Music!

Talking to one of my most favourite brothers-in-law today, I learned that he has uploaded one of his songs. You can listen to it here. Nice to see he's keeping busy!

Moon yes

When we were at the cottage on Thanksgiving weekend, we did a tour in the boat, one last time before putting it to bed for the winter. We had a hitchhiker, a small dock spider who patiently waited for us to return to shore. I was not going to disturb him! I know what happens when you tease a dock spider .

This morning the moon was brilliant, and I just had to take a few pics: I'm supposed to be getting ready for work, but this is SO much more fun! Anyway, this is the street where we live. The neighbours are getting ready for halloween, as you can see!

Sunday Sunday

Another busy weekend, and unfortunately I had a bug on Saturday that took the fun out of that day. I'd wanted to go to Glenda Ferguson Tippins' book launch, but just didn't feel well enough.

Sunday was a busy day, however. In the afternoon I attended a funeral at our church for a woman who was a longtime member of the congregation and a sweet lady. A nice service, and it was beautiful weather to be at the graveside, too. I did get stung by a wasp in Dodie's car (that's the second time that's happened this month - how am I attracting them?), which wasn't pleasant.

Late afternoon the deacons (minus Debbie who was working) met with Don Crisp and John McIntyre in Arnprior. I always come away from meeting with them feeling uplifted; despite all the things that don't seem to be going right, they always make you feel that they understand and that there is a way forward. Very gifted men.

The evening of music at Elgin St. Baptist was a combination of the old and the new. Hugh Horner was supposed to be appearing with his partner George Towell, but George was in hospital, so instead Hugh's wife, daughter and son-in-law entertained us. We didn't have a programme, so I (per usual) can't remember their names, except he called his wife Ruby - but that wasn't her real name. They performed old-timey music, while the young couple did songs they had composed and recorded themselves. Beautiful voices, talented musicians. I was in awe of the young couple: he is a pastor and has two churches he serves; she is a youth leader. As such, they both must have already had a busy day before going to Arnprior to perform. And they have two children from his first marriage, so a busy home life too. Amazing.

So I'm going to not think of myself as a very very busy person, after all.

And speaking about the election...

...did anyone else find the voting procedure particularly idiotic this time? I felt sorry for the people working at the polls. This is how it went for me:



First, I gave them the note from the government which says where I live and that I can vote. Then, I gave them my license, to prove my address belonged to me (what if I'd been in the middle of moving and hadn't changed it yet?). Good thing I had that - a guy in Ottawa presented his passport and they turned him away (really - my imagination is good, but I didn't make it up). Then she found me on the list and stroked off my name. The lady beside her asked me to say my name and address, before she handed me my ballot. After I marked it, before I put it into the box, she asked me my name again.



In the city this may seem quite reasonable. In a small town, not so much; I know one of the women personally. It seemed silly.



Also rather a bother was how far we had to drive to vote. We used to always vote within 4 or 5 blocks, depending on which location they chose. This time, we had to go 1.4 miles! Have a look at this map: the purple shows how far we went to vote. Not a big deal, until you realize how large that route is compared to the size of Renfrew!

They also put the polls on the second floor. Which meant anyone who couldn't do the stairs had to go and wait for the elevator. I feel sorry for older folks who had never been there before having to fin the elevator amid the throng of children entering or exiting the ice surface at the rink. The area is noisy and chilly, and there are usually bags of equipment everywhere.

I feel better now that I've had my little rant. Have a good weekend!

The election that was

So, another Liberal majority government. Not surprising, but certainly disappointing for Renfrew County, as I envision another four years of:

• no progress on four-laning to Pembroke/Petawawa (the bottleneck at Arnprior on Monday evening extended about 6 miles; even under normal traffic conditions there is always a line-up of cars there).


• no progress on bringing high-speed internet to rural Ontario


• continuation of the funding of Catholic religious schools only (some religions are more equal than others, I guess)

Business as usual in the valley! I shouldn't complain too much, because we did vote for a Conservative member, here. Not that having a Liberal member for years did us any good. There is a perversity in Renfrew-Nippissing-Pembroke (why don't they just call the riding "the valley" and have it done with?) which causes us to elect a party other than the ruling one, just so we can continue to complain to people who don't care. We're always bucking the trend, or shooting ourselves in the foot, though I shouldn't use that analogy during hunting season, in case I cause offense. Our hunters are really careful, though you may have heard of the fellow who was critically wounded last week by another hunter who mistook him for a grouse. Hmmm.

Cottage Pics

Okay, I am relieved to report that my neighbours only cut down part of the group of trees, so from our property it still looks very bushy! I think the rest of the trees are on the other neighbour's property, and they left them alone. Iain always says I am way too negative. Of course, he is wrong, there's no way, not a chance. :)
On Friday night, when I was waiting for Iain to arrive at the cottage, I took this shot of the rain moving in. It was only about 6:45, but the sky was as dark as if it were much later. It was a little spooky!

Saturday and Sunday were gorgeous days, though, warm and sunny, and we got to do a lot of pre-winterizing cleanup, so we won't be so busy next week. Hope the weather holds, because we always like to do a long after-dinner walk on Thanksgiving Sunday.
Sadly, I must report that the birds again took all of our grapes this year. We were holding out for them to ripen a bit more, because adding a lot of sugar doesn't make for the best wine, but we couldn't get the readings above 17 on the refractometer. One day the grapes were there, the next they were gone! That's how it goes - we've decided that in future we will just pick 'em and add the darn sugar!

Here's some pics of the flowers still blooming there. The nasturtiums look like they'll go on forever, though I know that one good frost will do it for them.
The annuals I started from seed in the deck box are still blooming, despite the dry weather they've had to endure.
The sun is setting ever farther to the south, now, and the days seem very short. Just one more weekend, and then we say goodbye, at least until New Years.

Monday Morning Musings

Being addicted to the computer occasionally has its upside. You become a member of Facebook, and the next thing you know you are inundated with invitations to all sorts of useless applications from people who you didn't ever hear from before. This is not the upside of which I speak; the up comes from updates that you can get on things you do care about. This last week, my Aunt Margaret, who is 94 and completely "with it", broke her hip (well, there is now some debate as to what exactly broke, but she did require surgery). Through the magic of updates from my cousins on Facebook, I was able to tell my mom on Sunday morning that her sister had come through the surgery successfully, and was now back in her hospital room enjoying the benefits of good drugs to ease the pain. My mom marvelled at this; we didn't even require a phone call to bring us news (though we did require a phone line).
Yes, I'm so addicted that I have a computer and internet access at our cottage. Good thing, too, since there are only three tv stations that come in at all up there, and I like to check the weather network online. Also a good thing because Iain can check in on work stuff (though I wish he didn't have to).
Anyway, I also have another thing to rant about, today. I must have on my street the fewest per capita tree-huggers in the country. While everywhere else the concern is about global warming and the protection of the environment, my neighbours blithely axe every large shade-giving tree and opt for air conditioners instead. As I write this, yet another huge shade tree up the block is being cut down. I'm not holding out much hope that they will simply trim it up and leave the main body of it standing, to leaf out again. The tree is healthy and beautiful - the leaves haven't even begun to turn as yet, while the sad maple we are trying to keep alive in our front yard has lost half its leaves - and yet I'm sure they will take the whole thing down. It breaks my heart to see such waste.

And just in case you thought I didn't waste enough time...

Here is my latest accomplishment, courtesy of simpsonizeme.com:

If I were a character!

Weekend!

What a gorgeous weekend it was! Would that this weather could last until after Thanksgiving!


We are getting short on cottage time. Just two more weeks, and it'll be closed up for another season. This weekend we had to cut short our time there, because I had a church meeting on Sunday morning that I couldn't miss, so we came home on Saturday night. We had wanted to stay for Judy's Bluegrass, but it ran too late for us.


Judy Kuno is a remarkably talented woman who lives near our cottage. She does wonderful artwork and crafts, and has the greenest thumb of anyone I know. She's making an annual event of having a big party with friends and family performing at her place. I had to take a pic of the entrance to her property this weekend:

Judy does a lot of clever folk art. She is one of those people with "busy hands". I'm not sure if she even owns a tv; for her, spare time is used to create, not to watch.


We did see a bit of wildlife this weekend: a deer, on our way to the cottage (you can just see her face in the centre of the picture),


and we also saw a porcupine on the street near my Mom's place, after we dropped her off on Saturday night, but I wasn't smart enough to get a good shot.

Political Learnings

I have a question about politics:

Why is it that the only party that ever seems to hit the nail square on the head on hot button issues for me is one that has absolutely no chance of being elected in my riding?

In the current running the issue is the funding of religious schools. It seems that only the Green Party agree with my assessment, which is that the government shouldn't be funding any religious schools, which means the Catholic board should be amalgamated with the Public one, and we should have only one school system that is publicly funded.

I'm a Christian, but I think religion is best taught in the church and the home, being a matter of personal belief, and that the lack of church involvement at school doesn't mean a lack of morals, necessarily. If you want to send your child to a private school, good for you....just don't expect the rest of us to pay for it, except through charitable donations. And don't tell me the constitution ensures your right to a separate school; that just tells me we need to revise the constitution (yet again).

The only other option I can possibly agree with is to fund all of the various religious schools, because as ridiculous as it seems, this is the only really fair option. I don't like it, but it's better than the status quo, which is clearly unfair. That's the Tory option, and they will probably be elected in our riding anyway.

At one time in the not-so-distant past, I could have relied upon the NDP to campaign for the separation of church and state, and for fairness, but ever since they got a whiff of power they are more interested in getting elected than in doing the right thing. Power corrupts....

Just Cats

We all know that the internet was invented mainly as a forum for people to show pictures of their cats, so here is today's offering:

This is the cat who has moved into Sheila's neighbourhood and makes a habit of visiting her daily. When we were visiting on the Labour Day weekend, she dropped by several times, for scritches and photo-ops. She isn't allowed a pass into the house, but enjoys the warm patio stones and any attention she can get. This is probably as close as Iain's mom will come to having a pet, although she used to love having Angus the scottie dog.

On the home front, I couldn't resist taking this pic of Phantom curling up in this basket I hadn't gotten around to putting away.

As he's getting older he is becoming more cuddly, and often sits on my lap in the evening, which I do appreciate (there are few things as satisfying as a cat on the lap).


Jezebel was just napping in the sun when I surprised her.

I don't have a new pic of my little Stitches, because she wasn't hanging out with these guys.