Last one ever. This is weird. I'll admit to a certain nostalgia settling over me, but in the moment, it's hard to own it. I see its vague shadow on the horizon, but it's not fully realized yet, probably because we're so busy with tying up all the loose ends that have to be tied. Things are going well in that department, though, so the stress level, although expectedly elevated, is not as high as it could be. Ask me on Sunday, though.
That's pretty much what today consisted of: packing boxes and cleaning house. I purchased and installed the new door handle today--looks good. Although it's a pretty easy process, a friend came by while I was working on it, and he was wowed by my expertise. Easily impressed, then, are we?
It turns out that they don't actually make the type of door handle/lock that I broke, so we had to go with a substitute. The type we have on both our front and side doors right now is the push-in kind (more like what you'd see in a bathroom than anything, only more sturdy), but they wisely don't make that kind for exterior doors. The replacement looks fine, though, and I only hope the landlords will be satisfied with the fix.
Besides fixing a door and packing a bunch of boxes, there were other things of note. The boy had lots of time to play outside today. We initially went out at 8:45, with the intention of leaving to walk to the hardware store at 9:00. The neighbour kids were out as well, though, and so the time was better spent playing with them. It's pretty funny to watch the boy play with other kids. For the first time, I actually thought it would be pretty neat to have more than one child, which is a big, bold statement for me.
The one kid, a three-year-old boy, was really getting under my boy's skin, though. It was that situation where every toy that our boy wanted to play with was suddenly the coolest toy around. This led to a little bit of frustration, but our boy is pretty resilient, so it didn't bother him too much. Until he got really tired--that's when he just got pissed off.
We also had an interesting moment while I was working on the lock. The neighbour kids were very interested in what was going on (the boy and a five-year-old girl), and were watching the lock installation carefully. When I needed to get another tool out of the shed, they of course wanted to come and check the shed out, so they trundled off after me. Our boy was standing there watching the whole thing, and suddenly broke out in an angry cry that we rarely see. Turns out he was jealous of the time I was spending with these other kids. Pretty interesting stuff. Once I got back to him and gave him sole attention, he was fine. Apparently, he's very protective of me.
After his morning nap and lunch, I headed off to the college to help set up for the weekend. What a gong show. It's amazing they can actually pull this off, and they could probably save themselves a lot of trouble if, say, the lines of responsibility were more clearly drawn. As it turned out, I had to talk to three different people to get an answer to a relatively simple question, and even then, I'm not sure I got the right person. So tomorrow at 9:00, I have to go back and see what else I need to do.
A really funny thing happened in the course of setting up, though. We were setting up 1000 chairs (there were only five of us--do the math), and trying to figure out if we'd need to angle the sections and how much in order to give people good viewing (how's that for a run-on sentence, by the way? The rules of grammar are all officially suspended this evening). The guy in charge of set-up was working all this out, telling us where he wanted things, when suddenly, he looked at his watch and said, "Coffee," at which point all his employees literally stopped what they were doing and walked out. Leaving three of us (another person had joined at this point) to pick our jaws up off the floor. He just left, without telling us what he wanted us to do, or even really doing anything.
I didn't think this was union shop, so I asked. The answer: "No, but they take their breaks very seriously." Apparently. Once 3:00 rolls around, a break must be taken, or else the delicate machinery that keeps the college running will grind to a halt. Do I want to mess with that? No. Far be it from me to, say, ask for some parting directions. But he didn't say a word--he just walked out. It was the strangest thing I've ever seen.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to people taking coffee breaks. I think they're great and necessary, and hey, if your contract says that a half-hour coffee break goes at 3:00, then I think you should take it. I just think that holding so strictly to the clock that you must leave the premises as soon as the second hand reaches the 12 is silly. At least respect the rest of us enough to explain why you're about to disappear, and perhaps give us an idea as to what we can do in the meantime. Seriously.
After that fiasco, I came home and hung around for a bit with the boy before dinner. After dinner, it was to the park (with a big slide) and then the usual routine of bed. Manic cleaning after dinner (oven, walls, windows, etc), and now some down-time. Nice.
Since this is the last posting for a while (and the last one ever in Three Hills), I thought I'd leave you with some parting reflections, neatly categorized for your reading pleasure.
Things I learned while I lived here:
1. There still exists a place in Canada where people don't lock their doors because they have no need to.
2. I am more materialistic than I'd like to think.
3. It's not necessary to have 100 channels of TV--two fuzzy ones will do just fine.
4. Although I come from the most beautiful part of the planet, beauty can also be found in other areas, and for other reasons.
5. I can survive without my motorcycle.
6. I can survive without being 10 minutes from Wal-Mart.
7. It's possible to have authentic relationships with people, even if you'll only know them for a few months.
8. Hard water sucks.
Things I'll miss when I leave:
1. Overhearing conversations in the grocery store that are meaningful and deep.
2. The simplicity of life that forces me to slow down and take a breath.
3. The friends I made here, almost in spite of myself.
4. Watching trucks travel down long dirt roads, leaving a trail of dust behind them.
5. Driving through a field, and not feeling guilty about it.
6. Getting a friendly greeting from perfect strangers as we walk through town.
Reasons why I'll be glad to go home:
1. No snow in April.
2. Humidity.
3. My motorcycle.
4. Not having to drive for an hour to find a grocery store other than IGA.
5. Customer service.
6. Water that doesn't leave you feeling more dirty after you shower than before.
7. Finally feeling at home in church again.
8. Having my degree.
This academic year has been one of the most challenging and most eye-opening of my life. What I've learned in my own studies has been equally matched by what we've learned as a family. Although I can quantify the things I've learned as a student, I can't quantify those life lessons quite so well. But what this experience has taught us as a family most of all is that it is possible to do things that seem difficult at first, if God is in them.
When the wife first pitched the idea of moving to Three Hills to finish my degree back in August, I initially wrote it off as silly. The first things that came to mind were reasons why we couldn't do it--why we couldn't leave our townhouse, why we couldn't leave our families behind, why we couldn't just up and move, why it was too short notice. Think up an excuse, and I probably gave it. Yet there was something that made all of those objections fall away, and what was left was a simple question: will you go? We had given God a challenge, almost dared Him to open up a way for us to go, and He did. Now it was up to us.
Before we came out here, I was programmed to failure. I felt like I was no good. I had lost a pretty promising ministry job under dubious circumstances, which hurt more than I wanted to admit, I didn't have my degree, I didn't have any job prospects at all--I was floundering. And I was taking my family with me. But in this year, God has changed my heart to the point where I feel like I'm a totally different person now than when I left. My attitude has changed, my behaviour has changed, my outlook on life has changed. I've grown substantially as a person in all my spheres of responsibility: husband, father, son, man of God. And I'm better off for it.
When we drive out of town on Monday, I hope we don't leave everything we've learned back here. That, I suppose, is one of the reasons for even doing this blog. As I consider everything we've been through and how I've chronicled it, I realize that this blog can serve as a beacon to me to remind me of the journey, and to bring back to my mind the lessons I've learned, we've learned as a family. No life experience is without its use. Although you sometimes have to look a little bit harder for that use, it's always there. This, too, has been useful. And we don't regret it at all, as much as I've complained about the weather.
And that, my friends, is the conclusion of this chapter of the story. Grad weekend now officially begins, and when we drive away on Monday, I will have the thing I've long yearned-after. I'll also have so much more.
Thanks for being a part of this journey with me. I've appreciated your interaction and continued readership. I hope that a week without the blog won't make you forget about it. I have plans for its future, and those plans will be revealed on May 7. I hope to see you then.
4.27.2007
4.26.2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
I was right. Turns out that I had, in fact, studied adequately for the test this morning. I admit to a brief moment of panic when I walked in and heard that the test was 120 multiple-choice questions, but they were all good questions--no tricks, no underhanded behaviour. Those who studied did well; those who didn't fared less well.
I managed to finish the test in about 25 minutes (told you I knew my stuff), and was the first one done. Although that gives me some personal sense of accomplishment, it also frightens me a little. Some of the people near me were only on question 95 when I handed mine in, which made me think that I had done something horribly wrong. But I stuck with it and gave it up. No, I didn't re-read all my answers; there were 120 questions.
Later, I talked to one of the guys in my class who happened to stroll past the house with his daughter. After our usual pleasantries--by which I mean him slagging me for being a Canucks fan, which makes no sense being that he's a Flames fan, but he's much bigger than me, so I tend to keep my comments to myself--I asked him how he found the test. He, too, thought it was fairly easy. Whew.
Having taken many a multiple-choice test in my life, I am by now a grizzled veteran of that particular testing methodology. Skim the test first to see what you're dealing with, go through it, tacking the easy questions first, and then come back to the hard questions later. On this particular test, though, I managed to do 116 questions on the first go-around. I wish they all could be that way. I'm not saying that I necessarily got them correct, but I at least had an educated guess.
And just in case you're keeping track, yes I'm finished, and no, I don't feel any different.
That was the morning. Well, at least the first 30 minutes of the morning. Walked both ways in the beautiful spring morning; feels like about February back home, but it's nice. The sun comes up really early on the prairies (and goes down really late), so by the time 8:35 rolled around, the sun was quite high. Crisp, dewy, everything you'd expect out of a spring morning. The kind of day that makes me think I'll miss this place when we leave.
When I got home, we began the process of packing the boy into the car for the Calgary odyssey (good thing I have a built-in spell checker; I never know how to spell that word). Trundled on down and hit the Telus World of Science, which could also be called the Telus World of Shrieking Children and Migraine Headaches, or maybe the Telus World of Overstimulation, but I digress. It's a fun little place. Has nothing on Science World back in Vancouver, but it's good. There wasn't much for toddlers to do, but we found enough places to keep the boy occupied for quite some time.
The cool thing about the science centre is that there are science facts all over the place, including the washrooms. In fact, I learned more in my two trips than I learned in the rest of the day. All the facts are washroom-related, as you'd expect. For example, did you know that the substance that gathers in the corner of your eye when you sleep (sometimes called, "sleep") doesn't have a name? Really, it's true. I also learned that by the time you turn 70, you will have consumed a pile of food the size of an elephant and pooped a pile the size of a car. Not sure what kind of car, nor if the measurement is weight or rough dimensions, but interesting nonetheless.
Of course, no public attraction would be complete without over-priced foodstuffs. We managed to do pretty well at the "cafe," mostly because we brought along a bunch of stuff. Two orders of flaccid fries and a delicious scone: $5.50. Considering the "sandwiches" were also $5.50 apiece, we did well.
So we spent two hours nerding it up, and then managed to navigate our way over to wife's cousin's house to pick up something. I was pretty proud of my Calgary navigating skills, let me tell you. The place is so sprawling that it takes quite some time once you actually enter the city to get where you're going. It only takes us an hour to get to the city limits from here, but you need to add on at least another 30 minutes to get to where you're going. The same could be true of any city, though; country life has spoiled me.
On the way home, we passed a town we've passed innumerable times before, but isn't it funny how sometimes you notice things for the first time. Each city in this area has a fancy wooden sign with the name of the town on it, along with a reader-board underneath for important announcements. Spring run-off has evidently affected the nearby towns as well, as both Acme and Linden have a boil water advisory up. When we passed Linden, I was reading the advisory on their board, and noticed their slogan that I hadn't seen before: "Rural industrial capital of Alberta." That's quite the boast there, Linden--can you back it up?
It reminds me of that Corner Gas episode where the folk of Dog River decided build a large something in their town to attract tourists, similar to the giant Ukrainian egg in Vegreville, Alberta, or the giant statue of Paul Bunyon and his blue ox, Babe in every other small town. Slogans seem to be the same way: you just have to have one. It doesn't matter what factoid you grab, it can sound impressive when engraved on a sign for passers-by to gawk at. What's Three Hills' slogan? I don't know. I've never actually looked at the sign.
Some others from around here...
Irricana: "Open the Gateway to the country." This town takes the imperative form of slogan, as opposed to the boasting form. Whereas Linden's slogan tells you an interesting fact, Irricana's commands obedience.
Beiseker: "Crossroads to the Future." Not sure what motif they're going with there, exactly. Perhaps "hopeful longing." A crossroads implies some sort of watershed moment; although the past and future do present an interesting juxtaposition, I'm not sure they're getting their point across. But what do you expect form a town whose mascot is a skunk named, "Squirt"?
Torrington: "Home of the World-Famous Gopher Hole Museum." Not sure I need to make any kind of comment at all, actually.
Some towns don't bother with slogans at all. Trochu (just up the road from us--that could be a slogan all on its own), for example, even though it has a slick website, does not have a town slogan. Where are your priorities? Another is Acme. Although I would consider, "Featured in Cartoons since 1948," it seems too obvious.
By the way, Three Hills' slogan is, "For a Brighter Future." Again, not sure what, exactly, they're basing that on, but it sounds optimistic. And communist.
Okay, time to take a break: the second period just started. Didn't like the last half of the first one, but I'm trying a new optimistic outlook. I'd keep going, but my computer interferes with my rabbit ear reception, so I can't.
Later. Could this series be any different than the last one? No wonder it looks like we're trying to figure out how to skate all over again. This Ducks team is going to be hard to beat, but beat them we will. They have some fast skaters, and they've burned us several times because of it. We look pretty bad tonight, but it's only game one--lots of series left.
Where was I before I got sidetracked with slogans? Oh right, Calgary. Before we even left the city, we stopped at one of the many Superstores in the area and picked up some things. It's always interesting going into another location of the store you most often go to. Things are somehow familiar, and yet different. All the same things are on the shelves, and yet the shelves are organized differently. It's just enough to throw you off. But we managed.
While in the store, we wandered past the deli section, which has a pleasant selection of freshly-made items. Wife got sidetracked by a salad roll--she's been trying to find one the entire time we've been here, but this is the land of burgers and steak; salad rolls are not on the menu. Anyway, she found one. Sitting beside the sushi. I couldn't help myself--I had to have a California Roll. For store-bought, it wasn't bad. But it's nothing like the place back home. Which we're going to the minute we roll into town.
Anyway, got home, had some time outside with the boy, and ate dinner. For some mysterious reason, the bonfire mentioned in yesterday's posting did not happen, but that's okay--we have a lot of stuff to pack. Built some boxes after dinner before bath and bedtime, and managed to get some non-essentials packed away. Like winter clothes. Am I being optimistic? I hope not.
In other news. I got an email invitation today from the distance ed department, inviting me to a reception for strictly distance ed students (of which I am still one). There was a line in there about how the president of the college will "do his best" to be there and appear in some photos. Oh well, if his excellency deems it fit to come to our lowly reception, we would be honoured. Seriously. He'll try? How hard will he try, exactly? What they need to say is, "Since the distance education department is such a small arm of our school, nobody, including the president, gives a rip about you suckers." At least it would be honest.
Oh, and I've got an update on our broken door handle situation, first reported here last night. I got the okay from our landlords to fix the handle, after being thoroughly interrogated as to the cause of the breakage. After defending myself against an implication that perhaps I broke the handle off by hanging off of it whilst closing the door, I think I proved my case. Because it's really a good idea to be stupid and break something in your last week. But hey, it gives me something to do tomorrow to keep me out of my wife's hair, so that's a positive thing.
And so, we conclude. This, friends, is the second-last posting to this blog. As I mentioned last week, I do plan on maintaining the blog (same address, different name) when we get back, but I haven't really fleshed that out yet. For now, tomorrow's post will be the last for a while, and so I'm sure the nostalgia level will be high. Right now, however, the third period has begun, and I am off to watch the exciting conclusion of this game.
See you tomorrow.
I managed to finish the test in about 25 minutes (told you I knew my stuff), and was the first one done. Although that gives me some personal sense of accomplishment, it also frightens me a little. Some of the people near me were only on question 95 when I handed mine in, which made me think that I had done something horribly wrong. But I stuck with it and gave it up. No, I didn't re-read all my answers; there were 120 questions.
Later, I talked to one of the guys in my class who happened to stroll past the house with his daughter. After our usual pleasantries--by which I mean him slagging me for being a Canucks fan, which makes no sense being that he's a Flames fan, but he's much bigger than me, so I tend to keep my comments to myself--I asked him how he found the test. He, too, thought it was fairly easy. Whew.
Having taken many a multiple-choice test in my life, I am by now a grizzled veteran of that particular testing methodology. Skim the test first to see what you're dealing with, go through it, tacking the easy questions first, and then come back to the hard questions later. On this particular test, though, I managed to do 116 questions on the first go-around. I wish they all could be that way. I'm not saying that I necessarily got them correct, but I at least had an educated guess.
And just in case you're keeping track, yes I'm finished, and no, I don't feel any different.
That was the morning. Well, at least the first 30 minutes of the morning. Walked both ways in the beautiful spring morning; feels like about February back home, but it's nice. The sun comes up really early on the prairies (and goes down really late), so by the time 8:35 rolled around, the sun was quite high. Crisp, dewy, everything you'd expect out of a spring morning. The kind of day that makes me think I'll miss this place when we leave.
When I got home, we began the process of packing the boy into the car for the Calgary odyssey (good thing I have a built-in spell checker; I never know how to spell that word). Trundled on down and hit the Telus World of Science, which could also be called the Telus World of Shrieking Children and Migraine Headaches, or maybe the Telus World of Overstimulation, but I digress. It's a fun little place. Has nothing on Science World back in Vancouver, but it's good. There wasn't much for toddlers to do, but we found enough places to keep the boy occupied for quite some time.
The cool thing about the science centre is that there are science facts all over the place, including the washrooms. In fact, I learned more in my two trips than I learned in the rest of the day. All the facts are washroom-related, as you'd expect. For example, did you know that the substance that gathers in the corner of your eye when you sleep (sometimes called, "sleep") doesn't have a name? Really, it's true. I also learned that by the time you turn 70, you will have consumed a pile of food the size of an elephant and pooped a pile the size of a car. Not sure what kind of car, nor if the measurement is weight or rough dimensions, but interesting nonetheless.
Of course, no public attraction would be complete without over-priced foodstuffs. We managed to do pretty well at the "cafe," mostly because we brought along a bunch of stuff. Two orders of flaccid fries and a delicious scone: $5.50. Considering the "sandwiches" were also $5.50 apiece, we did well.
So we spent two hours nerding it up, and then managed to navigate our way over to wife's cousin's house to pick up something. I was pretty proud of my Calgary navigating skills, let me tell you. The place is so sprawling that it takes quite some time once you actually enter the city to get where you're going. It only takes us an hour to get to the city limits from here, but you need to add on at least another 30 minutes to get to where you're going. The same could be true of any city, though; country life has spoiled me.
On the way home, we passed a town we've passed innumerable times before, but isn't it funny how sometimes you notice things for the first time. Each city in this area has a fancy wooden sign with the name of the town on it, along with a reader-board underneath for important announcements. Spring run-off has evidently affected the nearby towns as well, as both Acme and Linden have a boil water advisory up. When we passed Linden, I was reading the advisory on their board, and noticed their slogan that I hadn't seen before: "Rural industrial capital of Alberta." That's quite the boast there, Linden--can you back it up?
It reminds me of that Corner Gas episode where the folk of Dog River decided build a large something in their town to attract tourists, similar to the giant Ukrainian egg in Vegreville, Alberta, or the giant statue of Paul Bunyon and his blue ox, Babe in every other small town. Slogans seem to be the same way: you just have to have one. It doesn't matter what factoid you grab, it can sound impressive when engraved on a sign for passers-by to gawk at. What's Three Hills' slogan? I don't know. I've never actually looked at the sign.
Some others from around here...
Irricana: "Open the Gateway to the country." This town takes the imperative form of slogan, as opposed to the boasting form. Whereas Linden's slogan tells you an interesting fact, Irricana's commands obedience.
Beiseker: "Crossroads to the Future." Not sure what motif they're going with there, exactly. Perhaps "hopeful longing." A crossroads implies some sort of watershed moment; although the past and future do present an interesting juxtaposition, I'm not sure they're getting their point across. But what do you expect form a town whose mascot is a skunk named, "Squirt"?
Torrington: "Home of the World-Famous Gopher Hole Museum." Not sure I need to make any kind of comment at all, actually.
Some towns don't bother with slogans at all. Trochu (just up the road from us--that could be a slogan all on its own), for example, even though it has a slick website, does not have a town slogan. Where are your priorities? Another is Acme. Although I would consider, "Featured in Cartoons since 1948," it seems too obvious.
By the way, Three Hills' slogan is, "For a Brighter Future." Again, not sure what, exactly, they're basing that on, but it sounds optimistic. And communist.
Okay, time to take a break: the second period just started. Didn't like the last half of the first one, but I'm trying a new optimistic outlook. I'd keep going, but my computer interferes with my rabbit ear reception, so I can't.
Later. Could this series be any different than the last one? No wonder it looks like we're trying to figure out how to skate all over again. This Ducks team is going to be hard to beat, but beat them we will. They have some fast skaters, and they've burned us several times because of it. We look pretty bad tonight, but it's only game one--lots of series left.
Where was I before I got sidetracked with slogans? Oh right, Calgary. Before we even left the city, we stopped at one of the many Superstores in the area and picked up some things. It's always interesting going into another location of the store you most often go to. Things are somehow familiar, and yet different. All the same things are on the shelves, and yet the shelves are organized differently. It's just enough to throw you off. But we managed.
While in the store, we wandered past the deli section, which has a pleasant selection of freshly-made items. Wife got sidetracked by a salad roll--she's been trying to find one the entire time we've been here, but this is the land of burgers and steak; salad rolls are not on the menu. Anyway, she found one. Sitting beside the sushi. I couldn't help myself--I had to have a California Roll. For store-bought, it wasn't bad. But it's nothing like the place back home. Which we're going to the minute we roll into town.
Anyway, got home, had some time outside with the boy, and ate dinner. For some mysterious reason, the bonfire mentioned in yesterday's posting did not happen, but that's okay--we have a lot of stuff to pack. Built some boxes after dinner before bath and bedtime, and managed to get some non-essentials packed away. Like winter clothes. Am I being optimistic? I hope not.
In other news. I got an email invitation today from the distance ed department, inviting me to a reception for strictly distance ed students (of which I am still one). There was a line in there about how the president of the college will "do his best" to be there and appear in some photos. Oh well, if his excellency deems it fit to come to our lowly reception, we would be honoured. Seriously. He'll try? How hard will he try, exactly? What they need to say is, "Since the distance education department is such a small arm of our school, nobody, including the president, gives a rip about you suckers." At least it would be honest.
Oh, and I've got an update on our broken door handle situation, first reported here last night. I got the okay from our landlords to fix the handle, after being thoroughly interrogated as to the cause of the breakage. After defending myself against an implication that perhaps I broke the handle off by hanging off of it whilst closing the door, I think I proved my case. Because it's really a good idea to be stupid and break something in your last week. But hey, it gives me something to do tomorrow to keep me out of my wife's hair, so that's a positive thing.
And so, we conclude. This, friends, is the second-last posting to this blog. As I mentioned last week, I do plan on maintaining the blog (same address, different name) when we get back, but I haven't really fleshed that out yet. For now, tomorrow's post will be the last for a while, and so I'm sure the nostalgia level will be high. Right now, however, the third period has begun, and I am off to watch the exciting conclusion of this game.
See you tomorrow.
4.25.2007
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
There comes a point in the course of studying for any exam wherein one finds that one is fully saturated with knowledge and should proceed no further, lest he disrupt the delicate balance within his brain. I am at that point now. I could study more; I could memorize every little fact on the class handouts (each class in this course came complete with a fill-in-the-blanks handout) and be completely prepared. But that would make me crazy. Crazier.
The midterm in this course, although not daunting, threw me off somewhat. The prof asked all sorts of really obscure things from the notes, and I wasn't really ready for them. This time, I know that there will be questions like that, which makes me want to study all the obscure details. But then I'll have too many facts in my head and I'll probably end up confusing them. It's a tough line.
Suffice it to say that I know enough to do well, and I'm comfortable with knowing that getting 100% is nigh impossible (am I a perfectionist? You bet). Thus I will shoot for the A and be happy with the result.
Unfortunately, the test is at 8:00 tomorrow morning. I'm a big fan of the morning exam; I process things so much slower in the afternoon, and, as you know from previous conversations on this very blog, I'm a get-things-over-with-right-away kind of guy anyway. Waiting until the afternoon just makes me pace the floor and generally be annoying. No, git 'er done, as they say.
After the exam, my undergraduate studies officially come to an end. That's pretty neat. I've been in this mode for this whole week, though, so I think that I probably won't feel any different. It's like being asked on the day of your birthday if you feel any different (funny, but I never do). Things take time to set in and become reality, and I feel that this accomplishment may take a few weeks to actually be enjoyed.
Other than preparing for a major milestone, the day was particularly ordinary. One thing we're going to miss about being here is the pace of life. An ordinary day like today feels free and easy in a town like this; there are no pressures bearing down on you, nothing constantly nagging at you to be done, no TV to watch, no distractions to pull you away from simply enjoying life. I like that. We've grown really used to it. And now it's time to go.
But it's all a state of mind, isn't it? Don't you know someone who hasn't really bought into this whole busyness mentality that we love and cherish? Don't they seem more centred somehow (note to self: Firefox doesn't like Canadian spelling)? I think it's all about the choices you make. For example, I've chosen this semester to be more optimistic in my outlook on life. I had to consciously make the decision, and it's been good for me (although you, the blog-consuming public, may not have seen it, but my wife has). In the same way, when we go back home, we're going to have to make the conscious decision to relax and not be satisfied with the pace the world is throwing at us. Sometimes you have to capitulate, but I think those times happen less than we think they do. It'll be interesting to see how it goes.
Anyway. This morning the wife went off to one of her mom's groups, but left the boy with me. This is the group where the kids play in the nursery while the moms chat (don't worry--it's supervised play), but it hasn't really worked out that way this semester due to the boy's lack of affinity for the nursery setting (and who can blame him, really?). So she went by herself today, and experienced what she'd been missing for the most part. As for us boys, well, it was a fight to get the little one to have a nap today--he had a bit of a rough night last night with his teeth, and so he was already tired when he woke up this morning, which led to him being over-tired by the time the morning nap rolled around--but when he did, he was out. He slept for almost two hours, which allowed me to get copious studying done (which is why I feel okay not doing it now).
After lunch, it was time to go for our daily constitutional. Went off to the college to run a couple errands and check the mail, and sat on a blanket on the grass for a while. It's quite the funny juxtaposition: here we are in our shorts and T-shirts, sitting on the grass beside stubborn piles of snow that haven't quite gotten the "it's-time-to-melt" memo. And with it being warm, the bugs are starting to come out. Let me just say that I think we're getting out of town right on time.
And yes, it was another brilliant day today, weather-wise. 18 degrees for an extended stretch this afternoon, and it's still 11 now (it's 9:30 as I'm typing this). Wonderful. I even got a bit of a sunburn from yesterday's walk, which was as surprising as the Canucks' win last night.
Dinner tonight was hosted by our caretaker and his wife. Quite a nice older couple, who like to have people into their home for dinner. They even required a guest book signing before we left.
You know, there's something about other peoples' guest books that fascinates me. Looking through it and reading the names always brings up a quick picture of that person, and reading it has the same effect as going through an old high school yearbook. It's interesting. The problem is that I'm never sure what proper guest book etiquette is, and as I was delving through the pages, I looked up to see my host giving me a certain look that seemed like I had just done the equivalent of putting my feet up on the table in the Middle East. Turns out it was okay, and he just had indigestion (okay, I'm making that last part up), but for a minute, I wasn't sure if he was going to challenge me to a duel or what. Pistols or swords? Would've been interesting.
It's also interesting when you give someone a dietary restriction, and they seem to not take it as seriously as they should. For example, wife and son (I just explained to my wife, and now I will explain to you, that when I use those terms I'm not trying to be a chauvinist, I'm just trying to avoid first names. Although I have a good idea of who's reading this blog on a regular basis through my site meter, I don't necessarily think divulging first names on a regular basis is necessarily a good idea--a methodology that's proven completely inconsistent by the fact that my blog for my son's photos is titled after his whole name, but whatever; don't catch me on the inconsistencies of my positions)...never mind. That ellipsis got so long that I'm going to have to start that sentence over.
So anyway, wife and son have a sensitivity to wheat. It's not a life-and-death allergy in the sense that they won't drop dead beside you if they eat wheat, but it's painful enough that we just try to avoid it altogether. Unfortunately, not everyone is trained as we are to read ingredient labels with a microscope, and they simply assume that things are okay. Usually, they are wrong.
For example, did you know that almost every Campbell's soup has flour in it? It's true; even things you wouldn't suspect, like tomato soup, has flour. The meal tonight was a stroganoff--which sounds like a Finnish expletive--and she made it with cream of mushroom soup. And then, she thickened it with flour. To her credit, she realized just after she put the flour in that this was a bad idea, and tried to scoop it out. Unfortunately, flour has different ideas; it does not sit idly and let itself be scooped.
Fortunately, a minimum amount of main course was consumed, and although things got pretty uncomfortable at one point, it looks like we're generally in the clear now.
There should be a sign posted on my computer: editor on board. Wife has taken to sitting beside me (I'm working on the laptop) and knitting, all the while reading over my shoulder as I type. Doesn't that sound like a small-town stereotype? Wife sitting beside husband, knitting. Anyway. She just made me take out a paragraph. It's like having fargin' Jiminy Cricket sitting here.
Man, what is it tonight? The sun comes out, and everyone in Three Hills goes nuts. Just a few minutes ago, a large gang of unruly teens ran by, hooting and hollering as teens are wont to do. Just now, some dude pulled up outside our house with his radio blasting and windows unrolled (he was going to our neighbours' place, but had to park directly outside our house due to the fact that there is already a small armada of cars outside the neighbours' place). Seriously people, sleeping infant inside. He's already woken up twice and chirped because of your loud disruptions. Gosh. I'm so old.
Now, there's some dude either racing around on his very loud racing motorcycle. That, or someone is using a chainsaw in the dark. Maybe they're carving those little chairs. Now that would be a noble pursuit, as long as they drop one off over here. Oh wait, I think it's probably some guy ripping around on his ATV. It's loud and really annoying, whatever it is.
After we got back from dinner, the neighbours were having a little marshmallow and smokie roast, so I joined in for a bit. Had a really awkward moment when I went outside though--I used the side door of the house, the one we never use, and as I pulled it shut behind me, the doorknob broke off right in my hands. I've never had that happen before. And what great timing, eh? A week before we leave, and I'm breaking things. Oh well, at least we didn't lock ourselves out of the house again. As Bullwinkle would say, "Ooh, don't know my own strength." The link, by the way, is to Wikipedia. At the top of the article, two warnings are given about how the sources aren't referenced and the lists are "unencyclopedic," whatever that means (Firefox doesn't think it's a word). You know it's bad when even Wikipedia thinks your entry isn't up to snuff.
With that, the day concludes, and so does this blog entry. Tomorrow is a busy day; after the exam, we're going to head into Calgary for one more stab at the city before we go. The plan is to hit the science centre, which should be fun. Quick Superstore stop on the way home, and then a birthday bonfire for one of the student families. And, of course, round two begins.
I'll have a full update on the test and all the other crazy (mis)adventures tomorrow. See you then.
The midterm in this course, although not daunting, threw me off somewhat. The prof asked all sorts of really obscure things from the notes, and I wasn't really ready for them. This time, I know that there will be questions like that, which makes me want to study all the obscure details. But then I'll have too many facts in my head and I'll probably end up confusing them. It's a tough line.
Suffice it to say that I know enough to do well, and I'm comfortable with knowing that getting 100% is nigh impossible (am I a perfectionist? You bet). Thus I will shoot for the A and be happy with the result.
Unfortunately, the test is at 8:00 tomorrow morning. I'm a big fan of the morning exam; I process things so much slower in the afternoon, and, as you know from previous conversations on this very blog, I'm a get-things-over-with-right-away kind of guy anyway. Waiting until the afternoon just makes me pace the floor and generally be annoying. No, git 'er done, as they say.
After the exam, my undergraduate studies officially come to an end. That's pretty neat. I've been in this mode for this whole week, though, so I think that I probably won't feel any different. It's like being asked on the day of your birthday if you feel any different (funny, but I never do). Things take time to set in and become reality, and I feel that this accomplishment may take a few weeks to actually be enjoyed.
Other than preparing for a major milestone, the day was particularly ordinary. One thing we're going to miss about being here is the pace of life. An ordinary day like today feels free and easy in a town like this; there are no pressures bearing down on you, nothing constantly nagging at you to be done, no TV to watch, no distractions to pull you away from simply enjoying life. I like that. We've grown really used to it. And now it's time to go.
But it's all a state of mind, isn't it? Don't you know someone who hasn't really bought into this whole busyness mentality that we love and cherish? Don't they seem more centred somehow (note to self: Firefox doesn't like Canadian spelling)? I think it's all about the choices you make. For example, I've chosen this semester to be more optimistic in my outlook on life. I had to consciously make the decision, and it's been good for me (although you, the blog-consuming public, may not have seen it, but my wife has). In the same way, when we go back home, we're going to have to make the conscious decision to relax and not be satisfied with the pace the world is throwing at us. Sometimes you have to capitulate, but I think those times happen less than we think they do. It'll be interesting to see how it goes.
Anyway. This morning the wife went off to one of her mom's groups, but left the boy with me. This is the group where the kids play in the nursery while the moms chat (don't worry--it's supervised play), but it hasn't really worked out that way this semester due to the boy's lack of affinity for the nursery setting (and who can blame him, really?). So she went by herself today, and experienced what she'd been missing for the most part. As for us boys, well, it was a fight to get the little one to have a nap today--he had a bit of a rough night last night with his teeth, and so he was already tired when he woke up this morning, which led to him being over-tired by the time the morning nap rolled around--but when he did, he was out. He slept for almost two hours, which allowed me to get copious studying done (which is why I feel okay not doing it now).
After lunch, it was time to go for our daily constitutional. Went off to the college to run a couple errands and check the mail, and sat on a blanket on the grass for a while. It's quite the funny juxtaposition: here we are in our shorts and T-shirts, sitting on the grass beside stubborn piles of snow that haven't quite gotten the "it's-time-to-melt" memo. And with it being warm, the bugs are starting to come out. Let me just say that I think we're getting out of town right on time.
And yes, it was another brilliant day today, weather-wise. 18 degrees for an extended stretch this afternoon, and it's still 11 now (it's 9:30 as I'm typing this). Wonderful. I even got a bit of a sunburn from yesterday's walk, which was as surprising as the Canucks' win last night.
Dinner tonight was hosted by our caretaker and his wife. Quite a nice older couple, who like to have people into their home for dinner. They even required a guest book signing before we left.
You know, there's something about other peoples' guest books that fascinates me. Looking through it and reading the names always brings up a quick picture of that person, and reading it has the same effect as going through an old high school yearbook. It's interesting. The problem is that I'm never sure what proper guest book etiquette is, and as I was delving through the pages, I looked up to see my host giving me a certain look that seemed like I had just done the equivalent of putting my feet up on the table in the Middle East. Turns out it was okay, and he just had indigestion (okay, I'm making that last part up), but for a minute, I wasn't sure if he was going to challenge me to a duel or what. Pistols or swords? Would've been interesting.
It's also interesting when you give someone a dietary restriction, and they seem to not take it as seriously as they should. For example, wife and son (I just explained to my wife, and now I will explain to you, that when I use those terms I'm not trying to be a chauvinist, I'm just trying to avoid first names. Although I have a good idea of who's reading this blog on a regular basis through my site meter, I don't necessarily think divulging first names on a regular basis is necessarily a good idea--a methodology that's proven completely inconsistent by the fact that my blog for my son's photos is titled after his whole name, but whatever; don't catch me on the inconsistencies of my positions)...never mind. That ellipsis got so long that I'm going to have to start that sentence over.
So anyway, wife and son have a sensitivity to wheat. It's not a life-and-death allergy in the sense that they won't drop dead beside you if they eat wheat, but it's painful enough that we just try to avoid it altogether. Unfortunately, not everyone is trained as we are to read ingredient labels with a microscope, and they simply assume that things are okay. Usually, they are wrong.
For example, did you know that almost every Campbell's soup has flour in it? It's true; even things you wouldn't suspect, like tomato soup, has flour. The meal tonight was a stroganoff--which sounds like a Finnish expletive--and she made it with cream of mushroom soup. And then, she thickened it with flour. To her credit, she realized just after she put the flour in that this was a bad idea, and tried to scoop it out. Unfortunately, flour has different ideas; it does not sit idly and let itself be scooped.
Fortunately, a minimum amount of main course was consumed, and although things got pretty uncomfortable at one point, it looks like we're generally in the clear now.
There should be a sign posted on my computer: editor on board. Wife has taken to sitting beside me (I'm working on the laptop) and knitting, all the while reading over my shoulder as I type. Doesn't that sound like a small-town stereotype? Wife sitting beside husband, knitting. Anyway. She just made me take out a paragraph. It's like having fargin' Jiminy Cricket sitting here.
Man, what is it tonight? The sun comes out, and everyone in Three Hills goes nuts. Just a few minutes ago, a large gang of unruly teens ran by, hooting and hollering as teens are wont to do. Just now, some dude pulled up outside our house with his radio blasting and windows unrolled (he was going to our neighbours' place, but had to park directly outside our house due to the fact that there is already a small armada of cars outside the neighbours' place). Seriously people, sleeping infant inside. He's already woken up twice and chirped because of your loud disruptions. Gosh. I'm so old.
Now, there's some dude either racing around on his very loud racing motorcycle. That, or someone is using a chainsaw in the dark. Maybe they're carving those little chairs. Now that would be a noble pursuit, as long as they drop one off over here. Oh wait, I think it's probably some guy ripping around on his ATV. It's loud and really annoying, whatever it is.
After we got back from dinner, the neighbours were having a little marshmallow and smokie roast, so I joined in for a bit. Had a really awkward moment when I went outside though--I used the side door of the house, the one we never use, and as I pulled it shut behind me, the doorknob broke off right in my hands. I've never had that happen before. And what great timing, eh? A week before we leave, and I'm breaking things. Oh well, at least we didn't lock ourselves out of the house again. As Bullwinkle would say, "Ooh, don't know my own strength." The link, by the way, is to Wikipedia. At the top of the article, two warnings are given about how the sources aren't referenced and the lists are "unencyclopedic," whatever that means (Firefox doesn't think it's a word). You know it's bad when even Wikipedia thinks your entry isn't up to snuff.
With that, the day concludes, and so does this blog entry. Tomorrow is a busy day; after the exam, we're going to head into Calgary for one more stab at the city before we go. The plan is to hit the science centre, which should be fun. Quick Superstore stop on the way home, and then a birthday bonfire for one of the student families. And, of course, round two begins.
I'll have a full update on the test and all the other crazy (mis)adventures tomorrow. See you then.
4.24.2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
They actually did it. They actually proved me wrong. How's that for a shocking turn of events? Not that they proved me wrong, but that they actually put a team away, finally. My only question is where was the team we saw in the second and third periods in the last two games? Had they played like that, this series would never have gone to 7.
But, the good guys won, I was proven wrong, and now I can go razz some Flames fans. Awesome. Even if we end up losing in round two, at least we got past round one, which, as I just read, we've only done once since moving into GM Place at the beginning of the '95 season.
In a way, I feel bad for the Dallas Stars. Marty Turco played an incredible series--who would have thought that a 167:04 shutout streak would result in losing the series--and I always feel bad for the losing team, especially knowing that there are going to be heads rolling in Dallas this off-season. But. My team won, so there. We've had our share of playoff adversity, too. And I'm really happy for Alain Vigneault, who proved that he can still coach in the NHL.
Moving on. Today proved that the weather in this part of the world is stunningly unpredictable. Just two days ago, we were bundled up in parkas; today, we were in our shorts. Okay, I was in my shorts. My wife is made of ice, apparently, and cannot keep warm. Beautiful, though; sunny and warm--up to 13 degrees in the warmest part of the day, but it felt warmer. There's something about the prairie sun that's really scorching, even in the spring.
The funny/ironic part is that the trees outside our house just started budding in the past couple days, which means they'll leap into bloom probably a few days after we leave. We've basically missed spring entirely. Oh well. I hear the grass is green at home, and there are allegedly things called "flowers" that spring up from the dirt. We'll see about that.
The sunny weather meant much time was spent outdoors, including sitting on a beach towel on the grass soaking up the sun, and then taking a lengthy walk around town. Should I have been studying? Probably. I did study some this morning and then again this afternoon, so I feel alright, if still somewhat ill-prepared. There's still time to cram.
I also had the chance today to do something every man loves to do--walk around on his roof. Our downspouts are particularly ineffective here, especially when there's a big pile of snow on the roof. The water was cascading down the sides of the house, getting into all the window panes and pooling at the foundation of the house. Since it's still getting down to freezing most nights, I was a little worried about the foundation heaving (which is why the downspouts all drain into the middle of the lawn, theoretically, at least), plus I needed an excuse to go up on the roof. I figured that if I shovelled all the snow off the roof, we'd have less of a problem with melting.
Up I went, and it was glorious. It's great fun pushing piles of snow off the roof and seeing them land on the lawn with a satisfying thud, splattering everywhere. And hey, it solved the water problem, so good times all around.
Speaking of water, the water from the taps here is getting disgusting again. Brown and smelly, and leaving a ring around the tub after one use. Awesome. I shower in that, and I can't imagine I'm getting any cleaner than when I started.
So. I suppose that'll do for this evening. Tomorrow should be more of the same, just without the hockey jabber at the beginning (read: tomorrow's post will be boring). I'll find something to make it interesting. Maybe. How's that for a sell job?
See you then.
But, the good guys won, I was proven wrong, and now I can go razz some Flames fans. Awesome. Even if we end up losing in round two, at least we got past round one, which, as I just read, we've only done once since moving into GM Place at the beginning of the '95 season.
In a way, I feel bad for the Dallas Stars. Marty Turco played an incredible series--who would have thought that a 167:04 shutout streak would result in losing the series--and I always feel bad for the losing team, especially knowing that there are going to be heads rolling in Dallas this off-season. But. My team won, so there. We've had our share of playoff adversity, too. And I'm really happy for Alain Vigneault, who proved that he can still coach in the NHL.
Moving on. Today proved that the weather in this part of the world is stunningly unpredictable. Just two days ago, we were bundled up in parkas; today, we were in our shorts. Okay, I was in my shorts. My wife is made of ice, apparently, and cannot keep warm. Beautiful, though; sunny and warm--up to 13 degrees in the warmest part of the day, but it felt warmer. There's something about the prairie sun that's really scorching, even in the spring.
The funny/ironic part is that the trees outside our house just started budding in the past couple days, which means they'll leap into bloom probably a few days after we leave. We've basically missed spring entirely. Oh well. I hear the grass is green at home, and there are allegedly things called "flowers" that spring up from the dirt. We'll see about that.
The sunny weather meant much time was spent outdoors, including sitting on a beach towel on the grass soaking up the sun, and then taking a lengthy walk around town. Should I have been studying? Probably. I did study some this morning and then again this afternoon, so I feel alright, if still somewhat ill-prepared. There's still time to cram.
I also had the chance today to do something every man loves to do--walk around on his roof. Our downspouts are particularly ineffective here, especially when there's a big pile of snow on the roof. The water was cascading down the sides of the house, getting into all the window panes and pooling at the foundation of the house. Since it's still getting down to freezing most nights, I was a little worried about the foundation heaving (which is why the downspouts all drain into the middle of the lawn, theoretically, at least), plus I needed an excuse to go up on the roof. I figured that if I shovelled all the snow off the roof, we'd have less of a problem with melting.
Up I went, and it was glorious. It's great fun pushing piles of snow off the roof and seeing them land on the lawn with a satisfying thud, splattering everywhere. And hey, it solved the water problem, so good times all around.
Speaking of water, the water from the taps here is getting disgusting again. Brown and smelly, and leaving a ring around the tub after one use. Awesome. I shower in that, and I can't imagine I'm getting any cleaner than when I started.
So. I suppose that'll do for this evening. Tomorrow should be more of the same, just without the hockey jabber at the beginning (read: tomorrow's post will be boring). I'll find something to make it interesting. Maybe. How's that for a sell job?
See you then.
4.23.2007
Monday, April 23, 2007
In the final analysis, I'm glad that weekend is over. A really aggravating weekend, for a number of reasons that I will get into forthwith.
Before I do, though, I have to get a plug in for the new version of the Firefox browser--it's amazing. I'm most impressed with the built-in spell checker; now I can ensure my blog is free of silly spelling mistakes related to fast typing. Excellent. Are you still using that crappy Microsoft browser? Switch; it's so worth it.
On with it, then. First, it was the weather. Friday was snow, snow, and more snow, which puts me in a bad mood to begin with. It was heavy, west-coast snow, the kind that sticks to everything and weighs a ton (or maybe a tonne). Horrible, slippery stuff, and it kept falling all day. Had a nice strong north wind, too, so when you went outside you got whipped in the face by horizontally-falling, rapidly-moving snow. Ugly.
To add to the misery (as if I needed something more to complain about), the power went out at 10:15 and stubbornly refused to come back on. We're on the college's power grid up here, so finding out information was like asking a Korean for directions in Belgium. I called the switchboard to see if they knew anything, and the response was, "Well, we were just told to turn off our computers because the power is going off soon, so it'll probably be out for some time."
"Okay, let me get this straight: they're taking the power off-line at the campus [the only area it was actually on] on purpose? Why would they be doing that? And how does that relate to it being out for some time? Can you give me any guess when it'll come back on, even if it's an uneducated guess?"
"No sir, I cannot. All we know is that we have to turn our computers off. Goodbye, then." Click.
Thanks for the help. This was at 2:15, and we were making plans to head to the campus coffee shop just to get out of the house and be in the heat. Good thing I called, though, because the coffee shop might have also been affected by the outage (which the operator didn't know about, surprise, surprise).
We ended up heading off to one of the local coffee shops, in our full winter gear (including boots). Terrible conditions, but better than being in a house with no heat. They had a kid's area, so the boy got to play, which made him happy, and mom and dad got some nice hot beverages, which made them less miserable.
We managed to kill time until 4:30. When we got home, the power had just come back on 15 minutes ago. Six hours.
That brings us to Saturday. Still inclement weather, although the snow had finally stopped. Now all we had to contend with were big snow drifts and un-shovelled sidewalks. We thought about heading out of town somewhere but (a) couldn't think of anywhere we'd like to go, and (b) didn't want to leave town just in case it started to snow again and road conditions deteriorated. Instead, we decided we'd hit the annual college yard sale, where everyone sells their junk that they don't want to take home at the end of the semester.
That was the plan, at least. The lock on our front door is the silly push-in-to-lock kind that doesn't require a key to lock--you just pull it shut behind you. This, of course, carries with it the high potential for locking oneself out of the house should one not have one's keys. Fortunately, we're both very conscientious of this, and we always make sure we have our keys on us before we leave.
Except on Saturday. I am a creature of habit--I always have my keys in my right pants pocket. I put them there when I put my pants on in the morning, and I never take them out. Yet on Friday night, I had left them in the car's ignition when I switched with the wife (see story below), and hadn't gotten them back. She just put them in her purse and forgot about them, and used her keys on the way home. When I got dressed in the morning, I realized that I didn't have my keys on me, but I forgot to grab them out of her purse before we left. The lesson: when something comes to mind, deal with right then, because you might forget later.
The sequence was actually quite amusing, if you look at it like a TV show. Just before we left the house, I took the wife's purse out of the bottom of the stroller, because she didn't need her wallet or her keys, considering I had mine. I went outside with the boy while she put her jacket on, and then she came out and locked the door behind her. Realizing she had forgotten her mitts, she decided to grab them. "Do you have keys?"
"No."
And then there was this brief moment of horrible realization--we are now locked out of our house. Crap.
We decided to head off to the yard sale anyway, and call our caretaker from the college to get the spare key. No problem, right?
Brief interlude: the yard sale was meh--only six people had tables set up, and, because the weather was so terrible, it was indoors. I think, though, that most people just thought it was cancelled and stayed home. I talked to one of the people who had a table afterwards, and they said it was the most poorly-attended sale they'd been at in the five years they'd been here.
Managed to get a couple of things, though. I bought an old SLR camera for $5, and a PlayStation game for $3. While we were walking around, the boy saw one of those exercise balls (just a small one), and started playing with it. He was having so much fun that we bought it as well--at $2, you can't go wrong. Good buy, too; he's been playing with it ever since.
After we had checked out the sale, we went to call my caretaker. His tenant answered, because he wasn't home. Turns out he was in Edmonton. For the weekend. I asked the tenant if he had any idea where the spare keys were kept. He said our caretaker kept a bunch in his office and he'd check. Meanwhile, we headed over toward the house to pick the keys up.
Turns out our caretaker lives about as far away from us as you can get in Three Hills, which is a surprisingly long distance. After walking for half an hour in the cold, we got there, and I started rifling through the keys with this other guy. None of the keys looked like the right ones, but I figured one of them had to work. Just as we were about to leave, the tenant opened up a desk drawer, and in it was a box with our landlords' names on it. Inside was a key that looked right, so we took it.
After the long walk back home, we tried the key, and huzzah--it was a match. By now we were exhausted, but at least we were inside. And the power was on.
Of course, Saturday night was also the Canucks game, which started at 6:00. Right off the bat, though, we knew it was bad. And unlike last time, we all know the ending to this one--a loss. As if I wasn't disappointed enough with the weekend already--my team had to go out and lay an egg. For the second game in a row.
You know, I try not to be cynical and pessimistic when it comes to the Canucks. I try. I've been trying for years. In order to stop my pessimism, all they have to do is prove me wrong. Just once, they need to go straight for the jugular and put a team away when they've got them against the ropes. Just once. For the love of puppies.
But hey, we've at least got one championship-calibre team in Vancouver--the Giants. Another big win for them on Saturday, which puts them up 2-0 in their Western conference final series against Prince George. When the Canucks get eliminated Monday night, pay attention to the Giants; they'll make you feel better about the sad state of our professional hockey team. In fact, the Giants should just suit up against the Stars in game 7--at least we'd have a chance.
Fortunately, every bad day has to end, and Saturday did as well, giving way to Sunday, as it always does. The boy slept in until close to 8:00 today, which was a luxury. After we did the breakfast thing, we headed out to Linden for church. I hadn't had coffee, so I was a little bit out-of-sorts, but that's okay. The boy slept through most of the service, which meant that the wife and I could both enjoy the sermon, which is a rare feat.
After church, we came home and had lunch, and then took the boy outside for some playtime. The sun actually came out today and the snow started melting at an alarming rate, although it has quite a ways to go. Supposed to be sunny for the next few days, with temperatures in the mid- to high-teens, which would be really nice. With my luck, all the snow will melt just in time for a fresh coat at grad. But you know what? I'm going to be leaving for good in a week, so whatever.
After letting the boy play in the driveway for a while (and get his pants thoroughly soaked), we decided to go for a walk around town. When we got back, we played some more and then had dinner. Bath, bottle, and bed for the boy, and the beginning of studying for my upcoming final exam for me. Then it was Battlestar Galactica, and now it's bed. Whew.
Well look at that: Detroit just won. There'll be a lot of unhappy faces around here tomorrow. At least now I won't have to worry about the Canucks losing and the Flames winning, which I would never have lived down.
You'll be happy to know that the weekend wasn't entirely a write-off. Here at the college, the music majors do recitals at the end of the year to show how much they've learned and such. The usual are represented, by which I mean there are a lot of piano and voice recitals. One, however, stood out from the crowd: a percussion recital. My first thought was that it was just going to be some guy playing the drums and tambourine all night, but when I asked around, I found out that he had a whole band with him, and he was going to play through some of the absolute classics of rock and funk music. It was on Friday, so I figured I'd check it out. I was not disappointed.
Simply said, it was the best rock show I've ever been to, hands down, and I've been to many good rock shows. This thing was amazing; the band he had backing him up was incredible (led by the worship intern here at the college, whose talent is mind-boggling). They played all sorts of numbers, including the Stevie Wonder classic "Superstitious," and the funk standard, "Play That Funky Music, White Boy" (I'm not kidding--and it was amazing). Wow.
They took an intermission an hour in, and I jumped back in the car and rushed home to trade off with the wife. As I told her, it would have been a crime for her to miss it. I left the car running when I got home, which led to the whole locking ourselves out of the house incident the next day (see above for details). It was almost worth locking us out of the house. Watching that show was like watching an atom being split. At least I think it would be. What an obscure simile. Even I'm astounded with what I come up with sometimes.
Anyway. That about does it for tonight. A funny week lies ahead: our last week here (which is strange to think about), which means we have to begin the packing of the extraneous stuff (I've already got three boxes of books packed--I think my books are procreating). I've also got an exam on Wednesday morning, we're going to take a trip to Calgary that same day, and all the grad stuff on Friday and Saturday. I think it'll probably fly by. I hope it'll fly by.
That means that this is the last week of this blog's existence. So sad! Don't worry, though--the name will change, but the address and content will remain the same. More on the administrative stuff at a later date.
And someday soon, I'll get around to posting on my other blog. I was going to do it tonight, but I just didn't have the energy. Maybe later in the week.
With that said, I'm out. See you tomorrow.
Before I do, though, I have to get a plug in for the new version of the Firefox browser--it's amazing. I'm most impressed with the built-in spell checker; now I can ensure my blog is free of silly spelling mistakes related to fast typing. Excellent. Are you still using that crappy Microsoft browser? Switch; it's so worth it.
On with it, then. First, it was the weather. Friday was snow, snow, and more snow, which puts me in a bad mood to begin with. It was heavy, west-coast snow, the kind that sticks to everything and weighs a ton (or maybe a tonne). Horrible, slippery stuff, and it kept falling all day. Had a nice strong north wind, too, so when you went outside you got whipped in the face by horizontally-falling, rapidly-moving snow. Ugly.
To add to the misery (as if I needed something more to complain about), the power went out at 10:15 and stubbornly refused to come back on. We're on the college's power grid up here, so finding out information was like asking a Korean for directions in Belgium. I called the switchboard to see if they knew anything, and the response was, "Well, we were just told to turn off our computers because the power is going off soon, so it'll probably be out for some time."
"Okay, let me get this straight: they're taking the power off-line at the campus [the only area it was actually on] on purpose? Why would they be doing that? And how does that relate to it being out for some time? Can you give me any guess when it'll come back on, even if it's an uneducated guess?"
"No sir, I cannot. All we know is that we have to turn our computers off. Goodbye, then." Click.
Thanks for the help. This was at 2:15, and we were making plans to head to the campus coffee shop just to get out of the house and be in the heat. Good thing I called, though, because the coffee shop might have also been affected by the outage (which the operator didn't know about, surprise, surprise).
We ended up heading off to one of the local coffee shops, in our full winter gear (including boots). Terrible conditions, but better than being in a house with no heat. They had a kid's area, so the boy got to play, which made him happy, and mom and dad got some nice hot beverages, which made them less miserable.
We managed to kill time until 4:30. When we got home, the power had just come back on 15 minutes ago. Six hours.
That brings us to Saturday. Still inclement weather, although the snow had finally stopped. Now all we had to contend with were big snow drifts and un-shovelled sidewalks. We thought about heading out of town somewhere but (a) couldn't think of anywhere we'd like to go, and (b) didn't want to leave town just in case it started to snow again and road conditions deteriorated. Instead, we decided we'd hit the annual college yard sale, where everyone sells their junk that they don't want to take home at the end of the semester.
That was the plan, at least. The lock on our front door is the silly push-in-to-lock kind that doesn't require a key to lock--you just pull it shut behind you. This, of course, carries with it the high potential for locking oneself out of the house should one not have one's keys. Fortunately, we're both very conscientious of this, and we always make sure we have our keys on us before we leave.
Except on Saturday. I am a creature of habit--I always have my keys in my right pants pocket. I put them there when I put my pants on in the morning, and I never take them out. Yet on Friday night, I had left them in the car's ignition when I switched with the wife (see story below), and hadn't gotten them back. She just put them in her purse and forgot about them, and used her keys on the way home. When I got dressed in the morning, I realized that I didn't have my keys on me, but I forgot to grab them out of her purse before we left. The lesson: when something comes to mind, deal with right then, because you might forget later.
The sequence was actually quite amusing, if you look at it like a TV show. Just before we left the house, I took the wife's purse out of the bottom of the stroller, because she didn't need her wallet or her keys, considering I had mine. I went outside with the boy while she put her jacket on, and then she came out and locked the door behind her. Realizing she had forgotten her mitts, she decided to grab them. "Do you have keys?"
"No."
And then there was this brief moment of horrible realization--we are now locked out of our house. Crap.
We decided to head off to the yard sale anyway, and call our caretaker from the college to get the spare key. No problem, right?
Brief interlude: the yard sale was meh--only six people had tables set up, and, because the weather was so terrible, it was indoors. I think, though, that most people just thought it was cancelled and stayed home. I talked to one of the people who had a table afterwards, and they said it was the most poorly-attended sale they'd been at in the five years they'd been here.
Managed to get a couple of things, though. I bought an old SLR camera for $5, and a PlayStation game for $3. While we were walking around, the boy saw one of those exercise balls (just a small one), and started playing with it. He was having so much fun that we bought it as well--at $2, you can't go wrong. Good buy, too; he's been playing with it ever since.
After we had checked out the sale, we went to call my caretaker. His tenant answered, because he wasn't home. Turns out he was in Edmonton. For the weekend. I asked the tenant if he had any idea where the spare keys were kept. He said our caretaker kept a bunch in his office and he'd check. Meanwhile, we headed over toward the house to pick the keys up.
Turns out our caretaker lives about as far away from us as you can get in Three Hills, which is a surprisingly long distance. After walking for half an hour in the cold, we got there, and I started rifling through the keys with this other guy. None of the keys looked like the right ones, but I figured one of them had to work. Just as we were about to leave, the tenant opened up a desk drawer, and in it was a box with our landlords' names on it. Inside was a key that looked right, so we took it.
After the long walk back home, we tried the key, and huzzah--it was a match. By now we were exhausted, but at least we were inside. And the power was on.
Of course, Saturday night was also the Canucks game, which started at 6:00. Right off the bat, though, we knew it was bad. And unlike last time, we all know the ending to this one--a loss. As if I wasn't disappointed enough with the weekend already--my team had to go out and lay an egg. For the second game in a row.
You know, I try not to be cynical and pessimistic when it comes to the Canucks. I try. I've been trying for years. In order to stop my pessimism, all they have to do is prove me wrong. Just once, they need to go straight for the jugular and put a team away when they've got them against the ropes. Just once. For the love of puppies.
But hey, we've at least got one championship-calibre team in Vancouver--the Giants. Another big win for them on Saturday, which puts them up 2-0 in their Western conference final series against Prince George. When the Canucks get eliminated Monday night, pay attention to the Giants; they'll make you feel better about the sad state of our professional hockey team. In fact, the Giants should just suit up against the Stars in game 7--at least we'd have a chance.
Fortunately, every bad day has to end, and Saturday did as well, giving way to Sunday, as it always does. The boy slept in until close to 8:00 today, which was a luxury. After we did the breakfast thing, we headed out to Linden for church. I hadn't had coffee, so I was a little bit out-of-sorts, but that's okay. The boy slept through most of the service, which meant that the wife and I could both enjoy the sermon, which is a rare feat.
After church, we came home and had lunch, and then took the boy outside for some playtime. The sun actually came out today and the snow started melting at an alarming rate, although it has quite a ways to go. Supposed to be sunny for the next few days, with temperatures in the mid- to high-teens, which would be really nice. With my luck, all the snow will melt just in time for a fresh coat at grad. But you know what? I'm going to be leaving for good in a week, so whatever.
After letting the boy play in the driveway for a while (and get his pants thoroughly soaked), we decided to go for a walk around town. When we got back, we played some more and then had dinner. Bath, bottle, and bed for the boy, and the beginning of studying for my upcoming final exam for me. Then it was Battlestar Galactica, and now it's bed. Whew.
Well look at that: Detroit just won. There'll be a lot of unhappy faces around here tomorrow. At least now I won't have to worry about the Canucks losing and the Flames winning, which I would never have lived down.
You'll be happy to know that the weekend wasn't entirely a write-off. Here at the college, the music majors do recitals at the end of the year to show how much they've learned and such. The usual are represented, by which I mean there are a lot of piano and voice recitals. One, however, stood out from the crowd: a percussion recital. My first thought was that it was just going to be some guy playing the drums and tambourine all night, but when I asked around, I found out that he had a whole band with him, and he was going to play through some of the absolute classics of rock and funk music. It was on Friday, so I figured I'd check it out. I was not disappointed.
Simply said, it was the best rock show I've ever been to, hands down, and I've been to many good rock shows. This thing was amazing; the band he had backing him up was incredible (led by the worship intern here at the college, whose talent is mind-boggling). They played all sorts of numbers, including the Stevie Wonder classic "Superstitious," and the funk standard, "Play That Funky Music, White Boy" (I'm not kidding--and it was amazing). Wow.
They took an intermission an hour in, and I jumped back in the car and rushed home to trade off with the wife. As I told her, it would have been a crime for her to miss it. I left the car running when I got home, which led to the whole locking ourselves out of the house incident the next day (see above for details). It was almost worth locking us out of the house. Watching that show was like watching an atom being split. At least I think it would be. What an obscure simile. Even I'm astounded with what I come up with sometimes.
Anyway. That about does it for tonight. A funny week lies ahead: our last week here (which is strange to think about), which means we have to begin the packing of the extraneous stuff (I've already got three boxes of books packed--I think my books are procreating). I've also got an exam on Wednesday morning, we're going to take a trip to Calgary that same day, and all the grad stuff on Friday and Saturday. I think it'll probably fly by. I hope it'll fly by.
That means that this is the last week of this blog's existence. So sad! Don't worry, though--the name will change, but the address and content will remain the same. More on the administrative stuff at a later date.
And someday soon, I'll get around to posting on my other blog. I was going to do it tonight, but I just didn't have the energy. Maybe later in the week.
With that said, I'm out. See you tomorrow.
4.20.2007
Friday, April 20, 2007
CBC has officially joined the technology age: they're streaming the Canucks game on the internet. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside that my tax dollars are going toward giving me on-demand hockey. That's a tax I can get behind. Of course, now I have to watch, which means it'll be a late night. I just hope there's no OT.
So. How was your day? Mine was fine. We had a pile of things to do today, as we had guests coming over tonight. More on that in a minute. Finished off my last niggling little assignment that had to be completed, so that's good. Found someone to play bass and a singer for the songs I'm leading at the first grad ceremony. Went shopping for groceries. Came home.
All of this, of course, was happening in the snow.
Anyway. As I mentioned, we had some friends over tonight--it was a really great time. They're a younger couple who are just getting married this summer. He's a whole lot like me, and she's a whole lot like my wife, so it went well. And I made a lasagne. A spinach lasagne, actually. It was really quite excellent if I do say so myself. And as always, there are plenty of leftovers. Nice.
The boy was a little angel throughout the whole thing, too. We're really lucky to have the little boy we have, that's for certain. He was so interested in what was going on that he wouldn't go to sleep until they left, which was just about 9:00. That could be either really good or really bad. He'll either sleep in tomorrow, or he'll wake up at his usual time and be a total grump. Cross your fingers.
In other news. As a college student, I have a solemn responsibility to grow facial hair--it's almost a requirement of student life. Since I'd never really tried before, I decided to grow my goatee. I don't mind it, but I'm at that point where I've had it for a couple weeks and it's time to decide whether or not I'm going to keep it. On the one hand, I like the look of it (and yes, so does the wife); on the other hand, I feel like I'm playing dress-up sometimes. I can't decide.
What's worse is that, with grad coming up, there are going to be a lot of pictures taken. My decision to keep the beard or not has an impact for the rest of my life. Will I keep it and look back in 20 years and say, "Oh yeah, that was my stupid goatee period," or will I shave it and look back thinking that I should have kept it? Oh, the decisions.
I'm also growing my sideburns a ways, which I have no such connundrum with--they're staying.
Moving on. Here's a cheery forecast:
Snowfall Warning: Heavy snow overnight. A low pressure system over Montana is moving slowly north. The low is expected to spread significant snow to much of southern Alberta. A total of 10 to 15 centimetres of snow is expected by Friday morning. Some localities may see up to 25 centimetres.
That's directly from Environment Canada. By the way, I hate not having a real-time spell checker on Blogger, because I have to be careful about typing words like "Environment" to make sure I spelled them right. It's a pain. And I'm really spoiled.
Again, they're right about the forecast. It's snowing, as mentioned above, and yes, it's sticking, too. I'm hoping we're not one of the 25 cm areas, but you never know. In the words of Vanilla Ice: "Will it ever stop? Yo, I don't know."
Oh boy. Overtime again. I don't think I can handle the intensity of playoff hockey after living in a small town for a year. The pace is just too much for my brain and heart to handle. I'm also aware of the fact that by the time you read this, it'll all be over, which is interesting. Am I just shouting into the darkness? It's an interesting existential question. The internet: Kant's playground.
For those of you I lost with that one, Kant was an Enlightenment philosopher who posited that one can never have true and sure knowledge of the world, because what we know is limited to the phenominal world around us, and even then, our knowledge is incomplete because we know only insofar as we can perceive. I wonder what he would have done with the internet. A whole artificially contstructed world probably only proves his position.
Anything else? No, not really. It's going to be a snowy weekend, which hopefully means winter will be done with us by next weekend, which is, of course, grad. Not sure we have anything exciting in store for the weekend; we were going to take a day trip to Calgary at some point before grad, so I might have something to tell you about on Monday, but then again, maybe not. Our lives are suspenseful, aren't they?
Hope your weekend is fabulous. And I hope that by the time you read this, the Canucks will have moved on to the second round. There's something else I can talk about on Monday. Right on.
See you then.
So. How was your day? Mine was fine. We had a pile of things to do today, as we had guests coming over tonight. More on that in a minute. Finished off my last niggling little assignment that had to be completed, so that's good. Found someone to play bass and a singer for the songs I'm leading at the first grad ceremony. Went shopping for groceries. Came home.
All of this, of course, was happening in the snow.
Anyway. As I mentioned, we had some friends over tonight--it was a really great time. They're a younger couple who are just getting married this summer. He's a whole lot like me, and she's a whole lot like my wife, so it went well. And I made a lasagne. A spinach lasagne, actually. It was really quite excellent if I do say so myself. And as always, there are plenty of leftovers. Nice.
The boy was a little angel throughout the whole thing, too. We're really lucky to have the little boy we have, that's for certain. He was so interested in what was going on that he wouldn't go to sleep until they left, which was just about 9:00. That could be either really good or really bad. He'll either sleep in tomorrow, or he'll wake up at his usual time and be a total grump. Cross your fingers.
In other news. As a college student, I have a solemn responsibility to grow facial hair--it's almost a requirement of student life. Since I'd never really tried before, I decided to grow my goatee. I don't mind it, but I'm at that point where I've had it for a couple weeks and it's time to decide whether or not I'm going to keep it. On the one hand, I like the look of it (and yes, so does the wife); on the other hand, I feel like I'm playing dress-up sometimes. I can't decide.
What's worse is that, with grad coming up, there are going to be a lot of pictures taken. My decision to keep the beard or not has an impact for the rest of my life. Will I keep it and look back in 20 years and say, "Oh yeah, that was my stupid goatee period," or will I shave it and look back thinking that I should have kept it? Oh, the decisions.
I'm also growing my sideburns a ways, which I have no such connundrum with--they're staying.
Moving on. Here's a cheery forecast:
Snowfall Warning: Heavy snow overnight. A low pressure system over Montana is moving slowly north. The low is expected to spread significant snow to much of southern Alberta. A total of 10 to 15 centimetres of snow is expected by Friday morning. Some localities may see up to 25 centimetres.
That's directly from Environment Canada. By the way, I hate not having a real-time spell checker on Blogger, because I have to be careful about typing words like "Environment" to make sure I spelled them right. It's a pain. And I'm really spoiled.
Again, they're right about the forecast. It's snowing, as mentioned above, and yes, it's sticking, too. I'm hoping we're not one of the 25 cm areas, but you never know. In the words of Vanilla Ice: "Will it ever stop? Yo, I don't know."
Oh boy. Overtime again. I don't think I can handle the intensity of playoff hockey after living in a small town for a year. The pace is just too much for my brain and heart to handle. I'm also aware of the fact that by the time you read this, it'll all be over, which is interesting. Am I just shouting into the darkness? It's an interesting existential question. The internet: Kant's playground.
For those of you I lost with that one, Kant was an Enlightenment philosopher who posited that one can never have true and sure knowledge of the world, because what we know is limited to the phenominal world around us, and even then, our knowledge is incomplete because we know only insofar as we can perceive. I wonder what he would have done with the internet. A whole artificially contstructed world probably only proves his position.
Anything else? No, not really. It's going to be a snowy weekend, which hopefully means winter will be done with us by next weekend, which is, of course, grad. Not sure we have anything exciting in store for the weekend; we were going to take a day trip to Calgary at some point before grad, so I might have something to tell you about on Monday, but then again, maybe not. Our lives are suspenseful, aren't they?
Hope your weekend is fabulous. And I hope that by the time you read this, the Canucks will have moved on to the second round. There's something else I can talk about on Monday. Right on.
See you then.
4.19.2007
Thursday, April 19, 2007
It's over. Unbelievable. I have attended my last class in the course of my undergraduate studies. Am I excited? Oh yes. Am I in shock? Sure. Can I really appreciate it? Not just yet. But I'll get there.
You'll be happy to know that I finished off my last huge assignment this afternoon (my 15-page "take-home exam"), and I'm actually pretty pleased with it. Same thing with the other paper I was talking about yesterday, which ended up being an even 20 pages after it was all said and done, which is roughly 5 more than the prof asked for. But like I said yesterday, they're five good pages, so I think we'll be okay.
Now the waiting begins. Not necessarily the waiting for grad, but the waiting for my assignments to be returned. Let's see here, there are two for my first class, two for my second class, two for my third class, and two for my last class, plus one that I did last semester that was just graded a while back (it's technically a two-semester course, so that's the excuse, I guess), and then another whole course that I did via distance ed this semester that I haven't received any assignments back for (I think there were five).
The frustrating part is that I will go into my grad week having absolutely no idea how I did in my classes. I know I was doing quite well in all of them, and I expect that trend to continue, but you never really know, right? And I want to know. You'd think that in a college of only 400 students, your profs would be able to get your work back in a timely fashion. They impose deadlines on us, but then they take their sweet time in handing things back. I know they're the profs, and I know they've worked really hard to get where they are, and they're the smart ones, and all that stuff, but still, it's about respect for the students.
The good part about all this waiting, though, is that at least I understand why it always took me so long to get my distance ed marks back, and why it never seemed like a big deal that it was happening. It's par for the course here, I'm afraid.
Back to the main theme. There are a few more small assignments I have to take care of before I'm officially done (plus that one pesky final exam), but in my books, I'm done. The rest is just tying up loose ends.
In other news. For some reason, I can't access my blog from my desktop, only from my laptop. Strange. You'd think it would be the opposite, considering I run Windows 98 on the laptop, and the robust Windows XP on the desktop. Robust, indeed.
Carrying on. They actually got the weather right for once--it's snowing, hard. It actually rained today (one of the six days per year that it does that), but now it's snow. It's just cold enough to stick right now, but it's not sticking to the streets. That may change through the night if the temperature drops, but it's been pretty consistent all day, so I don't expect a huge change. I know, I know: famous last words. They've been talking about up to 20 cm of accumulation overnight, but I don't buy it. I can't buy it.
What else? After last night's late bedtime, the alarm rang much too early today. School was good, made all the better by the imminent end of the semester. Only had three classes today, which was nice, so I used the time I would have been in the other class to finish off my last paper. As much as I'm a constant tweaker, it's good practice for me to just get it to the point where it's good and hand it in, instead of just modifying ad nauseum. We got a two-day extension (which everyone believes came as a result of our prof drinking too much, as this is very out of character), and as much as I wanted to use it, I also wanted to just get it over with. So I did. And I'm glad for it.
After dinner, I had a very strange wrap-up party for the ministry that I'm involved in here on campus. Not that there was something inherently strange about it, but simply that it was ill-conceived. For some reason, the guy who runs the ministry thought it would be a good idea to have a party on the second-last day of school when everyone is busy wrapping up, and was surprised when less than half of the invitees arrived. Hmm. 17 people out of a possible 42.
Unfortunately, we had bought enough food to feed 42. Although I appreciated the extra ice cream, it was a little gratuitous. We somehow managed to get rid of the extra (giving it to the guys dorms makes that easy), so we were good. We had also bought prizes--we had 15 of them, expecting 40 people. It turns out that only two people didn't get prizes, which might have been worse. The whole thing turned out to be a little bit forced, and I was glad for it to be over.
Home afterwards, and the chance to finally sit and relax without the imminent pressure of looming deadlines. We ended up watching last week's episode of 24, so we're almost caught up. Just to re-affirm what I said a couple days ago--this show is turning into a steaming pile of crap. I was wondering what the next twist in the plot was going to be after Jack found the nukes, but I certainly wasn't expecting the worst actor in the history of the show--Kim Raver--to make a re-appearance. (I don't bestow that title lightly, either, considering Elisha Cuthbert was on the show. I'm sure they're both very nice people, it's just that their appearance on the show grates on me like Chinese water torture. Sorry, that's a bit of an inappropriate simile, considering the new plot line). I was really happy when, earlier this season, they revealed that she had been killed off. But that whole scene seemed like a forced imposition intended to foreshadow her eventual return. Face it, you knew she'd be coming back. You just didn't want to believe it.
And by they way, did the Chinese capture her a year ago as a hedge against Jack's eventual release? What possible reason would they have to elaborately stage her death at that point in time? Did they know that Jack would be released? Wha...but...um...gosh!
As for the whole storyline with the president's health--yawn. If there wasn't a clear case for the 25th ammendment before, I think there is now. Where's mister firey-pants vice president now? Probably off shagging the Belinda Stronach look-alike. That's a plot line I wouldn't care to see.
So, there you go. Another day in the books, finished off without appropriate segue. And hey, it's 10:30, and I'm actually going to go to bed. What a novel concept. Thanks for stopping by. See you tomorrow.
You'll be happy to know that I finished off my last huge assignment this afternoon (my 15-page "take-home exam"), and I'm actually pretty pleased with it. Same thing with the other paper I was talking about yesterday, which ended up being an even 20 pages after it was all said and done, which is roughly 5 more than the prof asked for. But like I said yesterday, they're five good pages, so I think we'll be okay.
Now the waiting begins. Not necessarily the waiting for grad, but the waiting for my assignments to be returned. Let's see here, there are two for my first class, two for my second class, two for my third class, and two for my last class, plus one that I did last semester that was just graded a while back (it's technically a two-semester course, so that's the excuse, I guess), and then another whole course that I did via distance ed this semester that I haven't received any assignments back for (I think there were five).
The frustrating part is that I will go into my grad week having absolutely no idea how I did in my classes. I know I was doing quite well in all of them, and I expect that trend to continue, but you never really know, right? And I want to know. You'd think that in a college of only 400 students, your profs would be able to get your work back in a timely fashion. They impose deadlines on us, but then they take their sweet time in handing things back. I know they're the profs, and I know they've worked really hard to get where they are, and they're the smart ones, and all that stuff, but still, it's about respect for the students.
The good part about all this waiting, though, is that at least I understand why it always took me so long to get my distance ed marks back, and why it never seemed like a big deal that it was happening. It's par for the course here, I'm afraid.
Back to the main theme. There are a few more small assignments I have to take care of before I'm officially done (plus that one pesky final exam), but in my books, I'm done. The rest is just tying up loose ends.
In other news. For some reason, I can't access my blog from my desktop, only from my laptop. Strange. You'd think it would be the opposite, considering I run Windows 98 on the laptop, and the robust Windows XP on the desktop. Robust, indeed.
Carrying on. They actually got the weather right for once--it's snowing, hard. It actually rained today (one of the six days per year that it does that), but now it's snow. It's just cold enough to stick right now, but it's not sticking to the streets. That may change through the night if the temperature drops, but it's been pretty consistent all day, so I don't expect a huge change. I know, I know: famous last words. They've been talking about up to 20 cm of accumulation overnight, but I don't buy it. I can't buy it.
What else? After last night's late bedtime, the alarm rang much too early today. School was good, made all the better by the imminent end of the semester. Only had three classes today, which was nice, so I used the time I would have been in the other class to finish off my last paper. As much as I'm a constant tweaker, it's good practice for me to just get it to the point where it's good and hand it in, instead of just modifying ad nauseum. We got a two-day extension (which everyone believes came as a result of our prof drinking too much, as this is very out of character), and as much as I wanted to use it, I also wanted to just get it over with. So I did. And I'm glad for it.
After dinner, I had a very strange wrap-up party for the ministry that I'm involved in here on campus. Not that there was something inherently strange about it, but simply that it was ill-conceived. For some reason, the guy who runs the ministry thought it would be a good idea to have a party on the second-last day of school when everyone is busy wrapping up, and was surprised when less than half of the invitees arrived. Hmm. 17 people out of a possible 42.
Unfortunately, we had bought enough food to feed 42. Although I appreciated the extra ice cream, it was a little gratuitous. We somehow managed to get rid of the extra (giving it to the guys dorms makes that easy), so we were good. We had also bought prizes--we had 15 of them, expecting 40 people. It turns out that only two people didn't get prizes, which might have been worse. The whole thing turned out to be a little bit forced, and I was glad for it to be over.
Home afterwards, and the chance to finally sit and relax without the imminent pressure of looming deadlines. We ended up watching last week's episode of 24, so we're almost caught up. Just to re-affirm what I said a couple days ago--this show is turning into a steaming pile of crap. I was wondering what the next twist in the plot was going to be after Jack found the nukes, but I certainly wasn't expecting the worst actor in the history of the show--Kim Raver--to make a re-appearance. (I don't bestow that title lightly, either, considering Elisha Cuthbert was on the show. I'm sure they're both very nice people, it's just that their appearance on the show grates on me like Chinese water torture. Sorry, that's a bit of an inappropriate simile, considering the new plot line). I was really happy when, earlier this season, they revealed that she had been killed off. But that whole scene seemed like a forced imposition intended to foreshadow her eventual return. Face it, you knew she'd be coming back. You just didn't want to believe it.
And by they way, did the Chinese capture her a year ago as a hedge against Jack's eventual release? What possible reason would they have to elaborately stage her death at that point in time? Did they know that Jack would be released? Wha...but...um...gosh!
As for the whole storyline with the president's health--yawn. If there wasn't a clear case for the 25th ammendment before, I think there is now. Where's mister firey-pants vice president now? Probably off shagging the Belinda Stronach look-alike. That's a plot line I wouldn't care to see.
So, there you go. Another day in the books, finished off without appropriate segue. And hey, it's 10:30, and I'm actually going to go to bed. What a novel concept. Thanks for stopping by. See you tomorrow.
4.18.2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Wednesday, April 18. The day I've been waiting for since January. The day when classes are finally over. What a feeling. Even though I haven't necessarily been able to sit back and relax as I watch this final day of classes approach, and even though I'm still frantically working to finish all my assignments by tomorrow, I can still appreciate it enough. And hopefully savour it.
There still remains, however, one more day that I'm looking forward to even more: April 28--you all know what happens then.
In other news, I am quite disappointed in the CBC. It turns out that I couldn't watch the Canucks game tonight, nor can I watch it on Thursday because the stinking Flames are playing. Tonight's game was shown only in BC, and on Thursday the Flames game is shown in Alberta while the Canucks are on the rest of the network. D'oh! At least we got a big victory tonight, which I'm very impressed with. Could it be that we'll be tasting round two? I hope so.
Keeping with the spirit of the last couple of weeks, today was crazy. Went to our final student families chapel this morning, where I ate doughnuts and wife pined after them (she can't eat them due to a wheat allergy, much to her chagrin). Testimonies were shared, and I realized how much I'm going to regret leaving without having gotten to know most of the people in that room.
After chapel, it was home to work on my big final project for "Issues in Contemporary Theology." After much belly-aching from the people in my class, the prof sent out a terse email giving us a one-day extension on the project. It's amazing how one day makes all the difference in the world. Anyway, I'm just about finished--I may be able to finish this evening if I really get the adrenaline pumping.
Oh wait, I just realized that I have another assignment I haven't yet completed that's due tomorrow. Crap. Bedtime just keeps getting later and later.
Anyway. After lunch, I went back to school to work on a group research paper. Our "group" is actually a pair, which means that there's more work for both of us. Although this paper didn't seem daunting at the start, it grew to something monolithic in proportion, and ended up at 19 pages. It's supposed to be 15. Oh well. I don't know of a single prof who doesn't like more of a good thing. Is this paper a good thing? I sure hope so.
Home, dinner, to the park with the family, and then back home for some more work on papers. I'm just about done with the whole writing of papers thing, but I'm feeling good because the more I do, the closer I get to finishing. I'm probably just going to collapse next week, but that's par for the course.
In a delicious twist of irony, a storm is being predicted for tomorrow, complete with 10-15 cm of snow. How fitting that my last day of school would be marked with terrible weather. And by "fitting" I mean stupid. I don't need another reason to leave this province behind me, but I'm apparently going to get one. I'm comforted to know that this winter has been bad even for the people who live here, but that's really not all that comforting when it gets right down to it. Bah.
With that, another short entry is concluded, and it's back to the books for me. I hope you're all enjoying your week, and I'll see you again tomorrow.
There still remains, however, one more day that I'm looking forward to even more: April 28--you all know what happens then.
In other news, I am quite disappointed in the CBC. It turns out that I couldn't watch the Canucks game tonight, nor can I watch it on Thursday because the stinking Flames are playing. Tonight's game was shown only in BC, and on Thursday the Flames game is shown in Alberta while the Canucks are on the rest of the network. D'oh! At least we got a big victory tonight, which I'm very impressed with. Could it be that we'll be tasting round two? I hope so.
Keeping with the spirit of the last couple of weeks, today was crazy. Went to our final student families chapel this morning, where I ate doughnuts and wife pined after them (she can't eat them due to a wheat allergy, much to her chagrin). Testimonies were shared, and I realized how much I'm going to regret leaving without having gotten to know most of the people in that room.
After chapel, it was home to work on my big final project for "Issues in Contemporary Theology." After much belly-aching from the people in my class, the prof sent out a terse email giving us a one-day extension on the project. It's amazing how one day makes all the difference in the world. Anyway, I'm just about finished--I may be able to finish this evening if I really get the adrenaline pumping.
Oh wait, I just realized that I have another assignment I haven't yet completed that's due tomorrow. Crap. Bedtime just keeps getting later and later.
Anyway. After lunch, I went back to school to work on a group research paper. Our "group" is actually a pair, which means that there's more work for both of us. Although this paper didn't seem daunting at the start, it grew to something monolithic in proportion, and ended up at 19 pages. It's supposed to be 15. Oh well. I don't know of a single prof who doesn't like more of a good thing. Is this paper a good thing? I sure hope so.
Home, dinner, to the park with the family, and then back home for some more work on papers. I'm just about done with the whole writing of papers thing, but I'm feeling good because the more I do, the closer I get to finishing. I'm probably just going to collapse next week, but that's par for the course.
In a delicious twist of irony, a storm is being predicted for tomorrow, complete with 10-15 cm of snow. How fitting that my last day of school would be marked with terrible weather. And by "fitting" I mean stupid. I don't need another reason to leave this province behind me, but I'm apparently going to get one. I'm comforted to know that this winter has been bad even for the people who live here, but that's really not all that comforting when it gets right down to it. Bah.
With that, another short entry is concluded, and it's back to the books for me. I hope you're all enjoying your week, and I'll see you again tomorrow.
4.17.2007
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
On days like this, I am acutely aware that all my complaining about the weather here seems pretty darned silly in light of what could be happening. I am, of course, referring to the shooting at Virginia Tech, for those who have been living in their cave quite comfortably for the whole day. Seriously, if I can hear about it in Three Hills, what's your excuse?
Somehow, words seem extraordinarily inappropriate. I do, however, have a couple of observations about the reaction to the events, specifically here on campus.
First (can you tell by my structure tonight that I've just been writing a paper and can't quite get away from the style?), it's interesting to see how individuals respond. When I saw what had happened on TV, I got that chill in the pit of my stomach, like a huge block of ice had suddenly been deposited. Others, however, were seemingly unaffected, and even a little bit glib. I almost smacked one of the guys for being so flippant about the whole thing. We live in an age where if it's happening on TV, it's somehow not real. Those students are nothing like us; they weren't just going about their day just like we are; they don't have families who are torn apart by this tragedy, etc. It's amazing to see what the power of TV can do.
Second, our corporate response was, I think, lacking. Like many institutions, Prairie has an internal email system that connects the students, staff, and faculty. Several people use it daily to send out mass emails about stupid things (i.e. "I lost my sunglasses, please call me if you see them"), and yet all day, and nothing about the shootings. This is a Christian institution--where, then, is our call to prayer? Do we really believe that prayer is powerful and effective, and are we willing to use it in times of crisis, even if that time of crisis happens to be in the last week of school when everyone's really busy? Yes, there is some level at which it becomes voyeuristic, but I just think that it would have been big of us to at least send out an email saying that a core of people would be praying in the prayer chapel, and invite whomever out to it.
The point of this rant is that as Christians, we need to take on the demeanour of Francis Schaeffer, and weep for the injustice and death we see in our society. If we do not extend our own emotions to the victims of injustice, even on the other side of the continent, we lose what makes us human, and what makes us connected within the body of Christ. It's our duty, if I can use a loaded word such as that one, to lift them up in prayer.
Anyway. With that, I'm done for the day. It being the last week of school, and with said paper being written, the time for blogging is minimal. This is the way it'll be for a couple more days at least, until Wednesday evening when suddenly all my cares will melt away. Aah.
See you tomorrow.
Somehow, words seem extraordinarily inappropriate. I do, however, have a couple of observations about the reaction to the events, specifically here on campus.
First (can you tell by my structure tonight that I've just been writing a paper and can't quite get away from the style?), it's interesting to see how individuals respond. When I saw what had happened on TV, I got that chill in the pit of my stomach, like a huge block of ice had suddenly been deposited. Others, however, were seemingly unaffected, and even a little bit glib. I almost smacked one of the guys for being so flippant about the whole thing. We live in an age where if it's happening on TV, it's somehow not real. Those students are nothing like us; they weren't just going about their day just like we are; they don't have families who are torn apart by this tragedy, etc. It's amazing to see what the power of TV can do.
Second, our corporate response was, I think, lacking. Like many institutions, Prairie has an internal email system that connects the students, staff, and faculty. Several people use it daily to send out mass emails about stupid things (i.e. "I lost my sunglasses, please call me if you see them"), and yet all day, and nothing about the shootings. This is a Christian institution--where, then, is our call to prayer? Do we really believe that prayer is powerful and effective, and are we willing to use it in times of crisis, even if that time of crisis happens to be in the last week of school when everyone's really busy? Yes, there is some level at which it becomes voyeuristic, but I just think that it would have been big of us to at least send out an email saying that a core of people would be praying in the prayer chapel, and invite whomever out to it.
The point of this rant is that as Christians, we need to take on the demeanour of Francis Schaeffer, and weep for the injustice and death we see in our society. If we do not extend our own emotions to the victims of injustice, even on the other side of the continent, we lose what makes us human, and what makes us connected within the body of Christ. It's our duty, if I can use a loaded word such as that one, to lift them up in prayer.
Anyway. With that, I'm done for the day. It being the last week of school, and with said paper being written, the time for blogging is minimal. This is the way it'll be for a couple more days at least, until Wednesday evening when suddenly all my cares will melt away. Aah.
See you tomorrow.
4.16.2007
Monday, April 16, 2007
Here we go again. End of regulation, 1-1. My only plea is that it ends quickly, because dang, I really want to stay up and watch, but my patience for a long and drawn-out affair is low.
By the way, the crying episode I left off last week's blog with ended up being a bit more of an ordeal than I thought it might be. Turned out to be a two-hour battle to get the boy to go back to sleep. Eventually, we had to let him cry in his crib, because it was getting way too late, and he just wasn't calming down. Not a lot of fun, especially with Friday morning being an early one for me. I don't even really know what sparked the fun and games; seems like maybe the initial impetus for waking up was the teeth, and then he was just awake. I do feel bad for him at times like those, but the sympathy level is low at 12:30 in the morning.
Anyway. Another lovely weekend is in the books--the second-last one of our time here (I'm not counting grad weekend, due to the insanity that it will be). It's crazy to think that I have one more class session left on Wednesday, and then I'll actually be receiving my BA. Amazing. If only I could just write this stupid 15-page paper that's due, I'll be really happy. It's going to be a long week.
The weather has been nice this weekend, so the majority of the family-related time has been outside, frolicking in the early spring sunshine and giving the boy adequate exposure to the great outdoors (which never seems to be enough). Just this evening, we spent about an hour at the park, just hanging out. He likes the swings and the slide; in fact, it's sometimes hard to get away because he'll just go down that slide for hours if we'd let him. The problem, of course, is that going down the slide requires parental accompaniment. Although we're still young, we don't necessarily feel it after ascending the slide carrying the boy six times.
Other than that, "remarkably average" would be an adequate description. Friday was the usual--school all fargin' day. You can tell it's the end of the semester by the amount of empty desks in my classes. Pretty rude, if you ask me, especially when your peers are presenting. It's like those people who'd leave the piano recital after their kid had played, and not have the courtesy to stay around and listen to everyone else's kid, even though we had to listen to their kid. Don't get my mom started on that one. Anyway, got through it fine.
Friday night was hockey (and, of course, Slurpees), which started earlier than I thought and took me by surprise, throwing off the rest of my evening and generally causing me to mope. Not that the game could have brought me out of mopage, what with the brutal effort and all. Strange night, really, that just sort of floated away into nothingness.
Saturday was a bit different. In the afternoon, we took a broad-reaching walk through the town, culminating in picking up my grad invitations and meeting a guy who I have a group paper to write with. I spent some time at school on Saturday afternoon, working on said paper, and then went to one of the restaurants in town for dinner. Nice meal, made even nicer by the fact that we didn't have to wash the dishes.
Saturday night saw some Grey's Anatomy and one of the two episodes of 24 I need to catch up on. Man, is that show getting more and more inane and soap opera-ish as the season progresses, or what? I'm sorry, but a guy cutting his arm off and a surprsing plot twist in the last 5 minutes of the show does not make for compelling television. I know, you've all seen last week's, so you know what happens. I'm just saying that it was disappointing, as it has been for the majority of the season. I guess when you start off with a nuclear bomb, there's norwhere to go but down.
Grey's, you'll be happy to know, is at least twice as good as it was last year, and I couldn't picture how it could have gotten better. Simply amazing. Especially after 24. In fact, we liked the first one so much that we stayed up late, despite the little voices in our heads telling us not to, to watch a second one. It backfired, unfortunately, as we saw a repeat of the boy's Thursday night's performance--waking up to cry. Fortunately, this time he was a little less panicked, and it only took an hour to calm him.
Hey, would you look at that--7 minutes in and we score. Beauty. You know, as a Vancouver hockey fan for my whole life, I have to say that it's really nice to finally see this team snatch victory from the jaws of defeat instead of vice-versa. Finally, we have a goalie who can keep us in it long enough to get our heads out of our rear ends. And might I also say that I'm glad we have Brent Sopel back, if for no other reason than the fact that we were missing a guy who would make ill-advised cross-ice passes at inopportune times. With his addition, our lineup is complete, I think.
Back to the overarching narrative, if I may. Today (Sunday) saw our very last trip to Red Deer (I hope, at least) in our time here. We had to pick up a few crucial things at the SuperStore (for example, diapers), and also grab some gluten-free lasagne noodles for later on in the week at Safeway. Off we went, then, skipping church like the heathens we are to shop for food.
Nothing too exciting to report about the trip. We like the Chapters in Red Deer because (a) it's got a Starbucks attached, and (b) it's got a kids' section with a whole train set and all sorts of other things, so mom and dad can drink their coffee beverages while the boy plays. Good times.
It's always interesting driving now that it's spring, because the local wildlife has come out of wherever it goes in the winter, and now darts across the road at the worst times. I am, of course, talking about prairie dogs. Cute, yet entirely stupid, standing in the middle of the road as you approach at 100 km/h, only running out of the way at the very last minute, usually under your wheels. Haven't managed to kill one yet, but the day will come, I know. And my wife will cry. Funny little guys to watch, though, as long as you don't have to swerve out of their way.
Anyway. Came home, unloaded the car, and took a quick nap while mom and boy played. Then it was dinner, and a trip to the park, as I mentioned above. When we got home, it was already past the boy's bedtime, so we skipped his usual bath and went straight to the evening bottle. That turned out to be a mistake; apparently, the bath cues him that it's bedtime, and without it, he doesn't seem to register that it's a good time to go to sleep. An hour of in-crib crying ensued, but we're determined not to teach him that crying equals parental intervention, especially after two-of-three nights requiring it. Life's lessons are tough to learn (and tough to teach, as we're learning), but they're necessary.
That brings us to right about now, as I sit at the computer and contemplate my plan for the coming week. I have this strange feeling that I'm not going to be much of a pleasure to be around for the first half, but the second half should be fine. Think positively, right? About a 15-page paper? Not likely.
Anyway (again). Time to hit the sack so that the day gets off to a good start tomorrow. Thanks again for stopping by, and I'll see you as we go through the week.
By the way, the crying episode I left off last week's blog with ended up being a bit more of an ordeal than I thought it might be. Turned out to be a two-hour battle to get the boy to go back to sleep. Eventually, we had to let him cry in his crib, because it was getting way too late, and he just wasn't calming down. Not a lot of fun, especially with Friday morning being an early one for me. I don't even really know what sparked the fun and games; seems like maybe the initial impetus for waking up was the teeth, and then he was just awake. I do feel bad for him at times like those, but the sympathy level is low at 12:30 in the morning.
Anyway. Another lovely weekend is in the books--the second-last one of our time here (I'm not counting grad weekend, due to the insanity that it will be). It's crazy to think that I have one more class session left on Wednesday, and then I'll actually be receiving my BA. Amazing. If only I could just write this stupid 15-page paper that's due, I'll be really happy. It's going to be a long week.
The weather has been nice this weekend, so the majority of the family-related time has been outside, frolicking in the early spring sunshine and giving the boy adequate exposure to the great outdoors (which never seems to be enough). Just this evening, we spent about an hour at the park, just hanging out. He likes the swings and the slide; in fact, it's sometimes hard to get away because he'll just go down that slide for hours if we'd let him. The problem, of course, is that going down the slide requires parental accompaniment. Although we're still young, we don't necessarily feel it after ascending the slide carrying the boy six times.
Other than that, "remarkably average" would be an adequate description. Friday was the usual--school all fargin' day. You can tell it's the end of the semester by the amount of empty desks in my classes. Pretty rude, if you ask me, especially when your peers are presenting. It's like those people who'd leave the piano recital after their kid had played, and not have the courtesy to stay around and listen to everyone else's kid, even though we had to listen to their kid. Don't get my mom started on that one. Anyway, got through it fine.
Friday night was hockey (and, of course, Slurpees), which started earlier than I thought and took me by surprise, throwing off the rest of my evening and generally causing me to mope. Not that the game could have brought me out of mopage, what with the brutal effort and all. Strange night, really, that just sort of floated away into nothingness.
Saturday was a bit different. In the afternoon, we took a broad-reaching walk through the town, culminating in picking up my grad invitations and meeting a guy who I have a group paper to write with. I spent some time at school on Saturday afternoon, working on said paper, and then went to one of the restaurants in town for dinner. Nice meal, made even nicer by the fact that we didn't have to wash the dishes.
Saturday night saw some Grey's Anatomy and one of the two episodes of 24 I need to catch up on. Man, is that show getting more and more inane and soap opera-ish as the season progresses, or what? I'm sorry, but a guy cutting his arm off and a surprsing plot twist in the last 5 minutes of the show does not make for compelling television. I know, you've all seen last week's, so you know what happens. I'm just saying that it was disappointing, as it has been for the majority of the season. I guess when you start off with a nuclear bomb, there's norwhere to go but down.
Grey's, you'll be happy to know, is at least twice as good as it was last year, and I couldn't picture how it could have gotten better. Simply amazing. Especially after 24. In fact, we liked the first one so much that we stayed up late, despite the little voices in our heads telling us not to, to watch a second one. It backfired, unfortunately, as we saw a repeat of the boy's Thursday night's performance--waking up to cry. Fortunately, this time he was a little less panicked, and it only took an hour to calm him.
Hey, would you look at that--7 minutes in and we score. Beauty. You know, as a Vancouver hockey fan for my whole life, I have to say that it's really nice to finally see this team snatch victory from the jaws of defeat instead of vice-versa. Finally, we have a goalie who can keep us in it long enough to get our heads out of our rear ends. And might I also say that I'm glad we have Brent Sopel back, if for no other reason than the fact that we were missing a guy who would make ill-advised cross-ice passes at inopportune times. With his addition, our lineup is complete, I think.
Back to the overarching narrative, if I may. Today (Sunday) saw our very last trip to Red Deer (I hope, at least) in our time here. We had to pick up a few crucial things at the SuperStore (for example, diapers), and also grab some gluten-free lasagne noodles for later on in the week at Safeway. Off we went, then, skipping church like the heathens we are to shop for food.
Nothing too exciting to report about the trip. We like the Chapters in Red Deer because (a) it's got a Starbucks attached, and (b) it's got a kids' section with a whole train set and all sorts of other things, so mom and dad can drink their coffee beverages while the boy plays. Good times.
It's always interesting driving now that it's spring, because the local wildlife has come out of wherever it goes in the winter, and now darts across the road at the worst times. I am, of course, talking about prairie dogs. Cute, yet entirely stupid, standing in the middle of the road as you approach at 100 km/h, only running out of the way at the very last minute, usually under your wheels. Haven't managed to kill one yet, but the day will come, I know. And my wife will cry. Funny little guys to watch, though, as long as you don't have to swerve out of their way.
Anyway. Came home, unloaded the car, and took a quick nap while mom and boy played. Then it was dinner, and a trip to the park, as I mentioned above. When we got home, it was already past the boy's bedtime, so we skipped his usual bath and went straight to the evening bottle. That turned out to be a mistake; apparently, the bath cues him that it's bedtime, and without it, he doesn't seem to register that it's a good time to go to sleep. An hour of in-crib crying ensued, but we're determined not to teach him that crying equals parental intervention, especially after two-of-three nights requiring it. Life's lessons are tough to learn (and tough to teach, as we're learning), but they're necessary.
That brings us to right about now, as I sit at the computer and contemplate my plan for the coming week. I have this strange feeling that I'm not going to be much of a pleasure to be around for the first half, but the second half should be fine. Think positively, right? About a 15-page paper? Not likely.
Anyway (again). Time to hit the sack so that the day gets off to a good start tomorrow. Thanks again for stopping by, and I'll see you as we go through the week.
4.13.2007
Friday, April 13, 2007
Friday the 13th? This close to the end of a semester? Oh boy.
Why I can't wait to go home, reason 492: in BC, spring run-off does not result in tap water that resembles the consistency, smell, and taste of a mud puddle. Admittedly, my knowledge of the nuances of mud puddle flavours is quite low, but I can imagine well enough what it would be like to drink from one.
Even the mightly Brita is powerless to stop all the odour (although it's doing a remarkably good job, but we just got a new one tonight). I'm comforted to know that it's apparently worse than it should be, but then again, that's not really any comfort at all.
Hey, how about that hockey game last night/this morning? No, I didn't stay up to watch it all; my level of desire to invest several extra hours into a hockey game, even in the playoffs, is limited to one period of overtime. That's when I turned it off. Good thing I didn't stay for the second OT, because by then, I would've invested so much time in it that I would have been obliged to stay awake until the game ended. Which would have been 1:30 our time. Good thing I'm only one time zone away, or I'd be really screwed.
A nice day today, he says, switching topics faster than Mitt Romney changes his mind. Sorry; best I could come up with, and admittedly not all that pertinent to the Canadian audience. But still, a zinger, no?
Anyway. Beautiful sunny weather--the kind that makes me almost forget that last week at this time, it was snowing like a mofo. Oh wait, there's still a bunch of it on the ground to remind me of winter's ever-present death grip on this prairie landscape. Seriously, enough already.
The comforting thing (and yes, a little bit scary) is that in exactly three weeks, I'll be sitting on my couch in Langley, hopefully watching some playoff hockey on a TV that doesn't look like a prairie weather pattern (is that a better simile? Not sure if the witty simile processor is tuned this evening). In the words of Worf, that will be glorious.
And if you're wondering where that one came from, I saw a picture of a Klingon tonight, ergo Star Trek analogy. That, and I know how much my wife hates Star Trek, and mentioning it in the house is verboten. But you, my friends, you accept me for who I am, and allow the occasional Star Trek reference in this otherwise high-brow forum.
Anyway. Other than dirty water and sunny weather, it was a remarkably ordinary day. Which is just amazing, actually. I intentionally took a sabbath today, knowing that I'm right back into it tomorrow, and until next Wednesday when the last project is handed in. Oh, then there's that one pesky final exam, but I'm not concerned. Considering the midterm took me all of 10 minutes to complete, the final won't be much more intensive. Famous last words.
To sum up: went to school this morning for a quick meeting, then back home. The boy was sleeping (he woke up quite a bit earlier than usual, which meant he was tired earlier than usual), so I took the time to organize all the various pieces of paper that had accumulated over the past week when I wasn't able to do anything about them. Lunch (hot dogs, if you must know), then some play time with the boy. He still loves it outside, so that's where we went. He has a piece of a broom handle that he loves to play with. Not sure exactly what he's doing with it, but it's fun for him. Took the time to clean out the car, too, which felt good.
After play time, the boy and wife wandered off (purposefully) to play group, in which time I did a small amount of school work--just enough to spare me the inevitable guilt if the day is completely deprived of said work. They got home, and it was back outside for the boy again, for a little bit of daddy time. It was great, until he face-planted into a snowbank. Perhaps I'm just an extra cruel parent, but man, was that ever funny. Yes, he was upset, as you would be. He had so much momentum going forward that when he hit, his legs left the ground, and, for one horrible moment, all of his body weight pressed his face further down into the snow. It's terrible, but I'm laughing just thinking about it. It wasn't funny for him, though, and much consolation was required. Which of course, only mommy can really do.
Dinner was early tonight (pasta, for those keeping tabs of my carb/calorie intake, which I assure you is not me), and then a quick bath for the boy. Again, bathtime was shorted by a mishap--this time he managed to slip while sitting down and fall (backwards, fortunately) into the water. Again, much consolation from mom was required, but to be honest, we were glad to get him out of the bath, because we're not quite sure exactly how clean one can get in water that murky.
Put the boy to bed, went to the grocery store to get some more Tylenol for him (his teeth are really bothering him, although none of them are finding it important enough to actually break the gumline and show themselves. That's what, three months now with no new teeth? It's getting a bit ridiculous, if you ask me, but you didn't, so disregard), and then it was Battlestar Galactica, and now blogging before bed. BSG continues to be excellent in season two, you'll be happy to know. The directing is amazing, the storylines are more compelling, and the actors seem to have taken things up a notch this season, too. And hey, it's filmed in BC, so I get to see green grass and trees with leaves and such.
Oh, the boy just awoke with a fit of crying--likely the teeth, as the Tylenol we gave him before bed will have worn off by now. Good thing I went and got some more.
With that, it's time to go to bed, as the alarm rings at the early hour again tomorrow. I'm also going to see if wife requires any husband-related help with the boy, even though she is the more able consoler. We shall see.
Have a wonderful weekend, all. I'll see you back here again on Monday.
Why I can't wait to go home, reason 492: in BC, spring run-off does not result in tap water that resembles the consistency, smell, and taste of a mud puddle. Admittedly, my knowledge of the nuances of mud puddle flavours is quite low, but I can imagine well enough what it would be like to drink from one.
Even the mightly Brita is powerless to stop all the odour (although it's doing a remarkably good job, but we just got a new one tonight). I'm comforted to know that it's apparently worse than it should be, but then again, that's not really any comfort at all.
Hey, how about that hockey game last night/this morning? No, I didn't stay up to watch it all; my level of desire to invest several extra hours into a hockey game, even in the playoffs, is limited to one period of overtime. That's when I turned it off. Good thing I didn't stay for the second OT, because by then, I would've invested so much time in it that I would have been obliged to stay awake until the game ended. Which would have been 1:30 our time. Good thing I'm only one time zone away, or I'd be really screwed.
A nice day today, he says, switching topics faster than Mitt Romney changes his mind. Sorry; best I could come up with, and admittedly not all that pertinent to the Canadian audience. But still, a zinger, no?
Anyway. Beautiful sunny weather--the kind that makes me almost forget that last week at this time, it was snowing like a mofo. Oh wait, there's still a bunch of it on the ground to remind me of winter's ever-present death grip on this prairie landscape. Seriously, enough already.
The comforting thing (and yes, a little bit scary) is that in exactly three weeks, I'll be sitting on my couch in Langley, hopefully watching some playoff hockey on a TV that doesn't look like a prairie weather pattern (is that a better simile? Not sure if the witty simile processor is tuned this evening). In the words of Worf, that will be glorious.
And if you're wondering where that one came from, I saw a picture of a Klingon tonight, ergo Star Trek analogy. That, and I know how much my wife hates Star Trek, and mentioning it in the house is verboten. But you, my friends, you accept me for who I am, and allow the occasional Star Trek reference in this otherwise high-brow forum.
Anyway. Other than dirty water and sunny weather, it was a remarkably ordinary day. Which is just amazing, actually. I intentionally took a sabbath today, knowing that I'm right back into it tomorrow, and until next Wednesday when the last project is handed in. Oh, then there's that one pesky final exam, but I'm not concerned. Considering the midterm took me all of 10 minutes to complete, the final won't be much more intensive. Famous last words.
To sum up: went to school this morning for a quick meeting, then back home. The boy was sleeping (he woke up quite a bit earlier than usual, which meant he was tired earlier than usual), so I took the time to organize all the various pieces of paper that had accumulated over the past week when I wasn't able to do anything about them. Lunch (hot dogs, if you must know), then some play time with the boy. He still loves it outside, so that's where we went. He has a piece of a broom handle that he loves to play with. Not sure exactly what he's doing with it, but it's fun for him. Took the time to clean out the car, too, which felt good.
After play time, the boy and wife wandered off (purposefully) to play group, in which time I did a small amount of school work--just enough to spare me the inevitable guilt if the day is completely deprived of said work. They got home, and it was back outside for the boy again, for a little bit of daddy time. It was great, until he face-planted into a snowbank. Perhaps I'm just an extra cruel parent, but man, was that ever funny. Yes, he was upset, as you would be. He had so much momentum going forward that when he hit, his legs left the ground, and, for one horrible moment, all of his body weight pressed his face further down into the snow. It's terrible, but I'm laughing just thinking about it. It wasn't funny for him, though, and much consolation was required. Which of course, only mommy can really do.
Dinner was early tonight (pasta, for those keeping tabs of my carb/calorie intake, which I assure you is not me), and then a quick bath for the boy. Again, bathtime was shorted by a mishap--this time he managed to slip while sitting down and fall (backwards, fortunately) into the water. Again, much consolation from mom was required, but to be honest, we were glad to get him out of the bath, because we're not quite sure exactly how clean one can get in water that murky.
Put the boy to bed, went to the grocery store to get some more Tylenol for him (his teeth are really bothering him, although none of them are finding it important enough to actually break the gumline and show themselves. That's what, three months now with no new teeth? It's getting a bit ridiculous, if you ask me, but you didn't, so disregard), and then it was Battlestar Galactica, and now blogging before bed. BSG continues to be excellent in season two, you'll be happy to know. The directing is amazing, the storylines are more compelling, and the actors seem to have taken things up a notch this season, too. And hey, it's filmed in BC, so I get to see green grass and trees with leaves and such.
Oh, the boy just awoke with a fit of crying--likely the teeth, as the Tylenol we gave him before bed will have worn off by now. Good thing I went and got some more.
With that, it's time to go to bed, as the alarm rings at the early hour again tomorrow. I'm also going to see if wife requires any husband-related help with the boy, even though she is the more able consoler. We shall see.
Have a wonderful weekend, all. I'll see you back here again on Monday.
4.12.2007
Thursday, April 12, 2007
2nd intermission; 3-2 for the good guys. Hopefully it ends well, but as a cynical Canucks fan, I'm nervous. But I can feel the spirit of '94 a-flowin'. And yes, I do have a playoff prediction: Canucks win the cup. How's that?
What a day. What a week, actually. I feel like I haven't actually had the chance to stop and breathe since this time last week. But this wave is over, and there's just enough time to catch my breath before the next one hits next Wednesday. The good news is that next week's assignments are the last I'll ever have to do at the undergrad level. Woot.
To expand on what I briefly touched upon in Tuesday's entry, the weekend was good, but not great. After a long and exhausting trip into BC on Friday (following a day in Calgary on Thursday), we found our way to the house we were staying at. Friday night passed, and Saturday was taken up with a meeting in the morning, and a self-guided tour of Armstrong in the afternoon, as well as a brief tour of the church building. Sunday, of course, was church day--we went to both services, which was quite a bit of church--then over to someone's house for lunch. Brief rest in the afternoon, which we used to pack, and then back for another dinner, this time with the pastor and his wife and the children's director and her husband. Then it was home, sleep, and a very early wake-up call the next morning. Drove back on Monday and arrived at 3:00, after which we promptly collapsed.
Unfortunately for everyone, it became pretty apparent very early on that this church was not a fit for us. In fact, we pretty much knew within the first five minutes of our Saturday meeting. In retrospect, we should have acknolwedged this and come straight home--it would have saved me a lot of stress yesterday and today--but we stayed. In the end, they emailed me and told me that they wouldn't be pursuing me anymore, which was a very mutual feeling. Although I'm a little cheesed about the whole email aspect of it (it's sort of like breaking up with your girlfriend over the phone; same results, just not the best method), we're fine with that.
Of course, it's still disappointing. We thought that we'd had a pretty good thing there, but it was not to be. Despite that, we're still optimistic. If going away for the weekend taught us one thing, it's that we need to be back in the Lower Mainland. We thought it would be good enough to just be back in BC, but we were wrong. In fact, being that close to home only made us more homesick, not less. It's a little bit tougher to make a go of it in the Lower Mainland, but to us, it's worth having our families close by. So we carry on, moving forward, and now looking for opportunities that will present themselves close to home. God has a plan.
With that, it's time to watch the third period. I'll be back after it's done with some pictures.
Later. Well, that third period pretty much showed everything that's wrong with being a Canucks fan. When the chips are down, when it matters the most, when it's all on the line and winners rise to the task, we choke. How much of that period was played in the Canucks' end? Too much, I'm afraid. This team can't seem to figure out how to go for the jugular and really shut an opponent down. Instead, they sit back and wait, apparently for the other guys to tie it up.
The unfortunate part is now I'm at an impasse. It's 10:35, and I'm really tired, but the game is going into OT. Unfortunately, the boy doesn't know this, and will still wake up at the same time in the morning. The decision is whether to sacrifice more much-needed sleep for the sake of the first game of the first round of the playoffs. Tough call, you might be surprised to find out.
Anyway. Back to the Armstrong story. Like I said, there were some good things about our trip. Besides coming to the understaning of where we're supposed to be next (at least geographically), we also got to spend some time away from the freakin' April snow here in Three Hills and hang out in the best place on earth. When we left here on Friday morning, it was cold, windy, and snowing. By the time we got to Armstrong, we were stripping off layers left and right--and not just because the ones we were wearing were covered with infant throw-up--and we had to make an emergency trip to the Fields store in town (yes, there's one there, just like here in Three Hills; in fact, the towns were remarkably similar, which was also a deciding factor for us) to buy some cooler clothes.
Besides that, the place we were staying at was amazing. It was outside of town on a farm, with an absolutely stunning view...
There were also some large ruminants for the boy to stare at, including recently-born calves...
In fact, we had this guy living in the field right next door to the guest house we were in...
And hey, we even got to see some more of the local wildlife...
Anyway. Like I said, even though things didn't pan out, we still think it was a valuable weekend, and we don't regret it at all. Okay, at about 12:00 last night, I was regretting it a little bit, but I'm over it.
In other news. Today was a crazy school day for me. The aforementioned mega-paper was finished last night and edited in my 8:00 class; chapel next; a presentation, book report, smaller two-page paper, and one other assignment due in my next class; another presentation and 12-page group paper due in third class; and handing in the mammoth 16-pager in the final class. Fortunately, that's the big day done. Next week, I've got two more papers due, and a couple of other small things, but I'm not as stressed about those as I was about these ones. In fact, I might even be able to unpack my suitcase tomorrow. That would be nice.
With that, the puck drops on the OT period, and I'm off to watch, or maybe fall asleep. Hopefully it'll end quickly, and hopefully the result will be the right one. I guess you'll find out when you come back tomorrow. See you then.
What a day. What a week, actually. I feel like I haven't actually had the chance to stop and breathe since this time last week. But this wave is over, and there's just enough time to catch my breath before the next one hits next Wednesday. The good news is that next week's assignments are the last I'll ever have to do at the undergrad level. Woot.
To expand on what I briefly touched upon in Tuesday's entry, the weekend was good, but not great. After a long and exhausting trip into BC on Friday (following a day in Calgary on Thursday), we found our way to the house we were staying at. Friday night passed, and Saturday was taken up with a meeting in the morning, and a self-guided tour of Armstrong in the afternoon, as well as a brief tour of the church building. Sunday, of course, was church day--we went to both services, which was quite a bit of church--then over to someone's house for lunch. Brief rest in the afternoon, which we used to pack, and then back for another dinner, this time with the pastor and his wife and the children's director and her husband. Then it was home, sleep, and a very early wake-up call the next morning. Drove back on Monday and arrived at 3:00, after which we promptly collapsed.
Unfortunately for everyone, it became pretty apparent very early on that this church was not a fit for us. In fact, we pretty much knew within the first five minutes of our Saturday meeting. In retrospect, we should have acknolwedged this and come straight home--it would have saved me a lot of stress yesterday and today--but we stayed. In the end, they emailed me and told me that they wouldn't be pursuing me anymore, which was a very mutual feeling. Although I'm a little cheesed about the whole email aspect of it (it's sort of like breaking up with your girlfriend over the phone; same results, just not the best method), we're fine with that.
Of course, it's still disappointing. We thought that we'd had a pretty good thing there, but it was not to be. Despite that, we're still optimistic. If going away for the weekend taught us one thing, it's that we need to be back in the Lower Mainland. We thought it would be good enough to just be back in BC, but we were wrong. In fact, being that close to home only made us more homesick, not less. It's a little bit tougher to make a go of it in the Lower Mainland, but to us, it's worth having our families close by. So we carry on, moving forward, and now looking for opportunities that will present themselves close to home. God has a plan.
With that, it's time to watch the third period. I'll be back after it's done with some pictures.
Later. Well, that third period pretty much showed everything that's wrong with being a Canucks fan. When the chips are down, when it matters the most, when it's all on the line and winners rise to the task, we choke. How much of that period was played in the Canucks' end? Too much, I'm afraid. This team can't seem to figure out how to go for the jugular and really shut an opponent down. Instead, they sit back and wait, apparently for the other guys to tie it up.
The unfortunate part is now I'm at an impasse. It's 10:35, and I'm really tired, but the game is going into OT. Unfortunately, the boy doesn't know this, and will still wake up at the same time in the morning. The decision is whether to sacrifice more much-needed sleep for the sake of the first game of the first round of the playoffs. Tough call, you might be surprised to find out.
Anyway. Back to the Armstrong story. Like I said, there were some good things about our trip. Besides coming to the understaning of where we're supposed to be next (at least geographically), we also got to spend some time away from the freakin' April snow here in Three Hills and hang out in the best place on earth. When we left here on Friday morning, it was cold, windy, and snowing. By the time we got to Armstrong, we were stripping off layers left and right--and not just because the ones we were wearing were covered with infant throw-up--and we had to make an emergency trip to the Fields store in town (yes, there's one there, just like here in Three Hills; in fact, the towns were remarkably similar, which was also a deciding factor for us) to buy some cooler clothes.
Besides that, the place we were staying at was amazing. It was outside of town on a farm, with an absolutely stunning view...
There were also some large ruminants for the boy to stare at, including recently-born calves...
In fact, we had this guy living in the field right next door to the guest house we were in...
And hey, we even got to see some more of the local wildlife...
Anyway. Like I said, even though things didn't pan out, we still think it was a valuable weekend, and we don't regret it at all. Okay, at about 12:00 last night, I was regretting it a little bit, but I'm over it.In other news. Today was a crazy school day for me. The aforementioned mega-paper was finished last night and edited in my 8:00 class; chapel next; a presentation, book report, smaller two-page paper, and one other assignment due in my next class; another presentation and 12-page group paper due in third class; and handing in the mammoth 16-pager in the final class. Fortunately, that's the big day done. Next week, I've got two more papers due, and a couple of other small things, but I'm not as stressed about those as I was about these ones. In fact, I might even be able to unpack my suitcase tomorrow. That would be nice.
With that, the puck drops on the OT period, and I'm off to watch, or maybe fall asleep. Hopefully it'll end quickly, and hopefully the result will be the right one. I guess you'll find out when you come back tomorrow. See you then.
4.11.2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
At this point, I sincerely regret having left town this past weekend and sacrificing all those useful days of school work. It's 12:45 right now (hey, for once I won't have to change the time of this posting), and I'm spent. I've just finished a 16-page, 4700-word essay that's due tomorrow. It was the worst essay writing experience of my life, and I'm really glad it's over. There's part of me that knows it's not the best work I could have done, but there's another part of me that tells me I'll never be satisfied no matter how much I tweak it, and handing it in tomorrow is probably the best thing I could do.
And just in case you think I've been slacking off for the rest of the day, I'll have you know that I completed another four-page paper earlier, a two-page report, had a meeting with my project group about our presentation tomorrow, met with another guy about another presentation we're doing tomorrow, and went to chapel. I'm getting tired just reading that list.
But there's a light on the horizon: the playoffs start tomorrow.
With that, I will crap out on you for another day. I'm sorry. I really do have stories about this weekend, but you're going to have to wait. And yes, I know Theo's blog is being neglected, but that's the price you pay for it being the end of the semester (and did I mention it's only 17 days to grad?).
By the way, it snowed again today.
See you tomorrow.
And just in case you think I've been slacking off for the rest of the day, I'll have you know that I completed another four-page paper earlier, a two-page report, had a meeting with my project group about our presentation tomorrow, met with another guy about another presentation we're doing tomorrow, and went to chapel. I'm getting tired just reading that list.
But there's a light on the horizon: the playoffs start tomorrow.
With that, I will crap out on you for another day. I'm sorry. I really do have stories about this weekend, but you're going to have to wait. And yes, I know Theo's blog is being neglected, but that's the price you pay for it being the end of the semester (and did I mention it's only 17 days to grad?).
By the way, it snowed again today.
See you tomorrow.
4.10.2007
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Back, safe and sound. Quite a weekend, if only for the copious driving we did. Turned out to be a longer drive than we were led to believe, which made for an interesting trip on Friday that culminated in a certain infant throwing up in the car (right before we got to where we were going, so at least that was good). Fun times. Pulled over on the side of the road, holding child as he throws up all over the pavement. And then having him collapse into my arms with exhaustion afterwards. If being a dad isn't the most glamorous job when the throwing up is happening, knowing that he loves me and feels safe with me afterwards is worth all the throwing up in the world.
How about that--I'm getting philosophical about vomit.
Anyway. It's been a long day, so this post will be quite short. We got up this morning at 4:00 am (Pacific time) and got on the road at 4:45. We didn't get home to Three Hills until 2:00 (Pacific, which, of course, is 3:00 local), so it was a bit of a trek. Driving that early was fantastic though--you really do feel like you have the highway to yourself, and the boy was sleeping for a good portion of the trip, so that made it easier, too.
How can I sum up the weekend in one paragraph? Oh boy. Well, it was so great to be back in BC--it actually rained on Sunday, which, although it seems over-rated after the winter the west coast has had, we really missed. Beautiful, sunny weather the rest of the time, and we were staying in the most amazing guest house I've ever seen (yes, I have pictures; no, you're not going to see them tonight). Being so close to home was tough--it was a real struggle to turn east on the Trans-Canada instead of west when we were leaving, but hey, only 18 days to grad, so we'll be back soon enough.
Anyway, I have many more stories, pictures, and details of the weekend, but they'll have to wait until tomorrow. Let's see, it's 10:20 (MDT) now, which means I've been awake for a little over 17 hours--I think it's time for bed. The rest of this week will be taken up with details of the trip, so I hope you come back for the great stories. See you tomorrow.
How about that--I'm getting philosophical about vomit.
Anyway. It's been a long day, so this post will be quite short. We got up this morning at 4:00 am (Pacific time) and got on the road at 4:45. We didn't get home to Three Hills until 2:00 (Pacific, which, of course, is 3:00 local), so it was a bit of a trek. Driving that early was fantastic though--you really do feel like you have the highway to yourself, and the boy was sleeping for a good portion of the trip, so that made it easier, too.
How can I sum up the weekend in one paragraph? Oh boy. Well, it was so great to be back in BC--it actually rained on Sunday, which, although it seems over-rated after the winter the west coast has had, we really missed. Beautiful, sunny weather the rest of the time, and we were staying in the most amazing guest house I've ever seen (yes, I have pictures; no, you're not going to see them tonight). Being so close to home was tough--it was a real struggle to turn east on the Trans-Canada instead of west when we were leaving, but hey, only 18 days to grad, so we'll be back soon enough.
Anyway, I have many more stories, pictures, and details of the weekend, but they'll have to wait until tomorrow. Let's see, it's 10:20 (MDT) now, which means I've been awake for a little over 17 hours--I think it's time for bed. The rest of this week will be taken up with details of the trip, so I hope you come back for the great stories. See you tomorrow.
4.05.2007
Thursday, April 5, 2007
On the plus side, it's quite beautiful here when it snows. If you can enjoy it from the heated comfort of your living room. The brief respite from winter's all-consuming ire at least makes me appreciate the beauty of a fresh new blanket of snow again. The old stuff, which was rotting and dirty, had the chance to melt, and it's like winter took a mulligan and started again. Dare I say that I am learning to tolerate the stuff?
Perish the thought. I still don't like it. I just figure buttering it up with some empty paltitudes might quell its rage long enough to make it go away. As my dad suggested to me today, at some point soon we may have to start offering ritualistic sacrifices to just make it stop. Hopefully it won't get that far, though.
Yes, it did snow again today, if you couldn't tell. An interesting snow, though; the kind that makes you feel like you're in a giant snowglobe, except without the violent shaking every little while. As I said, it's really quite beautiful, but it's still snow. But hey, it got up to a lovely -4 today (but still -9 with the windchill), so we're making progress. They're calling for sunny weather this weekend, but we won't be here to see if they're wrong.
Speaking of that, we're currently in the ugly phase just before leaving where things haven't quite come together enough to make us feel like we're ready to leave, but we've done all we can for now. We have to wait for some laundry to dry, pack up some perishable food tomorrow (snacks for the road, but they're cheese strings, and we don't want to leave those out all night), and do the packing of the car. I hate this part.
I don't hate it because of what it is inherently; it's more the anticipation of leaving but not quite being ready to go yet, that I hate. Not sure if that makes any sense--probably not, but then you're used to that. I am definitely looking forward to the weekend, though, and not just because I get to leave this disgusting excuse for spring behind for a weekend and hit the good side of the Rockies. More than that, I'm really looking forward to what this weekend might bring. Whether or not we end up working at this church isn't as important to me as just getting the process underway. It's exciting to see something happening after two years of it not happening.
What else is happening? Well, it was Wednesday, so school abounded. Did our presentation in the first class, which was good, but not great. Had an interesting discussion about Rick Warren's Purpose-Driven Church in second class, and had two more student presentations in the afternoon.
The discussion of Purpose-Driven Church (PDC) was interesting. I've never really been comfortable with the model espoused by Warren and his ilk, and this discussion today made me even more sure of why I don't buy it. Oh sure, I like the idea of making church fit the culture a little bit more, and there's certainly nothing wrong with being in a comfortable environment when we come to church. What I'm concerned about is that the seeker-sensitivity inherent in much of the mega-church life is putting too much emphasis on God's immanence at the expense of His transcendence. In other words, we're so busy making God our buddy that we forget that He's completely other, and so much so that we can't even begin to comprehend. That sense of wonder and awe at coming into a time of communion with Holy God is being lost in our churches is being sacrificed at the altar of being invitational. But if we're just a social club, what makes us different?
It's also fun to discuss things like this in a classroom setting, because not everyone agrees. We're all, in a sense, on a journey toward our own particular paradigms of ministry and church life, and we're all working out how that looks for us. In my opinion (and I've likely shared this before), there is no one particularly "best" way to do church. As long as we maintain the essence of what it means to be a community of believers (including, but not limited to, prayer, preaching, singing, and fellowship), we can make the form fit whatever suits preference--to a certain extent, of course. Not everyone, however, shares that opinion, and, although few people are as ready to shoot their mouths off as I am, everyone has something to say. That's what I value about this college experience, and that's what I will continue to value going forward. The minute I stop listening to people who disagree with me is the minute I stop learning.
Anyway. After school, I came home and threw the boy into snowbanks for a little while. No, I'm serious--I buried him up to his waist in snow, which he absolutely loved. It must be fascinating to see snow for the first time without having any comprehension of what it is. Sometimes I think we know too much about everything, and it really shortchanges us of the wonder inherent in not knowing all there is to know about it. But that's getting into philosophy again, so we won't go there.
The neighbourhood cats were out in abundance today, which pleased the boy to no end. He'd run down the sidewalk after the cat, shouting out to it in some unintelligible language. Once he caught up with it, he'd pet it (by which I mean he was trying to grab big handfuls of its hair, but was prevented from doing so by his unruly mittens), and then it would run away again, creating a whole new opportunity for screamy-running. He's at that point (the boy, not the cat) where he's managing to hit pitches with his shriek that only Mariah Carey can hit otherwise. It's quite piercing when he rips one off in the kitchen, but it's quite comical outside. Let him shriek, that's what I say. At least he's having fun.
Speaking of fun, as I mentioned previously, we had Phil Callaway speak in chapel today. Man, he's just such a good speaker. Although I'd heard some of his jokes before, he was still refreshing. If you're interested in hearing what he had to say, you can check out the chapel website here and download the mp3. As of Wednesday night, they still hadn't posted the mp3, but it should be up in a day or two. While you're there, you can browse through everything the chapel website has to offer, which should (a) take you all of two minutes, and (b) give you insight into what happens here on a regular basis. Although what Phil had to say was specifically directed to the Bible college audience, it's also applicable to everyone else.
That, I think, will be that. Wife is slowly recuperating from her bout with sickness, but has now managed to crink a nerve in her neck (or something) by sleeping in an awkward way, so she's drugged herself up, which is handy for me because it means she'll be out like a light in a few minutes, and I can stay up and do kakuro to my heart's content.
As a reminder, no blog posting Friday, and, since we're not back until late Monday, none for Monday either. I'll be back on Tuesday with a full report from this weekend, though, so we'll see you then. Happy Easter, all.
Perish the thought. I still don't like it. I just figure buttering it up with some empty paltitudes might quell its rage long enough to make it go away. As my dad suggested to me today, at some point soon we may have to start offering ritualistic sacrifices to just make it stop. Hopefully it won't get that far, though.
Yes, it did snow again today, if you couldn't tell. An interesting snow, though; the kind that makes you feel like you're in a giant snowglobe, except without the violent shaking every little while. As I said, it's really quite beautiful, but it's still snow. But hey, it got up to a lovely -4 today (but still -9 with the windchill), so we're making progress. They're calling for sunny weather this weekend, but we won't be here to see if they're wrong.
Speaking of that, we're currently in the ugly phase just before leaving where things haven't quite come together enough to make us feel like we're ready to leave, but we've done all we can for now. We have to wait for some laundry to dry, pack up some perishable food tomorrow (snacks for the road, but they're cheese strings, and we don't want to leave those out all night), and do the packing of the car. I hate this part.
I don't hate it because of what it is inherently; it's more the anticipation of leaving but not quite being ready to go yet, that I hate. Not sure if that makes any sense--probably not, but then you're used to that. I am definitely looking forward to the weekend, though, and not just because I get to leave this disgusting excuse for spring behind for a weekend and hit the good side of the Rockies. More than that, I'm really looking forward to what this weekend might bring. Whether or not we end up working at this church isn't as important to me as just getting the process underway. It's exciting to see something happening after two years of it not happening.
What else is happening? Well, it was Wednesday, so school abounded. Did our presentation in the first class, which was good, but not great. Had an interesting discussion about Rick Warren's Purpose-Driven Church in second class, and had two more student presentations in the afternoon.
The discussion of Purpose-Driven Church (PDC) was interesting. I've never really been comfortable with the model espoused by Warren and his ilk, and this discussion today made me even more sure of why I don't buy it. Oh sure, I like the idea of making church fit the culture a little bit more, and there's certainly nothing wrong with being in a comfortable environment when we come to church. What I'm concerned about is that the seeker-sensitivity inherent in much of the mega-church life is putting too much emphasis on God's immanence at the expense of His transcendence. In other words, we're so busy making God our buddy that we forget that He's completely other, and so much so that we can't even begin to comprehend. That sense of wonder and awe at coming into a time of communion with Holy God is being lost in our churches is being sacrificed at the altar of being invitational. But if we're just a social club, what makes us different?
It's also fun to discuss things like this in a classroom setting, because not everyone agrees. We're all, in a sense, on a journey toward our own particular paradigms of ministry and church life, and we're all working out how that looks for us. In my opinion (and I've likely shared this before), there is no one particularly "best" way to do church. As long as we maintain the essence of what it means to be a community of believers (including, but not limited to, prayer, preaching, singing, and fellowship), we can make the form fit whatever suits preference--to a certain extent, of course. Not everyone, however, shares that opinion, and, although few people are as ready to shoot their mouths off as I am, everyone has something to say. That's what I value about this college experience, and that's what I will continue to value going forward. The minute I stop listening to people who disagree with me is the minute I stop learning.
Anyway. After school, I came home and threw the boy into snowbanks for a little while. No, I'm serious--I buried him up to his waist in snow, which he absolutely loved. It must be fascinating to see snow for the first time without having any comprehension of what it is. Sometimes I think we know too much about everything, and it really shortchanges us of the wonder inherent in not knowing all there is to know about it. But that's getting into philosophy again, so we won't go there.
The neighbourhood cats were out in abundance today, which pleased the boy to no end. He'd run down the sidewalk after the cat, shouting out to it in some unintelligible language. Once he caught up with it, he'd pet it (by which I mean he was trying to grab big handfuls of its hair, but was prevented from doing so by his unruly mittens), and then it would run away again, creating a whole new opportunity for screamy-running. He's at that point (the boy, not the cat) where he's managing to hit pitches with his shriek that only Mariah Carey can hit otherwise. It's quite piercing when he rips one off in the kitchen, but it's quite comical outside. Let him shriek, that's what I say. At least he's having fun.
Speaking of fun, as I mentioned previously, we had Phil Callaway speak in chapel today. Man, he's just such a good speaker. Although I'd heard some of his jokes before, he was still refreshing. If you're interested in hearing what he had to say, you can check out the chapel website here and download the mp3. As of Wednesday night, they still hadn't posted the mp3, but it should be up in a day or two. While you're there, you can browse through everything the chapel website has to offer, which should (a) take you all of two minutes, and (b) give you insight into what happens here on a regular basis. Although what Phil had to say was specifically directed to the Bible college audience, it's also applicable to everyone else.
That, I think, will be that. Wife is slowly recuperating from her bout with sickness, but has now managed to crink a nerve in her neck (or something) by sleeping in an awkward way, so she's drugged herself up, which is handy for me because it means she'll be out like a light in a few minutes, and I can stay up and do kakuro to my heart's content.
As a reminder, no blog posting Friday, and, since we're not back until late Monday, none for Monday either. I'll be back on Tuesday with a full report from this weekend, though, so we'll see you then. Happy Easter, all.
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