Day 1.063: It was snowing when...

...I took this (March 12th). Forgive me if it went astray.

When we woke up this morning - the snow had nearly gone away:


Back in November zero-seven: patio* covered in snow:


Two nights** ago 'twas partly like no time had passed - no time!


(* - it's actually a deck; ** - it was morning)

Oh go on then - you can have it - pop pun #48 for title watchers but don't bother knocking on my door.

Day 1.062: I need udder-ville

Help me. Get things right.

This is, depending on how you look at it what 'our' Governor has managed to do (from politics at least), or what he failed to do effectively. Whether he has also done a deal to avoid punishment for his crimes we will see in time I suppose. As more details emerge, the stranger and worse things sound - especially because it seems he himself was being investigated by the FBI after he tried to cover up his actions with 'unusual' banking transactions.

Exile #3 has made progress with this too. After last week's rather static skating lesson, this week she learned how to produce a turn of speed. It's more like running than skating, but it's several steps in the right direction.

This is also one of the Rock Band songs and pop pun #47 for title watchers: I'm tired of trying - make my way back home.

Day 1.061: Multi-tasking

I made good progress with my taxes this morning after I had run out of excuses to prevaricate. After picking Exile #4 up from school, Exile #2 came in to see if I felt able to go out for lunch. Did I ever? After a nice meal of soup and sandwiches we popped into the hardware store to get a new saw blade - they didn't have the right size, so I bought a new saw instead - well how wrong can you go for less than $10? Oh, yes - I also picked up an axe, and a pair of gloves, and a mini-spade that Exile #4 took a shine to, and some shelving for the basement. Well, how wrong can you go for (undisclosed sum)? You shouldn't go to the grocery store hungry, and apparently you shouldn't go to the hardware store on a warm sunny early-Spring day either.

After a bit more taxation, I decided the time had come to turn our dead tree into firewood and its resting-place-cum-rockery into a potential flower-bed. It turned out to be an easy task thanks to it being dead to the point of rotting. Moving the stones and tidying up the twigs was a more significant task. Fortunately I had some help...

...from Exile #4 and her new spade of course - you didn't think I meant...?

Day 1.060: Tax and spent

Here's an update on the last of the current batch of snow. I wonder if will be the last of the season? We are just a week away from it being 4 months since my first snow report of this winter and it is more than three months since our first real covering.

Today New York is in the news thanks to the presumed-to-be-imminent resignation of Governor Eliot Spitzer (another case of the missing 'L'). The last one to do so was Nelson Rockefeller, who having presided over the demolition and concreting of large parts of Albany, went on to become Gerald Ford's Vice President. Not a post that our present Governor can now hope to attain I suspect.

Tomorrow, I am planning to try and get my tax forms filled in. Having to dovetail records from two countries with out-of-step tax years is not exactly simple. Hopefully I can at least get all the information I have into the right places on the forms. Whether that will be all I need to do is another question.

Day 1.059: Look: arbour no more

This picture was taken on Wednesday, when the girls collapsed the quinzhee (I didn't want to risk someone crawling inside when the snow was melting). I suppose since nothing was growing on it, I shouldn't really call it an arbour, but that sort of attention to detail could really ruin my posting enjoyment. This is now one of the few bits of snow left and it's significantly reduced from this pile - but that didn't stop Exile #4 taking the sled out and trying her best to make something of what's there today. Of course a year ago, we still had a good covering of snow but we thought spring had arrived (the clocks have gone forward after all) but we had another 18 inches of snow to come on St Patrick's Day.

Today I was in an all-day church meeting refining some of the words on our website and in various documents about who we are and why. It was a really good time of working out together what we believe to be important and how want to present that to the world at large.

So with the hope of displacing the dodgy prog-rock songs going round in my head from our delayed-from-Friday Rock Band get-together that we had this evening, I present pop pun #46 for title-watchers: but you know our sense of timing - we always wait too long.