The Cremation of Sam McGee

When I was young I recall how much fun it was having my gramma come for a visit and stay over. In the morning my sisters and I would crawl into bed with her and cuddle and have her tell us stories. One of the favorite things she'd do is recite from memory some poems from Robert W. Service. Our favourite was the Cremation of Sam McGee, which I've now passed on to my own kids. A strange sort of family tradition, but I guess it suits our macabre sense of humor:

In memory of Grams, heres a slightly stranger version - as read by a robot:

The Chicken Coops vs. Nature

While I understand that people like a high viewpoint of the fantastic scenery around here, it troubles me that this is what some local developer (with city approval at some level) considers acceptable. I don't care how cheap or how expensive such units are, these "chicken coops" constitute a disaster for both the environment and the people.
The famous north Nanaimo deer may not last long with developments like this wiping out the forests, so appreciate the next two views while we can:

La Corriveau

Doing family research on the family name always brings up the sad story (become legend) surrounding La Corriveau .... (dark ominous music...)

Here's a video on the original site:

And here's the wiki story in French.

Here's an English version from an official source.

Syrup video on facebook

Lauren remembered to bring a camera ... (ooops - I forgot mine) ... She posted a short video of us all at the Maple Syrup Festival this afternoon. It's inside her facebook so you may need to be signed up to that to see this:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=21872960522

Maple Sugar Fest

After church today we're going over to the arena for lunch. France can have her maple syrup on snow thingy... they truck in snow from Mt. Washington for this because we sure don't have any around here. Beautiful sunny day today - going up to ? plus 10 or so (I'm guessing)...

Cheers!

More Blah Blahs...

I've wandered away from the original theme of this Blog - which is to relate some of the things we're doing around here - nothing too deep, philosophical or religious - just "blah blah" ... how's the weather? What you been up to lately? Like that.

I'll start posting my bible-related, and faith-related musings at another blog: Under His Wings.

There's a link to this, and my aviation-related blog in the upper right corner ->

Cheers!
Grant

Winter Blahs... Procrastination Warning!

Caution: this posting includes links of interesting web cams in the area that could lead to many pleasurable minutes of procrastination and time-well-wasted....

Although the "days" have been getting longer and we're seeing more daylight, this is still officially the winter season until about March 20th. So, we have about 37 more days of winter left. That's not so long....

In the meantime we have to break the habit of sitting inside when the skies are grey, thinking that it's miserable outside - because usually it's not! Like today. The sky is mainly cloudy, but there's a lovely mildness in the air. The forecast high is +6. And the humidity just makes the air smell "delicious" and refreshing.

Also, I've discovered that in Nanaimo, the sun often peeks out for at least part of every day. The secret is to be ready for when that happens. Then we should drop whatever we're doing and burst outside for a short walk.

I've decided to collect as many weather/traffic cam views of the town (and around) as I can find:

1 The hiway near Malaspina U

2 Downtown corner at church street and the old bank building...

3 Nanaimo Harbour...

4 Piper's Lagoon - near our home.

5 Mt. Washington ski resort near Comox...

6 Boundary Bay near Vancouver - you can control the camera!

7 All the B.C. ferry terminals...

8 A whole whack of camera views of the lower mainland area and around!

9 Webcams galore! Around the world in eighty links!

10 A plethora of B.C. locations - including 100 Mile House.

11 Uclulet light house Surf Cam

12 Tofino beach and surf cam

Enough procrastinating by me making this list... Now I'm going to go back and explore some of those views! A whole new way to procrastinate! Winter blahs... meh!! har har..