Here We Are At Last!

So, we flew out of Halifax on Thursday evening and landed in Toronto where my cousin Stephane picked us up at the airport and brought us to his house, in which Tante Doris also has an apartment.

We spent the night at Tante Doris' apartment, sleeping on the floor and we got up early the next morning. We spent a few minutes with Logan and Rykauna and Hudson who had all grown up SO much since we lived in Toronto and are now quite big. And then we hit the road, with Tante Doris driving. We had breakfast near Barrie at Tim Horton's and pressed on northwards.

Along the way, we chatted it up with Tante Doris. We talked about all kinds of things and it was really neat. Tante Doris is exceptionally wise and wonderful and I love her tremendously. We arrived at Uncle Phil and Aunt Pauline's in Timmins at precisely six o'clock on Friday evening, just in time for supper. Cousin Danielle and her husband Harry were there also and we had a very nice visit. Sophie and Courtenay arrived a little later. We stayed up chatting for quite a while until my parents arrived from Collingwood on their way home from visiting Chad and Leanne and baby Jelena in Detroit at almost eleven thirty, and then we went to bed.

Saturday morning we had breakfast and a nice visit with Mom and Dad and Uncle Phil and Aunt Pauline and then we got all dressed up and headed to the Cedar Meadows resort for Melina and Mylan's wedding. It turned out to be a lot of fun because all kinds of people were there like Jesse and Vince and Robb and Angele and Candy! That was fantastic and fun and I realized again how much I love all of them. It was sad to be leaving them.

After the wedding we headed even further north, arriving in Kapuskasing with my parents at about eleven o'clock. We went pretty much straight to bed and had a nice deep long sleep. Sunday morning we got up nice and early, had coffee and breakfast and headed off to meeting. (Dad lent me a suit with suspenders, so I wore it and it was nice.) Everyone remarked how much weight I had gained ... which was not Janelle's fault, she makes wonderful food, but it's me who keeps putting it in my mouth!

We had Matt and Kim Arsenault and their three wonderful and exciting children with us for lunch and Mom and Dad's house and that was really nice and then we went for a walk to the rock quarry and circled the village before coming back. All in all, so far it's been a very nice trip. Except for the snow we woke up to this morning ... that was almost heart breaking.

Flying Out Today!

So, Janelle and I packed our bags last night and this morning went to our last day of work before holidays. Mind you, it's only a one week holiday ... nothing quite like the last day of school ... wow, I can't believe I actually complained about school. High School was a hundred times better than having a real job. (Not that I want to go back or anything.)

I just checked us in and printed off our boarding passes ... now all we have to do is wait. Well, actually, we've also got to finish packing, and there's probably a billion things to get ready that I haven't even thought of yet. Oh dear. Anyway; I'm excited.

Getting Pretty Excited!

Ok, so there's two more days until we fly out to Ontario! Pretty exciting. We haven't even started packing...

It seems like the trees all just exploded into green in the past two days. Four days ago, I could look out my window and see nothing but gray trees with tiny yellow buds, everywhere. Now, all I see is green everywhere. I used to be able to see the ground and all the houses, now everything is green, in just two days. Is that abnormal? Or did I just not notice it all those other years? Ah well, it's wonderful! And the weather is great too! All of a sudden we're getting 30'C weather! (Or rain... but at least we're done with the snow for now.)

So, funny story, there's an old guy who lives in our building, he's got weird knees so he's in a wheelchair and he's always real cranky, even if you're friendly and cheerful to him. So anyways, I was walking along the sidewalk to our other building when I met him coming the other way from the grocery store. There was a shopping cart with two wheels on the sidewalk and it was a wide sidewalk so it's not like the shopping cart was in his way or anything, and he stopped and tried to knock the shopping cart off the sidewalk. It took him a lot of effort and he couldn't get it on the first couple tries, so finally he stuck his legs out and drove his wheel chair into the cart and knocked it over, then he just kept on his merry way. I thought that was funny. This is the same guy who, when we had a toilet back up and flood the hallway, complained that his newspaper had gotten soaked and we ended up having to buy him a new newspaper.

three wheel kiss

janelle here. i'm thinking about getting rid of facebook, so i'm starting up a chatty random blog so i can keep my posting fix alive :).
you can find it at threewheelkiss.blogspot.com (i'll explain the name later) and patrick posted a link to it on the left (<--).
i hope 3dhippo readers will mosey on over to the kiss every now and then and post a comment for me!
xox

super awesome fun victoria day(s)

we had a super awesome fun extended weekend this week! dan and katie came to visit late sunday night and stayed until tuesday after supper. patrick is fighting a cold, and it was rainy and dull outside, but we had a lot of homemade fun and laughs and we miss dan and katie so much already!
it was all awesome, but here are the highlights:
-janelle and katie went shopping on monday, and bought anniversary presents (happy third to us! yay!) - a new magic bullet and a new set of glasses for the kitchen because we're clumsy and break ours a lot.
-rebekah daigle joined us for a yummy supper - katie made her famous macaroni salad and we had burgers too, and we all pitched in and made a rainbow cake that looked awful but tasted fantastic. three cheers for a great group effort!
-we 'helped' dan study for his major final exam. during this quizfest/conversation, patrick revealed that he once (or twice...) put a partridge's beating heart in his mouth. all kissing was curtailed.
-on tuesday, janelle got up bright and early to make smoothies for breakfast. the new blender isn't as good as the old one, and the smoothie ended up all over the kitchen. janelle ended up in tears. breakfast was nixed, and poor dan had to go to his exam with just a piece of toast to tide him over.
-dan wrote his six hour exam alllllll day long. katie met him for lunch, then came home with the great news that she saw a bubble tea shop while she was out!
-katie was wearing an awesome sundress that told the weather, "you're not the boss of me!"
-nursing a burned finger (for reasons that shall remain undisclosed) janelle kissed patrick goodbye, and went out with rebekah and katie in quest of the bubble tea shop.
-poor patrick worked all day, fighting his nasty cold that seems determined to win. he was vastly cheered up, thought, beccause ...
-WE FOUND BUBBLE TEA IN HALIFAX! it's not quite as good as C'est Bon, our toronto favorite, but it's quite passable and will definitely be our date-night location of choice.
-after slurping up our tea, we felt a yen for asian food and went to the asian grocery market on quinpool. we bought chicken wontons, soup base (yuck), and dumplings. we also got some yummy taro cookies and dried fruit candy. three cheers for a fun outing!
-we picked up dan (exhausted from his exam) and came home and made chinese food for supper. (wonton soup base tastes like fish - we threw it out and made a chicken version). when i say "we" cooked, i should really say rebekah cooked - or slaved over the stove - ps mad cooking skills, bek! - and finally, we polished off the last of the cake and said our sad goodbyes.
c'est tout!

Gatty's Tale

i just finished reading Gatty's Tale, by Kevin Crossley-Holland, recommended to me by joeythepoey. what an amazing read - a really great story, and it's really well-written. i especially love how little explaining the author does. he drops characters' conversations in without explaining how they are speaking (angrily, sarcastically, happily, etc). you get to infer by the other characters' comments and actions, yet it's all done so obliquely that you hardly notice you are doing it, and all of a sudden you just "get" the characters - they're so well-formed and true to themselves.
i love that in a writer.

the story is set in the 13th century, and Gatty - a field girl, an orphan, from Wales - is taken on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
this is a little tiny snippet from the first page:

"Gatty stood up, crossed herself, reached for her russet woollen tunic lying on a bale of hay, and pulled it on over her undershirt and baggy drawers. Loudly she yawned. She opened her mouth so wide she could hear all her little headbones cricking and cracking. Then she stepped round to the next stall.
'Greetings in God!' she said politely to her cow. She gave Hopeless a handful of grain, pulled up her three-legged stool, and began to milk her."

and i'm not going to tell you anything else, because i think you should read it for yourself! :)

The Attributes of God, by Arthur W. Pink

At first glance the book seems a little out dated. Written between 1922 and 1952 and originally published as a series of articles in the magazine Studies in the Scriptures, we have to admit the book is a little old and the language does sometimes seem a little archaic. But I have to argue that the content is timeless.

In this book, Pink discusses sixteen attributes of God: the solitariness of God, the decrees (purpose or determination) of God, the knowledge of God, the foreknowledge of God, the supremacy of God, the sovereignty of God, the immutability (unchangingness) of God, the holiness of God, the power of God, the faithfulness of God, the goodness of God, the patience of God, the grace of God, the mercy of God, the love of God, and the wrath of God. Obviously, the book is intended for Christian readers, nevertheless, I believe that, despite the sometimes archaic writing and the rampant "christianese" language used in the book, many unbelievers will find here a thorough and beneficial explanation of one of the most fundamental concepts of Christianity, and that is the concept of God.

To understand Christianity, one must first know what its God is like and in this book, Pink does a fantastic job of describing, quite thoroughly, the Christian's God as He shows Himself in the Bible.

I have a few disagreements with Pink, some of them I've outlined in my other blog but I don't believe Pink's errors to be fatal. Also, I find that towards the middle of the book, the writing becomes a little formulaic and boring and a little difficult to follow, but overall the book is well written and well argued and does what it does well. So read it, especially if you're curious about what Christianity is all about.

Halifax is Burning

I'm not sure about the facts, but these photos tell a rather sensational story. The latest reports I've heard are that twelve houses have been burnt (no loss of life yet).

These photos were taken from our apartment window at around 3pm today.

At around 9pm, Janelle and I went to the roof of our building and took these photos:

You can't see them in these photos because they blend with the sky quite well, but the columns of smoke are still quite high.

It's pretty exciting and I'm curious to know what's going on. Apparently, it's a pretty big deal because we've had to call in help from out-of-province to deal with this and large portions of the suburbs have been evacuated. So: Halifax is burning, spread the word!

We're actually not in any danger. The fire is off the peninsula in an area called Spryfield. That's in the suburbs. I may find out later that some people I know have been evacuated, but I haven't heard anything yet. Firefighters are hoping to get a handle on it tonight as the wind dies down and we are expecting wetter weather tomorrow.

The Unfinished Tales by JRR Tolkein

I read the Lord of the Rings for the first time in grade nine after my english class read The Hobbit. I started reading The Silmarillion immediately afterwards, but found it impossibly boring and gave up.

During my first year of University, I read The Silmarillion completely and found that, huge parts of it were, in fact, quite boring but the other parts more than made up for that. The boring parts were the ones where Tolkein describes in great detail, the creation of the world, the conflict of the Valar, and Melkor's initial episodes ... the ones where he goes galavanting with Ungoliant (the giant spider) and destroys the glowing trees or something like that. But afterwards, it gets more interesting. The Silmarillion is a collection of stories that are loosely connected because they tell about the Silmarillion, where they came from, how they were made, how Melkor stole them, and how the people of Middle Earth tried to get them back. Finally it tells how, when Melkor is on the verge of winning his very, very long war and enslaving all the peoples of Middle Earth, the Valar (the gods of the Tolkein world) come to Middle Earth and fight The War of Wrath, defeating Melkor once and for all, and imprisoning him.

The Unfinished Tales is kind of like a director's cut of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. It's not really interesting on its own, but if you've read The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, you might find The Unfinished Tales interesting because it fills in a lot of details. It tells the story of what Gandalf and the other wizards are and where they came from, it gives a short history of the palantiri (the seeing stones used by Saruman and Denethor in The Lord of the Rings), it gives the story of Tuor's journey to Gondolin and how he met Ulmo (the god of the sea), it retells the story of Turin Turambar (told originally in The Silmarillion) with greater detail and character building, it tells the story of The Battles of the Fords of Isen and the death of Theodred--battles that occur during the narrative of The Lord of the Rings but do not come into it--if you remember, Aragorn and his company arrive at Edoras in The Two Towers shortly after Theoden has learned that Theodred has been killed by Saruman's orcs at the fords of Isen. It also tells the story of how Isildur actually lost the One Ring and died. Also, as a matter of interest, The Unfinished Tales also contain the only preserved story from Numenor: the story Aldarion and Erendis.

Anyways, if you read The Unfinished Tales on its own, you probably wouldn't find it very interesting, in fact, it could be downright boring because Tolkein fills it with seemingly insignificant details. But if you read The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and have some understanding of the Tolkein world and are kind of curious about some things, The Unfinished Tales does a great job of filling in a lot of the gaps and the details that might make it boring, if read on its own, actually lend a lot of depth and richness to the narrative.

It is extremely well written, and edited by JRR Tolkein's son, Christoper Tolkein with a great deal of editor's notes to explain the text and to connect it with the known narrative of the other books and to point out certain disagreements between the texts or in Tolkein's unpublished notes. So, in short, I really enjoyed this book, although it took me a really long time to get through it and I found a lot of the editor's notes a little boring and repetitive and academic, not that that's a bad thing, if you're interested in an academic study of Tolkein. And if you are interested in an academic study of Tolkein, let me suggest an essay topic for you: Eurocentrism in Tolkein.

All The Excitement

So the past couple days have been pretty exciting! On Monday we went to Victoria's birthday party and pretty much everyone was there: Mom and Dad Swan, Joanne and her girls, and Bekah and Justin and Aunt Esther and Uncle Ken. It was at Peaches' house, so no need to mention that she and her children were there. We had a great time, the kids were absolutely wild and I poured coke on Marcella's head. That was fun.

By the way, Bekah, I still can't post comments on your blog.

And yesterday, Janelle and I went to dinner at Athens with Rachel and some friends from Janelle's school. That was fun. The rice pudding was exceptional, as usual.

As for the not-so-exciting: the past week or so I've been experimenting with the new Ubuntu, to figure out what it can do, so I haven't been doing much of anything else. I also finished reading Unfinished Tales by JRR Tolkein, so expect a review soon. And I downloaded and have been listening to The Cranberries' Greatest Hits album all morning. Oh yeah, I've got the day off today because of a particularly interesting time last weekend.

Janelle and I were on call this past weekend, and because Janie (the Superintendent at our neighbouring building) had the weekend off, we were covering both buildings. So, on Saturday morning there were phone books and broken glass to clean up at her building: someone had thrown the phone books down the stairs and smashed some glass in front of the building. Jane helped me clean that up while Janelle went for some breakfast at McDonald's. Later in the day, we had Ashlin, Marcella, and Laurie for a bit and played on the rooftop garden with them, and then met Mom and Dad Swan at Wendy's for dinner. After that there were a few apartment showings at the other building and then I had to plunge a toilet (that was so much fun!). But aside from that the day was pretty uneventful. On Sunday, Janelle made some banana-coconut cream pie and we ate some with Mom and Dad Swan, which was terrific: the best banana-coconut cream pie I've ever had!

Anyways, the boss gave me a day off this week because I covered the other building, so I'm taking full advantage of it. I slept in this morning, I plan to do some laundry, listen to music, start reading a book, blog a little ... you know, a fun filled day off.