Oliphant Parts

The sky is grey, the ground white. This is probably no longer news; the coming of spring will be my next real weather news. Still, it’s fun to watch the snow falling down and the kids trying to gather the tennis balls frozen to the surface of the pool. With all the ice and snow, I’m surprised there haven’t been more accidents on the corner here. Usually we get one or two a month, but so far none since the snow started. It’s not as if people have actually slowed down, so I’m guessing that the stop sign on Greensferry stands out more when surrounded by fields of white.

Thanksgiving went well, only one bloody incident. No, nobody attacked with a carving knife, just a niece who didn’t quite make it in her leap from the pool table, over the back of the couch, and onto the coffee table. Fortunately, she landed on her forehead and didn’t knock anything over. Fifteen stitches and an hour or two in the emergency room later, and it was time to eat. I am so ready for anything other than turkey.

Yay! Another snow day! After this, I may have to give up on reporting snow. Much too common now. It didn’t stick this time, but that’s probably because it was pretty wet from everything that melted on Saturday. That, and it was pretty warm (got all the way up to the mid forties).

Several places have lifts running, so it’s time to look into some skis and get the kiddies on the slopes. Aaron’s already snowboarding, so he should do well on a real ski slope. Lils will hopefully just keep from getting run down too often.

We had our second snowfall of the season last night. This time, it stuck around for a bit, not melting until noon. It was ice by the time we got up, and only about a quarter inch thick, but that was good enough for the kids. They raced for boots, jackets and sleds, and were soon sliding down the (very) slight incline from the pool to the back fence, smashing down the occasional pile of dog poo in their excitement to play in the snow. Hopefully next time it’ll be a bit deeper (the snow, not the feces) and they can get in more sledding. Or at least not so much dog-poo sledding.

I’ve decided my shop-bun needs an outfit. If he’s going to follow me around as I do my woodworking, then he needs a little apron and some mini tools. Does anybody know where I can get some rabbit-sized costumes?

I checked my blog’s value today at Business Opportunities Weblog and discovered it’s worth all of $0.00 US (or about $5,000,000 Canadian). Kind of dispiriting. Or would be, if I bothered to update this thing on a regular basis. Now I have an excuse to ignore it.

Speaking of ignoring, I got a call from one of my many brother-in-laws (brothers-in-law?) demanding that my wife turn over some document describing his legal status (felony for slamming a baby’s head into a dresser or some such macho thing) and also that we never contact him again, then rambling on about the bible and the book of mormon. Very enlightening conversation; I now know that he’s not an asshole, but a raving nutjob of an asshole. In his favour, he was quite polite while explaining that he never wanted to hear from us ever again and that it is our fault that his life and marriage are in tatters. Considering that we had nothing to do with ANY of his life decisions, I’m not sure how we are at fault. It is going to be rough, but as per his wishes, I will be sure to never call him again. The good news is, I’ve been preemptive in this and actually have never called him in the past either. Maybe I should steer clear of entries which require snippets from the Ramones.