By Benoit Rochon - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64014827

These poppies placed on the Canadian Tomb of the Unknown Soldier honour the dead. The poppies, provided by the Canadian Legion, are purchased f rom them and the monies raised are used to support the Legion and the soldiers still living who need and want that support. It is not as easy this year as in other years to buy a poppy, but a very small effort will find one or find another way to support our soldiers and veterans.

They need our support.

This year is also a year to honour our health care workers and the essential workers who make sure our food and other necessities are available for us and reach those of us who are isolated. Canada is showing itself to have strong and generous citizens in many areas. My father fought in WWII, as did my father-in-law. I think they would both be proud of what their country has become.

PS. The Legion is selling masks. Nice ones. 

 'Gang aft agley'...

The presently in foreign climes daughter asked me to write her up a description of how maple syrup is made. She gives bottles of the stuff as gifts and ends up explaining what it is. So, I set off to make her a booklet, with illustrations, one that she could use just the photographs of or hand to someone who wanted more information. And I do have photos, lots and lots and lots of them, from our quarter century of making the stuff.

It took me two days to extract the photos, organize them (um, sort of) and write the text. I have a fine colour printer and my plan was to print off a copy in booklet form, put the text and photos onto a USB, and mail her the result, along with a couple of other things.

Several weeks ago, a good friend and I ventured into The City, and I stocked up on cartridges for this printer. I was all set, I thought, smugly.

Silly me.

Test pages printed, at first not spaced properly, but I solved that. Loaded in the matte paper that makes a good booklet. The printer spit out five pages of the nine I wanted. And quit. Red button flashing. I reloaded. The printer spit out two blank pages, and flashed. Repeat. Spit. Flash. 

This is not the first time this printer has done this to me. The last time it balked, I searched on line and found a fix. I printed off the instructions to use should the wretched thing do it again.

A frantic search did not turn up the instructions. Nowhere. No how. 

A day passed, with repeated tries on my part interspersed with loading and  unloading the washer and the drier. Spit. Flash.

I finally went back to the basic loading instructions and told the [censored] machine that it was being loaded with plain paper in a different size than I was actually using.

It spit out two blank pages and then proceeded to print the rest of the text and photos. Not on the proper paper, no, because I had loaded test paper. 

There is now a booklet on its way to the foreign climes daughter with five pages printed on fine matte paper and four pages printed on flimsy stuff that does not do the colour justice. But it is done and mailed.

And my fine new car reset its clock all by itself to Eastern Standard Time.

You win some. You lose some. 

 

We decided on a pizza night at supper time and as we are too far away to be in the delivery area, I drove into the village at dusk to pick it up. It was dusk on the way in and the moon was at that stage of waxing when it looks like a billowed sail, not tossed upon cloudy seas this time, but rather breasting serenely through cloud fog, intent on its journey. We had snow earlier, and it lay up around our place but was only shining wetness down in the village. 

By the time I drove back it was full dark and since it was only my second time using the headlights of the new car, I had a slightly stressful few minutes remembering how to dim and raise them. That turned out to be easy, but the dashboard is illuminated in blue and is a bit too bright for my taste. I am not looking forward to a session with the manual figuring out how to dim the display a bit. Ah, new car joy. I wonder if the car clock change is going to be easy or a real struggle. Each car has been one or the other for Fall Backs over the years. Two sessions with the manual may have to happen.

I have been smugly admiring my mileage (kilometre-age?!?) with the hybrid Escape, and playing with the acceleration to keep the gas consumption low. I can get down to 4.9 litres per 100 kilometres sometimes. Since my last fill, however, it has been creeping up on me. I am not sure why…. possibly it is because the heater is now on. It was surprisingly high coming back up home, but I did have the heated passenger seat on high to keep the pizza as warm as possible. Our last few cars have had a lot of what I think of as ‘bells and whistles’, part of the package as we purchase, but heated seats are a treat, oh my, in eastern Ontario winters.

I am dreading this winter. Over the summer we have been able to do a lot of things if not normally, at least possibly. Coffee in the park with friends, Book Club convened in a big attic room owned by the granddaughter of one of the members allowing for distancing and ventilation from an open door to a balcony. A cleverly distanced wedding of the daughter of a friend held in a field in an open tent. Discussion group in the garden. Lots of time on the screened porch. As the snow fell this afternoon, it was really difficult not to sulk about the fact that these jaunts are now at an end. 

Well, yes. That was last week. Today the time changed and JG has spent most of the day telling me what time it should be, rather than making himself buy into the new hour. And it has rained and is raining. And it is a dark, November of course, sky. On Tuesday, day after tomorrow, the USA will or will not settle down. And tomorrow the guns will start and the deer, poor dears, will be at high risk for two weeks of the season here. Meanwhile, the paper feed in my colour printer will not work properly and I can’t find the printout of what to do to fix it that I made the last time it did this to me, and it is November, of course. 

We went out for a COVID-19 distanced dinner party to neighbours yesterday. I enjoyed every bite and every minute of freedom. And, I find, freedom from fear. I did not once think of the possibility of getting infected as we chatted and ate. Perhaps as this thing keeps grinding on and grinding on with glacial slowness, I am just numbed. I think a lot of people are. But tomorrow it is back to the masks and hand-washing and socially correct distancing as I trudge into town to a printing place and get my essay onto paper. And consider whether to kick the printer through a window or keep looking until I find the instructions for the fix.