A New Low

... about which to be happy.

This morning, after another good night's sleep (praise be), I arose before Cuppa, had some toast and cranked up the puter. At that point, it hit an all time low — a connection speed of only 16.8kps.

It's always slow out here in the hinterland, although we sometimes get all of the way up to 28.8kps — sometimes. So, I thought I'd be clever this morning and turn off images. That helped a bit ... until I was reading blogs and decided that I wanted to comment. The problem with that is that Blogger's verification codes are embedded images. Argh!

So, it all goes rather slowly. When I want to upload pictures, I just go off for a while and do something else ... as I will do shortly when I upload the photo that now appears below. I snapped the photo through the window yesterday afternoon. It looks west (obviously) toward he road. Across the road there is more Riverwood land, so aside from the road which you can't really see, everything in the photo is a small part of the almost 120 acres that constitute the property.

We once thought that we might build and live on the property that lies across the road, but that didn't work out. No doubt it's all for the best; I think we're better off where we are: in a small town, close to the kids, and near the amenities of a city. But I'm sure that we could have been very happy across the road, here in the boondocks, too.

That's what it is to be human, isn't it? To decide to be happy wherever you are. By that, I'm not naive enough to think that everyone can be happy for every minute. I'm certainly not. It's about having a prevailing attiude towards life. Most people in most circumstances can make the choice to gracefully accept and appreciate their lot (note the 'mosts'). Nothing less makes any sense to me.

 

Artist at Work

I mentioned in my previous post that Cuppa was painting by the window.

She probably wouldn't call this art; she would call watercolour on proper paper without a traceable template art. But me, I'm super impressed by any talent like this. And that's what it is — talent.

In case you're wondering, it's a fancy schmanzy doorstop for our patio doors.

 

Out of the Woods

We haven't got out yet today. I slept in and had rather a good night of sleep, which is rather a treat for me. Cuppa is doing some painting by the window, and I am fighting with this slow internet connection.

Last night, at 5:30, I woke up for a while, and the full moon was shining right in the middle of our bedroom window. I thought of waking Cuppa but decided not to. When I told her this morning, she wished that I had. It's hard to know sometimes.

We didn't get out for our walk until mid afternoon yesterday, and by then it was quite overcast, so I didn't take my camera. The two of the old buildings that I have posted here are from the previous day when we were emerging from the South Woods. In the first, we were still in the edges of the forest, and, in the second, we had just emerged.

 

Our First Snowshoe Walk

... this time

On our first full day here, today, we also went for our first snowshoe walk. We just went out once, and only for about an hour. That was enough for the first walk. Hopefully, we'll soon be able to go about for longer or more often or both.

There's probably about a foot and a half of snow cover, but most of it is quite crusty with only an inch or two of light, powdery snow over top. Our snowshoes didn't break through the hard under-snow at all, but I imagine that without snowshoes we'd have been breaking through all of the time.

We walked down to the little river and then began to walk up a rise of land, and that when I took the above photo. The structure is an old planer mill from when they used to do some logging on the property. It's empty now, but my BIL is fitting it for screens so that it will become a nice, relatively bug free spot in summer.

Then we walked along the path into the south woods. This property doesn't go very far in that direction, and we soon found ourselves trespassing on the neighbours' land. That's where I took the second photo of a tumbledown shack. When we got close there was a freezer visible through the doorway and an oven through the window. (The neighbours don't get there very often, and when they do, they can only access it from this property. I don't think they were up at all last year.)

Given the subject matter, I decided that this photo should be black and white, which isn't much of a stretch in winter when that's pretty well how this part of the world looks anyway: the trees are dark and virtually colourless, and the snow ... well, it's white. If the sky isn't clear and blue, there's simply not much winter colour in the woods.

 

Here At Last

As you can see from the photo, there is snow here: here at the cottage which we finally managed to get to after waiting for a month. You may or may not recall that everytime that we thought to make the trip, it would either rain or drizzle freezing rain. Last week, we decided that we would drive here this week no matter what. As it turns out, the weather has changed, and we are to receive more typical temperatures for the foreseeable future.

You may also recall that we like to get out and snowshoe while we are here, and that certainly didn't seem likely for much of the trip here. There wasn't much snow lying on the ground for the greater part of the journey. This worried us, but although it is terribly distant from those snowless roads (only about a half hour north), the cottage seems to lie in a slightly different climatic zone. Sure enough, the closer we got, the more the snow was visible, and as we got quite close, we could even see it clinging to the branches from a recent snowfall. Here at the place that we call Riverwood, and as you can see in the picture, there is certainly enough snow cover to content us. As an added bonus, it was even snowing lightly this morning.

I took the two pictures yesterday after we had unpacked and cleansed the place when the sun was low and casting a rather fetching light. However, by the time I donned my outdoor winter garb and got the camera ready, the light was no longer quite as becoming, but I took some pictures regardless. The second photo, below, looks back along the driveway toward the gate by the road. I have taken many iterations of these two pictures, and I suppose that I shall take many more in future years.

Oh, and I must gloat over our sighting from the window last night. We see all sorts of tracks around here, but we seldom see animal life, and I understand that bobcat sightings are extremely rare, but that's what we saw — a bobcat! He was crossing the driveway from right to left and was almost exactly on the spot where I stood to take the picture (below). The cat obviously heard Cuppa calling me to the window because he turned and looked at us before trotting along the driveway toward the gate, prudently moving away from humans but not in undue panic, or so it seemed. I don't know how else to describe the gait other than trot, but it seemed somewhat different than how I usually see normal cats move. In any event, it was a brief but enjoyable sighting.

 

Up Late Reading

... and being distracted by the hairs on my ears

Part One: The Book

It's been a while since I last did it — stay up half the night reading. I was up until four the other night finishing Elizabeth George's With No One As Witness. Just before midnight I realized that I was in trouble. With only 200 or so pages to go, I figured that if I were to keep reading I would soon be inexorably hooked and would necessarily be up until all hours needing to finish it. Since I wasn't yet terribly tried and ready to pack in it for the night, I opted to keep plodding, and, of course, that led to a long night.

At around 1:30 in the wee hours, I found myself with only 100 pages or so left. Should I keep going or not? Well, at that point, it really wasn't much of a question. So it was that it wasn't until several hours later that I was sufficiently sated to haul my bod into bed.

George authors the Inspector Lynley mystery series. She's an American who writes British-based mysteries, and she writes them very well. She has the ability to draw the reader into the minds and emotions of the characters. There are some good writers who are unable to do this, and it's this ability that sets George apart from most to make for some very fine reads.

When I read the reviews at Amazon, I see that reviewers have generally divided themselves into two disparate camps. They either loved or hated this book. Those who didn't appreciate it seemed to be disillusioned by about some of the unexpected plot developments. Others thought this may have been her best work yet, or the best for a long time. I fall into the latter camp. I found it riveting, the unexpected plot developments utterly captivating.

 

Part 2: The Ears

So what's up with the ear thing? I don't know why, but I fidget with my ears when I'm reading. I probably wouldn't do this if they weren't hairy, but they are ... hairy, I mean.

Somewhere around my fortieth birthday, when most of my top hair was gone, the creator added insult to injury compensated me by gifting me with ear hair. I am given to understand that I am not alone in this, that it happens to many middle-age men, but I'm not totally sure because, quite frankly, it's not exactly what guys talk about. Can you seriously imagine guys drinking beer, munching pizza, watching football and discussing ear hair?

I attend fairly vigilantly to these annoying little earmcthingies. When I'm reading and discover one of these blighters lurking on the outer curve of my ear, I will attempt to uproot him with my fingernails, and/or I will get up every now and then to find Cuppa's tweezers and really take care of the interlopers. Sometimes I go as far as to shave my ears, and every now and then, when I really am exasperated, I ask Cuppa to do a very through tweezing.

To add further insult, the Creator has also caused hairs to grow inside my nose. Ungrateful wretch that I am, this displeases me even further. I mean, really now, nose hair brings absolutely no comfort for the stereotypically bald man. "Oh yeah, tease me about my baldness, but have a look up my nose. Hah!" As if.

I can't be the only one experiencing this silliness. You see, I have purchased a mass-manufactured nose trimmer. It's not exactly like the one in the photo but close enough. Can you believe it? All sorts of men are out there buying all sorts of varieties of nose trimmers. I know that it sounds silly, but believe you me, one simply doesn't want to use tweezers on nose hair. It smarts. I know.

 

A Better Day

After those glitches on Monday (see previous entry), Tuesday turned out to be a much better day. We had a little wet snow in the morning and went out to complete a few errands. Of course, this necessitated a stop at Tim's to order our usual combination of hot chocolate and coffee; we took it to the river and gazed upon the view that you see in the above photo. It was a cloudy and subdued day but rather fetching in its own right,espeically with the reflection that is visible in the photo. The old log house in the bottom photo was directly behind us as we gazed upon the river.