Tuesday, Dec 11th

Got out early today as we needed water.  We generally don't drink the tap water, rather buy water in 5 gal. bottles for our water cooler.  At Fry's its $1 to fill the bottle.  I also bought a 24 pack of bottled water.  Even though we are not big fans of the plastic waste, it is a convenience thing when we are travelling or going out.  We prefer water even when out and about and don't like to resort to soda pop or other drinks of that nature. While we often refill the bottles, there is a limit to how many times we do that and still have good water.  We often use the filtered water for coffee or especially tea, so go through a fair amount.
  While out I stumbled on to a nice bottle of scotch at a good price and they said it goes very well with a splash of water.  It was a gift pack with two mini bottles accompanying a 750 ml.  So there seemed like enough good reasons and I bought it to try it.  LOL
  When I got back I called Air Canada to get information on our flight home.  Normally they ask you to be there 3 hours before an international flight.  We are leaving at 8:20 AM, so that would mean leaving the park here before 5AM.  They advised that as we are not checking any luggage, if we print our boarding pass at home we can treat it like a domestic flight and arrive 2 hours before flight time.  The only unknown was the delay going through security, but he suggested that should be fine.  He also said if we are holding a boarding pass we will get on as long as the gate is open.  This is what we anticipated, but wanted a little more assurance that our plans were OK.
  Lunch was planned overs from the chicken and pasta dinner the other night.  It was still good, you can feed me pasta, especially in a tomato sauce almost anytime.  We also finished the last of our oranges and they were still good as well.  Oranges are just that much fresher here and one of the things we look forward to.  We are starting to get into reduce mode.  Reduce the amount of food in the fridge or anything that will spoil as we will be gone for 3 weeks. 
  It was another day of Christmas cards.  Numerous people stopping by to drop off a card and generally Marg chats with them.  Well really there are only women doing this exchange.  We put the cards on the valances over our windows and are running out of room already.  Our count is somewhere around 2 dozen, some are really nice.  They always remind me of when we used to keep them until the following Christmas and then cut pieces out of the front picture to use as gift tags on presents.
  After lunch we did some house work.  I vacuumed, then Marg washed the floors.  It's easier for me to move furniture around to get at places where dust can go unnoticed.  Then I went and cleaned the bbq as we were going to need it for supper.  We also had a facetime with the Smiths and later when our company arrived, Marg had one with Vanessa & Daniel.
  Gerry & Debby arrived around 4:30 so we had time for a cocktail or two before eating.  Supper was burgers and salad finished off with Marg's homemade brownies.  They are always good and popular, tonight was no exception.  After things were all cleaned up we all left for bingo here in the clubhouse.  We were pretty close all night by Gerry & Deb both won.  They split their good fortune with us, so it cost us nothing to play tonight.
  A topic at the hall tonight among us Canuck Snowbirds was the dollar.  We are taking a real beating this year and close to $1.40 for a U.S. buck.  I jokingly said if we don't return they will know why.  We haven't been reduced to no name beer yet, but it could happen.