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.