Cooper & Spicy's Kingdom : Cooking up a storm!

Retired life means that you are not on a schedule. My life used to be about schedules and doing things when they were supposed to be done. Not so much now. So, I'm late writing my Sunday blog. No big deal. I know that my "readers" patiently wait for the Sunday post even if it's posted late.....at least I like to think so.

I've been cooking up a storm since about 9 am this morning. I made a Beef Bourguignon for dinner and a batch of Italian Wedding Soup. I had actually planned on making the beef dish for dinner last night but I got sidetracked. Although yesterday was a cloudy day, we decided to go for a short walk into Town just to get some fresh air. I figured I would cook the beef after our walk and lunch. It takes about 3 hours to cook so it would be ready in plenty of time for dinner. On our way back home, we picked up our mail from Friday and this is why I got sidetracked: there was a bill from Bell Canada or rather a notice that our payment was past due. Well, that really got me going because we had paid our bill on time. I couldn't help myself, I decided to call Bell to find out what was going on. You see, we asked Bell two weeks ago to combine our phone, internet and satellite bills into one. Simple request one would say. Not so much when it comes to Bell. It seems that the left hand doesn't talk to the right hand. The payment we made did not get transferred to the new account. It took three phone calls, three different people, and 78 minutes of my precious time to finally resolve the issue. Needless to say that after that phone call, I wasn't in the mood for cooking and my plan to make a nice slow roasted Beef Bourguignon didn't materialize until today.

So, here I am writing my blog on a late Sunday afternoon after I did all my cooking, made lunch and went for a nice walk with Russell and Cooper to look at the Fall colours. On our way home, we ran into some of our friendly neighbours, the deers, and Cooper did his usual rumble. We are teaching him not to bark at the deer as we are, after all, sharing our property with them! Cooper is now having a well deserved nap and Russell is building a fire using the wood that he split this morning. He got himself a wood splitter which makes it easier to cut the wood.

This past week was very nice. Cooper went to daycare on Tuesday for a good part of the day. We used that time to clean up the brush around our house. We made a few piles and we plan on renting a chipper to chip away the brush. It looks much cleaner now but we still have some work to do. On Wednesday, we went to Algonquin Park and walked two of the 19 trails. It was a very nice day and the colours were almost at their peak. I include a few nice pictures that Russell took. We wanted to go back today but it looked like it was going to rain so we may go tomorrow instead. The trails are very well maintained and the degree of difficulty of our trails was moderate (as opposed to easy and difficult). The trails are quite narrow and lots of little hills. Cooper seemed to enjoy it very much and, of course, his little paws got somewhat dirty. He is such a country dog!

On Friday, a professional photographer hired by Matt came to our house to take pictures and do a video. It took him a little over 5 hours to take the pictures. In a few weeks, the editor of a magazine will most likely come to our house to interview us for an upcoming article. I will write more about this when I have more details.

This coming week will be quiet. Cooper goes back to daycare on Thursday and he gets a bath on Friday. Russell and I will continue to clear up the brush, weather permitting.

So, that's about it for this week's blog. I will post this shortly and then read Darlah's Talemaker Havanese blog. I now not only read her blog but all the comments that various Talemaker Havanese owners write. I must say that I truly enjoy reading those and at times I even throw in my two cents worth.