Update on Cousin Leah

I just spent the afternoon today with Leah (The Goat's Lunch Pail). She is in good spirits and can't wait for her reboot. The Doctors still don't know why this happened, but she is breathing more normally now and so feels better. The top two areas of her heart are in arrhythmia and not pumping as they should be, but the bottom two are doing just fine. She has a test in the morning and if it is good they will try to reboot her, by flat lining her, then shocking her hopefully resetting her heart to have all four areas in a normal rhythm.

If all goes well, she should be back home by Saturday and will take great pleasure in posting all about the procedures and showing photos. I will be dropping by the hospital again tomorrow, so any more good wishes will be passed along then.

I read all of the good wishes posted on the various sites and she was very glad to receive them and can't wait to get back to blogging. She was going into withdrawal, so it is a good thing I got that new phone. And it has a camera!

Good evening all.

Decorating - the post I meant to write

Decorating at our house has never occurred before the 15th of December. That is my Sister's birthday and being so close to Christmas it wasn't right to be decorated for the holidays while celebrating her birthday.

My urban family also doesn't decorate early, the Sunday before Christmas, or as in this year, the Sunday before that. EJ, would have a decorating party, inviting Aunts, friends and family to come and decorate and have supper and it was a lot of fun. Over the years, however, the parties have shrunk, through deaths and disagreements. These things happen.

This year so much has changed in everyones lives and the tree we picked out was not what we usually get, we decided to change things up a bit as far as decorating too.

This was the first year that we had picked up a tree that was wrapped, very nervous we were, as sometimes the trees don't look very good once they are unwrapped. (Sorry stuck a little Yoda in there!) The University of Alberta Forestry Programme has a tree lot, which is where we got the tree, the Forestry student told us it was a Douglas Fir. Douglas Firs have short needles and widely spaced branches for good ornament placement. When the tree arrived at EJ's house and the wrapping was cut off, they discovered it was in fact a Balsam Fir (the tag said so), it has short needles, but it is so full of branches that they are not really good for ornaments. And they are very pitchy trees - I don't think that is a word, but, I have never been so covered in pitch from putting up tree lights. (new LED lights this year)

So, this beautiful tree, is much fuller than normal meaning we need to find a new placement for it. Much discussion later, we rearrange furniture and place the tree, have supper, get the lights on and the Angel and by this time it is time for me to go home. I went back on Monday and we put on a few decorations and started the tinsel/icicle stuff and I will be going back today to finish the tinsel/icicle stuff.

This will be a very different tree from what normally gets done at her house, in fact it will be down right minimalistic. I will post a photo later if I am able and maybe some from years past for comparison.

So, do you decorate in the same manner year after year, adding new ornaments as you get them, but never changing the basic placement? Or do you mix it up every year? Do you have a theme tree that you change every few years? Real or artificial trees?

Decorating

We have all discussed how awful it is that the retailers start decorating for the holidays the day after Halloween these days. So I won't go there. I find it equally silly that people decorate their houses in November as well. In the frozen north, yes, put up the lights when it is warm, but for heavens sake, you don't need to put out your lawn decorations yet! You certainly don't need to turn the lights ON until December at least. Well, it is your power bill I realize that, but it also pulls on the power grid. Making power for you to turn your lights on earlier, puts more pollutants into the air here in Alberta, in other provinces, it means using more water through the dams or putting more uranium into the nuclear plant. This goes for the whole world actually.

Alberta's Premier this year decided to not turn on the lights at the Legislature until 7.00 p.m. in an effort to reduce power usage. Last year, they changed all the lights over to LED to also save on electricity. I think this is a good effort to show the population that you can still enjoy the season, but also show a little restraint. Of course, I am not sure how much of a dent it will really make in the power grid at this time of year, but someone has to lead the way.

In Edmonton, the power company, years ago, started something called Bright Lights. They set up lighted Christmas displays in one of the city parks, and charge a fee that goes (mostly) to the food bank and I think the Christmas Bureau (gifts to the less fortunate). They have big companies sponsor the various displays and it is truly amazing.




There is an area in the city where the residents got carried away trying to out-decorate each other, which has morphed into "Candy Cane Lane". Once again, the power company comes out and helps them get enough power to light all the displays (without setting off the breakers in the houses or blacking out part of the city). The residents now all cooperate in this - they pay their own power bills, (one home owner on the news one year indicated that it cost about $2000.00) but they also collect food for the food bank. It is an older neighbourhood, so the streets are quite narrow (especially with snow clogging them), so when traffic got so backed up that the city had to send out traffic cops, they decided to send buses instead. Your fee - donation to the food bank. You can also park nearby and walk through, again, bring food.

Now both of these serve the greater good, but at what expense? The ideas are probably practiced elsewhere as well, but when is someone going to realize that year round rolling brown outs are not what we are aiming for?




















The pictures are from a few years ago at the Bright Lights, the top one, moves, the elves throw gifts into the stocking, there is another balloon, they alternate lighting, Santa waves, the bear pulls a fish from the water, the moose doesn't do anything and I can't remember what Aladdin does, but he moves too. There are so many more displays, that even if I had good pictures of them I wouldn't have space to display them. It is really fascinating to walk through and see them all.

This is so not what I was going to post today, but, oh well! No I am not a grinch, I love the displays.

For my Sister on her 1/2 century

Awesome Graphics at pYzam.com

I love you and wish we were closer.

Have a good day!

'Tis the Season

To be baking! Alright, I know those aren't the words, but it is true nonetheless.

Mom made the best pie crusts in the world! She often bemoaned that fact that they were too flakey and wouldn't hold together. A bit of history is required here. Mom was the seventh daughter, I am thinking, by the time she came along, there were already too many cooks in the kitchen, so she never learned to cook at her mothers knee. Before she married our Dad, she says she made sandwiches and that was about it. Our Dad, was the seventh son (is there a pattern going on here? Yes, but that is another post, or maybe one my Sister will tackle) and he did learn to cook, I am not sure it was at his mothers knee, but he taught our mom some basics and the rest she learned by trial and error.

She got a lot of her recipes directly from the back of boxes, Tenderflake pie crusts, Shortbread from the Cornstarch box, you get the idea. Over the years Mom's talent grew as did her recipe collection, not many people can follow a recipe and have it turn out so well. I know this because everyone raved about Mom's pie crusts and cookies and cakes and squares and so on. They would then take the recipe and follow it and then next time they saw Mom would ask for her secret.

The first time I lived away from home, I thought it would be nice if I could make Shortbread cookies to bring home for Christmas, so phoned and got the recipe & secrets from Mom. So, here I am merrily mixing ingredients in my barely ever used bowl, with my hardly ever used wooden spoon, when SNAP! The damned handle on my wooden spoon broke! I called Mom. What else do you do when your spoon breaks in the batter? She told me not to worry, just pick out the wood pieces and use another spoon! So, I get all the tiny splinters out and grab another spoon (I am sure that Mom started making a batch at home to serve guests, but if she did, she never told me) and proceed to mix in the second last cup of flour. SNAP! Oh shit! So, I pick out the splinters yet again and decide it it time to use my bare hands. This was in the '80's folks, artificial nails a mile long!

Well, I got the cookies made. Mom had told me that the recipe made about 4 dozen cookies. I managed to make 90 cookies - that is 7 and a half dozen. The funny thing is to me they looked the same size as the ones Mom made. The following year I snapped another spoon and made 120 cookies. The year after that for my birthday, I was given a set of nylon/plastic spoons - I don't really know what they are made from, but they don't break and I still have them. I still manage between 80 and 100 cookies from this recipe too, I can't seem to make them any bigger.

I will tell you in my next post why this year I won't be baking.

Good afternoon all.

When you eat your Smarties,

Do you eat the red ones Last?
Do you suck them very slowly ,
or crunch them very fast?

I can't remember the rest of the words, but I don't really need to now do I?

For our American friends, Smarties, in Canada (and the rest of the world actually) are a candy coated milk chocolate confection similar to m&m's made by Nestle's.

I am reminding everyone of the old jingle, simply because it was posted on (yes, you guessed it) Facebook. The discussion led to some interesting results.

Several people admitted to eating the red ones last, eating the colours in the order they are found in the rainbow, having to have even numbers within the colours, counting all of them and eating those colours with the most down to where they are all even then eating them in rainbow order or some other arbitrary order. I admit that I eat the red ones first, just to be contrary.

This package, by the way, seems to have been a little colour saturated, they look more burgundy than red. No, it is not just my crappy camera.

It was quite amusing to read the responses to what is essentially just a jingle. Did the obsession come from the jingle? Or did some advertising guru observe his kids saving the red ones for last?

They all taste exactly the same. Unless apparently you are in the UK, where the orange ones use orange flavoured chocolate. Of course I am referring to the original product not the revolting Sundae Flavoured type they came out with a few years ago.

The discussion also went on to describe some interesting methods of eating the candy. Most seem to suck it slowly, some to crunch, but a fair number indicated that they let them melt enough to soften the shell, then crack it in order to let the chocolate melt too.

So, did the jingle make you into a borderline OCD personality? Do you have to eat the colours in a certain order? Do you crunch?

Good evening all.

Jigsaw Puzzles

We have a tradition in our family of doing Jigsaws over the Christmas Holidays. I don't know how or when this started being the youngest, but we have done it as long as I can remember.

We have over the years tried to top each other with who can find the hardest puzzle to do as well! This has resulted in sharpening of skills and some very wicked puzzles. Some of which, due to us children living in other cities, resulted in mom being the one left to finish the harder ones alone. Dad wasn't much for doing puzzles, but he kept us fed with turkey sandwiches and desserts and would come in occasionally, usually when we were stuck and just pick up a piece and put it where it belonged. Drove us nuts most of the time.

We have done puzzles that were insane: one was solid green and round; one was called Spilled Milk, came in a milk carton, had a wavy edge and eleven extra pieces - of course, was all white. We did a puzzle that was all holographic gold - no picture. We did Hay in a Needlestack, Zebras, polar bears in snow. So many, I will stop now, you get the idea.

One Christmas, a friend of Mom & Dad's (who is not a very good sport) thought he had found a puzzle that would keep us going for days. He was rather disappointed when a couple of hours later, we came out to the living room where they were visiting, with the puzzle finished to show it off. It was one of the Hallmark ones that hold together so well, so we were able to carry it out and show them - the one with the pretty marbles.

So, in the spirit of Christmas, I have posted a puzzle here (courtesy of Jig Zone) on the bottom of my blog. Average time was just over 12 minutes, I did it in under 9 - have fun! (I couldn't get it positioned elsewhere without covering my posts.)