sloth

A late lunch and a quick sandwich have conspired to give me enough time to blog. Sloth - not necessarily the one pictured above -- it what I am aspiring to this week-end. Last week-end I was impressively (ridiculously?) productive so this week-end I need to balance things out.

Last week-end I:

• did my taxes
• baked bread
• cleaned a room (my own) sorely in need of it
• did laundry
• filled out my passport application
• made chocolate fondue (totally worth the effort)
• practiced making crepes (my wrist technique still needs work)
• caught up on some reading
• found the time to go for a walk

So this week-end it's all about the sloth. I don't know if I'll manage to be quite as cute as the little sloth above, but a girl can try. Looks like he or she has the right idea -- start with a long bath and very fluffy towel. It's going to be a great week-end.

* the sloth above comes courtesy of Cuteoverload.com a 95% family-friendly site of animal cuteness

fine weather for ducks

We're all lined-up to break a record for rain this week-end. Scary stuff when you consider how much rain is 'normal' for this part of the world. With floods on the way the last two week-ends it seemed the only logical thing to do was to go out and play in it.

A large puddle was making its way across the driveway and I was thinking it was big enough for ducks. Turns out it was. This is a first attempt at video, edited together in Windows MovieMaker. The original clips were shot at 5 MGP and are crisp during editing, but it keeps rendering pixelated. I've adjusted every output setting I can find. The best advice I've had so far on sharpening it up was "buy a Mac". If anyone has advice with a smaller price tag (or wants to buy me a Mac) I'm all ears.

There's an earlier version of the same idea here, but this was accidentally shot at 3 MGP so it's even fuzzier.

lazy daisy

Sometimes it is really nice to do a task the slow way.

Recently I came across a copy of Meaghan Mountford's new book, Cookie Sensations. It is a little over a hundred pages of everything from icing the Eiffel tower to Elvis onto a cookie. I decided to start with an easy one -- daisies.

Well I can't imagine how long a few dozen Elvises take to do because two and a half dozen daises took most of last Saturday and I mixed up the dough the day before. Still, it was a lovely slow way to spend a day. A few tips I learned from Meaghan:

1. You can dye icing white. This came as a total shock to me. I thought that the only way et get white icing was to use Royal Icing which is beautiful but not very tasty. Turns out Wilton makes white food colouring. And it works.

2. If you think your icing is too thick it probably is. I suffered through about a half dozen cookies before emptying out the icing bag and thinning it a bit. What blessed relief.

3. If you're piping a simple outline, skip the #3 and use a #4 tip instead. Also about six cookies into the day I realized that if I was only doing loopy daisy outlines it was going to go a LOT faster with a slightly larger tip. I wish I had realized this before filling in all the yellow centres with a #3. Good grief, it's not THAT had to change tips!

All in all they came out not too shaby. One thing to keep in mind is that you always need colours in pairs -- one to outline and a lighter version to fill. So these cookies in three shades required six colours of icing (would have been seven but white outlines white just fine.) All that to say do yourself a favour and buy multiple #4 & #6's so you're not constantly washing out tips. And to whoever it was who invented the disposable icing bag, I salute you.

take a deep breath

Ever heard of beatbox flute? Until today around lunchtime, neither had I. But thanks to the wonder that is YouTube my world got a little bigger.

This is Greg Pattillo and as you'll see in the vid he's not just an amazing flautist but he beatboxes as he's playing. No tricks, no editing. Just an amazing display of a skill that probably won't beef up your resume but it's pretty sweet. Take a deep breath and listen in.

thanks for the Memory

If you're looking for your next book, look no farther. Pick up a copy of Kim Edwards' startling debut The Memory Keeper's Daughter. It's easy to see how this was a New York Times bestseller. I'd heard so much about this book I accidentally bought it twice. I started reading it on Thursday and my only complaint is that I wish it had been longer.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a portait of a single decision stretched out and spun into a spider's web of secrets and distance. On a snowy night in 1964 Dr. David Henry delivers his own twins -- Paul born first, pink and perfect and a daughter he wasn't expecting. He sees right away that she has Down Syndrome and after the fashion of the time hands her to the nurse with instructions to take to her an institution. He tells his wife that their daughter died and a small crack begins to form between them, the only evidence that earth below them is shifting.

But Caroline, the nurse, decides not to leave the baby behind. Instead she gives her the name she heard her mother whisper -- Phoebe -- and leaves town to raise her as her own. And so the story truly begins. It would have been easy to slip into a maudlin discussion of loss, but Edwards avoids that skillfully delineating what can and cannot be regained. At one point she notes, "there would be no easy answers where Phoebe was concerned" but the conclusion when it comes is a deeply satisfying one.

I've heard rumors that Edwards is at work on her next novel. I hope she writes very quickly.

look a dying man in the eye

I picked up Tuesdays With Morrie the other day. It's a book I've meant to read for some time. A remarkably quick read it turns out. I knew the basic idea of the book, that an old man, dying with dignity, takes the time to share what he's learning with a returned prodigal student. What I didn't know is the central figure is dying of ALS. That hit a little close to home because a friend of mine is fighting the same fight.

Ralph is in his early 50s, far too young for ALS. I guess the disease forgot to check his driver's license. I saw Ralph about a week ago. It had been a month or two and in that short time he is already walking with a cane. ALS starts in the legs and marches relentlessly up the body shutting off the lights as it goes. These are the good days, he can still walk.

I saw him and smiled and then I must have noticed the cane -- it wasn't there last time I saw him. Ralph reached out a hand to touch my arm and smiled again. Shouldn't I be the one comforting him? I wanted to look away, I think he knew that. Thinking on it now I've come to believe that one of the greatest gifts we can give is to look a dying man in the eye. To be able to say "I know you're going, but you're not gone yet. I will not make you disappear. I will not practice forgetting."

One of the lines that stands out to me from Tuesdays is "death is not contagious". I think we have a natural inclination to try and distance ourselves from death. But it's so ridiculous, death may not be contagious, but it's is congenital. Everybody dies. Why do we pretend it isn't so?

Yeats wrote:
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
~ from "Sailing to Byzantium"

The choice is his now to sing or be silent. I cannot imagine Ralph sitting this one out.

The choice is also mine. Life is sweet, but short, and what lasts is only what we cannot hold on to. Silence is such a waste.

feel the love

This song has a special place in my heart and seemed just perfect for today. I wonder how much more love there would be in the world if we said how we feel outloud and more often?
May you feel the love today, in whatever form it takes. And remember, sometimes a frog is so much better than a prince :)

the darling buds of . . . february

It's beginning to look like Spring here on the west coast. I had the first picnic of the year yesterday. Granted, it wasn't really picnic weather, but it was lovely. I was getting the groceries out of my car this afternoon and realized that the maple tree in the front yard was in bud. Only just barely in bud, but enough to count. The honeysuckle already has miniature leaves. Spring is just around the corner.

I took a walk through my favourite greenhouse today. This time of year it's so silent, and as always, it smells incredibly alive. Who needs a Zen retreat when you can take a walk like that? I know that this has been a harsh winter in a lot of areas, and it's still a harsh winter in upstate New York. (What exactly do you do when there's over 100 inches of snow? That's more than 8 feet!) Let me offer this hope -- Spring is coming. The buds in my garden are already singing its fanfare.

under a blanket of silence

Sometimes life takes a most unexpected turn. The change can make us catch our breath -- not because it is a bad change, only that we did not see it coming. A new world takes a little getting used to. A couple of days ago test results showed that my niece Corrina is profoundly deaf. It's not the result I was expecting. Both Mark & Dave had hearing issues as children -- Mark was even completely deaf at one point -- but theirs were reversible. Corrina's deafness is not like that.

My Mom said it best as she often does, "this changes nothing and it changes everything". It changes nothing about who Corrina is, she is no less than she was before. It changes nothing about how much we love her or what great things she may grow up to do. It changes everything about how she will learn to communicate, how she will go to school, how she will be parented. Corrina is now part of the deaf community, and as her family, so are we. I have no idea what that means.

What it means for Dave & Janie is a big decision in the next little while -- do they pursue a cochlear implant or not? They have a great write-up on their blog that explains things better. It's a decision that will require a lot of thought and a lot of prayer, and probably not in that order. All day today I kept thinking about James 1:5 that talks about "if anyone lacks wisdom let him ask". I looked it up in the Message and I love the way it's worded there "If you don't know what you're doing ask the Father. He loves to help."

Mark is always telling me that "change isn't necessarily bad, it's just different." (What are big brothers for if not dispensing bon mots?) I think that's the case here. Whichever route D & J choose, Corrina's world will be no less wonderful than that one I live in. There will be no less laughter, no fewer reasons for it. She may not hear it the way I do, but she is already adept at reading faces and believe me, she laughs. I think the world just got a little bigger, not smaller. I don't know what it will look like, but if Corrina's there, I'm all in.

heads up

The good news is that I finally got my new header up (yeah for cuteFTP and the easiest file transfer ever). I still can't get the blog title to disappear -- I've reduced it to ` to take up as little space as possible. Isn't the new Blogger supposed to be easier? In old Blogger you just toggled the "hide blog title" button. Argh. I was doing so well.

To the designers among you (you know you who are) I know that the green behind my profile no longer "goes" but neither did any of the colour choices Blogger offered. If anyone can pull the hex for one of the blues in the header photograph, I'm all ears and open to suggestions. In the meantime, I was able to do *most* of this by myself, even the photo. That's me in my favorite reading spot on the quiet end of the beach.

One of my goals this year is to keep track of everything I read for the year so there will soon be two lists of books on the blog. I'll keep a short "recently read" list near the top and the full "Books of 2007" down below. I promise not to add a book to the list until it's actually finished. If I was posted a reading wish list it might take over the blog :)

seeing the beauty

It's been snowing here lately and I have not been a happy camper. I wouldn't mind it so much if the roads were ploughed, or if I could afford to hire a driver until it melts. I'm not in the demographic Volkswagon was aiming for with their "Drivers wanted" campaign. Truly, I'd really rather not. It's been snowy since Wednesday, five white days so far, and I realized today that I have almost completely missed the beauty of it.

Snow-covered rooftops, snow-laced branches, dogs chasing flakes along with their tails -- the world in white is incredibly beautiful. I have been so focused on the traffic reports I've almost missed the show. And I wonder why it is to so hard to see beauty in the midst of fear, the good with the bad, the unexpected pleasures mixed in with a situation I would never have chosen. There have been other times, other seasons, when one aspect of my life has so completely eclipsed everything else it was as if the world consisted only of the source of my worry. And thinking now, it seems that there's never a time when I need to see the beauty more than when one thing has grabbed my attention so completely.

It reminds me of a quote I came across the other day in an article that was talking about commitment. "Commitment," the author wrote, "isn't showy. It's subtle and common." Several days later I'm still chewing on that, but it's such a great picture. Commitment is a thousand tiny gestures done so frequently that they are commonplace. I've been reminded of that in these cold, white days when I've needed some help and it has come through time and again. There's a startling beauty in that as well and I need to make sure I don't miss it.

happy new year 2007!

Welcome to 2007! You know you've really become a west coaster when, while getting ready to head to the beach on the first morning of the new year, you look out the window and hear yourself think 'it's not raining THAT hard' and continue to get ready. My initial plan for the photo above also included a festive sparkler but the wind and the rain really picked up down by the water and I couldn't get the crazy thing to light.

So far 2007 has been pretty great. I got to welcome in the new year last night exactly how I wanted to (luxury) and now so far this year I've been to the beach, finished a good book, and indulged in a latte and a few chocolate dipped strawberries left over from last night. It's an unsustainable lifestyle to be sure, but well worthy of reveling in in the hours of vacation that remain.

It's impossible to escape the looking back this time of year. For myself I have to be careful not to wallow in it. But looking back over 2006, it was a good year. It wasn't 365 days of roses and rainbows, but it's in the past now and we choose the filter through which we view our own history. I choose to smile. Some of the good was fantastic and some of the bad truly sucked but I got to spend time with the people I love and I never went hungry. I have enjoyable and interesting work and somewhere to come home to at the end of the day. It may not technically be Xanadu, but I'd wager it's pretty darn close.

tech question re: new Blogger

I am appealing to the collective tech once again. I switched my blog over to the new Blogger and I'm right back to an issue I had with the old Blogger -- how do I keep the blog title from pasting itself right across my header without also removing it from the page title in the browser (and also in my profile)?

I managed to get the graphic itself back in by recycling the code from my old template. I know there was a way around the text-over-graphic thing, but the last time I edited my template was about two years ago. (I know...) I do have a new header graphic to put up but it's not quite ready to go yet, still needs some tweaking.

Any ideas? Helpful hints? Backdoor code?

christmases long, long ago

Many Christmases ago when I was a little girl - 5 or 6 I think - I received a set of Mr. Men cookie cutters for Christmas. Who could have guessed that all these years later I'd still be playing with them? I have no idea how many times I have made cookies with this set but one thing I always wanted to do was to outline the details in black and do fancy run-in work to ice in all the colours. I can remember my Mom saying many times what a lengthy process that would be and suggesting straight-up buttercream icing as an alternate. My Mom, as I have long known, is a wise woman. But this Christmas I decided to take the long route, just for fun.

Kendra had always wanted to try exactly the same technique so over Christmas this year we pulled out the vintage cutters and got to work. I have to say, in writing and for the record: Mom was right. It took AGES!! First there was the careful outlining -- no easy task on Mr. Small let me tell you. And then run out work which it turns out should be called painstaking - guiding - tiny - drops - of - icing - around - with - a - toothpick work. It was probably madness even to attempt it, but even as our fingers began to cramp it was great fun and the results as you can see above are quite impressive. True, the recipe makes about 4 dozen cookies and we probably got around to icing about half that, but that's really not the point :)

In news of a Christmas decidely more recent I am delighted to have spent another wonderful Christmas with my other family. It is an amazing thing to be able to spend Christmas with people on whom you have no claim -- in blood or the law -- but who have invited your into their hearts willingly. What a great way to acquire extra family. There were aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and sisters, presents and baking and puzzles. The TV was off for three days straight and no one noticed. Merry Christmas indeed.

For my parents, here are the photos of me opening the enormous present you trekked most of the way across North America for me. It was so big we'd nicknamed it "the giraffe" but it turned out to be even better than that.
Imagine you remembering on your far away holiday that my old hammock had finally given up the ghost. I can hardly wait for the weather to clear up enough to go and hang this in the backyard. I have just the right spot. Could there be anything better than a shady spot with a hammock to read in?

the accidental manicurist

First of all, Merry Christmas! Can you believe it's the 23rd? As my brother would say when we were growing up "it's the Eve of Christmas Eve!" We were big Christmas celebrators at our house. All the decorations had to go up each year, we baked the cookies and used every cookie cutter Mom had cutting them out. Then we'd spend all afternoon decorating. Good times.

Who knows which of us will online in the next day or two so in case I'm not, or you're not let me give you my Christmas greetings now. May you see all the reasons you have for your heart to be bright. And for the ones who live farther away than I wish you did, know that I hold you in might heart even if my arms can't quite reach that far.

You may be wondering what all this has to do with an accidental manicurist, well not much so far so let's take care of that. I learned a lesson in the importance of clear communication today. Kendra and I headed off to our favorite Manicure place to get some fancy nails for Christmas. Traditions come in many forms.

I am a recovering nail bitter but of late my nails have been in decent shape. The plan was to try something new and have the technician add a layer of acrylic over my existing nails to give them a little extra strength. I thought I was pretty clear about that. I sat down and 10 seconds later the technician had taken a pair of clippers, cut my nails down to stubs and pulled out a box of acrylic tips. "What are you doing?" I asked, only partially succeeding in concealing my growing panic. But the time for clear communication had passed. Long story short, I got a little more fancy than I bargained for:
I have never had nails this long -- or this SQUARE -- in my life. They kinda get in the way. The square part I can take care of with a decent file, the fake part will take some time to grow out. I suppose it's a good lesson -- know what you're getting into and if it goes badly, time will often fix it. I struggle with trying new things, it's something I've learned about myself and I'm working on it. I guess the nails aren't the only thing that will take time.

looking like Christmas

There are only a handful of days left until Christmas and around here things are certainly looking the part. The tree is up, the stockings are hung, the mantel is full and the cat is trying to eat everything. The house smells of pine -- one of the things I'm certain Heaven smells like. I sat staring at the tree so long this morning that Kendra asked if I was okay. Apparently I had an eerie stillness about me. I couldn't help but think how many memories are hung on the tree each year and how wonderful it is to have such a season to unpack them.
This is a mosaic of a few of my favorite things (or favorite deckies as we called them growing up). Top left is an ornament I made when I was three. It's supposed to be a bell, fashioned from egg cartons and glitter. My favorite out everything on the tree. It has crossed the Atlantic ocean and traveled the full width of North America. It reminds me of my Mom who always has time for crafts and of the magic that transforms something empty and used up into something beautiful. I always hang it near the top of the tree.

Next is a snowflake I bought last year in the gift shop of Salisbury Cathedral. Salisbury dates to the 13th century -- literally hundreds of years of worship are soaked up in the stone walls. I remember being there and falling silent. A snowflake, it turns out is a beautiful picture of just that.

I don't know where the robins came from, but they have always been a part of Christmas. Robins figure prominently in English Christmas cards. We had a set growing up that would get wired into the decorations in the house. When I moved out I asked to take one with me. The robin reminds me of my Dad because he used to hide the robins each year and my brothers and I would sit in the living room trying to see who could spot them first.

The Disney ornament is in memory of my birthday trip this year. When I spotted it in the vastness of the World of Disney store I knew it was too perfect to pass up. What a great way to remember a perfect birthday celebration.

The stocking is for my Nan, a champion knitter in her day. There's a whole set of these knitted ornaments -- stockings, candles, snowmen, candy canes. I have no idea how that works. My parents have a complete nativity that she knitted one year. Shepherds and staffs, kings and gifts, it's all there.

The ink well is for me, a reminder to keep writing, a reminder of the power of words and story. This particular ink well was also purchased last year, when I went to visit Shakespeare House. It was the strangest thing to stand on stone flags that once chilled the little toes of a boy who would grow up to transcend the ages. Flesh does not endure, but words can.

This last photo is for my family, because everyone has been posting lovely family pics and I haven't. So here you go. This is me at the company Christmas party with Leah & Lynnette. You can't go wrong with a black dress (even if everyone else has the same idea).

ferocious beastie

I was trying to get a "festive" photo of the cat but she refused to participate. Antique bells on red rope -- she would have none of it. Instead I got this shot of my fierce jungle tigress 'sounding her barbaric YAWP over the rooftops of the world'. (Points to anyone who correctly identifies the quote, double points if you get the non-movie reference as well.) I took this as a sign that the photoshoot was decidedly over. 'Nuff said.

In other wanderings, today I came across an interesting article about a professor who tried to prove Wikipedia was fallible. He failed. In his experiment he added erroneous factoids to several obscure articles. He expected them to last several weeks, but all 13 were gone in 3 hours. The professor conceded that the system clearly worked. Colleagues however were less convinced.

One quote really struck me, "But doubters of the approach -- and in academe, there are many -- say Wikipedia devalues the notion of expertise itself." Are these professional academics really saying that knowledge has no value in itself? Are they claiming that expertise only matters if I have it and you don't? How can knowledge lose value by being shared? Surely the only useless knowledge is that which is hoarded and kept private.

I wonder if they're speaking out of fear? Do they think that Wikipedia will one day replace the universities (they way the naysayers predicted television, or the internet for that matter, would wipe books from the face of the earth)? I can't understand teachers that root for less information, less knowledge. It's such an ignorant position.

about face

In a very strange congruency, the idea of prosopagnosia (face blindness) has come up a couple of times over the past few days. First it was the case du jour on this week's 3lbs (a show I doubt will make it past mid-season, but it stars Stanley Tucci so I'm watching anyway). Then it popped up again in the November issue of Wired. What must it be like to live in a world where the faces are no more recognizable than the famous apple-obscured bowler wearer in Magritte's Son of Man?

The Wired article talks a lot about the isolating aspect of the condition. Imagine not being able to recognize your own face, not realizing when the love of your life just walked into the room. Think of conversations without the benefit of expression or any facial clues. What a confusing world that must be.
There is so much emotion wrapped up in the idea of faces -- everything from recognition, to communication, identity. It's a big part of the world to be cut off from. I'd imagine it feels like losing half of your words.

In Orwell's 1984 there's this whole idea that you can curb thought if you simply remove the words to express that thought. I wonder if someone born with prosopagnosia would be less likely to use facial expressions having never seen them communicated? Years ago Discovery Channel did a series on how the brain processes faces. In addition to face blindness there were people who could only focus on one part of a face at time and could not put together the whole. There were others who could see the face but could not attach emotion to it. I remember one young man who was convinced his Mom had been replaced with an actress who looked just like her. He recognized the face but felt nothing for her. There was still one more who could see faces but could not distinguish a new face from one he had encountered before.

It must be a particularly heavy burden to have to keep introducing yourself to someone who loves you. There's such a strong element of selection in love -- I choose to be with you and no other -- would that choice, and thereby that love, be questioned if there was always a moment's hesitation before he or she moved towards you?

Heavy questions for a Sunday night. I did my first year of University as a pre-med student (and graduated with an English degree, long story). I remember taking a course on Brain and behavior that year. We didn't cover prosopagnosia, I wish we had, but it was fascinating how much we still don't know about the human brain. We can get all the way to the moon and back, but cannot travel all the way into our own heads. I wonder if it's for our own good.

happy feet

The holiday season has officially begun -- my Christmas socks are here. Every year since I went away to university my Mom has had a tradition involving festive socks. It's silly, I know, and that is exactly the point. Each year mid- to late-November a pair of Christmas socks arrive in the mail along with a note telling me that Christmas is coming, my parents are thinking of me and reminding me that the season is so wonderful even footwear can celebrate :)

Over the years there have been socks with Santas, sock with cats wearing holiday wreaths and one pair with bells attached that threatened to split my cat's personality in two. "Must attack bells! Must not bite Food Lady!" Ah the existential trials of fur on for legs.

It's funny how something so small -- a little pair of socks -- can be a celebration if time and attention are put into it. Funny and also wonderful. There are a certain number of major celebrations in a given year and a good many of them are beyond our control. (I cannot, for example decide to move Thanksgiving to February, or choose when it's time for a new niece or nephew or join the family) But if I'm willing to expend time and attention there is no limit to the celebrations I can create for myself and those around me. I can celebrate any time I feel like it.

If you go just outside my front door right now and stand very still you can hear a wonderful sound. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. The snow is melting. The roads are becoming passable again. Tires are finding purchase on the asphalt and white knuckles are getting their colour back. After 5 days of treacherous driving it is a beautiful sound. I think I'll go out and celebrate it.

snowman's paradise

It's snowing in White Rock and it shouldn't be. We're just outside of Vancouver, a stone's throw from the ocean. We're supposed to get two weeks of a light dusting of snow at the beginning of January. Clearly the snow had other plans.


It began last night. Kendra came in from the back room and announced "it's snowing." Like a character from a bad 80s movie I responded "no way!" and headed outside to see for myself. Sure enough it was snowing -- and not the barely frozen rain that passes for snow in these parts, but actual snow. This looked like the snow we got in Ontario as a kid. Packing snow, snowball snow. . . in those days pray-for-a-snow-day snow. It was unbelievable. I didn't expect it to last the night so I headed outside to take a few shots in the dark. Not only did the snow stick around, but it snowed straight through the night and as I am writing this, early afternoon of the following day, it has not stopped snowing.
This is what our street looked like early this morning. White Rock has a tiny, if existent, snow removal budget which makes driving in these conditions nasty. We get so little snow here that no one knows how to drive in it. Half the people drive 5 km/h and the other have drive 80. Both cause accidents. I'm already a little punchy after a recent accident on dry roads. I'm probably the only person in White Rock praying for a quick overnight thaw.

The backyard is beautiful. It's been like living inside a snowglobe today. Everything is white, the edges softened, the leaves thrown into colourful relief. In a true testament to west coast weather my Japanese maple tree still has deciduous leaves peaking out from under this new blanket of snow. Kendra and I headed out this morning to try and rescue the boxwood hedge. It was bent almost all the way to the ground under the weight. A couple of hours later and it is in the process of getting covered all over again.

These pictures are a few hours old now and the snow just keeps coming. The world gets prettier and prettier, the roads worse and worse. I'd like snow just fine if I didn't have to drive in it. I went out to frolic after saving the hedge and shoveling the driveway. It would be wrong to let the snow come and go and not throw some of it around. My aim with a snowball is still terrible, but that's rarely the point. Kendra and I thought about making a snowman, but they take a while so we opted for the miniature versions at the beginning of this post. I can see them on the picnic table out the living room window. They are half buried under new fallen snow.

After so many years in Ontario it is a little funny to think that snow in late November is newsworthy but it just doesn't happen here. It's like that year they got snow at DisneyWorld over Christmas and all the fountains froze. No one saw it coming. Every now and then a gust of wind comes through and shakes the trees and the white world gets even whiter. What a good day for a fireplace and a hot cup of tea. A snowman's paradise indeed.

UPDATE: 2:00 Sunday

This is what the tree in our front yard looks like now:

This is the same tree that's in the night time shot up above. It's completely covered in snow. The boxwood in the backyard is starting to bow again. The driveway looks less and less shoveled. And the snow just keeps on coming.