Month: December 2024

This morning I picked up a Farmboy dinner for two, a New Years Eve treat for Jane and me. The food is already prepared and simply needs reheating in the oven. Jane is battling a cold right now, so we may postpone until tomorrow.

After picking up the dinner, I took my drone over to a nearby park and did some practising. It went extremely well and I am becoming more comfortable flying it.

I’ll keep practising.

Jane has a follow up appointment with her optometrist, Dr. Roberti, to update her eye surgery information.

He has been an excellent optometrist, even calling Jane from his personal cell phone to discuss her situation.

We’ll find out what next steps he recommends since the surgery did not really change anything.

Given that it is very foggy and damp outside as well as rain being forecasted, I decided to keep busy by doing a live Tik Tok that involved inviting my 107,000 followers.

I decided to do a scenic flight over Toronto in a Cessna 172 Skyhawk. The flight lasted about half an hour and had over 400 views.

This afternoon I cut a piece of hardboard to 16 x 20 which will be the backing for a paint by numbers canvas of that size. Jane is doing a project for her friend, Annemarie, which includes then and now photos of the two of them.

Well, today the second drone arrived; Jane’s Christmas gift to me. It’s a Holy Stone brand 360S and it’s a beginner drone. As soon as it arrived, I unboxed it and charged the batteries.

I took it out to the back deck and got it paired up, calibrated and operational. However there were two crashes – one into the bird feeder and the second into the cedar trees in our neighbours yard. Fortunately, there was no damage. I decided to take Jane’s advice and try it in a more open space, so we went to a nearby park and tried it there. Here’s a photo overlooking Hurst Drive taken at about 75 feet.

I will need more practice.

Rina and Chris, our next door neighbours, have invited us to their place for afternoon snacks along with the Casey’s from across the street.

In the meantime, I have been experimenting with the Gimbal Pro IPhone holder which stabilizes the phone for taking smooth videos. It has a lot of impressive features that I tried out while shovelling a path on the back deck.

And the drone that Jane got me has been returned due to connection issues and a replacement will be here tomorrow,

After a wonderful couple of days with Chris, Tonya and Max, then Steve, Sara, Roxana and Royce, we left their place early this morning because they are hosting Sara’s family today.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves with both families especially watching the Grandkids opening their gifts and then playing with them.

We had all kinds of tasty desserts to satisfy our sweet cravings.

All in all, it was a very satisfying couple of days.

Yesterday we arrived at Steve and Sara’s for Christmas dinner along with Chris, Tonya and Max. It was a great dinner with lots and lots of food.

This morning the kids had a great time opening gifts and trying them out.

I was pleasantly surprised with two great gifts, one being a drone from Jane and a gimbal holder for my I phone.

We’re looking forward to a steak dinner tonight and another enjoyable evening.

Well I don’t have a sleigh, but using our car will help Santa get Christmas gifts to the kids.

We’ll get down there about noon, first to Chris and Tonya’s then to Steve and Sara’s.

Barrie is under a snow storm watch and it continues to fall making the front and back yards very Christmassy.

We did have to pick up a Yule Log at a local bakery but we have nothing else to do.

In a couple of days we’ll be heading down to Toronto, first to Chris and Tonya’s to watch Max open the Christmas present from us and then all of us go over to Steve and Sara’s for Christmas dinner.

Jane and I will stay overnight in Steve’s new bedroom addition and we’ll be there Christmas Day to watch Roxana and Royce open their gifts.

All we have to do at this end is pick up a Yule Log at the bakery and load all the gifts into the car.

The shortest day of the year with only 10 hours of daylight.

It’s been snowing off and on all day and everywhere is snow covered. It’s definitely looking like a white Christmas.

Fortunately for us, we did our shopping already so we have no need to go out anywhere.

So I am doing some flying on Miscrosoft Flight Simulator while Jane continues with the monumental task of sorting and labelling thousands of digital images.

A couple of days ago, we noticed that the Christmas lights were not working on the back fence. I went out there to check them and found that a squirrel had chewed through one of the wires.

I couldn’t fix them but fortunately I had another set to replace them.

Today Jane and I went to Walmart to look for a new coffee maker. We found this one.

Our previous Black and Decker Grind and Brew model was no longer being used to grind beans and took up a lot of counter space.

This one is better suited.

A couple of days ago I mentioned how it’s beginning to look like Christmas. Today it’s looking more like Spring.

Hopefully we’ll end up with white Christmas.

Yesterday Chris took Max to his very first Leaf game at the Air Canada Centre. The game, against the Buffalo Sabres, started at 5 pm so they were able get in two periods before Max’s bedtime. Leafs won 5-3.

And today a Christmas garage door cover finally arrived. It took over a month and I already got a refund on it because of the delay.

It looks pretty good and the fabric feels pretty durable so I can use it year to year.

It’s a kind of lazy day for us today. Jane is working on genealogy while I’m sitting by the fireplace, playing games on my I Pad and listening to Christmas songs playing on YouTube.

Tonight I am going to BBQ a steak despite all the snow on the deck

Jane got back home this afternoon after a busy weekend with the Grandkids in Toronto.

Because of the Canada Post strike, we had written a letter on Santa’s behalf in response to Max’s letter to him as well as to Roxana and Royce. Jane put Roxana’s and Royce’s letters in their house mailbox and then Steve read them to each of the kids.

Chris and Tonya had placed Santa’sresponse in their mailbox and sent us a video of Max reading it aloud. He amazed both of us with his reading ability (level 7 now) and the fact that he wanted to read the whole thing despite his Dad offering to take over half way through.

It was a very touching video.

Exactly one month ago I ordered a Christmas themed garage door cover but,, as of today, it had not arrived because of the Canada Post strike.

So I requested a refund which was granted.

But I think the strike was ended today, so I may still get it, but for free.

For most of the day it snowed here in Barrie. Fortunately I did not have to go out anywhere.

Jane is still at Steve’s where she was available to let the carpet installers in so they could lay the new carpet in the solarium area.

And the new bed frame was delivered today as well. So this new space will serve as a guest room and small office.

This morning Jane headed off to Steve and Sara’s to watch Roxana who is home from school today. They had some fun looking at rings.

Then Jane helped her get dressed with an outfit of her choosing.

Jane also took a Ziti bake for tonight.

Jane will be going to Toronto for a few days and, as in the past, is taking some food with her. First is homemade Ziti Bake.

Then she made two blueberry coffee cakes, one of which is staying here with me.

Everything has been officially tasted and exceeds expectations.

Today started out with a lot of rain and a chance that it would freeze making for very slippery conditions.

Nonetheless, I made a trip to a nearby location to have the handle on one of our Lagostina pots welded back on. It’s part of a a set that was given to Jane by her Mom.

I watched several YouTube videos on how to properly set up an external Bose soundbar with my Apple TV and Samsung smart TV. I leaned what settings should work and this is what I did.

Under General tv settings I selected external Device manger and turned on the option to anynet HDMI-CEC

On the TV sound under the audio output setting I selected the Digital output audio format I selected PCM.

This seems to work and fixes the unsynchronized audio situation that was happening.

Hopefully those settings wont change.

It’s been snowing steadily for the past several hours and the forecast is showing that it will continue for sometime.

This is what it looks like in our back yard.

Fortunately we don’t have to go anywhere today.

Jane’s hairdresser, Sabrina, invited us to join her and her daughter, Mallory, when they go to see the Springwater drive through Christmas light display.

They are picking us up around 4pm so we can beat the rush as it is a very popular event in the Barrie area.

Jane picked up a couple of books for Mallory.

For the past several days we have been getting snow squall warnings for Barrie, but they never materialized.

Today, however, is different and it has been snowing off and on here in Barrie.

I walked over to Circle K to get some milk for the neighbours and noticed that it was somewhat icy in places. I was careful, though and made it there and back okay.

Yesterday I began wrapping Christmas gifts and later in the afternoon I stumbled across a number of gift wrapping tips on Tik Tok. Of course, this morning, I had to try some of them.

Jane joined in and we got several more gifts done having added ribbon and name tags.

This morning I changed the flag over the garage to a Christmas style to keep with the season. I had ordered a garage door cover that was also Christmas themed, but because of the Postal strike, it is unlikely to arrive in time.

Then I started wrapping Christmas gifts for the grandchildren. I got three done and then stopped.

We’ll do a few at a time.

With the new mini PC and a new external DVD/CD drive I spent some time looking back at some of the Ministry of Corrections data that I compiled back in the nineties.

I had done a few special projects out of Head Office and it was quite interesting to go back in time to review them.

I also found some old videos and photos that I will transfer over to my One Drive storage.

This morning I received a new mini PC that I ordered through Amazon yesterday. This PC will replace my old laptop that is running Windows 10. The new one is preloaded with Windows 11 PRO and with 16 Gigabytes of RAM, will perform much faster.

I spent the morning setting it up and updating files and it is now working very well.

I am pleased with this Dream Quest mini PC