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Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Christmas Holidays

Posted by Melanie at 16:18 0 comments

I'm getting to do a ton of skiing and visiting. I even got to visit friends in Dawson Creek although the reason for going there is sad.

It was my first non family funeral. My friends husband had this very aggressive cancer that exploded into his life and left him, as my friends said, in five months less a day. It was not my favourite thing to do. But you know the more I think about it, I realize life is a gift and I'm damn well making the most of every second.

windpower

I've watched with interest as the wind turbine project on Bear Mountain, in Dawson Creek, was developed and came into being in August 2009. Read more about it here. After the funeral we went for a tour, taking pictures of the turbines from every angle imaginable.

The Peace is a great place for wind turbines. Ridiculous as it may seem, when I first moved to Prince George I used to miss the wind. In any case the electricity these turbines produce is enough, I hope, to put to rest the whole notion of flooding the Peace River valley. Apart from the people who eke out their livelihood in the valley it is a beautiful place, not one we want to have disapear, under the water created by the proposed site C dam.

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Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Toffee

Posted by Melanie at 15:41 0 comments

Nuts were a part of my childhood, every Christmas we had a large bowl of walnuts, brazil nuts, hazelnuts, almonds and a nutcracker to open them. Walnuts were a standard in cookie recipes and coconut was a close second. Peanut butter sandwiches were our favourite substitute for meat.

My innocent nutty life came to an abrupt end when I met Robert.

I offered him a cookie from my latest baking frenzy. I was surprised when he tentatively asked if it contained nuts. I had never heard of anyone being allergic to nuts. My first reaction was that he was making it up.

It wasn’t until after we were married that I realized I could no longer spread peanut butter on my toast, then use the same knife to spread jam on top if it. It meant no more peanut butter cookies since the smell of them baking, made him feel sick. It meant no more walnuts in my baking, no almonds in salads, no Christmas nuts, no Malaysian or Thai curries, they contain coconut, he’s allergic to that as well.

I’ve been piously avoiding nuts at home for twenty six years. I’m missing nuts more then ever this Christmas because I‘ve discovered homemade toffee.

Toffee

First Lisa, over on get in the garden, raved about her English toffee so much I requested her recipe. she generously printed it on her December recipe page for me. Scroll down to the bottom.

Then Kathie over on Threadlines sent me her recipe and Molly over on Orangette has yet another variation.

I’ve made all three of them. We’ve managed to gobble up at least half of it. Even without the nuts it’s still delicious.

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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Garmin Forerunner 305: Review

Posted by Melanie at 20:04 0 comments garmin forerunner 305

Anxious to get going with this wristwatch like GPS, designed for running, I took a hasty look at the quick-start-guide, strapped the Garmin too my wrist, put on my running gear and went outside. The device took a couple of minutes, or less, to find a satellite. I pressed the start button and I was off.

What it keeps track off

You can keep track of useful things like how far you run, the time it takes you to do the run, your pace, your heart rate and not so useful things like how many calories you burn.

The GPS comes with software to program the Garmin for the type of run you want to do and the pace and heart rate zone you want to do it at. The software keeps track of all your runs and also comes with a set of prepackaged workouts.

You can also just program the Garmin.

Heart Rate Monitor

I haven’t tried using the heart rate monitor yet. It is a rubber strap like thing you wrap around your chest. Because, you have to wet the sensors to create a connection between your pulse and the transmitter, it doesn’t seem like the ideal thing to be wearing when the temperatures outside are below zero. I'm waiting until Spring.

Programs

In addition to running, the forerunner 305 is able to keep track of all your cycling statistics. You can also program it to keep track of one other sport. Although the forerunner 305 is water resistant it is not waterproof so it would not be the ideal device if you are a triathlete.

The forerunner 305 can tell you the direction you are heading, the elevation and the grade or inclination of the slope you are on. Thus, I decided my third program was going to be hiking/skiing.

Why The Forerunner 305 is great to use for Hiking and Skiing

It is always interesting to know how high you are, but knowing the degree of steepness, of the slope you are skiing is crucial, when making decisions about whether to ski it or not.

Thirty-eight degrees is the sweet spot when it comes to avalanches. It is also the best slope for powder skiing. When out in the back-country, terrain is the only thing you can control, so having a device that can accurately measure the slope is just another thing for us geeks to chortle about. After all you don’t want to become dependent on a device you could lose, or that could break down, or not function due to a whiteout or heavy fog.

Even though it is not as much fun, an old fashioned compass and your brain are still the best tools you have in the backcountry.

Reading the Manual

After a few days I began to notice that the statistics my Garmin was downloading to the computer had the wrong time and date on them. I spent ages flipping through the manual and fiddling with the Garmin trying to figure out how to fix it.

Finally, out of sheer frustration, I Googled something like,

why do my workouts on the forerunner 305 have the wrong date?

Almost the first hit told me. It said- after completing each workout press the stop button, duh, AND, press the lap button until the forerunner resets itself.

Now if I had just RTFM before I ran off that first time…

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Monday, December 14, 2009

If George Elliot can do it so can I

Posted by Melanie at 15:55 0 comments

I find this story amazing and disturbing, in fact it makes me angry. Given my own experience as a freelance writer I'm beginning to think I should change my name.

I'm thinking maybe I should adopt the pseudonym, Thomas Hall. That's my Dads name. He died twelve years ago with prostate cancer. I'm sure he would be pleased and proud if signed his name to my writing instead of using my own.

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Thursday, December 10, 2009

Windchill

Posted by Melanie at 07:15 0 comments

Running shoes just don't cut it when the temperature is minus eighteen and the windchill makes it feel like minus twenty eight. I was thinking of getting a balaclava but nixed the idea when I realized how stupid it was too run in temperatures like this anyway. Even skiing is a bit dicey at these temperatures despite the fact ski boots are warmer than running shoes.

By midday it has warmed up to minus thirteen but the windchill is still making it feel like minus twenty, and my body is rebelling at the thought of running, maybe because the promised sunshine has not shown up.

Early Morning Riser

The other thing, is the house is finding it hard to keep warm, even with all the heat sources cranked. It's not cold, just cool enough that I feel the need to wear a wool sweater, to take the chill off. I'm not complaining just stating a fact.

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Thursday, December 3, 2009

Real books versus ebooks,

Posted by Melanie at 20:35 1 comments

I want something that is portable, durable, scanable, searchable ….

The Amazon Kindle is now available for sale in Canada. For the non technies among you the Kindle is an electronic device you can use to read digital books, you buy the digital books from Amazon. I have no idea if you can get them anywhere else in fact I know very little about it since I’m not interested in it.

Big bookshelf in the living room

I prefer my books to be made of paper, with pages I can turn. I like seeing them on my bookshelves and browsing through the titles on their spines. I like that books I got as a child and that I still own, bring back so many memories. I doubt you can get any of this with pixels, arranged to form words and displayed on a computer like screen.

OK, so you can adjust the text size on the Kindle to suit the degree of deterioration of your eyes. You can fill the Kindle with a stack of books and it will still weigh the same and take up the same amount of room, unlike a stack of real books.

David Pogue discusses the merits of the Kindle and other ebook readers in one of his, "collection of holiday gift guide videos," here.

But, if I could get the Canadian Oxford Dictionary in digital format. I would be first in line to get it.

The digital dictionary would anticipate the word I'm trying to spell, much like Words spell checker. It would be small and light. Much easier than my unwieldy paper version to carry around. It would be easy to look up exact definitions of words anytime, anywhere. When new words come into the language I could easily download them. The digital dictionary would be portable, updatable and smart.

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