I haven’t posted anything here in a long while. Lorin and I are renovating a family cottage and our house – both at the same time. We’ve bitten off more that we can chew but we hope one of the projects will be finished soon and we can enjoy it for a change and let life get back to normal a bit.

We’ll be visiting Letellier this summer for a wedding so I’m going to poke around and see what I can learn about the family history there, St Elizabeth and other towns.

If anyone has recommendations where I can visit to find an archive then I can plan around it for a side trip.  I have to get my head back in the game so that will be a great way to get going.

Thanks to everyone who leaves comments and answers questions for other visitors. If you have any photos, birth/death/marriage certificates to share with others then please send them to me and I’ll post them here for download.

Spring is here and summer is near.

On September 15, 2012 while sitting on the deck in Osoyoos with Lorin and our friend Peter enjoying a cold beer on a hot evening, I looked at the sky through binoculars and saw a very fast-moving bright dot that I thought was a satellite. It was unusual because of its speed but also because it weaved its way through the night sky as if going around things.  I pointed it out to Lorin and Peter but they couldn’t find it in the sky. They said there is no way a satellite can maneuver like that so it must be a UFO.

Since returning home in Coquitlam, I have found online that there were many sightings around the world and some people had even filmed something like it in the daytime in Australia.  Cue the theramine: it turns out there has been a spike in sightings in the last 3 months with more sightings in that period than there have been in decades.

Well, it doesn’t mean it was a alien ship – it just means it was unidentified. Could’ve been a weather balloon, military test plane, or any of the standard alternatives – and why not?

What I’d like to know is:

• why does it glow like a star?
• how large is it that it can be seen by the naked eye?
• why it looks as though it is flying amongst the stars? But really, that would not be possible to see unless it was the size of a star — and that’s not possible.
• what explains the flight path changing direction?
• why after so many sightings over so many decades is there no plausible explanation?
• why those who know won’t tell? Is the truth so plain and uninteresting that we won’t believe what they’ve been telling us all along?  Do we prefer to chase ideas that are more exciting and unexplained?

Over 20 years ago while camping near Harrison Lake, BC, Lorin and his friends saw exactly the same thing that I saw last weekend. They all said to each other “did you see something strange in the sky?”.  They all remember the night they saw a UFO.

Look at the displays in this great old museum in Pembina North Dakota.  The museum collection depicts early life for pioneers, metis, voyageur as well as those who surveyed the borders.

Yippee – Lorin has begun work taking out the wall between the kitchen and dining room.  Our kitchen is large but our dining room is quite narrow so now it will “feel” larger just because our view won’t stop at a wall.  The instant he bashed through it we realized it will be even better than that as there is another large window in the kitchen that we can now see from the dining room.  Amazing to have a such a wide view of our beautiful yard – very exciting.

The plan includes lower cabinets and countertop along the outside wall and where the old wall was, plus task lighting above so we don’t have to work in our shadow when preparing food there.

And since the windows are ugly original aluminum we’ll replace them too, and of course change the paint colour.

One thing always leads to another so Lorin wants to finally put in a good quality kitchen floor so were shopping for that too.  We’re looking for cabinets in the construction recycling shops but we’ll get new countertops custom installed through the whole kitchen when complete.

Sure is nice to have a handy husband.

I’m turning 48.

Reflecting and dreaming.

Lorin has worked very hard and has been given his commission as a Professional BC Land Surveyor and received his professional’s seal. Just yesterday he signed his first plans.  He’s worked very hard to get to this point and he’ll soon feel comfortable in his new role and flourish.