Calabogie Ski Hill

Weekend/Short Term Weather Forecast – Maple Lake Ontario – Haliburton Highlands – 01.08-09.10 (below)

Haliburton Highlands Weekend Weather - 01.08-09.10 through afternoon

The weather forecast for West Guilford/Haliburton Highlands for Friday will be cloudy with clear breaks with a low temperature of minus 11°F. Saturday morning and afternoon will be clear and sunny with temperatures rising from  minus 4°F to 11°F.

Saturday overnight will have mainly cloudy periods with temperatures dipping to minus 4°F.

Sunday Jan 10, 2010 weather forecast through afternoon

Sunday evening forecast

There will be scattered flurries Sunday overnight with a low of 13 degrees F.

Remember to click on the thumbnails to embiggen them and to read captions!

Weathercast Haliburton Highlands Jan 11-18 2010

Haliburton County – Maple Lake Weather Long Term Forecast 01.1.10 (above)

Long Term Weather Forecast – 01.11 – 01.16.09 (below) – Haliburton Highlands – Maple Lake, Ontario

The weather forecast for West Guilford/Haliburton Highlands for scattered flurries for Monday with a high of 20°F.  Overnight Monday there will variable clouds and a low of 11°F.

Tuesday expect a few flurries, a high temperature of 17°F and lows dipping  to about 6°F.

Wednesday, expect scattered flurries and a high of 24°F.  Overnight temperatures are expected to be 8°F.

Thursday, expect scattered flurries and a high of 27°F.  Nighttime temperatures should be about 20°F.

Friday brings a few flurries and a high of only 11°F.  The low on Friday night is expected to be a brisk minus 15°F.

There will be  a few flurries  on Saturday. Expect a high Saturday of 20°F and an overnight low of minus 17°F.

Have a great week!

Lake Muscoka, July 15, 2009

It’s difficult to put into words the feelings one has when about to embark on a trip that will keep them from home for the better part of a month. I have a to-do list in my head which I really should transfer to text–if I could find the time.

Last year I burnt up quite a bit of time at the Lake by working. Cottage County installed the base station for internet at (on, actually) our cottage so even though I swore I’d take a week off from work, I never did.

This year is decidedly different in that work has changed considerably. I’m doing more work independently but with that comes more juggling of  saying “stop!” to it for  the duration. As much as Canada doesn’t seem like a foreign country as far as mail service it is. Certainly in terms of internet access to a number of United States-based websites it is. Both these restrictions may prove either incentives to work less or work more.

Trying to find a workaround for them could consume large chunks of time and may ultimately prove fruitless. If I just say “no” to work completely then I won’t have to fret about getting access to the websites which provides a good deal of substance which I transform into content (I create content for put simply, things I like). I suppose it would be smart to find out just “how ” restrictive using the Canadian internet will be . (Is there such a thing? It’s probably using the Internet in Canada, right?). I hear so much about China and North Korea and other countries being crazy restrictive. I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.

I can keep my freelancing gigs to a point but there’s also a point where I’m defeating the purpose of vacation. Ten days to go and I’m juggling so much that I’m not even worried about the weather.

Guess it just proves  that old saying about everything being relative. I do hope we get some good weather though. I’ve been watching the forecast for Maple Lake and right now, I see the first couple days of vacation ( should I say “holiday”?) look good temperature-wise though there is rain one day. The upside of regular rain is less fire hazard (though one must always be cautious–we are in the woods after all). The downside besides literally putting a damper on things is the bugs! My cure for too many bugs generally has been to stay in the Lake but not in the rain. See? Fret. Fret. Fret. Always wanted to be a Type “B” personality–never got there.

And where are all the people on Maple Lake who were supposed to sign up for Internet so our fee could go down? Don’t you know you can get television, too? No separate service, simply be slightly savvy and you can find your programs through the Internet and since it’s high-speed and since if you live on the Lake you cannot be far from us–the base station–your reception should be good. What are you waiting for? I’ll come over and show you the ropes as I’ve already –with son and spouse– gone through it. I’m seriously concerned that if people don’t sign up I’ll lose my service because I cannot see paying for 12 mos. of service and using it for barely one month. OK. I’d say I’ve fulfilled my fretting requirement for one day. Have a good one!

Hard to believe but now being half-way through the month of February, it’s time to put in requests for vacation time. I of course, don’t get a vacation break because silly me, I work for myself (most of the time I prefer it that way).

Spouse however has a traditional full-time career job and they are getting antsy about when he plans to abandon them to drive northeast to our cottage.

So. Last night we sat at the dining room table with calendars, both work and home, the summer school schedule for our son who has no room for non-AP classes during the school year (and that’s with taking just half a lunch period!) and the vacation table from my husband’s company. We hammered everything out pretty quickly. Spouse is champing at the bit to get up to Maple Lake. I cannot believe how utterly in love with it he is–but he is. In the short term, he will go up in May to assess what winter brought and to open the cottage.

Summer school and my not wanting to leave my son alone every day for weeks while his father works 7 days per, will again affect deeply my schedule of being up there but I just cannot stay away when I know I can work whilst up there due to having a great satellite Internet connection.

I wish my neighbours on Maple Lake would get the hook up. It’s lonely being the only ones–maybe someone joined up over winter?<hopeful>

Lake Muscoka, Gravenhurst, Ontario-10-31-08

Sincere apologies to the small group of folks who read Maple Lake Ontario that the site has been unpredictable in it’s availability over the past couple of weeks.

I was using a host company that became increasingly less dependable and after trying to work with them to resolve the difficulties only to have them suggest ultimately that I take down most of this blog _permanently_ to “fix it,” I opted for another host for the website that had been recommended by a number of fellow bloggers.

It’s understandable now if you are wondering, “Was it her own fault?”

Nope. Don’t worry, I triple checked on that myself but the giant fumble in forgetting to fully transfer Maple Lake Ontario over to the new sever was not my doing. Being a brand new customer I should have had as my new host trumpets, them “do all the file transferring” for me. It should have been as simple on my end as essentially plugging in in a new address to send the Maple Lake Ontario name to it’s new host. “Should” being the operative word here.

They forgot to move the Maple Lake Ontario files and I ended up dealing with a succession of people at the new host, two of whom told me it was not their responsibility to help with that. One, I caught when he “found something” on his end (duh!) and he let out an involuntary “oh-oh.” With that he said he’d put in a ticket–but failed to get complete information so my website languished yet another day.

Again, I apologize to anyone that may have come back here after getting essentially nothing for two days.

As you may have noticed, in order to make some pocket money and pay hosting fees (and this year buy myself my first full-length winter coat in a decade–50% off at Old Navy) I do some posts for which I am paid well, pocket money.

I choose who advertises here and believe me, I turn down far more than I accept. But my point is the advertisers have a right to have their posts that I wrote on their behalf be accessible and my new hosting company prevented that, too.

I’m not sure what to do. At this point I’m adopting a wait and see attitude because there’s not too many other options.

Please wish me luck.

As you may know, I’m a big fan of not typing, however it’s tough to be a blogger without doing so.  Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition software has become a companion of sorts for me, a blogger with multiple blogs. But Dragon can be used very effectively in a number of other ways. Please have a look at my fellow blogger Heather and her 95-year-old father as they capture a piece of their family’s oral tradition–you know, all those wonderful stories the elder folks in your family told but due to time passing will be lost forever unless committed to the written word.

Type at $150 Words Per Minute for $99!

Press Release:

The above video is not the typical Dragon NaturallySpeaking video. It was created by a blogger named Heather from British Columbia. She writes a blog called Boating in Beautiful British Columbia.

In the video that she has created, she talks about Dragon NaturallySpeaking. She talks about using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. In fact in the video, she is using Dragon NaturallySpeaking while she’s talking about it but you don’t quite realize that until the video is about halfway done.

The thing that’s REALLY interesting about this video, is not the fact that Heather is using the software and it’s not the fact the software works for her so much as HOW she chooses to use it. She took Dragon NaturallySpeaking and sat down with her father who is 95 years old. She spent a few minutes with him getting the software tuned to his voice so that the computer recognizes his sentences and words. Then she’s lets her father tell some of his great stories to the computer which transcribes everything that he says.

You can tell just by watching the video and listening to her father that he really does have some interesting stories to tell. I have a feeling that I could probably listen to the stories myself quite a bit, enjoying them immensely. And that too is not really the cool thing about this video. Although I’d love to hear her father tells more stories, the COOL THING is that she’s using Dragon NaturallySpeaking to capture a piece of her family’s oral tradition.

I can think of hundreds of different stories that my family has shared with me over the years that have not been documented. Our family is slowly losing some of those great stories and unfortunately, as we are losing some of our family members. We survivors don’t know all of the stories ourselves that our parents or grandparents or our great grandparents knew. But this video shows that you can use Dragon NaturallySpeaking to help capture some of those great stories that your parents and grandparents and great grandparents have probably told you dozens of times.

It’s something that we don’t always think about, but in a lot of ways those stories are some of the most cherished memories that we will walk away with from our family. And the sad thing is that our family cannot Be with us forever, but their memories can live on and this is where Dragon NaturallySpeaking really shows us its value. It’s true for $99 you can use Dragon NaturallySpeaking and you can type 150 words a minute. That’s a pretty good value for the software. It’s not too expensive and the benefit is tangible.

Now, you can get a useful tool at any computer store or Home Depot or Lowes, and if you don’t know how to use it well, then it really doesn’t matter what you pay for it. It is a waste of money.

Heather shows us a great way to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking to capture some of the most valuable information and stories from her father that she might ever be able to record not only for herself but for her daughter and her grandchildren someday and great-grandchildren and many other branches of the family even.

So that’s just another great reason why they Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a pretty cool piece of software. $99 could help you capture your family history easily and even make it indexable too, so that you can search it from your computer. That’s just amazing.

My name Brett Bumeter, and I write about Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I’ve been writing reviews about it for almost 2 years now. You could say that I’m sold on the software, and I hope that this article and this video helps show you the value of using it as well.

Sincerely,
Brett Bumeter
Softduit Media
www.softduit.com

I love to travel whenever and wherever finances permit.  I guess that’s no surprise–given that I’ve dedicated this blog to a place that affords me the opportunity to see many interesting things as I make my way to and fro’ several times a summer–not to mention the unforgettable sights I see once there.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to appreciate that just about everyone has an interesting story to tell and their stories are often coloured by their place of residence or the various places they’ve been.

For example my friend “E,” who now lives near my parents about 700 miles from here and with whom I’d very much like to spend some time, spent most of her life in Australia, her native land. I have always wanted to travel to Australia and will someday but until then, hearing first-hand tales from an Australia native is as close to being there as I can be. I would love to share some of her amusing tales of growing up Aussie but she has a particular fantastically humourous way of relating her life story. I have to have her varbatim contribution. She is that funny. It would be neat to (with her permission) switch on a little recorder and later use Dragon NaturallySpeaking to transcribe a post of  E. sharing her story. If you are unfamiliar with what I call “the Dragon,” make sure to have a look at Dragon Reviews and get a good feel for it by taking Dragon’s typing speed test!

Back to my Aussie friend. What has made her life even more fascinating to me is that now she lives in an area of the country that is trying to make changes intrinsically to morph itself from slums into middle class neighbourhoods. She has a condo with her spouse and because she lives in this uncharted territory she constantly witnesses interactions that must boggle her mind though she puts an amusing spin on them when writing of them. I can’t even begin to get a grip on what it must be like to be an Aussie ex-pat transferred to the seedy side of a big American city, witnessing drug transactions from your back porch, gunshots as a semi-common background noise, drunks staggering past, between you and your little path to your front door–moments after they’ve taken a wee on your front gate. :p

The Dragon could take me a long way in committing to the written word so much of what is conveyed but ends up either lost in translation or forgotten due to my imperfect photographic memory. That’s kind of how I envision Dragon NaturallySpeaking–as my photographic memory-travel blogging assistant.

Even though I’ve stated that the month-plus that I spent in total at Maple Lake this year was fantastic there is one disappointment that resulted from the rainy weather. A lot of the activities that I’d planned to participate in–especially those outdoors–either got canceled (like the Stanhope Airport August Fly-in) or weren’t feasible due to the rains making the ground damp for days on end.  Most any trail-related activities would have called for hiking boots which in normal circumstances wouldn’t have been needed as the trails I was planning on visiting were not challenging. They were more footpaths. This year, muddy footpaths.

I don’t blame the weather for me not getting out and about on the  handful of non-rainy days. On those days I couldn’t tear myself away from Maple Lake as who knew how long the non-rainy weather was going to last?

I also messed up a bit in my plan for before and after photos of the little fix-up projects we indulged in–putting up new drapes, painting a bit, put down grass seed and nurturing it, as well as the extensive outside work that spouse did. On that last count I did take photographs of the newly-improved groin, and the great-looking beach that was a result of it. I also documented the finished sets of re-purposed steps that spouse made by hours and days of digging out old, forgotten near-boulders that the years had covered with sand and piecing them back in a fashion where they could resume their job of helping to keep the bank in place.

Anyway, we have lots more plans for the future and after we vet them with my Dad I’ll be sure to shoot before, during, and after shots to share here.

Chris at about probably age 9- tubing on Maple Lake

I’m hoping to not sound like a broken record but I am ready to leave–in my mind.

The reality of a bunch of (paid) work flung my way in the past few days has slowed me down–but I am truly not complaining–just explaining.

It’s going to be late by the time I depart here tomorrow but that’s my schedule for you.

I’m just about to do a complete upgrade to Maple Lake Ontario -did a full backup just now–go me. I’ve got fingers crossed that it go off without a hitch.

I will of course, be blogging from Maple Lake . I have fingers crossed that the satellite internet guys have things ready for me to hook up and log on.

Here goes.

Ciao!

C.

Nirvana a/k/a Maple Lake, Ontario, Canada

It’s not simply case of not feeling like getting prepared for “Cindy’s big adventure north.” It’s more a sense of feeling overwhelmed by leaving home ( here) for a month. I want to go–really, really want to go. And I’m quite sure once I get there and get settled in that I’ll be better than fine. It’s just that I’m finding it hard to find a stopping point for my day-to-day responsibilities and to be honest, distractions which are not productive.

I think I need a nudge but there’s no one to tell me to get it in gear because I’m pretty much the boss of me.

OK. That’s it. I’m signing off. I will see you on the other side (of the border), fingers crossed that the newly installed satellite Internet in the cottage is humming along. This girl does not have the luxury of taking a month break. Posting may slack a tad–though be prepared for a barrage of photographs of the beauty that is cottage country. Until then, stay safe and take good care.

C.

It looks like we can do three weeks at Maple Lake this summer. Plus Labour Day weekend, I think (we have been for a few years in a row now).

Which is great as long as there’s Internet. I know I’m a broken record but I’m not the only person that can’t afford to take weeks off of paid work. And dial-up in my hyper-competitive online world won’t do it, regardless.

I think need to call the Haliburton County-affiliated W3Connex cable guy.

I’ve talked to him once on the phone and he seems very nice but with service orders for exactly what I need at about 800 online inquiries ahead of me in the email queue.

That’s why I’m thinking maybe going to the cottage a bit later so there might be a chance to get the cable people out our way? Oh please, oh please?