progress....

It's all coming together - I've found renters! Yay! This means I get to go to Vancouver for Thanksgiving, though I still have to make plans, book flights etc. I'll be racking up the air miles; or not... the fare that I'm going to book (I hope it's still there!) only gives you 25% of the trip's miles - B-S!! Oh well, whatever. So today's job is to pack it all up (the house, our stuff) and in to a small downstairs closet that is NOT to be touched. Volleyball has been good, though my entire back is sore; every muscle and part and joint and bone and tendon feels worked and abused - there's no shape like volleyball shape, that's the deal. What else has been going on this week - a friend of mine came over to help me install a programmable thermostat - er, well actually he did it all and I was the one who helped (didn't really). It was surprisingly easy, once set up, to program; the only thing is that it's in fahrenheit and my brain works in degrees celsius. SO, since the dated yellow-ish thermostat has mercury in it, I have to drive allll the way to the other side of Winnipeg, where I made an appointment to dispose of this tiny vile of noxious substance. It's just funny, when something so tiny poses a disproportionately large problem. The same can be said for broken toes I guess. It was super windy last night - I had thoughts about the house blowing away Dorothy and Toto style - and I thought I'd wake up to leaf-less trees, but no. Even though the leaves are a dark mustard yellow, and even though this tree has been shedding for a while now - it retained almost all of its little guys, which is very impressive. I'm just wondering if I'll have to rake again before I go. Meep.

I said I'd say something about Romanian Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is today, but I don't think I really have to. The people there suffered a terrible fate at the hands of Romanian fascists and extremists and German Nazis; here's to hoping that that kind of thing never happens again. (Is it naive to think it won't (?) - genocide, mass persecution - but, like I said, here's to hoping...)



On a brighter note - today is also Leif Erikson Day, celebrated by Nordic and Icelandic peoples in parts of the USA, Scandinavia and... wherever! In honour of the first Europeans to settle North America (who did the marketing for Columbus?), this "day" (which varies in date from place to place) honours the spirit of Norse discovery and Leif Erikson's arrival on the shores of North America. Based on various legends and accounts, Leif and his men (were there women? I should think so) purportedly arrived in present day Newfoundland in 1002(ish), 500 years before the Spaniards; L'Anse-aux-Meadows is one of the supposed settlement sites. Cool. But not really. Probably freezing bloody cold and man, what a hard life that would be. When I think about how long ago that was - 1002 - I think of Yaroslavl's 1000th birthday coming up in 1010. We are young bucks over here as Canadians. But I suppose that we are all a melange of other nationalities and THAT would be neat to know about... um, I guess that's called geneology. Right. Apparently there is a small gamut of claims to other possibilities of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic travel/contact but the Viking voyage is the only one that's widely accepted as being true. The idea that Portuguese fishermen graced the Eastern shores is also believed to have strong possibilities but wow... that's a long way to come for fish.