Welp, we're in the middle of the worst April blizzard to hit Edmonton in 20 years (I like how it's described as "worst" rather than "only.) This is what the world looked like on Friday, when I went out to take photos of rabbits courting out by Ag For:



As you can see, plenty of rabbits and no snow in sight:



On Saturday it started snowing:



And then it snowed some more:



On Sunday I measured the snow on the patio table and it was almost 6 inches deep. On Monday morning we dug the front steps out because it was also windy and the snow had drifted onto our stairs and against the house. It took us an hour to get to work because we stood at the bus stop for 20 minutes, I got tired of waiting and went back home to pick up a warmer coat. When we stepped out the door a couple minutes later, the bus passed us. We did eventually catch a bus, though.

On our way home, we saw a snow-covered rabbit in a divet under a lamp post. Brown rabbits covered in snow look awfully pathetic.

These pictures were taken this morning. It's *still* snowing. But we're staying home.

As you can see, the snow on the patio table is probably about a foot deep:



We've got some interesting drifts forming on the roofs in the neighbourhood. Here's the one on our garage:



We've got an even better one out front, but I'm not going out there until it's time to shovel again.

Update

It's been a few weeks, so here's some news!

NB and I endured a short-lived but annoying plague of fruit flies. We seem to have removed whatever it was that they were feeding on, though, because they seem to have died out. NB caught a cold, and then he didn't want it any more so he passed it on to me. I got a crab for my birthday! :D It was very exciting.

One evening we saw a porcupine in our backyard! It was too dark to take photos of it, but we watched it from the sunroom. It had its back turned to us and was wobbling gently, so that it looked like a grey gelatinous blob. We watched it wobble for a while and then got bored. The next day NB found an apple core in that spot, so it was probably dining on the few leftover fallen apples. We've kept an eye out for it, but it hasn't returned (as far as we know).

At the beginning of November some component of our furnace fan broke, so that it wouldn't stop running. We discovered this at midnight on a Saturday, of course, after it had been pumping cold air into our house for an hour. Luckily it's still not all that cold outside. We called the emergency furnace line, but the furnace guy didn't show up until Monday. We had to control the fan manually all day by using the circuit breaker. By Monday, the fan had managed to "fix" itself. We thought we might buy a new furnace, but the furnace guy recommended against it. He said that the old furnaces are far more reliable.

We've found some contractors to do our roof -- they were recommended by my boss, who has used them for his house and all his farm buildings. They won't be able to start until the spring, but that's just as well.

Apart from that, the weather has been fairly good, so we've been cycling in -- NB usually, I occasionally. The new (temporary?) bus station by Southgate is irritating, but they're putting up some heated shelters so hopefully that gets done before the really cold weather hits. There's still construction everywhere. It's very irritating.

Anyway, that's mostly it for us.

October

So, there's still not much happening at Casa Gazza. We finally put down the last of the hardwood in the sunroom. Now we just need to buy some baseboards. We looked at the available options when we returned three out of our four remaining hardwood boxes to Home Depot (the other box had reached its 90-day return deadline a few weeks ago). It looks like we'll want to paint our baseboards white to match the walls, so we probably won't be getting around to that until spring. But the sunroom is basically ready for use, give or take the elusive leak in the ceiling.

We didn't do much for Thanksgiving this year. My brother was in town and the three of us went to the Blue Plate Diner for dinner on Sunday. Then on Monday I cooked and mushed a medium-sized pumpkin for pie purposes. If you need to cook pumpkin pieces for pie, but aren't sure whether you want to roast them, I definitely recommend microwaving rather than steaming. I spent an hour steaming pumpkin bits in the wok (we have a bamboo steamer we almost never use) before getting sick of it and discovering that you can just microwave a covered casserole dish full of pumpkin in about 6 minutes.

Next week we'll be turning pumpkin mush into a pie or two.

Neil spent some time cleaning up the mess in the sunroom and library and putting some shelving together this weekend. We've also cleaned up the yard a bit. Neil mowed and picked up apples, while I pulled up a LOT of baby spruce trees last weekend. Luckily, the weather has been nice for the most part.

And that's about it. Time to go into winter hibernation!

Not really New!

I don't actually have much new news, but the long time since the last post made me think I should put something up.

My video card was acting kind of flaky, so I replaced it. A good video card is finally more expensive than a really good CPU + 1GB of memory, which is kind of amusing. Fortunately it's amusing in a good way: it's mostly because CPUs are less than $200, even for ones that are pretty much top of the line, and I expect to start finding 1GB memory sticks in my cereal boxes any day now.

I'm playing a new video game: Bioshock. It's been a surprisingly long time since a good single player computer game has come out. There are definitely a lot more console games now.

The sunroom is almost finished: it just needs the last row (where the boards need to be cut lengthwise) and some sort of baseboard/edging. It's still not leaking, which is irritating, because I'm not quite sure I trust it. I almost want to say "yeah, it's still leaking. Come have a look!" because I don't think they'll drop by if I say "it seems to be fine, can you check it?" After that, the next stop is in fix-the-roof-ville.

Still doing Wing Chun. Made spaghetti and sausage instead of spaghetti and ground beef meat sauce.

Back!

NB and I are finally back home. We arrived yesterday afternoon. Our house didn't burn down, our bikes, computers and tomatoes are still there, and all the plants are happy and well.

And now, for a weekend of recovering from our vacation!

NB has already uploaded his vacation photos here. Mine are slowly going up here.

Heritage Festival

Welp, NB and I had a great Heritage Festival weekend, as usual. We're pretty bushed, though.

We went soon after it started on Saturday. It was raining a bit before we left, so we put on some raingear and drove in. By the time we got down the hill, it was raining harder, and we were starting to get soggy by the time we reached the festival. The hot-drink vendors did well that day. We went from booth to booth, soggy tickets in hand. There were no line-ups, and after getting our food we'd duck into the exhibition tents and eat there. The sun came out briefly when we got to the end of the tents. We made it back up the hill and to the car before the rain started again. It was really pouring on the way home, and we were pretty happy to have gone earlier.

On Sunday we met my brother at the LRT station and wandered around together. He was taking cellphone photos for his foodie friends back in Quebec, and I brought the little digital camera so we got a few pictures of the food and booths. These are just mine, since he's on the road back and hasn't had a chance to post his yet.

One of the first things we noticed was the Segway Police:



There were a few of them and they were riding around, answering questions, flashing their lights and whatnot. We played the "spot the police" game -- they were on foot, on bikes, on segways, in a car, and a few went by in a golf cart. It was like collector trading cards. I didn't take photos of them all, though.

The England exhibit was set up nicely, but they didn't have anything too interesting to eat.



Apparently my parents were also wandering around. We went around by the pond to find the Polish exhibit.



We talked to them briefly, but they weren't planning on staying very long. They came back in the evening and walked around some more after the stores closed, and they said it was very crowded later on.

I took a few pictures while we decided what to eat next. Some dancers by the Hungarian pavilion had pulled some bystanders into a circle dance:



NB had some tasty rendang at the Indonesian pavilion, but it looked like a bit too much food to me:



Some Polish girls in costume preparing to dance:



Later on we got some mango shakes -- the best drinks at the Festival, with the Nicaraguan cacao and Scandinavian sima being possible runners-up.



But not even a mango smoothie could cool this spicy, spicy papaya salad from Laos.



I gave it a good go, but had to give up a few bites in. NB liked the spice, but didn't like the papaya, and my brother liked neither. It was my one failed experiment. Luckily, the Laosian meat skewers more than made up for the disappointment.

NB and my brother tried some Zimbabwean sausage kebabs, which were delicious. I tried coming back several times on Sunday and Monday to try to get one for myself, but the supply was low and they went quickly.



We sat down to rest at the top of Saskatchewan drive, and I got my brother to take a photo of NB and I:



I have a few more photos from today, but am too tired to upload them. I'll have to do it later in the week.

Gnus

So NB went to Vancouver and came back. We're both overworked and dead tired now. We have too many things to do before the vacation, and we haven't had a good night's sleep in what feels like years.

Now that there's been some rain, we've confirmed that there is a leak in the new sunroom. We've called the sunroom people and they said they'd send someone out to look at it sometime. I hope it's soon, because we're about halfway done the sunroom floor now, and would just like to finish the job and forget about it. But since water and wood don't mix, we have to wait until the leak is fixed.

Apart from the never-ending sunroom troubles, we also have other problems. It looks like our roof is deteriorating more than NB expected, so we have to start calling roofing people this week so that we can get it fixed as fast as possible. The garage is probably going to need replacing very soon because the roof is visibly sagging and the door will no longer close all the way. We're looking at a lot of repairs and renos in the next little while, which is a giant pain in the butt and expensive to boot. We're not happy. Oh, and the car has started making funny noises so we need to take it in (for the third time) before we go to BC.

We did get to lay a little more hardwood this weekend. Since some of the tools our friend lent us aren't actually his (and need to go back soon), we had to go and buy a compressor and brad nailgun. While we were out, we also got a bike rack. We tried out the new compressor on Sunday, and it seems to work nicely.

In addition to everything else, I've also had a setback with my tomatoes -- almost all of the ripening romas and the one ripening Jet Star have succumbed to blossom-end rot, while the tumbler tomatoes have funny blemishes on them (they look bug-related to me). It's very disappointing. At least the cucumber is still producing enormous fruit (bigger than the two of us can easily eat) and it looks like the banana pepper plant will give us a bumper crop of peppers.

So, that's the news from Edmontonia. I'm depressed just having to write it all out. :P But we have the Heritage Festival to look forward to, and we'll be celebrating our Yam-a-versary with a nice dinner out tonight. We're thinking of maybe buying a couple of yams at the supermarket, putting little hats on them, and taking them out to dinner with us. It seems appropriate for some reason.