Yowsa!  Yowsa!  There's a whole lot of shakin' goin' on!  Around 8:03 we were watching tv in the basement.  I felt the couch moving and thought a dog was re-arranging himself and bumped the couch.  But all dogs were sleeping on their beds, sound asleep.  The pictures were swinging on the wall and the door was moving back and forth.  It was the weirdest sensation.  It felt like the floor was moving beneath me, but I was the one moving, on the couch, on the floor.  It seemed to last for a long time, perhaps a minute.  Of course, the phone started ringing as neighbours called to see who felt what.  My concern was to phone my daughter in Terrace once we found out the epicentre was near Masset on Haida Gwaii (aka Queen Charlotte Islands).  The quake registered 5.5 in Terrace and 7.7 at the epicentre.  The coast is on tsunami alert.  Very scary, indeed.  All was well in Terrace other than being rather shook up!

It is still snowing today.  It has been snowing for 2 days now.  It is hard to believe that 2 weeks ago we were in t-shirts and I was grumbling that it was too hot for getting wood.  Next thing we know the temperatures dropped well below normal, freezing the produce in the garden.  Now the temperatures have risen to just below freezing and the snow continues to fall.  I guess that is life in northern Canada.  You never know what you're going to get as far as weather is concerned. 

I had another private dog training lesson to do today in Burns Lake.  It went well.  The dog is a lovely 6 month old pup, boxer lab cross.  His owner is in a wheel chair so it was a new challenge to come up with training methods that will work with the handler in a chair.  Clicker training was the answer as it is hands off and reward based.  It worked very well and we are off to a good start.

The trip home was slow going as the roads are slippery with new snow and temperatures hovering at the freezing mark.  I will be going to town on Tuesday so have made an appointment to have my winter tires installed.  They are on winter rims so it is a quick stop to have them changed.  I have studded tires for winter, on all four wheels.  They are great tires! 

Dennis got the boat in finally.  He had to put stabilizer in the gas and run the motor to get the stabilizer through the engine, then load the boat on to the trailer and haul it in to it's shed.  We should have done this earlier, but who knew it would get so cold so soon?  Oh well, no harm done.  He also got the boat ramp pulled up above the high water mark.  We don't have a dock here.  If the wind storms don't rip it out in the spring, summer and fall, the ice will certainly rip it out in the winter.  We have seen several docks going by in the spring.  We even got in the boat and tied on to one and dragged it to shore, only to have the next storm rip it out and take it down the lake.  We soon learned it was futile to have a dock so built the ramp.  Now we just winch the boat up out of the water each time we use it.  The ramp is moveable so as the lake drops we just move the ramp down.  Works like a charm.

The snow is early this year so we are caught unawares with the garden.  Tomorrow we will try to salvage a few more potato plants and the cabbages.  A neighbour is going to harvest the kale as I still have a lot in the freezer.  A deer ate hers so she was happy to see my kale still out in the garden.  It is good for kale to have a frost to sweeten it up so it does not hurt to harvest it out from under the snow.

bye for now.