Home again.

[pecunium]

Back home again. It’s about as strange as I expected. Dollar bills, instead of one, and two, dollar coins (though we have four different types of dollar coins; none of them are in common circulation). The suddenness of going several hundred miles south. When I got to Ottawa it was as if I’d gone back about three weeks, in terms of how much daytime there was.

Skip ahead to now, and the suddenness of the longer days. Everywhere is the sound of birds. This has, it seems, been a tolerably moist winter. Everywhere is the reek of fresh growth. Green, and earthy and nothing rank in it. Hints of mustiness, but nothing is tired or worn out. My plum is getting ready to bloom. The not-jonquils are getting ready to bloom, the freesias are starting to bloom and the roses are springing from the canes.

Weeds are trying to take over the front parkway.

And it’s warm. It was -17C in Ottawa, and it’s about +17C here. A small difference. I, having no body fat, still want a sweater in the evenings, but I can sleep with the windows open. The light is less blue.

Right now (1400) the clouds have come back, and a south wind is blowing. I’ve done some of the “make and mend” needed (most notably cleaned the camera sensor), and am still working my way through the photos taken in Ottawa.

The lessons, and workshops went well enough (the client was happy, and the incidental audience seemed interested in what was said). Teaching, and working with the vagaries of the new subject (snow and ice have been, at best, an occasional subject. Having a month to look at them, and time to make return trips; improving on the lessons learned, was really nice, fun too.

Tried to get some chocolates at Stubbe’s, but they aren’t open on Mondays. Instead we stopped at Timothy’s, where I bought some, “Presidential Blend No. 44.

In the things I really wanted to do dept. was curling. I got to, sort of. I got a lesson. If we had found the Ottawa Curling Club sooner, I could have joined the starter league, but as it was I got to shove a 40 lbs stone, and listen to it roar. I wasn’t awful. I only fell twice (the “slippy” shoe, isn’t. It’s a bizarrely slick thing. There is no resistance, in any direction. Ice skates have control, the edge constrains... not so the slippy shoe, only balance keeps one’s kiester off the ice).

With some practice, I could be ok. With a lot of practice, who knows? Olympic dreams anyone?

Comments

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

weird. Curling has now come up three times in the past two weeks with friends. One had a _team building_ outing in Switzerland where they curled. And then last night at girls night curling was brought up and we got excited about trying it out (even looked it up on the web for a local club). We found one place, but they won't have lessons again until december. But we'll be looking a little more once we had a real computer to search stuff on than the phone.

[greenmother.livejournal.com]

I hope that you had a chance to watch Men With Brooms whilst you were in Ottawa and dreaming of curling! Paul Gross and the rest of the cast made a delightfully "Canadian" movie. Very different from Passchendaele!