Victoria

It was a hairy drive down the snowy icy Coquihalla highway yesterday. We saw three horrible accidents. One involving a semi lying diagonally across the road, three munched up cars, the people in them probably dead. In Hope the snow was mushy. In White Rock it was gone. In Burnaby where one of my sisters lives there was a little bit along the sides of the road. In Vancouver it was gone and here in Victoria they hadn't had any snow. What a relief.

We are prepared for snow but down here not many people are, driving would be a lot scarier.

We are staying downtown on Government St. in a hotel recommended by friends There are lots of my favourite shops on Government St, Munro's Books, Mountain Equipment and Rogers Chocolates. We are off to find some breakfast, do some shopping then visit the inlaws.

Sun Peaks Christmas

We've had a wonderful three days of skiing. There was lots of fresh snow, the temperature was around minus ten and the sun shone more than it didn't. Today we are going to relax and look around the village, tomorrow we are driving to Victoria.

Christmas

Tomorrow we're driving to Sun Peaks ski resort to spend Christmas with my family, then its over to Victoria for a few days then back to White Rock for New Years.I'm looking forward to skiing and visiting family and friends. If there is WIFI I may even blog.

Merry Christmas everyone.

In The Bleak Midwinter

It's the shortest day of the year. Tomorrow is the first day of our winter celebrations, it's Robert's birthday, then Christmas then Callum's Birthday on the 27th then New Years.

The thermometer registered minus sixteen this morning. I've been shopping and wrapping and shopping some more. I spent a few hours priming the person, who will be looking after my plants at work, while I'm away next week.

I've got almost everything done except this sweater I'm knitting Robert for Christmas. I'm going to sit here by the fire, hot drink in hand, podcasts on the stereo and knit.

Although, I do have to make a winter salad for dinner tonight with friends.

Christmas Gifts Only A Click Away

Remember that scene in the Bridget Jones movie, it was a Christmas party, when Bridget says something rude to Mark Darcy about the sweater he’s wearing. Mark Darcy manages to dispel the moment by saying, it is a Christmas present from his mother.

You don’t have to wait for your mother to knit you a Christmas sweater you can knit your own and it’s so easy. Head on over to, we hate sheep we love holiday sweaters. Click on window shopping to see others creations or start knitting your own, piles of fun.

Via Alison

PK Skiing

Yes I did go skiing yesterday. Yes the snow was great, Blah Blah Blah. Although as the day progressed we had to go further and further afield to find untracked powder. At one point, while skiing down a great open area full of bottomless white stuff we thought we had not arced far enough left to get back to the chair. We feared we might be walking back along the highway.

But eventually as we skied lower we spied the cabins of the old sub division. Thank goodness. The trek back was still almost 2 K and no one, except some kid we didn't know, came by on a sled to give us a lift. The company of my fellow skiers more than made up for this slight deviation from the expected plan.

Prince George Ice Jam

It has shrunk from the massive size of six killometres down to only two killometres long. As you can see, in the picture, the Nechako, on the left, has managed to carve a channel around into the Fraser, on the right. Much of the flooding has subsided but there are still business closed and people are not yet allowed back into their homes. For more pictures go here. You can click on individual photos to see larger sizes and read comments.

Why We Need Experts

I was not surprised to read a CBC news report just now, saying that the ice jam, at the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser rivers here in Prince George, is not expected to melt until Spring (April). Well Duh.

Last week the ice jam started to form up when Alcan released a lot of water out of its spill way at the Kenny Dam. They did the same thing last spring causing all kinds of havoc. Anyway, this time the excess water caused a build up of ice pushing the river over it’s banks, flooding the park, running along the roads forcing people from their homes and causing business to be shut down.

Officials were hopeful, some still are, that somehow the river would be able to carve a channel out of the ice and the problem would resolve itself. I suppose they forgot the all important point, that is is winter and only the beginning.

Experts hired by the Province said, trying to blow the ice dam up with dynamite would cause more problems. They said, the only way to fix it, for the future, is to build a very big dyke.

I’ve been meaning to go down there to get pictures. No matter what, I’m going there tomorrow.

Saturday Snow

I was woken by the unmistakeable crash of snow falling off the roof. I looked out the window to see even more had fallen out of the sky during the night and I noticed the temperature was a very warm minus one. I decided to go skiing now.

The dogs from up the road met me at the foot of their driveway. I love having them come with me. I love the friendly way they following their noses, circling back to check on me then running back into the ditch. Most of all I love the fact they live at the neighbours house.

Now I’m back at home inside. It's started to snow again. I got the shortbread out of the freezer to take to the party tonight. I made croissant dough, which is resting in the fridge before baking, to share with friends this afternoon, when they come to cut down one of my conifers for Christmas.

I‘m still not sure if I like this idea.

It’s too late baby now it’s too late

First I got rid of all the chemicals in my food. I reasoned that the closer the food was to its original state the less processed it was and the better it is for me.

Then I eliminated all cleaning products, bleaches, detergents and the specialized chemical stews designed to clean my toilet, my sink, my bathtub, floors, walls, windows, tea pot, silver jewelry, in favour of friendlier things like baking soda, vinegar, borax and real soap.

Next with the help of the cosmetic data base I chose safer, nicer face creams, shampoos and soaps. I would have chosen greener makup except I don’t wear it. Now I’m purging my house of bad plastic. When will this end ?

Getting Rid Of Plastic. will it be enough?

Plastic is everywhere, in the liners of tin cans, baby bottles, the water pipes in our homes. Chemicals leaching out of plastic are in the very air we breath.

Last week on the Current Podcast they had two episodes about plastic. As usual I’m behind on my podcast listening so I just heard them a couple days ago.

Plasticizers which give plastics flexibility and durability contain chemicals like phthalates and adiphates and are notorious for leaching out. An example given on the show is the new car smell.

Plasticizers mimic hormones and thus become endocrine disrupters. In nature these hormone mimics are causing havoc. A study done on endocrine disrupter hormones such as estrogen has found that some male animals are becoming increasingly feminized. For example male minnows found in the St. Lawrence Seaway are being born with female reproductive organs in their testes, and are thus unable to reproduce. These minnows are at the bottom of the food chain. Their disappearance could ultimately lead to its collapse. When these minnows were fed to laboratory rats the male rat babies were found to have lower sperm counts and their sperm were not as viable, they couldn’t swim straight. Scientists on the show caution that none of these studies have been done on humans. But, as Anna Marie Tremonti, host of the Current Podcast says, people are eating the bigger fish found in the St. Lawrence Seaway so wouldn’t that have the same effect on humans as it did on the laboratory rats?

We ingest plasticizers everyday from the plastic our food is wrapped in. Think of the cheese you buy from the grocery store or the sandwich you took to work in your packed lunch. Apparently these plasticizers can be broken down in the environment. Sounds good except the scientists found that the things the plasticizers broke down into are even more dangerous, than the plastic itself.

Pretty scary stuff and what are we going to do about it?

The second podcast discusses how to eliminate plastic from your life. I thought soft plastic, like foodwrap, was worse than hard plastic, like drinking bottles or the containers I use to store leftovers in my fridge, apparently not.

At the bottom of plastic containers there is a recycling symbol with a number from 1-7 in the middle of it. These numbers are helpful for recycling but they are also an indication of plastic content. Plastics with numbers 1 2 4 and 5 are better than plastics with numbers 3 6 and 7.

I went through my kitchen to get rid off all the offending plastic with the numbers 3 6 and 7. There wasn’t much to throw away. I was encouraged to see that most of the plastic food containers had good numbers on them.

Yesterday, I was talking to a friend who told me that Mountain Equipment, MEC, had pulled all the coloured drinking bottles off their shelves because they contain Bisphenol A which has been linked to cancer. I had already chucked my water bottle because it is a number seven plastic.

I use my water bottle almost every day and depend on it when I'm in the backcountry so I'm anxious to replace it with a Bilt Designs Fresco Water Bottle made out of stainless steel, when MEC replenishes their stock.

To listen to these podcasts go to the Current Podcast page scroll down and click on, 05/12/2007: Plastics, this is the show with the background about plasticizers. You can also click here to listen to the show.

The second show with advice about good and bad plastics is called, 06/12/2007: Letters, and plastics, revisited, The segment about plastic is halfway through the show. You can click here to listen to it.

So Nice To Come Home To

I slept in till 7:20. I had to make do with a mandarin orange and a cup of tea, in the car, for breakfast. When I left home it was snowing, windy and only minus 6.  

Work was SSDD. I came home to go skiing before it got dark.

When I arrived the Chinook wind had drifted snow into the lower half of the driveway, pilled it up against the house and by the kitchen door. I swept it off the back deck and shovelled it off the front deck and wondered where the guy was who I have hired to plough the driveway.

The snow was like a blizzard, blowing in my face as I skied down the road. I waved to the school bus driver, who lives three doors down and was on his way to get the kids from school and take them home.

Now I'm home. It's still snowing and blowing outside, minus 4 and getting dark. My Christmas tree lights are shinning in different colours, my wood stove is pouring out heat and I'm sipping a glass of wine.

Skiing

I was so glad, yesterday when I woke up, to see the temperature outside had risen to minus seventeen. Time to break out the skis.

We drove north to the Pine Pass, parked by the old Azouzetta lodge and skied up the road, along the power line and into the mountains. It was cloudy and the wind in the alpine was very cold so we decided to stay on this side down in the trees.

The snow was deep and fluffy. Even with seven of us we all managed to find our own lines of untouched pristine white stuff. Click here to see a skiing video.

Ending Child Poverty

Today is Food Bank day on CBC radio one. I've been listening to this day long show almost every year since my youngest child was a baby. I usually spend the day baking Christmas goodies. This year I made mince pies from mince meat I had made in September. I enjoy listening to the show and I make a donation.

Food banks are controversial for lots of reasons. However, Forty one percent of food bank recipients are children. That statistic is enough to influence me to give a donation.

The CBC show ends today at 6 PM but don’t despair you can still contribute to the CBC food bank drive by going to their site and making a donation through the citizens bank of Canada. The best thing about giving cash is that each dollar you donate buys three dollars worth of food.

What The Doctor Ordered

Last night it was minus thirty. This morning the water pipes were frozen in the upstairs bedroom. I used the photo below to figure out where the frozen pipe was likely to be. I took this photo, merely as a record of our summer of house building. I had no idea I would be using it to diagnose problems.

As you can see the pipes are under a built up floor. On the right is the last log, after that the popup is conventionally framed. Where the construction techniques change is where there is a hole and cold air is coming in from outside.

In order to melt the ice in the frozen pipes we turned all the heat up full blast. To hell with worrying about the environment. The last thing we wanted was the pipe to burst, getting water everywhere, forcing us to rip up the bathroom floor to install a new pipe.

Luckily, extreme heat for two hours, was all it took until I heard the soothing sound of water splashing into the bathtub. As soon as it warms up, in May, we will get a huge tube of sealer and squeeze it into the crack between the two construction areas.

I still don’t understand why we didn’t have this problem last winter.

Finding Time To Decorate the House

It's a relatively warm minus fifteen degrees outside. As soon as I got home form work I pulled on my ski clothes, snapped my boots into my ski bindings, opened the door and took off down the snowey driveway, out onto the snowy road. It was wonderful to be outside after all the cold, frostbite warnings and bitter wind.

The picture is of a sunrise over the place we used to live in. The photo was taken around the beginning of April.

My tree is up and there are coloured lights on it. The box of decorations sits open below it. Every now and again I hang one up. I suppose with no kids at home anymore it will take a while to decorate.

I was going to put outdoor lights up today, since it is warmer, but skiing takes priority. When I got back it was nearly dark.

My wreath is on the front door. My fridge is full of snowmen, poinsettia and christmas tree magnets the kids made when they were in elementary school. Most of my Christmas decorations are homemade by me or the children or they were given to me. Opening up the boxes every year brings back a deluge of memories.

Recycling T-shirts

I got the idea for this rug, made from discarded t-shirts, from a book called alterknits

The rug was fun too make and it is nice and soft on my feet every morning when I get out of bed. Cutting the t-shirts into strips takes a very long time, days and my hand hurt from the constant squeezing motion of making the scissors cut.

However, it was worth it since I got a lovely soft rug in the end.

See more detailed instructions and photos here.

Cold Enough For You?

My Mother, who lives in White Rock, a southern BC place that rarely sees snow or sub zero weather, said it was snowing so hard down there she can't see anything, let alone her magnificent ocean view, through her windows.

My inlaws, who live in Victoria, which boasts the warmest climatic zone in Canada, they even grow palm trees there, told me, despite having the warmest temperatures in BC today, there was still snow on the ground when they woke up and the clouds in the sky were making their day very dark.

I delighted in telling them that here in Prince George we have sun, lots of sunshine flooding my house and warming it up, although, despite the yellow light shining on the thermometer it was still a chilly minus 12 outside.

Now the sun has gone to bed it's minus twenty but, according to Environment Canada it’s minus 34 with the windchill. BRRRR. They predict similar temperatures for the next few days. I think I'm canceling that ski trip tomorrow.

I wasn't planning on writing anything today because NaBloPoMa is finished. But hey, I'm Canadian and we all know we love to talk about how much colder and horribler our weather is than yours.