Dec 16/17 - are we crazy ?

Ok, we left good weather in Florida to come up north, shovel snow, put on snow tires, haul wood, drive 20 miles for the mail, and then repeat most of this over and over. It makes a lot of sense, doesn't it ?? doesn't it ??? ... I'm not convinced yet ! Sandy had the best plan -- stay in Toronto until I've got the place in working order, then come up to a warm house.

However, we wouldn't miss it for the world ... well, make me an offer ...

So ... we left Stef's around 8:30 yesterday heading downtown and our first stop was The Green Beanery -- a coffee shop at Bloor and Bathurst. We found out some time ago that a) Timothy's was going to stop delivering coffee and b) they were going to stop doing a French Roast -- two strikes -- so I started looking for alternatives. We could probably find another place that would ship coffee to us but I've been intrigued for some time with the concept of roasting our own beans. So ... long story short ... we ordered a coffee roaster. It's our Christmas present to each other. The Gene Cafe will allow us to experiment with different roasts and will allow us to roast 1/2 pound at a time. Most of the roasters out there, i.e. the cheaper ones, will only roast small amounts of coffee and they will not do a dark roast. This should be interesting. We also picked up a few varieties of beans. Theoretically speaking, it will pay for itself in 50 pounds of coffee -- roughly a year for us. Later blogs will document how we do with roasting.

Next stop yesterday was the St. Lawrence Market. We picked up some meat and fish and some olives for tapenade. After that I dropped Sandy off at the Enterprise Car Rental at Front St. West at Simcoe. By this point it was 11:30 and I headed north.

Sandy was heading north too -- north Toronto that is, for an item on our Christmas list. My journey was longer -- I got into the cottage around 3pm which included a stop in Barrie for some groceries. After unloading the car, putting on a fire, turning on the water etc. which took the better part of an hour, Abby and I went visiting to Jim & Bonnie's. We only stayed an hour and then headed back home. Dinner, a little TV etc. and I was ready for bed.

Our driveway had been plowed, but no wider than the plow on the guy's truck. I stopped at the top of the driveway and had to make a judgement call as to whether I could make it down and then, having made it down, could I make it back up. I walked down and checked things out and decided yes, I could make it ... even with my summer tires. I was willing to chance it rather than having to unload the car from the top of the driveway. I'd have been exhausted.

There is a lot of snow -- just shy of three feet before it warmed up and lost a foot. It's crusty and heavy, as I found out this morning when I started shoveling a path from back to side on the deck. Jim had already cleaned the walk so I didn't do any more there. Later on this ...

Early to bed and early to rise ... I woke up at 11 pm, 1 am, 3 am ... and kept feeding wood into the wood stove. At 3:30 I decided that I couldn't sleep any more so I got up and started my chores for the day. After coffee, of course, I started with the computer, hooking up the external SATA drive and bingo, brought up the same copy of Windows that I'd been running in Florida -- I like this. Next, make bread. That doesn't take long but I love the bread that comes out of the breadmaker with the multigrain flour, so I put on a loaf so I'd have some for lunch.

Next, although it was still dark, start shoveling a path on the deck. I needed to be able to get from the back to the kitchen door, and to the barbecue. It's not far -- perhaps 50-60 feet, but deep, crusted -- I could probably make an igloo with the chunks of snow. That small bit of shoveling took over an hour. By now it was light and I headed up the driveway to get out the snow blower. I cleared the front of the barn and widened the driveway somewhat. I say somewhat -- I still have more work to do. This may sound like it's not a lot but there were spots where I had to use a spade to break up the crusted snow so that the snow blower would deal with it. I had to do that down the length of the driveway to widen it for better driveability -- and will have to go out tomorrow and do some more so that the Propane truck can get in for a delivery. I think that I'll change this, call them in October for a fill rather than worry about whether they'll be able to get down the driveway during December.

Next, with access to the barn cleared, get the X5 inside and change over to snow tires. Although I'm driving ok with the summer tires (summer, not all-season), that will only last as long as there is no deep snow and as long as the snow is cold and crunchy. If it gets soft the treads in the summer tires fill with snow and the car will go nowhere. It has snowed on and off all day and I don't want to get stuck.

This all takes time -- by the time I've got the car prepped it's 10:30 and I headed into town to pickup the mail and minnows -- I want to catch some fish. Drat, drat, drat -- the minnow place is closed -- it's just someone's house so if they're out for whatever reason, no go. I did get the mail -- a box of mail -- and also signed a bunch of forms a) requesting a post office box for the year (no charge for this), b) allowing Sandy to pick up my mail (isn't this silly ?), also allowing Jim & Bonnie to pick up my mail ... where did all this come from ? I've never signed anything at the Post Office (General Store) before.

Back home, time for lunch and get fishing. I do have some artificial minnows and some real worms. The ice is about 6 inches thick so I got out the auger, made my two holes and put out my gear. As I type this I'm looking outside at the two rigs -- no action yet -- I'm not expecting a lot of action from these -- perhaps if I stayed outside and jigged the artificial minnow I might get somewhere, but not likely just sitting there. The worm is another matter -- I don't think that worms are very effective at this time of year ... but what the heck.

It's now after 1pm and I've got BNN on TV -- the Canadian "Business News Network" -- which is usually pretty good but today the focus is on the fact that the TSX -- Toronto Stock Exchange -- is down. It's been down for 3.5 hours. They're having software problems. They're calling it a "data transmission issue". How do you think the rest of the world will view Canada when its largest stock exchange is down ? It's frozen perhaps ? Perhaps BNN refers to Banana News Network -- with the recent issues in Canadian politics many people outside Canada are looking at us as a Banana Republic. This is the second time this year that the stock exchange has been down -- this is ridiculous.

For the rest of the day -- I don't have much planned. I won't be going for a bike ride ... and probably not using the trainer ... perhaps tomorrow for the trainer.

I'll be picking up Sandy in Parry Sound tomorrow afternoon.

That's about it ...