A day of rainbows

Today was a day full of weather changes.  Fog, sunshine, storm clouds, hail, rain and rainbows.  I couldn't believe all the changes that I was seeing.  I saw 3 rainbows in the period of 1 hour.  All this occurred as I was driving west to meet up with Jay and Laura and the girls.  We agreed to meet halfway where I would then pick up Laura and the girls so that we could spend part of the March break together.

There were bolts of lightning coming down from the clouds.  I wished that I had my good camera with me.  I wasn't too happy with the hail, but thankfully it didn't last long.  I suspect that I encountered two storm fronts coming today.  The wind was quite strong and before you knew it, the sun was out again.

Here are a few photo's that I took with my phone.

A day in NOTL

Our plan was to wake up at 4:30 this morning and try to catch a beautiful sunrise.  Sadly it wasn't to be.  All night long I coughed and coughed.  Poor Ralph, I don't think he got too much sleep last night. At 4:30 when I woke up, I told Ralph I wasn't feeling up to going.  This isn't like me at all as I love going out to take pictures.  I just didn't feel the greatest.  We slept till 7:00 and got up at that time. We had ordered some pies from the Pie Plate so we needed to go and I didn't want Ralph to go their all by himself.  Ralph made us a nice smoothie for breakfast and then we headed out to "Starbucks".  After that we drove towards Niagara on the Lake.  It turned out to be an amazing day.  I'm glad that we went.  We did some birthday shopping first and then headed towards the wineries.  It was nice to walk around and see how things are starting to grow.  From there we went to the Pie Plate and picked up our pies.  We contemplated having lunch there but chose to drive to Johnny Rocco's instead.  We enjoyed a really nice relaxing lunch and then headed towards Jordan.  There was an old boat that we wanted to photograph.  We had a great day!

Our grandchildren

This weekend we enjoyed a nice visit with Laura and the kids.  Jay is in Japan with work and won't be returning until next week.  It's nice to spend the time all together.  Tomorrow we're going to celebrate Brody's 3rd birthday. It's amazing how fast the time has flown by.

Morning Sunrise

As I have been driving back and forth to Barrie helping my Mom with her appointments I have been blessed with some beautiful sunrises.  This one was from Thursday of this week.  As I was driving up the highway the sky just burst into flame.  I was frantically trying to find a place to pull over and take a picture.  As I approached the gas station near King City I pulled off and drove to the far corner.  At this point in time the red was starting to fade away already. It's amazing how quickly the sun came up and the colour went away.

Denver, Colorado - Feb 2-5, 2016

I was invited to go on a business trip with my "old team" to Denver, Colorado to meet with the Vendor that we work with.  I was really touched that they wanted me along and happy to join them in this meeting. We flew out on Tuesday afternoon and returned home late on Friday.  We had been cautioned to prepare for the elevation change by drinking plenty of water and closely monitoring for headaches.  Some breathing difficulties might also be experienced.  I kept myself well hydrated and had no issues with headaches and I didn't find that I had any problem with the breathing either.


Denver is a beautiful city, filled with history.  I took advantage of my visit by getting up early each morning and took hour long walks exploring the city.  The weather was beautiful and the temperature moderate.  I didn't know this but they get over 300 days per year of sunshine. I wished we had that in Toronto.

We met daily at the Vendors office which is located in a Historic home..  It was built in 1890 and is referred to as the Butters House.  It was beautiful and I could envision Ralph and I living in a home like this.  There was a fireplace in almost every room and even one right at the entrance.  They certainly must have had to cut alot of wood.  Throughout the home you saw Oak trim which added to the warmth of the house.  There were beautiful stained glass windows going up to the 2nd story and the other windows were still the original glass.  It was beautiful.  The fixtures were all original which really blended well with the home.  The offices were on the 2nd and 3rd floors and the conference room was on the main floor.  It was a 3 story home with a carriage house in the back which was also converted to offices. 

We ate some pretty amazing meals while we were in Denver.  I especially enjoyed one restaurant -Vesta Dipping Grill where I enjoyed the Venison. Each entree came with dipping sauces to use as a compliment to your meat. The menu proposed two sauces but you also could change them for a wide range of other choices.  It was a really interesting compliment to the meal.  As an appetizer they had a cheese and meat platter that was set out which fed us all.  The food was really tasty.

Cheese & Meat Platter

Mixed platter served with house made mustards, pickles, candied walnuts, and black pepper truffle honey:

cheeses gorgonzola piccante, dutch girl gouda, schnebelhorn, casatica du bufola, house-made burrata

house made meats duck rillettes, salami, masala chicken galantine, beef bresaola, spicy coppa

Madras grilled venison   

Pommes frites, ginger ale oyster mushrooms, dried cherry butter reduction
SUGGESTED SAUCES: sambal aioli**, pineapple pedy marmalade

We weren't that close to the mountains and really only saw them when we were driving back to the airport.  They looked amazing and it would have been awesome to ski there.  Maybe another time and visit.  It was a busy couple of days, but I enjoyed it very much.

Home made chicken stock

Over the weekend, I thought I would try to make some home made chicken stock.  I went to the butcher and purchased 5 lbs of chicken necks, wings and backs and placed them in a deep stockpot.  To this I added 3 carrots (cut into 2 inch pieces), 3 celery stocks (cut into 2 inch pieces), 1 parsnip (cut into 2 inch pieces), 1 large bunch of parsley (roughly chopped) and one onion chopped. I then added 2 tsp of kosher salt as I figured we could increase later if needed and filled the pot.   I let it simmer for about 6 hours.  The house smelled so amazing.  Once it was ready, I strained all the liquid out of the pan and threw away the vegetables.  I picked through the bones and saved some of the chicken meat to be used in the soup and placed the stock (in the pan) in the fridge.  This morning I scraped off the fat from the top and then filtered the stock through cheesecloth.  I now have 1.5 bags of home made stock.  I can't wait to make a full pot of soup with it next weekend.

Retired - First week

So it's been a week since I retired.  I have to truthfully say that I haven't thought too much about work which is a good thing.... I think.  I've been busy.  I went out on Monday morning to take a few pictures of the sunrise.  Sadly there was no colour in the sky.  I didn't really see that much (and had forgotten to bring coin for the meter), so I didn't stay too long at the lake.  I took a few pictures and I hope to come back soon to take some more when there is more colour in the sky.

Driftwood - Lake Ontario

I knitted 4 scarves this week.  I think I better slow down with the knitting, but it was an opportunity to get use to working with yarn again.  I found a couple of really nice yarn stores that I am sure to visit again.

Baby blue Roving (100%  wool) with embroidery floss

Hand spun wool - NOTL

Cream and Brown Scarf - Romni Wools

Purple Scarf - Romni Wools

I spent a day with my working friends at the Nottawasaga Inn. It was our way of saying goodbye and my boss asked me to join them during one day of their 3 day conference.  We had a lot of fun. We went walking around the golf course and then later in the evening played a fun round of Mini Golf and charades.

Grace, Colin, Steve, Matthew

Golf Course - Nottawasaga

I've spent many hours reviewing Youtube video's as I become acquainted with my camera.  It is so nice to have this time to do this without feeling that I should be working on something else.  My camera has some amazing features on it.  I've discovered that I can manage my camera remotely using my phone.  How cool is that.  As well, I have a feature on it that merges three pictures (over exposed, under exposed and regular exposure) to give you the best result.  This is best used on a sunny day where your camera has difficulty figuring out which is the best exposure. As well, I also discovered that I can take multiple pictures on the same frame for some creative fun.  So much to learn and remember.

Next week, I have been invited to go to Denver, Colorado for a meeting with one of our vendors.  We will use this meeting for me to handover the controls of one of our systems to another manager at Bell Mobility.  I was really touched that my boss asked me to join them.  It will be a 4 day meeting.  I'm excited to go, as I have never been to Denver before so it will be fun to see a new city.  As well, it will be nice to say my goodbyes to a group of people that I have worked very closely with over the last two years.  After this meeting, work will be completely finished.

Today I practiced with my camera and took a few pictures of my Amaryllis.  They are so beautiful this year and full of bloom.  It was a good opportunity to try a few new things and also learn a bit more about Light room (a photo developing software).  Last week Claudia and I spent a day together learning some of the fundamentals of this software.  It has a lot of potential and  is very easy to use.