you. It is a blob of hand soap that I made from the skinny little leftover remains of soap bars from the bathrooms. You know, those little left overs when a bar of soap gets too thin to use.

No, I’m not so cheap or broke that I need to re-manufacture soap from left over pieces. Its just that I was in need of entertaining myself with something silly and got the idea that it was indeed silly to always throw away those leftover soap remains. So, I gathered up the 10 or 12 that had piled up in a dish and put said dish into the microwave just to see what would happen. I did several short bursts of nuking and then mashed the softened pieces up and shaped the results into a blob. It then cooled off and is now a usable hunk of hand soap again. In size its bigger than a new bar of soap. It was impossible to get the blob shaped smoothly so the first few times I used it, it was a bit bumpy but other than that, I have a brand new clump of soap. Sometimes you have to do silly things like that just to take your mind off the world.

Doug

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Have a Good One
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