I love that today is the last day of winter and spring will start tomorrow. I don’t like winter and could live without snow, even though I know it is necessary. By comparison to most of eastern Canada, the Halifax area didn’t have such a bad winter. The snow started earlier than normal, but we avoided most of the heavy snow which other areas received. We actually had no snow on the ground until last week, when we got 10 to 15 cm, which is still there due to the colder than normal temperatures recently.

It is another sunny and seasonally mild day here on the east coast of Canada in Nova Scotia, and all the snow has melted. I would be naive to assume that we won’t be getting any more snow or cold weather this winter, as we are only at the half way mark, but we can only hope it won’t be too severe. Our groundhog, Shubenacadie Sam, didn’t see his shadow on Saturday, which could be a good sign. This is the third year in a row that he hasn’t seen it, and we had good weather during the remainder of those winters. We had an early start to our winter weather this year, but we have been lucky to have avoided some of the bad weather which hit other parts of the Maritimes and Canada since Christmas.

It appears that the 2008 television season will be a wash out of most of my favourite programs until the writers strike is settled. There may not be any new episodes of my favourites until next year. It is unfortunate timing because the winter is the best time to watch television. I will miss new episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Lost and Prison Break. There are more shows on television that I have never seen than I have seen, but I don’t plan on wasting my time watching reruns of them, especially during the prime time of 9:00 to 11:00 pm.

My son recently sent me about a hundred pictures of himself and his girlfriend, Babe, in Thailand, where they both live. Most of the pictures were taken while they were on vacation around Bangkok on the Chopraya River, at the Lop Buri sunflower fields, at Hua Hin and Kho Phi Phi beaches, and at the Loy Kratong festival. I put a few of them on my blog this week, and printed all of them for my photo album. Pictures of sunny, warm places are nice to look at while we freeze in Canada.

Anne

For me, 2007 was a good year, with the exception of the weight I gained. I have made a good start in that department for 2008 by joining Weight Watchers. I have a good feeling that I will stick with it in 2008. It is easy to make a New Years resolution to lose weight when I already started it a few months ago, and I still feel good about it.

We had a very nice Christmas yesterday. My brother visited, and we enjoyed seeing him again. My family had a great time playing some of the Play Station games we found under the Christmas tree. I kept to my sensible Weight Watchers way of eating, and for the first Christmas in years, I didn’t have heartburn from eating too much rich food. We had our Christmas feast at lunch time, and I ate turkey, stuffing, gravy and vegetables but in smaller portions than I usually do. I had an apple for dessert, instead of the usual plum pudding or pie. For me, it tasted just as good. For our supper, we had turkey sandwiches, squares and chocolate cheesecake. The cheesecake I had was small, but it was my biggest indulence of the day.

Two days away from the big day. I have been ready since last week, so except for cooking the Christmas meal, I can relax and enjoy the ambience of the season. We are expected to have our first white Christmas in three or four years. There is enough snow on the ground that the rain expected on Christmas Eve shouldn’t melt all of it. In past years, if we were lucky to get some snow, it was just enough to cover the ground. This is fine with me because as soon as Christmas day is over, I would prefer the snow to be gone too. Our winters are so unpredictable that some years are very mild with rain, and others are cold with lots of snow. Environment Canada predicted a cold and snowy winter, and so far they have been correct. Our winter started in November, and hasn’t let up yet.

Earlier this week I went to the semi-annual luncheon for CRA retirees. We meet at Brewsters Restaurant in Bedford every June and December. It’s amazing that most of the retirees look better now than they did when they were working, even the ones in their 80’s. The stress of working takes it’s toll, but seems reversible. For some reason the women look much better than the men.

One of the recent retirees, who had transferred to the Calgary office about twenty years ago and retired to Nova Scotia last year, sent us an email about what is it like to retire. I found it very amusing and very true. If you haven’t retired yet, this is what you have to look forward to.

I have been thinking about writing something in my blog recently but nothing has interested me enough. I used to enjoy reading my daily newspaper from cover to cover every morning, and would often write about items which interested me. I guess you could say that I am bored with the news. I am suffering from news overload. I can understand why some people never read a newspaper. Now I just glance at most of the news stories with little interest. I prefer to read human interest stories, stories about my own community and the weather. I still love weather stories.