Guess what? The weather has turned! It's sunny... and... well, baby, it's cold outside!

Time for an old chestnut... roasting on an open fire, of course. Most people seem to like Nat King Cole's version of "The Christmas Song" the best, but frankly, I don't think you can go wrong with the writer of the song. I give you the Velvet Fog, Mel Torme, singing his classic:

Let's be silly today for the advent calendar. There are lots of silly Christmas songs, songs about missing front teeth and mommies kissing Santa Claus and reindeer running over grandmas. But this is one of the best (and least annoying, IMHO). Make room for that big, big present!

Today, the advent calendar has a little Canadian content, or Can-con as we call it here in the Great White North. We open up the little window and... omigosh! Barenaked ladies!

One of my favourite seasonal movies is The Nightmare Before Christmas. I know it's a favourite for a lot of you, too. It's generally the one DVD I pop in to start my Christmas viewing. In honour of that (I'll be watching it tomorrow night, likely), here's Jack Skellington discovering Christmas Town:

It's that time of year again! I've been trawling YouTube, and I think I've got a nice bunch for you all this year. Let's open the first window and see what's behind it...

Why, look at that! It's a classic! Who doesn't love "A Charlie Brown Christmas"?

It's almost mid-October, and today it's 28C/82F outside. WTF?

I still have forget-me-nots blooming. Hell, I still have roses blooming!

I'm not complaining, but I do wonder about climate-change deniers. I've lived for more than 4 decades here, and I cannot remember a (Canadian) Thanksgiving weekend like this: bright sunshine, high temperatures. A friend of mine declared on Facebook that she and her partner are having Thanksgiving dinner on the deck. That's just unnatural, people. Nice--very nice--but totally unnatural.

We're having a pretty poor autumn as far as foliage displays, too. Normally by this time, the leaves have all changed to bright oranges, reds, and golds. This year, what leaves haven't been stripped off the trees by the high winds we've had are still green, or just turning brown.

It's just weird.

Hello, everyone... I'm connected again! The power went out here at about 4:30 AM yesterday (Monday), and didn't come back until 11:30 AM today. Not as bad as it could've been, I suppose: we didn't lose anything in the fridges or freezers to spoilage, and we were able to clean ourselves and brush our teeth, after a fashion. Couldn't flush any toilets, though, so you can bet that the first thing I did when I had running water again was scrub the main bathroom. :-p

Irene was a tropical storm by the time it reached us, but don't let that fool you--she still packed one helluva wallop. High winds brought down trees, which in turn knocked out power. She came in faster than we expected, too, so we were kind of unprepared; we'd planned on filling the bathtub (for those oh-so-important flushings) yesterday morning, but... the best-laid plans and all that. Man plans, and God laughs, so the saying goes.

All in all, though, everything turned out OK. The roof is intact, the garden survived (yay, tomatoes!), we had bottled water, and there was propane for the grill, so really, a lack of power wasn't too bad. Mind you, I had to use a saucepan and the side burner on the barbecue in order to make a cup of tea this morning... that was interesting...

The meteorologists call it a "heat dome"... so we're under the dome... I'm blaming Stephen King. :-p

Actually, we're not quite under the dome here, but I must say... 26C (78.8F for you non-metric folks) is not normal for this part of the world. Add the humidity, and 26 feels like 35 (95F). I know, I know, to some of you, that's a doddle. And I hate to complain, but damn it, it's hard to breathe! And there's no AC at work. Nope. None at all. We have air exchangers. :-p My only hope will be that I'll have to go down the back of the store via the frozen foods section...

(Oh, that 26C? That's in the city, which is on the Bay of Fundy, which means cooler temps. I'm inland of that. I haven't dared to look at the thermometer since 8 AM, when it was 27C/80.6F.)

I've spent the afternoon here in the Chatroom, drinking water and trying not to move much (apart from the obvious trips to the loo... 's what happens when you drink that much water). I'm fairly comfortable at the moment, but I'm gonna have to get ready for work soon... and then actually go to work... and then I'm house-sitting all weekend. My brother's house is not as well set up for the heat as this one is. I have a feeling I'm going to have to sleep with the blind up so I can have the window open. :-p

We've had spectacular downpours in the last 24 hours. I woke up early yesterday morning to the sound of rain bucketing down and thought, "Well, so much for my three miles today," but by the time I'd actually got up, it was over; by afternoon the sun was out. Then last night about 10:20, I drove home with lightning flashing all about. When I reached the ferry, the rain had started, and by the time I drove onto the ferry (which was sitting there waiting for me--glee!), it was bucketing down again. That lasted for less than a quarter of an hour, because by the time I pulled into my own driveway, it was all over.

So this morning, which dawned bright and sunny, I had a quick wander round the garden. So far the bamboo skewers seem to be stymieing the cats--at least I didn't see any dug-up areas in the tulip bed. And there's no ant movement near the rosebush, which is promising.

If the blossoms are anything to go by, I'm going to have an awful lot of tomatoes. I hope they don't ripen all at once, or I could be in trouble... or making a helluva lot of fresh salsa!

And I have bachelor's buttons! Yay! I know, I know, I did plant them, but I wasn't sure anything was going to come up in that bed, because once again, the cats were into it, but I do have several bachelor's buttons up, and one blooming. I haven't seen those since I was a wee girlie and gardening with my dad's mum. :-)