What a difference a day makes

For several days last week we had been blessed with spring like temperatures down here in Leamington. Even a record-breaking temp of +11C/51.8F during the day and above freezing temps overnight that I think is pretty good for January. Yesterday I even spent the afternoon raking accumulated leaves off the chain-link fence and pulled some fresh weeds (yes, you read that correct) from the flowerbed. That was when I discovered some daffodil shoots poking out of the ground. Those fragile buds I quickly covered up with dirt because the weather forecast called for snow today, which was hard to believe in that gorgeous warm sunshine.  Well, here we are, it has been snowing all day with an estimated accumulation of 7-12cm/3-5inches and wind gusting to 40km/h. There is already a snowdrift in front of the garage and the barometer has plummeted.  Back to winter I guess so don’t rush home yet if you are somewhere down south.

For those of you who don’t know where Leamington, Ontario is, here is a little tidbit that made me chuckle when I read last week’s local newspaper. Our mayor, John Paterson, held a public breakfast a few days ago at which he predicted a brilliant future for Leamington.  He said that Leamington is known as the Greenhouse Capital of Canada, the Monarch Butterfly Capital of Canada, the mecca for birders, the most southern tip of mainland Canada, and more recently the *Cannabis Capital of Canada, but he prefers the title of “My Home Town” and that is where we live.

*The Federal government will legalize recreational Cannabis in July of this year and a very large portion will be grown here in the local greenhouses. BTW we have never tried smoking pot and have no intention to do so in the future.

Now I like to go to some other topic.  While using our microwave oven last week I thought how come there is no light on in there.  I hadn’t noticed that the inside light was not working or when it quit working. It is a smart Panasonic Microwave just that you know. Changing a light bulb should not be a big thing and it really isn’t unless you don’t have the right tools. If you ever had to exchange the light in your microwave then you know you might have to have a specialty screwdriver to do the job in the newer models of the high tech microwaves. First off, we were wondering where the bulb was located because you can’t see it from looking into the oven.  Good thing we have the Internet and a quick search found a YouTube clip of where to locate the bulb and how to get to it. Turns out most microwave ovens use the same light bulb but only very few shops sell them and none of them are in our area. We found a reasonable priced bulb and it is now on the way by snail mail (slow boat from China).  Benno could not have opened up the microwave if he hadn’t had the right torx security bit from the boxed set of specialty security bits. This tool set comes in handy once a while and I guess it is not found in most guys’ tool cabinets. 

While I wait for the bulb to arrive and the weather to improve I’ll be reading the blog posts of all you good fellows down south and oh, by the way, Benno will update you on a recent little project on our Honda 2000i inverter generator. He is fitting an hour meter to keep track of the oil changes.