09:48 – The weather has moderated a bit. It was 23F (-5C) with no wind when I got up this morning, which was a lot better than the 13F (-10.5C) with a stiff breeze and gusty winds yesterday morning.
I ordered the boxed DVD set of Heartland S8 from Amazon.ca yesterday. I always order Heartland CDs as soon as they’re available because I want to support the program. I’d intended to order them back in September/October, but I didn’t get around to it because we had so much going on at the time. The DVD sets are always less expensive from amazon.ca, so I wasn’t surprised that they were $27.49 in CA dollars versus $42.60 from the US Amazon site. What did surprise me was the exchange rate. Not all that long ago, the Canadian and US dollars were at parity. A Canadian dollar now buys only about $0.72 US. Even with the added international shipping charge, the boxed set cost me only about $27 US.
There was an interesting column in the WS newspaper this morning, about new gun laws proposed in Tobaccoville, NC, which is right on the western edge of Forsyth County, a few miles from our old house. I asked Barbara what she thought of it, and her opinion was the same as mine. These proposed laws aren’t an attempt to infringe gun rights. One of them increases the minimum distance from an occupied dwelling to discharge a firearm from 300 feet to 1,000 feet, which is not unreasonable. The other prohibits the use of exploding targets (Tannerite high-explosive charges). Barbara and I agreed that 1,000 feet was a reasonable separation, and that neither of us would want someone detonating high explosives with only a 300-foot (~91 meter) separation from our house. Those opposing the new laws are attempting to frame it as a gun-confiscation issue, which it clearly isn’t.