5C's Que Pasa

Aug 07, 2018

Time for some TLC

Colin and I got married in 1987 and happily lived in a 1050 sq ft brand new condominium in Vancouver. Five years later we bought a large home in Tsawwassen, it was huge at 5600 sq ft with three levels and two staircases. Our business was moving into the lower level complete with cove walls, a seamless background used for photographing architectural models as well as product photography. We needed to do some serious furniture shopping 😯

The only furniture that we have left are our teal colored recliners which we love now as much as we did back in 1992. It was a special order and they only reclined and rocked, I asked if they could add swivel and they did. We shopped at Paramount Furniture ( they are still in business ) where most everything was a custom order. We waited eight long weeks for these Barcaloungers and they cost us a total of $2310.00 way back then. Today they are still for sale and cost even more. I have to say that we use all three functions but the swivel is our favorite.

They have served us well for the last 26 years but it was time for some TLC and Colin had some free time. They have only been moved three times but now had some worn areas. Here we are now living in just under 1000 sq ft in a mobile home in an RV Park.

Tiny little white patches here and there. Likely from swiveling against something. Once we had a guest in house #2 who reclined so quickly and far back that she put a hole in the wall.

Rather then spend hundreds of dollars on having a professional come and do the touch ups Colin did some online research and found a leather repair kit online through Amazon.ca for under $35.00. Somewhat complicated to create the correct color match.

A good deal of concentration and repeated tests to get the color correct.

The moment of truth. Looks great. He went over every inch of each chair.

Later he used a special leather cleaner on the loungers and they now look brand new. I sure like this semi retirement 😆

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Aug 06, 2018

Crazy Days

Today marks day three of what is called the civic long weekend here in Canada. Some provinces simply call it a civic holiday which means you get an extra day off while others like Alberta call it Heritage Day, here in BC it is called BC Day, Nova Scotia calls it Natal Day. Ontario has the strangest name of them all, click here to read about it. It doesn’t matter to me what you call it, for me it has been mostly a researching weekend.

We have been taking walks every morning before the heat gets too intense. Yes I am finally getting back to walking. Can you imagine watering these pots everyday. This lady had the same amount of potted flowers on the other side of her driveway.

We are leaving here much earlier this year than normal for our winter vacation in the RV. There is a particular event that has a fixed date attached to it necessitating our end of September departure. Once that is over we will have five full weeks to travel around the US before we cross into Mexico and head to the Isla. So these seven weeks in the US require some researching. How long to get to point A, how many miles do we have to drive each day ( 335 in fact ), where to overnight and what the heck are we going to do for those last five weeks. Colin has been great with the getting to point A and I have been working on the what the heck afterwards. Fortunately that will simply evolve once we start to travel after the event once we have some destinations sorted out. Stayed tuned for the que pasa of it all.

I could smell smoke in the house when I awoke yesterday but as you can see the day remained clear and the smoke dissipated. Isn’t this a beautiful flower garden?

Do the amount of berries on a Mountain Ash tree mean that there will be a harsh winter? I remember my Mom saying something like that. She said that it was nature providing more food for the birds for the winter coming. Some years there are much fewer berries.

Once I start researching I end up with maps and papers and notes all over my desk and credenza. Good thing my desk has two levels. I usually start with day one of a trip and move on from there but this time I started in the middle. That lead to a detour on the route to point A which increased our mileage to that 335 miles per day I had mentioned earlier. We can’t really leave any earlier as Colin is committed to some jobs in September. It is going to be a very fun trip with us going to many places we have never been to. I could say that at least 80% of the trip will be new territory 😀 We are both looking forward to starting the engine and hitting the road. Meanwhile the research is tedious and time consuming. Sometimes I just have to keep going so I don’t lose my thought process. We ate rather late last night even for us @ 9:15PM. However we had a delicious tomato sandwich about 2:30PM for lunch so we weren’t starving. That tomato as well as the veggies we had with dinner came from our garden 😛

It wasn’t until about 5PM that I noticed how hot it was getting at my desk. Usually I turn on the AC when I see 85F. There are temps in the week ahead at 100F plus. Today at 9AM we already have 75% humidity.

I saw this gate on our walk yesterday. Love it. I think it may have been a screen panel that was adapted to a gate.

Another clever idea, hiding the trailer hitch.

I like how this fellow has hidden his shed from the street with this wee garden.

So this was my post for last night but I was way too tired to write this at 11PM. Time to head out for my walk and then back to research. Once I get the US part of the trip sort of organized I get to move on to our trip to Europe next May. Always something to look forward to. Hope you all have a great day today.

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Aug 03, 2018

Que Pasa

The spider bite is improving. The swelling is ever so slowly going down as is the hard lump and it no longer itches. When we were working earlier today a huge spider ran across my ungloved finger 😥 Note to self to always wear gloves in the garden.

The fires continue. This is an excellent graph showing the number of hectares burned to date, with the white dotted line depicting the 10 year average. Last year was horrific as shown in red and where we are right now is depicted by the blue line.

Taken just two nights ago directly across the lake from Peachland. A thunderstorm had come through the area along with some strong winds which kicked up the flames.

Just a few days ago we had ash falling as you can see on the hood of my car.

We woke up this morning to some rain showers which has helped cool the air and the slightly lower temperatures are also helping. We just got through a stretch of approximately 18 days of 34C plus temperatures. Much hotter than normal. So these few days of cooler weather are a blessing. However we have had winds almost everyday which is a problem not to mention the lightening strikes.

Help is on the way as you can read from this update earlier today. I know I talk about the fires a lot but our livelihood is based on the weather not to mention the air we breathe everyday.

This was the fourth year that Opera Under the Stars has taken place outdoors at UBC Okanagan’s central courtyard., a free concert. Due to the threat of thunder and lightening we decided to stay home and this is the program that we missed. 800 others did attend. Okay, for sure next year we will attend.

Our beach is coming back. The lake recedes with the heat.

I was coming back home from an appointment in the city and saw this very strange boat. while stopped at a red light. It almost looks like a dock with a motor.

We cut off the supports on Colin’s big tree. We figure with a trunk that large it should be fine with the lake winds, you can see the red colored mark above the strap that we had cut, about to dig into the trunk.

My photos have all been blurry this past week. Turns out that my camera was on a weird setting. Wonder how that happened? Not me! I have been hearing some different birds sounds for a few weeks. We have a pair of Cedar waxwing birds enjoying our yard. Sadly I never saw them today. I can only hope that they come back.

Photo taken from the internet. When they flew I could see the line of yellow along the bottom of their tail. A beautiful bird who is very welcome in my yard. First time I have seen them in our 15 years here.

Sometime during the past week I was able to catch to a sunset :). Life is good.

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Aug 02, 2018

Yikes

I woke up with a small itchy spot on my arm. I did not scratch it but as the morning progressed the spot grew and became hot and hard. I put ice packs on it until it went down but now at the end of the day it is even larger and redder. Bummer getting bit by a spider in your own bed 😡 It is very swollen at the moment so time for more ice.