March 1st, 2009: Last Sunday, the weather forecasters told us we were going to get a couple of inches of snow. We did get some on Monday, but I doubt if it amounted to an inch. Tuesday started out cold and windy; it started to snow before coffee time in the morning and kept it up all day, with winds that I’m sure produced near-blizzard conditions out on the highway. We just thanked our lucky stars we didn’t have to go anywhere except for coffee. I spent most of the day napping.
The snow continued well into Wednesday and I guess it would have dropped a couple of inches altogether. Thursday, Friday and Saturday were cold, down to -30°, but bright and sunny, with very little wind. Very comfortable. Yesterday I had a nap in the car for over an hour; it was sitting in the sun and I didn’t even have to run the engine to stay warm.
Clear and a little windy today – the temperature started out about -18° but quickly rose to about -12° by the time I write this. The forecast calls for milder temperatures, maybe getting up to the freezing point by mid-week.
Finished at last! Our contractors put on the finishing touches last Tuesday. All that remained was a final coat of varnish on the woodwork, and they did that on Thursday. We are super pleased. Did we ever tell you what renovations we were having done?
Our en suite bathroom just had a toilet and vanity, no shower. We started out squeezing in a shower, but wound up emptying the room and putting in everything new. The main bathroom had a sink that was checked around the drain as they so often do, so we put in a new counter top and sink. In the basement, where we spend so much of our time, we built a whole bathroom with a soaker tub into the utility room. Nice bright lights and mirrors.
Our son, Lloyd, used to own BeautyCraft Manufacturing, making tubs, tub surrounds, counter tops and other bath and kitchen related products. Lloyd gave us the name of our contractor, who bought a lot of product from Lloyd; a man he had always respected for his attention to detail and fine work. It shows, too. When he and his crew are finished, they leave things a lot cleaner than they were when they started.
We went to the Collectors’ Show at Prairieland Park yesterday. Doreen can spend hours browsing in those places without going near the guns; I can spend minutes, most of that at the booth where people show off their home-made engines – steam, gas and hot air. Beautiful workmanship. I had coffee and shared a table with a couple from Regina and their granddaughter. Delightful conversation! The grandfather collects pocket knives, and had bought five, so we had to check those out. One was a Lone Ranger Trick Knife – there was no thumbnail notch in the blade to pull it open so you had to puzzle out how to get the blade out. I finally figured it out; then the granddaughter had to show us how to get it to stay closed again.
We met Pat Thompson, formerly of Elfros, son of Bertie and Gladys Thompson. He tells me Bertie is well into his 90s and living in Stensrud Lodge here in Saskatoon. I haven’t seen Bertie for ten years or more.
We went to the Western Development Museum for lunch, and sat with Walter and Doug Goodyear, from Wynyard originally but now living in Saskatoon. It turned out there was a model railway display there; Walt being a retired engineer (though on that lesser-known line, the CPR) was interested, of course, and so was I. There were only two setups; one was a one-man setup featuring actual steam locomotives. It was well done with a miniature village and so on. The other was a huge affair in an “L” configuration, with several trains running at once and six or eight men running it. Lots of buildings, vehicles and miniature people, and very realistically done. It must have been a club effort. Impressive, but we gave our vote to the one-man show. There were several other tables but they were all selling model railway stuff.
Our nephew and his wife, Ron and Patty Malyk of Prince George (Lucille’s son), are arriving this evening and we want to be around while they are here so we did our walking this morning at the Field House. The Cardiac department wasn’t operating today so we had to pay our $14 to walk; we had the place pretty much to ourselves. Walking seems more fun when the place is crowded, maybe because we know a lot of people there now.
Doreen ran into Sherry and Dave Levick of Porcupine Plain the other day. They said there is a lot more snow out there than in the city. Dave has been feeding about fifteen deer; he says some of them still have antlers. One big buck with a big rack was particularly aggressive, bullying the other deer mercilessly. Then he lost one antler, and overnight turned into the most timid, docile deer of the bunch. Even the young ones pushed him around with impunity.
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