Quinzhees and Kraft Dinner at 35 below

It's almost lunchtime, but I am back in the office after spending some time in the bush this morning. It was a beautiful Northern Ontario morning with the temperature at about minus 15 and the sun shining so nicely. I was out to snap some photos of the Timmins Porcupine Search and Rescue providing winter survival training. It brought back some great memories of when Neil and I were involved with Scouts Canada about 20 years ago and spending winter weekends at the Windy Lake camp north of Sudbury. I remember one day we went on a 10K hike in minus 35 weather. We built a quinzhee shelter and even cooked up Kraft Dinner over an open fire. Those were fun times. It's just amazing how nice it is to spend time in the bush on a winter day. Today was good in another way. I topped out over 1700 points playing Wii tennis this morning. Woohoo. I can't wait to show off for Tyler, Nathan and Victoria. Had a nice chat with Jennifer on Friday to get caught up on things. The boys were in another hockey tournament. I had to laugh because the boys figured they would have Friday off to play hockey. But once their game was over, Jennifer was at the rink to pick them up and drive them to school! She is such a good mom.

Instincts

Funny how instinct works eh. I was in a bookstore about a month ago and picked up a stack of novels. One of them was by Leon Uris. I read a lot of his stuff years ago, but not recently. He always wrote excellent stories. Acting on instinct, I bought the book. So I started in on the novel and for some reason it didn't click. I just couldn't get into that book. It was disappointing. Last night, I finished reading the last of my other books and I felt a funny panic because I was suddnely out of books, on a Sunday night and today is a stat holiday in Ontario. No book stores are open. I actually laughed because it felt like I had run out of food or something urgent. So I went back to the bookcase and found the Uris novel I had put away and began reading it; actually forcing myself to get into the pages. Well whattya know? It's a good read. I'm really enjoying it. Funny eh?

Things are booming ...

Another busy week is zooming by. Friday was stressful since the company came in and installed a new publishing program on the MAC. This was the third Friday in a row to attempt this and now it seems to be working! Woohoo. I have to learn a new program and it's not too different from other desktop publishing efforts so I am sure I will get used to it.
Today is Sunday and it was fun to watch as Goldcorp, one of the local gold mining companies blasted away a headframe to make room for a new pit. Yeah, so things are booming in Timmins. Ha ha ha. Thank goodness for gold!
So I took a few photos and got the story up on the website right away. See it here.
I also noticed this morning that the odometer on the truck turned over at a very evil looking 66666. So of course, I had to snap a photo. I don't know if the number is evil or not, but it was gone about one kilometre later!I almost forget to mention I was feeling silly Saturday morning, thinking of the fun I have when Tyler and Nathan are around. I had a bunch of icicles hanging outside a window ... so I got a tray of ice cubes and my slingshot. I had fun shooting down the icicles. Sure wish the boys could have been here!

It's all good.

Well what the heck is going on? I have ignored this blog for two weeks now. I blame my new Nintendo Wii game. Playing tennis and frisbee golf is addictive. So life is interesting these days. Winter Carnival begins in Timmins this morning and I will soon be out and about enjoying it. Had a great chat with Jennifer this week. She and Scott got down to Toronto to see a Leafs game... and to their great surprise, they got seated at ice level between the player's benches. Jenn and Scott loved it, especially since the Leafs won. When they got home, they were pleased to hear that Nathan and Tyler had seen them on national television. Life is busy at work. Had another MAC failure this week and had to bring the terminal into the shop. Our sales department is getting new PC laptops. No more MACs for them, lucky bums! I have to stay with the MAC because the company isn't willing to get new program licences or new machines for the news side of the operation. There is so much news going on around mining. Gold continues to dominate exploration in this area and now there is all the excitement over a massive deposit of chromite north of here... Chromite is what you need to put the "Stainless" in stainless steel. It looks like several BILLION dollars will be spent developing the property and Timmins is hoping to cash in on some of that action. Interesting days and months ahead. Anyway, the sun is shining and I know that spring is on the way in a matter of several more weeks. I will get some snowshoeing in this weekend and I will have to remember to put some SPF on my face. I got a bit too much sun last week. Keep smiling.