Jul 1 - an all day rain

I guess we needed it, but far better to rain overnight !  It basically rained all day but there were long periods where it was hardly noticeable, so Cassie got out for some play.  I didn't see any action next door until late afternoon when Kim was out with Chili and Barry was out with his dog.  I was up on our deck throwing (chucking) the ball into the lake for Cassie.

I heard from Sandy; she and Marda are having a good time.  Last night they were staying at the Quality Inn at Bronte Road / Oakville; not sure where tonight - B&B in Stratford ?.  Tomorrow night they've got reservations at the Sheraton Niagara Falls and will head north Monday a.m.

I spent much of the day updating Quicken.  It's all Cassie's fault.  Since we're had her, I've been using the laptop in the kitchen(s) and not keeping Quicken up-to-date.  My U.S. bank and credit card accounts (BofA x 3, Amex US) are updated automatically when I occasionally sign on at the PC, but not Fidelity (8 months out of date), or my Canadian accounts -- TD bank, TD Visa, Amex Canada - all 6 months out of date.  They are now current and reconciled.  Ugh. 

Here at the cottage, it's not such a big deal to use the PC in the den, now that we don't keep a barrier between the kitchen and the living room the way that we did at Christmas.  In Florida, she's not allowed upstairs (neither was Abby), so I don't spend much time at all in the loft, where my PC is.  That said, there's really nothing stopping me from using Quicken at the laptop, since I do have VMware running and a snapshot of the environment here ... but then I have to move the file back and forth.  On the PC, I have automatic backups happening ... I guess that I could do that on the laptop as well, if I kept my 256 GB SD card stuck in the slot.

Pat Martin dropped over with some pictures of the property in question on Forest Access Road.  He took some current photos of the "lay of the land" and brought some slides which I will scan, showing the area before the bay was dredged and material was used to build up the land and supposedly change the watercourse.  I'll have to fire up my scanner ... that PC hasn't powered on in more than 2 years - 3-4 years ?.  Hopefully it will work because I don't know if I'd be able to come up with current drivers for that Nikon scanner.  It will take a trip down memory lane to remember how to use it and I'll have to find the slide carrier.  It has the roll film carrier attached now.

What else ... that's about it.

My eating habits are quite a bit different when I'm alone.  I have breakfast and lunch more-or-less on the same schedule but dinner much earlier.  When Sandy is here, I have my 5pm snack and then we eat around 7:30.  By myself, my snack gets extended and becomes dinner in stages.  Last night, for instance, I had some of the pickled herring from Costco and 3 snacking peppers with tapenade.  A little later I had a salad - my usual full head of Romaine with some sun dried tomatoes, an avocado and mozzarella chunks.  I had 3 of the small flax seed squares that came from nuts.com.  Still later I had half a package of green beans -- the only thing that I cooked.  Breakfast and lunch are pretty typical.  For lunch, I'd had a can of wild sockeye salmon and some stir fried Costco frozen veggies.  For breakfast, my one slice of seedy bread toasted and two poached eggs.

I didn't bother going out fishing yesterday a.m. because a) they usually aren't biting when it's cloudy and b) it started raining before long anyway.  This morning, I'm planning on going out but it's a cool one -- 47F right now.  This will be Cassie's first fishing trip.

I put on a fire yesterday as it was cool and somewhat damp in the cottage.  It's nice having it cozy.  That's probably a record -- a fire on July 1.  With two of us here and Sandy cooking, it wouldn't have been as cool, so I probably wouldn't have bothered.  The place warmed up quite nicely though, so much so that at one point I heard the A/C kick on and immediately turned that off !  I'd had the temperature set at 73 for the A/C.  It climbed to 75F in the house and is now back down to 73 and falling, with it being cool outside.  The sunny day will warm it back up this afternoon.

Onward ?