Stan Beeler 🇨🇦

Watching How to Get to Heaven from Belfast last night and really liking it. Same show writer / creatory as Derry Girls and has an interesting view of the interaction between citizens of the 2 parts of Ireland. Good sense of humour. www.imdb.com/title/tt3170...

Karin & Mopsy come home after a walk on this winter day.

Loaf of rustic-looking bread

Today's culinary experiment: Soda bread using yoghurt instead of buttermilk. (no buttermilk in the house) I did not add raisins, sugar, or any other cake-like ingredients; when I make bread it is minimalist.

1. Updated Mac to Tahoe
2. Printer security not recognized
3. Can't update printer security as HP util is insecure
4. Insecure printer cannot update itself (see #2)
5. Changed Mac to use ip address of printer instead of more "secure & easy" methods
6. It works now.(~2hrs work) Beware the Updates!

I don't follow US football, but Bluesky makes it impossible to miss the political implication of any US event. So, I discovered that the US has variable voting rights according to geography. If you live on some islands you have no say in the presidential elections. An indirect learning experience.

We finished watching the Netflix spy drama Unfamiliar last night. It was in German, set in Berlin, but the show creator is not German & the narrative structure, pacing & character presentation reflects this. It feels American when compared to other German spy shows like Deutschland 83 & Kleo.

The back door handle broke last week so I was not surprised when the front door handle came off yesterday. I bought a new one (my spare parts were used) & installed it. I suppose the wild fluctuations in temperature this winter have result in metal fatigue. Life in an era of climate change.

Our refrigerator started leaking a bit so we did some research on reasons for the problem and places to buy a replacement. It seems that a drainage hose had frozen and we only had to manually defrost the fridge, but replacing the hose looks difficult in this particular brand. I hope it stays fixed.

Veg pot pie

Today's culinary experiment: veg pot pie (mostly bean & carrot filling.)

This is a whole genre of Tiktok posts. The advertising is already complete.... <grin>

Yes, yes indeed, I did mention that immutable fact several times. <grin>

screen shot of weather report.

It gets colder, but when it is like this a bit of moisture in the kitchen can make the door latch freeze and this time it was enough that the metal inside it finally snapped. The handle moved normally, so at first I thought that the door frame had frozen to the floor again.

The door knob the back door, where the dogs go out (20 X a day), froze and when Karin tried to open it the handle broke free of the latch bolt and it would not open. I spent 20 minutes figuring out the problem and then replaced it with bits & pieces of old doors in my workshop. Cold hands!

Perhaps when our prime minister is finished dueling with the Americans he can fix our horrendous Canadian phone company monopolies. (I don't mind if he takes his time with that, he seems to doing a good job with his first priority.)

Last month my family phone plan bill went from $290 to $309 for 60 gb shared data, so I went in to complain. I changed the plan to a new one with 400 gb of data (same company/ different plan) and this month's bill is $235. Marketing confuses me.

Ice on trees on UNBC campus ; waiting to pick up the kid from night class.

We started watching Ponies last night and liked it enough that we stayed up to watch another episode past bedtime. Set in 1970s Russia it presents two US Embassy (Moscow) secretaries who become spies. Good sense of humour & Emilia Clarke sans dragons or heroic confidence. tinyurl.com/4ejz69zb

So Long, Marianne (TV Series 2024) ⭐ 7.4 | Biography, Drama, History So Long, Marianne: Created by Øystein Karlsen, Ingeborg Klyve, Tony Wood. With Alex Wolff, Thea Sofie Loch Næss, Anna Torv, Peter Stormare. Based on the relationship between Leonard Cohen and Marianne...

We watched 4 episodes of So Long Marianne last night. It's a Norway, Canada, Greece show based on the romance between Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen & it is fascinating. Brings back memories of my own youth & shows Cohen's transition from Beat poet to musician. www.imdb.com/title/tt1936...

Just back from my run today and entering the stats collected by my Garmin watch & wondering how it collects the ascent figure. Lately I have been running up a hill into the forested area near my home. (Too much ice on the residential streets) It says 139 m ascent for a 10.61 K run. No downhill minus

They sell hybrids and plug-in hybrids too, so if those are included it might even work for our long distance drives outside of population centres. We have a Hyundai hybrid 4X4 and it works very well in deep snow and with long distance drives in -25 C.

I see that Carney is letting 49000 Chinese EVs into Canada (with hints at local factories) and it seems to me that this is a reasonable market test. I looked up the car sales in Canada for 2024 (pre Trump) and it was about 2 million. We will see if they fit the Canadian climate & geography.

I have five centimeters of ice on my driveway and about a metre of snow in my garden area in the backyard. No matter how bad your political situation gets, you can still enjoy your weather.

The Tiger (2025) ⭐ 6.6 | Action, Drama, Thriller 1h 56m | R

We watched Der Tiger (Tank) last night & liked it despite the fact that Karin dislikes war films. It is the story of a WW II German tank crew who escape Stalingrad only to be assigned a rescue mission on the eastern front. It has elements that discourage fans of realism. tinyurl.com/bdd3m9zf

When I was an undergrad at Dalhousie in the 1970s I went scuba diving in the Northwest Arm (wetsuits not dry) on Christmas day. It was cold!

I believe that gentleman asked if he could take a leak and with medieval disdain for orthography decided to have both a leak and a leek. <grin>

It was -21 when I ran this morning and I was heading up Foothills Blvd with the sun at my back. The moisture in my breath froze on my eyebrows and eyelashes and when I turned south to head home I was running into the sun. The ice crystals on my eyes turned the scene into a massive prism. Beauty!

I was born & raised there, but I moved to western Canada to do a PhD in the 1980s and have been in exile ever since. <grin>

I see by his hat, that Dave has been to Nova Scotia.

Snowy front walk.

It has been snowing quite a lot (days) and the temp has been around -14 C, so I decided to forgo my run and shoveled snow for 1 1/2 hours instead. The piles near our shed were almost level with its roof so I moved it to front lawn by sled. Ouch, shoveling uses different muscles than running!

I wholeheartedly agree with you on that point. I live in BC and it feels like we don't have a land border -- south or east -- with a rational government anymore.