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It’s been forty-five years since Juanita agreed to marry me shortly after we met. As my grandmother would say, “Act in haste. Repent at leisure.” I have no regrets and Juanita is pretty quiet about expressing her misgivings so we had occasion to celebrate. She had a gift card for a local restaurant that she received on her [words obscured] birthday last month and she took me to lunch. This was our first restaurant meal since breakfast in the food court in the Houston airport on March 16th.
Things have changed. There we were the only people wearing masks other than a few passing Asians. Here, everyone is wearing masks except while they are eating. We eat at a table outside in an area walled from the pervasive prairie wind. There are tables inside as well but only half can be used. Distancing, you know.
Debbie is busy racking up hours on her motorcycle as a learner. Later this month she and Ernie attend a weekend workshop in Saskatoon. The focus is on motorcycle safety and provides class and practical sessions. The end result is increased knowledge and some benefits for timing of licensing and insurance rates. She dropped by our property briefly on one of her practice runs.
I received a call from a prospective employer in Alberta for instrument work. I declined largely because I didn’t want to work under Covid restrictions, but commented that my safety tickets weren’t up to date in any case. That prompted me to check around locally for safety courses and I ran across some starting the next day at the community college and masked up and paid the fee to secure one of the last spots remaining.
Near the start of the first class we did a round table to introduce ourselves. Most were in pre-employment classes. I had 55 years in industry, two trade tickets and a steam ticket. Definitely the old guy. After several days that week and next all my safety tickets were up to date except for the Aerial Work Platform and the fit test for respirators. The first is not done locally that I can find. The second takes less than an hour and expires each year so you might as well get it when you pull a slip from the union hall. In my enthusiasm, over the weeks I also completed all available modules of the CSTS safety certificate. Just in case.
September is when the chimney gets cleaned. Well, that’s a little too passive voice, isn’t it? I clean the chimney and wood stove smoke pipe every September. We don’t burn that much wood per year and always get everything toasty before cutting back on the damper so there is never much creosote to be cleaned. Building with twelve inch thick walls does tend to cut down on heating needs. :-)
The leaves start turning colours and we start harvesting tomatoes along with lettuce and kale. I carry on building paths until we have a fifty minute walk on our property without repeating the same path. We start using the paths regularly. I ordered some special clamp on cable ends and build a really good replacement control cable for the DR Mower. The cable ends Canada Link: Cable Ends USA Link: Cable Ends were on both Amazon.ca and Amazon.com sites but I ordered from the USA site because they would mail direct to me and had them in stock. The Canadian Site would ship them from France. Might take a while.
On the last Sunday of the month we drove forty-five minutes north of town to Jeannette Lake and attended a baptism in the lake. People! People, who for the most part, we hadn’t seen since last Christmas! Nice to visit, even two metres apart. The baptism went well. Everybody survived the frigid waters. That lake doesn’t get warm even in the summer.
Our annual dose of NCIS DVD's arrived and we watched one episode a night until we ran out. That's not binge watching. Is it?
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