Back From Vacation

More Photos from the cottage....

Vacation

well, we just got back last night from 5 days at the cottage with my sister and her family, in Coboconk... what an awesome time we had..... ate WAY too much, had a nap nearly every day ( work next week is gonna be a BUMMER! ) and just had a really nice relaxing time....

and ANGELA?? I BOUGHT CROCS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so there!

we went to the Elliott Dam north of Norland on Sunday.... the kids loved it... they took sticks and threw them over the railing on one side... and then ran back and looked for their sticks on the other side.... Jacob was getting tired of looking for tiny sticks.... and decided it'd be easier to spot a TREE!!! bless his heart!!
















Monday Steve and Dawna Storey came up for supper.... we had a blast... Steve and Megan took it upon themselves to beat the kids in a game of croquet .... I'm not sure my niece has forgiven Steve yet, for sending her ball flying down onto the other side of the ditch!!!

I'm not Saying......

I'm not saying that I shouldn't have leaned on the back end of his truck.....

and I'm not saying that his shocks are bad........


but ...




JEEEPERS

The Shadow of the Almighty

When I got home tonight, the driveway was full.... so I parked my car beside Mark's Truck...... made my car look pretty tiny in the shadow of that truck....



Reminded me of one of my favourite Psalms : Psalm 91 ..... it starts out this way :

1He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

I don't think David was talking about a Ford in the Shadow of a Peterbilt though!!.....

Bless you

ok... There's one thing I really can't stand...

Allergies.....

my throat gets all tickly ( I'm such a technical term person ) ... My nose blocks up, then runs, and then blocks up again...and then I sneeze like a wild thing.....

Saturday I inspected a big horse farm... By the time I left, I could hardly breathe...

Today, I inspected, among other things, 2 farms...

guess what? Both horse farms...

wanna know what ELSE? Tonight when I was labeling the pictures that I took,

I couldn't stop sneezing.....

Psychosis..... Just one more of the many layers of my onion!

Crazy dog

One of the neat tools of the trade that Farmers Mutual provides for us, is a Leica Disto Laser Measurer... they make our job SO much easier.....

Today, I was measuring a building and the little red light on the laser was bouncing on the wall ... and the dog went nuts.. jumping up and down trying to bite the little red light...I think he thought it was a red bug or something....




cracked me right up... so I spent the next few minutes shining the light all over the wall, watching the dog jump up trying to bite the light!!

i know... small things amuse small minds!!

shut up!

Beautiful Lake View on Sturgeon Lake

Pretty eh?

Re-organized room

ok, so I'm SO excited today ... I got my room re-arranged ... I've been at Mrs Fisher's house for almost a year .... and since coming here, have changed from a laptop to a desk top, and from a small printer to a huge big scanner printer thingy..... the fact is, the room just wasn't working for me.... so I had my friend mary ( who is a self proclaimed room organizer ) help me figure out how to get the room working.... instead of getting a new desk, I bought a desk top for $18 at a business liquidator, as well as a new chair.... re-arranged the room.... and WHOOOOOO EEEEEEEEEEEEEE ... am I excited about it......

to quote my dad : " small things amuse small minds "

!!

Advertising

I'm the kind of person that hates advertising... I HATE that we get hammered with ads all the time.... it annoys me that the media pushes products and "things" that they think we should have..... I'm a fairly smart consumer, and I like what I like... I don't like that ads on tv are LOUDER than the regular show, I don't like that Canadian tv stations have WAY more commercials than US television stations.....
and.. I HATE how condescending a lot of the radio ads are.....

So...... I mute the tv during commercials, when I'm in the car, I change back and forth between the cd and the radio, when ads come on....

I just feel I should be able to CHOOSE what I listen to, and not be hammered by people pushing their products on me.... ( I'm not as hard as I sound, honest ) ....

so imagine my surprise on Monday afternoon.... I was in Alliston, and was filling up with gas at the Esso station on Highway 89 .....and the gas pump started talking to me..... I mean REALLY talking..... freaked me right out.....

I mean, she ( the pump ) had a pretty voice, and all... so I looked up....

to my shock, and surprise and eventual disgust, I found that the pumps there have tv screens! As soon as the pump started pumping, the tv came on and started a whole stream of Ads.... from tv ads advertising the weather network.... to Esso pushing their overpriced snack foods....

JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPERS..... for 3 minutes, can't I have some ADVERTISING FREE TIME TO MYSELF????

I bet soon, they'll have tv screens on the ceiling of the bathrooms so they can fill your minds full of trash while you uh..... sit there and uh... read the newspaper!!

Highway 35 this afternoon.....

At my last inspection today, I saw this accident on Highway 35 ... looked like a small car carrier, jack knived ( did I spell that right ) coming north on Highway 35 near 7A .....

by the time I got there after the inspection, he was off to the side, and there were 4 OPP cars there.... one truck sideways, and 3/4 of Lindsay's OPP staff responded!!

One Door and Only One

and yet the sides are two,
I'm on the inside, on which side are you

that was a Sunday School chorus when I was a kid... and sadly, that is as much of the song as I can remember.....

this posting, though , has nothing to do with the Sunday School Song...

I just hung a door on my townhouse... whoop tee doo!!

For over 2 years, I've been sleeping in the basement of the townhouse... it's a two storey with the basement level on grade, so when you walk in the door, you're in the basement... my office ( and bed ) is in what USED to be the garage..... there's no window, only the main entry door....
it gets very muggy in there, and if I open the door, those freakin' cats from the neighbourhood come in... have caught TWO in my place in the last year... bricken bracken #(*$P)O(*&($*

sooooooo... after looking for an entire year, I found a used Screen door for $15 on some guys front yard last week... I bought it, and hung it yesterday....

works like a charm... doesn't FIT, but it works like a charm! Keeps those BLASTED cats out.....
Will likely have to do some trim work before Bug season comes back!!!

Gas prices tonight....

On Highway 115 , there's an Ultramar that is consistently cheaper than everybody else for fuel...

Today, they were lined up half way down the highway ( ok, slight exaggeration ) so I figured I should stop.....
















I was glad I did... They'd run out of Regular and were selling Premium for the price of Regular...
I remember back in 2005, when gas first hit 99cents a litre, I nearly drove off the road I was so angry... and NOW, I'll wait in line for 20 minutes to get it for 92.9 ....... life is sooo weird!

Multi Tasking

so yesterday, the news reports on 680 AM were ranting at length about the fact that people using cell phones may not be able to manage talking on the phone AND driving.... They were referring to a big study released yesterday from the University of Utah on Multi Tasking....

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you allowed to have more than one wife in Utah?

I'm thinking that their study was maybe about Multi Tasking, but had nothing to DO with driving and talking on the cell phone....

I don't know how those guys do it... I could barely manage ONE!

anyway, after hearing the report umpteen times, I couldn't take it any more....I put my phone down, set my coffe and donut down, closed my daytimer, shut my camera off, and reached over and shut the radio off.... it was driving me CRAZY!

Full Moon Wednesday night in Brantford

mind you.... sometimes it seems like EVERY night is a full moon in Brantford!!!

Taylor's Vacation Trip to South Carolina

Taylor left today for South Carolina.... my cousin Kathy and her family bought a ticket for Taylor and flew him down to visit them ( Taylor is about the same age as her oldest son Winston ) ...





Taylor is not very fond of flying ( today was his 3rd annual trip ) .... so he didn't sleep very well last night..... nor did I, for that matter.... When we were on our way to the airport this morning, we heard the news report about the Terrorist plot that was foiled in England.... Taylor looked at me and said.. "oh MANNNNNNNNN... I was worried ENOUGH before that".....




Things weren't too much different, other than the fact that he couldn't bring any liquids in his carry on bag.... no toothepaste, no shampoo, no gel, no water bottles, no liquids. I watched him until he went through Customas, and watched as he walked out of sight .... I almost cried.... sentimental slob that I am!

















His flight ( US Airways flight 3847 from Toronto to Philadelphia ) was originally 10:30, and he was in the air by 10:53 .... so it wasn't too late... he transferred in Philadelphia and THAT flight was delayed 2 hours... he said part of it was weather, and part of it was a scare of some sort..... police and dogs were in searching all over the place.... he called me just after 7 tonight from Kathy's place.... he was thankful to have his feet back on the ground, I think!

I miss you buddy!

Lester B Pearson Airport today....

After the Terrorist scare and arrests in England was anounced today, the airport was a very interesting place today.... CH News and Global News both had news crews, interviewing people at the airport... It never ceases to amaze me how they can take a normal story, and make it into something completely SENSATIONAL... sigh...








Also at the airport today I saw Viktor Troicki - he is a Serbian tennis star, and had come to Canada to play in the Rogers Cup Tennis Championship in Toronto. He was flying out today to Cincinnati ( I think he said ) .. I asked him how he'd done at the tournament ( and realized as soon as I said it... the tournament finishes on Sunday.... if he is flying out thursday, he obviously didn't DO VERY WELL !! ) .... he told me though, that he had twisted his ankle.. and so he was leaving early!.... I shook his hand but was too chicken to take his picture.... so I went around the corner, and got a picture of his luggage and his knees!!















The other thing that was really cool today, was that I saw 4 groups of kids flying out to Kentucky to the Tim Horton Childrens' Foundation camp ... The kids looked pretty scared... Though they were in a groups of about 20, they looked like they were ALONE... each kid walked by themselves...they obviously hadn't made friends with each other... they looked really lonely... poor kids.....

Waking Up Taylor

when we were in Belleville last weekend, we got to spend quite a bit of time with my brother's kids ( Isaac and Eva ) ....

Saturday morning, Isaac's most fun task was to wake Taylor up....

I think it was a lot more fun for Isaac than it was for Taylor!!

Cell Phone Itis

My daughter Anna wants a cell phone.... her friend Lauren got one... and Anna is pretty sure she'd like to have one exactly the same... Anna's MOM though, doesn't share her feelings... and has yet to give permission....

Tonight on messenger, Anna asked if I would contribute to the cost of the phone, and then she'd be " pay as you go" with the card thing....

At one point, she was teasing me pretty badly, and i said... FINE... if you want to be THAT way,
I won't LET You get a cell phone....

this was her reply:

Anna says:
well unfortunately it's not your permission i'm seeking.. it's your funds...




sigh!!!

Check out what I found while I was inspecting Monday

Did ya think I DIED???

I must apologize for disappearing for the last two weeks... I took a week off with my kids....

we spent 3 nights at my sister's inlaws cottage in Coboconk with some friends from Brantford... the weather was pretty varied, and a mini tornado blew threw the day we left... it was wild...




.... then we went to Belleville to visit my parents.... the kids are still there, in fact, spending time with Gramma and Grampa and visiting their cousins Isaac and Eva...





Abby turned 13 while we were there, so we celebrated her birthday there... we went golfing the next night... Sunday, Carol and David and the kids stopped for lunch, on their way home from Nova Scotia.... so we met at Ponderosa and had a family reunion.....! it was fun!

over all, it was a very fun week.... so now I'm back to work to pay for this lavish lifestyle I have become accustomed to...

I have lots to write about... and lots of pictures to post.. but have work piling up...

will blog more later***pm