Well, it’s minus nine degrees Centigrade today, here in Toronto; minus 18, with the wind chill. I guess you could say that winter has arrived. Yesterday’s soggy snow has mostly dissolved; what’s left has frozen. And there will likely be more snow, later today, and another five centimetres has been promised for tomorrow.

This is when the thoughts of Canada’s Snow Birds turn to Florida; for Rob and me, however, it is our trip next month to South Africa that exercises our minds and our imaginations. We have a three-day trip planned, to Kruger; a night, with dinner and breakfast, at the fabulous Roots restaurant and boutique hotel (where we were married, in December of 2010) in the Magaliesberg; time out with my mom, my kids and their husbands and partners in Montague, in the Western Cape; some time in Cape Town, of course; and five or so days, just Rob and me, in the country escape of the Cederberg. All this preceded, I have to say, by a week in Pretoria, working on my European Union-South Africa skills planning project.

In less than three weeks, we will be there. I can smell the braais and the warm summer thunderstorms already. But first, back to the present. I will be dressing pretty warmly this morning, I guess, when I head out later to the office.