20 things you need to know

I have no profound thoughts or exhilarating adventures to share, so instead I’ll share some recent photos from my iPhone and share some thoughts that may or may not have any relevance to the photo. And I’ll number each thought so you think they are really important.

1. Sally has long whiskers. Here’s a picture of our Sally, the cat I trapped as a kitten in Nova Scotia and have been taming ever since. She is 12 years old now!

2. My new toque is blueish. Here is my new toque, covered in frost from my breath after a walk.

3. We’ve decided to stop living like college students. We downsized over 50% before moving across the country, including all our knick knacks. We have a small living room, with more dog half-chewed rawhides than pretty things. No shelves on the walls. It needs a decorator, bad! To work on upgrading our home, we’ve finally decided to part with our couch, and just have a couple recliners instead, so we can have room for side tables too! We also ordered a 3rd chair, so we can have one guest at a time. It arrived first, with its smaller side table. Jeff’s recliner and side table aren’t expected until January, so the couch has a temporary reprieve.

4. Jeff went caribou hunting with a friend up in Eagle Plains, near the Arctic Circle for a few days. He missed the caribou passing through, but they are hoping to return in a couple weeks to try again. It was his first trip with his new longer trailer, with tons of room for his sled and supplies.

6. The Find Friends app is really neat to spy and make sure your husband is back safe and sound in the Eagle Plains lodge for the night, using their shared satellite internet connection.

7. You didn’t even notice I skipped #5.

8. Hank begs relentlessly when he declares it is walk time. We had a great walk one night in fresh snow while Jeff was away. The next picture is the nursing home, attached to the hospital.

9. The museum is one of my favourite buildings at night, especially in the snow. I’ve realized that is because it has dark yellow, orangish lights, which look fabulous in night time photography, compared to the white light of LED lights.

10. Hank would rather be eating this snow than sitting still in it for a photo.

11. I’m not good at feeding myself when solo. After eating our left-over Halloween candy for meals for 3 days, I whipped up a pizza from scratch with whatever toppings weren’t rotten yet in the fridge, to feed me and the hungry hunter when he returned.

12. Hank is demanding. After he has his walk, and his supper, he demands his kong, filled with peanut butter and a large milkbone, so he can smash it into the floor over and over until the cookie pops out and he can eat the peanut butter. Here is his standing on the foot stool giving me the stare down until I comply.

13. We have snow. A pretty decent amount too.

14. With no wind, you can see exactly how much snow as fallen, since it is the same height everywhere, on the raised bed planters, roofs, bird feeders, fence, etc.

15. The direct sunshine no longer hits town, and won’t return until January 6. On one of the last days we still had a glow over the treeline in the afternoon, I caught a picture of it lighting up the sun in this beautiful stained glass window of the Sleeping Giant from Thunder Bay that our friends Jen & Ian gifted us for our wedding.

16. You can never be too old, too fat, or too out of shape to ski. I haven’t been on skis in a really long time, but we thought, hey, why not and bought a set for each of us. We were out once on the groomed trails last weekend.

17. Skiing uses muscles that no other workout touches. We just did a short route over 30 minutes so we’ll go again. If I ever get smart, I’ll start going during my lunch hour, when it isn’t dark, to keep working up my endurance.

18. The Yukon decided not to change our clocks this year, which moves us from Pacific time to Mountain for the winter. This is absurd, since we’re further west on the continent than the Pacific time zone, but people wanted some light after work. And it worked. Today the sunrise was 11:36am and the sunset at 4:39pm. This means it is pitch black dark until almost 11am now, which is pretty weird, to be honest. And there is still a bit of light after I finish work at 5pm to walk Hank or go to the dog park before it’s black again. I open all the blinds and curtains at 8am regardless, and stumble around in the dark. It just feels better to not have the wall of blinds on the windows blocking the world. And keeping the inside of the house similarly dark feels natural.

19. Sunsets can be beautiful even looking northwest. Even though we didn’t see the direct sun the other day, the sunset filled the entire sky.

20. Raisins are delicious.

21. The full moon coming over the hill behind town was impressive. You can see more of the museum’s orangey glow from their nice exterior lights in this shot too.

That’s all for now folks. As Joanne and Hal would advise, keep fit and have fun.