Monday Mish Mash

How was everyone's weekend? It was a pretty darn good one here in Living to Tell the Story land. Friday saw the chinook arrive and blow with a vengence during the night hours. If you don't know what a chinook is, it's a warm wind that comes off the mountains that Southern Alberta is famous for. It can at times literally raise the temperature from -20*C (-4*F) to 5 or 10*C (41*-50*F) within hours. The sky is totally covered over with a grey cloud cover during the chinook except the very edge of the horizon to the west where there is a blue strip of clear sky. That is called a chinook arch. It's very windy but we welcome it after sitting in frigid temps since before Christmas.


Of course, along with the nice sudden warming comes major melting. And that is something we Southern Albertans grumble about even while praising the chinook. It makes for extremely slushy, wet, dirty sidewalks, roads and parking lots. One never knows when that innocent looking pile of snow on the pavement will actually be a melted puddle underneath the snow cover and all of a sudden you are up to your ankles in cold water. The roads become swimming pools as the fast melt cannot get to the drain holes because of snow that hasn't melted yet




and piles of snow along the sides of the roads are very dirty as cars spray up the wet, mucky dirty gravel that they lay when the roads are slick. It goes from a white, pristine landscape like this
To a yucky dirty look like this

Main roads like ours that have been plowed before will clear really fast but side streets become treacherous when all the slush then freezes overnight when temps go down below zero. They are a rutted, solid ice mess.


But the wind, the wet and slush does not stop us hearty Southern Albertan from much. Especially not going shopping with a friend when there is a gift certificate to spend! Remember I mentioned the gift certificate and hoping to score a good deal here in #5? Well, after literally combing the store I scored an awesome deal with this cute wool coat. (If you zoom on the pic you'll see the cute weave in the coat). And notice the price? Well guess what I got it for? Go 'head, guess. A cool $79.99. How awesome is that? By the time I pooled the gift card and birthday monies, the only cash I put out was $12.99 for a cute scarf to go with it. Whoo hoo, I actually have a nice coat now, rather than just a bunch of casual type sport coats. I modeled it for my youngest whose comment was: "Wow, Mom, you look in stlye now". Which I think was a compliment. LOL. And what's a shopping trip without reviving ourselves with a nice cup of coffee at Starbucks?

We wrapped up the weekend with a great church service on Sunday, learning all about letting the Word of God be sown on good soil in our hearts and then a nice Chinese food dinner with some friends who treated us. Wow, reading back on the last week I have gone out more with friends than I have for months. And you know what? I liked it. Really, really liked it. I definitely have to make more of an effort in that department.

So anything fun in your weekend?