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.