Snow, buns, and planking

I haven’t had any epic journeys lately to blog about, so I’ll just tell you the mundane everyday stuff that’s been going on.

Jeff’s been out moose hunting often over the last month. He had two extended hunts, and bunch of daily excursions. Hank and I were often home alone.

I’m 7 weeks into an exercise program, and feeling pretty incredible! I’m using the Nike Training Club app on my iPhone, which connects to my Apple Watch to record all my stats. I started with a “Start Up Plan” monthly program (it’s all free by the way!) and I’m nearing the end of my second month of another Start Up plan. I started with a couple exercises a week, and taking longer walks with Hank on the off days, and now I’m up to doing a program every other day and aiming to close all my Apple Watch rings as often as I can.

All the exercises from this app range from 10 minutes to 45 minutes and vary drastically, which keeps me engaged. There are no personalities or “class” presence, just a voice and a little video clip displaying the moment, and nothing last longer than 30 or 40 seconds. I’m doing bird dogs, squats, lunges, leg lifts, marching, running on the spot, and even yoga! (Downward dog kicked my ass for a few sessions).

When I started this I could barely do a push up and I couldn’t lay on my back and lift my legs off the floor. Today I held a plank position for 30 seconds, twice! I can’t tell you how amazing this is to be rebuilding core strength after the surgery I had in 2018! I’ve only a lost a few pounds, but all the inches I’m dropping feels really encouraging. My clothes are getting loose! I’m so much stronger! And the best part of doing more exercise is not having to diet, because I have zero urge to overeat or snack on bad food.

Here’s a walk along the river on September 25. The river is dropping lower and lower. The ferry is scheduled to be pulled out next week.

When Jeff went out moose hunting with a friend, I made banana bread for them to take (emergency rations ya know).

We’re heading in our darkest time of the year. Actually maybe it is right now. Just about everyone is eager for snow, because once the ground is covered in white, it reflects the light and it doesn’t seem so dark outside. The sun is setting at 7pm now and it makes dog walking feel really dark (especially after a summer of 24 hours of light).

To compensate, I took Hank for a hike one day at lunch up at the Crocus Bluff recreation park to walk on the trails.

Hank needs exercise every day, you know like all of us, but he NEEDS it. If he doesn’t have at least 20-30 minutes of a good walk, he goes crazy. A dog walk break during the work day can keep him from doing this staring gig while I’m working:

I’ve been video chatting with my family when I can. My mom and sister met in a park last week to show the fall leaves to my niece Selinah and I got to join them by video for a bit. I hope they don’t mind me showing you how cute they are:

Meanwhile here, the leaves have all fallen. I pulled out our failed tomatoes plants (no heat this summer, didn’t get a single ripe tomato!) and the very next day (October 9), the frost didn’t leave until the afternoon (this was 12:35pm!).

One day after work, Jeff was out hunting, so Hank and I went to explore the new trail from the Crocus Bluff ball diamond that switch backs up to just below the cemeteries, hugs the edge of the cliff, and then connects into the Crocus Bluff park up above. It’s a great trail! Well until we took the steep trail back down to the Robert Service cabin with Hank just on a 6 foot leash. It was super steep and muddy and wet and leaf covered. There was a lot of me begging Hank to not pull me down the hill to be heard that day.

The last couple of Saturday’s I’ve got together with a couple girlfriends for lunch and chat. I finally made it to the Red Mammoth Bistro! It’s been open for what, 2, 3 years? I finally went and had a lovely time, with fancy foods. A chai latte, and later a hot chocolate. A turkey sandwich on a homemade pretzel bun (with a hint of coarse salt on top!) and later an almond croissant.

By yesterday morning we had light snow everywhere. Our friend who drives the grader in town worked on a Sunday to get the streets in town bladed one more time before they freeze solid.

I spent Sunday making buns to bring to Thanksgiving dinner at our friend’s house. I doubled the batch and the dough rose nicely!

I’m always trying to perfect the perfect dinner roll. These are really good and super easy. But I’m not 100% satisfied and wonder if there is a better one. Have a suggestion?

This recipe uses warm milk and butter, not oil like the previous recipe I used did.

These rise about 90 minutes in the bowl, and then for another hour after you form them into buns. They only take about 15 minutes to bake.

After they come out of the oven, you are supposed to give them a light brush of melted butter.

Which makes them all shiny while they cool down.

We ended up with about 70 buns! Our friends seemed to enjoy them, so I’ll keep trying to perfect them. We had a couple turkeys, dressing, sweet potatoes, whipped potatoes, brussels sprouts, broccoli and cheese sauce, carrots, gravy, and pumpkin pie and some sort of amazing chocolate berry dish. Fabulous dinner! And what a collection of friends! Including gold miners, an RCMP officer, a person who was raised way way north of here in the Arctic (and is allergic to cold!), a mining inspector, a couple heavy equipment operators, the gold buyers, and the business owners of a fuel oil delivery company, a hardware store, and a work equipment supply shop.

We’re pretty fortunate to still be able to socialize. We have a 15 person indoor gathering restriction, and we kept under it, with people coming and going. We have no Covid cases here.

It’s been 12 years this weekend since I trapped this little kitten and her brother under our front deck in Nova Scotia! And she’s still getting tamer and tamer. She’ll sit beside me in my arm chair in the evenings now! And interacts with Hank more as he calms down. Aww Sally, so gentle and cute, but still a bit fearful.

Today we got our camper and our friend’s camper under a roof out at his lot. We winterized our trailer a month ago (disconnecting the propane, flushing out the tanks and water and adding antifreeze to the pipes and drains). It was -5°C this afternoon and the ground is frozen and hard. It’s still snowing lightly.

Now that they are all tucked in for winter, we pulled the batteries too and will keep them in our garage and use a battery tender on them monthly.

We ordered new studded winter tires for my Xterra and got an electric battery blanket and oil pan heater installed. It is ready for winter! Or will be by the end of the week when Jeff puts the new snow tires on (thanks Jeff!). The warmest temperature in the next week is one day at 0°C with most nights dipping to -9°C.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!