Never trust the weatherman

well. this morning as we were preparing to walk to school and work- because our car was in the shop, as it frequently is these days thanks to the Province of Ontario's ingenious 'drive-clean' plan (more on that later)- we checked the weatherman's report online to find that the forecast called for a mostly sunny day with a few clouds about and a mild 7-degree temperature. 'we do not expect any precipitation between Thursday morning and Friday morning,' it said. so, spirits were high as we both set off in the chilly morning air, the sun shining brightly. as i went along my merry way, i noticed that the wind was in fact very cold indeed, and had to pull my hood over my ears to keep them from aching, but thought nothing much of it other than wishing for some earmuffs.

about an hour after i arrived at work, however, i received word that the scene outside was now significantly different than it had been earlier. what was the differing factor, you may ask? well, faithful reader, for the answer to that question i bid you have a close look at the photographs below:




do you note the small specks of white floating in the foreground? despite what your better judgment might tell you, those are in fact snowflakes. yes, several times today the heavens opened and down fluttered these little white specks- in quite considerable quantities in fact. evidently the weatherman must have been just as surprised as i at this unforeseen onslaught of not only precipitation, but crystallized precipitation at that! his magical powers of prediction and precise scientific equipment must have been out of alignment today.

so there you have it! October 12th- the first snow of the winter in London, Ontario. i have a feeling we're in for the long haul now. this is how i feel about that:

ah well, we'll take it all in stride- just like we've taken in stride the fact that the Ontario Provincial Government is clearly in cahoots with Murphy and conspiring against us, attempting to bring about our slow and painful (and untimely, if i may say so) demise. incidentally, i think the dryers in the laundry room are also in on it. but let me get back to the Government. a little warning for anyone who ever thinks of moving to Ontario: don't bother bringing your car with you, unless it's fairly new or unless you feel like forking out hundreds of dollars to get it up-to-par for Ontario registration. apparently this province has a bit of a superiority complex about its 'clean and safe' roads, and a 1989 Sentra, no matter how well-taken-care-of, doesn't measure up. meanwhile, London certainly has its fair share of gas-guzzling SUVs, driven by maniacs who feel that it is more important to get to their destination in a timely fashion than to obey the rules of the road. but clearly our missing brake light and aging ball joints are more of a hazard to the safety of London's citizens. as a result we have been getting a whole lot of exercise walking when our car was variously at two different mechanics and the Jiffy Lube being tested, getting repairs done, and being re-tested. she now proudly bears an Ontario Motor Vehicle Safety Standards certificate, and hopefully by the end of tomorrow she will have passed the emissions re-test, have Ontario plates and be legal! but we're not getting our hopes up yet... ;)

let's just say we'll be glad when we're through with all the red tape that is evidently involved in a province-to-province move, and things start settling down into more of a regular schedule.

as a brief addendum, i must apologise to the readership of "adventures of a rookie waitress" for the lack of excerpts of late. to be honest, i'm running out of material. you see, i don't know how many of you picked up on my clever ploy, but the main character is actually loosely based on me- i know, how subtle was that!? i bet you never would have guessed- and as of late things have actually been rather uneventful at work. i seem to have beaten the rebellious ice cubes into submission (mostly) and i haven't had any recent episodes with the dropping of cutlery on people's heads or with uninformed patrons causing a fuss, so for the moment the rookie waitress has nothing much to report. things could change at any time though, so there may still be hope for more future adventures!

Mrs. Bing