Switcheroo

Ok, so big news: I have officially switched the blog to the new blogger beta. Or google-blogger, or whatever you want to call it. Should have no impact for the readers of the blog (AFAIK it'll still look the same), but it looks like there are some new options I may take advantage of as I build up the blog. I wasn't particularly attached to the existing blogger interface, so it probably won't impact me much. So far so good, anyway.

I got to thinking about yesterday about blogging, and how it's pretty much impossible to have a blog with substance without offending someone. For some unknown reason, I am usually pretty sensitive to the fact that there are always two sides to a story (i.e. if you tell me "A", I can probably make a compelling argument for "not A" - I should have been on a debate team!). So whenever I post something, I am pretty much always aware how someone might get offended by it. Which is probably the reason why I haven't advertised this to too many people...

As I was thinking about all that, some thoughts crystallized in my head. These are not new or revolutionary thoughts, more like concepts I'd been dealing with for a long time, but all of a sudden they became really clear. Not only is it impossible to please everyone, but you should not ever even attempt it. Byt trying to please everyone, all one can accomplish is lose oneself completely. Now that doesn't mean one should not be aware of others, or considerate to others, or civil or courteous. You can be all that, and still firmly stand your own ground. And you will probably insult or offend some people just by having your own opinions, but as long as you're not being obnoxious about it (feeling superior, or bringing up the subject constantly etc), you can't really be blamed for other people's feelings.

Of course that's a big caveat. I think it's hard to draw that line of obnoxiousness, because it's different for different people. I guess you have to decide for yourself where it lies for you. And revise it over time, as new evidence comes up, and you discover the sore points of people who are important to you (or maybe even strangers who bring up valid points).

I'm not quite sure exactly where my obnoxiousness line lies yet, as I am still fine-tuning it...

OK, next time I post I promise to write about something more upbeat. Maybe my new JA company :)

Tschuss!

Overconsumption

OK, so I really try not to get onto my high horse too often, because I know how annoying that can be. Plus, I know very well that I am not a saint by any stretch, and just like anyone else, I'm not too crazy about hearing sermons from others. However, this
article deals with an issue that is near and dear to my heart. Canada is sitting at the coveted #4 spot as one of the biggest over-consumers in the world. It bugs me that we, as a society, are such uber-consumers. And clearly, I am not completely immune to this, after all, we do have 2 cars for 2 people, and just this year we bought a laptop and a digital video camera. But we do make a concerted effort to:
1) minimize the amount of garbage we produce each week (by composting, recycling and re-using as much as possible)
2) if at all possible, avoid buying overpackaged, disposable and single-use items
3) always resist the urge to buy on an impulse
4) resist the hype!

I really get quite annoyed at all the commercials that try to convince us that we absolutely *NEED* and *DESERVE* the latest and greatest in _fill-in-the-blank_, especially when it comes to disposable stuff. The latest trend in cleaning supplies is single-use stuff, that you keep buying every week (lining the corporation's coffers), and throwing out every week (lining the city dump). And yet it seems to make sense to many, many people. Is it just a case of "out of sight, out of mind"?

Also, it seems to me that everything is being designed for obsolescence. As an example, when we bought the light kit for the ceiling fan on the weekend, it turned out that they didn't carry the same colour for this brand (and they have over 20 different colours). They have similar colours, but just different enough that they would clash. My cynical side tends to believe this is done so that we would buy a whole new set (fan + light kit), since we can't match our existing fan anymore... We ended up going with a complementary colour instead...

And don't get me started about the "keeping up with the Jones'" syndrome. It seems to have been getting progressively worse (caused by easy credit? mass media? spiritual emptiness?) over the last few decades. Sometimes I wonder if it can even be stopped...

Anyway, I will get off my high horse now... But I would like to encourage everyone to take one small step to lower our over-consumption. Who knows, you may even save some money! One thing that I heard one couple do, was take a look at their weekly garbage at the curb, and try to minimize or eliminate the high runners. Too much styrofoam? Try to buy things in other types of containers. Cardboard? Maybe that can be recycled. Food scraps? Consider composting... You get the idea.

Ok, no more ranting for at least a month, I promise!

Bye,

Weekend update

So we had another busy weekend... But lots got done. The first major accomplishment is that the huge pile of logs under the lean-to is no more: we've finally managed to cut and chop all of the wood, and it is 90% stacked (and the remaning 2% will probably get burned over the course of this week). Luckily Saturday was really nice, so it was a pleasure to be working on the wood pile with the beautiful sun an pleasant breeze. Now we only have 3 more piles to go ;) But at least we now have some room to move around under the leanto and re-arrange the remaining wood. The original wood pile seemed so daunting for the last 2 years (at least), so it feels really good to have it gone.

So that was pretty much our whole Saturday. On Sunday, the weather turned out to be miserable. Hail, rain, icy winds, in one word "Bleh!". But we had some tickets to go skating at the local NHL arena, which we do each year, so we had to leave the house. We left early, and even managed to get DH a new pair of skates (he's never had a new pair). I think we may have been the only adults without children there, though we were having fun just like a pair of little kids, so maybe that counts ;) After skating we went to a lighting store and picked up a light kit for the ceiling fan in our living room. And we managed to get the light installed when we got back home, together with a handy remote, so now I have an actual light in the ceiling (it's only been 5 years...). So now if we have friends over for dinner, or to play cards, we can entertain in the living room, with the fire going, and with actual lighting :)

Oh, and another accomplishment this weekend: I made my first borsht (or as we spell it: barszcz). It actually tasted decent, and we're still alive, so it must not be poisonous ;) It's kind of a complex soup to make, with a lead time of a few weeks, which is why I never made it before. But now I know I can!

Anyway, that's it for the big news today :)

Till later!

CARS (part 2)

Ok, so where was I? Oh yeah, cars I never really get a chance to drive :) ...

Well, after we left Algeria and came to Canada, my parents really didn't have any money for cars. But we needed some kind of transportation, so they bought an old and decrepid Plymouth Horizon, that had recently been in an accident. Poor little car, I think it was held together by duct tape and sheer power of will. The driver's side mirror was held in place with chewing gum... This is the car in which I eventually learned how to drive, and I vividly remember my friend always bringing an umbrella into the car, so that she could whack the dash with it whenever the radio started cutting out :) The wiring in the dash must have been a little used up as well... For one of the
turn signals, you had to keep depressing the lever, because it always wanted to get back into the "off" position. In other words, the car would always keep you on the edge of your seat when driving. On the positive side, I don't ever remember getting stuck anywhere, the little beater always took good care of me. I will always remember this car fondly, and to this day, whenever I see one drive by (which is becoming an increasingly rare occurance), I have to smile :)

Once my parents found work, and there was some money coming in, they bought a second vehicle. This time, we were riding in style: a 1990 Chevrolet Cavalier wagon. This car may be the single reason why I have a soft spot for wagons. I borrowed this car many a times, and I was pretty much always the designated driver of our group (a pretty easy choice given I don't drink). I also fondly remember driving my baby sister to her skiing classes out in Rigaud. This car almost let me down a few times, stalling in the middle of traffic for example, but certainly the good outweighed the bad. I really discovered the wonderful sense of freedom that you get when getting into a car with the wide open road ahead of you. Even though my stepfather kept a close watch on the kms I put on it every time I went out, I still had the feeling I could go anywhere and do anything... Great memories :)

The third car my parents bought (once we said goodbye to the trusty old Horizon), was a 1993 Oldsmobile Achieva. I didn't get to drive this car nearly as much as the other two, since it was the new car right until the time I moved out. I don't have too many memories of it, except that it was the car in which i had my first accident. Totally not my fault, although if I had a bit more experience I might have been able to either avoid it, or lessen the impact. It was one of those things, huge snow storm, blowing gale, reduced visibility, and I had driven all the way across town, with my Mom in the passenger seat. We were just 3 streets away from home, when a city truck decided to ignore a stop sign and drive right into my path. I wasn't going to fast, but with the snowfall, and the ABS engaging, I wasn't able to stop in time, and ended up hitting him. Believe me, it wasn't a nice night to be sitting inside the city truck filling out the paperwork and freezing to death. The only casualty ended up being our bumper cover, but to this day I am leary of that intersection (one-way stop with poor visibility). Maybe that's the reason why I was never as attached to this car as the others...

So after that I moved out, and my parents' cars stopped being my rides. I commuted by bus, metro and bike, until I came to Ottawa for my internship at Nortel. That's where I met my DH, and around halfway through my stay here, I got introduced to his car, a 1994 Cherry red Ford Probe. I have to say I was very impressed. I think I instantly became a fan of sports cars :) This became the car on which I learned how to drive a standard (thanks to the immense patience of DH), and it's the the only car we had for a few years after I moved up here for good. In fact, we're still driving it today, though it's a little faded, and the sunroof won't open anymore... But it's still as fun to drive as ever! If the Horizon hadn't convinced me that hatchbacks are where it's at, this car certainly would have :)

Which is why our next car had to be a hatchback. A 1999 ferngruen (a.k.a. green) BMW 318ti was our little princess. We ordered it in Canada, and went all the way to Germany to pick it up, drive to the port of Bremerhaven, and ship it back to Halifax. Then we went to Halifax, we picked it up at the shipyards, and drove it all the way home. It was a great big adventure, and so was owning the car. When I say the car was a princess, I mean it both in a good and a not-so-good way. The car had great handling, was a pleasure to drive, looked amazing and made us feel at home. But it also required a lot of pampering, and really didn't enjoy it when we bought our house on a dirt road. It was made to drive on the smooth pavement of the autobahn, and all the gravel and potholes made it cranky...

So when we decided to go on a cross-country trip, we decided we would trade the 'ti in for something a little bigger (so we could fit all our trip gear), and maybe a little less refined. We ended up getting a second hand 2002 Volkswagen Passat Wagon. Aside from a flat tire, the car behaved flawlessly throughout the trip, and back home as well. It convinced us that wagons are great, and that we do like german engineering a lot! Our only complaint about the car was a certain gutlessness, a lack of pep when driving it.

So.... when DH noticed that the value of the car was starting to drop quite quickly (he's an appraiser, and knows this kind of stuff), we had to make a decision: either we're driving this car to the ground (sort of what we're doing with the Probe), or we trade it in on something a little newer, and a little peppier. We decided to trade it in on a very similar, yet peppier vehicle, a 2003 Audi A4 Avant. Again a wagon, in a similar colour, but a little smaller, with a bit better handling, and all wheel drive. This car we will probably drive to the ground, it seems like the perfect compromise: it has the driveability of the BMW, combined with the utility and versatility of the Passat.

So that's it. My life as a passenger and car owner :)

Later!

CARS!

Ok, so today I am going to try something different. I want to talk about the cars in my life. Why? Well, because I am a bit of a car nut, and I think cars have always been an important part of my life.

So to start with, I have to dig deep into my memory... So the cars of my childhood. I only remember my parents having one car, and that was a trabant. I've scoured the web for some pictures, and here's the best picture I could find. In Poland, we affectionately called them soapboxes. The body of the car was made out of plastic, which may explain the nickname :) You can find lots of information about the trabant at the following website. A very typical Polish car. The other two cars that I remember very well from that time, are the polonez driven by my
grandfather, and the little FIAT, or maluch (i.e. tiny one) driven by my other grandfather. I think these three cars probably represent more than 50% of the vehicular population of Poland at the time :)


So once we left Poland, we went to Algeria. There, we mostly drove Peugeots, the mainstay of cooperants there. Ours were the 504 model, a good workhorse. I really enjoyed those cars, though I am sure today I would find them quite unrefined. We took ours all over Western Europe and Northern Africa (ok, just Marocco, Algeria and Tunisia, but still), and they served us well. We had one different car in Algeria, though: an old Mercedes Benz, my first experience of a "couch on wheels". The seats in that car were so mushy, it was very very easy to get sea-sick in the back seat on winding roads... In fact, I really disliked being driven in that beast, although I am sure it was fun to drive :) Of course I was way too young to even start thinking about a driving license at the time (though I do remember being allowed to steer the Peugeot on a remote road once - a good memory!).

But the one good thing about the MB is that it saved our lives. We once had an accident so bad that the front axle broke on the car, we had three flats and the witnesses told us that we "need to kill a sheep and have a meshoui tonight" because we were very lucky to have even survived it... I remember the shocks coming out through the wheel wells, it was an unbelievable sight. But we got the car towed to a mechanic, who somehow managed to solder the axle, and promised us it would last us the rest of our life (though he made no promises as to the length of said life). I don't think we kept the car much longer after that, but we were certainly very thankful for the quality of its original built. There's no doubt in my mind that in a lesser quality vehicle we would have not survived (a few centimeters was all that was separating us from dropping down onto a highway into the path of big trucks). So if only for that reason, this car certainly deserves a special mention. And that may also be the reason why to this day I have a soft spot for german engineered vehicles... Though for the life of me I do not remember the model number of the car (the colour was something light and soft, like caramel or something). I'll have to ask my Mom if maybe she remembers.

Unfortunately, I have to conclude this episode of "down memory lane... the car version", because I have to get going. But stay tuned, part 2 will follow shortly :)

Speed of life

Isn't life just crazy? I can't believe how fast it goes! I was reminded of that on two separate occasions today. Once, when we went out for lunch for a coworker, who's leaving on her maternity leave tomorrow. And I swear it seems like just a few months ago she told us she was pregnant for the first time (and this is her second pregnancy). Her first daughter is going to be 2 very soon...

And then another friend sent out the picture of her niece that she adopted. The whole adoption process was a mess that somehow got really mangled, and ended up taking forever. The little 12 year old girl that we saw in pictures has now become a 16 year old young lady. It doesn't seem like all that long ago when we first heard of her, but the pictures from then and now seem like two different girls. And as much as I'd like to delude myself, I am sure the passage of time can be noticed in my pictures as well ;)

This year was our 5th wedding anniversary. I find it hard to believe we've been married longer than we had been dating before our wedding. We've known each other for 10 years now, and the 10th anniversary of our first "date" is coming up in around 2 months. And yes, at times it does seem like we've been together forever (and then some), but most of the time it just seems like we've barely scratched the surface in our relationship. Either I'm married to a very, very deep guy, or I'm very slow at getting to know people, or there's always something new to discover because we're still constantly growing as people. Most likely, it's a combination of all three. And I really like it. When I was growing up, I used to wonder how people managed to have a simple life (especially without kids), and not get bored with the routine and each other. But now I understand better the whole concept of "the more we know the less we know", that with each discovery/understanding we only find out more to explore, whether it be about life, about the world, or about our spouse. How can one ever get bored, as long as one keeps their thinking hat on?

Anyway, I've got more musings on that, but I have to go, it's almost time for my volleyball game.

Keep exploring!

Kitten pictures!

Ok, so here it is, the promised "part-two" of the story of our long weekend. Also, for your viewing pleasure, I am including some shots of mama-cat (Tiger) and one of the kittens (Tim - the neighbours decided to call the little ones Tim and Bits in honour of the donut holes you can find at Tim Horton's). It's hard to still call him a kitten, as he'll soon outgrow his Mom. His paws and his head are already way bigger than hers!


Anyway, so aside from being visited by the cats, we had all sorts of other excitement on the weekend. We went to visit friends for dinner twice, and we also spent a whole bunch of time working on our wood pile. I think we have maybe half a face cord of wood all nicely cut, split and piled, ready to be used. It's fun work, but it's still a lot of work. One of these days I'll post a picture of our growing (so far) wood pile :) We also did some repairs to the barn, because one of the logs supporting the lean-to had rotted away, and in the winter the roof was looking like it might collapse under the weight of ice and snow. So we found a suitable log, cut it to the right length and shape, found a suitable cement support and nailed it into place. Not a really big job, but one that badly needed to be done before the winter. And now it is off the to-do list :)


So on to our other activities of the weekend, namely visiting with friends. Saturday we visited my friend and coworker and her family. We really had a blast. The food was extra delicious (ham stuffed with chicken and cheese - how can you go wrong?), and the company very enjoyable. My friend's kids entertained us with many magic tricks (very well rehearsed), and after dinner we played a few hands of Uno. DH had never played the game before, and he was getting confused about the rules, to the delight of the kids. I think everyone had a lot of fun, and it's always refreshing to see such well-behaved and polite, yet still lively and vibrant children :)


On Saturday we had the traditional Thanksgiving get-together with DH's childhood friends (from here on I'll refer to them as homeys). As every year we were invited to the mansion that J owns, which is nestled in the woods just minutes from where we live. It was great to see everyone as usual, and the weather was so beautiful we went not just for one but for two walks in the beautiful surroundings. We must have been quite a sight, a 5 year old, two dogs and a bunch of grownups (some of us behaving still like 5 year olds) :) It was a riot. The dinner was a potluck, with the hosts providing a full Thanksgiving dinner and the rest of us just bringing a few incidentals. Because our vegan friend can't really eat the traditional turkey, I was bringing a vegan meal. DH suggested I try something indian for a change, so I made a chana masala (a recipe I found on one of the vegan forums on the internet). I think it turned out quite ok, although I was amazed at how long I had to boil the chickpeas (2.5 hours boiling at home, and then another hour in the oven!). This is one of the billions of great things about the internet - the ability to have all these recipes at the tip of your finger! And now that I've bought all these exciting new spices (turmeric and curry and friends), I can't wait to try some more indian recipes. I think something with potatoes and peas is going to be next :)

So I think that's it for our gastronomic adventures on the weekend (though we're still eating some of the leftovers). Hope you've enjoyed the totally unrelated pictures :)

Here's one of a grasshopper that landed in DH's hand and just didn't want to leave!




TC!

More kitten news

Just had to post this this morning. Cats are just so darn cute :)

Yesterday we were hanging out on the deck drinking smoothies, when the mama-cat came over to visit. BTW, it looks like the neighbours are going to keep the cats, so we should be seeing them around for years to come :) So mama-cat was hanging around, walking between DH and me and being all friendly and purring. So I dipped my finger in the smoothie, and let her lick it off. She really seemed to like it. I figured it was probably ok for her, as it's mostly soy milk and blueberries. I usually leave a small dish with clean water on the deck, so that if she gets thirsty she can always have a drink, and she often does, so I figured she may now come looking for water and smoothies ;)

In the evening we went to visit some friends (it is Canadian Thanksgiving after all). We came back around 10pm, to be greeted by Tiger (aka mama-cat), carrying a mouse in her mouth. She dropped it right at our feet, very proud of herself. I guess one treat deserves another ;) I think she ate the mouse overnight, because there was no trace of it this morning. We were pretty happy about that, as we're not too keen on starting a dead mouse collection in the driveway. So we're eating breakfast this morning, when all of a sudden Tiger appears behind the patio door, drops another dead mouse on our deck, and meows proudly in our direction. She also tried to shove the mouse around a bit, looked like she was trying to prove that it was freshly killed... I know the intentions were very sweet, but it's kind of hard to eat breakfast with freshly killed mice at your door...

Now I have to let DH use the computer, so I'll have to finish the whole story of the weekend another time.

Later,

Random thoughts

So here it is, I am starting to feel guilty again about not updating this thing. Really, it's cause it feels like nothing is happening. But in fact things are happening. Just nothing exiting enough to make me want to shout from the rooftops. Which is quite unusual, because it doesn't usually take much for me to want to share my thoughts with whomever is willing to listen...

I guess I've just been a little tired and worn out. Last weekend was great, but very busy. We spent a lot of time chopping wood for the winter. We keep a pile of wood on the left side of the barn, under a lean-to. Every fall, my stepfather likes to scour the land in search of fallen/dead trees, and we drag them back to the barn. After they've had time to dry for a year, we cut them and chop them into burnable pieces. Then, when the cold winter months come, we can burn them in the woodstove, for rustic charm but also to heat up the house. It lessens our dependance on the oil company :) We have a little rechargeable chainsaw, which works pretty well on the small-diameter logs we have, and we also have a kick-ass splitting axe, so the whole job of cutting, splitting and stacking is a lot of fun. But it also exercises some muscles that I don't normally use. So after the first wood chopping session of the season, I am always sore in funny spots.

As luck may have it, I also started a new session of Yoga last Friday (after a whole summer off), so I could feel that in my muscles too :) As a result, when Monday rolled around I wasn't the most rested person out there. And as everyone knows, once you start the week tired, you'll probably be tired all week... Luckily, the coming weekend is Canadian Thanksgiving, so we'll have a long weekend. We already have lots of social plans, so it should be a hoot. And hopefully I can get some rest somewhere in there too :)

Hmm, I was going to put some actual random thoughts into this post. But it's getting kind of late, and I want to be on time for my volleyball game! I'll have to save my deep thoughts for later :) Maybe on the weekend I'll have a chance to sit down and ponder online ;)

And again, I have no pictures for you. The other day, my cubemate used his cellphone snapped a picture of a small snake on one of the paths at work, but when I went looking for it, it was obviously gone... That would have been a great addition to this blog, I think :)

Anyway, that's it for now!

Happy trails,

Poker, poker and more poker

So this week we have a Texas Hold'em Poker tournament at work (for charity). Being an occasional poker player, I registered, just to see what it would be like. On the weekend we had a few friends over and had a friendly game, which was good practice. I was still feeling a little hesitant about it, given that I had never really played according to the official Texas Hold'em rules. For example, when we play with friends, we always play that Aces are high, so a hand of A-2-3-4-5 would not be a straight. But in the official rules, it is.

So Monday afternoon rolls around, and I head to the cafeteria, where the tournament takes place. A few of my coworkers were coming with me, but when we drew our table numbers, we were all located at different tables. There were 20 tables, with pretty much 10 players each - for a total of 197 players! Imagine my surprise when I found out that one of the guys at my table was a good friend who we play poker with regularly. It made me feel better to have a friendly face at my table, as I was still a little worried about not being able to keep up with all those serious looking poker players. But then something happened. I was getting really good hands (2-pairs, A-K flushes, etc). After the first half hour, I was the person with the most chips at the table ;) When you have that many chips, it makes it easier and easier to bluff people off, and I should have taken advantage of that. But I was playing a little timidly, and in the end that cost me the game. I finished a respectable 4th at our table, but only the top 2 advanced. My friend finished first, so he advanced to the Tuesday round, where he was eliminated as well (by a hand with three 8).

So my Texas hold'em carreer at the work tournament was pretty short lived, but I am determined to learn from my mistakes and do better next year. I still have some memorization to do, as I sometimes confuse the ranking of hands, and I have to hone my bluffing skills. But overall I had a blast, and I am definitely going back in next year. Though I still can't imagine playing this for real money (not the nickel-ante we play at home).

In other news, this week marks the start of the JA Company Program in Ottawa. This is a program I have volounteered with over the last 4 years. It's a program ran for high-school students to give them some exposure to the world of business. The idea is to setup, run and take down an actual company. They have to come up with a product or service, create a production line, a marketing strategy, produce and sell the product, and hopefully come out of the whole process having generated some profit. They get exposed to the concept of break-even point, capitalization, share price, commissions etc. At the same time, they get to learn about leadership, teamwork, competition and such things. And they need some volounteers to introduce the program to them and serve as resources while they run the company. For more information about the program, you can go to the Ottawa JA page. This week we met with the students at our designated high school, and did some introductions, and next week we will be trying to settle on a product. I'll keep you posted on how that goes :)

TTFN,

More work critters

Ok, so things are pretty busy, and I don't have all that much to say (no time for idle musings), but I thought I could at least post a few pictures again. This time, it's little chipmunks that we see around work. A coworker fed this little one a bit of his chocolate danish... Apologies for the quality of the pictures, they were again taken with my PDA/cellphone thingy...



It's already Friday, and next week starts the busy season. I will have something going on every day of the week until February or so. Volounteer work with Junior Achievement, choir, volleyball, yoga twice a week. Surprisingly enough, I am looking forward to it all (I guess otherwise I would really be a masochist...). But it will make the weekends that much more precious :)

Ta ta,

Musings (or is that whining?)

Ok, so this has been bothering me for a while, I think I have to get it off my chest. I religiously follow our friends' blog about the twin girls from China (see our China blog). Anyway, it's really an interesting read, and I check it often (sometimes a few times a day) to see if there are any updates.

Well, this weekend, a surprising conversation followed the hilarious entry on the blog. I have to take exception to that conversation. It's still bothering me a little (yes, I know, I have no life!).

First of all, note to self: never call anyone an idiot in your blog, it may upset some people (I blame that one on mommy-brain). Just because some people decide to make choices in life that are different than what you would choose, doesn't mean they need to be insulted for it.

Here's what I take exception to: the concept that "equality" in a marriage means the man doing everything that the wife does, or more (equally splitting all chores and duties). I am not a parent, so I understand that I am not all that qualified to comment on the roles of mothers vs fathers and all that, (even though I've spend the last week interacting with new parents, and analyzing what they do and how it works for them). But I get really annoyed with the whole premise that a full partnership must involve a full 50-50 split on all responsibilities. Just as I get annoyed when people say "cooking is a woman's job", or "a man has to make more money than his wife". To me, these are two extremes in the spectrum, neither of them very healthy. My philosophy is one of sharing responsibilities and duties according to abilities (maintaining an eye on fairness obviously). Maybe the husband who doesn't take care of poopy diapers is a hard working surgeon, who brings in lots of money so that his wife can stay at home and take care of the kids and the house (and maybe she even enjoys it-g*d forbid!). Or maybe the partnership is such that the husband takes care of the outside of the house, and the wife of the inside.

And sometimes what happens is that the roles that were defined earlier on in the relationship don't seem appropriate anymore, and that's when one of the partners may start to wonder "how can I get my partner to change xyz". Doesn't mean that the original arrangement was bad, it's just that people change. You can't always prepare for what the future holds.

Personally, for example, I love cooking. So it only makes sense that I would be the cook for our family (not because I am "the woman", but because I like to cook). DH does all the dishes, though (I wish I could say it's because he likes, but in this case it's more a case of the fairness thing). We share most of the other housework almost 50-50 I would say. It works for us, but I am sure there are plenty of couples for whom it wouldn't work at all. I know plenty of men who are excellent cooks, and plenty of women who dislike cooking for example :)

Anyway. gotta go! It was good to get this off my chest...

Back home

We made it back in one piece :) I've been procrastinating with the blog, mostly because of lack of time and opportunity. I only have a little bit of time, so I thought I'd just post a quick summary of the remainder of our trip.

The last two nights in Halifax we played cards with DH's Mom and her beau. We learned a new game called Push, and we had a lot of fun with it. We also played some cribbage, an old favourite. When Thursday rolled around, we didn't really feel like leaving. But we had to go if we wanted to get a chance to meet up with friends on the way, and make it home in time for the Opera on Saturday (wouldn't want to miss the Barber of Seville!).

And so we left Halifax on Thursday morning. Uncharacteristically, we had had good weather all week, and this was another gorgeous day. Our first stop was in Fredericton, where we met up with a high-school friend of DH's. I had never met her before, so it was nice to finally put a face to the name. We had a nice chat at Timmies, and went on our merry way. Oh, before we got to Fredericton, we stopped at Magnetic Hill in Moncton... What a big disappointment that is! I'd been warned about it, but wanted to see it for myself. Unless you have kids and you will be going to the Zoo and associated other amusements in the area, I consider it a waste of the 5$ admission fee. At least it didn't cost us all that much time, since it is right off the highway :)

Leaving Fredericton we weren't sure how far we would go. But with the low volumes of traffic and nice weather we just kept on going and going, until all of a sudden it started getting dark in a hurry. We stopped at a Mike's for supper, and ended up spending the night in the beautiful town of Kamouraska, made famous by a 1973 novel that was part of our mandatory reading material in high-school. It's a very pretty town, with apparently an abundance of picturesque sunsets, as you can see on their homepage.



Friday morning, we had a nice breakfast at the local greasy spoon, and headed out to Quebec City. That's where we met up with my friend A whose baby J is only a month old. That's her in the picture on the left. Isn't she precious? A and her husband just moved to Quebec City this summer, and they are renting a beautiful condo with breathtaking views. It was really a lot of fun to see where they live, and to meet baby J. We've only seen A once in the last 3 years, and that was at her wedding, so it was nice to have a few hours to catch up and just chat.

From QC we headed straight for Montreal, where we stayed overnight with my family. After brunch, we headed for home. We spent the rest of the weekend catching up on chores (laundry, cleanup and the dreaded yardwork), having dinner with friends, going to the Opera, you know, just the usual stuff ;) Then on Monday it was back to work...

And that's how our Halifax trip ended. In all likelihood, this will be our last trip this year, since we've already taken 4 weeks of vacation :) But certainly next year we will have some more travel adventures!

Later!

More visiting

So our stay in Halifax is coming to an end... Yesterday we spent some time on the town, and today I went back to visit with the niece and nephew. Had a chance to snap a few more adorable pictures :)

The kids were taking a bath again, so we have lots of towel-hooded shots :) The last shot that I am posting here is of our nephew doing one of his many adult impersonations, where he looks totally like a grownup stuck in a baby's body. He's so funny! He does smile a lot, but doesn't like to do it for the camera! As soon as my face disappears behind the cam, he gets this puzzled frown, wondering what's going on :) It's really funny to watch!

Anyway, that is it for the updates from Halifax. Tomorrow we're heading out, destination Fredericton and possibly beyond. Then the next day we should be able to stop in Quebec City to visit my friend with her newborn (more cute pictures!), then on to Montreal, where we will spend the night, and home on Saturday! I may not be able to update the blog until then!

Later,

Here are the pictures

So we did get to see the babies yesterday, and even scored some decent pictures. The first picture is DH with his nephew. Don't they look cute together? This morning I also dropped by to help out SIL a bit, though I'm not sure she really needed all that much help. She's very well organised, and seems to have everything under control. I guess you have to be when you are dealing with twins all day every day! I got to see both babies get a bath, and I gave both a bottle. They are so cute, though squirmy! I am amazed how interactive they are too, being only 3 months old. And they both have a great disposition. They seem to love to smile and giggle, and they don't cry or fuss for very long.

The second picture is of my nephew after a bath. It sure seems like a lot of work, taking care of little twins. They take a while to eat, so it seems like at any time there's either one of them eating, being burped or being changed (and sometimes bathed). Luckily they seem to tag team quite a bit, so when one of them is eating or being fussy or something, the other one is sleeping :) But it also means that the parent in charge gets no respite at all, they have to stay on top of things all day. On the bright side, both kids seem to be sleeping trough the night by now, so that's nice. As long as SIL can get some help during the day, they should be fine. Everyone seems to have a decent routine going on :)

The last picture is my niece after the bath. She's got an infectious smile! If you can believe it, both babies actually seem to enjoy having a bath! They're getting to be too big for the little baby tub, they will soon have to be washed in the big tub, as they tend to splash all the water out onto the floor :D

Gigglingly yours,

Got here...

OK, so I'm a little late with this posting. I just couldn't get connected to the internet until now. I've composed an entry yesterday, though, so I am posting it now. Then I'll create another post with some pictures :)

So we made it to Halifax. We managed to make it all the way from Montreal to Halifax, and in pretty good time too. We managed to cover 1300km in 12 hours of driving, plus 1.5 hours of stops, including a full hour stop for sit-down supper. We still got here before 10pm, because we left Montreal at 7am :) There was really little traffic, but the weather was pretty crappy. It rained for the first 8 hours, at times a little, and sometimes pretty hard. The AWD of the car was pretty useful in the spots where water was accumulating in the ruts and causing us to aquaplane a little :)

Overall it was a very nice drive down. I drove the whole way (yay!), so it went pretty quickly, for me anyway. Saw lots of nice sights, but we were in a hurry so I never took out the camera to take any pictures. So you will just have to take my word for it :) But thanks to the PhatBox(tm) that we got installed on Friday, we had all our music with us, which was really great. We had been really missing having all our music at the touch of the finger. We didn't even realize how much we were missing it. Sounds a little silly, but we both like our music a lot! The weather here is really nice, and we're having lots of fun. Haven't seen the babies yet, but we're hoping to drop by today.

Ta-ta!

Getting ready for our trip out East

Not even sure if I would call it a trip. It's more like a visit. We will try to get there as fast as possible, to allow us to spend as much time as possible with the family. Which to me is the opposite of a trip, where I usually take my time getting to where I am going :) And for the record, I like both trips and visits, so this differentiation is purely semantics :D I am really looking forward to seeing everyone and meeting the babies :) After all, they're my only niece and nephew (so far anyway)!

Of course being the crazy driving nut, I am also looking forward to the drive down and back. I really love driving around, especially with my DH. We can share the driving (which is really handy when you have to drive _all_ day), and we have really good conversations. I think having a forced captive audience appeals to me ;) But also having all this time on our hands, we get the chance to discuss things fully, taking every subject to the n-th level (where n is quite substantial). Leaving no leaf unturned :) I also find it very relaxing, as in a way I become the spectator, watching nature and life unfold before my eyes. We'll always spot an interesting animal on our way, or a funky car, or an interesting license plate. It's one big game of "I spy" ;)

Tonight we're only going as far as Montreal, where we will stay with my family. It means we get two hours of driving over with, we get to sleep in a place we're used to, and my Mom promised to make us sandwiches for the road! Doesn't get any better than that :) Plus my parents have high-speed, so we'll get a chance to do some surfing, and maybe even upload a few more pictures. It's painfully slow to upload the pictures at home, where we're still stuck in the 20th century with a 56K modem...

Later!

Just another manic Wednesday

Not much to say today, so I thought I'd upload a few pictures we took a while ago with a friend's digital SLR (Rebel). The pictures were taken on the campus at work, where every spring we get to witness tons of little goslings running around. They are very very cute, but hard to get close to, as the Moms are very protective :)

This weekend we're heading to Halifax to visit DH's family. BIL and his wife are the proud parents of very cute twins, and we're going to meet them for the first time. Expect lots of cute baby pictures next week. On our way we will try to stop in Quebec City visit my friend who just had a baby as well, so that will hopefully mean more baby pictures :) Yes, I am obsessed, how can you tell?

In the meantime, though, we have lots of packing and trip prep to do. Better get going!

Bye!

Another long weekend done...

So we had another long weekend. It was a good one, though we didn't get much rest. Saturday was spent driving around getting errands done, including grocery shopping and stereo shopping for our car. We're planning on driving to Halifax next week, and we were hoping to get our PhatNoise(tm) system installed in the car before we go. But we need two different cables (unfortunately VW cables don't work with the Audi decks), and a stereo shop to install the whole thing. It's a lot of hassle, and a fair amount of money too, but hopefully we only need to do it this once and we'll keep it like that for the next 10 years. I really hope so. We're so used to this system from the time we had a Passat, it is very user friendly and invaluable for long car trips. I think we have something like 5 days worth of music stored in the cartridge :) Makes it a lot easier to drive around, especially on those long hauls. We may try to get to Halifax straight from Montreal, which is a pretty long drive, so hopefully it will help us stay awake (if we get everything installed in time). We've been procrastinating on this because it is so expensive and complicated. In the Passat we were able to do the install ourselves, so that was a lot simpler...

On Sunday, we spent the day cleaning and cooking (and cleaning again), because we had some company over for dinner. It was really nice. There were 8 adults and 1 kid (my friend princess D). We only have 6 matching chairs, so some people had to sit on mismatched furniture, but aside from that I think the evening was a success. There was enough food to feed everyone, I remembered to serve the salad at the last minute, and the tart peach/apple pie I baked went very well with the *sweet* soy ice cream that I had bought. One of our friends is vegan, so I made the whole meal vegan (no meat, no dairy products, no eggs, you get the picture). It's challenging at times to come up with a menu that's vegan, and I hate to always serve the good old reliable "pasta with tomato sauce", so this time I made a vegan meatloaf :) I basically used the TVP (textured vegetable protein) instead of ground beef in my favourite meatloaf recipe, I omitted the eggs all together and added a bit of olive oil to moisten and flavour the whole thing. It must have turned out alright, since there were no leftovers :) I served the TVP-loaf with young potatoes, cauliflower and broccoli, and a tabouleh-type salad. I also made a leek and potato soup, and the aforementioned pie for dessert :)

One of the guys brought a friend with him, which is quite unusual. You see, this bunch is basically 5 guys who have known each other since pretty much kindergarden (DH's childhood friends), 2 spouses and 1 kid. We get together fairly regularly, but it's pretty much always the same lineup ;) So it was nice to have someone new join us, with new conversation and a fresh perspective. Most of us already know her from work, so it all felt very comfortable. Of course it helps that she's very nice and easy to get along with :) And we're also happy for our friend, who's had some bad luck with women in the past. To summarize, we had a very nice evening on Sunday.

On Monday we went out for brunch with DH's dad and aunt (FIL has been staying with her over the last few days). Again, a good time was had by all. I really like aunt E, she always has great stories to tell us, and she wanted to hear all about our China trip. So we shared trip stories and anecdotes until early afternoon, at which point we went back to work to do some more cleanup. We've started working on the computer room, and believe it or not, we can now actually see the floor :) There's still mountains of papers on the desk and all horizontal surfaces ;) but I have hope that we can get through the whole thing at some point... Maybe even before Christmas :D It's definitely a good activity to do when the weather is so dreary... It rained pretty much all weekend - thanks Ernesto!

Big hugs to everyone!

Animals at work (redux)

Here's a few more shots of the groundhogs around where I work. It's really nice to have those little guys around to watch on our breaks, when the sun is out and it's still warm outside :) They're a little skittish, but if you're patient they will let you get pretty close. Especially if you come bearing gifts in the form of little apples from the apple trees in the courtyard. Again, these pictures were taken with my little PDA, so the quality is a little low, but it gives you a good idea of what our furry friends are like. It makes me appreciate working in a place where there's plenty of greenery around. In the winter we often see deer right outside our doors, and there's even been a bear spotted once!

I had big hopes for the weekend (since it's going to be a long one - yay!), hoping to get some yardwork done. Well, it turns out we're supposed to get the tail end of a hurricane, so they're predicting rain for the whole weekend. Hopefully that will give us the opportunity to do some tidying around the house. I am hoping to get the computer room to the point where we can actually put the laptop in there. We've been leaving the laptop on the dining room table, because you can barely even get in to the computer room... Sigh! An overdue cleanup that is!!

Hope you have a good weekend!