November

Nov 30 Yes I'm here but I had a genuine customer coming this morning and had to take a 'parcel' to the postoffice so didn't update, so you will all have to wait for the adventures of Butterball the fat grey cat until tomorrow! The parcel was un upgrade from an envelope that was to fat to send as an envelope, so instead of 96 cents they wanted $8.97, that's what 3 or 4 mm costs! Since I was going to have to pay parcel rates I didn't post it yesterday I brought it home and repacked it in a box! What a rip off! It wasn't overweight it was over thick, I can ship to Britain Airmail for less than I can ship accross Canada!

Nov 29 Looks like it might be a nice day here today! I did put up the picture of my starfish beads, dec 3 free bead draw... on my home page, check my free bead page for rules on how to enter..... AlsoI did post the picture of the front of the house... need to find a before deconstruction picture to for comparison! Off to Saint John again today, hopefully we''ll get to come home tonight! Stuart says he has a mouse (?) doing laps over his head in the ceiling at night... must have got into the ceiling through the hole in the kitchen floor in the main part of the house, the hole that I finally put a board over so that I wouldn't fall through and end up in Stuarts bed! At least I'd have a soft landing! Oh he's called his new 'pet' Simon! Too bad Emmy is such a tub or we could stick him under the floorboards and he could go mouse hunting! Qwyzzle update almost didn't play yesterday now on 79, mainly because there is no 78! actually did 77 this morning, I figured out the coastline and the border after I went to bed last night!)

Nov 28 I'm not sure if the football game happened or not last night, Edmonton won in overtime, I watched most of the overtime, since I'm originally from Edmonton I would say the right team won! The church supper was all 'meat or macaroni' dishes and desserts, no salads of any variety at all! Never seen that in a potluck before! (AND we got home just in time for the first kick!) Actually got beads made yesterday, wired some earrings, hammered my finger nail (Ouch still hurts) doing ear wires, sorted all my silver wire into my file box... see how long it stays neat?

... unpacked some glass, made rice crispies squares that taste like rice crispie squares... (the good ones all disappeared, so we have most of the trees left to eat!) My starfish beads... Dec 3's freebees for my draw (check rules...from home page) and a new picture of the front of the house WILL be posted today... I know I promised yesterday,.... made it to 75 on Qwyzzle, you need a die for level 70 mine had the 3 and 4 printed mirror image to where they are suppose to be.... Guess thats what I get for using cheap dice! (The level is totally imposible with the mirror image die, so the problem was discovered quite quickly!)

Nov 27 10:30 I'm late! The sky has cleared off, last nights skiff of snow is melting.... The reason I'm late... I had to make another pan of rice crispy squares, I discoverd yesterday that marshmallows that have had a number of birthdays even if their bag is still sealed don't melt.... they get gooey, chrystallize and do all sorts of other things but they do not melt! I managed to get 4 cups of rice crispies (not the 6 it calls for) glued into the muck and made 10 little rice crispy trees (freebie mold from the Christmas Rice Crispy packages) I'll chop up todays pan into squares so that the trees will have little presents .... (yesterdays version was the sick joke from my youth " pine tree with little blob beside it + pine tree with little blob beside it + pine tree with little blob beside it = 10" {tree and a turd + tree and a turd + tree and a turd = 10}) But since these are going to a church supper the little squares will be presents! I had customers in the gallery yesterday! Whoheee!

... As for the church supper I was getting whining this morning about the supper conflicting with the Candian Grey Cup Footbal Game, I offered to tape the game, only to discover that it starts at 6:30 not at 5, so he might miss the first quarter and any highlites will be replayed until we are sick of them!

Today's Qwyzzle update I'm on 69, know how to get the answer, however G is gloating because he suggested that that was the way to the answer 30 minutes before I quit last night.... But the level with the boy scout waving his flags was the cute one... G was standing there waving his arms around speeling off the letters, oh for a video camera!

Nov 26 -4 (25) with blue sky today (8:30 am)... so far no wind! No more rain yesterday, G bought the baseboards and moldings for the upstairs bedrooms yesterday... there may be a light at the end of the tunnel afterall! Yesterday I did make beads and got a few other things done before I got sucked into the evil clutches of Qwyzzle, I'm at level 61 now, accepting any and all hints to higher levels so I can finish the game and start doing something useful!

Nov 25 I was about to say another gloomy Friday and noticed a samll patch of blue sky out there! WOW. Yesterday just got worse and worse... Walked to the mail around noon and then the wind picked up and the rain started.... Ugly afternoon. Around 6pm the wind stopped and we got a Thunder storm, the rain come down so hard for a few minutes I actually thought that the roof had split open upstairs, it sounded like a giant shower
actually managed to tear myslef away from Qwyzzle to go see if there was a wall of water about to come down the stairs! Guess the rain was hitting the metal roof of Rapunzle's tower and without the dead air of an attic between it was very loud! According to locals the wind changes with the tide, G is a sceptic.... Gord was waiting for the ferry on the mainland and said that the lightening looked like it hit the warf there, the lights went off and the thunder was instant, I only heard one crash of thunder, and it wasn't very close. Emmy is beginning to look like a butterball turkey, guess he wants to be ready for Christmas! Or else he's building up padding so that he doesn't get hurt when Duddies bounces him off walls!

Nov 24 Happy American Thanksgiving, just another day for me, no slaving over pans full of food on a hot stove... We did get a little skiff of snow yesterday just after I finished my rant, But it should disappear today! G's off to paint some of the walls in Saint John that we fixed/preped on Tuesday, but he didn't take poor Em, he didn't think he'd look nice in yellow, I'm not sure a sunshine yellow cat would be a nice contrast to this grey weather! Got through another 3 levels on that stupid Qwyzzle last night, including the 20 card binary stepping stones.. wrote my own binary converter, didn't work, so will have to figure out why it didn't work today! Need to make a set of green scarved snowmen too, made some on Monday but the males all looked Dorky and who wants a dorky snowman hanging off of their ear!

Nov 23 Mid afternoon finally home and finished wading through about 90 emails, We got stuck on the mainland last night, they quit running the ferries at 4 pm (actually one broke down at 3 the other one quit at 4) because of high winds, not sure how much rain we got... way more than we needed! The power was off for some length of time too, the ferry hot line said they would be running one ferry to bring more NB power trucks onto the island,, but the line up for that ferry might have been quite long! So, we stayed in Saint John and got to feel Stuart's music vibrating throughout the house, luckily he has to be at work by 7am so it quit at a relatively civilized hour! I spent yesterday trying to find the bathroom wall under layers of wall paper.... think with a coat of primer and some light sanding it might be OK to paint! Think the only way to get a bed into the second bedroom there will be through the bedroom window, so it will have to be a twin (3/4 mattress might fit but I don't know if you can even get those anymore)! Finally got a batch of starfish out of the kiln that weren't cracked, I'm blaming the glass, it's one of the pastel moretti greens, it was acting like lauscha, needs to hit the kiln glowing or it'll crack! So I can design a bracelet to go with the necklace on my home page.

Nov 22 Pouring Rain... Bleck , It was threatening rain last time we were in Saint John .. maybe if we quit going to Saint John it would quit raining? Progressed to level 43 in that stupid game, had to identify the 7 dwarfs last night and my identa kit didn't have them wearing the same colour clothing that they were wearing in the picture! There was even an extra clue on that one.... it was more of a hindrance than a help. One of the levels was a band and even after getting the right answer, I've still never heard of the band... they have been around since sometime in the 80's , so not even some one hit wonder! Did manage to find time to make beads yesterday, haven't got them yet though cuz it's wet out there!

Nov 21 Gloomy today so probably fairly warm... can't seem to get sun and heat together, have a freind that just moved to BC that has the same complaint! Got to 23 in Qwyzzles yesterday and got stuck solid, I know how to get the answer now and boy do I feel stupid! (Update the game only works on Explorer!) While I was playing G was watching football so I think what I was doing was at least somewhat mind developing... I was going to insert a personal opinion of footbal here but I decided that you didn't need that!

Nov 20 I'm late today, ate breakfast and got sucked into Qwyzzles (or whatever it's called) for a few minutes, someone sent me the answer to level four, yes that's cheating... and of course I HAD to see if it was right! Trying to find a map of Wales to get the answer to level 6.... will post the link at the bottom of this rant, however I've heard it doesn't work on Mac's I couldn't get it to work on Netscape but it might have been because the computer I was using doesn't have sound.... Once it's loaded on level 0, if the word wrong doesn't show up in the bottom left hand corner, your browser is incompatible....

Yesterday was so much fun, my gallery software disappeared poof gone, the last back up was September 14, so I spent the rest of the day doing inventory to see what was missing, and then trying to mach inventory missing to Visa and Mastercard Sales slips... Today I get to sell it all again, in the right order! and then go into the sales file to make the sales dates and the visa MC slips match....

Nov 19 Sunny again, but still cool, actually wondered if I shouldn't have been wearing socks and real shoes last night in Calais! Almost blew it yesterday, closed early so that I could get to the Post Office in Calais before they closed... on the way to Toronto, G got out and walked accross the street to read the PO hours, and the sign on the door said that the Post Office was open to 5:30.... Yea well the 5:30 is the access to the boxes the counter closes at 4:30, they were walking towards the door with the keys when I breezed through at 4:32... They let me mail my 'parcel'.... We were in Calais to go to An Arte Affair, a craft sale in the Down East Hertiage Centre, since we hadn't been in the Centre since it opened thought it was a good opportunity, there were only about 9 booths and I didn't see to many people wandering around with bags, I did buy a skein of black handspun angora/wool blend yarn. When they were organizing the event, I was asked to participate, but decided the hassle of hauling the stuff (including tables) back and forth accross the border wasn't worth it, plus wasn't sure we/I could get home on the friday night.... We have a pheasant cleaning up the sunflower seeds off the lawn right now, hope he's smarter that the last one, it walked in front of a truck a couple of months ago!

Nov 18 Sunny so the temps back down around freezing, the salmon seem to have moved on, too bad they were kind of fun to watch! Still no free lobster, (G spent yesterday morning playing with lobsters again) what's the point of working for a lobster company when you don't get any lobster!
I have a new mouse today but the cord is so short that I keep tugging and loosing the connection. When I took my Computing Science degree, my second year was the first year that they had rodent controls on the University computers, those little RATS (way to big to be called mice) were constantly quitting and freezing , generally totally antisocial, but at least on those computers with the arrow keys, tabs etc you could move around the screen, yesterday with no mouse, I could scroll and pull plugs!

Sewed a patch on Peter my giant inflatable pumkin yesterday, the rip was quite conventiently located next to the zipper, so could have a hand on the inside the entire time, still have all the tie down tabs to sew back on though a thimble might be useful for that! I bought an orange jacket at Value Village and cut the hood off to use as a patch. I inflated him in the living room after the patch was sewn in and he got full size, (so the patch must be half decent!) Emmy wasn't sure about this giant Orange thing in his living room!

Nov 17 Raining here again, started this on the gallery computer but my battery operated mouse quit and eve with new batteries nothing happened, so I pulled the plug on the no speed dial up connection and changed computers! Yesterday in Saint John we took Emmy to the vet, he weighs 7.3 pounds, the vet said he was a 'big boy' to still have all his baby teeth, maybe he will get even bigger than Unkie Duddies and then won't the cat fights be fun!

I think most of the local seagulls must suffer from bird flu, they certainly can hover over and hit windshields way too often! Further excitement yesterday was buying my son a bed, early Christmas present, of course the box spring wouldn't fit down the 'apartment' stairs, but fortunately did fit down the main basement stairs and through the 'secret passage'. After we had the rails assembled there was lots of pieces left over, we assumed that they are to attach head boards etc.... if they aren't he may find himself back sleeping on the floor!

Nov 16 Windy and rainy here today. but at least it's rain, don't have to shovel that! Off to Saint John today, Emmy has a vet appointment, last of his never ending shots, and we're short a few tiles for the bathroom counter, and Stuart (my son) seems to figure he deserves a bed, he doesn't like sleeping on the floor in the living room... I personally don't see why he can't sleep on the floor in his bedroom! The bed is his Christmas present!

Update on the free ranging salmon, I guess most of the salmon cages belonging to one company were cut open and there are $1,000,000.00 worth of salmon swimming around out there. I would have thought it might be worth netting some of them since they were swimming in groups on Tuesday, leaping and cavorting... and I'm sure glubbing 'we're free'!!!! Two more round balls got made yesterday I do have a couple of thoughts on shaping but they won't happen today! Actually they are about 1.5 - 2 inch diameter and will look really nice on my Christmas tree!

Nov 15 So much for summer, sitting right on freezing this morning! Yesterday was such a nice day to be out on the water on a ferry.... Coming home, ferry shows up doesn't load.... I guess we are back down to one ferry, the big one is broken again! I also got stuck beside a truck that ran exhaust into my window the entire way home, YUCK. One of the local salmon farms let a whole bunch of slamon loose (think they were fixing a net) the cove was full of jumping salmon yesterday morning, I saw one at breakfast and G implied I was halucinating... they weren't real until he saw them! Wonder if they will stick around for awhile, kind of neat watching 15 pound fish jump right out of the water! Made beads yesterday time to go retrieve them and admire them, tried blowing two little bottles, using 1/4 inch hollow mandrels too, the blowing part worked but as soon as

Nov 14 Already 10 degrees/ 50 F here at 8:30 in the morning, I'm late today ate breakfast first! I just asked G what exciting things happened yesterday and he said he sorted 109 crates of lobsters (10,900 pounds) and I didn't even get one for supper! He also bought about 17 crates, didn't get any of those either..... I think he knows the price now too, buying from the boats is about $6.00/pound.... 10 cents a pound makes a big difference when your selling 1000's of pound of lobsters a week...day, whatever.... I hauled firewood, and cleaned off the back porch so we could move some firewood indoors so wimp doesn't have to go outside on cold days to get it! I also addressed and packed a bunch of things so I can go to the post office in Saint George this morning to mail them! As you can see a very exciting day! And there was no football game yesterday afternoon, actually since Sakatchewan lost and it was a semi final game there will be no more football this fall

, however Edmonton did beat Calgary, so I'm predicting a Montreal (they beat SK), Edmonton Grey Cup, of course both those teams have to win another game to get that far....

Nov 13 Supose to be sunny and 12 (54) today, see if it makes it! Can haul in some fire wood and get it drying out on the back porch! Lit the fire in the gallery yesterday but used up most of the dry readily available fire wood! Posted two new pictures on my home page yesterday, the finished pens and also a 'starfish' necklace, the necklace got put together and taken apart so many times I lost count,... trying to get it to hang right, will try and get a picture of someone wearing it in the next couple of days, the cats don't usually co-operate, and don't think it suits G, although all those little sea critters might be cute crawling around on his hairy chest! The verdict on my giant pumpkin is that I think I can fix him, will have to buy some nylon and fix the rip then sew all but one tie down strap back on, actually the rip(s) are where the one tie down didn't rip out, (about 16 inches total 3 different right angle tears), but the motor still works and the lights aren't broken, he (Peter the Pumpkin) has taken over the living room and is resting there comfortably waiting to be fixed. Can't find some of the pegs for the ropes, but we have a back up set since we have an inflatable snowman too! Emmy has turned into a real bead connoisseur, he steals them every chance he gets, he grabs them with his teeth and then runs into the kitchen and bats them around, the give away is the thunk as they bounce off the wooden cupboards, but his mean mother just takes them away.... no big deal, he just goes and gets another one!

Nov 12 No cat today, actually he's sleeping on the chair behind me and Em is standing at the back door chirping because G left and didn't take him! Not sure if it will be sunny today or not, too early to tell! Gord went to Saint John to retrieve Em and go shopping yesterday, couldn't find any stores that were open, my sister in Edmonton went to The Mall (West Edmonton Mall) and drove around for 10 minutes to find a parking space! I stayed home and sorted out the beads with 'beadpen' size holes form the rest of the silver I bought in Toronto! Then spent over an hour playing with the silver and the glass beads to get a 'finished' product! Should find somebodies 5-8 year old daughter to 'assemble' bead pens, I'm sure she would have a ball, playing with all those beads! Will take a new picture of pens once it is daylight and post it! I bought a display stand when I bought the pens, so all I have to do is get a nice background! G is helping buy lobsters for the next couple of days, better bring home a few.... SOON! Last night he got called at 5:30 to go out (yes it was in the middles of an early supper, he was suppose to be leaving at 6:30) the first thing the boat captain asked him was how much were they paying, duh, .... Well how can you buy lobsters if you don't know the price?! At least the scale worked yesterday, I gather it didn't work the day before either! (Thursday was the first day anyone pulled traps here.)

We got home last night at around 7, drove through Snow most of yesterday morning in Maine, we come past the Sugar Loaf Ski Resort, it started as sleet, freezing rain, ice pellets, whatever you want to call it the night before, we stopped just after 8 in Quebec almost at the border, the restaurant closed at 8, so supper was 3 large bottles of beer and two packages of chips. Large bottles of beer are double the size of standard size bottles, but only cost 50% more. Yummy, Of course I did point out to the driver that if he had listened to the navigator , we would have been there at 7:55 not 8:05 and might have got food! We spent two nights in Toronto, ate supper the first night with a woman that I met at a Chain Maille class I took in Red Deer 3 years ago, I got most things that I went to get, I think, of course I keep thinking of things I wanted that I forgot to buy.... NEXT TIME. Weather the two days we were in Toronto was OK hit lots of rain both coming and going though, which since we stay downtown and walk everywhere would not have been pleasant! Today it is sunny here, so will have to go see what I can do with my Pumpkin....someone vandalized my inflatable pumpkin while we were away, will see if it's fixable once I figure out how to dry it withough being able to inflate it! Mostly they stuck to smashing real pumpkins, the ones that didn't get smashed on Hallowe'en but I guess my giant air bag was too much for them!

Nov 6 Cloudy this morning, good day for driving. I had a customer yesterday! My Christmas hours in the gallery start next weekend Fri , Sat & Sun 11:30- 4:30 or if you can find me.... Got my pottery unpacked and stuffed in holes around the gallery, I know in SK when I sold a bigger piece that was prominantly displayed I 'd get sort of miffed because I would have to redo my display! Back on Friday need to eat breakfast and hit the road! (and... we will be taking credit cards to pay for our gas not buying a new truck or phoning CAA and AAA to send out a jerry can or tow truck every time we need gas!)

Nov 5 Cloudy today but much warmer than yesterday, Duddies is walking around the house purring since Evil Em is in Saint John! Had to buy gas in Canada yesterday 96.9 cents/litre that's about $4.56 US a gallon. Actually I went to Fredericton to pick up Pottery for the gallery, I picked it up from a Christmas Craft sale, but I guess I'm not in the mood to shop I went round that sale in about 10 minutes and nothing jumped out at me and said buy me! Back to Bead Pens, I tried to order the nickle spacers, and some lacey silver beads but they guy won't ship to Canada, not only won't he ship to Canada he won't answer my email! But more on Bead pens, They make fountain pens too, so I got a couple of them with my order and discovered when I put beads on them that their centre of gravity was way too high and there was no way you could write with them, Since mine were shipped to me 4 weeks ago they have redesigned the lids and the rods to hold the beads, I emailed them and suggested, that, they would like to send me 3 of the new short rods, we will see if I get my new short rods.... will let you know if I do!

Nov 4 Still cloudy, off to Saint John and Fredericton today. G was out donating blood last night, and they discovered when he got there that it was his 100th donation, I guess normally that would have got him a cake and a photographer from the local paper.... but somehow he fell through the cracks so all he got was a pin! While he was gone I got a call from someone doing a telephone survey... the average telephone solicitor lasts two seconds and the survey types don't last much longer, however I had just finished my book there was nothing on TV and I couldn't find the silver findings that I wanted..... so when this woman asked if I has 12 minutes to do a survey I said I guessed..... Anyway she asked what year I was born in, then did anybody in our family work in the gaming industry, when I said no to that question she said I'm sorry we have enough people of your sex and age already for our survey and hung up .... Boy did I feel rejected!

Nov 3 Cool and cloudy again today bah humbug! Gord is trying to teach Duddley manners, he won't let him out if he is sitting at the door growling! He stands there and very calmy tells this cat that is hissing and growling 'remember what I told you last time, you don't get to go out until you're nice.....' Duddley of course listens! Update on bead pens, may use chromed nickle on the pens can get 100 chromed nickle washers with big holes for $7.00, or if I want to get the weight down, I could take up wood turning...?

Nov 2 Had a quick trip to Calais yesterday, when I came back the lineup to get into the states was accross the bridge and two blocks through town, not sure why everyone wanted to go to Calais on a Tuesday at noon? Except it was the day they knock another nickle a gallon off of gas which would have made the gas $2.44/ gal, it's still 99.9 cents a litre here. My main reason to go to Calais was to get a set of King size pillow cases to cover the world's ugliest cushions on the couch we bought last week, of course I ended up with two sets of pillowcases a King size duvet and a bed ruffle.... So now I can cover the entire couch and not just the pillows, actually it's an old trundle bed, and wasn't even that uncomfortable to sleep on except where I didn't get the ugly itchy fabric covered..... Calais has a store called Marden's, it's sort of a liquidation centre, and does get some really good deals, but you never see the same thing twice....

Nov 1 Another new month... 54 shopping days til Christmas, assuming most stores are open Sundays now! Noticed stores putting out Christmas decorations already a couple of weeks ago, actually as soon as Canadian Thanksgiving is over they swing into Christmas! Back to Hallowe'en we had 11 kids that's about 25% of what we usually get and it was a gorgeous night... Price of gas has come back down under a $ a litre to. (four litres in a US gallon). I'm off to the mainland today, and no I won't be buying any cheap Hallowe'en Candy! I probably will be buying grocery store coffee though as we've run out, which almost rates as a crisis, just ask my family about Lynne before coffee...! (Actually this is usually written pre coffee!) Preferred coffee is the Fog Horn blend from Java Moose in Saint John, but I'm driving west today, east on Friday!