My blog updates have been much slower than I anticipated they would be this summer. have been writing a lot for work lately, so when I am not working, I am not so motivated to continue writing for fun. I have lots of pictures to post, though, so I will try to do that more regularly.
This is another picture of the day we went to the beach, IN JUNE, and it was freezing cold and raining. Somehow it doesn't look as miserable of the one of me by myself.
It also features my characteristic wink that I am seemingly unable to stop doing when there is even the slightest hint of brightness.....
Another thing to add to the list of things I never thought of before I moved to a snowy place: Too much snow on a roof can make it collapse! Fortunately D knows about these things. The roof on the main part of the house is steep enough that it isn't a problem, but we (well, D) had to shovel the snow off the shop and the addition at the back of the house. These pics are from a few weeks ago.
So for the past 2 days, the temperature has been above freezing, and this has led me to declare that winter is ending and spring is coming. Because I said so. I haven't actually said this out loud to any one who lives here because I don't want people to laugh in my face and shatter my hopes. So until I am proven wrong, I declare that spring is on its way. Since the snow has been melting like crazy, I went out this morning to document the accumulation of snow before it all disappears.
I tried to use Nova beside the snow banks at the end of the driveway to give it some perspective, but clearly I know nothing about photography.
The giant snow banks that have built up at the end of the driveway are taller than my car. When I back out of the driveway in the morning, I mostly just hope that no one is coming because I really can't see anything. There is rain in the forecast for the next few days, so perhaps the snow will all wash away most of the snowbanks so that I don't have to risk my life every time I leave my house.
I thought it might be appropriate to post some pictures of the snow in Sackville since everyone in Austin is freaking out about the inch of snow they received Thursday night. These pictures were taken last week. We got an additional foot of snow this week, so it is even higher now, but I am too lazy to go out in the cold and take more pictures.
D and Nova in the snow
Nova balancing precariously on a snow bank, trying not to fall through
Front of the house
Closer view of the icicles
I must say that my first real Canadian winter hasn't been so bad. I am actually enjoying all the snow. That being said, I am still very excited for my trip to the desert next week. Arizona, here I come!
One of the things people warned me about before I moved to Sackville was the wind. I was worried about getting used to the cold and the snow, and everyone said that cold and snow alone would be no problem, that it would be the wind that would get me. So far there hasn't been much snow, although it has been very cold on a few days. And the wind is DEFINITELY the worst part of the weather here.
The two worst experiences I have had were Sunday and Tuesday of this week when I walked the dog in the morning. Both days I was reasonably bundled up with a toque on my head and things were going just fine until I turned into the wind or rounded a corner into the wind. Both times my face and head were blasted by an icy wind that felt exactly the same as having a brain freeze from drinking a slurpee too fast. Except it wouldn't go away until I was completely out of the wind. It was so painful! In all my years of skiing and snowboarding, I have never felt anything like that. I guess when I am on a mountain on a cold and blistery day, I cover my whole face and have googles and stuff. I think I need to invest in a balaclava if I want to make it through this winter.
One of the first oddities I noticed when I came to Sackville to look for a house was that all of the fire hydrants have little fire hydrant signs beside them.
I had never seen this before, and I am not the sharpest tool in the shed sometimes, so it took me a while to figure out the purpose of the sign. To my credit, it wasn't like I was sitting there trying to figure it out; I just noticed that it was different and made some casual semi-conscious assumptions.
At first I assumed that it was because New Brunswick is bilingual and it makes more sense to just have a picture than to have words in French and English.
Then I thought maybe it had something to do with some sort of disability - like braille or something. (I repeat, I am not the sharpest tool in the shed.)
But then I thought, WAIT, why would you need a picture of a fire hydrant when the fire hydrant is right there in plain sight? This made no sense.
That is when, to my horror, I realized that at some point the snow was going to be so high that all the fire hydrants would be buried!!!! The sign is there so that firefighters can find the hydrants when they are covered in snow.
I am not going to make it through this winter if the snow is higher than fire hydrants.
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.
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.
For most of July and August, the weather in Sackville was unbearably hot and humid. Ever since the hurricane/tropical storm swept through, it has been bloody freezing. Somehow we completely skipped over Fall and went straight from summer to winter. Last night there was a frost warning. For the past several days, I have had to walk Nova with gloves and a toque on. How is this possible in September? It also doesn't help that our heating systems are not as automatic as the electric and natural gas heating I have been used to all my life. I actually don't even know what kind of heat the main heater is at my parents' house, all I know is that it is controlled by lever on a thermostat and is easy.
Here in our old house in our small town in rural canada, we have two options, neither of which seem particularly easy to me.
One is an old (1959) furnace.
Powered by oil, which is stored in this tank.
The other is an old (god knows how old) wood stove.
Powered by, well, wood.
Both of these sources of heat require maintenance before using them for the first time after not being used all summer. In addition to the basic maintenance, our chimney, which houses the output for both the furnace and the wood stove, is in shambles. So that needs to be repaired and hopefully it will be done soon since it also allows water to leak into the basement when it rains.
Today, since D has a visitor in town to assist him (apparently I am not good enough), he is cleaning out the chimney for the wood stove.
Which is apparently quite dirty. At last check, there was this much soot that had been banged out of the pipe.
I am also happy to report that when I went outside to take pictures, I realized that it is actually kind of warming up today. It is about 19 degrees Celsius (66 Fahrenheit). I guess we might get a couple of decent days before winter fully sets in. Also, this weekend is the Sackville Fall Fair, and since today is the perfect day to be outside, I think that is where we are heading.
Well it appears that I have survived my first real hurricane, or maybe not. I arrived in Texas right as Katrina was happening, but it was too far away from Austin to have much of an effect. Next came Rita and she was supposed to come right through Austin, but then ended up not coming anywhere near. The closest I have been before this, I guess, was Ike in 2008, which passed over Austin after it caused fairly severe damage in the Galveston and area along the gulf. It was downgraded quite a bit by the time it got to Austin.
Hurrican Earl was my 4th "almost hurricane." It appears that it was not actually a hurricane when it came to my part of the world. The news reports were up and down about whether it was a hurricane or a tropical storm. On Friday night it was declared that it would come inland in Sackville as a Category 1 hurricane. Overnight, it was downgraded to a tropical storm, but then it was upgraded to Category 1 again in the morning. It didn't end up hitting Sackville as directly as anticipated, and although it was windy and rainy, not much happened. In fact, I was taking a nap when it hit. I woke up, looked out the window at the sheets of rain blowing across the road, thought of videotaping it, but decided that napping was more important. So that explains the level of scariness of the storm. Pretty underwhelming overall, which is probably a good thing.
One of the reasons I was excited to move from Texas to New Brunswick was to have an enjoyable summer free from stifling heat. When we first arrived here, it was pretty damn cold, and I was pretty damn excited about that. Now it is not so cold. In fact, it is pretty warm, and coupled with that warmth is an extremely high level of humidity (between 94-99% over the past week). Combine this warm weather and high humidity with a lack of air conditioning in both my house and office and you have a summer that is so much worse than Texas!
First of all, I am just sticky all the time. Second, because we have to have the windows open to cool the house down, EVERYTHING IN THE HOUSE IS WET! The bed is wet, the clothes hanging in my closet are wet, and in the garage, the floor is wet. Papers and wood are curling and warping, skin is constantly perspiring, and I cannot even explain how disgusting it feels to crawl into a soggy bed at the end of a sticky day. Ugh.
I was so excited to live without an air conditioner and be able to feel the nice breeze through my open windows. And at first, that was nice. I almost wrote a blog post about how much I love opening the windows in the house and feeling the fresh air blow through. I am glad I didn't because right about now I would sell my right pinky finger for some central air!
I am sitting in my office right now, dripping with sweat. My formerly straightened hair is frizzy and wavy. I look like Monica from the episode of Friends where they go to Barbados and her hair turns into an afro. My co-workers tell me that this level of humidity is not normal, and that it will be better soon. Somehow I doubt that in a place where we are surrounded by water. Sackville is on the Bay of Fundy, has the Tantramar River running through it, is surrounded by marshland, and is also home to a decent-sized lake. According to various sources that I found by googling "Where does humidity come from?" it depends on the source of the humidity as well as various other weather factors. All I know is that right now, it is gross.
I am off to purchase a fan for my office and several dehumidifiers for the house and garage.
It has rained a few times since we have been here and we haven't noticed anything like this, but yesterday, right around high tide for the Bay of Fundy, we noticed an awful lot of water in the basement. It wasn't that deep or anything, but it seemed to be seeping in from all sides of the basement. It was especially watery near the washer and dryer. It receded once the rain stopped, but it was still pretty weird. Does this happen to everyone around here? Is our house defective?
Today the ground was still damp so we lit a fire in the wood stove in the basement to try to dry it all out. There doesn't seem to be any visible mold in the basement, so maybe this was just a freak occurrence. I guess only time will tell.
