Musings on a Small Life

Sleet, pouring rain, snow...we had it all. Though we managed to escape the freezing rain that other areas had, a small mercy. Even so, on Saturday there were lots of accidents in the city and on the highway, including a transit bus that slid off into the ditch (with people aboard) out in the west end. As far as I know, everyone was fine. The view Saturday afternoon from one of my upstairs back windows is the first pic, below. For those who haven't seen my tiny back space, you might notice something odd attached to my fence. (Click to enlarge the pic.) I had an addition built in 2010 designed to prevent Nicki from escaping. Tricky Nicki was my "Houdini" and he had gotten out of the back space a few times prior, in spite of the home-made fence additions my dad and I had done years ago. You can see the frame of the addition, and that's greenhouse roofing attached to it at an angle. It has worked very well through the years at allowing the cats to go out into the gar...

Chumley passed 13 years ago tonight, from a blood clot. I wrote a tribute to him 18 months later (it took me that long to be emotionally ready to do so), and for anyone who hasn't actually read it and wants to, you'll find it on the page " In Memory of Chumley ." So I won't repeat myself here, will just leave you with a few pics of my handsome boy, whose life was cut short. To this day I wish I could have a do-over with him, because I knew nothing about cats at the time and made so many mistakes; nonetheless, he was ever the gentleman and ever forgiving. God bless, Chum-Bum; I love you.

We had 20 cm of snow Saturday afternoon and into the night, about 8 inches. Just a regular snowstorm and nothing to complain about at all. Newfoundland, particularly St. John's and nearby communities, got walloped with 76+ cm of snow, some areas more, plus another 15 cm yesterday. (You're looking at over 3 feet of snow.) That's on top of what they already had on the ground. A state of emergency has been in effect since Friday and continues, many still without power in sub-zero temps, and confined to their homes. Mind-boggling and extremely scary and dangerous. So our 8 inches of the white stuff doesn't even count! Of course I just had to take my little p&s camera and head downtown for pics. Because why wait for a warm, sunny day when the streets are clear? That would be too sensible for me. One of the homes in my larger neighbourbhood, below. I've always loved this one, the lot is pretty. So here are a few pics down along the waterfront. I...

...and joined Instagram. Private account, but is anyone else on it? Everyone else? This might be one of those things I do for a while, then delete, like FaceBook.  :-P Anyway, we had a few cm of snow this morning, very pretty. This was the view coming in to work earlier: Have a great day. Peace.

What's a kitty do but sleep when you have over 40 mm of rain in one winter day, followed by freezing rain then snow?    That's how Derry spent our messy Saturday. And he spent our equally messy, then freezing Sunday like this:   We got off "easy," with the weather. I know parts of southern Ontario west of Toronto saw rain in the 70+ mm amounts, and parts further north and east saw far more freezing rain. I wasn't so lucky with the bedroom leak issue, as it continued to drip. So it's not a siding issue, as the repair people fixed that last week.  I long for my own bed...and for a properly repaired roof. (I had moved myself into the guest room on December 31st, because who can sleep with the sound of dripping in-between the walls? Plus water and live electrical boxes don't mix, so I had shut the power off to the room until the leak is resolved.) I will keep after the president of the property management company until things ar...

RE: the house repairs: It looks like they had replaced the gutter over the garage on Monday (as well as checked the attic for the location of the leaks), plus repaired my front and back downspouts. Not replaced them, but replaced parts of them and reattached the one at the front that was swinging free. They also replaced the broken part of the adjoining neighbours' back downspout, as the president of the company said last Friday that water would have been pooling there during the heavy rains, possibly causing my 18+ year basement leak. Gutter issue ongoing for most of 2019; hopefully resolved now. Basement leak ongoing for 18+ years (only when the rain hits the back of my unit at the corner where it joins the next unit); possibly resolved, possibly not. Yesterday they repaired the damaged siding from Halloween night (terrible wind and rain storm), and supposedly sealed up along the soffit as well (all the gaps). They did not address the huge buckle in the siding to the le...

[Warning: This is a wordy, non -cat post, so feel free to skip it.] Derry getting cuddles over the weekend I finished off 2019 with a new master bedroom leak (have had issues since early September, with a patch here and there), this one in between the interior bedroom wall and the interior wall of the adjoining spare room. Fun times. I moved myself out of the master bedroom and into the guest room because (a) you can't sleep when you're lying there listening to drip...drip...drip and (b) I was concerned about the potential for dripping water to come into contact with the electrical boxes in the wall. I also shut off the breaker to the bedroom (and adjoining room), just to be safe. Overly-paranoid, perhaps, but better safe than sorry. I'll skip over the "brick wall" that trying to get a response from my property manager was (is) and say this, social media has power, when you least expect it! Last Thursday evening I wrote an absolutely scath...