Washed and Waxed and looking GOOD

No not me you goof, the car! It’ll be 6 weeks old on Monday and it was due for a wash! We took turns hosing it off in town at a drive in wash stall. It’s so shiny again!

Let’s see, what is new….

On Friday we had FROZEN car windows when we headed off to work at 7:20am. It’s always foggy and dewey in the mornings but on Friday it was 0°C and the dew froze! That reminded me that we should probably put the window scraper in the car! In fact today we bought an emergency telescoping plastic shovel to keep in there – you never know what winter will bring and it’s a 20 minute drive for me into work. Jeff’s talking about getting studded winter tires for the car because they are legal out here!

So we figured out today that we’re probably the laughing stock of the garbage pickers. I had noticed before there were deposits on some pops when I got them, but we just put them all in our recycling. I figured no one drank pop on this road since there was no one else with big bags of recycling cans and bottles on the biweekly collection day. Turns out EVERY pop bottle and can has a 10 cent deposit paid on it and you have to bring them to the bottle collection depot to get your money back. GEEZ another different bag to sort our trash into. So far we have to sort out:

• one bag, clear, for garbage
• one bag, blue, for paper and cardboard
• one bag, blue for cans and bottles and plastic containers
• one green container for organic material like meat, bones, dirty paper towels, fast food wrappers, pizza boxes, food scraps
• one container for collection organics that we can compost ourselves in our outdoor composter
• one container now for bottles and cans to take to the bottle depot

Since we’ve put them all out for recycling, I’m sure someone drove by each time and scooped them all. There is even a deposit at Tim Hortons if you get a bottle or can of iced tea. So what are you supposed to do, take it with you to get your deposit back? This is insane. So when I have a can or bottle of juice or pop at work I have to bring it home so I can take it to the depot to get the 10 cents back?

Speaking of freezing.. wait, weren’t we? haha. We still aren’t heating our house. We’re waiting for the local guy to come out and service and clean the pellet stove and fireplace so we can start using them. He’s the same guy who was our house inspector and his company is swamped with work. Jeff’s been calling every week and they haven’t fit us in yet. Luckily though we ran into the woman who has more connections than anyone I’ve ever met – our real estate agent – and she’s going to see him on Monday so she’ll get him out here. Remember she bought us a dinner a few weeks back? Well she’s also having her customer appreciation dinner coming up this fall! What a lady! She said she will probably hand deliver the invite too. I commented on how most of the listings in the paper are her’s. She said they were putting a real estate listing publication out and she wanted her listings labeled with her name. The other agents didn’t like that because it made them look bad. I mean she’s got the majority of listings in the entire region – not just of the other agents in her office. She told them to get off their duff and get some listings!

Today we went for a driving tour – no back roads so we took the Caliber. We went over through Goshen and headed to Guysborough. From there we went through Mulgrave and then by the Canso Causeway (road to Cape Breton Island) and up towards Antigonish. Then we headed down the back road through St. Andrews, back to Goshen, and then back to home. We didn’t make many stops or take many pictures but it was a nice drive. There are rural areas where 50% of the houses are abandoned. Some of them are the classic big huge old wooden houses with wrap around porches. Many would be incredible B&B places if someone had the time and money (and customers). So many of them just look like the owner didn’t come home one day.

We’re seeing so much more of the lake now from our house. Most of the leaves are down now, except for the ugly alders that hold their leaves for so long. We are seeing places across the lake that we had no clue were there since we couldn’t see them before. Now the lights of the traffic as the odd car makes its way around the far side of the lake are more noticeable when we’re sitting here at night (since we don’t use the blinds. If you have a telescope and want to watch us, we will collect our entertainment tax).

Tomorrow is the local community association’s casserole dinner. We had caught wind of it, and then we got the flyer in the mailbox this week. I called up the lady who we met during our first week, the lady who had held our mail and had the extra key, and asked more about the casserole dinner – most importantly – were we just supposed to show up and pay our $10 each or bring a casserole? She said they call up different people each year to bring a casserole so we were probably off the hook this time because we were new here. We’re definitely going and hope to meet more interesting neighbours. There is supposed to be a good seamstress close by too (in case my wedding dress needs alterations when it arrives next week).

Jeff has been busy in the basement tonight working on the two massive big wooden bookcases he’s building for in my office here for all our books and photo albums. The first one is now together and the second one is being glued and clamped right now. Then we can sand and prime and stain and coat with the polyurethane or whatever it’s called.