Poor Little Pup.

Voyage Critic # 1 is feeling a little down in the mouth today...

He was born with a defect of poorly aligned teeth. - Really poorly.

Because of this, he takes to extreme, a dog's skill of engulfing his food, and rarely puts more that 2 chomps to the most challenging of mouthfuls.

I usually wind up manually removing tartar from his teeth about every 3 months, and by then the scale build up is thicker than a toonie's thickness, and very yellow.  On an average dog, that kind of build up takes at least 2 - 3 years to accumulate.

Last week, I went about the fun of scraping it again, and discovered upon removing a particularly large chunk that at least one tooth was nearly absent in its presence. 

So today we dragged poor Max in for a professional cleaning and whatever shows itself as necessary dental appointment.

We picked up a fogged out little boy who is now 3 teeth short of a load, though the rest are bright and sparkly.

He now lies convalescing in Daddy's chair with a baby blanket over him, and a small, low setting heat pad below as he tries to shake the fog and waits for Daddy to come in for appropriate cuddles.  (No, we don't spoil our pets, why do you ask??)

It has made for a quiet day for me as I oversee his maintaining of calm.  Just as well as it is another day brimmed with arctic chill - by Okanagan standards.

So with that, I must attend my patient, and bid you,

Adieu.

Wi-fire Benefit Discovery

My husband and I both have laptops, and we have a networkable printer and external hard drive.  Because connecting to these devices is easier from a wireless approach instead of having LAN cables, we have a wireless router in our rig.  It has LAN cables to the printer and hard drive so the laptops can tag into the system wirelessly.

This worked well when we had a land based modem in the house for high speed internet, but when you are relying on an external wi-fi source for internet, it does create a bit of a bug.

We have had to choose one router or the other because we couldn't be online with one router and printing with the other.  It would only allow one connection at a time.

With the Wi-fire added to our equipment, I discovered this morning that I could connect the internal wi-fi receiver of the laptop to the rig's router to print, and still leave the wi-fire connected to the external wi-fi internet source.

I did find that the page connection was greatly reduced when on wi-fire alone, but it was still there.  When printing emails for example, we used to have to connect to the net, tell the email to print, disconnect from the net, connect to the internal router, let the document print, when it finishes (and no sooner or the print will be interupted), disconnect from the internal router, reconnect to the external net router, then resume surfing.

This time, I disconnected to print, and reconnected to the internal print router, but because the wi-fire was still connected, I thought I would try surfing.  As I said, it was slow, but it was nonetheless, able to navigate to a page or two while the printing completed.  I then reconnected the internal wi-fi receiver to the external net router and the speed returned.

It wasn't part of what I wished to accomplish with purchasing the Wi-Fire, but it has definitely been a bonus I appreciate.

So I am off and running again.  Not far, just town, but I will bid you,

Adieu.

Okanagan Research and Innovation Centre

Today we went on an arranged tour to the observatory North of Okanagan Falls, and South of Penticton.  It was set up by the RV Park staff, and was well attended.

It was a beautiful day for an outing, and a good time was had by all.  The tour was lead by one of the Astronomers (I never did catch his name) who has worked in this observatory from many years, and who also worked for 15 years at the one in Hawaii.

If astronomy is your field of interest, you will find this to be a worth while visit, and there is no admission fee for visitors.

I have also visited in the past, Victoria BC's "Centre of the Universe" observatory,  but they are 2 totally different centres.

Victoria has one of the world's largest telescopes, but the Okanagan observatory works on radio wave and focusing on Hydrogen as a means of observing the celestial bodies.  The biggest difference this makes is that the Okanagan one can be used day or night and cloud cover doesn't block reception.

There are plenty of visual displays, audio tracks to explain equipment and its uses, and as an added bonus, perched atop older, no longer functioning equipment is a soon to be reoccupied osprey nest that will likely be a sideline focus at the centre later this year.

Please have a look at the photos I took today.

It has been quite a day, and the night is getting old, so I bid you,

Adieu.

Quick Wi-Fire Assessment

As mentioned, we have received the Wi-fire devices we ordered, and it is too early to say too much, but one big positive so far relates to my eternal struggle with using Skype as a connection with my parents who snowbird in the states.

Usually I have broken conversations and dropped calls.  However, this morning I tagged in and as usual, the call was going poorly.  I plugged the wi-fire in, connected it to the signal, and immediately the breaking of the signal stopped, and in mid stream of the conversation.

We look forward to having the opportunity to test it away from a known signal, but for now we are very content with the boost it gives, and we really like the signal strength monitoring which is far more accurate with the Wi-Fire's readouts.

Until we move off and start roving more thorough testing will wait, but we are happy with them as it stands.

I am going to grab a bite of lunch now, so I will bid you,

adieu

Follow-up Report

The weather is redeeming itself, but we still have a lot of new as well as the residual old snow to thaw.  Today says it is a balmy 5.9 Celsius  at just shy of 10 am.

We have received the Wi-Fire device and will be reporting back about their functionality after using it for a spell.

The cheque is on its way from the dealership over the washer matter.

The RV Park is doing an upgrade on the system as they are aware of the unsatisfactory state of the offered free internet, and agree that it is unacceptable.  The upgrades will be in soon we are told, and we look forward to the improvements.  I do note too, that a lot of other parks that offer the service do charge a fee for its inclusion with the pad where theirs is complimentary.

I am off and running this morning, so for now I bid you,

Adieu

Betrayed by the weatherman!!

What a sneaky thing to do to the unwitting, innocent people of this region.

We started this morning with the most hopeful signs of things to come. By the time I went for my usual 10 am walk, it was so warm (+ 9 celsius) that I debated even wearing a jacket. I decided to wear a wind shell over a sweater, but even that was tied at my waist by the time I was only about 2 blocks out. Even the wind was gentle and warm.

At long last, the dreaded white dump of December 12 was nearly gone, with only the deepest and most glaciated or sun sheltered patches clinging to their hold on our should be "northern snowbird haven".

I was duped!!!

By 2 pm the clouds started to accumulate, and the temperature cooled rather quickly, but it was still springish. By 3 it was definitely an ominous sky, and by 3:30, the use of four letter words were unavoidable.

Snow ........................ Hail ........................... Cold ................................ Wind

(See how high the drift is? The only reason the path is clear is that I shoveled it)

I know the use of 4 letter words is inappropriate for net pages, but what can you do??

By supper time, we had to put the dog out on an unavoidable business trip, and already, there was a 2 to 3 inch accumulation in the yard. Worse still, I took out the shovel to push enough aside to create a path for his duties, and found a snow drift that was closer to a foot deep.

We had a white-out blizzard, and here we are on the brink of March. Yet again, the locals tell how this is unprecedented weather we are having. (One does tire of hearing that when in relation to the down side of the forecasts.....)

How cruel a trick to put on the weather weary soles of the Canadian escaping winter while remaining in country.

However, even now I say that if you do stay in Canada for snowbirding, the South Okanagan is the most logical. It is half the cost of the Lower Mainland or Vancouver Island, and we still fared better overall than they did during the worst of it, and far far better than staying in other regions not so kind in climate.

Hopefully, tomorrow will bring a hasty thaw to the weather of today in the meantime, I bid you,

Adieu.

The Things You Miss...

This is a thought I meant to post about a week ago, but unfortunately due to a net connection failing which could not be foreseen..... I was a bit distracted..... (but I digress.....)

As mentioned in an earlier post, my neighbour and I have been going out for a morning walk. We started just after New Year - though we haven't called it an act of "resolution" as that would condemn the venture as unworthy to continue beyond the first week.

We originally took a Westward direction, and looped about on a 4 mile route, but we have since redirected our sojourn such that it excluded as much sidewalk-less roads as possible. We now walk along the walk/cycle route beside the river. We have done this now, continuously since early January.

Funny thing, about a week and a half ago I was walking with Ken as my regular pal was entertaining out of town guests. Ken and I walked the same route that she and I had walked for weeks.....

So can you explain to me how we missed these two shots below??? (The shots were taken a couple days later when I remembered the camera)



This is just off the path to the west, and the second is a closer up shot. The first shot shows that there is almost no support from the tree next to it, and the second shot shows how little is holding it from below.

I have to say, that must be the hardest of hardwood I have ever seen. There can't be more than 3 inches of wood left to hold the tree up, yet it continues to be standing. (Today we noted that it looks like the "worker" had resumed duties recently as the grayed out trunk wood had some fresher looking wood and chips about it.)



This is another trunk (along the bank near center on this side of the river) that apparently, the parks workers decided to take down on their own before the beaver could finish the contract.

Now this next shot came about as we expanded our route beyond the end of the paved route, and further out onto the still under construction portion of the route. Again, we had walked the path a couple times before this sight jump up at us.........



I am really curious how in the middle of winter in the middle of the Okanagan, one can walk past an area 4 of 5 times, and completely miss a couple of giraffes standing in the field.....

As I ponder these quandries, I will bid you...

Adieu.