:wave: It's snowing again . . . :mad: . . . Looks Like March is trying to do both IN and OUT in LION-mode. Things will have to change a lot by tomorrow for it to turn into a LAMB.

Daffy - Montreal prices really started to shoot up about ten years ago. We've lived in our neighbourhood (Plateau) for 18 years and a place that sold for $85 000 in 1992, sold again two years ago for $420 000. We should have bought way back then, but DH was a grad student and buying a place even for $85 000 was out of our range! Now $400 000 is out of our range, so we still can't afford to buy here!

Rosebud - I imagine the heating would quickly eat up a lot of the money one saves on housing in your area? What about gas and groceries? Do you have to pay a lot more because you're further north?

March is going out more lionish than it came in! Yesterday DH and I were out and the temp was 0, but there was a wicked -10 wind chill. Brrrrr.... The weather is predicting 11 degrees for the first day of April - we'll see weather or not that turns out to be a joke.

Today is tax day. :( DH so dreads it! Because he's self employed and his income if from a foreign source, his return is really complicated. It isn't helped by the fact that the d*** Quebec government can't make up its mind on how they want him to declare his income. Depend on who he's talking to he gets told to do it several different ways. Then, when he finally fills it out, he gets told that he needed to do it yet another different way. After twelve years of this crap he's ready to tell them he's a bum and has no income :lol:

BP

Bopeep, I don't envy you your tax situation...QC is not known for it's being organized or kind in that department. I can't wait to see how things go for us when I come back to work in Ontario after my sabbatical year in QC, and DW stays behind, being supported by me...That should really set their heads spinning!

We have a beautiful sunny day here, too...warm. We can actually see a bit of grass peeking out from beneath the snowbanks either side of the drive. The city went by last night at 9 PM with the huge snowblowers and widened the street on both sides. We'll be able to leave one vehicle in the road again.

Pooch took us for a nice walk, and then we all went to the park to play fetch. I guess he, too, feels it's all about the journey not the goal, because he'll run after the ball when we throw it, pick it up, then leave it there and come back, leaving us to fetch it :rolleyes: Or maybe he thinks he's teaching us to play fetch...

Have a great day, all! :wave:

Hi everyone! :wave:

Just joined 3FC earlier this month, and am looking forward to sharing ideas and encouragement with everyone here. I'm 46, recently celebrated my 20th wedding anniversary. We have a 14 year-old son, and 3 rescue cats. I'm not sure which keeps us most busy!

My weight loss project is part of a wider recovery from thyroid cancer. It took a few years to get a resolution and have the thing removed, and the low metabolism and lifestyle changes I suffered in the meantime really did me in. My goal is to lose about 115 lbs / 52.16 kilos (I'm still not used to weighing myself in kilos!) I plan to follow the South Beach diet (recommended by my doctor), but am gearing up to first follow a low-iodine diet for some treatments I'm doing towards the end of April. That one means max 6 oz of meat per day, no dairy, no commercially prepared foods, no restaurants. The timing is a happy coincidence, as I expect that will kick-start me in the right direction for weight loss! :cp:

Aside from food, I am to gradually become more active. My goal for April is just to do something - anything - at least one time per day, to ultimately by the end of the month do some time on the recumbent bicycle. The end of my treatments will coincide with serious garden planning, and hiking in the woods in May - more happy coincidences :carrot:

So the stars seem to be on my side. (That, of course, means that this nasty white stuff will melt into the ground. If I hear that four-letter word one more time in the forecasts...:mad:)

Later!

Hi seawave! Lots of kitty fans here! I only have two at the moment, both special needs cats, so they're quite a handful. With spring coming it's almost time where you *really* want to get out and get moving, after being cooped up all winter. Gardening is a great activity, but it won't really start for me for another month. I'm an obsessed gardener with a very small yard and it's amazing how much time I can spend on it and how pooped I can get! It's nice that you've got some woods for walking - I really miss that.

Daffy - DH has never, NEVER, had the federal government give him any kind of hassle about his return, but the Quebec government always has something to say about it. I'm also supported by him, and one year they even questioned that - 'why wasn't I working'? Ummm... That'd be a big 'none of your d*** beeswax'!. God help them if they ever get their wish and become a separate country - they'll drown in their own bureaucracy!

DH decided to split up the tax headache into two weekends this year - his theory being that if he can break it into more manageable chunks it won't be so frustrating. So, after that we went out and stocked up our wine fridge (a walk of one hour and carried the heavy bottles back home), then we popped in a movie and took turns on the elliptical, doing a loooong slow 'run' instead of heart pumping stuff.

Dinner was roast chicken, baked sweet potato wedges (no fat needed) and some swiss chard with garlic.

Tomorrow we're supposed to get a mixture of snow and rain. You know - I used to have another word in mind when I thought of a four letter curse word starting in 's'...

BP

Morning . . . :wave:

I'm up way too early this morning -- already working on the 3rd :coffee:. Can't tell what the day is going to bring to Atlanticca on this final day of March because it is only just starting to lighten up; but the radio is saying sun for today and that other S word (about 4 cm. worth) for tomorrow -- aww, come on guys, enough already. :mad:

Hi there SEAWAVE . . . :welcome: to our little group and :wel3fc: also. Glad to have you joining us. Whereabouts in this tiny little country of ours are you actually located? Five cats for me . . . three 'rescues' and two purebred Bengal Leopard cats (terrible little prima donnas, BTW). That's Purrecious (aka Flying Squirrel) looking out at you from my Avatar.

Cute one BP . . . You're right . . . we can now go around saying "Oh Snow" whenever we need to let off a little steam and everybody will understand instantly what we mean. :lol:

Well, guess I'd better get on about my business . . . see you later, gang.

Hi!
 

Well the storm wasn't so bad! We only got about 15 cm. It was white out for several hours and they closed the number 1 Hwy. It moved into Ontario last night and we cleared right up. I hat the spring storms! Not only does it feel like it shouldn't be there, but you get the heavy snow that takes so much more to shovel! And the power flickers kept taking out our wireless network. Internet and satellite TV kept going up and down. Sigh.

Welcome SeaWave. I only started in this forum this weekend! That low iodine diet seems like it will do wonders. Can't really eat out or cheat if it's for a medical procedure.

Bopeep- Good luck with the taxes. I am not near QC, but I can feel the pain. I have enough trouble doing my own (and dh) and my mother's (she's still in New Brunswick- where I'm from originally)

As far as housing prices here, I am rural. In the nearest town, about 1/2 hour away, the average 3 bedroom is about $175,000.00. I live outside of won and have about an acre.

I haven't gardened in the last few years with the kids being so small and DH being away, but this year we intend to put in veggies for sure! I am looking forward to it!

Looks like I am home from work today. My dd has a stomache bug and was up for several hours last night. I am sure that the daycare definitely doesn't want her in this condition!

Everyone have a healthy day!

As I took my first step out of the bedroom this morning, I glanced across the hall and out through the windows of my office...I could not believe what I was seeing and literally blinked and rubbed my eyes to be sure. More white fluffy s***. As I write this, it has stopped and is starting to rain.

Apparently, we are due to get 2-4 mm of freezing rain this am, followed by close to 25 mm of rain by tomorrow am. They're saying to watch for flooding, which likely won't affect us, but some neighbourhoods close to here are lower, and closer to the river...

On the positive side, they are saying it could rid us of one-quarter of our current snow accumulation :carrot: THAT would be wonderful.

I am usually a weigh once-a-week person, but this week I have been obsessively stepping on every morning. There was more good news this am, with another pound gone. While yesterday's breakfast was not OP as we went out, I did keep it reasonable. The rest of the day was good.

Yesterday, I spent some time making my own portion-controlled low-cal meals. It took very little time, and I find the benefits are several: I add no salt, so the sodium is limited to the sauce and natural content of the ingredients. I use brown rice. For similar calorie counts I get about 2.5 oz of chicken and lots more veggies, and I only used a tablespoon of sauce per meal. I was going to use more, but the Tbs. looked about right.

I also picked up a silicone mini-muffin tin for freezing sauce portions one Tbs. at a time. This will let me have a greater variety of tastes in my meals, even if the basic ingredients stay the same. I think I will experiment with WW pasta, and maybe potatoes in the next batch.

:welcome: Seawave! I'm guessing you're on one of the coasts, but then again, maybe your nickname is just wishful thinking... Best wishes for sticking to that no-iodine meal plan. I myself would find it somewhat challenging :dust:

:wave: Have a good day, everyone! Someone, somewhere, enjoy a ray of sunshine on my behalf, please, since I clearly will not be seeing any today.

Ti'an

Oh SNOW! :mad: (I think that says it all.) It's nice to know there are other gardeners out there. We can encourage each other to snip and trim in the stifling heat of the summer -- yes, it is coming! (right?)

Bopeep - Oooooh, Quebec taxes. I've only heard of them second hand, and they still give me the creeps. Good luck!

Meowee, I'm from the Ottawa east suburbs, so Bopeep, we drive to the woods - I don't have any of my very own (wish I did, though!). And Daffy, no I'm not from one of the coasts. My parents are from the Acadian Peninsula in NB, though, so I've got the ocean in my heart. I grew up in the Niagara Peninsula before moving to Ottawa in my mid-twenties.

Daffy - I too have just picked up some silicone baking stuff (40% sale at Canadian Tire!), but not the tins. They're like the paper liners that you use in regular muffin tins, but silicone. I've never used the stuff, but my mil swears by it, and you don't need to grease or oil. I'm all for that!

Keeping thoughts of :sunny::swim: and :broc: (that's gardening, folks, not food! -- need a flower smilie!). Thanks for the warm welcomes!

HI Everyone!

Its good to see a place that has its fill of "canadian content". Just started on my new journey. Got tired of living with my head in the sand. The weight is coming off whether it wants to or not!:smug:

just wanted to pop in, i am a cold cold cunuck aswell. :) live in ontario.

i weight over 330 lbs and really want to get it off. just got tested for sleep apnea and awaiting the results :( maybe this will help me find the energy to exercise :o)

well just wanted to say HI :o)

:wave: We had a lovely sunny day, so we went shopping and ran errands in town. The snow was melting becuz of the very warm temps; in the 40's F most of the day. Tonight they are calling for that snowstorm from Manitoba to land here; gee, I was hoping it was just an April Fool's joke ... guess not ... ah, shucks!!!

:wel3fc: TO ALL THE NEWBIES ...

Yah, the homes are a better price, but you do have to pay more for heat here becuz of the colder temps, but this year we were milder than normal. We probably pay more for gas and food and such as well; not sure that would make up for the difference though as $100,000 is a lot less than $500,000 esp when you add on the interest ~ LOL!

Have a great night ... :hug:ROSEBUD:hug:

Okay everybody, since it is the :joker: day . . . What was your best ever April Fool's prank? Either one that you pulled or one that was pulled on you?

Brace yourselves because mine is a fairly long story . . . If you are old enough you will probably remember that the conversion to the metric system in Canada was a very long (and tedious) ten year event, but nobody got too excited about it until things started being converted in the stores in the early 1980's -- pounds to kilograms; inches to centimetres; yards to metres, etc. Talk about confusion. :dizzy: Wow. :dizzy: Anyway . . . as I was driving to a business meeting one morning (about a 45 minute trip from Toronto to Kitchener), the radio started broadcasting the latest news in the great (and unpopular) changeover to metric. Effective the beginning of next month (May 1) we would be changing to a metric time system -- 100 seconds = 1 minute; 100 minutes = 1 hour; we would, therefore. be converting to 14 hour days, and to top it off; the year would be divided into 10 months of approximately 62 days each. Pretty far-fetched you say -- :yes: -- but by the time I got to my destination, they actually had me believing it. It was very well done. I walked into my meeting and reported this latest happening and almost got laughed out of the room. :o:o:o

This morning both Mom Nature and the Scale-:devil: are playing tricks on me. We have about 4 inches (10 centimetres, in case you care :D) of heavy,wet, fresh snow on the ground but it is supposed to get washed away by rain later on today (high temp of +9C/48F predicted). The really nasty thing for this morning, however, is that my weight is 1.6 pounds over my ticker number (just to complete the translation process, that's about 3/4 of a kilo :lol:). Oh well . . . both the nasty weather and the nasty weight blip will soon be gone again. :crossed:

Have a great moving and shaking day, gang . . . :carrot:

Hi Everyone...
I am new to 3FC and thanks Meowee to telling me about this group
and also you asked me where was I
Well I am in New Brunswick

Help! Had my annual physical Dr office scale said 317 but the centre scale says 321. Whos do I believe?