Ann’s Weblog

This day has taken an odd and nice “turn”.

I answered the phone a few minutes ago; it was a friend who had moved away from town about 2 years ago,and she is in town. Her father, a physician, has been maintaining L.’s home and her housecat, but now the property has sold. The two of them could not think of anyone to adopt the 17 year old cat, so they were ON THEIR WAY to have “Skitty” euthanized!

The doctor, who is also a friend of ours, commented to his daughter, “Oh, I didn’t check with Ann about this…” as they approached my driveway. They used a cell phone to call me, I replied that I WOULD adopt the sweet, elderly kitty, and they all turned in! A life was saved at the 11th hour! Poor Skitty would have been in cat heaven within 30 minutes.

So, there were tears all around, and I got thoroughly hugged by both L. and her dad; it tugs at my heart just thinking about this. I know… I can’t “save them all”, but Skitty is indeed a lovely old cat, and we can keep her safe and warm and away from certain stressors (dogs, mean cats, and wild predators).

It was L.’s dog who we boarded for a month last summer:

This is “Nala” who was just like “one of our own” while she was boarding, and lavished with attention from some young HUMAN guests that we had at the time.

Okay, I’d rather sit here and visit with you fine people, but I need to get some more things done around the house.

~Ann

I had a blog entry that I liked, and I’ve accidentally deleted it.

I was using this DELL laptop, and I MEANT to delete the “Post” that wasn’t working correctly to display a “YouTube” video that I enjoyed. So I went back to the list of posts, clicked on “delete”, thought it wasn’t working and clicked “delete” AGAIN… so, in the end.. TWO entries were deleted. Forever.

In the “Post” that I accidentally deleted, there were these pictures:

To me it’s completely remarkable and alarming that a natural formation as massive and majestic as the “Athabasca Glacier”, or “Columbia Icefields” has crumbled and been decimated within MY LIFETIME.

On the left is pictured the glacier as it is today. Beside that is the ice as it was in 1960. I remember the Icefields as they were when I was a small child, and that the souveniers for sale in the Columbia Icefields Centre all featured the glacier as you see in in the picture. It didn’t simply APPEAR huge because I was little!

In recent years (okay.. the last thirty) I have travelled the Banff-Jasper Parkway many times, but it was only about ten years ago that I thought “Whoa, what is happening to the Icefields?” and “Didn’t it come out right to the highway before?”. Anyone who wants to argue that global warming or climate change is not a reality should take note. For this to occur within one generation is bizarre.

We need to address the ways in which we can ensure future generations (starting with our own children) of clean air and water, and food, and it’s impossible to ignore; we SHOULD learn more.

Okay, so the other side of the conservation coin: also pictured above is Calgary pictured at night. Few would deny that this booming city is beautiful; with more than a million people, the downtown core has become a bustling place with a life of its own. When I left Calgary in 1976, the population was a mere 470,043.

I need to answer some phonecalls and go do some more sorting of books and magazines (what I am affectionately calling “spring cleaning”.

Thanks for reading my blog.

~Ann