Thursday
December 13, 2007

The day after the house shook.

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Here are a few of my favorite online haunts:

REALTOR.ca
[This is the site I visit to fantasize about living in Toronto again, which is almost every single day during the winter]

Jonathan Cainer's Zodiac Forecasts
[This is where I visit in the morning, when I need a positive spin on things past, present and future.]

Living Local
[This is where I go to see what Canadians are up to, sometimes I even buy things from the businesses listed there.]

Environment Canada Weather
[This is the site I visit every morning, and before every road trip during the winter]

Oh, the endless excitement of living in a cottage, built from plans suitable for tropical climates and meant for summer enjoyment. The people who built this place surely did not account for snow when they chose the plan. Big mistake on their part I fear. Now that we own the building, it is our mistake to fix.

Last spring, on the north side of the house, the ice and snow from the roof plummeted from the roof to the earth in one gigantic sheet. When it came down it sheared the deck off that side of the house. We repaired the damage and replaced the door to the deck with a window, not replacing the deck. It was a foolish design for the snow belt, a deck along the drip line of a roof.

On the other side of the house, the south side, we have another deck and our back door and porch. Last winter the snow fell from the roof occasionally, crashing to the deck, the porch roof and the ground in harmless icy clumps. But this year we have had snow, and more snow and more snow. Yesterday morning, as Attila was leaving for work, the built up ice and snow had begun to slide off the roof in a sheet. In similar fashion to the process that sheared off the north deck.

All that morning I watched that ice sheet slide, extending further and further from the roofline. It was only a matter of time before gravity would take over and it would come crashing down.

There is a sliding glass door onto the deck. Worried that the falling mass of ice might break the glass in the door, I began to move furniture, plants, lamps, everything away from the area near the sliding glass door. Having done all that was possible to prevent damage, all I could do was wait.

Looking out the window, the sky had virtually disappeared behind the sheet of ice. And then, suddenly, just after noon, it descended with a mighty roar and crash.

Mist leapt from our bed, where she had been sleeping, and looked to me to advise her on the nature of the intrusion. Satisfied that all was well, she headed downstairs in search of a more peaceful place to curl up and sleep.

The ice sheet came down on the deck, clear of the glass doors and windows. That was a blessing. The door, windows, deck and porch are intact, nothing was destroyed by the impact.

On the roof of the porch and the deck lies a thick mass of ice and snow. It would have killed anyone who had been standing under it. The weight of it must be considerable; it will have to be removed.

It looks like we are going to be in for an interesting winter if the snow keeps coming the way it has been!

We have been talking about repairing the south deck, but now I wonder if it will still be there in the spring. Nature may make the design decisions on this renovation.



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Worldly Distractions

Ice sheet overhanging roof.
The ice beginning to slide.



Quote
"Sleekit is the Scottish way of describing someone (usually a female!) who is "smooth," sly, cunning "fair spoken." Simply, it means untrustworthy. How many times did we hear a girl spoken of as a "sleekit wee midden." especially when she somehow had influence enough to form a triangle. A triangle meant that she would always be one point of the triangle and would somehow manage to induce, with sly manipulations, two other girls to be the other points in the triangle to pick on some unsuspecting playmate. She would be sly enough to avoid being the main point or troublemaker."
From an Email List Post



Weather
Mainly Clear
Temp -13.1°C
Press 102.4 kPa / falling
Visibility 15 km
Humidity 83%
WindChill -19
Dew Point -15.4°C
Wind Speed ESE 11 km/h
 

Page by Page: A Woman's Journal
Photography
Poetry
by Maggie Turner

Canadian Maggie Turner writes and publishes poetry, photography, and a personal journal online. Her work reflects the current way of life in Canada, embracing Canada's past, present, and future in a unique portrayal of everyday life. Maggie's voice is one of the many that actively depict the rich diversity of Canadian culture.

Photography: "a term which comes from the Greek words photos (light) and graphos (drawing). A photograph is made with a camera by exposing film to light in order to create a negative. The negative is then used in the darkroom to print a photograph (positive) onto light-sensitive paper.
Source: University of Arizona Glossary

Poetry: "a form of speech or writing that harmonizes the music of its language with its subject. To read a great poem is to bring out the perfect marriage of its sound and thought in a silent or voiced performance. At least from the time of Aristotle's Poetics, drama was conceived of as a species of poetry."
Source: Creative Studios

Journal: " "Though a journal may be many things - a treasury, a storehouse, a jewelry box, a laboratory, a drafting board, a collector's cabinet, a snapshot album, a history, a travelogue..., a letter to oneself - it has some definable characteristics. It is a record, an entry-book, kept regularly, though not necessarily daily.... Some (entries) will be nearly illegible, written in the dark in the middle of the night.... Not only is it a record for oneself, but of oneself. Every memorable journal, any successful journal, is honest. Nothing sham, phony, false...." (Dorothy Lambert from Ken Macrorie's book, Writing to be Read )
A journal is a way to keep track of your thoughts about what you read... as well as what you did on any given day."
Source: Journal Writing

A Blog is an online journal created by server side software, often hosted by a commercial interest.

"The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger[4] on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999.[5][6][7] Shortly thereafter, Evan Williams at Pyra Labs used "blog" as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog") and devised the term "blogger" in connection with Pyra Labs' Blogger product, leading to the popularization of the terms."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_blogging


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