Wow, it’s 2013! Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and avoided the flu bug that seems to be everywhere this winter. So what have we been up to since our last update? Well at the end of November we fixed up the one remaining bedroom on the main floor of the Grand Bend cottage but it wasn’t an easy job. It had butt ugly old carpet glued to tiled floor that once removed, revealed black sticky glue residue that stubbornly remained. Had to get it off before we put down the new laminate flooring that Sue & Paul wanted installed.
Removing that crap was hard, manual work. We, or should I say mostly Dave scrapped it off, bit by bit using plenty of elbow grease and ice scrapper. But, once that was removed, the painting and installation of the laminate floor was pretty routine. The updates were a significant improvement over the original.
Anyways, the day (Nov 24) we left the cottage it snowed, the first we’d seen of the season but thankfully not much of the white stuff to be seen back in the Toronto area where we spent a week with family.
At the beginning of December we headed for NIagara-on-the-Lake for our house and cat sitting assignment at a B&B there. This area is world renowned for it’s wineries, the climate here is perfect for vineyards, it’s quite mild, even in winter compared to the rest of the country.
We’ve never been wine tasting before and with 28 local wineries to choose from, the possibilities are endless. Our friend Ina came down one weekend and we sampled the wines at 8 different wineries. What a great experience! I found out that I really don’t like “oakie” chardonnay’s but the “unoaked” ones are surprisingly good. “Grassy” savingon blancs are also off my list. Many of the tastings included an ice wine which, when they were first introduced a number of years ago, we all thought were disgusting. Way too sweet!! But, apparently the process to produce them has significantly improved/changed and all three of us agreed although they are all still quite sweet, they’re not so syrupy. Ina and I really liked the red, Cabernet franc ice wine, Dave too. Still not something I’d go out of my way to drink but as an after dinner drink/dessert, it’s really quite good.
Anyways after that, things went downhill for a couple of weeks, I got the flu. Knocked me flat on my back for about 5 days, zero energy, felt like crap for 5 more. Put a real dent in our Holiday socializing but we still managed to catch up with my cousin Cathy for dinner the last night we were in NOTL. Hadn’t seen her or her family since about 2006 so it was a great visit!
Spent Christmas with Dave’s family and have been hanging out in the Newmarket area for January. We’re puppy sitting for Dave’s sister right now. Charlie’s grown quite a bit since October when we last looked after him. He’s about 8 months old now, full of energy and a sweetheart once he stops chewing on you! :-)
Anyways, we’re hoping to get back on the road come early Feb so hopefully our next update will be from somewhere warmer than Southern ON!