Nearly February, already!

This month has really gone by fast, eh? Mom was asking me the other day what I would have been doing a year ago. I think I was starting to try and figure out where my placement would be.

Anyways, I do not have a lot of recent photo's to show. I do have one from Christmas that I really like. It is of me and Gavin sporting our new John Deere Hats (I know you'll appreciate this Sanne! Mine is brown with pink mesh, totally awesome) - this is taken at my sisters house on Christmas day.

New Years I spent with Steph and her brother in Hamilton at a really cute Irish Pub. Cute might not be the right term - it was just a really good spot. Steph really likes me eh? :)

Nothing is really overly new with me. I guess I am still absorbing the fact that I am staying in Ontario for a while now. I like my job at ARA, my built heritage associated projects are fairly interesting and as long as the Ministry of Culture doesn't get me down - I would like to stick this out and make something of it. This past weekend I spent in Port Perry visiting my Aunt Brenda and Uncle Mike with my parents. It was like a weekend on vacation so I had a really relaxing time, though I kinda miss those snowmobiles.

It's been cold here, and snowy - I like it. Even if I'm not much of a winter sports person... well... just skating and toboganning...

Snow in Manitoba

It also snowed in Manitoba! Patrick and I went camping for three days over the New Year's weekend, and it was lovely weather until the morning we were supposed to get up in enough time to drive back to the city for a massive New Year's brunch. I cannot emphasize the importance of this brunch...picture everything you would normally put in a brunch, and then add little luxuries like an omlette bar, curry, dessert table and endless cups of tea. Think of a brunch worth driving through a blizzard for, and you get the general idea.

So. The first two days were lovely and clear, and really freakishly warm for that time of year, around 15 below. Here are some pictures.




Then, on that fateful final day, we slept in! I woke up around half seven and noticed how warm and dark it was in the tent and concluded that it must still be very early, that I didn't really need the loo, and that I could safely doze for a nice long time. Some time later, Patrick had the presence of mind to check his watch and realized we had slept an hour too long. Why, you may ask? Because the tent was completely covered in snow! About a foot of snow, in fact. A blizzard had blown in the night before and covered everything. So we skipped breakfast, packed up and trudged back across the lake (which was in a complete white-out, by the way) and found the van also covered in a foot of snow and the highways closed.

This is what the lake look liked as we got to shore:


But to cut a long story short, we braved the back highways, which were not closed, dashed into the house to change (but not shower) and arrived at brunch only half an hour late (and stinky). It was a very dramatic entrance.

But it seems I got lucky. I received an e-mail from Winnipeg today telling me that the temperature has dropped to -48 with windchill.