Sunday ; Today was sunny and mild. The weather remains quite nice.
Today was communal Thanksgiving Dinner at Riverside RV Park Resort. But ... we didn't attend. We went to LambFest, a Fall Okanagan Wine Festival event at Bogner's, a very upscale restaurant in Penticton. It was my "birthday dinner".
WOW ! WOW ! ! ! MMMMMM ... oak spit roasted whole lamb, served family style, very generous portions, melt in your mouth meat, each of the first three courses excellently paired with a wine from Hester Creek Winery in Oliver. Now ... we're not exactly oenophiles, and ordinarily don’t drink red wines, but the food and wine pairings were done by the restaurant’s owner / chef and the winery’s owner, and ... they were superb !
A tiny sip of wine with each mouthful of food just ... pulled the flavours out of the foods. Character White with the appetizer, Pinot Gris with the salad, and Cabernet Franc with the lamb entree. OH ... MY ... GOODNESS ! I want to make a reservation for next year ! We spent some time chatting with the very hospitable winery owner who came by each table to chat and serve his wine. This outing was not cheap, but sometimes even something expensive is well worth the money spent.
The only sour note of the day was ... the large, injured Gopher Snake that we encountered on the road at the entrance gate of our RV park as we were leaving for Penticton. It was severely injured but still very much alive. I never have been, nor ever will be, willing to leave an injured creature suffering. Save it if possible, or mercifully put it out of its misery. I killed the snake ! Inflicting sudden death upon an injured, suffering creature never has been easy, nor is it pretty. YUCK !
Monday ; Canadian Thanksgiving & Daniel's 57th Birthday
The Dow Jones index gained 329.76 points today ? ! ? Well ... Happy Birthday to me !
I had a long chat with my sister this afternoon. My brother-in-law has a rather aggressive form of prostate cancer !
Joanne made a wonderful Thanksgiving turkey dinner. And an excellent Black Forest Cherry Torte birthday cake ! Thank you, my dear.
Wednesday ; Daniel's & Joanne's 37th Anniversary
What a crappy way to spend our 37th anniversary. HA HA HA < SNORT > HA HA ! ! !
I spent the day "cleansing" in preparation for a colonoscopy tomorrow. What a civilized euphemism ; cleansing !
Thursday ; Today was sunny and cool. This morning on the way to Penticton for my early afternoon colonoscopy at Penticton Hospital, my eyeglass case fell off the dash of the truck ( on the passenger side, Joanne was driving, I was feeling pretty ill from 40 hours of colonoscopy preparation ), the glasses slid out of the case, and sustained a very deep, wide scratch on the left lens. DAMN ! Guess that means I'll be getting new glasses in Los Algodones, Mexico in about a month and a half.
My colonoscopy went as well as a colonoscopy can. My new gastroenterologist is a young woman. She has much better bedside manner than my previous male gastroenterologists. And she has a much gentler hand with the endoscope. She doesn't make it feel like somebody is trying to ram a sewer hose and TV camera up my ass ! She used a bit less sedative than my last two colonoscopies ( which were here in BC where they seem to use more sedative than in Ontario ), so I was a bit more alert ... read that as "a bit less asleep" ! HA HA HA ! I was awake just enough to watch part of the proceedings on the big screen TV on the wall, and ask stupid questions, which she graciously answered. She scoped the entire colon, taking 40 biopsies in the process, so I certainly can't accuse her of not being thorough enough ! While there was ulceration in the colon, which I saw on the TV, ( DUH ... why did you think it was called ulcerative colitis ? ), there were no polyps and no evidence of cancer, so there should be no bad news from the biopsies. Well done, Dr. Papay, thank you.
Friday ; Today was sunny and cool. We went to Osoyoos to retrieve our Similkameen Day Tours business cards and rack cards from the BC Visitor Information Centre, Watermark Beach Resort, NK'MIP Campground, and Spirit Ridge Resort. We stopped to have lunch at Ella Greek & Mediterranean Grill, a small Mom & Pop no frills restaurant in Osoyoos. We recently read some great reviews of Ella's. And the reviews were right on ! No ambience, great food ! First time we've had really good Lebanese food since we lived in Ottawa.
On our way home we stopped to pick up our business cards at Forbidden Fruit Winery and at Rustic Roots Winery. We spent some time chatting about our lack of Similkameen Day Tours business success with the very personable and helpful owners at Forbidden Fruit. We realized that we forgot to stop at Bo's "picnic park" in Osoyoos, so to make it up to him we made a stop at Pine Park in Keremeos.
We spent the evening watching a performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore on PBS. HA HA HA ... I love Gilbert & Sullivan's satirical operettas.
Saturday ; Well ... following the advice of some local business owners whose opinions we respect, Similkameen Day Tours now has both a Facebook page and a Twitter account. I'm still not completely clear on why ... HA HA HA ... but ... < shrug > ! I worked on creating a Facebook page and a Twitter account during bouts of insomnia over the last couple of weeks. Follow us on Twitter ; WildernessToWinery@SimilkameenTour.
This morning we headed into town with our three fire extinguishers. A Penticton based fire prevention business was having a Fire Prevention Week promotion in the parking lot of our local grocery store. It was sponsored by our local volunteer fire department. I was going to have our three fire extinguishers checked and recharged if necessary, but decided that it was much better value to just buy three larger and better fire extinguishers that were being offered at a Fire Prevention Week deeply discounted price.
From there we went to two wineries in Cawston to retrieve our business cards.
This evening was Taste Of Our Valley at Victory Hall in Keremeos, an annual celebration of the harvest bounty of the Similkameen Valley. Lots of foods and wines for tasting. MMMMM ! ! ! Adam's Apple, Plumiscuous, and Pearsuasion by Forbidden Fruit, Chardonnay by Robin Ridge, Riesling by Orofino, and Capella by Clos du Soleil were the wines I tasted, along with Parson's Fruit Stand's pumpkin soup, turkey from Van Dieman Turkey Farm, some maple syrup flavoured honey from Orchard Blossom Apiary, peach flavoured barbecue sauce and wild Saskatoon jam from a local gourmet personal chef, some baking from the local grocery store, Joanne sampled some home made pork and beans with sourdough bread from the Grist Mill, local apple cider ... I've probably forgotten some.
What a great place to live !
DSK
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