May 15 - whine

I went to Mass in Brantford and we headed north, north into some snow squalls ... yes, snow squalls mid-May.  No wonder many GOP supporters don't believe in global climate change, aka global warming!  We stopped at Stef's, everyone was home and we met David's girl friend.  From there we stopped for some lunch at Panera and then headed to Parry Sound, picking up a few groceries and then to the cottage.

Everything seemed ship-shape until I opened the door to the wine cellar.  The thermostat had failed and the heat had run constantly.  It was over 100F in there and about a dozen bottles had popped their corks.  I was worried that I wouldn't even be able to have a glass of wine to drown my sorrows but a bottle that I cooled in the freezer seemed ok.  Time will tell how much we've lost.

It was interesting (sort of) that the wines that had popped were all of a given order.  Six here, three there, you get the idea.  There are some bottles that have corks pressed part-way out, just a smidgeon.  No doubt some are "corked", literally.

Ah well.  Last year it was the heater cable failing in the water supply line, this year the thermostat.  It seemed such an elegant solution to maintaining the temperature slightly warmer than the house.

Ugh.

Anyway ... and the internet was crawling.  No, I mean really crawling, couldn't access any web sites but it did pull down email; that too was very slow.  I wasn't in a mood to call Xplornet so I left it until the a.m.  Well, it turns out that "seasonal suspension" in the satellite world is simply throttling.  I guess that I'd scheduled it to come back on today or tomorrow and we were early by a few hours.  It's up and walking again (the internet doesn't really "run" here, it walks).

There was some good news.  The water level was up and I've already stripped the gazebo of lights and tarp. Not only that, but having Jason's dock tied to ours meant that I could have a dock on all three sides of the gazebo and didn't have to juggle docks to do the work.  It went much faster than usual, as a result. 

Cassie has already been swimming, many times, chasing sticks.  Yup, she's a fetcher and a water dog, no question about that !

Next up, trip to town to pick up the mail.  I should also get the Whaler in the water today.

The black flies haven't made their appearance yet.  No doubt they will soon.

Onward !