Monday, April 2, 2007

As an April Fool's Day joke, it snowed today. The sad part of the joke is that it didn't end at noon like it's supposed to. And hey, more snow predicted for this whole week. Which just makes me feel super about having to drive across the mountains on Friday.

Speaking of April Fool's Day, I've been blessed with a wife who thinks the same way I do about it, which is that we look at the calendar and say, "Hey, isn't it April Fool's Day or something? Huh." That's about it. I thought that Valentine's Day was my least favourite manufactured day, but I forgot about April Fool's.

My daily Far Side calendar also pointed out that today was both Palm Sunday and April Fool's Day. I'll bet the local atheist league had a field day with that one.

Did this happen to you? I just looked down at my clock on my computer (I'm on the laptop), and it seems to have automatically adjusted itself for Daylight Saving Time. This morning, my Palm Pilot did the same thing. Strange that those two items wouldn't have gotten the memo. My desktop computer didn't seem to have an issue, and both computers connect to the same darn internet, so I'm not sure what the issue is. I'm willing to cut my PDA some slack, I suppose. Why did we change that, again?

Other than the snow today, it was a nice enough weekend. Wife was ill for much of it, which is never fun. She's feeling much better now, thanks for asking, but is still fighting off the last dregs of the illness, which always refuses to just walk away with its dignity intact. No, it has to go out kicking and screaming, this time in the form of a persistent cough. More annoying than anything, but that's about enough, I think. Okay, let's start at the beginning.

Friday. Guess what I did? Went to school! Good times were had by all. Actually, because I hadn't had the chance to work on the homework I was supposed to get through on Thursday, I actually took my computer to school and worked on homework for other classes during my classes. Ooh, I felt like such a rebel. Then I realized that's what most people do, so I was just fitting in. In fact, if I really wanted to be a rebel, I'd actually pay attention.

Anyway. Since we're leaving in May, our landlord is now trying to get someone to rent the place when we go, which shouldn't be hard. Of course, the problem is that we're probably going to have a few people come by over the next bit to look at it. The first couple came on Friday. Nice enough. It's always strange showing your rental suite to someone else, because you want them to like it, but realize that you don't really care whether they do or not. Strange situation.

Friday night was Slurpees and TV--we were too tired to think hard enough to play board games. Not much doing there, what with the sickness and all.

Saturday. Fast forward, then, to the next day. Wife had signed up for an infant sign language class that was taking place in the afternoon. Out here in Alberta, there's a society called "Parent Link," which operates all this stuff. They put on this clinic for free. Not bad. The actual session was from 1:00-4:00, so the morning was taken up with various insundry things.

Child is trying to switch his schedule from a morning nap to an afternoon one, with varying degrees of success. Saturday it was an afternoon nap, which meant that the morning was taken up with much playing outdoors. He loves being outside so much that it's actually a little bit ridiculous. For example, when he woke up from his afternoon nap on Saturday, I changed his diaper (which I now know the sign for, by the way), put him down, and he ran straight to the front door and picked up his shoes. Uh, trying to tell me something there, buddy?

I decided that we'd go outside, and try to meet wife after the clinic was over. Of course, that left an hour of wandering, which we managed to use up, as you might imagine. In fact, we headed over to a playground, and son had his first ever swingset experience. Loved it, as you might imagine. I also helped him go down the slide, although he was more interested in sending rocks down it than himself, which was also fun. Until he thought that rocks looked tasty.

We did end up meeting Mommy after her class. She was feeling pooped, so we ordered take-out from one of the local eateries. It was one of those situations where it's really tasty if you actually go there, but for some reason, the take-out isn't very good at all. Maybe it was just because they were really busy, but I was unimpressed. However, I did eat a very large hamburger, so that was good. And the fries were okay, even though they were somewhat post-crispy.

Saturday night was hockey on TV--my Canucks again. This time, of course, they got spanked, and unfortunately by the Flames. I am going to hear about that in class on Wednesday from the local Flames fans (there are many, as you might expect, and all know my affinity for the Canucks). Hopefully our playoff run will be longer than theirs, but, as a bitter and jaded Canucks fan, I am obliged to say that I don't really believe that will happen. Prove me wrong, Canucks!

Sunday. A day of rest today. We went to bedside Baptist church, which is to say that we stayed home and sat around. We figure we've got a busy weekend ahead next weekend, so we need to conserve our energy. That, and wife needed the morning to fully recover, and if I had gone with the boy, we would've just been in the nursery. No point in that, then. So we played outside (what a surprise). Yes, in the snow. And the wind. And do you think he cared? Not a whit.

Took a little drive in the afternoon, just to get out of town for a bit. Because of the aforementioned trip this weekend, however, we didn't want to go far. Where to, then? Just west of here, there's apparently a lake--we've seen it driving, but had no idea how to get to it--so we figured we'd head over there and perhaps satiate our desperate need to see a body of water larger than a pool of melted snow. We weren't quite sure how to get there, but knew the general direction in which we needed to travel. Off we went.

Turns out there is a lake over there, and it's quite nice. Keiver's Lake, it's called. There's a nice picnic area, campsites, playground, baseball diamond--quite the little metropolis, actually. And it's quite lovely to boot. Of course, we found it four weeks before we leave, but better late than never.

We had it in mind to take a walk through the area and see what we could see. It was desperately cold, with a biting north wind, so we didn't want to be too long. As we approached the shoreline of the lake (still a ways off), I looked toward it and thought I saw a dog along the shoreline. I had seen another van parked near us, so I assumed it was someone out with their dog. When I looked a little closer, however, I realized that it didn't really look like a dog. Nope, it was a bear.

A black bear, to be exact. Not sure what he's doing in central Alberta, but as I said to the wife, if I was a black bear, that's where I'd want to be. Of course, I can't give a solid confirmation that it was a bear, as we weren't about to stick around and look a little more closely, but I'm sure it was.

Scary (to grossly understate the matter). We turned and hightailed it back to the car. Fortunately, we hadn't gotten very close, and I don't think the bear actually cared that we were where we were, but again, not really willing to take that chance. As we hustled back, scenarios of valiantly defending my family against a bear attack ran through my mind, but then I realized I'd probably just wet my pants, so I led the charge back toward the car. Got there no problem (obviously) and realized that the area was probably overrated anyway.

This evening, we finally finished the first season of Battlestar Galactica, which was everything that I expected and more. Stupid cliffhanger season finales. At least I've got season two burned and ready to go. It took every bit of restraint not to stick it in there and watch the next one, but considering we'd already watched both parts of the two-part episode, it was not a good idea. I'm now sitting in our makeshift bed, typing away on the trust laptop (looking down and thinking it's an hour later than it actually is) while wife tries to sleep beside me. A perfect evening, really.

What's on tap for this week? Let's see, it's a busy week, as I mentioned, with getting ready to leave and all. We're actually leaving town on Thursday and staying over for the evening in Calgary before heading across the Rockies on Friday. Steph's cousin lives in Calgary with her husband and son (who is about a month older than ours), so we've booked a lunch date with them--he works in the afternoon/evening, so lunch was all we could coordinate. We figured that it was a dumb idea to head back here that evening, just to go down again the next day on our way through, so we got in touch with my cousin, who is generously allowing us to crash at their place. Cuts 90 minutes off an already-long drive, which is really great.

With that, though, there's going to be one less blog entry than usual this week. Try to contain your disappointment. Thursday's posting will be interesting, though (of course, every posting is interesting, but this one will be really interesting). Phil Callaway is speaking in chapel on Wednesday, so I'll have a full report for you then. Plus, I'll link you to the secret location of the mp3 file if it interests you to download it. Ooh.

That's about all for now, though. Have an excellent week, and I'll see you tomorrow.