Buddist monks, kittens and Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian friends!
For the first time, I'm actually here in Canada for Thanksgiving so I'm getting to find out what happens, which is rather exciting. I believe that I'll be on veggie peeling duty later :-)
I'm here safely and settled it. The flight wasn't as bad as I'd feared. I had to use my cane, which produced some unexpected benefits because I got put on the plane first along with the first-class passengers. So nobody got wacked as I tried to find my seat *g* For some reason, I didn't have anyone sitting next to me so I got to enjoy my window seat without worrying about disturbing someone every time I got up for a hobble and a stretch. The food was as...exciting as ever. I can't decide whether it was pasta or potatoes that they gave me. Hmmm.
The queue at security in Heathrow was nightmarish - if anyone is flying from there any time soon, make sure you leave lots and lots of time to get through to the departure lounge. There were people in the line getting dangerously close to having their gates closed before they got there.
The customs queue in Canada was almost as bad. I had some English people demonstrate how nice we all are by queue jumping me when I dropped my passport and had to retrieve it just as the queue moved. A few minutes later a very nice Canadian Buddist monk tried to get me to skip part of the queue and jump in before her. Which was very sweet :-)
Do you go to hell for looking at Buddist monks with less than heavenly interest?
I had an interesting day yesterday, too. My aunt and I were walking up the road to get the car and heard this very odd noise. It sounded like a weird bird, but not quite. We looked around for the source and found a tiny kitten lying in a ditch by the road. The poor thing was much too young to be outside, never mind lying in a ditch. Obviously, we had to rescue him when we couldn't find mummy cat or any sign of one. He seems to have been dumped, although how anyone could dump anything that cute is beyond me. When we got him home, we checked him over and he seems perfectly healthy, just very young. He took a few minutes to catch on to drinking milk out of a bowl and he hasn't got any interest in solids, so we think he was still nursing. Cue a rush to the store for kitten chow, special milk and anything else he might be able to eat. The poor thing was starving and exhausted, but otherwise OK. My aunt thought about keeping him, but her neighbour across the road has been looking for a kitten so the little mite has a new home with a very happy mistress.
If I didn't have to back to England, I would have kept him myself even though he'll need a lot of care for the next few weeks.
Altogether, it's been a busy couple of days and I haven't even been here forty-eight hours yet! So I'd better get upstairs and start peeling carrots :-)
For the first time, I'm actually here in Canada for Thanksgiving so I'm getting to find out what happens, which is rather exciting. I believe that I'll be on veggie peeling duty later :-)
I'm here safely and settled it. The flight wasn't as bad as I'd feared. I had to use my cane, which produced some unexpected benefits because I got put on the plane first along with the first-class passengers. So nobody got wacked as I tried to find my seat *g* For some reason, I didn't have anyone sitting next to me so I got to enjoy my window seat without worrying about disturbing someone every time I got up for a hobble and a stretch. The food was as...exciting as ever. I can't decide whether it was pasta or potatoes that they gave me. Hmmm.
The queue at security in Heathrow was nightmarish - if anyone is flying from there any time soon, make sure you leave lots and lots of time to get through to the departure lounge. There were people in the line getting dangerously close to having their gates closed before they got there.
The customs queue in Canada was almost as bad. I had some English people demonstrate how nice we all are by queue jumping me when I dropped my passport and had to retrieve it just as the queue moved. A few minutes later a very nice Canadian Buddist monk tried to get me to skip part of the queue and jump in before her. Which was very sweet :-)
Do you go to hell for looking at Buddist monks with less than heavenly interest?
I had an interesting day yesterday, too. My aunt and I were walking up the road to get the car and heard this very odd noise. It sounded like a weird bird, but not quite. We looked around for the source and found a tiny kitten lying in a ditch by the road. The poor thing was much too young to be outside, never mind lying in a ditch. Obviously, we had to rescue him when we couldn't find mummy cat or any sign of one. He seems to have been dumped, although how anyone could dump anything that cute is beyond me. When we got him home, we checked him over and he seems perfectly healthy, just very young. He took a few minutes to catch on to drinking milk out of a bowl and he hasn't got any interest in solids, so we think he was still nursing. Cue a rush to the store for kitten chow, special milk and anything else he might be able to eat. The poor thing was starving and exhausted, but otherwise OK. My aunt thought about keeping him, but her neighbour across the road has been looking for a kitten so the little mite has a new home with a very happy mistress.
If I didn't have to back to England, I would have kept him myself even though he'll need a lot of care for the next few weeks.
Altogether, it's been a busy couple of days and I haven't even been here forty-eight hours yet! So I'd better get upstairs and start peeling carrots :-)