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Sunday, January 31, 2016

Fresh Start

We’re back after a bit of a holiday hiatus so the first order of business is to wish you all a happy, if somewhat belated, New Year. We hope that you enjoyed a wonderful season surrounded by family and friends.

For some, a new calendar inspires thoughts of change. Personally, I’ve never been one for resolutions since I feel that positive new beginnings are best addressed as the need for them arises. I’m also a terrible procrastinator, and prone to avoiding failure whenever possible. I do have a great deal of admiration for those with more self-discipline though, and we’d love to hear from those of you who followed through with anything that you resolved. Take a moment to comment below and be an inspiration to the rest of us.

Despite my reluctance to that particular type of committal, January does bring a yearning for a fresh start of some sort. This year I’ve been purging the household. While I decided to keep all the members of it, we do come with a ridiculous amount of unnecessary stuff. I’m certain that, if I did the research, I’d find that our family motto is ‘it may come in handy’. Room by room, I’ve been sorting, scrapping and donating. Now I just have to resist the urge to fill up the new-found space with more stuff. When it comes to tossing things to the curb, we do have a bit of Association news. Simcoe County has been doing some filing and sorting of their own, and we received an email asking about the status of our poll regarding a change to our waste collection day. You may recall that we needed a majority vote to make the change and, unfortunately, we didn’t come anywhere close to the required number of responses. Therefore, the County will consider the matter closed and pick-up will continue on Fridays. We remind everyone, especially our cottagers, that raccoon clips are available from the County for installation on green bins and that proper sorting of waste will discourage inspection and destruction by local wildlife.

Although it’s hard to imagine with the amount of snow we’ve been blessed with in recent weeks, it won’t be long before the Association executive meets to organize events for warmer weather. We received great response to last year’s line-up which included a perennial exchange, neighbourhood yard sale, and a bottle drive among other initiatives. Brainstorming new ideas is a great deal of fun for us, but we would also like to hear your thoughts. Perhaps you’ve heard of or attended an event in another community that you would like to duplicate here at home. Maybe you have fond memories of annual occasions you enjoyed in younger years. We can also be of help with communication if you would like to get an organization off the ground – perhaps a snowmobiling club, or a reading group. The possibilities are many and our mission is to offer opportunities that spark community interest so please let us know what we can do for you.

Until then, we hope you’ll find reasons to make the most of our winter wonderland. If you’re a fan of playing on the ice and in the snow, perhaps you could pass along info about conditions in our area such as thickness of ice on the lake or hazardous spots on the trails. We’d be happy to share your observations here. In the meantime, please do be safe, and remember to wear your woollies.