Ladies and Gentlemen, we have just finished the third weekend of the holidays and it just keeps getting better!!! Saturday was pretty quiet but the really cold air is starting to creep up the closer we officially get to winter. While it always snows in Ottawa, it’s usually too cold for it to snow in large quantities. After a certain point, the temperatures drop so low that everything just freezes and the city just becomes a mass of people frantically trying to get from warm place point A to warm place point B. It’s a pretty sad sight!!
Anyways, we went by the house on Saturday morning and from what we could see, the drywall is all finished. Our first inspection is during the first week of January and so far, everything is on schedual (a blessing that we are very grateful for thus far). The amount of progress that we can see in the construction of our home diminishes a lot from here on in as most of the interior work won’t be visible from the outside so we’re happily taking whatever we can get!!
Saturday night was spent with my Dad. Since we won’t be together during Christmas, we made a point of setting aside some time for a nice dinner before we take off to Tilbury. Normally, we would get together and have dinner at Dad’s place but this year, he suggested that we go out and let someone else do the cooking. Since Steve and I got to choose, we selected our very favourite restaurant, the Keg Manor.
Located in the second oldest house in the city of Ottawa, the restaurant is set in this historic mansion with very little renovations made to the home. This give you the fantastic menu of any other Keg Restaurant with the beautiful atmosphere of refined dining. Steve and I try to make it out there at least once or twice a year but my Dad had never been before…so the Manor it was! We were seated in the most gorgeous part of the restaurant in a small room next the fireplace. We drank some wine, had a great meal and enjoyed a simply wonderful evening together…one of our best actually! Oh…and we learned how the use the automatic feature on our digital camera…but not without a fair share of candid shots in the meantime!!
Jesper and I were suppose to run 16 kilometers on Sunday morning. This would not normally be a very big deal but all weekend we had been getting notice of a severe snowstorm warming looming for Sunday morning and afternoon. Sure enough, come Sunday morning, the snow was falling and the wind was blowing…it was pretty ugly. Ugly enough in fact to stop us from doing our run but, not ugly enough to stop us from meeting at Starbucks for yummy drinks and even yummier breakfast pastries!! Really, if you’re going to skip out on a 16 kilometer run…you might as well make it worthwhile!! So, Jesper and I spent nearly two hours early on Sunday morning talking about life. You would think after the countless hours that we spend running together that the conversation would run out eventually…but it never does! Like all great things though, our morning escape had to end eventually and by this time, the snow was really starting to come down.
As I woke up this morning and saw the resulting storm in the light of day, I concluded that it was God’s way of making all of us stop and take a breather because frankly, that’s exactly what all of us were forced to do. In all of my life, I have never seen as much snow as I am looking at right now. According to Environment Canada, the accumulation of snow that we have right now is the most amount of snow that Ottawa has ever received in recorded history…seventy-five centimeters all together!!!
We were suppose to attend our church potluck at Blessed Sacrament last night but, like the countless stores around the city, nearly all the bus lines and every other social event going on…it was cancelled. This suddenly left us with an entire day of nothing to do but sit on the couch under a blanket watching Christmas movies. It could be worse!!! Actually, it felt like such a beautiful gift of stolen time. In what would normally be a very busy weekend, everyone was forced to hibernate and spend time…well…not rushing! I ended up baking up a chocolate mess, caught up on some emails, watched a movie and eventually, around 5:30pm, when the wind died down and the snow lightly fell, Steve and I ventured outside to take a look at the aftermath. First off, we could barely open our front door…THAT’S how much snow there was!!! We spent a good hour and a half shoveling snow until we just ran out of space to put it! Mother Nature really has a funny way of showing us who’s boss! I LOVE IT!
What never fails to impress me though is how well the capital seems to cope with such tumultuous conditions. Obviously, we are used to unpredictable weather but even for us, this was more than what we were used to. Sure enough though, we woke up to the snowplows working hard and everyone patiently making their way through the streets. The schools got an extra snow day and the rest of us enjoyed the calm after the storm!
For those of us at the Gallery though, we enjoyed our annual Christmas party in the Great Hall amongst our forty-foot Christmas tree!! Only twice a year do the roughly three hundred people that make our Gallery work get together to take an extended lunch. This year was especially fun though because they handed out four awards for 35 years of service. 35 YEARS! That means that those people were working at the Gallery before I was even born! WOW! Anyways, it was also the first year in a while in which our team has been complete. With the many life changes that my colleagues have been experiencing, we have been witnessing a lot of change among our small group. It was nice to take a group picture without an empty spot!
For up to date pictures on our holiday madness…click here.
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