First snowfall of the season

I have a very long driveway, at least compared to city people. Mine is about 100 metres long (almost 300 feet) and it goes downhill. It's actually a bit steep.

So on a day like today when snow falls, I have mixed emotions. Everything looks so beautiful and clean and white. The fallen leaves are covered over and there are bird and animal tracks everywhere.

But it means that the shovelling season is about to start for another winter.

It takes me about an hour or an hour and a half to clear the driveway. And I have to do it or I can't get my car on the road. I need groceries from town. And library books. And money from the bank. And my mail at the post office. So I have to shovel.

Luckily there are a few good things about shovelling though.
It's good exercise (and I live a long way from a gym). It gets me outside away from the computer -- ahhh, fresh air. The snow is usually really pretty and I often stick a camera in my pocket.

But the best thing is that I get to see Dog again. He lives just down the road from me and only visits in the winter when he can hear me shovelling my driveway. He is a German Shepherd mix and loves to run up and down my driveway. Dog runs around a bit and then trots back for a visit. I don't know what he does all summer but I seldom see him until the first snowfall. I guess winter is officially started.

Yahoo! I'm back in Silver Birch

Well a nomination in Silver Birch 2010 has certainly made me a happy author. When my biography of Robert Munsch was published last spring, I really hoped it would be added to the list of contenders. I was so excited when I got the news. But then the organizers told me I couldn't tell anyone for a week. That's when the official announcement was made. That was almost too cruel.

Back in 2001, my first novel Frogger was nominated for Silver Birch's fiction category. At the time I didn't know what that meant but I soon found out. I was invited to visit schools all over Ontario. Even my old elementary school -- Dr. Robert Thornton School in Whitby -- invited me to talk to all the students in one giant assembly.

It was great!

After the presentation, they added me to the school's Wall of Fame. They framed up a picture of me in grade four, a cover of Frogger and, I think, one of my old report cards. The last time I saw it, it was hanging next to a picture of Sandy Hawley -- North America's most famous jockey who graduated a year before me. Very cool.

Well now that people will be paying attention to me a bit more, I guess I had better keep this blog a bit more up to date. It sort of fell behind -- just like some of my projects in grade four.

Talk to you later.

Frank