Window replacement

As you can see, the seal is broken in the window on the left. This actually was the 2nd replacement but was due for replacement because the window broke either in transport or during installation (there is a small crack in the bottom outside corner).

In order to for the window guys to be able to work without being bothered by the dogs, I put them in the kitchen and then put the towel rack in front of the door (because Taz knows how to open the doors). We have a towel rack by the back door to hold the towels we wipe the dogs feet with when they come in. Another reason to have these doors closed was that it was -27C that day, so it would keep the cold air from getting into the whole house.

Here are the guys trying to remove the clips that held the old window in place. Steve Lalonde, owner of New Look Windows, is kneeling, and his assistant (I think it was Jeff) is standing in the blue coat. Because this window was essentially a single pane, there was a lot of ice/frost on it. There was a lot of ice on all of the windows because Steve said our humidity was too high. (See photo below for example.) The new window was slightly bigger in both dimensions than the old one, so Steve had to take the shims out.

Replacing this window is the last item outstanding on the list from Tarion. Unfortunately, the window cracked when Steve was putting it in, so he will have to order another replacement. He said he had an order coming in 2-3 weeks, so we won't have to wait more than a year this time. That will be the fourth replacement for this window.

This photo shows what the ice buildup was like on the windows. The one getting replaced had more on it though. The white moulding adjacent to the window snaps into a little track on the window frame and holds the window in place. The bottom moulding was difficult to remove because the ice was holding the piece in place.

We had a lot of condensation and frost on the family room windows. Steve said we needed to turn down our humidifer. We had it set to 50% because the Torlys people said it needed between 30%-60%. Steve said that was way too high. I looked up on the web and found a recommendation by Jon Eakes that said maximum of 25% RH (relative humidity) when is is -18C to -24C, and a max of 20% RH down to -30C and 15% RH below that. So clearly it was too high. We have been getting some mould on the windows too, and Steve said that shows the RH is too high. I have sent an email to the Torlys people so will see what they have to say.

As it isn't normally below -20C here in Ottawa, I have set the humdifier to 40% RH - will see how that goes. Oh, and we have our ceiling fans on too, to move the air around and reduce condensation on the windows. Steve recommended that we remove the screens for the winter, so we have done that as well.

Fun winter day

This is a view of the Christmas lights we put up outside. I have several strings of red lights that run along the driveway, these help me know where the driveway is when I am doing the snowblower when it is dark and the snow is blowing. On the tree I had hung up several strings of red, green, purple, and pink. I have no idea why the purple ones look blue and the pink ones look purple. If you know, please leave a comment. These are all the LED lights, so the colours are nice and bright and pure.

We went for a walk on the lake. Tawny, Taz, and Max had a fun time running and sniffing.


We saw these bush wolf tracks when we were walking on the lake. We know they are bush wolf tracks because Freda saw the wolf crossing the lake this morning.

The wind made interesting sculptures in the snow. The weather had been very cold, so the particles of snow were quite fine and could blow around quite easily. In some places, the drifted snow was quite dense and could easily support Tawny and Taz without them breaking through.


Tawny and Max sniffing, because that's what dogs do best (besides eating, and besides looking cute, and besides sleeping, and besides playing, and besides... well, you get the idea).


Here we are walking home, and Max is jumping around Tawny, who is tired and doesn't appreciate his energy, she probably was thinking, "Youth is wasted on puppies." Taz had lots of energy to growl at Max, telling him to behave in dog talk.

Some Downy woodpeckers have been visiting our feeder. Although they have eaten at the bell shaped seed hanging in the orange mesh bag, they prefer the suet feeder. We have seen these woodpeckers banging away at some older trees in our "forest", and also on other peoples' property.


After a hard day's play, it's time for sleep.

A full moon

There was a full moon today. Freda took this photo around dusk with her camera, and you can see how bright the moon is. There is a reflection of the flash off the glass there because her camera automatically fired up the flash - whoops! It's a pain having to turn the flash on/off on these cameras. I wish there was a button that would just be on/off instead of auto/on/red-eye/off.

This was taken as we were going to visit friends for supper. The moon is very bright.

I stopped on the way and took this photo. The moon was so bright but it doesn't look that way in this photo. You can see a lot of sensor noise due to low light levels on. I had to do some post-processing on this one, including some noise reduction, but it is still marginal.

This is Lily, she is about 11 months old and she is a pretty young girl. When we rang the door bell, we got "hello" and then "I thought it was next Saturday that you were coming over?" Whoops! My bad! They invited us to stay for a cup of tea but my headache was too throbbing, especially considering the stupid mistake I made.

After 20 cm of snow

We were forecast to get 20-30 cm of snow, but we supposedly only received 20 cm of the white stuff. You can see that we did get some in this pano of the sunset, but not a whole lot.


After a strenuous play, both Tawny and Taz are enjoying their supper. This is actually a rare scene at our house because Taz has such a strange eating schedule. Tawny - not so much: put some food in front of her and she eats it.

Walking the dogs

I was walking Tawny and Taz in the morning (Jan 6th) and Taz noticed something in the trees and starting whimpering when he gets all excited. I couldn't see anything, but I could see some branches moving a bit. I figured it was a squirrel but wanted to check it out.


Here's a close-up of the trees with the squirrel. I circled it so you can see it for yourself. They really blend in but Taz has the amazing senses - eyes, ears, nose - to be able to pick them out from quite a distance.


January 6th was a beautiful but cold day, but that doesn't stop Tawny from wanting to play. We have to make sure that Taz has a "bone" (rawhide roll) or another toy to keep him occupied because otherwise he will steal the toy right from Tawny's mouth. She is a happy dog that is willing to share so she gives it up to him. Silly girl!

It had been cold for quite a time so we hadn't been down to see the horses. As it wasn't so cold this day, we walked down to see Cooper (horse on the right) and his stable mate (don't know his name) and brought them some nice juice carrots. We bought a bag of carrots for their Christmas present but hadn't been able to share it with them because of the cold.

We had snow forecast for tomorrow so I took this photo of Tawny and Taz to document how little snow we really have, which is really just a light dusting...

Sunset pano Jan 5/09

January 5, 2009 pano

Sun is starting to set. It was clear cold day. Not too much snow on the ground. We could use more so we have sufficient runoff in the spring, but we have some time I guess.

Dog play

January 4, 2009 pano

I took another pano this afternoon, on our way back from a long walk and play. The dogs are exhausted and have been laying down sleeping ever since we got home (sleeping all the time except for eating their supper, that is). Tawny was playing with her ball and Taz was carrying his "bone" (rawhide roll) around - you can't really see it in this photo because it is a panorama. You can see that I didn't take enough photos for this panorama, as there is black areas in the sky. (I am experimenting with different software to try to fill that in, but am not expecting anything.)

This is a close-up of Tawny with her ball. It is actually a ball that came out of a well-used Water Wubba. Basically the material holding the two balls together (a tennis ball and this ball) were the things that made the Wubba float. We can't quite figure out why Tawny likes this ball so much - maybe it's the texture? or that it makes a wheezing sound when she bites on it? or that it is so big that she has to keep her mouth open wide (like at the dentist)?

Here's a photo of Taz carrying the rawhide. Pictures of Taz don't turn out too well except in quite bright light conditions, as you can see from this photo.

I discovered this morning that we had another bit of roof damage from the high winds last week. You can see a tab of the shingle is missing below the first leg of the H in "Here". I guess I will need to purchase another tube of that roofing repair stuff. I think I still have a tab from another shingle that I can use to fill in the gap.

Hockey Night in Carp

Some good friends just down the road had an urgent road trip come up, and asked us if we could look after their daughers on Saturday evening (Jan 3rd) and take one of them to her first hockey game. We were very happy to help out. Things were a bit rushed for supper, but there was no problem because we had already planned to have pizza, so we ordered it a bit early, ate, and then started to get ready for Maddy's first game of the season.

Here is Madelaine (or Maddy), getting her equipment on (aka armour!) at home before we left. Those disembodied hands are Maddy's mom helping with the straps.

Here we are at the rink. Maddy has her skates and her team's jersey on, and with the exception of her helmet, is ready to go... I think she's pretty happy about it -- what do you think??

Here is Freda and Emma (Maddy's sister) fooling around while waiting for the game to start.

All the players' names were announced, just like in the NHL. It was very very fun to watch the game. There was a big size difference (maybe 18 inches in height!) between the smallest and biggest kids, but they were all having fun and enjoying themselves, skating and playing hockey.

I tried to take some photos of Maddy when she was on the ice, but they were all very poor because the lighting wasn't bright enough for a good photo, and the camera flash isn't powerful enough to illuminate the scene. Nevertheless, I was able to get a few passable photos. This is Maddy, on the left with the pink laces and blue/white socks, driving to the net with the puck

It was quite a cold evening to be at an outdoor rink, but it just made the hot chocolate from the canteen even more delicious!!

Flowers don't do so well in the cold....

January 3, 2009 pano

Our neighbours kids were out clearing some of the snow off the ice so they could skate and play a bit of hockey. This is a pano so you can't see the kids activities too clearly.

Here's a better view of the kids clearing the snow off the ice surface. The ice was very very smooth because we had a melt a while ago and then it froze quite quickly with not much wind. If it freezes slowly, with windy conditions, the ice gets a lot of ripples on it and is not easy to skate on.


After we took the dogs out for their morning play/walk, we went to get some groceries. When we were going to take the dogs out in the afternoon, we found a basket with some flowers on the porch. The beautiful plant was frozen solid! This photo was taken about five minutes after we brought the flowers inside, you can see the flowers are quite limp here.

This photo was taken after about half an hour. We need to cut off all the limp/broken stems to see if anything survived the deep freeze situation. I doubt anything did, but we have yet to see. Freda called the neighbours to thank them for the beautiful flowers and found out their girls had brought them over. I guess the girls don't know that cold can kill plants. I suspect that the cold just from carrying them over would have done them in, since it was -17C or something like that.

At least it wasn't -42C here today like it was in Edmonton!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everybody!!

Update to some earlier stories about coyotes: we found out that these were not coyotes but are what are locally known as brush wolves - they are larger than coyotes and smaller than the classic wolf. Apparently coyotes don't get any bigger than 35 lbs around here.