Raising our Carbon Footprint..yet again...

First we flew the boys out here for a vacation burning fossil fuels as only Air Canada with its multi-connection flights to the east coast can do, and then once they were gone we got down to the dirty job of cleaning up the mess left over from our rear deck renovation from last year or was it the year before? Time flies when you're retired. Three hundred bucks for the rental of a dumpster...eighty bucks for nine paving stones and a little bit of gasoline and whoosh...problem solved...sorry Greenpeace...we tried...we really tried....

Home Renovation Tax Credit At Work!

Who says the Conservatives can't help out us old retired folk? We saved the price of almost one whole set of stairs! We didn't do it for the savings, we did it because of the snow...now we only have to shovel the tiny bit by the side stairs and we can ignore the rest..Woot!...Woot!

Over, much too quickly

We did a little visiting, a little sightseeing, a little eating, a lot of sleeping :) All in all a nice visit but it was way too short, it takes time to recover from flying across the country courtesy of Air Canada's insistence that you lay over for hours in the two centers of the Canadian Universe; Toronto & Montreal before hopping on a little puddle jumper for the last hour and a half to Bathurst. Oh well, hopefully their next visit will be a longer one and by then the elusive Mila may have built up some vacation time at her new job.

Hail, hail, the gangs all here!

Well, my sons made it safe and sound on their cross Canada journey to visit us here.  Imagine a five hour layover in Toronto or three hours waiting in Montreal.  Sounds like a torture the CIA would dream up but no, just our national airline doing its bit to screw over its customers.  However, I digress.  It's great to see them both, they were up until 2:30 in the morning adjusting their body clocks to NB time, Lynn and I however, had retired hours earlier.  Jake couldn't believe that his pack grew by two and loves these new pack members, Loki is beside himself, four extra hands for pets and Odo, well he's just being Odo.

They look good and I'm sure that once they have time adjusted, we'll see more of them :)

Squirrels and lions and bears oh my!

The great fat hunter has managed to trap (and release) three squirrels using the new trap. I drove them one at a time into the next town and released them. I brought Lynn with me on the last trip and when we got home she told me that we had only gone about four kilometers. I had read somewhere online that we should drive them at least five miles away as they might return.

Now we have three squirrels playing on the bird feeder, an empty trap and I have a feeling that the rodents have put one over on me.

Kidneys, can't live with em...

I know everyone knows that you should drink 6 to 8 glasses of water a day but I mean really, has anyone ever really done it? After a scan for my vision problem (which went away) they discovered that my remaining kidney is acting up and my doctor arranged for yet more tests but until then she suggested that I drink more water...echhh....I did discover though, that I can drink water while I sit at the computer since I'm not looking for a sugar rush...so I drank three glasses of water over two days and was quite proud of myself. Half the tests are done now and we are waiting for the results, the next test isn't until November. We'll see how it turns out, meanwhile I am going to really really try to drink more water.

Dog Days of Summer

His first swim in the Bay Of Chaleur for this year and of course he loved it!

Our squirrel trap arrived finally, so hopefully we'll get back to having a garage where we can store the bird seed n stuff.  They even tried to chew through the top of a gas can if you can believe it.

Mark and Jonathan will be here in less than a month, that'll be fun.  Mark's moving from Toronto to Vancouver prior to coming here, I guess he just wanted to be on a plane that much longer :)  I hope he stops in to see his grandfather, if he's in Toronto, before he goes.

We got Gaston Gavroche(ok, not his real last name), out to give us some quotes, we'd like to rearrange the stairs on both decks so that they exit the side rather than the front, but apparently both decks (the front is worse) are in bad shape so they will both likely have to be replaced.  We also had him take a look at the bathroom, we'd like the bathtub taken out and a sit down shower put in, as well as fix the leak in the main floor bathroom shower.  God knows, when you get some income tax money back, you have to spend it!!

I have to go in for more tests, apparently my lone kidney is not doing it's job properly or something, so more ultrasounds, peeing n stuff to come...oh joy....I have been drinking more water though, I'm almost up to five glasses a week :)  I'm gonna have to try a little harder, I think.

With the renovations to come we will be getting closer yet to our dream of a much easier to maintain property.  We took down the split rail fence between us and the neighbors, which will make cutting the grass much easier and I did some more tree/bush trimming to assist with that as well.  Loki and the boys have been helping by digging post holes in the yard, not that we wanted to put posts in the yard but they think they're helping.

I picked up some lillies to plant in our side flower bed for some additional color and for the hummingbirds, and the two new apple trees and most of our new shrubberies survived the mountains of snow and are thriving.  Things are looking good.

Got an email from Tom Peebles announcing someone's retirement..oh yes, Les Bell, but at least it wasn't another death notification, we seem to be getting quite a few of those.  Sheesh.

Ok, time for coffee...I'll keep you all updated as to the renovations.  Congrats to my niece Francine for yet another beautiful baby boy!