Category Archives: technology

bye…

05 Friday Jan 2018

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early this morning the kids went home… yesterday I worked and they, along with my two younger grandsons, picked me up at the end of the day…

even though it was crazy cold, they had gone to the zoo so that Auntie and Uncle could visit Journey to Churchill… the boys were excited to show everything there, as we go quite often… one of their Christmas gifts is a family pass so that we can go whenever the mood strikes us…

when we got home there was pizza making fun… all three of them had a good time and in the end we had a lovely dinner, although the prep left a big mess…

today I had leftover pizza for my lunch…

after the kids were picked up by their daddy, we had a short rest and then the final packing took place…

we were at the hangar just after midnight and they checked in and went right through security…

I headed home and to bed while they waited until 3 am to get onto their flight… they texted when they got on the plane and when they arrived in Ottawa… they are now home safe and sound and getting back to their routines…

I am trying to get back into my routine as well, but it sure is quiet around here today, lol…

a goodbye selfie;-)…

crackers…

04 Thursday Jan 2018

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spent a bit of time on New Year’s Eve prepping for our traditional New Year’s Day dinner…

while the kids were out, I began setting the table, and finished it early on New Year’s Day… decided on a silver and purple theme and had some fun finding decorations and napkins that would go well together…

there were just enough leftover Christmas crackers for everyone to get one and we read jokes, but did not put on any paper hats, lol… we can just squeeze around the table when there are eight of us and I have to push it up to the window so that everyone can get in… the table can expand further, the problem is that the dining room can’t…

while the steak and lobster tails finished thawing I prepped the potatoes for baking, cut up the Brussels sprouts, sliced the mushrooms and prepared the sauce for the escargot stuffed mushrooms…

once the kids arrived the sons-in-law looked after barbecuing the steaks and lobster… finished up a Caesar salad and the melted butter pots…

everyone had a taste of champagne or sparkling cider and we enjoyed a delicious dinner… we aren’t going to talk about the slightly overcooked Brussels sprouts, sigh…

we were all worn out so we ended the evening with a short visit and the Winnipeg kids headed home…

a bit of reading and visiting and we all headed to bed…

lovely start to the new year…

Nest…

03 Wednesday Jan 2018

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so the smoke detector was installed on Thursday afternoon… and I am loving it… a cute little ring of blue (a nightlight) appears when I walk under it… so far no alarms, which is good, nor has it talked to me yet…

on Friday my son-in-law went out and found the Nest thermostat at a good price and on Saturday he began the process of installing it…

it was a long complicated piece of business… by 7 pm that night, it was 63 degrees Fahrenheit in the house because after the first install, and putting back the original thermostat, the furnace refused to circulate any heat… the furnace service people came out around 8 pm and discovered that a fuse had blown, so they went back to the shop and brought a new one and installed it… this particular fellow didn’t know how to install the Nest product so we left it so that the house could warm up… it was rather chilly…

on Tuesday my son-in-law tried again, after he had gone out and bought more fuses, in case we blew another one in the process of hooking up the new thermostat…

once again, the new one wouldn’t work so he reinstalled the old one… he walked over to the furnace company’s office and left a message for the owner to give us a call… a while later we heard back and they figured out that there needed to be another wire…

which meant that the drywall ceiling in the basement hall had to come down so he could run the cable… he removed it and cleaned everything up beautifully, but by then it was too late to move to the next step…

today, while I was at work, he was able to pull the wire (without cutting into the plaster in the hall, yay), connect everything, and set the temperature, because it finally worked perfectly…

we added it to my app and I can now change the temperature from my phone… although it does say it is -8 outside, whereas the weather app says it is -22, lol…

seemed like such a simple little job, but he didn’t stop until it was done;-)… I sure am blessed…

mugs…

02 Tuesday Jan 2018

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I have a shelf in a kitchen cupboard where my mugs go…

a few taller ones go on the shelf above…

the goal is that when I get a new one I have to give one away…

over Christmas I have accumulated three new mugs, two as gifts and one that I picked up at the Assiniboine Park WildThings Gift Shop…

very happy that I was able to take out four mugs to put in the pass-me-over box…

while having tea with a friend today we discussed how much she loves my mugs… we decided that, as it gets more difficult to let a mug go, I shall pass it along to her, knowing the mug will be loved, lol…

this might just make it easier;-)…

coal…

01 Monday Jan 2018

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last night the Ottawa kids went out to a New Year’s Eve party…

before they left I gave them a bag I’d packed with a few items so that when they arrived back home after midnight my daughter, who has dark hair, could first-foot the house…

I had packed an orange, small bottle of Baileys, a few chocolates and a good sized chunk of coal…

when the girls were eight and ten we had taken a trip to the East Coast and had gathered coal along one of the beaches there… we still remember the fun we had that day… over the years we have used that coal to first foot a number of places, lol… I think I might be down to the last piece…

I had fallen asleep before they returned home and they had to call to wake me up so that they could get in…

I was surprised with a different bag which had the coal, orange, chocolate and a number of other items which they had read up on and included in the first-foot bag…

there was a piece of evergreen, a nearly finished salt mill they’d taken from the kitchen, crackers, a bag of candy coal, some nuts, cash and some coal body scrub…

took a picture this morning of all the goodies…

they had been planning and collecting what would go into the bag since they arrived in the city, lol…

seems like pretty good luck to me…

urge…

31 Sunday Dec 2017

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had the urge to get a few unfinished jobs completed, so while my son-in-law was here we tacked a couple of them…

last night I printed a number of pictures to put in a frame that I’d picked up a while ago and hadn’t been able to decide on what should go in it… I’d been waiting for the professional photos that we had taken in October… but once I started choosing I ended up with pictures that I, or the kids, had taken… it was fun because my son-in-law had got the wifi printer working perfectly so that I could print right from my phone… I do love technology, lol… unfortunately I stayed up very late to finish the job…

so this morning I hung the frame up… yay me, although consensus has it that it might need to come down a bit on the wall…

then he helped un-decorate the two small trees, box them up and put them away in the basement… looks way more roomy in the living room now… left everything else up for New Year’s dinner tomorrow…

I’ve had an IKEA drawer for ages that needed to be put together and installed so he also did that… took a few minutes to decide where it would actually fit…

it is going to make getting the pots out a lot simpler, although it has to be held open or else it slides shut on its own… apparently the kitchen cupboards might not be perfectly level…

and finally this evening I emptied out a drawer that was filled with expired crackers and cereal, lol…

I feel very accomplished;-)…

ice…

30 Saturday Dec 2017

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out and about today…

found some warm and non-skid boots for my daughter at Canadian Footwear… they still measure your feet there… who knew… these will keep her on her feet when there is ice on the sidewalks in Ottawa…

had a lovely visit and some delicious hot chocolate with Constance as we browsed and found just the chocolate that we needed at Chocolatier Constance Popp…

stopped in at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights to pick up my membership…

got a few pictures with the Winnipeg sign, being as we’ve done the Ottawa and Kingston ones, lol… a lot warmer when we did them… there is a new ice rink in front of the sign now… very cool…

and then popped over to see the ice castles, although they don’t open for another week… already look spectacular…

pictures came out rather well considering that my glasses were foggy from the cold…

pretty full morning…

kit…

29 Friday Dec 2017

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been thinking back to some of the best memories of the last week…

one involved the gingerbread house… my son-in-law and I were shopping together in November and we spotted this gingerbread house kit that came with the house already built so that all that would need to be done was decorate… we’ve tried to do this before but have always struggled with getting the house constructed, lol…

we took the kit with us on Christmas Eve and it was a hit…

work began with Auntie helping the younger two… eventually she moved on to something else, but they both kept returning to continue with the decorating…

the final product looked great and the boys were entertained for ages… such fun…

was thinking how George would have loved working on this with they boys…

detector…

28 Thursday Dec 2017

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well I am safe now…

thanks to all my kids I finally have a new smoke detector upstairs…

for Christmas, the Winnipeg kids got me a Nest smoke detector…

and today, my Ottawa son-in-law installed it and connected it to an app on my phone…

it even shows me the temperature outside when I open the app… how cool is that…

think I will save up for the thermostat and maybe a few more of the detectors… checked for Boxing Day sales but there weren’t any huge discounts…

sure do have a great bunch of kids…

opening…

27 Wednesday Dec 2017

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enjoyed some beautiful flowers today…

was at the office for a few hours and the African violet was still blooming and looked so nice…

I was laughing when I got home to see that the hibiscus was blooming again… the buds started opening when my daughter arrived in the city… she and my son-in-law have been house-sitting for a friend and while she’s been gone it has not bloomed… she arrived home about five minutes before I took this shot…

finally, while I was out today, I picked up this cute little tree that was on sale at Safeway… I bought it instead of flowers;-)…

a lovely addition to my tree collection;-)…