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Saturday 31st December 2005
Well, it's New Years' Eve again and another year gone. What's new? Well, I bought a pair of ice-walkers.($34Cdn) They are quite good, so long as the ice is not covered by a layer of snow. Even then, they do help. They are called Yaktrax. They have a web page at: www.yaktrax.ca. Go take a look .. they could save you a trip to the hospital! .. Not to speak of six weeks in a plaster cast and twelve weeks or more of therapy (if you can get it).
What else? My retractable dog lead stopped retracting a few days ago. I cannot do without this useful device (as I have been pulled over by my dog or just put off balance several times). The new one was $54. .. including all the taxes which our various levels of government need to spend on advertising, bribes etc. Anyway, this lead is called a flexi3. They have a web site at www.flexi.de (the de is because they are made in Germany). This really ticks me off .. we don't seem able to make anything in Canada. You would think the ice walkers would at least be made in Canada, wouldn't you? Oh No, that would be too simple .. they're made in China!
Sunday 24th December 2005
What is this strange dislike of Christmas rich dark fruitcake?? I absolutely love the stuff. It causes me to put on pounds every Christmas. .. Well, that and rich dark plum-pudding with brandy custard sauce. If anyone wants to send me a fruitcake or plum pudding it will be much appreciated - and will contibute to my overweight problem!
For my Christmas Eve treat I went to see Harry Potter and the
Goblet of Fire. Really enjoyed this, as usual. The ending was
a bit unfortunate as it involved.... oh well, go see it for
yourself. Wish I could tell a good story like that.
Afterwards, as the movie had taken from 15:35 until 18:30 or so,
I was quite hungry. It would have been another hour or to make
my usual Saturday steak and salad. So I bought a chicken dinner
and mixed vegetables from Swiss Chalet, on the way home.
Have seen a number of good movies this month: The Weather Man, March of the Penguins, Pride & Prejudice, Zorro. All good stories, I thought.
The temperature suddenly went above zero, a couple of days ago. It is surprising how quickly one acclimatizes to being cold all the time. Now I am pleasantly warm. As the snow melts and the pavements become safe for walking, it is more like England than Canada. I really wish I could afford to go home (to England). I would like a house on a cliff, with a view of the sunset. A place where the wind blew and I could watch the seagulls wheeling.
Monday 19th December 2005
The temperatures have been below freezing since the beginning of
December. We had quite a storm a few days ago. I have had to shovel
and blow out the driveway, the patio and the deck twice this year
already. I noticed a young man with a shovel and asked him if he
would like to do shovelling. He agreed, but took one look at my
driveway and passed along. I don't blame him, it's a big job. There
have been several letters to the local papers suggesting that people
should be shovelling their pavements and saying that old folk should be
able to easily find help. Well, I have tried for years without
success to find help. Last year, when I was sick, I called a
professional in. He came with a big truck. This left snow piled
against my house - which I had to shovel later, when I was well. He
also damaged my house eaves-troughs down-spouts diverters. It always
seems when I pay someone to help they end up doing some damage. Some
years ago, when I broke my arm, I was tired of the dust and cat hair in
the house. I paid someone to vacuum. This person broke:
the light fixture in my bathroom (left it hanging so that the glass could come
crashing down),
the portable fountain in the living room,
my clothes stand,
my plant stand in the kitchen and, finally,
put a vacuum beater bar on the linoleum panels in the kitchen (which means
that they will all have to be replaced, when I can afford).
Oh, and pulled down the curtain fixture in my bedroom. This I put back up
when my arm had healed.
All this would have been funny if it had
not been so annoying and cost me $60 for the "service". I had often
heard my mother complain about the Klutzes who "helped" her and
now I can understand why her beautiful Dresden china came to be
broken - and just about everything else she owned.
My movie yesterday was "Pride and Prejudice". A lovely story about a young woman and her family. Beautiful photography - countryside of Yorkshire, England. Pleasant soundtrack - piano music which I enjoy.
I was told by my html tutor that the P for paragraphs command should be put at the beginning of a paragraph and turned off at the end. I have not done that because I only use Explorer. Putting it at the end only has always worked for me.
Today I have been looking for the "Yes Virginia there is a Santa Clause" article. I have found a beautiful site at: http://ca.geocities.com/christmasisland@rogers.com/virginia.html and thought you might like to take a look at it. He certainly was a wonderful writer.
I also saw a nicely written explanation answering the question: "What are the laws of the universe?" This was in the local comic section, written by Beakman and Jax. (Google cosmos nasa).
Their explanation as follows:
"They are forces that are a part of the cosmos. So big you don't
need to believe in them for them to happen. I don't know if that
makes them laws, but it does make them unwise to ignore"
"1: The Universe works toward balance.
The Universe working toward balance is how airplanes fly, how
batteries work, what makes the wind blow, or a hurricane,
even something simple and sweet like cocoa cooling down. Balance is
needed for the existence of matter. If atoms were not balanced, they
couldn't exist. The Universe pushes tirelessly and forever to make
things balanced."
"2: Nothing ever disappears.
There is a set amount of stuff in the Universe. None of anything
that exists can ever disappear. When it seems as though something
has disappeared it has really changed its form. Like burning wood.
The fire mixed the wood with oxygen and they transformed into new gases
and smoke particles as well as heat and light. An important part of
this law is that energy is just another way for matter to be. And vice
versa. Really."
"3: There is no darkness, only light.
No one can make something that is not a thing. Negative things
like dark or cold are not really things. They are the lack of
a thing. They are the absence of energy and not a kind of energy.
There is only more or less light. There is only more or less heat.
To make dark, you must block out the light. To make cold, you move
the heat. Energy moves into where there is less of it until all
space shares equal light, equal heat. (See 1 and 2)."
"4: There are different truths.
Energy can be like a wave, such as a radio wave or a light wave.
A whole understanding of nature flows from energy behaving as a wave.
But, energy can also be q quantum - a chunk, or particle of energy.
Photons are particles of light and a whole understanding of nature
flows from energy as quanta that is completely different. Both are
very different and the Universes they describe are different. Both
are true. They are different truths."
"P.S. from Jax: It always is a good idea to remember how close the word cosmic is to the word comic."
Visit a site for many photographs of North American Birds and animals.
Rhona Raskin Home Page at http://www.rhona.com.