5C's Que Pasa

Colin was off at 5AM this morning.  He was on his way to visit his 103 year old Mom in Winnipeg.  This is the first time he has seen her since she went into a home mid April.  He had to pay $25.00 one way to check in his guitar.  Mommio loves to hear him play.  All his personal items were in his small carry on item in his other hand.  Needless to say she is not happy where she is.  Colin says that her room looks industrial and stale with no personal accents other than two pictures.  Not at all warm and home like.  Apparently she had a a fall two weeks ago that required stitches above her eye.  We were not informed of her fall.  I am more than upset.

Colin’s two bothers have the power of attorney and made all the decisions including cleaning out her home.  They made the decision to move her out while she was at a low point physically.  They did not ask Colin about her possessions or what they had decided.  So he had no say as to what she might like in her room at the place she now lives.

Last evening before Colin left we reviewed our fire evacuation plan. I wanted to be certain that I knew what needed to be done just in case.  Whether he is here or at work, or like this weekend in Winnipeg, I am now confident with our written plan.  It is written in stages based on how much notice we have to evacuate.  If we only have 10 – 15 minutes we take such and such.  If we have another 15 minutes we take such and such.  Lets hope that we never ever need to put it into play but there was a news article published today that stressed that the floods and increased fires were our new normal for this area 😯

You can’t tell by my rain chain as I was too late to take a photo at the height of the rain but we have rain!!!  We have had it off and on for the day. Wonderful news for us here in the Okanagan.  You can see that our patio is wet and if you look closely there is a thin stream of rain.  Back to sunshine tomorrow.

~ Car in lake

As far as we know the car is still underwater in our lake.  No attempts have been made to recover it yet.  Nothing about it in the local news.

~  My foot issue

I haven’t had pain for the last two days.  So yesterday afternoon Colin accompanied me on a four block walk and each step was misery.  I am very concerned.  I tried walking with three different pairs of my usual outdoor shoes and I just can’t manage it.  I have had to put away the walking shoes I got in Edmonton, I cannot wear them without pain yet I wore them that first day and loved them.  While there I also bought a pair of orthotic flip flops called Lynco Flips.  I love them, I got the watermelon color shown in the link.  I have worn them for 4 days now as I can’t even wear my beloved Mephistos without pain and have no pain with the flip flops when I walk in the house.  I feel that I am walking on air.  I wish that they would work as a walking shoe.  They do however have sandals and I will now have to look into them.  I just can’t keep spending money on shoes, wear them for a few days and decide that I can’t wear them.  Wearing them in the house is not the same as walking in the street with them.

Only 50.00 CAD for orthotic flip flops.  I love them.

~ The fire situation

If anything it is getting worse, well at least the smoke is for us personally.

These fires are not going away soon.  Should I even add that we had another Okanagan fire start yesterday, in Keremeos.

We find it difficult to believe that the smoke has become even worse. We did not think it possible.  We can’t even seen the road any longer.

I can’t believe that a 15 year playing with fireworks set off the Oregon Columbia Gorge fire which is destroying the area.

~ Hurricanes and an earthquake

The world is out of control.  Monster hurricanes and a destructive earthquake in Mexico.  We have friends being affected by them all.  And then there is the next possible hydrogen bomb by North Korea tomorrow and we actually do have friends who moved to South Korea the end of July to teach school there.  Will it ever end?  Is this our new norm?  I have been to many of the islands in the Caribbean that have been decimated and just can’t believe that it keeps going on and on.  Jose can you please slow down?

~ Cooking yellow fin tuna steaks

Finally something positive to update you on.  We loved loved loved the BBQ tuna steaks.  Basically we went with a recipe by George who writes Our Awesome Travels.  I met George and Suzie about 9 winters ago on their first and only trip into Mexico.  George ran a restaurant in Ontario years ago and has a wonderful reputation as an excellent chef.  I had the privilege of teaching him how to peel and clean fresh shrimp with the head on.  This is George’s recipe for cooking tuna steaks on the grill.

We started by marinating the raw fish in olive oil with some salt and pepper, for about 40 minutes. I will admit to being too heavy on the salt but it was still really good.

Our Weber grill was set to high. We cooked the steaks for 2.5 minutes and then flipped them for yet another 2.5 minutes.  I set the timer so that we were exact with the time.  That is a baked potato in the foil.

Perfection. The trick really is in not overcooking the tuna.

Baked potato, Caesar salad, asparagus ( steamed in the microwave as the grill was too hot for it ) and the exquisite yellow fin tuna.

I wouldn’t change a thing and the left over cold tuna was a great lunch.  I now have a new recipe I am eager to try involving a marinade and sauce to serve over the cooked tuna.  I will keep you updated.

Meanwhile, to all our American and Mexican friends, stay safe and know that you are in our thoughts.

Was the radiator dry and he needed water?

No he was following a car in the fast lane and then tried to pass on the right at the same time as the first car changed to the curb lane on the right.  The passing car clipped the first car and somehow ended up in our lake.

We had a lakeside view so to speak except the smoke was so thick that we could not see the details either through binoculars or strong camera lenses.

Usually we can see details but the smoke really affected perspective.

The driver in the car that ended up in the lake escaped through the sunroof and was taken to hospital in an ambulance.  Folks at the scene said that he appeared to be fine.  The driver of the first car, the one that got clipped had no injuries.

Colin’s camera was able to capture a bit more and with enhanced photoshop we got this photo.  To the right of the boat which is one of the few ski boats allowed on our lake, you will see a white dot at the shoreline and just above that is a person who happens to be a firefighter.  We believe based on the people looking down at the lake that that is where the car went into  the lake.

It is getting dark and all the emergency vehicles are highlighted.

Apparently the car is fully submerged.  An RCMP boat was trying to locate the vehicle.

The submerged car was a Lexus 8-O,  mine is just fine parked in our driveway.  I don’t have much sympathy for the Lexus driver.  Anyone who drives irresponsibly deserves their fate.

A very smoked in sun today. In fact this is the most we saw of the sun all day. Another extremely smoky day.

We were surprised that it appeared to be even smokier in town today but then Kelowna is closer to the Peachland/Summerland fire than we are.

While in town we stopped in at Costco to pick up a fillet of wild salmon as Colin is going to be home for dinner tomorrow.  All they had was Atlantic farmed salmon which we refuse to buy.  But they did have some very fresh nice looking thick tuna steaks.  Does anyone have a suggestion how to prepare them?  BBQ or ??  We have never cooked tuna before so we are looking for your suggestions.  Marinade , yes or no?  A special sauce perhaps?  Looking forward to hearing from you.

As we were in town this afternoon and rather hungry we stopped in for a very tasty dinner of vegetable tempura and teriyaki salmon with rice and stir fry veggies.  I might not eat for another week.  A great meal for only $15.00 each.

Colin never got in till about 9:45PM last night but I did have a dinner of quiche and salad waiting for him.  We certainly don’t have a set time when we eat.  Last night at 10PM and tonight at 5:30PM!  I thought that we might run out of wine so I put a bottle in the freezer to chill.  Turns out we did not drink much wine and didn’t finish the opened bottle.

Guess what?  I forgot to take the bottle out of the freezer.  Normally I set the timer for 30 -40 minutes to remind me.  So this morning Colin found this in the freezer.  It was frozen solid but the cap stayed on, perhaps because it was a screw cap rather than a cork.  I just now opened the bottle at 8:30PM and it is just as good as ever.  I do love my wine chilled.

Last night as were sitting in our teal recliners watching a bit of TV while we dined and sipped, Colin suddenly bolted up.  “Did you see that” he asked me.  No I did not.  He described it as a yellow/white streak that came down very slowly to the ground on an angle.  He believes that he saw it explode as it got very bright at the end just as in the video. We discovered this morning it was a meteor somewhere between one and ten tonnes and that when it landed it created quite a large noise.  This is a link to a interesting short article about the unusual event.  The first part has a video (security camera ) which shows the meteor falling to the ground.  Only the first 25 seconds show the meteor, after that they have added in a video that is really only a drone with a red light moving around the sky.  Meteors do not fly sideways in a controlled fashion.  So disappointed that I missed it.  I was facing forward while Colin was turned sideways towards me which it why he saw it and not me 😕

Sunset last evening.

Apparently our province passed a new law.  We now only have three seasons, winter, flood season and fire season 😯

🙁

We were in Vernon late Saturday afternoon picking something up and all the way back we saw a plume of smoke. This is what we saw from our patio.

The new fire is the big flame on the left.  The fire that started August 24th is the one on the right.  Just to make it interesting, a new fire started today on the right side of the lake almost opposite the fire burning between Peachland and Summerland.  We are just a tiny bit above the word Kelowna.

Of course within the last 48 hours the fire has now grown to 1500 hectares and continues to burn out of control.  Close to 80 homes have been evacuated and another 250 are on notice to evacuate immediately.  They have determined that it was human caused.

Yesterday the smoke was the thickest we have had this summer.  We could not even see the highway nor the end of the lake.

Before we traveled to Medicine Hat to pick up the Jeep the end of April, we asked if there were any defects, chips, etc and the dealer said no.  So being who we are and how we think we hired someone from a body shop to go check out the vehicle before we drove all that way.  She found a significant nicks on the drivers door and sent us photos.  We contacted the dealer and they promised to have it repaired by the time we arrived ( a 2 day drive ).

This was the repair job. Certainly not acceptable. They told us to take it home and get three quotes and they would pay for the repair. All verbal, nothing in writing.

Before we got home it appears that the manager had quit and the new guy would have nothing to so with the repair.  He said we did not have it in writing.  At one point after at least a dozen phone calls I took the phone from Colin’s ear and told the new manager that we were going to walk and take the Mercedes back as we were not happy at all.  But we stayed an extra night so they could redo the repair and it still looked horrible which is why the old manager was going to pay whatever to get it repaired here in Kelowna.  He did not want to lose the deal and likely he knew that he would soon be gone.  I was pretty strong in stating to the new manger that why would we lie about something like this.  Colin sent the new manager the photos for a third time and he must have really looked at them and agreed that it was bad however they had no budget to pay for the repair.  All the quotes had come in between $2800.o0 and $3000.00, mostly because they had to blend the paint over two door panels.

Colin went from shop to shop and got names of some guys who worked on the side. We finally found someone who as you can see did an excellent job.  Cost $750.00 and the dealership where we bought the Jeep did pay for it.  Phew.

I guess this is a good time as any to let you know that I took a rather hard tumble on our patio yesterday and re injured my foot and a knee in the process.  Colin has decided that I should not try and do anything in the yard or the house as I am too much of a klutz.  Basically I am safe just staying put.  However he was out there weeding in the hot 34C sun and I thought that I could help just a bit.  Of course I had to trip over the hammock stand.  More icing and still sore.  I had really hoped to resume at least a bit of a walk by now.

About noonish today a police helicopter, likely the only one we have here, began going back forth in a grid pattern.  Today we had some blue sky.  Once the winds picked up in the afternoon so did the smoke.  Meanwhile Colin was able to get a job done today.

It was searching an area of the woods just off the lake to our right. As you can see they were very low and below the tree line. I watched for close to an hour, great pilot.  No idea what was going on.  Someone drove by and said that they were searching for a little girl.

After about 45 minutes they began to search along the waters edge in our park. Look at all the spider webs, they have been everywhere this summer.

There has been nothing the media about the search which I think is strange.  Someone did come by about 5PM and said that the girl had been found.  That is good news but no details at all.

Taken a few nights ago, not yet the full moon.  The moon is looking huge tonight but still two days to go till it is full.  The white pinpricks of light in the background are cars on the road while the softer lights in the foreground are Colin’s rope lites.

Thank you for taking the time to stop in and checking out the que pasa of it all 😎