Vacation at last

As you'll recall, we had a very nice vacation in Nova Scotia in September. We rented a lovely little cottage on the far end of Crescent beach, and aside from the very minor inconvenience of having to keep track of high tides, it was perfect. Quiet, relaxing, I got a tonne of writing and editing done, and met some new friends.

Then it was full steam ahead at work. I've been looking forward to vacation for a little while now, and I'd better enjoy it, because it will be full steam ahead till the end of March.

We aren't going anywhere. We want to stay home and relax. I've lots to do, but I can do it on a putter schedule, rather than a frantic all out banzai attack. There are things on my list.

The very first of which, I am disconsolate to report, is a fail. IKEA has changed their wire bottle racks. They used to look like this. One side slid into the IVAR holes, and the other had one of the metal pegs. They were perfect, so of course they were discontinued.

Now they are thin flimsy constructs that have to rest on a shelf. This doubles the cost, and reduces the amount of storage. I was in IKEA yesterday to buy, and decided not to. I'll have to do more research on what to use. Unless, do any of you have the old style bottle racks you don't need/want any more? If you live in Calgary I'm sure we can work something out. If you store lots of wine bottles tell me about your system in comments, please and thank you.

There will be much other puttering and tidying down in the basement. The main reason was to find a place to store more wine, but the other is to deal with clutter. This applies to my books as well. Lots of clutter there too. Whoever suggested I buy Let's Get Digital, thank you! I'm about half done now, and can't see any reason why I shouldn't self publish. Rather than explain to a publisher why they should buy when it goes against every rule of their paint by numbers expectations, I'd rather explain to someone who is at least willing to part with 2 or 3 dollars and try. I figure anyone that reads my blog at least every now and then is a potential audience because the books are much better written than the blog.

Even though it is the season of too much food, (remember that kilo of chocolate? Gone!), I'm still moving the bod. Monday and Wednesday I swam. Monday was CSS intervals in a 50 m pool. This is harder. In a 25 m pool I can do 25 x 100 in 1:50 w 10 seconds rest. In a 50 m pool I was knackered after just 15, and had to hustle to make it.

Then on Wed I had the whole training pool to myself. So calm. So peaceful. Such a contrast to the Co-op later. I decided to just swim for a while and see how it turned out. The 2 K went by in a hair under 38 minutes, nice and easy, except for a couple laps I had to hustle to make up for sloppy flip turns. Overall the pace was very even.

Afterward I picked up my prize! Yes, a prize, which is always nice. I was a weekly winner in the Talisman we inspire contest. Michelle nominated me, and I was thrilled about the whole thing. Here's the goodies: a gym bag, tech shirt, towel, lanyard, earbuds, a little wrappy thingie for the earbuds, a water bottle, and 3 facility passes. Nice! The best part is that I'm entered for a draw to win an annual pass. Pretty good odds there. I'll let you know how it turns out.

There was a bit of shopping to be done, not for gifts, just regular stuff unfortunately timed. Lee Valley was good. Even IKEA was good, though they didn't have what I wanted. But by the time I picked Linda up from her half day at work and we went to Co-op, it was a madhouse. I watched a couple guys yelling at each other about parking. I wasn't worried much about a fight, they were both older than I am. Linda said inside was just crazy too.

We had a peaceful afternoon and evening at home, tidying and putting up the tree. Celina wanted to help. She is in all the photos of the tree.

Some of the ornaments that didn't make it onto the tree this year.

We tried hanging some stuff in the front window, with predictable results.

Done. Celina thinks it's just for her. She's already dragged down some of the cloth ornaments and carried them off. We can't tell if she thinks she is rescuing family members, or capturing things for later ravishment.

We had a lovely quiet morning, sleeping in, opening gifts, watching cats high on catnip. For some reason I got into watching a bunch of clips of the minions being silly. I might have to rent those movies during vacation.