He knows if you’ve been bad or good

The tree is up and decorated. And for all that we laughed at its scrawny branches, it doesn’t look too bad. Completely understandable that when it is minus 30 and you’re tree hunting in the wilds of Rocky Mountain House, you aren’t going to be as particular as you might have been in Christmases past (passed? past?) Christmases gone by. I’m in charge of the lights. Then the first to hit the...

Decembrrr at the Compound

George found this online at Canoe to share. Environment Canada, says temperatures in the Edmonton area early Sunday morning were among the coldest anywhere in the country. The mercury dipped to a frigid —46C at the Edmonton airport, making it the coldest place in Canada. With the wind chill, it felt more like —59C. It crushed the same day coldest temperature record of about —33C set in 1968. For those of you...

I saw three ships come sailing in, On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day

Posted by George. Some wise men followed the star of the east to find the manger; I followed a Christmas tree east to find home. I was coming home from work Thursday, Dec. 10 and thought I saw a newly decorated house on Secondary Highway 616. I noticed it seemed to be very close to the road. As I approached it became clear I was following a rogue parade float. Now that’s something you don’t see every...

Augh!

I was going to launch my new design for the Compound website but as soon as I had it in place I thought it still had too many missing pieces I thought I’d tackle the problem of getting a live feed from my webcam – something that is in the manual, but I always figured was too tough for me to figure out. I was right. I think I killed my webcam There’s snow above my boot tops, and its minus 30. The...

Be all you can be

I admit I like to read vintage kids books. With a growing collection of Trixie Belden books, somewhat similar is the Donna Parker series, also published over the late 50s, early 60s by Whitman. Currently I’m enjoying Donna Parker – Mystery at Arawak, where our heroine has a summer job as a junior counsellor at Camp Arawak. Donna differs from Trixie, experiencing more ‘life lessons’ instead of...

Voyage West

Voyage West, as Virginia named it, has concluded. After Vancouver, (stopping back in Calgary to pick up Adam), and then Yellowknife for “you-may-be-the-government-but-I-am-your-lawyer” meetings, the travellers flew in to Edmonton. Adam helped me to fence in the back meadow, formerly known as Lac St. George (the ‘lac’ lacks water and now grows tasty forage). Sue arrived on Friday and we all...

President George for another year

The publishers conference is over at last, and George is elected to serve another term as president of the association. Friday’s theme dinner “Riverboat Gambler” was fun, but sparsely attended. About 20 people dressed up in costumes for the event. While I had over the past month tried on my dress many times, I had never worn it for any extended length of time, and certainly had not tried to eat a...

Our state fair is a great state fair

And George and I aren’t too shabby either. This Saturday was the Millet Harvest Festival Fair. Mainly it’s a bench show. George said a few weeks back that I should enter my 1879 dress, and since we were doing that, we might as well enter some other classes. George entered eight photography classes and won five ribbons. I entered a photo as well, plus a lace shrug that I knit this winter along with my...

Fruit full

I said yesterday morning that I was through with picking Saskatoons. It’s been 5 weeks now, I’m tired of picking the darn things. I have in the freezer over 30 bags, 4 cups each. That should be enough to sprinkle on cereal for a year right? Sage must have heard me because he’s been quite good about staying out of the bushes. He can have a few now, I won’t yell. Mot too many….they...

That should teach me

Serves me right for not updating the site. I had a dozen comments in my comments admin section to approve, all about the Riverboat Dress. Two more weeks and I get to wear it The funniest comments are generated by the spammers. Their clever little robots sending out messages hoping to get past the admins. They crack me up. My explanation of the freight train caught “Are you a professional journalist? You...