The snowbanks are even taller, Stilly, and it’s still resolutely cold most of the time. This is Ottawa, not wussy Stratford, and winter lasts well into March.

The kitchen project is on feet, with contracts signed and the first deposits paid. We cross the start line in a week, and before then I have to choose stone and buy a kitchen sink.

Last week I started mall-walking — end to end and back at least five times (4.5 km according to my Apple watch). The mall in question is at Billings Bridge, a major transit hub, and we Olde Phartes have the run of the place from 0800 to 1000 hr each day from Monday to Friday. Like many enclosed shopping malls these days, Billings Bridge has many vacant shops, and what’s left — banks, financial services, a travel agency, lawyers’ offices, a dental practice — doesn’t provide much curb appeal, so the landlords rather like having even crocks like us filling the halls. Walkers, rubber-tipped hiking poles and quad canes abound. A commercially useless suite of rooms in the basement is provided for hanging coats and stashing boots, and over the years the “Walk and Talk” gang has set up what amounts to a clubhouse, with a Keurig machine, a covered plate of home-made cookies, and a revolving cast of volunteers to supervise.

Yesterday, I walked in on a lively discussion of the effect of US tariffs on potash prices in the American mid-west, and left as the gang was collectively solving a crossword puzzle. I’ll be back on Monday.