It was a Dark and Stormy Night...
... more on that in a moment, but first:
Monday was a quiet day, in more ways than one; It was a great day outdoors, and that meant that the ladies who normally show up for their Senior's Bowling on Monday didn't show up. They had told trixstir before that in good weather, they'd more likely be working in their gardens. That's perfectly understandable, particularly given the forecast for the next couple of days. This is May, Mid-May at that, and yet there was a forecast for rain and possible snow Tuesday Evening and Wednesday. This is Canada, and I've come to learn over the years that one can expect snow up until the May Long Weekend, particularly if you made any plans to go camping or other outdoor activities that weekend.
In any case, the weather on Monday was beautiful. I had an appointment to bring my truck into town to get the ruptured exhaust lines fixed, and Trixstir had a job interview at the Co-Op in the afternoon. I dropped the truck off at the shop, walked across the street to the hardware store to pick up the fluorescent light ballasts for the Bowling Alley, and then proceeded to the the Bowling Alley to mind the place while Trixstir went to her job interview. Trixstir came back from the interview long before the truck was ready, so we sat there together waiting for customers that never came. Again this is not unexpected; It's Seeding Time, and pretty much anyone who isn't working in town is working on a farm getting the crops into the ground. May through August is a slow time for Bowling, as there are no leagues running during those months, and most people are outdoors in decent weather. The shop called me ten minutes before they closed to let me know the truck was ready, so I trotted over as quickly as I could (which isn't that quickly given that I really need to get into better shape) to pick it up. While the truck was ready, the invoice wasn't, and this works to my benefit; They'll mail me the bill, and that gives me more time to pay for it. The truck runs great now, quieter than it has in ages, and it's back to full power now that the turbo charger is working again. Trixstir feels that her job interview went very well, and we should hear back from the Co-Op in a couple days.
On Tuesday morning, the weather was still wonderful. Bright and sunny, with barely a cloud in the sky. We used up the last of the hay-bale I had gotten last Thursday, and I called the fellow to see if I could come get the rest of the bales. Since his place was just outside of town, Trixstir and I also popped in to get a proper license plate for the flat-deck trailer. Unlike Alberta where you pay for a trailer-plate once, in Saskatcewan you have to renew your plate every year. The difference is that in Saskatchewan the cost of your plate includes insurance, whereas in Alberta extra insurance on your trailer is optional. I want the extra insurance anyway, so this isn't quite as bothersome as it would be otherwise. We loaded up with 52 bales of hay, which I got at a real steal. This is good Alfalfa hay, and I paid only $2 a bale for it because the guy just wanted to get rid of it. He usually used the large round bales for his cattle, and having to deal with the small squares was more trouble than it was worth to him. Alfalfa hay would normally be selling for at least $5 a bale, so this was a great deal! Out of the 52 bales, three of them had a touch of mould on one end. That's no problem, we separated those three from the rest and can just throw out the ends; The rest of the bale is perfectly fine.
We had borrowed a trailer from the guy who sold us the hay (since ours was still at the farm waiting for its plate) and when we got back to our farm we put a tarp over the hay expecting to unload it later in the day. We then hooked up our flat-deck trailer to the truck, as I had originally planned to pick up some of the equipment I had bought at the auction. By the time that was done, it was getting close to Noon, and there were signs that the weather was starting to change. Trixstir had taken the day off to help me get the hay and the equipment, so she was at the farm with me instead of in town. The kidling had music lessons at 5:30pm, and it was now unlikely that we would have had enough time to go get the equipment, load up, and get back. Also, with the weather changing I wanted to get the hay into proper storage before it got rained on, or worse.
It's been more than 20 years since I moved that many bales at once, and I'm still aching from it! We got it all neatly stacked in the garage next to the temporary stalls we had built for the horses. I've got it sitting on sheets of plywood which in turn are sitting on some 2x4s to keep the hay up off the floor and thus safe and dry. After that, I unhitched our trailer from the truck, reconnected the borrowed trailer, and returned it to its owner. By the time I got home and was reconnecting our trailer (again) the kidling got home from school. Trixstir took him to his lesson while I finished a few chores and made supper. Apparently the lesson went very well, and he's quite excited about the whole thing. After the main lesson the instructor had also let him try his hand on the drums, and says he's got a great sense of timing and rythem! This is news to me, but so long as he's enthusiastic about learning music that's just fine.
It was pouring rain at 7pm when I went to feed the horses, and of course just after I finished feeding them it stopped raining. Thanks Murphy. Strong winds from the West were blowing the rain into the horses' shelters, but by the next morning those winds had shifted to the North, and that brought...
SNOW, and lots of it. The wind howled all night long, waking me up several times. It sounded like the furnace coming on, and I kept waking up and then remembering that we don't have a furnace, we have a hot-water heating system, and then I'd fall asleep for a little while again. I woke up at about 6:15 from the sunlight peeking in past the blinds, and noticed that the clock was out. Uhoh. I peeked outside, and saw snow covering everything, and the wind whirling skiffs of it around. The battery backups on the computers were still beeping, so the power couldn't have been off for long. An automated message from the power company told me that the problems had started around 5am, and they expected to have it fixed by 7:30am. It actually came on again just after 6:30am, then went out again a few minutes later and stayed off until 7:30. Then it was on-again, off-again several times through the morning and early afternoon. The school-bus driver called to say she couldn't make it, so I had planned to take the kidling to school myself. The road looked pretty icy, but I still had the winter tires on the Explorer, and I had seen a few slow-moving vehicles on the road already. We got about 20 feet past our driveway when the Explorer started fish-tailing even at low speeds, so we turned around ASAP and came back home.
With no electricity, and the weather too foul to do anything outside, we stayed indoors to play a game. The one chosen was the classic "Game of LIFE" which has changed somewhat since the last time I ever played it. The basic game-play and board are still the same, but they've added things like "Career Cards", "House Cards", "Salary Cards" and "Stock Cards." I can't say if it's better or worse than the original version of game, but it was still an enjoyable way to spend some time together. By mid-Afternoon the power was back on and stable, and the Sun had come out and melted most of the snow. The wind was still howing outside (and still is now!) but at least things were thawing out again. Now that my power-tools would work again, I got Trixstir to help me move the old desk out of the computer room so I could put up the shelves on the wall behind it. These are adjustable shelves that need their braces screwed into the wall, and I needed the electric drill/driver to put the screws in. Each bracket has uses five screws, there are five of them, and the screws are 2.5" long to get through the bracket, wallboards, and into the stud. This is not the kind of work one does with a hand-held screw-driver; I did that once, when I first bought the house in Calgary and it's an experience I do not want to repeat.
The kidling had a 4H meeting in town in the evening, so he and Trixstir went to that as I fed the horses. I finished putting up the shelves while they were gone, and then relaxed for the rest of the evening. Today, before I put the desk back in place, I want to work on some wiring that will be impossible to reach once the desk is back. This is a project that is long overdue, and I suspect will take the better part of the day to complete. Tomorrow, the weather is supposed to be greatly improved and I hope to finally get to pick up the equipment that I bought at the auction. This is the Victoria Day long weekend coming up, and it's going to be a busy one!