Musical Trains

An exciting thing happened in Leduc recently.
A musical Christmas train came through the little
ol' town of Leduc.

Formally knows as The Canadian Pacific Railway
Holiday Train Experience, it is a Christmas train that
travels through Canada each year and stops in
communities along the way. It is a completely
decorated train and when it stops, they open up
a couple of the box cars (doors on side of train)
and have bands inside.

The bands this year were Wide Mouth Mason

and Lisa Brokop. They play music for about

30 mins. Lisa Brokop played some nice Christmas

tunes but the Wide Mouth Mason dude was a bit

loud for the atmosphere. But good nonetheless.

They are very dedicated artists, performing

seven shows per day.

There is free hot chocolate and you can donate to
the food bank. It was tons of fun. The weather
was nice and mild which was a blessing. There were
lots of people there and the kids were quite excited.
So excited in fact, we got 'bullied' off of the snow bank
we were standing on. I wanted to kick the kid down
the snow bank, just give a little shove really - more
like encouragement, but Hubby stopped me. So I
pushed hubby down the snow bank. Just kidding.

Wrinkled in Alberta

So I was doing the dishes the other night and

when I was finished I noticed, not for the first

time, that my hands seemed to be abnormally

wrinkled. You know that kind of wrinkled after

you get out of the bathtub. My hands did not

get this wrinkled doing dishes back home. (Home

being Nova Scotia, here being Alberta) My hands

are waaaay more wrinkly after doing dishes here.

I also noticed the same effect after taking a shower.

I asked hubby if he notices this wrinkly hand syndrome.

Yes! He exclaims (hubby hardly ever exclaims).

He had noticed the same thing while doing dishes,

taking showers... etc . I wonder why this is?

A little background on what causes wrinkly fingers:

Even though you can't see it, your skin is covered with its own special oil called sebum. Sebum is found on the outermost layer of skin. Sebum lubricates and protects your skin. It also makes your skin a bit waterproof. That's why getting caught in the rain, hopping in the shower after a game, or washing your hands before dinner won't leave your skin soggy. Sebum is there to keep the water out.But what happens when you spend a long time in the water? Well, there's only a particular amount of sebum on your skin at a time. Once the sebum is washed away, the water can make its way into the outer layer of skin. The water does this by osmosis. This is when water actually moves from one thing into another, from a place where there is more water to a place where there is less water. There is more water in the pool than there is in your body, so it naturally moves to the place where there is less water - you!Although your fingers may look shriveled like raisins, they aren't really shriveled - they're actually waterlogged! The extra water in your fingers causes the skin to swell in some places but not others, and that's what causes the wrinkles.

So Is Alberta water zapping us of our Sebum? And Why?

Is it a government conspiracy? Are Aliens involved?

The Energizer Bunny? (see 'warped mind' post for the

humor behind that) I just hope this wrinkly skin

syndrome does not carry over onto my face.