downshiftme.com: January 2007 - downshifting from the UK to Nova Scotia, Canada

A two driver family

Downshiftme.com are pleased to announce that Mr. AJ has passed his Nova Scotian driving test!

He had to go through the full regime as he never took his test in the UK.

Full details in the podcast at the weekend.

No podcast this week

Unfortunately there will be no podcast this week. I had to get up at 3.45am to get to work for 5am this morning so my brain is not functioning well enough to podcast! Many apologies - hopefully our normal level of coherence (or incoherence) next week.

In the meantime, here is a photo of a Maple leaf in the snow I took last week at the park.

Podcast 48 – the brrrrrrr edition

Right click the orange podcast logo above and "save file as" or "save target as" to download (11.8mb)

Winter has arrived:

Monday – finished early – a nasty drive home

Tuesday – got out of working

Wednesday like The Day After Tomorrow
-30 windchill
-16 real temperature
High winds

Thursday – back to college and work – river frozen.

AJ’s accident
- hospital visit
- charging for ambulances
- hobbling
- getting better

Winter – managing to survive – yes it is cold. House is lovely and warm. Burning lots of wood – not using too much oil (as long as the gauge is working). Snow is a pain on the roads sometimes. Need to shovel the entrance to our drive.

Storms in Europe – plane taking off – couldn’t find on BBC or Youtube.

Brewing beer - Mouse in bottle incident

Our Favourite advert nicotine replacement –“The seatbelt light is on! SIGH”
Click here and then on "Deb on quitting smoking" on the bottom right.

BBC Canada – wall to wall homes programmes!

Bad things
Matt – snow
AJ – hurt foot

Good things
AJ – woolly hats
Matt – snow

NS Deep Freeze

Well we must have tempted fate about the winter. Yesterday we started to experience the remnants of the "ice storm" which has hit the Unites States. Had a very slow drive back from work at 5pm with some sliding over the road.

We have about 15 to 20cm of snow outside at the moment and tonight is going to go down to -20°c (wind chill of about -27).

We are toasty warm though with the wood furnace and woodburner doing a grand job.

Podcast 47

Right click the orange podcast logo above and "save file as" or "save target as" to download (14.2mb)

Things to bring thread on ACL, a Dead Dyson, Flora’s question about money. Nice people we have met, listener in Israel, email about rain in Swansea. Work update – doing signage. College update – Chelsea garden. Mother Earth News article – poly tunnel with compost pathway, keeping chickens, nuts, compost.

Podcast 46 - one year on

Right click the orange podcast logo above and "save file as" or "save target as" to download (20.6mb) or here for the dialup version (11.8mb) or here for the special higher quality version (96k) which weighs in at a modem-busting 35mb.

This is the first podcast of the year and our "review of the year". Our first ever podcast was on 30th December 2005 so this is our one year anniversary of podcasting.

It lasts for 50 minutes so have uploaded an even lower quality than usual version for our dialup listeners plus the normal 56k version which is included in the podcast feed.

Christmas Video of Dylan and Garden

This short video was shot on Christmas day to show the sunny weather and also our garden in the winter.

Dylan manages to get in on the shot and have a roll about in the grass and you also get a glimpse of our vegetable beds I started to dig over in the Autumn.