Birthday Visit

It was Norma's birthday on July 27th and on Monday Brooks picked Jayde up at the ferry dock and the two of them drove up for a visit. On Tuesday morning Sierrah arrived from Victoria with her other grandmother, Carolynn. It was so nice to see our two adult granddaughters together, something that doesn't happen very often. Everyone had a good time with lots of gabbing, food and fun!

Sierrah, Brooks, Jayde, Norma, Croft


Sierrah and Jayde taking photos in the garden


Sierrah and her two grandma's

Tim Hortons

Yesterday I walked the 3.4 KM return trip on the seawalk to Tim Hortons with no (very little) trouble. Made it there easy, sat and had a coffee and muffin, and headed back. I passed a bench and sat for a minute enjoying the view, continued on and about 200 feet from my house experienced the beginnings of a leg cramp. Hmmm, what's that all about?

My Exercise Regimine

Aside from one day it was raining too hard, I have been walking the 1.3 KM return trip to the mailbox every mail day (5 days a week) Since June 15. I have to admit the first day was more of a struggle than I like to admit as I had trouble walking a straight line and actually sat down on a park bench half way back home.

Now, I am blasting through it with no problem, am walking straight with a good pace and feel no need to rest part way. It is a revelation!

I am now wondering how I can increase my distance. There is a seaside park a bit further along so today I just might continue right past the mailbox and try for the park. Google maps says it is a 15 minute walk each way for a 2.4 KM return trip. Man, I am getting healthy, I wonder how much I weigh?

Oops, they are calling for rain this afternoon. It may or may not show up. If it is not raining I will head out with my phone so I can call for a ride back if needed. What's a little rain?

Edit: I corrected the mileage. A little problem with Google Maps.

Supporting The Evil Empire

It is with heavy hearts that we are watching the inhumanity that is going on in the USA lately. Concentration camps for children being set up at the southern US border, school children being slaughtered in their schools, idiots with "MAGA" hats on running around with guns. The First Lady sporting a Nazi Stormtrooper slogan on her jacket.

No one is safe from the tyranny. Today it is brown skinned people, Muslim or Hispanic, tomorrow it could be another color or race. Norwegians may be on some future list in the mind of a madman. Or English people. It is unpredictable and there seems to be no effective opposition to the current President.

Are we going to spend our hard earned money in the USA next winter? Not likely. We have to make a statement that what is going on down there is simply unacceptable and cannot be supported. We enjoyed our winters down there and have made friends with many individual Americans. It is not these individual Americans we have a problem with but is the leadership of their country. I know the $20K or so that we spend down there every year is just a drop in their bucket but we have to make a statement, no matter how small.

I don't know what the solution is. Many friends and our son say we should just fly somewhere in Mexico or Central America and rent a house for a few months. That has it's appeal but is not the way we like to travel, we like being able to move around and we like having all our "stuff" with us. Another possibility is to just hold our noses and drive directly through the USA, boondocking as we go spending money only on gas. We could be in Mexico in four or five days. The return home in April would be the same and would limit our exposure to the Death Star that is today's USA. Of course by then they may have concentration camps on their northern border.

The discussion will continue.

We Cancelled!

We had reservations at the Cluxewe Resort near Port McNeil, BC for next week. We had been looking forward to it and had plans to meet up with our friends Ken and Kris from Port Hardy. It was going to be a fun week relaxing on the water and a trip to their son in law's restaurant in Port Hardy.

However the weather has been looking worse and worse for next week and the final check this morning showed pretty constant rain with only a couple of days of no rain but cloud. It was also going to be on the cool side. Bottom line, we would be spending most of our time inside watching TV, if we could even hook up to the satellite from the well treed site.

So we bit the bullet and cancelled. We will lose our $32 deposit but that is just the way it goes. It was not going to be as much fun as we were hoping for. We will save the $200 in gas and the $150 we owed the park for the rest of the week. We will do it when the weather is better.

Wildlife!

Here I was, lazing in bed this morning at about 7:45 when I heard Norma outside yelling,"Goddammit, get out of here!". Hoping she wasn't talking to me, I peeked out the window to see her disappear around the side of the house. "What is it?" asked I, having an inkling of what the answer would be. "Deer in the yard" was the answer.

I quickly got dressed and went out to help with the wrangling. She had chased the two of them into the southwest corner of the lot where they could do no damage but also where it was steep, muddy and very hard for me to get to. Nothing to eat there but bush and grass, no flowers. We opened the gate and made our plans. I threw rocks behind them to get them moving towards the far side of the house and Norma followed to keep them moving while I positioned myself to keep them from circling the house again, a game they delight in. It worked! They went out the gate and down the driveway.

It does not appear they have done any harm to Norma's precious flowers or freshly planted tomatoes. We don't think they had been in the yard long but we have no idea where they got in! I will have to try to get up the bank and inspect the fence line. It is not an easy task!

EAGLE!

While I was back there checking out what I could see of the fence from the walkway, I heard an eagle squawk! It sounded close and when I looked up, there it was in the tree above me right behind the house! It was  a beautiful yearling, not yet with the white head feathers marking an adult. I went in to grab my camera and it was still there when I returned! Luckily I got a shot from the back because when I walked around the house to try from the front, she/he flew away.

EDIT:

We found the breech! It was in the rolling gate which is made up of a steel pipe frame with horizontal rows of tightly stretched stainless steel wire spaced one foot apart at the top and six inches apart at the bottom. The deer got his nose between two wires and just pushed his way through, stretching and displacing the wire. His brother/sister then followed. It must have hurt!

"I Really Don't Care, Do U"

This is one of the children the government seized from her parents and now cannot or will not produce. This is not the Man Of The Year cover he wanted. Or maybe it is.

This is the jacket Melania chose to wear when she left to visit one of the border concentration camps for a photo op..

Or maybe it is the slogan itself

My Mailbox Walk

Here is the walk to the mailbox and back.

Down the driveway

Across the crosswalk 

And down the path past the eagle carving

A bit of the beach. There are often eagles in those trees!

Hydration for dogs provided, I had my own water. 

The Husky station where Rae worked the winter she was here. 

The boat ramp and fish cleaning station. Honour system payment. 

Time for some water. It is around 80 degrees! 

The old Shell station where Brooks once worked (and was robbed).  Now a restaurant.

The Fogg Dukker Coffee Shop on the beach. Should I stop for an espresso? No, too hot. 

Finally, the mail box! 0.6 KM  No crosswalk from the walking path over to the mailboxes. Time for some political action!

I will walk back on this side of the road. Not too busy and this is marked as a bike lane. 

The Husky station again.$1.46 per litre. See how much I saved by walking? 

Liquor Store and vacation rentals. $300 per night, three nights minimum! Don't worry, we won't make you stay there! 

Back home! Up the driveway and it will be 1.2 KM!

It's Only A Kilometer... Right?

I am not the model of physical fitness. I am not proud to admit that and when the doctor asks me if I get exercise I answer somewhat evasively that we get lots of walking in in Mexico. Which we do, or at least did. We have not been there in three years and do not get the same exercise in the USA or at home. We are far enough from everything important that we tend to drive instead of walk.

We keep meaning to fix this. We talk about it all the time. We just don't actually do it. I have to go in for a cardio stress test in a month or so and I want to be able to walk at least a few steps without collapsing. OK, it's not THAT bad but still...

The community mailbox is located down the highway a bit and there is a beautiful taxpayer funded walkway all along the waterfront to it. Right across the highway from the mailbox is the Fogg Dukkers Coffee Shop on the beach. What a perfect reward for walking to the mail instead of driving! I drove past there and measured the distance. It is a half a kilometre each way. One kilometre in total. It's not going to kill me. EDIT: Google Maps is kind to me and says it is 0.6 KM each way. That makes it 1.2 KM total!

We walked down there yesterday and rewarded ourselves with an Americano espresso, sitting in some chairs beside a beach fire in a big tire rim that appears to be burning all the time. It was very nice.

Today Norma was busy doing whatever around the house so I walked down myself, cell phone handy in my pocket in case I decided I wanted a ride back. No problem, it was much faster and more effortless than yesterday. In fact I skipped the reward of an espresso.

I am on my way to fitness!

Windows 1803 Update

Called the "April Update", this update seems to be causing problems everywhere! My Acer desktop tried downloading and installing it at least three times and failed every time. My final solution was to reinstall Windows 10 and that seems to work although the computer failed to restart properly a few times after that.

My Lenovo netbook with the tiny 32 GB hard drive was next. It told me it had no room on the drive so I directed the download to the SD card that serves as storage. It attempted the process using this card but failed four times. I finally stuck an empty 16 GB memory stick in it and tried again last night. It downloaded but got stuck on the install process and just sat there for a couple of hours with the spinning wheel and a notice telling me it could take a while and to not turn off the power. Progress showed as 0%. Well, sit there it did! I checked it before I went to bed and it had progressed up to 2% so something was happening! When I got up this morning it had completed!

Now I have to try to update my old Toshiba laptop that started out as a Windows 7 or maybe 8.1 machine and has updated to Windows 10. But first, I need a coffee!

EDIT! The Toshiba updated with no problem and now seems even a little faster.