There’s a story there…somewhere

Counting Cars

A train! This is always cause for stopping and rolling down the window, if at all possible, in my family. Everywhere. Even in Pickering.


So to park safely I missed getting a picture of the engines. But what’s a train without CN boxcars?

And tankers, flatbed cars, hopper cars…. This train was terrific!

But when it had passed we encountered a serious disagreement. My daughter said there were 146 cars while my son insisted there were 165.

There is no winning for a parent in this situation.

© Lizann Flatt, www.lizannflatt.com
No part of this blog may be used without written permission from the author.

Of Pickering, Power, and Parking Lots

This past weekend I found myself in Pickering, Ontario (last minor hockey event of the year). Being in the Greater Toronto Area in the last few days has made me realize that there are things I am not used to having to deal with. They are:

* Lack of parking spaces–everywhere!
* Lineups–everywhere!
* People running yellow lights–all the time!

At our hotel one night we couldn’t find a parking space anywhere so we, being the savvy country survivalists that we are, spotted a space where a snow pile was preventing its use, got out of our car, kicked the snow mound to flatten it out, and proceeded to park over top of it. Hah!

The parking lot to the arena was under huge electrical power towers. The lines hummed in a most eerie way.

I have to confess, though, that it was more eerie to find out that those four dome shapes just visible in the haze in the lower left were the nuclear power plant. I knew it was around but didn’t realize I would actually be able to see it!

The power towers marched on as far as I could see in both directions.

Most fascinating to me, though, was being close to the huge windmill (and one of those nuclear domes is slightly more visible in the lower left).

We wanted to get a closer look at this windmill so we asked a local for directions. He happily provided them (and possibly looked at us like we were weird seeing as he admitted he’d lived there his whole life and had never seen it closer himself).

The size of it is difficult to believe. Those are not evergreen bushes, they’re full blown trees. Of course, at this location I was steps from the nuclear power plant. Time to leave.

It’s great to be a tourist!

© Lizann Flatt, www.lizannflatt.com
No part of this blog may be used without written permission from the author.

Desperately Seeking Signs of Spring

This winter I’ve seen far too much of this:

So it was almost like this unknown thing had appeared in the sky yesterday, and the day before, when it was actually sunny for a change. But just to make sure I wasn’t going to get all completely happy or anything it was also cold as …well, you know.

Seems I wasn’t the only creature seeking sunshine. I noticed quite a few tracks to tell me that other animals had been about.

Here is the sign of the rabbit:

Note that it is beside the track of the automobilus domesticus of the Honda family, species “Odyssey”. And, below, the rabbit is perhaps late, late, late for a very important date.

Triple tracks below! The right hand track is the domestic feline “Marshmallow” while the left track is perhaps a fox, and the track crossing horizontally is a small rodent, I think.

And then I got all happy when I saw signs that the beavers had been out. Perhaps they’d been sunning themselves on top of their lodge whilst I was out forraging at the supermarket.


See their trails up to and on top of that bump? It’s a snow covered lodge, trust me. And then it looks like they went on some sort of frolick!?!? Check out this trail:

Wish I could’ve seen what made them do this:

Or maybe it wasn’t the beavers at all. Maybe it’s like those crop circles…we were visited by aliens and it’s, like, a message:
ZA!
(Translation: “We. Were. Here. Nah. Nyah. Nah. Nah. Nah. Nah.”)

Obviously you can see what lack of sunlight can do to a person. ZA!

© Lizann Flatt, www.lizannflatt.com
No part of this blog may be used without written permission from the author.