The Animals Came By Twosies, Twosies, Twosies...

When I last blogged on Friday I had visions of a Monday post full of Thanksgiving weekend adventures...I spent the night at my grandparents, went for a hike with my mom and grandmother, picked cranberries for cranberry sauce. We had Thanksgiving dinner and I ate lots of pie...it was all very blogworthy. 

And then it started to rain.

And it rained some more.

And before too long the quaint little brook that runs behind my house looked like this:

And then it continued to rain.

And rain.

And rain some more. And roads started to look like this (the photo on the left was actually taken yesterday after it had finally stopped raining):

And as much as I love rain the novelty starts to wear off a little when you have a lake in your backyard and your great-aunts freezer is floating in her basement. When it finally stopped raining we got over 250 mm (that's almost 10 inches) in just under 24 hours...and it got windy. And around here when it gets windy we lose our power. Which normally isn't a big deal because we have a generator that powers the essentials (and some creature comforts i.e. television) except that in the midst of all the rain we loaned our generator to my uncle so he could continue to power the pump that was keeping his basement from being transformed into a pool. 

Late Tuesday night it stopped raining and the wind had died down enough that we got our generator back and our power came back for good shortly after supper time last night (Wednesday). So things are starting to get back to normal. We were actually really lucky, the water that came in our basement was a small puddle, there's a lot of people who have entire bottom floors full of water and lost a lot of stuff due to water damage. 

Needless to say all that blogging I was planning to do this week went out the window. On the bright side I finished two books, did some NaNoWriMo planning, and I spent lots of time using my camera. 

Linking up with Stuff & Things.

Hurricanes & Dinner Dates

Before I launch into 1000 excuses about why I have failed so miserably at "Blogging Every Day in July" let me tell you about my week. 

This past session started off with a hurricane warning. So the day before the campers arrived the director and myself made an emergency trip to town to buy more rope/tarps/bungee cords to secure stuff down plus enough lanterns for each of the cabins to have one incase we lost power. While we were in town the counsellors back at camp filled all the bathtubs with water and took everything outside inside. You really don't realize just how many projectiles you have around until you're preparing for 100 km winds. 

Camper Drop Off was more chaotic than usual since a dozen or so campers decided to come the next day rather than drive in a hurricane to get to camp. Luckily the winds didn't really pick up until later on in the afternoon after the majority of the campers had arrived. I say luckily because this meant the counsellors were able to entertain the campers while the director & I dealt with the hurricane. 

At one point "dealing with the hurricane" meant standing on the start of our dock with a walkie-talkie watching for it to break loose while we waited for the maintenance guy to come over to do a quick repair job because the waves and wind were hitting at just the right angle to jiggle the bolts holding the dock together loose.  We weren't super worried about the dock because that's easy enough to replace…what we were concerned about was that attached to the dock is our boat so if the end of the dock was going to break lose and float away the boat was going along for the ride. 

The rest of the week followed suit and I don't think I've ever been happier for a Day 7 to come along so I can get my life in order again. Including getting back to blogging. 

The prompt for today is Five People (Dead or Alive) I would like to have dinner with. 

1.  Ellen DeGeneres: Not only is she hilarious but she has so much compassion for other people. I'd love to hang out with her for a few hours and listen to her talk. 
2. Shane Claiborne: This guy fascinates me. If you haven't heard about him before you need to google him right away. I love how passionate his is about his faith and how how intentional he is about doing what HE feels called to do even if it goes against the mainstream church. I'd love to share a meal with him and have some seriously deep discussion. 
3. Laura Ingalls Wilder: I will always love Little House on the Prairie. I have read the books thousands of times and I never get tired of the stories. I would love to meet her in person and hear her stories directly from her with added details and insight. 
4. Kelly Stamps: I don't think there are too many bloggers out there who aren't at least semi-familar with Kelly's blog Kelly's Korner, it's one of the first blogs I really started reading on a regular basis. I just think she is the sweetest and although she's perhaps a little more conservative than I am I would love to sit down with her and listen to her talk about her faith. She just seems like such a genuinely nice person who really desires to use her talents and gifts to make a difference.
5. Taylor Swift: This is my fun pick. T-Swift would probably be okay with just grabbing some fast food and eating it while laughing and giggling about life. And then we'd bake cookies for dessert and everything would be fun and sparkly. 

Snow Day Roulette

During university whenever there was a snowstorm in the forecast my friends and I liked to play what we called "Snow Day Roulette". The game was pretty straight forward - you could have a few drinks/stay up late/not do the assignment all in hopes that the next day classes would be cancelled and you'd be free to recover from your few drinks/sleep in/enjoy another full day of procrastination.

So when the weather forecast looked like this Tuesday night I was faced with a new grown up job version of Snow Day Roulette.

Except that in Grown Up Land my choices were more along the lines of not choosing my outfit or packing a lunch the night before. I know. Livin' on the edge.

Wednesday morning I woke up at 7 and checked my phone to be greeted by the glorious message that work was in fact closed for the day.

My Snow Day was exactly what a needed I wore my favourite extra grubby $10 Wal-Mart jogging pants all day long, drank two cups of coffee and at least 3 cups of tea. Enjoyed homemade waffles and played board games with the roomies. 

And I won't lie this morning when work wasn't closed I was pretty annoyed. The roads were really sketchy and I absolutely despise winter driving. Plus it was kind of a long day at work.

The good news is tomorrow is Friday which means I can wear jeans to work and I have no plans to work this weekend! Depending on the weather I may go on an adventure to visit with H. on Saturday but we may be getting more snow. (Seriously, I am SO ready for spring!)

My snow day also seemed to have re-kindle my blogging inspiration! I've got some post ideas planned for the next few days and have been taking steps to contact folks about a new design. 

Life is looking up!