Things are still going well for us here but this week we thought we would include in the blog some of the things which haven't gone so well over here in the past few months - just so you know that things still go wrong here sometimes too!
1. Rachael managed to knock over a gallon pot of paint whilst decorating the spare room - thankfully we had dust sheets down on the carpet.
2. Shaun dropped a full 1L bottle of extra virgin olive oil out of the trunk of the car when unloading the shopping which as you can imagine took ages to clean up the oil slick.
3. Rachael then trapped her finger in the garage door.
4. One or both of the kittens - not sure which as they both looked as guilty as each other knocked one of our handmade vases over which we had carefully shipped over from UK. It was on the top of the piano. Unfortunately it is beyond repair now in about 100 pieces - here is a picture.
5. This week we experienced our first Nelson power 'outage'. This phenomenon happens quite frequently by all accounts and usually lasts between 5 minutes to a couple of hours. Well Wednesday evening turned out to be quite eventful Rachael had gone to her jewellery night class and Shaun had gone out for dinner with some clients from work. At 8pm just as Rachael was about to put drill to metal the lights went out and the power died - after waiting half an hour we decided to end the class for the night and everyone headed home in the dark. The whole of the town centre was in darkness, there were no traffic lights and it was really really dark! About a third of the city was affected including the area that our house is in.
Shaun was also having an interesting time with the clients as they all tried to eat their meals by candle light. You will be pleased to hear that the power did eventually come back at 8am the next morning just as we were leaving for work. By the time I arrived at work I was really looking forward to a nice cuppa! The cause of the outage was rumoured to be a lightening strike on a sub-station. In anticipation of the next imminent occurrence we now have replenished the propane in our BBQ so at least we can boil the kettle.
So as you can see rubbish things still happen even in Canada but really they are just minor irritations - albeit quite entertaining for our readers!
The excitement building over here at the moment is Halloween. It seems to be quite a big celebration, there are lots of pumpkins for sale in the stores ranging from moderately sized to gigantic monster pumpkins. We have been invited to a pumpkin carving party - you have to turn up with your own pumpkin and weapons of choice ready for carving your design. We shall take some pictures and post them next week. The hosts of the Halloween party have just had a new hot tub installed on their deck so we are also taking our swimming cozzies. This will be the first time we've ever been to a party with Lycra in hand.
We headed out for an easy hike over at Pilot Bay. After a nice trip on the ferry we went to visit the lighthouse which was built in 1905 to guide Paddle Boat Steamers on Kootenay Lake. It was decommissioned in 1993 and has since been renovated by a local heritage group. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the door to the lighthouse was open and you could climb the 2 flights of stairs to the top to look out.
The information board inside said that the lighthouse had been previously renovated in 1970 and the light had a 3.05 amp 12 volt bulb in a 250 millimeter lantern powered by two six volt battery packs. A photoelectric cell shut off the light during daylight hours to conserve power. The light had a characteristic one second of light and eleven seconds of dark. Should a lamp burn out the four position lamp changer would move the next lamp in to focal position. On the picture you can see Shaun at the top looking out across the lake.
Looking towards December when Whitewater opens, we have discovered that most of the outdoor shops in town will loan you demo skis for a day for $35 which they then take off the price of any equipment that you buy. They also take their range of skis to the hill to try as many pairs as possible in a weekend. So, these long-term snowboarders may turn to 2 planks of wood by the end of the season.
The weather this week has been a little bit changeable - we have seen temperatures up to 18 degrees during the day but then down to 2 degrees at night. The forecast is for our first overnight frost this week.
That is all our news for this week, next time we will post some photos of the autumn colours and of our tragic attempts at pumpkin carvings. As usual, we look forward to hearing all your news.
To quote Alan Titchmarsh "Whatever the weather this weekend, enjoy your garden, ta-ra"
Love Rachael, Shaun, Phantom & Harley
xx
1. Rachael managed to knock over a gallon pot of paint whilst decorating the spare room - thankfully we had dust sheets down on the carpet.
2. Shaun dropped a full 1L bottle of extra virgin olive oil out of the trunk of the car when unloading the shopping which as you can imagine took ages to clean up the oil slick.
3. Rachael then trapped her finger in the garage door.
4. One or both of the kittens - not sure which as they both looked as guilty as each other knocked one of our handmade vases over which we had carefully shipped over from UK. It was on the top of the piano. Unfortunately it is beyond repair now in about 100 pieces - here is a picture.
5. This week we experienced our first Nelson power 'outage'. This phenomenon happens quite frequently by all accounts and usually lasts between 5 minutes to a couple of hours. Well Wednesday evening turned out to be quite eventful Rachael had gone to her jewellery night class and Shaun had gone out for dinner with some clients from work. At 8pm just as Rachael was about to put drill to metal the lights went out and the power died - after waiting half an hour we decided to end the class for the night and everyone headed home in the dark. The whole of the town centre was in darkness, there were no traffic lights and it was really really dark! About a third of the city was affected including the area that our house is in.
Shaun was also having an interesting time with the clients as they all tried to eat their meals by candle light. You will be pleased to hear that the power did eventually come back at 8am the next morning just as we were leaving for work. By the time I arrived at work I was really looking forward to a nice cuppa! The cause of the outage was rumoured to be a lightening strike on a sub-station. In anticipation of the next imminent occurrence we now have replenished the propane in our BBQ so at least we can boil the kettle.
So as you can see rubbish things still happen even in Canada but really they are just minor irritations - albeit quite entertaining for our readers!
The excitement building over here at the moment is Halloween. It seems to be quite a big celebration, there are lots of pumpkins for sale in the stores ranging from moderately sized to gigantic monster pumpkins. We have been invited to a pumpkin carving party - you have to turn up with your own pumpkin and weapons of choice ready for carving your design. We shall take some pictures and post them next week. The hosts of the Halloween party have just had a new hot tub installed on their deck so we are also taking our swimming cozzies. This will be the first time we've ever been to a party with Lycra in hand.
We headed out for an easy hike over at Pilot Bay. After a nice trip on the ferry we went to visit the lighthouse which was built in 1905 to guide Paddle Boat Steamers on Kootenay Lake. It was decommissioned in 1993 and has since been renovated by a local heritage group. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the door to the lighthouse was open and you could climb the 2 flights of stairs to the top to look out.
The information board inside said that the lighthouse had been previously renovated in 1970 and the light had a 3.05 amp 12 volt bulb in a 250 millimeter lantern powered by two six volt battery packs. A photoelectric cell shut off the light during daylight hours to conserve power. The light had a characteristic one second of light and eleven seconds of dark. Should a lamp burn out the four position lamp changer would move the next lamp in to focal position. On the picture you can see Shaun at the top looking out across the lake.
Looking towards December when Whitewater opens, we have discovered that most of the outdoor shops in town will loan you demo skis for a day for $35 which they then take off the price of any equipment that you buy. They also take their range of skis to the hill to try as many pairs as possible in a weekend. So, these long-term snowboarders may turn to 2 planks of wood by the end of the season.
The weather this week has been a little bit changeable - we have seen temperatures up to 18 degrees during the day but then down to 2 degrees at night. The forecast is for our first overnight frost this week.
That is all our news for this week, next time we will post some photos of the autumn colours and of our tragic attempts at pumpkin carvings. As usual, we look forward to hearing all your news.
To quote Alan Titchmarsh "Whatever the weather this weekend, enjoy your garden, ta-ra"
Love Rachael, Shaun, Phantom & Harley
xx
