A Beekeeper's Diary
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Sunday December 16th, 2001 I was feeling a bit stiff after the activity yesterday and spent the day cleaning up my hard drive and re-organizing files on the computer.
Saturday December 15th, 2001 Around 10:30, I left for the mountains. Since I was a bit late leaving, and Fortress is an extra 1/2 hour of driving, Nakiska looked like the best choice. The snow conditions at Fortress looked much better -- all the runs are open, they claim 21 cm fresh, and there is 95 cm on the Farside -- but I was running out of time. I picked up Lora Lee along the way. The other P-Ss were not into skiing. We arrived around 1 PM. Although there were few runs open, those that were open were good, and the hill was not crowded. I managed to do over 15,000 feet of vertical in the three hours left in the day. My first few runs were pretty slow and careful, but by the last run, I had the throttle wide open, since I was warmed up and the crowds had left the hill due to the overcast and increasing wind, and the runs were clear. On my first run of the year, I was thinking "Am I nuts? What is an old man doing out here in the cold, skidding around on hard snow, going fast enough to break bones?", but by the third run -- once I warmed up, I realized that I had not had so much fun in a very long time. There is something about being high on a mountain, standing on a tiny board zooming along at 30 MPH and pulling Gs in hard turns that defies description. Having lost weight since my last boarding trip made a huge difference. I no longer had to struggle as hard to control my speed. My workouts -- few as they were -- in the past week or two made a huge difference too. When I left, I was not in the least sore, although I was tired. I dropped LL off at the Mill and had supper with P-Ss, then went home and got to bed early. Tired as I was, I slept poorly. I blame that on the bottle of homemade wine we had with supper. I am quite sensitive to some red wines and yeasts. I drank some to be polite, and regretted it after, but maybe it was the chocolate coated nuts we snacked on, or the effects of altitude. I slept for 12 hours off-and-on. An incoming Chinook started howling around midnight and slammed the screen door in the middle of the night, waking us several times. Looks like great windsurfing weather tomorrow, but just a bit cool.
Friday December 14th, 2001 Nothing very remarkable happened today. Dennis bought my old Tbird and left early. Paulo kept cleaning in the basement.
Thursday December 13th, 2001 I decided not to exercise today in order to give my muscles a chance to recover, but the benefits seem to be continuing. Dennis and Paulo worked on the basement floor and various other tasks, then re-stacked some windows. El & I went to Red Deer for the evening. I left El at Value Village and went shopping at Costco, but when it was time to leave, I found the line-ups at the cashiers so long that I had to abandon my cart to go and get El, since she had left her coat in the car and VV was closing. I don't know why Costco insists on making it so hard to get out of the store. I have seen over and over again that whenever the lines get short at the cashiers, they close one down to keep at least several customers waiting in each line. When I was waiting to leave, there were lines of about eight people waiting at each of only two cashiers and quite a number of other customers wandering around the store waiting for the lines to diminish. There seemed to be lots of other employees around doing very little.
Wednesday December 12th, 2001 I exercised again this morning and it had a good effect, but maybe not quite a good as yesterday. The day was mild and got up to minus five or so, and we did odd jobs around the place. We moved the yellow forklift inside so we can work on it in comfort, then Meijers came by for supper on the way back from the airport.
Tuesday December 11th, 2001 I finally got smart and d/led a (free) pop-up window killer. It works. No more X-Cam ads proliferating all over my desktop. Suddenly I feel great. This morning I got up and did about 25 minutes of exercise. My parents always did exercises in the early morning (before I opened my eyes), but I never felt the need. However, as I get older, I am beginning to think morning exercise may pay off. My mother (82) does 1/2 hour every day and claims it is what keeps her going, and go she does. She can outpace two women 1/2 her age. In my case today, I don't know. Maybe it is not the exercise, but maybe it's just the fact that I finished the books -- for now -- and have the time to spend on other things. Diet helps too, no doubt. Dennis cleaned up the area where we burn old pallets, boxes, lids, etc and got about 8 drums of ashes, nails, tin, etc. Then he filled some propane bottles. That was pretty well his whole day's work. Paulo changed the forklift tire, stacked the painted boxes and did some cleanup. Productivity is away down. Time for Christmas holidays, I think. I did some wire tracing, went to town with the disks, etc.
Sunrise: 8:29 am / Sunset: 4:29 pm Monday December 10th, 2001 Dennis took the day off. Paulo finished painting boxes and did a few other chores. I went to Calgary in the evening and went to the stores in Beddington Hills. I wandered through the new movie theatre complex, which was open and practically abandoned. I noticed that films were running in the theatres I passed as I walked down a corridor, so I sat down and watched most of 'Behind Enemy Lines'. No one else was in the room. The movie was pretty fanciful, but entertaining. I then walked across the hall and went into another room where I watched the end of another war film (with Robert Redford involved in some kind of violation of the People's Republic of China), then went to Canadian Tire, where I poked around for a few hours.
Sunday December 9th, 2001 I was planning to go to Fortress this morning, but when I looked out the window, I changed my mind. It is dull and snowy. Driving could be bad. I checked the webcams (added to the bottom of this page) and saw overcast conditions in Banff and Sunshine Village. I decided to get some work done and go mid-week instead. I played around all day, did a little accounting, went snowmobiling, tried skipping, lifted some weights and also used the treadmill
Saturday December 8th, 2001 There goes our snow. The Chinook rattled our doors and windows from midnight on, and the temperature was plus 4C before sunrise. I'm thinking of going skiing, but see that Nakiska, my first choice does not open for another week. I decided that it was too windy, and Fortress, my choice under the circumstances would be pretty breezy. We went to the Mill for lunch and to droop off a sewing machine we had borrowed and some cardboard boxes that we had accumulated over the years.
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