Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Want to know what's awesome? I'll tell you. What's awesome is having trouble opening the front door in the morning on account of the piles of snow outside. I fell asleep in April, and I woke up in January.

I know, I know--I've lead with the weather so much that you're sick of it. Too bad. I'm sick of it, too. In fact, I wish I didn't have any weather-related things to blog about; that would make me a very happy man. But the fact of the matter is that the weather stinks, and I'm going to tell you about it. So there.

Anyway. Close to six inches of snow on the ground this morning when I woke up. Not a ton of fun, expecially the having to shovel it part. Thought I was done with that, let me tell you. But you know, there's one guy who's really happy that it's snowing, and that's the guy who sweeps our sidewalks. He's got a tricked out John Deere with a fantastic sweeper attachment on the front. He must have figured he was done for the year, too. Bonus for him.

Here's what it looked like outside this morning. Sorry for the poor quality of the photos...

Yes, that last one is my ruler in the snow, measuring roughly 5.5".

Moving on. My ISP (Uniserve) has been having a major problem with their email server today for some reason. I haven't been able to get my email since noon, and man, I'm worse than a crack addict going cold turkey. I still check every few minutes, just in case they've fixed the problem, but alas, no dice. Stupid.

The worst part of this whole thing is the inability to get information from their website. It's all flashy and stuff, but there's absolutely nothing about current issues. Sure, I could just call in, but who wants to wait on hold for some guy to say, "Yup, there's a problem with the email server." Could've told you that myself, actually. Hopefully there were no emails of great import in the old inbox. Realistically, I'm just missing about a dozen pieces of spam, but hey, anything counts, right? I'm so pathetic.

Let's try a different topic. There's a new building being constructed here on campus (the Maxwell Centre, so named after Prairie's first president, L.E. Maxwell), and it's almost ready for moving in. It was actually a relatively quick process--they broke ground last summer, and it's done now, which is moving like lightning here in Alberta (came in under-budget, too, as they like to tell us). It's beautiful, but it's intended to house the new nursing and ECE programs that Prairie's offering, as well as giving the President a nice new office.

It's a bit of a slap in the face to the Bible College, isn't it? I mean, the Bible College is your bread-and-butter, and you build a nice new facility and don't let the Bible College use it? Come on! Keep the money-maker happy, and put the nurses and their new-fangled program in the old building. Hey wait, it's not like I care--I'm not going to be here. And yes, I understand that a nursing program needs specialized labs and such; I'm not knocking it, I'm just saying it's hard to build motivational value for the students to get behind the project when it won't really be of benefit to the vast majority of the student body.

Anyway. The bookstore is also moving into the new building, which means that they have to move all their stock from the old building over. Apparently, getting the stock across the courtyard and into the new building is too arduous a task, and so they're having a clearout sale for all their old merch. If I'm that manager, I'm moving the stuff, but whatever.

One of the great things about the sale is the 80% off clearance tables. Mostly knick-knacks and stuff I wouldn't choose, but just like at a garage sale, there are always gems. One such gem that we located was a DVD of the Veggie Tales classic, "The Sumo of the Opera." I personally cannot get enough of Veggie Tales, which is good because neither can my son. He's a VT fanatic--he'll dance a little jig to the theme song and everything.

All that lead-up to say that this particular VT is one of the funniest I've ever seen, and that's saying something. The main portion spoofs Rocky, complete with a Mr. T character. Awesome. The Italian Scallion takes on Apollo Gourd. Good stuff. The other stuff on the video is just as funny, especially when it involves the French Peas. Good times. In fact, wife and I watched it ourselves tonight all the way through, because we never seem to get from the beginning to the end with the little one running around. Ah, the things you have excuses for as a parent.

I think that's going to be all for tonight. The usual early start tomorrow, made all the earlier by the fact that I actually have to get there early for the group presentation I have at 8:00. Actually, I'm not presenting, but I have to be ready to take questions afterwards, so I still had to prep. After that, there's Phil Callaway at chapel, and then more school. Only four more class sessions left, which I'm truly and honestly excited about (in case you couldn't tell). It's all coming to an end so quickly.

Thanks again for stopping by and reading. I appreciate it. See you tomorrow.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Oh heck. My mouse is possessed. Strange things are afoot. It's a laser mouse, which usually works like a charm, but sometimes it decides to do funny things. Today is one of those days. I'll keep you posted with any late-breaking news.

That's not the only thing acting strangely. At this exact moment, we're in the grip of a disgusting winter storm that's dropping piles of snow. Here's what it looked like first thing this morning...

And here's this afternoon...

If I could take a picture now, you'd see about 10-15 cm of accumulation. The only thing that makes me feel somewhat better is the fact that it's doing much of the same back at home--at least, in parts of the Lower Mainland. But heck, it's April, and my sense of entitlement tells me that I don't deserve this. To make matters worse, I have to drive across the mountains this weekend. Super.

Today's high temperature: -6, with the windchill bringing it down to -14. More of this tomorrow, apparently, which I'm really looking forward to.

Okay, we need to move on, because I'm starting to get really depressed. 26 days until grad.

There were a couple things I forgot to mention yesterday that I should mention today, because they're just so good that they make me feel better about this snow. Okay, not really, but here's hoping.

First, though, I had a little pronoun-antecedent mixup in yesterday's posting (which is what happens when I do them at 11:00). When I was talking about wife's cousin, husband, and son, I used the term "he" to refer to the husband, but the placement of the pronoun in the sentence might have led you to believe I was talking about the son. The thing is that I was talking about this "he" going to work, which is a little incongruous with something a year-old child does, at least ever since the inception of trade unions. Oops. It's actually quite funny when you read it like that, even if you didn't the first time. I know you've gone to check, so I'll just wait until you get back.

Welcome back. On with the story. Last night, I took a much-needed trip down to the recycling depot to eliminate the disaster in the shed (the recyclable materials purgatory). The depot is open at various inconvenient hours during the week, but it's also got a drop-off area for weekend and evening disposal.

In a seemingly unrelated bit of news that I'm cleverly going to weave into the story later on, the United Church in town had a huge garage sale on Friday and Saturday at the curling rink (no ice--I imagine that a garage sale on curling ice would be a lot of fun. You could curl your purchases over to the money-takers yelling curling words like, "Hurry!" and "Hard!"). As much as I don't like to give money to the doctrinally impaired (ouch), it was fun to snoop around. Our total purchases: 25 cents for a paperback copy of The Constant Gardener. I loved the movie--a compelling storyline and incredible acting from Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz (two of the hardest last names to spell in all of show biz)--and I figured that the book would be good, too. If I ever have time to read for pleasure again. Besides books, there was the usual mish-mash of used crap that makes up a garage sale, only this one was really big, so there was more crap than usual. Plus it was church sale, which means that it was crappy Christian stuff, which is often times worse. In other words, there was a big stack of old vinyl records, but they were all of the Gaither Trio and various couples singing hymns. And some Streisand--it's the United Church, after all. Nonetheless, everyone in Three Hills was there, so it was a Big Deal.

Back to the recycling. Off I went to the depot (it being a Sunday, of course, nobody was there). When I got there, I noticed a pile of boxes near the door. Being the snooping individual that I am, I investigated further. Turns out that there were about eight huge boxes of books sitting there--I suppose you can recycle books--all the ones that hadn't sold from the aforementioned garage sale.

When I see books for sale, I'm very choosy. We already have way too much generic fiction at home, and I'm loathe to add more paper to our collection. I do, however, feel that having a large library is an asset, even if they're all Tom Clancy rip-offs. Somehow, having lots of books on one's shelf connotes some sort of literary power and prestige. Or perhaps I'm just making that up. But being widely read is fun for me, and I'll never pass up the opportunity to read something new, even if it is just for the sake of it being new. But when I have to pay for it, I'm very selective, knowing full well that the book might never be read.

Of course, when books are free, I am not limited by my feelings of an already-crowded bookshelf. Hey, even if I don't read them, they were free, so I'll just toss 'em. I went crazy. I rifled through those boxes in the freezing cold and picked up everything that seemed even remotely interesting--I think I ended up with a dozen or so (it says something about the selection when all I could muster was 12 books out of 8 boxes). I even managed to pick up two copies of the same book, such was my haste. But now I have plenty of material to keep me going when I can think of reading being pleasurable again. Which will be in roughly 26 days.

On Saturday (although it could also have been Friday; either way it makes no tangible difference to the story, except to weaken my credibility as a storyteller), I had yet another moment of complete delight in finding something unexpected.

I was checking the status of my TV shows to see if I needed to download any new episodes (which I do with a great deal of frequency, considering we don't have cable), and one of the more elusive shows is "Little Mosque on the Prairie." In my search for it, I ended up at a particular site where it is filed under the dubious category of "Other," along with 19000 other entries. Fortunately, they're alphabetical. Unfortunately, you can't just jump to a certain letter; no, you have to go through all the other ones first.

As I was going through this incredibly slow process (I never did find any new Little Mosque), I came across the "D" section, and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but that beloved show, "Dinosaurs." What, you don't remember it? I get that a lot. It aired in the early 90's (was it that long ago?) and featured the line, "Not the mama." You know the one.

Anyway, someone had posted the first two seasons up there, and of course, I immediately downloaded it. Just watched the first episode tonight--what a gem. This particular set also has the extra features from the first season's DVD set, including a 15-minute documentary on how they made it work. Amazing. The creativity just astounds me. It's a great show, one that might have fallen victim to the classic blunder: never get involved in a land war in Asia. No wait, it was the second (andonly slightly less well-known) one: never make a TV show that's too smart for an audience whose favourite show is "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader." Totally worth watching again (and again).

What else? Oh, nothing really. Had quite the productive day, if I do say so myself. With only three days to do school work this week (and then five days of not being able to do anything), and the end of the semester rapidly approaching, I had to crank it up a notch. But I got through, so we're looking good. Tomorrow looks like an essay writing day. I tried to write this ugly thing today, but I was just writing sentences that didn't make any sense and had no flow whatsoever--in other words, a blog posting. Anyway, just thinking about doing this thing is making me gag, but I have to git 'er done, so that's what I'll do. And I'll hope it doesn't suck as much as I feel it will. Somehow it never does, though.

You know, I just looked up and out the window again, and it's still fargin' snowing. Gosh.

Sorry. Moving on. Wife is out tonight, which gives me free run of the computer to watch things like Dinosaurs and post blog entries to my heart's content without feeling like a neglectful lug. She got a call just after dinner from another one of the young moms. Her husband had class tonight, and would my wife come over for some girl time? Hey look at that, we actually have friends. It only took most of two semesters. Anyway, they're off doing girly things, I'm sure. I'm a little worried about the conditions out there, but they only live a couple blocks away, so I think I'm just worried for nothing. But that's me--I worry about my wife.

Before you start either vomiting or saying "Maw, what a nice guy," you should know that my motives for worrying aren't solely noble. Oh sure, I worry about her because she's the woman of my dreams and I'm madly in love with her, but I also worry because it's a situation I'm not in control of. As a male, I like to have control of a situation, even if I can't do anything to change that situation (I can't make it stop snowing, for example). It's just that having control makes it seem better for some reason. Man, I have to get over myself.

That was surprisingly cathartic. Thanks.

With that, another posting winds down, and I, well, I go do something else. Maybe I'll watch some more Dinosaurs. Did I tell you how good it is? Just checking.

Anyway, more of the same tomorrow, which I hope you stop by for. See you then.

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.