Body Heat

Photo Credit: Mitsi Krzywicki

Even though the last half block is a bit harrowing, I've been walking the whole way to work most days this week. The temperature, with the wind chill, has been in the minus twenty five to minus thirty range. The walk is just under two kilometres, takes about fifteen to twenty minutes and, according to the government of Canada, poses a moderate risk that I'll freeze my nose off.

I dress warmly of course and have noted every day as I've walked over the freeze-dried sidewalks and crunching snow that it's not the clothes that keep me warm. I keep me warm. The clothes just make it easier. 

There's nothing like extreme cold to make you very aware of, grateful for and amazed by your own body heat. Without doubt the body takes some measure of what the conditions are and adjusts accordingly. When the cold snap began, I could not keep my hands warm in my gloves. By Friday this week, my hands were keeping themselves warm just fine.

How cool is that?

Why I Love Working at the Ministry of the Environment

On Thursday this week while I was on a teleconference with some people out at our science lab, one of them mentioned there was a sun dog in the sky. From where I was inside a monolithic wing of the Queen's Park complex, I couldn't see it at that time. 

But later that day, as the sun settled in the west, our intern came up to a bunch of us and said, "You can see the sun dog now." Then, as one, ten serious, highly-trained professionals, most of them with multiple university degrees, jumped from their desks to go to the window and see the rainbow colours of light reflected off of ice particles in the sky.

Molly's post this week is another meditation on winter.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Mishaps

Suddenly and without warning Apple reached out and told me my life would not be complete without the new Mavericks operating system for my Mac. So I did the only thing I could do. I welcomed it, all unawares, into my home. 

I'm in my sixth hour of downloading, installing, updating and iclouding the contents of my computer.

So you're all getting a rerun today. I wrote the following on Sunday October 19 2008. I called it 40,000 Car Crashes. Enjoy.

This Saturday a.m. was possibly the most perfect autumn morning in the history of the world. The sky was clear blue.  The sun warmed the chill edge off the gentle breeze.  The trees in Allen Gardens were a brilliant mix of gold, orange, red and stalwart unchanged green. I walked through the gardens on my way to shop onChurch Street. I had company coming for lunch and was thinking happy thoughts about what I was going to buy to feed my guests. I had just come out of the dappled shade of the north west end of the park and was walking toward the intersection of Carlton and Jarvis Streets.

A small red car westbound on Carlton didn’t seem to notice the red light and T-boned at high speed a grey van half-way through a left hand turn in the middle of the intersection.  There was a horrible bang and a gigantic splash of pulverized car bits that caught the early morning sun and made a glorious aura around the shocking sight. Hit with such force, the grey van bounced out of the intersection and slammed into one or more cars on the eastbound side of Carlton.

“Oh my god!” I said, a time or two, not really adding much. 

There were quite a few people at the intersection (mercifully, there were no pedestrians in the middle of the mayhem) most of whom had cell phones and were already calling for help.  The rest were checking on the health of the people in the vehicles.

The fellow in the red car, the one who’d caused this mess, was stunned but unbloodied – his seat belt was on; his air bags deployed – and was sitting in the warm embrace of shock in his vehicle that was 50% shorter than it had been mere moments before.  The front end wasn’t just smashed; it was practically atomized by the force of the collision.

There was nothing I could do, so I went and did my shopping.

Half a block from the terrible, horrible scene, the world was still bright and sunny and every person I saw was untouched, unconcerned and unaware of the awfulness less than 100 metres away. 

I, on the other hand, was really badly shaken. As I walked away from the scene, I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t burst into tears. I felt I needed to hold my head. I heard sirens before I got to the store and I hoped the people in the vehicles would be OK.

Twenty minutes later, I returned home the way I came so I could walk back into the scene of the accident. All the people in the vehicles had been taken away. Just the ruined cars remained to snarl traffic and impede the progress of streetcars. Firemen had spread sand on the street to trap gasoline from someone’s shattered gas tank.   

I wondered if there had been other witnesses who had really seen how it happened. All you have to do is look away for half a second and you miss things like this – they happen so fast. I really had seen the whole thing. At least I was very sure who had been at fault.

So, I approached a policeman and told him what I saw. I gave him my name and phone number. I was afraid I was going to have to stay, or “go downtown” like they do on the TV shows and not be able to feed my guests. But he just said thanks and let me go on my way.

I’ve seen at least 40,000 car crashes on TV and in movies and, so I’ve heard, your brain doesn’t really distinguish between the make believe and the real.

Yes it does.

Drive careful.

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Here's a picture of Molly when she was a puppy.

You can read Molly's post today here.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Advanced Level Pedestrianism

Bruce and I spent New Years in Belleville, so we missed Toronto's New Years celebrations. 

Based on what's readily available on the Internet, the photos below represent the finest moments of the New Year.

Photo Credit: National Post

Rob Ford found one person still willing to have their picture taken with him.

Photo Credit: Guangming Online

And a bunch of mostly naked people (including one who recently had major surgery - check out the scar on the belly of the guy in the black trunks) threw themselves into Toronto Harbour. 

The biggest star of the season was the weather. First the December 21 ice storm and then the polar vortex.

As mentioned last post, what Bruce and I suffered from the ice storm was nothing compared to others. On the other hand, the sudden plunge into tremendous cold from the polar vortex after a mild day or two in Toronto tested to their limits our skills as pedestrians.

Skill One: Know Your Tools and Use Them Properly

For this skill, I had a short seminar before the vortex came. On January 2, we were still on holiday and I'd spent the day working on the dog's blog. But, I wanted to go to yoga, so I'd registered a spot for the 5:45 class. The studio's normally a thirty minute walk from here, but I gave myself a little extra time because the Weather Network told me it was 26 below with the wind chill. 

I piled three layers of clothes on me, doubled the number of socks I normally wear, put on my honkin' Sorels, my hat, my gloves and headed out assuming that I had fairly matched my winter gear with the weather.  

Halfway to the studio, at the corner of Church and Wellesley, I hailed a cab because I knew I would otherwise die before I made it to yoga.

In this lesson, the tool I failed to use properly was the subway. 

Skill Two: Know Your Centre of Gravity

I knew a guy in undergrad who'd come from Malaysia to Waterloo get a degree in business. Having grown up in a warm climate, he never completely comprehended the cold in Canada. He'd step out in sub-zero weather in a summer-weight jacket. And he never learned to walk in the snow. He did, however, have a knack for falling right. I'd watch him fall and pick himself up three or four times before he'd gone a block. I assume he thought this was how everyone got around in Canada in the snow.

Growing up in Winnipeg and Edmonton, I got my snow legs at an early age. The same way someone practiced at it doesn't even think about how to shift gears on a standard transmission car, a seasoned snow walker doesn't keep at top of mind the signals and responses required to stay upright. 

The key signal is the loss of traction; the response is a shorter stride. The less traction, the shorter the stride. Keeping sight of your centre of gravity is fundamental to keeping your feet when you're walking on ice.

Unless it's windy.

On January 6, the powerful cold that came down from the arctic brought with it winds gusting to more than fifty kilometres per hour. Bay Street acts as a kind of accelerator for these winds. This is where I was standing, shortly after five p.m. on Monday afternoon. I was very well dressed against the cold, but the ice underfoot everywhere was forcing baby-step progress. I was waiting for the light to change and standing on a zero-friction surface. The wind caught my heavy, large handbag which acted as a kind of sail. 

The headline flashed before my eyes: Fifty-Something Woman Killed By Handbag: Dragged Beneath Wheels of Car.  

Happily that did not happen, but it was a near thing I'll tell you.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Resolutions

Photo Credit: Kevan MacRow

Open House Overview

Twenty guests came to the open house on December 29 and ate and conversed heartily.

As you can see, the place was fairly festively decked out. 

In case you're wondering, this took hours to put together, minutes to take apart.

Photo Credit: Kevan MacRow

The little hemlock sported a few extra baubles this year.

Photo Credit: Kevan MacRow

Photo Credit: Kevan MacRow

Inside, there was lots to eat and drink. 

Referring to the notes I made for last year's party, I reprised the salsa, guacamole and onion dip, and made rather than bought the hummus. Something new on the cheese board was a fig and olive tapenade, without the garlic and walnuts in the recipe, because I felt there was enough garlic already in the dips and I forgot about the walnuts. Another recipe I would try again is Festive Nuts, but never mind about the dried cherries; they don't add a thing.

My caterer from last year - Tiffinday - was closed for the holidays, so I went with everyone's contingency plan, President's Choice. These were remarkably good. I wouldn't hesitate to use these again the next time I'm in a pinch for decent hors d'oeuvres. 

Party Fashion Update

In the photo below, the busy hostess appears to be checking her party app on her iPad to make sure everything is in order before the guests arrive. In fact, I'm playing Yahtzee, or maybe Scrabble.

The dress should look familiar. It's really the only dress I buy anymore: a Holly Boatneck from Pam Chorley's Fashion Crimes on Queen West. I wore an unpolka-dotted version at the Amethyst Awards, and an off-white lace-covered version at my wedding.

Photo Credit: Kevan MacRow

What Was that You Said About Resolutions???

Right. New Year's Resolutions. For almost two years now, I have been trying to finish the blog I started about Molly the Dog. The last time I published a post was in July 2013. This year I resolve to change all that. I have about ten more posts to make before the sequence of stories is done. I will finish all ten in the next few weeks and publish one a week until the whole story of our silly little dog is told. 

If you haven't already seen it, the opening post to Molly's blog is here. And today's post can be found here.

Thanks for reading! Have a great week!

Karen