CANADA GEESE

    Yesterday morning, I saw several flocks of Canada geese fly over. We don't have any open water except for some parts of rivers. Now, in some fields the snow is gone and they could feed.

    Nevertheless, they are probably not going to land here and stay. No, the first geese here are going on. Water isn't open here and they are flying further north, What gives?

   Well, some Canada geese fly to lakes on the arctic coast.  They stay  on the ice for six to eight weeks. They eat  debris on the ice from material that has blown on the ice during the winter. There are also insects on the ice at that time of year. There will be fresh water on top of the ice.

   When most of the snow  and ice have melted they will nest. 

   Now Innuit hunters take advantage of this situation and harvest large numbers of geese. They use white material to make a blind that allows them to move. They are a able to harvest many geese. Meat and down it valuable at that time. These days hunters fly out and make a camp and stay a few days. People who have permanent jobs go on these hunts.  

      I don't know about their behavior in the fall. I do know that it's pretty cool when flying, to look down and see flocks of geese below you.

NOISE

      A  couple mornings ago I was in the back of the house and heard a very loud strange noise. I thought that it must be something outside so I ran to the back door to open it and see if the noise came from outside. As soon as I got to the back door I knew the noise was coming from in the house. More than that it came from downstairs.

      I bounced down the stairs and was getting closer to the noise. The noise came from under the stairwell and there I found my sump pump running. Funny thing but there was no water in the sump. It's winter and we don't have water out side. Well,  my brain told me to pull the plug out for the sump pump and the noise stopped immediately.

    Well.  I still had  to find out why the  sump pump suddenly started  running. Sump pumps don't pump snow.

   I soon found out that the cable holding the floats had rusted and broke. 

    However, I will fix my sump pump now so it's ready for any water in the spring or summer

SNOW

     Yesterday we had about four or five cm of snow. That's not much but we don't get a lot of snow. 

The snow was powder so it was fluffy and dry. It was easy to shovel as it was light. Now it was about minus 8 below. So this would be winter snow as compared to spring snow which is heavy and wet.

      Now' just recently I transferred my photos from an old hard drive to a memory stick. There were  close to 8000 photos, It was a good time to cull some photos. I discarded about 4000 photos, Many photos were snow photos. It looked like I never saw a snow flake I didn't like and by the way, I didn't take any snow photos yesterday.

        I had never transferred  anything to a memory stick so it was a bit of a surprise, I downloaded 6 files and then it said it was downloading 4441 photos! When It was finished I looked at what I had. I thought they were all jumbled up. As with any problem like this I waited a couple of days before I went back to the photos. Upon inspection , I found that the photos were in exactly the order they had been in.

     Since I did not make files the computer filed them by date. 

   I do have a few things to learn.

A VISIT TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM

•       In the past ten days the micro manager and I have caught one of he most miserable head colds we've ever had. I've been retired for 28 years and have rarely had a head cold. We have no idea where we picked it up. We think it may have been in the hospital that the micro Manager had her cataract surgery,
•       But that isn't what this post is about. Yesterday afternoon the Micro Manager had a coughing spell that was alarming. We decided  to  go to the emergency rather than wait until when she  got sicker.
•        We got to emergency about 6:30. PM
•      We had been told that there was a wait of about 3 and a half hours. At 10 I asked how long we still had to wait. Well there were four people ahead of us. How long would that take? Well it took until one AM for us to get in a room. It took another hour to see a doctor  
•      So we got out of the treatment area about 2 AM. We got home just before  3 AM and he did not prescribe anything for us to do.

              We got home just before 3 AM. That's six  hours for two elderly people to wait around. Apparently with this bug you just have to tough it out as there isn't anything to treat it.

MARCH WEATHER

       Here in Central Alberta, Canada, March is considered to be a spring month although with extremes.

       Today was a good example. When I got up today there was light rain. It was about plus 2 C. The rain soon stopped and the wind started. Then snow flurries occurred. The rain lasted about 30 minutes. Just enough to make things wet. The light snow lasted about 60 minutes.  

      March can be very windy. Weather systems go through quickly. We tend to get much precipitation in March.

      So today was a day that's quite common in March. You feel the warmth from the sun ,but the wind makes it feel cold. 

      So what will tomorrow bring? It's supposed to get cold tomorrow. 

NO CARTS

       I went to the local Super Store this morning for a few items. Super Store is the equivalent of Walmart here. I want you to get the idea that this is a large store.

     When I went in the store, there were only five  carts  in the stand. No worry! More carts  will soon be brought in.

    I finished my shopping and on the way to the car someone asked for my cart. He would come to the car while I unload my groceries. Usually, I would get very suspicious about some one wanting my cart. There are many homeless in this rea and they ask for your cart so that they get your change. I  looked  around and there were no carts in the stand . The guy was desperate. 

     So what was going on? The store was replacing the carts with new ones. The company supplying  the  new  carts   took all the old ones before any new ones were brought in.

    Well, this just does make sense to me. Why would a store, on a busy Saturday, not have shopping carts ?

MARCH 1

          I'm more than nerdy about weather . I like the science of weather as how it works with low pressure high pressure systems. When  I was in grade school I liked the weather unit in science. I had many airplane rides in The Northwest Territories. the pilots had to have a good  sense of the weather. The only time I was in danger of crashing is when the pilot misjudged the weather. Well to be  fair the weather  was tricky. The  airplane iced up.

       We did many radio reports on weather and that had to good enough in the 60's.

       What high tech I do remember is when the first satellites began producing weather   reports. I remember the first and only time we  used it,

       But today my topic is March' In like  a lion and out like a .lamb,.We spend time debating whetherr the weather  we had was lamb or lion! Yester dsy we could have had a discussion.

      At midnight it was  minus 18 C and calm, Shortly after  noon it was plus 5 and no wind It was a beautiful day.

    So we'll see what the weather is like on March 31