To Sir, With Love

Yo.

Happy 100th Birthday Granddad! Congrats.

My family is having a big celebration party thing for him today at my old stomping grounds (the church). Kinda bummed about missing it, especially since I haven't seen some of the people who are going in quite a while. Actually, I think one of my cousins who I have never met or only met when I was really young will be there. Not to mention that turning 100 is a huge deal!

It's SNOWING! I'm kinda scared, since it isn't even November yet. But it is so pretty.



So, Dylan had a friend/old coworker from Fujiya visiting this week. She actually is having a whirlwind tour of the East Coast - three days in Montreal, two in Quebec City, two in Ottawa, and two in Toronto before flying back to Japan. I, for one, know I don't have enough energy to be able to run around that much. But I'm an old lady.

Anyway, we continue to try and improve on our hosting abilities and to find all sorts of exciting things for visitors to do and see while here. Eventually, we will be the perfect hosts! We tried to take her to the botanical gardens, but the first day it poured rain and it was $14 per person (even though it is free after 5pm throughout the summer, during the fall they have a lantern festival and they pretend that that justifies the price). But, have no fear, Dylan took her back the next day and they had a lovely time. He also took her on a lovely drive through Montreal to see the sights. And the last day we tackled downtown. She has a particular fascination with old churches and cathedrals, so that part was easy since Montreal is loaded with them. Took her down St. Catherine's, to Old Montreal, to McGill and all around there.

And, as it turn out, it was FREE MUSEUM DAY! WOOT! We knew beforehand that the Museum of Contemporary Art would be free after 6pm. Yah, me and contemporary art are not bffs. There was one exhibit about a lady who was in love with her monkey. I don't know. Although this one dude had robots coming out of old fashioned blue and white vases, which were awesome. This is why I stay away from the fine arts...

Anywho, it turns out that the Museum of Fine Arts was also free. Unfortunately, it closed at 5pm and we showed up at 4:30pm, so it was a bit rushed. Still, it was cool to see Picasso and Rodin and all them. And, if that was enough to make it worth it:




Why is Dylan standing next to that picture of that random guy, you ask?



















Because he's hanging with his great, great, .... grandpa! Woah.

Can't sleep.

Today's my Papa's birthday. Happy Birthday Daddy! (It's still his birthday back in Victoria, at least.)

In other news, thanks to my dear friend Clair (although Pauly is probably the actual culprit, after having infested our entire home with germs a few weeks ago) , we are all suffering through a cold at the moment. For me, this means that the left side of my face is rebelling against me. My ear hurt, my throat hurts, my lymph nodes are swollen, and, most annoyingly, my nose has been running/blocked for the last 24 hrs non-stop. My poor sinuses are really, really unhappy with me. All of this has resulted in me not being able to sleep. I am very close to cutting off that whole side of my face.



But, I did manage to distract myself for a few hours today by accompanying Clair to this big fancy mall near us (Clair and I went to the Zellers there a few months ago). It is much bigger than we thought! In the one building, there is a Bay, a Sears, a Brick, a Zellers, an Old Navy, an H&M, a Smart Set, three kids clothing stores, every cell phone store you can think of, and a billion other smaller stores. There was also a Rona on the other side of the parking lot. Kinda sad that a mall in the some random neighbourhood is that much bigger than any mall in Victoria. What did I end up buying after wandering around this shopper's heaven for two hours? A spatula. I was pretty excited. Somehow, in the last four months, Dylan and I have managed to break two silicon spatulas. Because we are amazing.

Yesterday and today, Dylan decided to be all mountain-man, and set out to go camping all by his lonesome (I couldn't go) in the great outdoors! He packed up his tent and sleeping bag onto his bike and made the two-three hour trip to a national park, just west of Laval. Isn't he so manly? And, in an extremely unusual turn of events, he left and came back safe and sound, without incident. Depending on the weather, the two of us might head out next week as a final camping trip of the season. Who knows.

That's about it from our neck of the woods. Night night (hopefully).

Phew.

My beloved laptop is safe and sound, happily charging away.

After wanting to scream and cry like a little girl because my favourite toy wasn't working the way it was supposed to, I went into the Apple website and found out it was still covered under warranty (Thanks to my beloved husband and his firm belief in extended warranties), which was a relief since I've had my computer for just over a year. It wouldn't have been a huge deal, since I was 98% positive I just needed to replace the power cord, but I would've been out $80. I still felt bad for any mistreatment from me that might have led to this problem, so I cleaned off the dirt between the keys with a Q-Tip. Anyway, I booked a tech call with Apple online for the next day (yesterday). It's actually very cool; you can book an appointment for a specific time and a rep will call you no latter than 15 mins after that. My dude called, literally, two minutes after the scheduled time. Anyway, we talked, I sent him this report that told him pretty much everything about my computer, and he decided that it would be easiest if I went into a store considering his options for problem solving were somewhat limited on the phone. Luckily for me, the scary report thing told him that my battery was working just fine, so that relieved some concerns. He went on and booked me a time to go in and talk to a Genius (what they actually call their tech guys) at the store downtown.

Wow, seriously. I'm sure you don't really care anymore. I don't think anyone in their right mind cares this much about my laptop other than me. But I'm still going to finish my story, 'cause I can.

Today, at my allotted time, I arrived, and the nice lady, Nancy(?) Genius, told me that some of the pins on the power cord where it connects with the computer got pushed in and that made for a less than optimal connection. And that it was unlikely that it was my fault. She gave me a new one and I was on my way!





They've changed them, too. I like the new look.









Now, I had a fancy new adaptor, but I still had my old extension for it (I left the bit that lets you plug the adaptor straight into the wall back in Victoria, so I always have to use the extension) that was all dirty and didn't match at all. So I cleaned it. Clair thought I was craaazzzzy! Especially since I cleaned it with a disinfectant wipe (it was the most convenient thing I had to clean it). Then I wiped down my laptop with it's nice little microfiber cloth and gave the screen a much-needed cleaning.

All is right in the world once again.

Wow, I kinda suck at this whole updating thing.

So, what up, you ask? Well, Pauly came and, sadly, left. But we did have a pretty gosh darn good time while she was here! We took her downtown, showed her the sights, had a picnic on Mont Royal, finally had pizza at this one silly restaurant that we've been trying to eat at since we moved here, and basically got a chance to hang with one of our faves people in the world. We forgot to take her to the Jean Talon Market, but just imagine a normal farmers' market but bigger. It's lost some of it wonder for me, although I do want to head down and check out all the autumn foods sometime. Anyways, we also took a fabs (Vanessa has forever changed the way I think with her article) trip down to Ottawa with her so that she could re-visit some childhood spots (ex. the cheese factory, that proved to be more of a cheese store located in the middle of no where) and see her aunt and uncle. They were pretty cool people, clearly related to Pauly, and took us all out for Sushi. Yummy, except I don't know how I feel about mango on my sushi. Sadly, the Hershey's Factory shut down a couple years ago, so we couldn't go there. And I just keep falling more and more in love with Ottawa. It is definitely on it's way to making it onto my list of places I'd like to live. We took a lovely walk along the canal and it was just beau-ti-ful. I'm loving autumn on the East Coast.


What else, what else? Umm, Thanksgiving is coming up. We're planning ourselves a nice little turkey dinner. I'm making the candied yams. Dylan taught me how to make them a few years ago when he was catering for a convention at our lovely Em's church that happened to fall on Thanksgiving weekend. Ahh, memories. It is one of the only things that i know how to make. That and veg chili. I'm excited.

I'm having problems with my power cord and it is pissing me off. It's not connecting properly unless I fiddle with it and that worries me. :(



Scotty, I need more power!