Wednesday Wonders

Okay, well, "wonders" is probably pushing it. But annnnnyway! It has been busy lately but I finally have a little free time so I'm doing some catching up. Here's a little bit of this and that...

Here's Naomi looking ticked off that I am daring to photograph her while she sits on my lap first thing in the morning! (My friend Eugene thinks I sit around in my pajamas all day, but it's NOT TRUE!)

Last week, my friend Ronna and I met up with the rest of the committee that put together the Osteoporosis Canada 2012 calendar for the Ottawa Chapter (Ronna did the illustrations, I did the design.) We had a very delicious lunch at the Fraser Café in Ottawa. The guy across from me had, gasp, pasta with DUCK in puttanesca sauce...

And Ronna took this shot of my photographing the atrocity. For more on our meal, visit Ronna's blog. Speaking of ducks, I have for three days been shovelling duck-poop-coated hay out of the two duckhouses and replacing it with wood shavings. It's not a glamourous job, let me tell you! Gordon helped me finish up this morning. Meanwhile, we're having a large duck run built in the barn so that everybody will have more space this winter. The duckhouses are okay size-wise but we want the ducks in the barn when it's cold, especially if they can't go out because of bad weather.

If anyone has opinions on duck bedding, let me know (I am not talking feather duvets!!!) I was using straw but it seems to get matted, wet and filthy very fast, so I am going to try the deep-litter wood shavings method we use with out chickens, which has worked really well.

Onto other things...

Yesterday Ronna and I lunched at Schnitzels in Cornwall, where I was a big fat hypocrite and had...

...a Cajun CHICKEN sandwich. I really need to go vegetarian. I could live off sweet potato fries!

Ronna had the half pizza/Caesar salad lunch special, which looked yum. They have a wood-burning pizza oven at Schnitzels.

Ronna hadn't been there before. We both enjoyed our meals!

And for dessert, we both had gingerbread gelato, made at the gelato and candy shop a few doors down. The servings were quite HUGE...

I managed to finish it without exploding!

After lunch, Ronna and I went around the corner to the courthouse to see Gordon acting as duty counsel in bail court. I haven't seen him in court since we lived in Toronto about 15 years ago. It was fun to see him in action again, even though he lost! Cameras are not allowed, and neither Ronna nor I brought sketchbooks, so I'm sad to report there are no pictures of the event, although a good time was had by all but the accused, who was led back to the holding cells after being denied bail.

This morning, the wonderful lady who cleans our house came. She followed Sophie into my office to tell me she'd taken an empty paper towel roll off her, and wouldn't give it back...

Sophie has a fixation for all things paper, so I let her chew up the roll.

Julius watched from a distance, oozing his usual disgust for dogs!

At some point, I got more toast art from Gordon. I think this might have been a duck but I'm not sure.

And Julius made his way to the cat bed on my work table, where he promptly relaxed and fell asleep...

Tough life, eh?

And this morning, there were four woodpeckers at the feeders outside my office window, three Hairy woodpeckers and one Downy. I only managed to get on in the picture though!

That's all for today. I have one more Secret Spy Diary 1975 post coming soon!