The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

This isn't a "Christian" story. Jesus doesn't show up anywhere in it. It has little to do with God too. But it does have much truth in it.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a fable about a man who dies and then has his life explained to him by five different people who crossed his path at one point or another in his lifetime. Although the story is about death, it has more to do with life and how it's lived.

I thought this story would be a little like The Shack, where the reader gets a glorious glimpse of Heaven that has the potential to be life-changing. But it was nothing like that. Rather, this book was more like a quiet reassurance.

The truth in the story comes in five different lessons, the first one is that there are no accidents, no coincidences. Everything happens for a reason. The second lesson is about the meaning of sacrifice. The third lesson is about the importance of forgiveness--not so much for the other person, but for yourself. The fourth lesson is about the strength of love. I'm not totally sure what the last lesson is, but I think it has something to do with how important the little things are, like fixing rides at an amusement park may not be a very fulfilling job and it doesn't bring a whole lot of meaning to life, but it's a very important job because without someone doing it, all kinds of little people would die in horrible amusement park accidents. Either that, or the good things you do in life make up for the bad things ... but that's not so good or true, so I'll stick with my first thought.

This book tries to be one that comforts you before you die, tells you that everything will be okay, that what you've done with your life wasn't meaningless, that you were important to someone or to lots of someones. It tries to help you face death.

How to Lose a Battle by Bill Fawcett

I found this book at a small bookstore while waiting for a flight out of Toronto's Pearson Airport. After leafing through it and laughing at Fawcett's unique humour, I decided to buy the book. Of course, I didn't want to be gouged at the airport, so I ordered it from Amazon.ca.

The book arrived and I read a few of the more interesting chapters. Today I read the whole book while waiting at the hospital for Janelle to come out of the OR.

It's a great book, very funny, very easy to read, and very accessible if you know even just a little bit about history. Bill Fawcett is not the author of the book, but its editor. The book is actually a compilation of articles written by various historians about poorly commanded battles throughout history. The first chapter deals with Alexander the Great's battle against Darius III at Arbela and the last one details the bungled battle of French commander Navarre at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. A handful of the articles are written by Bill Fawcett himself, and these are the best ones. They're funny, witty, and well written. Some of the other ones are less interesting. For example, the author who wrote about the civil war seemed kind of cranky--like he had a point to prove; and the author who wrote about the Six Day War seemed to have a political agenda because the article was more about the politics surrounding the war and the historical events leading up to the war than the actual war itself. But, mostly, the articles are right on, fun to read and short enough that you can read one or two in one sitting without getting bored out of your pants.

So it's a fun and interesting book if you're interested in this kind of thing.

Meet the Austins by Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L'Engle is well known for the book, A Wrinkle in Time, which is sort of metaphysical science fictiony and quirky weird in a good sort of way that makes it interesting and fun to read. Also, it's very well written.

Meet the Austins is not like A Wrinkle in Time. I was actually kind of surprised, because I was expecting it to be kind of metaphysical and science fictiony but it wasn't. Instead, it told the endearing story of the Austin family. The father, Wallace is a country doctor, the mother, Victoria is a musician and a homemaker. They have four children, John, who wants to be an astronaut and is building his own space suit; Victoria, who's a bit of a bookworm, but is mostly just plain and ordinary; Suzy, who wants to be a surgeon and is exceptionally smart, extremely stubborn, and always practicing surgery on her dolls; and Rob, who likes being the youngest very much and wants to be a ferry pilot when he grows up.

Their adventure begins when their Uncle Hal dies in a plane crash. That same plane crash leaves a family friend, Maggy Hamilton, orphaned. So, until everyone can decide what's to happen with Maggy, she is placed in the care of the Austins and goes to live with them. However, living with Maggy is no easy task because she's spoiled, willful, and generally hard to get along with.

I liked this story, even though it didn't have all the exciting science fiction stuff going on. It moved at a slow pace that made it easy to enjoy. The characters are very well developed and interesting and the more I got to know them, the more I liked them. There wasn't a whole lot of action or suspense but I kept reading it because the story was just so well told and well written and fun and interesting. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes to read, it's all kinds of fun and I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

more adventures

last monday i swept and mopped our main staircase from top to bottom. no sooner had i finished than i discovered that someone had urinated on the landing between the main floor and the first floor. right in the middle of the afternoon, no less, and while i was mopping it!

so, last night was my only night off all week. janelle and i watched a movie while we had supper, and then i rode the bike to the library and returned some books and took out Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce and went to canadian tire and bought a new weight scale and then picked up some arrowroot cookies and gingerale for janelle. janelle and i spent the rest of the evening relaxing and doing not much of anything and around eleven thirty we went to bed. we read together for a little bit and talked for a while and then i turned out the lights and we prepared to go to sleep.

no sooner had i closed my eyes than a horribly annoying ringing sound started going off in my ear. it took me a few seconds to figure out what it was. the fire alarm. as i climbed out of bed, janelle looked at the clock. midnight. dang. it always happens at midnight.

i got my pants and shirt on and called joy. she was heading down to the fire panel to find out where the alarm was going off. the fire panel indicated four locations, one being the eleventh floor, another being the second floor, and two in the basement. she directed me to the second floor but when i got there, there was nothing happening, no fire, no sprinkler, just the annoyingly persistent ringing of the fire alarm. looking through the window, i noticed that the fire department had arrived, so i made my way down to the main floor and found joy, just as the firefighters were coming in.

joy took two of the firefighters down to the basement sprinkler room and i took the rest up to the eleventh floor in the elevator. my fire key broke off in the elevator key hole, so joy and i had to switch keys, which resulted in an embarassing fiasco that i'm not going to write about here.

henry, our maintenance chief showed up shortly after the firefighters did and immediately took charge.

anyways, we got to the eleventh floor and saw water streaming out from under the door of two of the apartments. the firefighters got the door of one opened, and were banging on the other one but there was no answer. i unlocked it but the door was chained shut, so they banged and yelled some more. finally they cut the chain and forced the door open, stamping into the apartment. water was streaming into the apartment from under the wall. the carpet was already soaked. the firefighters had to wake up the occupants. back in the other apartment, they discovered that a sprinkler head had gone off, spraying water all over the apartment. when they had made certain that there was no fire, the firefighters turned the water off for that floor and smashed the toilet to drain the water, then started the long and tedious process of containing the water spill. i fetched a shop-vac from the basement and brought it up to begin vacuuming water out of the carpets.

the firefighters did what they could and then left, and the sprinkler people came and replaced the sprinkler head and turned the water back on and then they left. and joy called the carpet people and then we waited for them.

it turned out that the water flooded the apartments on the tenth, ninth, and eighth floors as well.

i was impressed with the carpet people. there were four of them, they came at around two thirty, one at a time. they brought sixteen dehumidifiers, at least as many blowers, and a bunch of water sucking vacuumes. they lifted the carpets and cut out all the underlay and threw it in the garbage, and then stuck blowers and dehumidifiers under the carpets.

as soon as the carpet people got themselves all set up, henry went back home and joy and i went to bed. it was three o'clock by the time i got home. thankfully, they let me sleep in until noon the next day.

chad and leanne and jelena come to visit

so our company left today. flew out at eight this morning. what a week.

we picked them up around midnight last friday at the airport. saturday we went out, walked along the waterfront, the girls did some shopping, and then we relaxed for most of the rest of the day. sunday afternoon we got pizza and we tried to do bubble tea, but it was closed. so much for keeping regular hours. monday i gave chad a grand tour of our building and in the evening we went to peggy's cove. tuesday and wednesday janelle and i worked. while we worked, chad and leanne went out to see the sights. on wednesday chad helped me clean up the building. wednesday night we went to dartmouth and had supper at the alderney landing, where there was a concert but we didn't stay long because it was bedtime for jelena. after we put her to bed, mom and dad swan came over and we went up on the roof of our building to watch the fireworks because it was canada day. afterwards janelle, leanne, and chad worked on some posters that janelle had agreed to make up for the sunday school. i made some beef jerkey and then i went to sleep on the floor. janelle woke me up at around two o'clock and we went to bed. we had to get up early the next morning because we were going camping.

we got our stuff all packed and left halifax at around eight thirty. we drove to shediac in new brunswick, where joanne and colin and their kids had brought a trailer and camped out for most of the week. they left the trailer for us and we arranged to stay for two nights. of course, the weather was kind of crappy. we went to the beach on the first night anyway and chad, janelle, and i went swimming while leanne and jelena watched. it was pretty cold. then it started raining and it rained the whole time we prepared supper, huddled shivering around the campfire. chad and i baked some potatoes, leanne made up some steaks, and janelle cleaned out the trailer so we could eat inside. we ate supper, played a few games, and then the rain let up enough that we made up another fire and sat around it cooking smores. the trailer was damp all that night and it felt like sleeping in a puddle. we decided not to spend another night and, after a breakfast of hot delicious pancakes and turkey bacon, we packed up the trailer and made plans to head to moncton for the day. as we packed the sun pierced the clouds enough that janelle and i both got sunburnt.

it started thunderstorming as soon as we got to moncton. dark clouds filled the sky and it rained violently. we went to chapters and to crystal palace, where jelena and leanne rode a carousel, and janelle and leanne rode a roller coaster. jelena liked the carousel so much that we had a hard time taking her off it. it stopped raining a little and we went to swiss chalet for supper. yum. after that we drove back to shediac, where we dropped off leanne and janelle at a flea market while chad and i went to the campsite with jelena to get the trailer hooked up to the car so we could leave. jelena was so upset at being ignored while we worked on the trailer and furious at chad that when we picked leanne and janelle back up at the flea market she told leanne all about how papa had neglected her. the sun broke through the clouds again, so we decided to go to the beach one more time before we left. this time we all went in and we saw some jellyfish, i think i may have even been stung by one. and even jelena went in the water a bit. after that we got all our stuff back into the car and headed back to halifax.

we got back around midnight and were happy to climb into bed and get a full night's sleep in a dry place. saturday we spent the day doing laundry and relaxing. saturday evening we had supper at mom and dad swan's house and they babysat jelena while we went out to a movie. the movie turned out to be a disappointment, so we decided to go out for bubble tea to make up for it... but the bubble tea place was closed again. we went back to mom and dad swan's for dessert and then got jelena packed up again and went back to our place. janelle and i pretty much went right to bed, but chad and leanne had lots of packing to do.

and sunday morning at five thirty we were up again and heading to the airport... the week went by altogether too fast.

of oven racks and other things

my day began, interestingly, with a hunt for oven racks. you know, before i started working here i thought that all oven racks were the same and that i should be able to take one oven rack from one apartment and it would fit in a different apartment. later, i learned that we have three standard sizes for ovens, big, medium, and small. the smalls go into the one bedroom and bachelor apartments and the big and medium ones go into the two and three bedroom apartments. so i thought that we should, corresponding with our three oven sizes, have only three different sizes of oven racks. today proved that i was wrong.

two weeks ago, we cleaned apartment 187, the oven racks were quite dirty, so we took them out and brought them downstairs to the swamp (a container of liquid oven cleaner). on our way down, we picked up the oven racks from 159, because they were equally dirty. we normally let the oven racks soak for a day or two, so we pretty much forgot about the oven racks and left them there for quite some time.

when we got word that some investors and the big shots at the company were coming to tour the building and they wanted to see a few apartments, including 187, we remembered the oven racks and went down to fetch them out of the swamp. however, when i brought them back up to the apartment, i found that they didn't fit! so i left them in the apartment and told my coworkers so they could give it a second try in case i was doing it wrong. but it turned out that the oven racks were just too small. so, did they shrink in the swamp? this was as inconceivable to me as it was to my manager, who came to the logical conclusion that the oven racks were missing and must be found. of course, we put it off for a few weeks, but when someone moved into the apartment, finding the missing oven racks suddenly became a priority.

the task was compounded when we received a call from apartment 460, complaining that their oven racks didn't fit in the oven. i went to 460 and examined their oven racks, they were very much too big for the oven they were in. so i took them and then went through all our spare oven racks, looking for ones that fit this oven. i found about five different sizes of oven racks and none of them fit in 460, so i made out a work order and passed the task along to henry, our maintenance man.

so, first thing in the morning on the last day of june, henry and i went on a hunt for oven racks. we found ones that fit into 159 easily enough--they were a standard size. and we found some that were the right size for 187, but try as we might and with much grunting and straining, we could not get them into the oven. so, we turned our attention to 460. we even got racks out of our barbecues on the patio, to see if they fit in 460's oven. we found none.

as far as i know, we still have no oven racks for 460. joy, my coworker, was able to fit the oven racks into 187. apparently, we had tried to get it in backwards or something.

okay, i know it's not a very exciting story...but the moral is that, phew! who knew such a thing as oven racks could be so complicated.

The Tale of Desperaux by Kate DiCamillo

i was pleasantly surprised by this wonderful story of a mouse who saves a princess. in fact, i would place it next to c.s. lewis' the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe as an everlasting classic children's tale.

the story revolves around four characters, desperaux tilling, the extraordinarily small mouse with enormous ears; roscuro, the rat; miggery sow, the serving girl who wants to be a princess; and the princess pea. after desperaux falls in love with the princess, he is never the same again. in fact, his mouse community, including his father and brother, cast him into the dungeon to be eaten by rats! as fate would have it, desperaux survives and in surviving discovers a villainous plot of revenge against the princess pea. he takes it upon himself to become a knight with a shining needle and rescue the princess.

it is a tale of bravery, love, hope, mercy, forgiveness, and most of all, grace. it's a wonderful story that i will read again and again for my own enjoyment and will read repeatedly to my children. i promise you will love this story!

save the environment in seven easy steps!

1. do your laundry in the bathtub, while you bathe

doing laundry in the bathtub isn't very innovative. it's a little old fashioned, in fact. people used to do their laundry in the sink with a washboard, didn't they? and before that, they washed their laundry in the river, with or without the washboard. here's where it really becomes innovative: do your laundry while you take a bath! it'll conserve water and save you time!

2. reusable toilet paper

just like reusable cloth diapers, reusable toilet cloths will save thousands of trees from being cut down so you can wipe your butt. plus, you can wash your reusable toilet cloth in the bathtub while you bathe.

3. don't flush the toilet--ever

we all know the rhyme, 'if it's yellow let it mellow; if it's brown flush it down,' but let's take things just a little bit further. now that we're not putting toilet paper in the toilet (we're using reusable toilet cloths, remember?) we can afford to flush the toilet less often without worrying about the toilet clogging, so what if we only flushed once or twice a month? worried about the smell? simple, keep the lid down when you're not using it. if you're daring, you can take this step even further and only flush the toilet once or twice a year. don't worry about all that poop clogging up your drains, it'll dissolve into a sludgy soup before too long. when you finally get around to flushing the toilet, you won't be flushing much more than a thick fluid. so try it out and see your water consumption dramatically decrease!

4. throw away your television

i don't know what the usage statistics are for televisions, but i do know that the average household has it on for huge parts of the day. that consumes a lot of electricity. toss your television and save the planet! you'll also be saving money. don't think you can live without your tv? all the more reason to throw it away.

5. cut your power

maybe, right after you throw away your television, you can take the bolt cutters and snip your house's power cable. after you've gotten rid of the television, it's not so much of a stretch to nix the microwave, oven, refrigerator, and lights. say hello to reading more books and playing board games with candlelight. not to mention families spending more time together. say goodbye to keyboard related repetitive strain injuries.

6. stop washing

showering and bathing consumes so much water. if you add all the times you wash your hands, brush your teeth, wash the dishes ... you're consuming water like nobody's business! so stop. some people wash their hands before every meal! that's a ridiculous waste of water. some people brush their teeth three times a day! aren't we concerned about the environment? some people bathe or shower every day! you're wasting water people! get with the saving-the-planet program! you're worried that you'll smell bad? well, is it more important to you to smell all pretty than it is for your children to be able to live on this planet?

7. grow a garden

easy. grow a garden. now that you've cut your electricity and stopped washing and all that, you've freed up all kinds of time for yourself, you can grow a garden in your own back yard! don't have a back yard? get a load of dirt dumped in your living room or balcony and get down to work growing those carrots and onions.

chad and leanne and jelena are here!

so i'm just about bursting from all the excitement! chad and leanne and their baby jelena are spending the week with us. they flew in around midnight on friday (or is it saturday?). we've been passing our time relaxing, playing games, chatting it up, adoring jelena, touring the town, and eating, all in equal parts.

jelena is the most fun of all! she is so curious and content. she talks and sings to herself. and she's so funny!! (like most babies are, i imagine.)

pictures will appear later!

first ultrasound

i'd post the pictures of our first ultrasound ... but the doctor kept them. i'm kind of disappointed about that.

anyways, we saw our baby today! it's really little, as can be expected. it's about the size of a grain of rice and seems to be developing healthily (if the doctor is to be trusted). we could see it wiggling and we could see the heartbeat. we're calling it little belzoir (pronounced, bell-zo-ear).

looking at it, my face split into an uncontrollable grin and my eyes watered. thankfully, no one was looking at me, grinning like an idiot and crying ... i'm such a happy/proud papa.