Sunday, January 15, 2017
Rock Your Baby
A Sunday afternoon trek along the Sooke River and the construction site. I found an attractive rock and we wondered how we could get it back to the house without anyone noticing.
New Kid on the Block
If you followed Gibsons Nature Watch you would have seen my occasional posts about my Sorel Boots and the Canadian Tire lawn mower, my Honda powered friend that shared my life for over sixteen years. About three or four years ago, the lawn mower hit a huge rock when I was being dangerous in the culvert, and the incident came close to slicing off the end of my Sorel boot, and perhaps slightly worse, a couple of my toes.
The blade had detached when the keyed blade connector broke in two.
I sourced a replacement from Home Hardware and also replaced the distorted blade, but after that, the lawn mower was never the same, it had a slight vibration and shimmy and was, I expect, rather grumpy.
In early September, at the end of the growing season, I sold it at one of our pre-moving yard sales, a ten dollar bargain, I even included some gas, and demonstrated how the mower would still start. The chap who bought it shuffled off with a big smile.
So, here we are, four months later in our new location in Sooke and we (myself and my Sorel boots) have a new friend to accompany us on our walks around the yard.
We will keep you posted.
The blade had detached when the keyed blade connector broke in two.
I sourced a replacement from Home Hardware and also replaced the distorted blade, but after that, the lawn mower was never the same, it had a slight vibration and shimmy and was, I expect, rather grumpy.
In early September, at the end of the growing season, I sold it at one of our pre-moving yard sales, a ten dollar bargain, I even included some gas, and demonstrated how the mower would still start. The chap who bought it shuffled off with a big smile.
So, here we are, four months later in our new location in Sooke and we (myself and my Sorel boots) have a new friend to accompany us on our walks around the yard.
We will keep you posted.
Saturday, January 14, 2017
Stranger on the Shore
Running along the shore today, avoiding us as much as possible, were a bunch of Killdeer. This little chap was running along in little bursts, then stopping suddenly to forage, then on occasion, jetting off in a flash of tawny white, slender wings.
I was lucky enough to grab a half decent photograph with the Lumix.
I was lucky enough to grab a half decent photograph with the Lumix.
Friday, January 13, 2017
Normal Weekly Routine
If you followed the old blog, you would have seen that a few years ago we started using a five dollar breadmaker from the thrift store, and here we are, on another blog, but still with the normal weekly routine of baking a morning loaf. It took us a few minutes while making coffee this morning to set up the Panasonic and as usual, three hours later, it beeped three times and one of these appeared :
The cost of a loaf like this is fascinating, and worthy of note.
A 10kg bag of whole wheat flour is $6.50 and a loaf uses 375g. So, the flour costs 24 cents. A 4kg bag of sugar, $3.75 so the 3 teaspoons, 12g, cost 1 cent, the yeast costs $6.24 for 908g, so the cost per loaf is about 2.4 cents, salt costs less than 1 cent, water is (relatively) free and a splash of olive oil is perhaps another 7 cents. Add the hydro costs to bake, at 550w/hr during the 45 minute cooking cycle, plus a bit for the proving cycle and mixing, let's say, to be conservative, a kilowatt, then the cost is 9 cents. So, cost per loaf is less than 45 cents which is a fraction of the average cost of a loaf of whole wheat bread at the supermarket.
Karen and myself have just had a fresh, buttered crust of the new loaf, and it is marvellous, plus this basic whole wheat offering makes perhaps the best and freshest toast you can imagine.
Hungry yet?
The cost of a loaf like this is fascinating, and worthy of note.
A 10kg bag of whole wheat flour is $6.50 and a loaf uses 375g. So, the flour costs 24 cents. A 4kg bag of sugar, $3.75 so the 3 teaspoons, 12g, cost 1 cent, the yeast costs $6.24 for 908g, so the cost per loaf is about 2.4 cents, salt costs less than 1 cent, water is (relatively) free and a splash of olive oil is perhaps another 7 cents. Add the hydro costs to bake, at 550w/hr during the 45 minute cooking cycle, plus a bit for the proving cycle and mixing, let's say, to be conservative, a kilowatt, then the cost is 9 cents. So, cost per loaf is less than 45 cents which is a fraction of the average cost of a loaf of whole wheat bread at the supermarket.
Karen and myself have just had a fresh, buttered crust of the new loaf, and it is marvellous, plus this basic whole wheat offering makes perhaps the best and freshest toast you can imagine.
Hungry yet?
The State of the TV Nation - Sooke
I thought it would be a good idea to update where we are on our journey without cable TV, I did this three years ago on our Gibsons Nature Watch blog, and now that we are in Sooke, we should revisit the topic.
Graeme Wright, my buddy who lived in Ontario has now gone off to the left and retired in Nova Scotia, in a parallel world he has started his own blog, the South Shore Tidal Watch and it makes for fantastic reading (I have added a link over on the right of the screen).
Graeme, when he was still working, would often ask if there were any flaws in the financial plan, and our answer was always none. In December 2012 we had just "cut the cord" and gone off the cable TV mortgage, something that was costing about $85 a month, and we can say that over the four years we have saved something like $4000 and to be perfectly honest, we have a far better TV experience than we ever had with cable TV.
In the transition to Sooke, we changed our phone and Internet Service provider, at the moment it is Telus fibre and if we look at the package cost, we're paying $10 a month more now. Our yearly savings have reduced to something like $900 and we expect, as streaming becomes more popular, that these companies will continue to edge up the costs of their internet plans.
In Gibsons we could receive a few over the air HD channels, but here in Sooke we are surrounded by mountains and high ground which block the transmitters, so we have lost some live TV, but we have also found some IPTV channels that are live, and overall, our viewing choices continue to expand, not diminish.
If there are any flaws in this cord cutting plan, we have yet to find them.
Will update again in a few years time.
Graeme Wright, my buddy who lived in Ontario has now gone off to the left and retired in Nova Scotia, in a parallel world he has started his own blog, the South Shore Tidal Watch and it makes for fantastic reading (I have added a link over on the right of the screen).
Graeme, when he was still working, would often ask if there were any flaws in the financial plan, and our answer was always none. In December 2012 we had just "cut the cord" and gone off the cable TV mortgage, something that was costing about $85 a month, and we can say that over the four years we have saved something like $4000 and to be perfectly honest, we have a far better TV experience than we ever had with cable TV.
In the transition to Sooke, we changed our phone and Internet Service provider, at the moment it is Telus fibre and if we look at the package cost, we're paying $10 a month more now. Our yearly savings have reduced to something like $900 and we expect, as streaming becomes more popular, that these companies will continue to edge up the costs of their internet plans.
In Gibsons we could receive a few over the air HD channels, but here in Sooke we are surrounded by mountains and high ground which block the transmitters, so we have lost some live TV, but we have also found some IPTV channels that are live, and overall, our viewing choices continue to expand, not diminish.
If there are any flaws in this cord cutting plan, we have yet to find them.
Will update again in a few years time.
Monday, January 9, 2017
Monday
It was warm today, we just spent an hour or so dawdling along the beach, doing nothing but perfecting the art of the dawdle.
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