Monday, September 29, 2008

Hurricane Kyle

September 28, 2008 was the date Kyle came ashore in Nova Scotia, just north of Yarmouth. The heaviest winds seem to have been in Shelburne - 154 km/hr gusts.

In Lockeport, we had lots of wind, very little rain and not very much damage. Shelburne, on the other hand, had a building under construction (a new office for Harlow construction) demolished - it was at the stage of roof closed in but the walls were open studs and the wind just lifted the roof off. It was fairly large - probably at least 100 ft long - so a costly demise.

Since we had never experienced a hurricane before (just a few tropical storms of low intensity) we didn't really know what we were doing while preparing. All of our loose lawn furniture etc. we put in the garage - there wasn't much we could do about the woodpile and composter but they survived completely. Our only damage was a few small broken branches. We filled assorted containers with water (wine equipment, bath tubs, pitchers) in case of a power failure - the well pump wouldn't work. And we waited.

Yesterday was Wayne's first hockey game of the season - a little thing like a hurricane doesn't stop hockey players. Sherm called Barrington arena before he left East Sable to meet Wayne at Exit 24 (car-pooling when you go 70 km to play hockey). Everything was a go. So they met, drove to the Shell in Shelburne to meet some other guys, waited, heard some hurricane stories (Jeff Harlow reported on the collapse of his building) and eventually Barrington called one of them to tell them the power was out at the arena.
So they all went home. Try again next week.

We had no power outages at all but apparently there were over 40,000 without power last night and many roads had to be cleared of trees and limbs. Our neighbour, Al, was working doing that all night.

Down at Crescent Beach this morning, there were seaweed and lobster traps over the rocks at our end of the beach, huge rolling waves, and no beach at all to walk on. Hopefully some sand is left when the waves subside.

But for a hurricane, it was pretty minor stuff. Thank you, God.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Great Day!

I must admit I make Wayne work too much. Right now he is working on getting the kitchen prepared for the new cabinets which should be installed this week or next. There is a lot of plastering, sanding, replastering, priming, painting involved in our old kitchen and he has been working at it faithfully.

Yesterday, we were waiting for Star Choice to install our satellite dish (so we can get more sports and still pay less). Wayne continued to work all morning and the dish was installed by 12:30 - great reception and 2 receivers hooked up so we don't have to fight about which game/program to watch.

For lunch, we hustled over to Sable River's Firemen's FunFest and had a BBQ chicken meal - 3 pieces of chicken, roll, coleslaw for $5.00 (they had run out of potato and macaroni salad so they dropped the price from $7.00). We wandered around the booths then went back to Lockeport to work on the house, watch some golf and hockey (saw Redden give the puck away to the Devils - some things never change!).

At 5:30 we headed into Shelburne for some Chinese food at Luong's. Great dinner - we hadn't eaten there for about 5 years but are now determined to return more often since the prices and food were both good.

We went on to the Osprey for a very entertaining play - Underneath the Lintel - by Glen Berger, starring Christian Murray. It was a one-act play, 80 minutes - funny, thought-provoking, imaginative in a DaVinci Code way.

Then we returned home in time to see the 3rd period of the Senators-Canadiens game which I at least enjoyed (guess who won!).

All in all, a very full, enjoyable day.

Something Else to Love About Nova Scotia

Well - we're taking the plunge this week and switching our cars and drivers' licences to Nova Scotia. To do this, of course, we have to have insurance coverage in Nova Scotia and vehicle safety checks.

We have had ING policies in Ottawa - one to cover our Ottawa home and 3 cars and a seasonal one for the Lockeport house. In order to have a comprehensive policy for Lockeport, we had to get the Ottawa policy listed in Bob's name (ING doesn't allow you to have 2 principle residences and pay them more insurance which seems like a strange policy to me). That was no problem since his name is on the Ottawa deed. Then we had to switch the ownership of the old Saturn to Bob's name - this is now a 6 step process in Ontario, commencing with a visit to a lawyer to have him notarize a form saying you are giving your son the car and your son accepting it. Then safety check, emission test, insurance proof, licence plate declaration, signing the ownership and standing in line for an hour at the licence office. That was all accomplished during our recent visit to Ottawa.

Friday I saw our insurance agent here, Debbie. She was our agent previously when ING let you have a seasonal policy in Nova Scotia without any other coverage by them - in 2006 they wouldn't renew so we had to get all our policies from them through our Ottawa broker since our then Ontario insurance company (Gore) wouldn't insure anything in Nova Scotia. Anyway, we are now back with Debbie.

Within an hour, she had done all the paperwork to set us up with comprehensive house insurance and insurance for both cars - better coverage by far than we had in Ottawa. Then she calculated the total bill for the policies. For $13/month more than we paid for seasonal coverage at Ontario rates. we get the comprehensive house insurance plus the insurance on the 2 cars here - same company, same vehicles, same house, same country, different province.

Weird but we'll take the savings gladly!