It has been a while since I wrote anything on this blog. I guess I just lost interest in doing it regularly. I am so glad that our weather has improved in the past few weeks. I was afraid we would have one of those foggy, wet summers which we get every five or six years, and we haven’t had for a few years, thankfully. We can be at the mercy of El Nino or El Nina, which causes our too short summers to be even shorter.

Regardless of how good or bad our Nova Scotia winter has been, I can’t enjoy it. I can’t even embrace it. The best I can do is tolerate it and hope that our spring, at least, isn’t too damp and cool. This year we had a better than average winter but by February I was tired of the cold and was anxious to get away to sunny, warm Florida.

Jennifer and I will be leaving on our second trip to Las Vegas early tomorrow morning. The first thing I heard when I woke up this morning was that volcanic ash from Iceland was heading towards Newfoundland, and eventually the Maritimes, and flights could be cancelled. I had visions of either not being able to travel, or being stuck at an airport for days waiting for a flight. Fortunately, it appears that for now there won’t be a problem with flights from Halifax or Toronto.

My daughter, Jennifer, and I went to Walt Disney World in Orlando for ten days in early September. I would definitely recommend going there at that time of year if you can. I couldn’t believe that there were absolutely no crowds and no waiting for anything. I was prepared to wait in line, or at least have to get a Fastpass for some of the attractions. It was great that we were able to go on even the most popular attractions more than once, with no waiting.

I took about 320 pictures during our one week trip to London England in early May. I selected just some of these pictures to put on this site. While looking at the pictures I realized that one week in London just wasn’t enough time. There is so much to see and do, maybe next time….

It would be nice if this mess would just go away, but it won’t. Every day there is more bad news. I spent yesterday afternoon watching CNN which is something I never do during the day. The heads of the Big Three auto makers were requesting a massive $34 billion loan or bailout, or whatever they are calling it, from the taxpayers in the United States. Those companies have only themselves to blame, but it is doubtful they will be allowed to fail. The damage it would cause the North American economy would be too much. Many people, myself included, feel they should not be bailed out, and should file Chapter 11 bankruptcy if they are that bad. It would be survival of the fittest.

There is nothing that marks the end of summer like closing down the cottage for the year. Depending on the weather this task is usually done during the month of October. We like to pick a nice sunny day in order to make it as pleasant as it can be. One day last week we loaded the car with boxes in order to take home anything which will freeze during the winter. We drained the pipes, put away the lawn furniture and boxed the food from the freezer, fridge and cupboards. Unfortunately, this year we didn’t spend much time at the cottage because the weather wasn’t very good. The spring was cold and damp, June and July were great, but August was too damp and cloudy to be able to spend much enjoyable time there. October is always the end of the good times at the cottage and the start of getting ready for winter, which to me is gloomy and dismal.

Yesterday I went shopping for a new LCD monitor. I have been having difficulty reading my non-LCD five year old monitor for some time now, but I kept putting off getting a new one. The prices for anything electronic are getting cheaper and better but if I kept waiting for a better deal, I would never buy one. I thought that because school will be starting soon, there will be good sales around. I did some price comparisons in the weekly flyers, and decided that a 20″ widescreen would meet my needs. The make didn’t make any difference to me as long as the price was in the $200. to $250. range.

I love to read and my favourite books are British crime novels. Recently I read Ian Rankin’s first novel about detective John Rebus, which was written many years ago and has been developed into a series of novels by Mr. Rankin. I must have read at least one of his novels over the years but I can’t recall which one. Ian Rankin is one of the best writers in the British crime novel genre. He has written several books other than the Rebus detective novels, but I decided to start reading all of those and progress to the others such as The Flood, Watchman and Westwind.

I have downloaded 40 pictures of my trip to Las Vegas and Red Rock Canyon out of the 310 pictures I took during the trip. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to take any pictures of the casinos because cameras aren’t allowed.

Anne