It’s 7:30p.m. on Sunday, December 11, 2011, and I’ve just driven home from Kelowna.  I visited and exchanged gifts with Jules and Carol and then with Peggy and Bert.  I ended up having wine and dinner with the latter. The Christmas entertainment has begun.

 I put up some lights and decorations last weekend and then realized that nobody would see them but me.  So I decided to have a small party.  Without thinking about it much, I took a picture of the front door, downloaded it and turned it into an enigmatically worded e-invitation to drinks and dessert on Thursday, Dec. 15.  Had I thought a bit about it, I would have realized that I was asking for confusion.   It was not clear whether I was inviting the spouses, or not.  Some took it for granted that I wasn’t and others that I was.  I then had to phone the former and make sure they realized that their significant others were welcome.  Of course this ballooned the party to potentially 30 and necessitated my going through old recipes and planning to make more desserts, which I haven’t done yet.  Then I realized that another element of the evening that I hadn’t sufficiently thought through was my plan to have make-your-own eggnog.  I would place a bottle of brandy and a bottle of rum beside a punch bowl of nog.  But I don’t have a punch bowl any more.  It’s one of the many things we got rid of before moving to the condo in Ottawa.  That kept me awake for a while on Monday night, but Mo solved the problem the next day by saying I could use her mom’s, which she had been given and used rarely.  So the party’s on, and at the moment I am in turns looking forward to it and to it’s being over with.

Saturday was a great day of training for SSASS, the adaptive ski program that I have volunteered to help with.  When I awoke at 6:30 and looked outside at the grey morning, I wanted to roll over and go back to sleep.  I had had a back spasm, the first of my life, in the middle of the night and was thinking of using that as an excuse.  But I was supposed to drive Mo and decided I couldn’t let her down. So I packed the Rough Guide to Korea in my backpack and was prepared to spend the day at Silver Star reading it if my back hurt.  But it didn’t, and the day turned out to be sunny and warm.  Our instructor was very enthusiastic, and he knew how to teach skiing.  I learned a lot and am now much more eager to face the two days of instruction next weekend.  I was afraid I might not ski well enough to be able to do it, but not any more.

I met the woman I will be teaching at Immigrant Services.  She’s from India, in her early fifties and speaks English quite well, but she wants practice with pronunciation, reading and writing.  It looks promising.  

The front door picture for the invitation to the party

The living room decorated for Christmas

The fireplace