Brass Monkeys

Rather than Brass Monkeys, the title for this post should perhaps be the Bad Ass Brass Monkeys, because it is bloody freezing in cryogenic utopia that is Canada. I recall harping on last year about the really, really, really cold weather - well, it's back again but this time with its big ugly mother - the wind chill! Wind chill warnings have been issued for the past few days as in Calgary the wind chill has been minus 49!!! That aint cycling weather! That's just watching t.v. weather and not daring to venture too far from the couch in case there's a draft somewhere in the house! The actual ambient air temperature was a rather bracing minus 36 on the way to work from Cochrane these past couple of days, which burns your skin if you are senseless enough to expose any flesh outside for more than a millisecond. My love of winters and all things cold and white has been tarnished a litte bit by such climatic absurdity, it's as though the weather is really just taking the piss! The cold weather has slowed everything down somewhat, and the weekend was rather unproductive (although I did get up before dawn again on Saturday before the Arctic came south and skied out around Bragg Creek - no Cougars this time, the snow had been blown off certain aspects to expose rocks which my knees felt the need to connect with sharply, as I tumbled (again and again). My skiing became more of a hobble.
I've no piccies to post as we've had scant time outside - the longest I've been outside this week is trying to plug my damn car in on the school car park (which aint so easy with mits on that render you about as digitally dexterous as an arthritic lobster).
Our new couch has led us to spurge out on a new t.v and in all of our excitement we plumped for a 42 inch flat screen HD jobbie (I could tell you all about 1080P if I'd have been listening to the anal salesgeek who found it rather peculiar that I didn't play video games and that this would probably be our only electronic purchase in the four years!). The little 42 inch screen really is little when it's sat on the shelf in the shop amongst hoards of mega 60inch home theatre systems with all the bells and whistles "that'll do just fine" we convinced each other. Struggling to wheel the enormous box out of the shop (which incidentally could house at least three Taiwanese people) my spidey senses kicked in "mmmm, maybe a bit big, but it'll be reet".
On unpacking said t.v, the first response was "Holy shit, what have we bought?". The remote control itself is bigger than a laptop, and has more buttons than the cockpit of an Airbus A380 (we never even had a remote for our last telly). The instructions were encyclopedic and all the multitude of holes for wires on the back of the t.v. make it look like it's been hit by heavy artillery fire. We did manage to power up the t.v. - resulting in a blackout in the rest of Cochrane - and it's like being in the ruddy cinema. There was a show on about the ocean that gave me motion sickness, and the final of the tennis was shown but you literally have to move your head to watch the ball cross the screen. Clearly, any t.v that's going to make me vomit all over my new couch and that requires you to move to watch both sides of the screen, is going back. So it's going to take us the next few nights to figure out how to repack such a monstrous item back into the Taiwanese house - but hopefully the weather will have warmed up (to minus 20 at least) by the time we venture out into the elements to swap it for a dainty 32 inch t.v. (at least we'll still be able to see the wall with a smaller set).
Other than that, work remains what it is and Brina's still teaching Injuns before the daycare is up and running.
May all your programs be enormous and coming right at you from across the room,
S&S.