Lew Pitcher's blog

So this is the year. I've cleaned out fifty years of cruft around my cabin at the lake, started some much needed repairs, remodeled the kitchen, and repaneled the bedrooms. This year, I add (drum roll, please) electricity.

OK, so it's not as dramatic as all that. After all, I've had a generator at the cottage for about a decade. But, what is dramatic is that, for most purposes, I'm about to replace that noisy, costly, polluting generator with silent, inexpensive, eco-friendly solar power.

Another Christmas has come, and that means another trip to Montreal, laden with presents, luggage, and people. And, so I prepare to use my trusty, home made, cargo box. And, this year, I intend to adorn that cargo box with some Christmas cheer.

What could be more exotic, more unusual, more inviting than to travel the road to Morocco like Bachelorette Canada did in 2016? Well, Terry and I found out exactly how exotic, unusual and inviting Morocco can be; we took a week and travelled the road to Morocco ourselves.

Spring has started "springing", and I anxiously await my return to my log cabin on Kimball Lake. This year, I have a couple of largish projects in mind, and I can't wait to get started.

Terry and I took our annual Christmas trip to Montreal this past week, loaded down with gifts and luggage. Like years before, we had more baggage than I could reasonably fit into the Jetta, and was obliged to resurect the roof-top box. However, this year, we had even more than before, and the makeshift roof-top box that I had used previous years was just too small. It looked like it was time to go buy a bigger box.

I have had an "odd" season at the cottage, this year. I opened the cabin late (after the May long weekend), and only managed to get up to the lake sporadically during the summer. Fall has now arrived, and I find myself planning for the cottage closing, sometime in October. I don't know that we really had a summer this year, and I certainly missed the cottage.

Cottage time quickly approaches, and I've got much to prepare. Part of that preparation includes the selecting of games and passtimes for those rainy days and lazy evenings. This time, I decided to be a bit frugal, and concoct my own chess, checkers, and backgammon games.

And so, I give you my 2 page (duplex printed) Chess, Checkers, and Backgammon set.

Recently, a friend of mine was "caught", twice, by malicious websites. Under the guise of representing Microsoft, these sites each reported (with alarming audio and text) that my friend had been infected with spyware and viruses, with the advice to call a 1-800 number to obtain a fix. There was no apparent way to escape this notice; all my friends efforts to close or escape the page were ignored, and the system seemed at a standstill

I managed to help this friend get out of these traps, and found that no harm had been done to the computer.

The end to the 2016 cottage season fast approaches, and I have done almost all that I can do this year.

Two long-standing components of my late mother's cottage are gone: a long-dead snowmobile, and an even-longer-dead iron cookstove.
I have cleaned out most of the junk (next year will complete the job) and started the much-needed renovations and improvements.

I think that my Mother would be very happy with the changes.

Another visit to the cottage, and more incremental improvements and repairs. This time, two jobs: painting the master bedroom walls, and rebuilding the deck at the waterfront.