Spring Has Arrived!

The temperature started warming up this weekend and it is going to soar this week!

We took the opportunity to load up on more wood pellets for the pellet stove (just in case the driveway becomes inaccessible again). We talked to the energy guy at the store and he took us out to the greenhouse where they have a pellet stove running. It was pumping out way more heat than ours and wasn’t turning everything black inside. We talked troubleshooting for awhile. The guy working there just put in a wood burner rather than a pellet stove. I asked him why – he said because he doesn’t need a technician to fix a wood burner, but the pellet stove parts are expensive and require a technician to fidget with them.

The guy who helped Jeff load up the truck with pellets said that if we send our receipts into the province government, then we will get the tax back because it is an environmentally beneficially heating source – wood pellets are a wood waste item. We will definitely be looking into this!

My sink broke last week too so Jeff got to play plumber. He did a fantastic job! My bathroom sink (yes we have so many bathrooms that Jeff and I can each have our own!) has always had a bad smell that I couldn’t put my finger on. It only smelled like gross sewer when the tap was running, but the smell wasn’t coming from the water. What I now think it was – the tap had no gasket/seal under it. The sink has an outside layer – so it’s really a sink in a sink. I think the water was leaking from the tap and sitting in between the sinks and it rotted out the drain until last week when it broke and flooded my shelf of clean towels under the sink (glad they were there to catch the water!) So Jeff replaced my tap and the drain and he put in a plunger drain rather than the rubber stopper it had before. He had to replace the flexible water lines up to the taps too.

The lake in front of our house has been slowly freezing from the north end down towards us. Some idiot drove his snowmobile over the ice – from the tracks it looks like he made it – but I don’t think any of the ice is too thick since half the lake is still water! There is a shallow lake closer to town that has been frozen over since it first snowed in the fall I think.

This week I start working my second job until the end of March. I won’t be able to go on our weekend errand runs to town with Jeff because I will be working at home on my computer for my old boss in the Sault. I’m glad for the opportunity because it means MONEY at my old salary rate. I’m a little worried about working so much – but it is only for 3 months. It also keeps me in touch with people that could hire me again some day so I need to do it.

Yesterday we bought me new winter boots. I’m soooo excited. We found them at Canadian Tire. They are Kamik’s. They go up almost to my knee and are good for -70C! I’ve been wearing Jeff’s around the yard and they are WAY too big so now I can walk a bit faster. They are nice slip on ones too not like my annoying last winter boots that tied up and had a ridiculous liner that was always slipping around. Those ones were only slightly higher than my ankles anyway. To the trash with you!