Come From Away

I went to Halifax to visit my brother. We hung out, fixed up his computer, went to a movie and ate at a few good restaurants.

Here are some pictures of my crossing.

Now for the funny story… We were talking the night before I was leaving about when we had to leave his place to be able to make the ferry that was at 11:45 AM. He was driving me there and I was walking on. K would be picking me up on the other side. After some discussion, we thought it best to leave his place by 9:30 AM. This would give us plenty of time…

The following morning, we get up on time. Get ready, etc. and then proceed to putter around his place… He then looks at the computer screen and says, “Is that the right time?!” as it was reading 10:00AM…

I pack (toss my crap into my bag) as fast as possible and we hop in his car. ZOOOooooom…

We fly along the highway to the ferry. Arrive at the terminal at 11:45. The boat is still there! Hurray!

He pulls up to the passenger drop off and I hop out, grab my bag, don’t even close the trunk and start running across the road where the cars and trucks line up before boarding.

The nice man at the gate gives me the universal hand signal for slow down, it’s OK. So I slow to a brisk walk.

When I arrive at the gate, the boat is about 10 feet out and coming into the dock… Strange there are no cars waiting to get on, so I say to the guy, “What’s up is the ferry late?”

“No, he says. I called it back for you. I saw you coming and I radioed them. They said they would come back for you.”

OMG! Only on the East coast!

This stupid thing flopping around in front of me all the time. It’s driving me crazy and I am going to cut it off!

Well, this is how I was feeling last Sunday, so I took some metal sheers and cut 5 inches off!

My belt fits soooo much better now!

The vet came out to our place to give Oopsie her biannual steroid shot. Yes, we have a horse with asthma… He also gave one to the “barn cat” (the one that is not allowed to go outside).

While he was here, he was talking to K about Portobello and what we feed him, etc. He was interested as he was recently at another client’s whose potbelly pig was so fat that it was starting to get “fat blindness” (the fat grows over their eyes so that they cannot see) and was so fat that it did not want to even walk around. K told him about the Purina Potbelly Pig Chow that we use… He mentioned that Porty’s hooves looked a bit long… To make a long story short, Portobello in his squirminess managed to move his foot right at the wrong moment and he got the tip of his toe nipped off. Ouch!

I came home to some horrifying looking puddles in front of the back door. Thankfully, I had been warned and did not panic…

He did not seem to even notice overly much for the first couple of days and was happily walking around leaving a ghastly trail, but the last two days he has been limping a bit. I got a good look at it today and it does not look infected. It’s probably just hurting because it is starting to heal. Poor guy. It’s almost all he can do to keep eating constantly…

This long week-end in many, many places around the world devout potato lovers will be celebrating with traditional heart warming activities such as playing with Mr. Potato Heads, potato guns, games of hot potato, peel the potato, etc. There will be a lot of over stuffed bellies, teaming with favourite potato related dishes (Scalloped, Mashed, Boiled, Baked and others)

Of course today is the only day that is really about honouring the potato and once over there really is not much more potato activity this week-end. The silly bunnies and chicks take over the scene soon with all their cheeping and pooping out little chocolate balls all around living rooms everywhere on Sunday morning (or super late Saturday night).

PEI wishes everyone a fabulous Good Fry Day!

Better weather is right around the corner, but it doesn’t feel like it here. School was cancelled for the last two days as we had a huge storm that dropped a whole bunch of snow on us again. I hope this is the last of the season.

The fields around our house are covered with hundreds of geese and they fly over all day honking loudly. It’s nice to see them as I am sure they are harbingers of warmer weather. And, finally, we see some positive temperatures in the forecast, although I noticed that Friday’s forecasted 12 degrees and cloudy has become 11 degrees and rainy.

I’ve been taking regular walks with Molly up our field and beyond behind the house. Although there were some deeper spots today in the snow, it was still a great walk. The sun was shining so bright that it was hard to see and there was a brisk wind, but not ear numbing (as I did not have my hat on). We only went about 10 – 15 minutes up and then back.

There’s a single pair of geese in the field and they have been there for a few days now. I’m not sure what they are doing there as they always seem to be doing nothing at all. I think they are attracted to the feed corn that was missed by last fall’s harvest, but hold their heads high and watch us when we are around. Molly noticed them and would keep stopping to watch them with her head down suspiciously. I encouraged her to go say hi, but in the end she was far too shy. Two days back we (or more accurately “I”) saw a skunk running across the field. Molly did not notice him/her and I DID NOT encourage her to go say hi.

I was carrying my phone as I no longer have a watch and I took some pictures. The camera had a lot of trouble with everything being so bright. They were terribly underexposed and I corrected them once downloaded. I guess, I can’t complain too much about my phone not being the best camera. Here are the better ones:

The whole gang went into Charlottetown today to have dinner. K, Big D, and B went off to guitar lessons and L, Little D and myself took a side trip to Indigo to purchase some books and burn some time…

I was happily surprised and a bit shocked at seeing the new computers that they have set up to search their inventory.

This is clearly a Macintosh with a swanky touch screen. The Apple-Command key is right there on the keyboard. Perhaps there’s a mini hidden away somewhere in the pedestal… I am a bit disappointed that it is masquerading as some shitty IBM. As you can see, the only identifying label on the whole set up shows “IBM”

Hmm… Or perhaps, it actually is a crappy IBM, but they couldn’t find any keyboard as nice as the one from Apple…?

I took Big D and B to guitar lessons today as K is not feeling well. A note in the bathroom warrants its own blog entry. Apparently, paper towels can be used to blog toilets!

I love this sign. I zoom by a number of these on my way to various places around us and always think that I should stop and snap a picture. I guess these signs might be necessary for the first snowfall of the year, but always find them amusing when almost buried. As my phone now has a camera, I actually had the tools I needed with me for once. And it also has blogging software, so I can make this entry while waiting for my lunch at Cedar’s!