...and the paint's peeling off of my walls

Further to last Thursday's post, it was really, really cold today: this morning it was -28°C, which with windchill was a numbing -38°C! As I said before, it will get even colder than that in the months ahead, but for November this was exceptionally chilly, and even some of the locals found it a bit too cold for comfort. Numbers like these simply had no meaning until I moved to Canada, and although it can get so cold here that your nostrils literally freeze up on the walk to school, it's amazing what you can endure with the right clothing and a positive attitude. That said, I wouldn't have fancied having to live out in the open as the Inuit would have done not much more than fifty years ago, and I'm grateful for the haven of my (relatively) sumptuous apartment on days like this.

Nonetheless, despite the cold it was another beautiful day, although when I tried to take some photos of sunset over the (now frozen) Bay, my poor little camera simply refused to cooperate. It made a few whirring noises, the lens kind of half opened, then closed, then opened again and finally a message on the screen proclaimed 'lens error' before total and final shutdown. I think the message should have read 'it's too cold to be taking pictures you idiot; put me back in the case NOW!', but I got the picture (well, actually I didn't, but you know what I mean). Fortunately Stella, one of Dominick's Desktop Publishing students, got a good shot of the Bay with her obviously superior, Northern-proof camera - the photographic equivalent of Eddie Izzard's Stalinist oranges - and it is with great pleasure that I present it for you now (click to enlarge):

On a different note, it was the Grey Cup yesterday, which for those of you not in the know is the Canadian equivalent of the Superbowl. Canadian Football is similar to American Football, the main differences being that there are twelve players on a team not eleven, each side has three downs to gain ten yards rather than four, and the players apologise when they knock each other over. For the record, the Calgary Stampeders beat the Montreal Alouettes (all together now: ♪♫♪ je te plumerai la tête, je te plumerai la tête, et la tête, et la tête, alouette, alouette, ohhhhhhhhh......♪♫♪) 22-14, which will make Melanie happy as the Stampeders are her adopted Canadian Football team. She chose them because they have a horse on their helmet. Not a real horse, as that would make movement around the field very difficult, but just a picture.

Go Stamps!