Thursday,
December 3, 2009

Caitrìona's Christmas

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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]

Last weekend Attila and I were invited to share a turkey dinner with Caitrìona at her farm.

The house had been rented out to tenants for sometime, the tenants moved away last July. Ever since taking back possession of the property, Caitrìona has been renovating.

I had not been back to visit the farm in over 40 years. Rymal, Harriet, Attila and I took a grand walking tour of the estate. How familiar it was, even in its altered state.

In the physical sense, many things had changed over the years. A forest of trees flourished where once there had been a thriving orchard. Former strawberry fields and vineyards were overgrown with brush and small trees. The barns and sheds were gone.

Some things had not changed at all. The "well with no water" was still there. The black walnut tree in the front yard was still there. And most significantly, the farm house was still there.

What a transformation the farm house has undergone. Caitrìona and Wilson have performed magic on the house. They installed hardwood floors, and restored the original red pine floors in kitchen and dining room. All of the rooms had been dry walled and painted.

Caitrìona spent months cruising recycling outlets to furnish the house. This has resulted in a bright, charming, welcoming and comfortable home. I think that is how Caitrìona always meant it to be. It is a vision realized.

The dinner was attended by ourselves, Caitrìona, Rymal, Harriet and her daughter, Helena and two of her three children and my cousin Kate.

Caitrìona prepared a magnificent turkey dinner, complete with homemade bread for the stuffing. Yum! Everyone took great care to relay to me the ingredients in the desserts they had prepared, accommodating my allergy. As a result I ate far more than I should have and far less than I would have liked. It was a feast to remember.

Our first snow storm of the season hit only a few days after we arrived home from visiting Caitrìona. The month of December arrived with a flourish, boasting snow packed roads and zero visibility. By the morning of December 2, a layer of cold white winter lay over the entire landscape.

Then it began to rain, and it is raining still.

My new little job has provided me with a few hours of work each week, for which I have been grateful. I find the first few weeks at a new job a bit stressful. There is so much to learn in a short time! The routines are becoming more familiar now and my comfort level is increasing.

We have had a wonderful autumn and it hardly seems possible that it is only three weeks until Christmas!



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RECIPES :: Cast

Worldly Distractions



On The Screen
K-Pax
Kevin Spacey



Quote
"Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Thomas H. Huxley
(1825 - 1895)


Weather
SNOW SQUALL WATCH IN EFFECT
Condition: Light Snowshower
 Temperature: 1.0°C
Pressure: 101.0 kPa
Visibility: 8 km
Humidity: 93%
Dew Point: 0.0°C
Wind Speed: W 18 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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