The return of light

We finally made it to Toronto last Saturday, about 9 hours late. When we arrived, we found that much of the city was totally dark, reducing major intersections to simple four-way stops, and leaving things eerily quiet. Although power was on at our destination when we left, it had gone back out by the time we arrived. Everything was coated in a thick sheet of ice, and at night we were pretty well housebound in the dark. Hundreds of thousands of people were without power, and prospects for getting everything fixed before Christmas were not good. Fortunately, the home of my sisters-in-law has two gas fireplaces capable of heating the whole house in a power outage, and the temperatures outside were cold enough to turn the front porch into a refrigerator/freezer. So although the nights were dark and we were dirty (water was not fully functional in the city at first, and then there was no hot water for showers), we spent the next 3 days in relative comfort.

Knitting by candlelight on Christmas Eve

On Christmas Day, the propane camp stove was brought out to the porch and Jeff's sister's partner made scrambled eggs and toast for Christmas breakfast. We had fondue for lunch. Then, mid-afternoon, we experienced a Christmas/Festivus miracle:

And so, we were able to cook Christmas dinner and dessert, and celebrate in full light. Other than regular showers and cooking, our 3 days in the dark were really not that different than they would have been if we had had power. We talked, played games, went out to a movie, ate cookies (fortunately I had frozen some of our overabundance and packed them for our trip), were enchanted by my baby niece, ate take-out, and overall had a merry time. We were also fortunate to have access to a working shower and kitchen at the tiny apartment of Jeff's brother's wife's cousin, so we were even able to bake a few more cookies and get a shower on Christmas Eve. When the power came back on, the major difference was that we didn't have to leave the house to watch a movie, cook food, or take a shower.

I hope everyone had as nice a Christmas as we did!

Ice Storms and Expensive Postage

Tomorrow we leave very early in the morning on a flight to Toronto. Unfortunately, there is a huge ice storm throughout southern Ontario, and many flight delays and cancellations are predicted. Fingers crossed that we make it!

About 10 days ago, Canada Post announced that there will be a 59% rate increase on stamps in the coming months. About a week ago, I went to the post office to buy stamps. When I went to enter my pin for the debit card transaction, this is the amount that came up:

Everyone there got a bit of a kick out of it – "I thought rates weren't set to increase until 2014!"

And now I must go finish getting ready for our flight which may be delayed or canceled, but for which we will be getting up at 4:45 in the morning anyway, just in case it is not. Have a very Merry Christmas everyone!

UPDATE: Our flight is delayed by 6 1/2 hours, but of course we weren't informed of that until we got to the airport at 5 AM, so we checked our bags and came back home to try to get some sleep. I slept on and off, relatively poorly, for about 3 hours, which is more sleep than I would have gotten if our flight was on time. There are serious advantages to living only 5 minutes from the airport, because if we get word that there has been a change in the delay, we'll be back at the airport in no time. Then a little after 8 AM, we got a call from Jeff's sister informing us that their power was out and there was no estimate as to when it would be restored. Fortunately, it came back on within the hour, so we didn't have to try to scramble to find a hotel or anything like that. It is an odd mix of crazy travel, and hanging out at home sort of doing nothing, but I am so glad we're not stuck at an airport somewhere!

Cookies, running, and a Segway segue

1. Yesterday we had two of our friends/colleagues and their families over for cookie decorating. We spent a good chunk of the day baking gingerbread cookies and making frosting, and then in the afternoon we had a decorating extravaganza with 6 adults and 4 kids ages 5 and under. It was a very merry time. Each family also brought some cookies they had baked, and we swapped, which is wonderful except that now we have far too many cookies. This is not an entirely bad problem to have.

2. I think I mentioned before that we had to move our treadmill in order for it to be relatively level so that I could use it. I'm not sure that I mentioned that my previous wobbly experiences with the treadmill left me nervous, so while I've been walking on it, I have been very reluctant to try running. I've been working up to it, both mentally, and by trying different treadmills out at my physical therapy appointments. Today I finally had the courage to give it a try again, and successfully completed three 30-second running intervals interspersed in a 15 minute walk. It went well, and I'm hoping to start a regular routine of exercise that includes these treadmill run/walks. One limitation right now is that I need Jeff to be there, mostly because I need someone to adjust the speed of the treadmill for me, because my hands are occupied by hanging onto the grips (and I am really not stable enough to let go even with one hand, even for a second). Hopefully that will change eventually, and I can be independent with my exercise routines.

3. About a month ago, my physical therapist and I were having a discussion about the fact that I do a lot of non-therapeutic walking: walking to get from place to place that tires me out but doesn't have a lot of therapeutic value. When I get tired out I fall back on compensation strategies as opposed to walking the very best I can, and the problem with this is that by practicing compensation strategies, walking in a slightly more awkward way gets more practice than the kind of walking that brings me one step closer to normal. We have had this conversation numerous times, and this time was prompted by my need to park in an underground lot for winter, which is safer because I avoid having to walk on snow and ice, but problematic because it is really far from my office. Many older people who are faced with this predicament end up using a motorized scooter. As you can imagine, that type of scooter is really not my style, and also comes with problems of its own, like being more sedentary and spending more time seated (neither of which is particularly good for health). So in this conversation, my physical therapist suddenly had an idea: she suggested trying out a Segway.

Apparently, although they are not marketed or regulated as mobility assistive devices, there is a small contingent of people with mobility limitations who use them. There is someone based in British Columbia who has published some research on this, and someone in Saskatoon (about 2 hours north of here) who is selling Segways with this small market in mind. I called him, and he agreed to come to my physical therapy session last Thursday, and I got to try it out. It was surprisingly easy to learn, even for me with all my balance problems. Then, to my surprise, he suggested that I keep it for a week, and try it out to see how it works for me functionally (generous, but also a good sales strategy).

I am a bit ambivalent about the whole thing. On the one hand, it could end up being very helpful in allowing me to do more things without getting so tired out. It could also allow me to be more focused when I do walk so that walking has greater therapeutic value and less likelihood of reinforcing bad habits. On the other hand, I don't like the idea of relying on a motorized device, because I would rather just be able to do all of those things that I used to be able to do on my own two feet. I also don't like the way riding a Segway is so visible, and so interesting to other people, so that people stop and stare, some literally open mouthed (as was my experience trying it out around campus on Thursday and Friday). But I have to keep in mind that this might be a temporary solution, that it might increase my ability to do the things that I want to do for now, while I continue to build up strength and ability.

So we'll see. No decisions on this at least until the new year, partly because I have to get confirmation of how much (if any) insurance would cover. But it may be that the Segway is my segue into the next chapter of my recovery.

Making Christmas

Last week we were busy with work, but this weekend we started getting our house ready for Christmas. We will be spending 6 days surrounding Christmas in Toronto with Jeff's family, but we will be home most of the month and I love the warmth and cheeriness of a decorated house.

Koshka is helping with the lights

This is our first Christmas in our new home, and somehow that makes it seem all the more exciting to decorate. Since we own this house, things like figuring out the best way to put up the lights seem like good time investments, because we know that next year we can do the same thing.

Getting a Christmas tree is a little bit different here than it is in Oregon. There aren't Christmas tree farms just outside of town, and even if there were, going to cut down a Christmas tree in this weather would be ridiculous. Yesterdays high temperature was something like -28°C/-18°F, and with the wind chill it was about -40°C/-40°F. I will not go outside in that weather other than to get to the car, but Jeff actually went running when the weather was something like -34°C/-29°F, and I don't know how cold with the wind chill. Anyway, it would be completely ridiculous to go and try to cut one's own Christmas tree in that weather. So instead, Jeff went to Lowes and picked out a tree from the options that they had all baled up out in their garden center area. We planned on decorating the tree once he got it home, but when we put it in the stand and cut the baling strings, this is what we saw:

 The tree was completely frozen, and we had to let it thaw out before we could decorate it. Thawing took maybe 4 or 5 hours. This is a step in Christmas tree preparation than I am not used to. I am also not used to the extremely sweet fragrance of balsam fir. Is smells just like a candle that I used to have that was supposed to smell like Christmas trees, and I always thought that the candle was wrong, because it didn't smell like Douglas fir. Now I know that Christmas trees come in more than one scent :-)

Last night Jeff had a friend over to watch one of his favorite movies, Aliens, and while they watched the movie I decorated the tree.

Add caption

 And this afternoon, I read student papers sitting on the couch in the warm glow of the tree lights. I do love this time of year!

Advent-ture

This coming week is the final week of classes for this semester, with finals next week. It is nice to be almost done, though in many ways this semester has gone by very quickly. I've enjoyed teaching my classes, started working with some fabulous students – a graduate student, an honors student, and volunteer research assistants, made progress on getting research projects going, and set up some wonderful new lab space. All in all, it's been a productive and enjoyable semester.

That said, I'm very much excited for the start of the holiday season. Last night we had a potluck dinner for American Thanksgiving (two days late, but since there aren't any days off for American holidays here we have to make do) and ended up having 15 people and a huge amount of food. It was quite enjoyable, and was our first attempt at hosting a party in our new house. Although our house is relatively small, the layout is really quite good for hosting, and I think we'll probably try it again soon.

With Thanksgiving over, I went out shopping today for some new Christmas decorations for outside. I bought some LED lights that I'm hoping Jeff can hang from the roof (they are some ingenious lights that have clips attached to the strands, so hopefully it won't be too onerous or dangerous), some solar walkway lights with candy cane striping on the bases, and some red, green, and gold ball ornaments to hang on some of our trees outside. I will try to get a photo once things are all decorated.

And I have some holiday excitement to look forward to as soon as I'm done with this post. Last Christmas Jeff bought me an advent calendar that is wooden with little doors opening to little cubbies that can be filled with whatever you like. Jeff is filling the odd doors and I'm filling the evens, so tonight is my night to see what Jeff put in door number one for me. I have always loved advent calendars (I love the countdown to Christmas, and having an official start to the countdown), and when I was little we always had the ones that were just paper and had pictures behind the doors. Then at some point I found out about chocolate advent calendars, and the dilemma was that of course I wanted chocolate but those calendars were never as pretty as the paper ones. So now I have a pretty advent calendar, and I don't know whether there will be chocolate behind the doors but I expect some kind of delight, and it feels like the best of both worlds. Who says that Christmas is for kids :-)