What a difference a month makes

On the 17th April 2013, we had a nice dump of snow.  

Again.  

April was long and cold, and it seemed that winter was simply going to refuse to give way.

But by the end of April, the temperatures finally rose quickly and the icy lakes melted and single blades of green grass proudly emerged from the dull landscape.  

And one month later, wow, what a transformation.

Foliage is alive.  The landscape has awoken.  

Calgarians have come out of hibernation.

And I have managed to spend a few hours weeding some flower beds and gathering some instant colour from hanging baskets and pots.

Colour, at last.  Yay.

Bad blogger

I am so behind on blogging and reading blogs.

I have been up to my ears in kid's dance competitions, choral rehearsals with a new director, and evening classes for the terminally insane (it's an accounting course and I'm barely keeping my head above water).

In fact, I am only typing this up now because I am off work today under the guise of revising for my final exam tonight, but it's lunch time and I am trying not to get sticky fingers on my keyboard as I munch my way through a Rappleberry bagel smothered in peanut butter and jam.  Yum! And if you are interested, it's being washed down with a blackcurrent tea and a chocolate chip cookie.  In fact, I had a yoghurty granola bar thingie earlier too, so it's a bit of a "Carbs R Us" day.  Great stuff.

The accounting course is killing me slowly, and giving me an inferiority complex.  I am a normal intelligent woman (on most days) but anything with those squiggly lines - you know,  numbers - gets me every time.  I cannot do mathematics.  At all.   Brain just flicks a switch and says "whatever".  Accounting is not quite maths - it's learning, by rote, a series of steps and entries to make your book-keeping work.  Which is fine, until you forget one little step.  Then you're buggered and everything you try to work on after that is a complete waste of time because the answer will be wrong.

I like words and language.  I like to be able to talk about things, talk my way out of things, to elaborate or to explain something three different ways. Accounting doesn't want to play like that.  Apparently, I won't earn extra points if I write some nice explanatory paragraph in the margin of my final exam explaining why I am a doofus and, sorry Miss, but I forgot how to enter discounts in my journal, or the ratio for working out inventory turnover.

And the crucial element really is that I can find no way in my brain to apply what I am learning.  I have somehow managed to get to 47 years old without knowing this stuff.  I can balance my bank account, I can run as good a household debt as anyone, and I am not about to apply for a job as a book-keeper.  So I am only doing the course because I have to, because it is part of a Management Certificate program that, at one point, I thought would be a good idea.

Onwards and upwards.  Four more hours of revision, then it's too late.  I will be lucky if I scrape together 50% to pass this exam.  And then I'm done.  Thank God!

Hopefully, normal blogging will return soon.

Oh, if that bloody Anonymous spammer could please just f*** off, that would be great, thanks.

Reward...

That pesky groundhog.  I think his pants are on fire.

Spring has not quite Sprung!

First day of Spring. Yay!  

Ahh, the anticipation of warmer breezes and spring bulbs poking through the soil and some colour returning to the landscape.

Unfortunately, Alberta did not get the memo.

Maybe next week...

Or the week after...

Or maybe sometime around June.

Mmmm, ice-cream cakes

A Dairy Queen "pizza" cake with a "Skor" chocolate bar crumbled all over it, with added drizzled caramel.  My birthday last week resulted in this essential purchase.

I don't think they have Skor chocolates in the UK - so for the Europeans out there, it is like a Dime Bar - hard/crunchy toffee wrapped in chocolate.

Good God - I'm in the wrong job.  

I think I want to invent cakes!

D'oh! More snow!

The clocks changed last night, so that means it's nearly Spring, right?

Er, maybe not this week.

More scenes from Calgary and Cochrane in Alberta, after a wet and heavy snowy dump this week.

Work that body.

Or watch someone else fly past with their snow-blower.

Would you like some ice with that 

gin and tonic?  Just snap and go.

Good morning Calgary.

Good evening Calgary.

Hello Rockies.

And goodnight.

Linking to SkyWatch Friday, and OurWorld Tuesday this week.

Nearly March already

Where has the last couple of months gone?  

Christmas, New Year, January and now February - poof!

The three weeks around Christmas time was chilly in Calgary - temps in the -20'sºC, but since then, I've had no reason to complain.  This was the view from my office window taken in December.  Pretty, in a frigid kind of way.

The Bow River running through Cochrane was only frozen in little bits this year - the above picture from mid-January is the worst it ever got.  It really hasn't been that cold this winter (and yes, I know it's still only February, and Mother Nature has a knack of making me look smug and stupid on any given day of the year).  

2013 started with new windows throughout our house.  The team of guys were very fast and very good, but even they couldn't divert me from questioning why I had agreed to have them installed in January, when it was -9ºC outside.

But we are delighted with the results.  Triple-glazed, upvc, sunscreen coating - you name it, we got it.  And now we just have to finish paying for it.

February also means two birthdays in this household for our daughters - we now officially have two teenagers in the house (though it has felt like that for some time, on some days, to be honest).  A 13 year old and a 15 year old.  Oh boy!

I was very surpirsed to see flocks of the Bohemian Waxwings in my garden again in early February.  I tell you every year how they feed in November and then migrate  (to who-knows-where) - but I have never seen them again so early in the year.

And today - just above freezing, sunshine and nearly clear blue skies, 

hardly a scrap of snow to be found, except on those newly layered mountains in the distance

and the knowledge that we turn our clocks back (almost my favourite day of the year) in a couple of weeks' time.  The mornings are lighter, the evenings are lighter, and my mood is lighter!

Linking to Our World Tuesday

and SkyWatch Friday

Have a great week.