"Winter is coming"

I am fairly sure than when he conceived the Starks of Winterfell, George R. R. Martin was thinking of Canadians.  Possibly, those dwelling in the Northern Ontario reaches where I find myself making my home.  That "Winter is coming" is very much part of the psyche here is unquestionable, this I judge from the year and a half I have been here.

As soon as August this year when the trees began turning, I sensed a change in the mood prevailing, even my own.  It was a queer mixture of anticipation and resignation, flavoured with glee in some cases, stark unhappiness in others.

September drifted by, with the leaves in full bloom of colour, but by October they were already on their way to falling off the trees.  Still, there were some truly fine days in both months, real autumn days in terms of colour but blessed with temperatures in the low 20s (degrees Celsius).  Altogether tolerable, those days that held a lingering whiff of the summer than never quite was.

With the coming of November, the warmth began to recede and the cold stole the march.  The daily high temperatures slipped further and further down the scale, even though no snow came.  Oh, there were one or two sallies, apologetic snowfalls I called them, because the flakes had hardly hit the ground before they disappeared.  There was no accumulation even up to the middle of the month.  Not until the final ten days of the month, when talk of American Thanksgiving and Black Friday were everywhere, and Christmas decorations and music were already making their appearance, did the snow finally come.

The first accumulated snow was brought on heavy winds over the course of last weekend.  What did follow were almost Arctic temperatures that meant outer layers for me went from tights and sweaters to ski jackets and down coats.  The first winter storm showed up today, and shed an even greater accumulation on top of that which had largely been ignored as of little consequence.  Not today though, snow plows came out, people are shoveling driveways, and I canceled a possible trip to another library sale.  Days like these give me zero incentive to stir beyond the precincts of our house.

Here are some photos I took for both weekends, past and current:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, those last photos were taken out of doors, after dark.  I felt somewhat restless, in spite of thoroughly enjoying my day off following a harrowing end to the week at work.  So, I bundled up in my snow suit, put on my Caterpillar snow boots with their surefooted tread, and put the little Nipper in his harness and clipped the leash on him, and away we went around the block.  I found it rather soothing to be out there in the light snow, thoroughly cocooned from the snow except for my face, but enjoying the gentle bite of the cold against my cheeks and eyelids.

Officially, winter is not for another three weeks, the solstice this year falls on December 21.  Clearly, though, winter is coming, and Old Man Winter has stolen the last few weeks of fall for himself.

Reading projects, and more changes

Yes, I have an agenda now, to schedule things in and remind myself to get things done.  It doesn't help if I don't write everything I need to do in there.  Like keep up with this blog.  I am making a note of my next scheduled post date right now.  Honestly!

Two months ago, I was starting out my grandly-titled (in my mind, anyway) "Year End Reading Project".  A Song of Ice and Fire (Books 1-4) had been languishing on my TBR (to-be-read) shelf for more than a year since my birthday of 2012, and I decided it was time to give them a go.  Or, I should say, another go.  I started reading A Game of Thrones in October 2012, but quit within the first hundred pages.  I simply couldn't get into the book, and the author's use of character names instead of chapter numbers almost guaranteed I would end up confused and lost about who was whom, much as I was the first time I read The Lord of the Rings.

However, I decided that four months left in the year and four books in my boxed set was serendipitous, so I embarked (again) on the journey into the fantasy of George R. R. Martin.  I resolved to read the books on my lunch break at work, and read something else on the weekends.  I bought myself a book to use as a book journal, so that I could keep people straight, then discovered that the books had appendices naming the major, and not a few of the minor,  characters.

Fast forward two months, and instead of being halfway through, I am very nearly done with all four books.  I have been sucked into the Westerosi universe, and leave only reluctantly.  As a consequence, I read the second book over the space of 4 days, and the third and fourth in about two weeks each.  I only managed to stay true to my original calendar with the first book.  The fifth is now on its way, ordered via Amazon.ca, thank goodness.

Since I took over the organization of our home finances, things have been somewhat more orderly.  After a mis-communication that saw us over-paying the hydro and under-paying the gas bills, G and I have worked out a system whereby he opens and sorts the mail, hands off all the bills to me, I input them into the spreadsheet I use for tracking, and all bills are sorted into 3 neatly labeled caddies (one for unpaid, two for paid).  At any point in time, I can hand him all outstanding bills if needed, or confirm all paid bills.  Although I pay everything online, I print the payment confirmations.  Computer systems do fail, occasionally.

Another recent contribution of mine to our "home economics", is the use of a menu plan for weeknight meals and grocery shopping.  For some many months, one of my main bones of contention with G has been how late we eat on weeknights.  Often it is not until he collects me after work that he turns his mind to what we will eat for dinner, and that usually means some amount of waiting for food to be prepared.  Jamaicans do not eat dinner at 9:30 p.m. very often, at least not the ones I know.  However, that was becoming a normal practice for us, and it began to annoy me to no end.  Two weeks ago, I decided to end this practice by using one of the dozen or more cookbooks we have as a basis for menu-planning.  Specifically, Betty Crocker's Big Book of Weeknight Dinners.

The results have been encouraging so far.  Rather than going to the supermarket every couple weeks and spending $300-400 to buy random items we might like to eat, and still complaining that there's nothing available to make dinner (or lunch for work), we select recipes for each night, plan our shopping list accordingly, and I make weeknight dinners now, with help from G where needed.  Leftovers become lunch the following day, and usually there are leftovers.  So far we have not spent more than $140 on each week, and it has not been necessary for me to purchase lunch (usually between $5 and $10 per day), or any items specifically for lunch (such as prepared salads).  Saturdays and Sundays, meals remain G's sole responsibility.

As of this week, and for the foreseeable future, I will not need a lunch anymore.  My hours have been cut at work, the usual "budget cutback" cry has become fashionable in my workplace.  It came as a blow, but with many of the major bills out of the way for this year, such as the property tax, I won't complain.  For the rest of the year, or until my hours go up again, we will just have to tighten the belt a little further.  As a Jamaican, this is nothing new to me.  I am new to being a part-time employee, having been employed full-time in salaried positions since I started working at 20, but with a new life comes new things.

Something new is up next tonight: With the end of the Showtime series Dexter, it became necessary for G and I to find a favourite series to spend some of our "couple time" watching.  After seeing my enthusiasm over the Game of Thrones book, he agreed to give the HBO series based on the books a try.  We are halfway through the first of three seasons, but I can confidently say we have a new favourite series!