I can’t say that it never snows on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, but usually it’s a half-hearted affair that melts in a few hours.  Not this time. It’s cold, it’s windy, it’s icy and nipping at your nose. It snowed enough that it took me over an hour to shovel the sidewalks (times when corner lots aren’t so cool) and there’s more promised. And here I was complaining that I couldn’t find the Yuletide spirit.
On the other hand, the timing for the start of the cold weather was pretty good. I went to a movie and dinner with a friend on Saturday and the snow held off until I was driving home. I beat the worst of it by about a half hour.
The movie was Twilight. I was pleasantly surprised, since adaptations are tricky. I liked the actors they chose for most of the cast, especially Jacob. I think they cut out quite a bit (especially the werewolf story), but I might be forgetting what was in which book. The interplay between the characters was sensitively done for a Hollywood film.  My one quibble was the vampire make-up, which didn’t work for me, but that was a fairly minor thing compared to what went well. I really liked the portrayal of Bella and her dad. Fabulous scenery—they really capture the magnificence of the rural northwest and it’s always cool to think – wait, I know that place …
So I’m glad I had my night out before getting grounded by the ice. The main roads are okay, but the sidestreets will be like glass for a few days and no place for a car without snow tyres.
My favourite vignette this morning was watching a peacock trying to cross the ice in the park.  It looked like an Ice Capades skater in full regalia, coasting along and using its tail like a rudder.

Here’s some of the photos I took out in the fog:

     

Okay, so this weekend was The Great Holiday Shopping Adventure, Part Two. That went pretty much as one would imagine. 
The more interesting bit was rattling around the north part of the peninsula with my resident expert on the library system. I’m planning to write a book proposal that involves a library, so I wanted to get the mechanics of their daily chores right.  I thought I’d start by looking at a bunch of branches and, yup, they’re all a little bit different.  They all have their own “feel.” The staff members were very gracious. Being shepherded by one of their own helped, I’m sure, but just the same they let me poke around the back and ask dumb questions and stuff. Much appreciated.
It was a beautifully foggy day. The atmosphere prompted us to talk about some of the supposedly haunted places in town. I say supposedly because I’ve never checked into most of them … I’m always a bit cautious about what’s been inflated for the sake of the tourist brochures.
I do believe in hauntings—though what they are, exactly, I won’t venture to say beyond “energy that once in a while seems to want to interact”.  As an old town in and around a lot of water, we seem to get more than our fair share of spooky. Truth be told, though, after a while it’s just part of the landscape. If you look for stuff, you’ll find it, but most of the time it’s easily ignored, kind of like sparrows or squirrels.