Dec 31 - ring out the old

Before I forget, I did go out for a short bike ride from here to Jim and Bonnie's and back, on the lake.  It was quite a workout.  With the temperatures being a "little brisk" it's also difficult to do.  Riding in the 4-wheeler track was the easiest.  The skidoo tracks weren't packed enough.

Right now it's -15F / -27C and predicted to be a few degrees colder tonight !

The day zipped by. 

The girls played outside a couple of times in the bright sunlight.  David pulled up a nice pike and left it at the back door for me, so we have another meal in the freezer.  David also roared around on the 4-wheeler for a while.  David and I went into town; me for the mail and David to pick something up at the liquor store.  Jim Matthews dropped by on his skidoo and picked up the mail.  Unfortunately I'd not asked Bonnie whether she needed anything in town and she went in later, or was supposed to anyway, to pick up wine that she ordered.  I'd figured that since they came up the day before, there was no point in asking !

Sandy made muffins for breakfast, so neither the French Toast pan nor the Waffle Maker got any use.  We're well into the two dozen eggs that I got from Susan now but I don't think that we'll run out.

The minnows are getting depleted but I don't think that we'll run out or at least, I don't think that I'll buy any more but you never can tell.  It's the cheapest per-pound meal that I can buy.

Did I mention that the X5 fan clutch has seized ?  I don't remember.  That just causes the mechanical fan to spin faster.  It happened before in Revelstoke and I drove to Saskatoon with it, making the motor noise louder.  I'm pretty sure that I could drive to Florida without incident but at this point I have an appointment on Friday in Barrie to deal with it.  Even if I had to do one such thing per trip north/south/north, it's extremely cheap transportation.  Heaven only knows how long it will last.  It, in this case, being the X5.

Sometime in the next few days I'll be switching to the all-season tires.  There's no significant snow accumulation expected.  I might do it before traveling to Barrie on Friday, since they are nicer to drive on bare pavement ... I'm not sure.  That would be an exercise for tomorrow.  Today I got to Britt for Mass and that will be on the snows.

I had bought a bingo game last year that I'd never taken out.  It's a full set with balls and roller cage.  We played bingo before lunch .... "under the B ....".  All the girls were in the act except Sandy who was prepping for dinner.  The only male, me, did the calling.  Unlike the last bingo game that I attended, there was no smoking.  That's what I remember most about going to bingo with my Italian grandmother.  She didn't smoke but everyone else did.  The other thing that I remember is that even though she had a bunch of cards, she'd manage to complete my cards if I missed something.  Funny.

We ate relatively early as we were having fondue.  Beef, pork and shrimp plus, of course, chocolate fondue later.  Desert was after we did some fireworks outside.  It was excellent.  We now have three packages of meat in the freezer for stir fries for another day -- two of the marinaded beef and one of pork.  There weren't that many shrimp to start with and none leftover.  We wouldn't refreeze the shrimp anyway.

We did have some fire-related excitement -- twice. 

The first was when I refilled the burner from one of the fondue pots.  I picked it up with a napkin and the napkin caught fire.  I was working on the granite counter so it was kind of funny.  Had it been Formica it might have been marked, not sure.  It only burned for a few seconds.  I overheard Lauren telling her Mom the story and I'm sure that it grew with the telling -- Lauren wasn't even there when it happened so any details that came through were no doubt embellished :).  I guess that next time I'll use the oven mitt !

The second was with the fireworks.  The only one that I had planned to do -- we don't really have a stock here -- was the mortar.  The first one (I had four) didn't drop all the way down and it exploded laterally instead of at the base of the mortar and shooting up.  No one is ever near that thing when we do it anyway and it just messed up the mortar tube.  We had three left and David threw them as far as he could after I ignited the wick.  The wicks are really long so it would bounce out on the ice and then several seconds later, explode.   It was interesting but not quite as spectacular as when they explode up in the sky.   I suppose that I could have found a short piece of pipe and used that ... in the future I might think about that as it would be better than the cardboard mortar tube anyway.

I then lit the sparklers and the gang had a good time with those.  We have some more left for the next time.

Back inside, it was time for chocolate fondue.  We finished that up completely.

I had a short snooze from 9:30 to 10:30 and then got up but went to bed around 11:30.  Sandy went to bed at 10:30.  There was a crowd in the loft watching TV ... I've seen the ball drop before.  I think that we need to move west so that we can see the ball drop at 9pm.  That's more my style  !


Onward ... It's the new year.  This year's stories have yet to be written.  Hopefully everyone will stay healthy; that's the important thing.

Cheers !