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Published: December 30th 2006
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Ice on the aerial
Our Mickey ears were a little bit frozen! Bad, blurry photo, but I wasn't in the mood to hang around in the cold! The "halo"-looking thing around the ears and aerial is not just the blurriness of my shot though, it's ice! Seasons Greetings to you all!
Clinton and I are currently in Canada's capital, Ottawa, visiting our good friend Derrick for Christmas. (For those who do not know him, we met him in Jacksonville when he was posted there too. We drove up here a couple of days ago, stopping at Lake Placid, NY (home of a couple of Winter Olympics, in case you're wondering where you'd heard of that before) to "warm up" for our snowboarding season ahead. Unfortunately the snowfall in this part of the world has been virtually non-existant, which is very unusual for this time of year, so the snow we were boarding on was of the delightful icy man-made type. What was there was spread in strips down the mountain, with the surrounding areas bare. Quite a weird thing to ride the ski lift and see bare ground beneath your feet.
Clinton has become quite proficient on a snowboard, with his numerous ski trips since we've been here. I had a go at it two years ago at North Carolina's slopes (not recommended by the way), and spent most of my time on my rear end. So Lake Placid was my second snowboarding attempt and
involved a quick lesson in how to avoid blocks of ice and also making sure I didn't slide off the manmade strip of snow. I am happy to say that I actually managed to remain upright on my board, which is a true miracle in itself. I had one fantastic "stack", where I did a cartwheel and then then recovered back to my feet, all in one smooth, graceful movement.
When we drove in to Ottawa a couple of days ago, we experienced a phenomenon neither of us had seen before. It was raining and then the rain was freezing on our car. Quite weird how it wasn't turning to snow, but instead turning our car into an ice cube. Check out the cool photo of our aerial on our car all frozen up. We were hoping that we would have a white Christmas in Ottawa, but the weather Gods are not cooperating. We've just found out something quite bizarre... there is snow falling in two states in Australia at the moment. What the heck?
Derrick took us on the royal tour of Ottawa, which is a rather beautiful city. Lots of lovely old buildings, some of them
Ottawa's Parliament Building
No snow for us, but lots of fog. That's the "Peace Tower" in the background. Gothic in style. The Parliament Building is covered in all sorts of gargoyles, which I could spend many hours photographing. I forgot to take a warm hat out with me on our trip, so the fact that my ears were feeling like they were going to freeze off saved Clinton and Derrick from having to endure one of my photographic ordeals.
We had lunch in an Irish Pub in one of the streets of Ottawa's market, where I ate traditional fish and chips- the closest I've come to so far like those at home. While eating our lunch, we were able to do some fairly decent people watching. I was delighted to see a busker playing a harmonica, with a cat on his shoulder. For those who don't know, we have two adorable cats back in Australia, who are being looked after by a good friend. We miss them dearly and any chance to pat a kitty in the meantime is a bit of therapy for us! (for me in particular)
25th December, morning
Merry Christmas to you all! We've all stumbled out of bed this morning to discover that the snow has put out some of the
bushfires at home. The ground is bare here in Ottawa and there's snow in Australia at Christmas. What is the world coming to?
Anyway, hope you all have (or had for those in the Southern Hemisphere) a great Christmas!
26th December
Well I didn't get that last entry actually posted, but I'll finish it off now. On Christmas night, full of probably far too much delicious turkey, ham and Christmas pudding, we sat down and played several hands of Carioca (a card game our friends, Pablo & Luz Maria from Chile taught us). Clinton mentioned that maybe we would see a Christmas miracle and we’d see a flurry or two of snow while it was still officially Christmas.
Lo and behold, at 1158pm, a beautiful white blanket of snow fell around Derrick’s house. Neither Clinton or I had experienced this before and the three of us raced outside to see “the winter wonderland”, as they call it. As corny as that saying is, it really was a wonderland. It was as though someone had come out and spread a thick layer of icing on the cars, street and trees. The fact that it was the middle of
the night meant that it was quiet and untouched by cars or people- that is, until two Aussies and a Canadian gamboled out into the street to have an impromptu snowball fight. It turned out we weren’t the only ones. Three other people up the road were having their own war and I believe we even had some crossfire at one point.
I went back inside to get my gloves to make it a bit easier to scoop up the snow. When I returned, Derrick and Clinton were busy rolling snow into big balls to make a snowman. Derrick attempted to place the torso on the bottom half of his snowman and it kind of fell in on itself. For some reason, he then decided this gave him a stellar excuse to lob the entire oversized snowball at me... followed shortly by a second one from Clinton. The snowballs were so big that my glasses were knocked from my face and disappeared under the snow! I knew then I needed better equipment, so once I had found my glasses, I went back inside and to the boys’ amusement, returned with a saucepan lid as a shield. During the onslaught,
many other unfortunate victims were caught in the crossfire: cars, letterboxes and the neighbours’ garage door. Eventually a truce was called around about the time Derrick dodged a snowball from Clinton, in perfect Matrix style- except for the fact that his feet didn’t stay on the ground and he landed painfully on his elbow! We also decided with the noise that we were making in the street, the neighbours may have feared Armageddon was upon them, so we thought it would be a wise idea to go back inside to our slightly quieter Carioca game.
So once again, hope y'all had a fantastic Christmas. I've got lots more to blog and hope to get it up asap.
xxx
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Dad
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Christmas
Love the white Christmas and I can imagine the competitive "defence boys and girls" having the snow fights. Unfortunately the fires in Vic are flaring up again and we have returned to summer temperatures. We did have a nice downpour of rain on New Years eve which helped the garden and tank water. The presents were absolutely wonderful - you have all clearly told me I intend playing tennis for a few more years! And off to the Aus Open in two weeks to see how its really done - love it. love and kisses Chum and OB