After A Good Night's Sleep

...the back of my head often feels like a brillo pad in the morning.  Now I know why.

Highland Fling

On Saturday, the ladyfriend and I took a rare trip outside the most immediate environs of our slice of paradise to check out the Highland Games in Antigonish, the closest to authentic pronounciation we were able to come up with is "Annie Gnish (like knish)".  It was, quite honestly, a lot of fun.  While I didn't get to check to see what clan my family (father's side) might be connected to, we did get to see some Highland dancing, some heavy games events (yes, heavy), bagpipe competition, and, our favourite, the tug-of-war.

 We caught three of the heavy games events.  I couldn't get a good picture of the 16lb hammer toss, but we did get to see the caber toss, which was quite impressive.  The winner of that event was a lawyer from Brooklyn, NY.  Yay, Brooklyn!

The other event was 'weight for height,' where participants took turns throwing a 56-pound weight over an ever-higher bar.  The winner tossed it over the 17 feet mark.  The announcer kept saying that tossing that stone was like tossing a six-year-old.  I've known some six-year-olds I've wanted to toss (not the boy, of course).  I'll just keep it at that.

Sometimes a Chasm Is a Nice Place to Fall Into

 Yes, I'm currently in the timewarp that is Nova Scotia.  (Yikes!  It's been a long time since I've posted and so much has happened in the intervening few weeks, but let's save that for later.)  Each year we get better and better at relaxing more quickly.  When we first started coming here, we'd still be whirring about in our heads about things that needed to be done.  Now, those things still come up, but we're finding it easier and easier to give over to the deep chill that is Nova Scotia.

We now make it a point to come during the last week of August so we can take advantage of the local lobster season.  It did, however, feel at times like it was getting out of hand. I basically was on a lobster murder spree.  We "processed" 16 lobsters over the course of about a week.  Yes, 16.  I know - crazy.  But what is great (and so crazy in its own way) is that I brought my pressure canner and have canned a dozen or so pints of lobster stock.  Oh, how I'm loving the pressure canner, and oh, how I love lobster stock.

We froze some of the lobster meat to use later in our stay, but we did have the traditional lobster boil, lobster rolls, lobster macaroni salad (oh yeah), and chili lobster (courtesy of a NYTimes recipe).  That's already a whole lot of lobster love.