Made it down

I made it down the driveway this morning.
It was thick with wet snow but I went really really really slowly (with my new studded tires) and made it to the slushy highway below.

Hopefully “the guy” will plow the laneway before I get home so I can get back up the hill. Or maybe the rain will wash away the snow. Can it rain that much?

It’s really mild here. We’ve had a couple snow storms now and it hasn’t gotten below -7. I’ve been told it does hit -20 here for a few days at a time in the winter – but that is as cold as it gets.

Classes are over at the University and students are heading into their exams. I don’t miss those years one little speck. University kids have changed so much just since I went to school. Now they all have cellphones and are walking around texting all the time. They all have laptops. And many have ipod plugs in their ears. Lots of them have very nice expensive automobiles here too (maybe mommy & daddy’s). I see some flannel pj pants here – but there just isn’t the “look” that the Lakehead campus had when I went there – I remember all the toques and flannel and nalgene bottles clamped to MEC backpacks with carabiners. Actually I don’t see many backpacks here at all. Some of the students look soooo young, but I guess they probably can start when they’re 17 now.

Jeff is in Halifax last night and today for another course. He was in Halifax all last week, and he will be next week too. I’ve been doing an ok job of keeping the pellet stove going. The ash has to be shovelled out a couple times a day. I found that if I stop the pellet feed for 30 minutes so it burns down, I can scoop out the hot ashes into a pail, put a handful of pellets in the burn pot, and by the time I run the ash bucket back outside, the stove was hot enough to restart the fresh pellets on fire so I don’t have to get the fire starting fluid out. Oh poop – I just remembered that after I did this this morning I forgot to top up the hopper with pellets so it’ll be out by lunch (or earlier). Argh. Guess it’ll be cold enough for a better cleaning then.