A day of randomness

Saturday was a very random day filled with some New Brunswick randomness. Me and D headed to Amherst to do some shopping. We had both been lounging around in sloppy clothes and went and fancied ourselves up for the trip "to town." For D this meant changing from his tattered lumberjack coat into a hoodie. While in Amherst, it seemed like everyone we encountered had very strong east coast accents. I mean most people here say their "a"s like east coasters and have subtle hints of "oot" and "aboot," but these people had the full on accent. I was wondering if it was because it is Thanksgiving weekend and all the country-folk had come into town to be with their families.

On the way back from Amherst, we noticed a couple of overpasses with cars parked along them, which was weird. D figured they must be waiting for something to come down the highway. Right as he said that, we saw a bunch of flashing lights ahead and an entire convoy of big rig cabs covered in pink decorations. There were over 50 trucks all in a row (I stopped counting at 50), all driving down the Transcanada Highway with a police escort. Turns out we had driven right into the Convoy for a Cure.

Later in the evening, we decided to go to the truck stop restaurant in Aulac, which is the town next to us. People have been telling us about the truck stop restaurant and the Schnitzel Haus in Aulac since we have been here. I was hesitant to try the Schnitzel Haus, being a vegetarian and all, but I do love me a greasy spoon truck stop restaurant. While there, I ended up having their famous chocolate cake with boiled icing. I had only recently heard of boiled icing from a friend here, so I have decided that it must be a Maritime thing. Google has informed me that boiled icing is made by pouring hot sugar syrup over stiffly beaten egg whites. It basically is a slightly softer version of meringue. I had not googled boiled icing before I went there, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I wasn't expecting the piece of cake to be so huge, nor was I expecting there to be 2-3 inches of icing on top! This picture really doesn't do justice to the hugeness of this cake.

Normally I don't like frosting unless it is chocolate, but this was really good. It was much less sweet than normal cake frosting, which I liked, and it was beat so smoothly that it had a really  good, creamy texture. And because it was so huge, I got to eat the leftovers again the next day!

Bay of Fundy, Take 2

New Brunswick is just so pretty. While Brad was visiting, we had the opportunity to go back to the Alma area and stay in an adorable cabin overlooking the Bay of Fundy.

Isn't it cute, y'all?

Jane, who owns Cleveland Place B&B also owns this gazebo/cabin, and let us take it over for the night.
 This is the view from the cabin. The first bit of water is actually a marsh, but beyond that is the Bay.

The first thing we did upon arriving was walk down to the beach. The tide was out (but on it's way back in as we quickly discovered) and we were able to walk out quite far. The boys loved it - and so did Nova. She ran around like a crazed animal chasing the waves and gulping down massive amounts of sea water before puking it all back up again.

That night, we hunkered down in the cabin and played some games. I played scrabble for the first time ever! I have always wanted to play, but the opportunity had never come up. I wasn't very good at it.

And D took to long too place his words.

Brad totally won. Then, as a reward, we let him sleep in the loft, which was octagonal shaped like the cabin.

On our way back to Sackville the next day, we stopped at the Hopewell Rocks, one of the best places to see the tides change. During low tide, you can walk on the ocean floor. We were there at high tide, so we just got to look at the water. It was still pretty cool. At low tide, you can walk under the18 ft high archway formed by the biggest rock...

 It was a delightfully sunny day, and we walked around the park checking out all the viewpoints.

 See, people, you should totally come visit me! It is lovely here in New Brunswick.

Flood!

 So, as mentioned in a previous post, from time to time, when it rains, the basement of our house floods a bit. Today when I went down to do laundry, I realized that the entire basement was seriously flooded and was under about 2-3" of water!

 My first plan was to use the shop vac to suck it all up, but after a couple of buckets full of water, I realized the shop vac was no match for this flood. We had been talking about getting a sump pump for the basement and now seemed as good a time as any to get one. D went to the store and came back with a submersible pump and a hose.

First we directed the hose into the sink, but the pump worked a bit too well, and the water came rushing through the hose so fast that that the sink couldn't really handle it.

This is when D decided to drill a hole through the side of the house, much to my dismay. We ran the hose out to the ditch beside our house, and pumped the water into there. Der then started sweeping the water our of the laundry room.


Flood from LDH on Vimeo.



Most of the water was gone in about 10 minutes. The basement was still soaked, but at least it wasn't splashable any more.

This house was clearly built to flood, since everything in the basement is about 6" off the ground. You can see the hot water heater in the pic above perched on a 6 in tall block. The furnace, chimney, and oil tank are all also about 6" off the ground.

Once we had gotten all the major water out of the house, it started to seep back in. I was surprised since it hadn't been raining for a few hours, but I guess the ground was still really damp. We decided to leave it for an hour, and then I went back down with the shop vac to clean up the new water. It wasn't very effective, so now we are waiting until later in the evening to hopefully do one last vacuum of all the remaining water. Then we will start a fire in the wood stove to attempt to dry it out a bit. We still haven't bought a dehumidifier. We should probably get on that.