And did I tell you about my Christmas?

And while I'm being Ms. Whingefest 2008, let me tell you about my new tradition when it comes to Christmas presents: I don't get to keep them. Second year in a row that I have to return them. This year all that I really, really wanted was a clock radio that was also an iPod dock. I have trouble keeping my iPod battery charged, and I always get tangled up in my headphone wires, so this would have been ideal. I also wanted an iTunes gift card. Easy Peasy. So my wonderful Dar bought me a clock-dock. Yay! Well it turns out that I have an iPod model that isn't compatible with it (it's a Classic 80 GB), so that has to be returned; I doubt that I'll find anything that will work with my particular iPod, actually. And the iTunes card that Maddie bought me was defective. Honest to God. When I scratched off the little shield in back to reveal the redemption code? The whole damn thing disintegrated. The code is completely indecipherable. All over the receipt is stamped in big letters: NO RETURNS. NO REFUNDS. So that's out. And really I can't blame them. It would be an easy scam to redeem the card and then deface the code in order to get a refund or an exchange. Oh, and Dar bought me a battery-operated timer, because I am extremely anal about timing things. It's weird, I know. Anway, the timer? Doesn't work. I'm hoping it's just a bad battery that came with it.

On the other hand, I got the magazines I asked for from my brother (I'm a magazine junkie), and Mark bought me a book about the writing and filming of The Wire - which is one of my favorite TV shows ever - and a DiscWorld book that looks like fun. And then my Dar also gave me a beautiful piece of estate jewelry: it's a worked silver pin of a flower pot with little garnet leaves on the flower. While garnet is not my birthstone or in any way connected with my birth month or my astrological sign, it is definitely my stone. I love it.

Then there was a book of historical photos of Annie Oakley (I know!) and the soundtrack to Pushing Daisies (I know!) and socks and candy and protein bars and a pair of highly-inappropriate-for-farm-use abstract print gloves (from my SIL) that I kind of love. So it wasn't at all a bad Christmas; it's just a harbinger of a trend I could do without, eh.

Oh, and no Bailey's. OK, I got a bag of Bailey's filled chocolates. Which were yummy and gone in a few hours. But wait! In my Christmas stocking was a scratch card - and I won $10. I can buy a bottle of Bailey's! Win \o/ OK, It's all better now :)

Baby, you can light my fire

We've been having wild, wild weather. Yesterday the temps got up to 50F/10C, and with it came a light, steady rain and a heavy fog. Last night the winds came roaring in big time and the temperature started to drop. By this morning most of the several feet of snow we had was gone. Of course a lake appeared to take its place, but the winds even took care of that. And then the temps plummeted and it all turned to ice. It also knocked out our power, which meant no lights, no heat, and no water.

The wind was just about unbelievable. It blew open the doors on the barn overnight. Poor alpacas :( Stuff was flying around all over the paddock. (Or so I hear. I was inside dealing with an asthma attack.) A couple of the cats snuck outside, and I was fairly certain I was going to see them get airborne before they made their way back inside. It blew the window in our screen door off kilter. We had to drive into town, and we came to a dead stop because the wind had knocked over a big-ass tractor-trailer. We didn't see an ambulance, so I'm assuming the driver was able to walk away. I saw a lot of tree damage along the way, and more than one roof had missing tiles.

There are two fast food places in Listowel: MacDonald's and Tim Horton's. Both of them were packed. The grocery store was pretty busy, too, and I found out that the electricity (or hydro as they say around here) was out all around the area. Only Listowel itself seemed to have been spared.

We were without power for going on seven hours. I know that seems like nothing when compared with what my New England friends went through after the ice storm, but we were dealing with very cold temperatures, too. We hauled out a buttload of candles and lanterns. It was kind of a happy coincidence that this happened on the last night of Hanukkah; all nine candles were lit, and it added a lovely glow if not a lot of heat. Dar had made a fire downstairs, but it wasn't catching like it usually did. It didn't seem that bad in here while it was still a bit light outside - we just bundled up. But when the dark fell, I just got colder and colder. I really wanted something warm to drink, but with no electricity and no water, that was right out. Mark took off into the big city to try to find some fire starter logs to help things along in the fireplace. As it happened, the power came back on about 20 minutes after he got home. Figures :)

The first thing I did when the lights came on was run to the bathroom. I hate that we lose our water access whenever we lose our power. Especially since I have to take diurectics for my blood pressure. Oops. I usually try to have buckets of water ready to use to fill the toilet tank when the weather looks iffy, but for some reason I didn't get that done today. I should have figured that we'd lose power because of the wind. And to be honest, I'm not all that certain it's going to stay on all night. It's flickered a few times already. Just let the damned wind die down, OK?

We had a couple close calls with the cats and the open flames, but no one got their whiskers or their fur singed, so that was good. Jane and Lexy ended up in the heating ducts, chasing each other around. I don't know how, I don't know why, but they were incredibly noisy about it. Everyone has calmed down. Actually, now that I stop to listen, I think the wind is finally dying down, too. Now it's down to its usual gale force instead of Category 5 hurricane force. Yay!

I need to get some sleep. Hopefully tomorrow will be less eventful, eh.