Travels With Nicola

We drove from Salmon Arm to Radium today and listened to the audiobook of "Big Sky" by Kate Atkinson. One of the characters threw out a piece of trivia that the suicide rates among farmers is alarming. I paused the audiobook and wondered why farmers. Nicola wondered about teachers. Neither of us had heard of a teacher committing such an act but who know? Nicola looked it up and found some stats relating to the U.S. that confirmed that in fact, yes, suicides among farmers is very high. Also among construction workers and loggers. I figured this had to do with the seasonal nature of the work. Then Nicola found that suicide rates have going up generally in the U.S. especially for middle aged males. For teachers though, it's almost too low to measure. Cocktails at Canyon Campsite She did discover that suicide's a problem for primary teachers in the UK. The main problem, standardized tests. The cognitive dissonance for these people seems between their reason for ...

We checked out houses to buy today; five in all. First, we viewed a house owned by a woman who lived in the downstairs of a house built on a hill. She leased the upstairs to tenants with two dogs. The lease is for two years and, in B.C., these leases can not be broken by a new owner. which would mean that the new purchaser would be confined to the lower level.  The upper had originally been inhabited by the woman's brother who'd since died? moved out? Who knows? The two floors are completely separate. There's no inside staircase connecting them. The upstairs had originally been a log cabin located on a lake and moved to a new foundation which was the downstairs of the house we contemplated purchasing. On the inside, the cabin still looked like a cabin with plywood cupboards in kitchen that overlooked a small living room. Just off the living room was a sunroom that the people were using for a second living space. The lower level consisted of one big room that combin...