Life's a Stitch

Five hours and counting down

When C walks in the door in five hours or so he will be officially retired. The party's been had, the speeches done, the gifts received, his working career is over in a nice way. He is ready. Not sure I am, but we have exciting times ahead. 

He has worked the past 17 years in the office at a shipping terminal. The day he got his job his horoscope read "Your ship has come in." Now, on his last day, a new ship is scheduled to arrive in port. It's name? The Santiago. I guess his ship has come in as retirement planning includes a trek on the Camino de Santiago. His work has ended, bring on the next phase!

The party was on Friday night:

The gift presented above, is a frame with pictures taken of us at the company Christmas Party this year. One of the best pictures ever of us and one of the worst. I'll share the good one:

What makes it nice is that it exists. C REFUSES to have his picture taken by photographers, having ruined, with a frown or a silly face, what would have been nice shots. Blogless Marsha can attest to this as she has witnessed this behaviour on many a cruise ship. In this one, however, he is truly happy. He was probably thinking about retirement.

Now it's my turn. T minus 32 days and counting.

 

Sandy's Saturday Sky

Remember those, you long term knit bloggers? Sandy doesn't appear  to be blogging, but the Saturday Sky is her legacy. In her honour here's a Saturday sky taken last week near Pitt Meadows, on our way back from the six mile mini trek around Barnsten Island.

Located in the middle of of British Columbia's Fraser River, Barnsten has a population of 155 and relies upon a cute little free ferry-on-demand. One side of the island is noisy, from the nearby lumber mill across the water, the other is pastoral. There's a cranberry farm, dairy, cattle ranch, a large herb farm and two places to picnic. My vote is to return, C's is otherwise. 

The previous Saturday, I snapped this guy scanning his sky over Bellingham, WA's Lake Whatcom.

One person's recycling bin...

is another's painting subject:

That one took a long time to paint. Don't know why. But I'm happy with it. On the knitting side, my Occupational Therapist made me a teensy weeny custom thumb splint which will hopefully allow some pain-free knitting.

You spell color, I spell colour.

It's official, I've lived over half my life in Canada - 50.4% of my life has been based north of the 49th parallel. Oh the differences! Spelling, pronunciation, math, taxes, medical systems, all in all it's worked out well for us. Taxes and social security benefits might be higher in the US, education and medical costs are lower in Canada. It probably evens out in the long run and I'm quite happy to be here.

The only exception is when the bottom drops out of this darn Canadian dollar. Now I know why they call our dollar the loonie. There was a time while living in Canada that we had mortgage payments in the US and $600 meant $1014 out of our Canadian paycheque (paycheck). The pendulum has never swung the other way to that extent. The best I remember is when that $600US turned into $540CDN. Today's dollar puts a bottle of Trader Joe's two buck Chuck, which is really $2.99, at 3.88 loonies.

How to tie this in to knitting and painting? It makes the cost of yarn and art supplies prohibitive.  Luckily I stocked up on both under better currency circumstances, in that preretirement period of binge spending. The "I'm buying it now because I won't be able to afford it in retirement" phase. But the flip side of that is the ability to spend more time turning that spending into income. Here's painting I finished on Monday and sold today:

I've been offered a spot in a gallery in Bellingham, WA. Now that will be a good deal - Canadian landscape, US dollars. At least this year.