Things I forgot to tell you all

1. I am on VAY-CAY-SHUN this week!!!!

2. We have a new cat. His name is Fibby and he is about 8 years old. We took him in from the vicar's family who were unable to take him back home to New York. Up until now, we have always been a one-cat family, so it will be interesting to see how it goes. Dexter, our resident cat, is quite put out by the new arrival, but despite his obvious jealousy it is going quite well so far. Fibby has been exploring his new surroundings and so far there has been no catfighting.

3. This year our pool water has been cloudy and grey right from day one. I couldn't figure it out and no amount of adjusting the chemicals and cleaning, filtering, vacuuming etc. made it better. About 2 weeks ago green algae began to grow. I finally had enough and emptied and cleaned the pool and started all over again. I have been monitoring the water vigilantly and now it is fine. Last night I was discussing it with my husband and I discovered that he (who had been taking care of the chlorine levels, etc. this year) had only been adding enough chemicals for a 10,000 L pool - ours is about 18,000 L. It's such a shame we wasted all that water.

4. Back in the spring I finally got around to decorating the living room and dining room. I meant to post some pics of the finished product but never got around to it. Here it is:

Living room - Before and After:

Dining room - Before and After:

5. My mom was nominated for Kitchener-Waterloo Woman of the Year. Woman of the Year is a HUGE deal around here. My mom, who has known about this nomination for a while now, mentioned it in passing last week. That's very typical of her - she is very modest and humble. She was nominated for the Community Service category for the work she does as the coordinator of a local school breakfast program. She's been running it for 8 years now. She's a bit embarrassed by all the attention.

I am off to the pool now!