Travels With Miranda

I just got in from the staff holiday party put on by the company for which I’m working this winter. This was quite a treat. I did get a dinner out from the crazies at the RV park in Oliver (which was rather shocking), but otherwise this is my first staff party since the 2003 holiday season. Oh, we got a staff party when I worked the government, but we had to pay to attend, so it doesn’t count.

We had the party at the Regent Restaurant, here in Lethbridge. They serve Canadian-Chinese food. The owners ordered a variety of dishes and we ate family style. It was very good! There were a few chicken dishes, some beef, assorted vegetables, noodles, and rice. Chinese food is at the bottom of the list of cuisines I’d go out for, but I don’t hate it, I just find that it tastes like junk food. This stuff didn’t. If someone was to ask me to recommend a Chinese restaurant in Lethbridge, I’d say I’ve only been to the Regent and I can recommend it.

Everyone was given an envelope and I didn’t think much of it, assuming it’d be a thank you/happy holiday card. I opened it in the car and, sure, enough, that was it. But there was something else in the envelope, too, something that shocked me so much it took five minutes for me to recover enough to be able to drive. I’ll just say it was the most generous bonus cheque I’ve ever been given and I was able to order myself an iPad when I got home.

I’m off to stare at my Amazon order confirmation for a while. I don’t expect delivery until the New Year, but it’s on its way. Amazing.

I just survived another rent collection day. I can’t believe I only have three left! Even though I will have ultimately spent a year in Lethbridge, it really doesn’t feel that way since I’ve changed location and circumstances.

I’m having fun working on the route I’ll take in the fall, trying to cram in as many states I haven’t been to as possible. I’d like to be able to hit about half of them going east and then the other half when I come back west. And then I’ll just have to schedule a trip to Hawaii. 😉

For those who are curious, these are the States I still haven’t set foot in:

1) Alabama
2) Arkansas
3) Hawaii
4) Idaho
5) Iowa
6) Kansas
7) Kentucky
8) Louisiana
9) Mississippi
10) Missouri
11) Nebraska
12) New Mexico
13) Ohio
14) Oklahoma
15) South Dakota
16) Tennessee
17) Texas
18) Utah
19) Wyoming

I think it’d be easy to figure out a round trip circuit that would include all of these States except Hawaii as they are all clustered together. I’ve basically done the entire east and west coasts, New England, and the states around the Great Lakes, plus Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado. That leaves me most of the midwest (including Wyoming), the southwest (including Utah), and the south.

"I can't wait to get back on the road again"

The weather here is still surprisingly decent. We had a nasty snow storm on Wednesday, but it’s since warmed up (all I needed today was my fleece sweater). That said, this is my least favourite weather: it warms up during the day so everything melts… and then it gets frigid at night and everything freezes. Can we say slick?

Miranda is doing well. I haven’t measured the temperature inside her with just the one heater, but we haven’t really hit frigid yet except for a couple of nights. I’ve lived in her in this kind of weather with just the one heater and been comfortable, so I’m not worried about anything at this point. I do keep hoping for free daylight hours in warmish weather to get some work done in her. I’d like to take advantage of the rig being cat-free to do a really thorough deep clean and de-furring before the spring.

That is all at my end. I’ve had a very long day and have no transcription so collapsing into a muddle of exhaustion sounds good to me right now.

Growing up out east, I was fascinated by the idea of a chinook, a warm wind blowing in from the ocean that would significantly raise temperatures in a very short period of time. I always associated them with Calgary, but it turns out they are more prevalent in Lethbridge!

The temperature started to rise yesterday and the wind to pick up. I was standing outside enjoying the sun when a tenant came up and explained to me that a chinook was rolling in! Today is incredibly windy and the snow is melting very quickly. My tenant says that if I am fortunate I will experience a much more dramatic chinook this winter, with temperatures going from, say, minus 15 in the morning to plus 15 in the afternoon, but even I don’t I can cross ‘experience a chinook’ off my bucket list!

Fun fact: chinook is pronounced ‘shi-nook’. The reason for this (and why it’s Shi-ca-go, not Tchi-ca-go) is the influence of the French-Canadian explorers. We (because I am a French-Canadian explorer) pronounce ‘ch’ the way ‘sh’ is pronounced in English.