More Trip

I'm sitting in the laundromat. I like laundromats. You get the laundry done SO FAST. It's quiet, and you can read or blog or watch country music videos. Every time I go to a laundromat, I think that it'd be really tempting to make this a part of my week (except for pumping quarters into the machine). But by the time I have little enough laundry to be able to afford it, I won't crave the hour and a half of aloneness that is the corollary to laundromat-time.

I was going to blog about the symposium and all the cool things we picked up there. But my desire to read the kids' blogs overrode my desire to ruminate on hymnology and Gerhardt. So I'll have to do that later, as my dryers don't have enough time on them to do two blogposts.

Mooooo. Apparently Canadians don't depend on dairy like Wisconsinites. The cheese selection at the store is small, and the price is outrageously high. Of course, I'm always stunned by the high grocery prices whenever we're on a trip. Good grief, I'm stunned by high grocery prices simply when I shop in my own county instead of at Woodmans. (I may have mentioned once or twice that I thank God often for Mr Woodman.) Gary told me that he'd heard Canadians pay a lot for groceries. Yowsa. He's right. And the butter. I pay about 40 cents a stick. Here it's $1.40 a stick. Probably eating less dairy is good for them. But the prices make my eyeballs pop outta my face.

We are enchanted driving through the countryside here around Niagara. Orchards and vineyards. That's all you see. No wheat. No corn. No beans. No cows. (Ah, that might explain the high dairy prices.) Just loads and loads of fruit. It's so pretty at this time of year, with the fruit trees all in blossom! The grape vines aren't doing anything yet, but that makes it easy for me to see the variety of ways they look, all bare-bones like, which gives me ideas of what I might do with my overgrown Fredonias (similar to Concords).

We went to see Niagara Falls yesterday after the symposium ended. The water is so clear. The power is overwhelming. The chill surprised me. It's warm this week -- mid 80s. Well, here it's high 20s. (I really made someone's jaw drop when I said our temps had been running in the 50s. I meant it had been cool, but the confused woman must've thought I lived in Death Valley.) Anyway, we were dressed for warm weather, and the temps by the falls were significantly cooler. All that water in the air! All that water rushing past in the rivers! Paul pointed out that you could actually see your breath. Not easily, but just a bit you could. And the tulip beds closest to the falls were just beginning to get buds on them, whereas the ones further from the falls (like a block or so away) were newly budding, whereas the tulips in neighboring suburbs were full and big and getting old. So it's not just my old bones and my decrepit chilliness that gave me such goosebumps yesterday. It kind of stuns the mind to realize that the temperature can be 30 degrees different (15 for you Celsius folks) in the space of a couple of city blocks.

Well, loads more to bore you with, but the dryers turned off and I should start folding clothes.