Okay, you smug Winnipegers, I got your teasing e-mails, and I’ll cry uncle. Here’s the tropical climate I moved to, the morning of October 29th. Cold, driving snow that stuck for two days. Curse you, weather gods! On the plus side, it was good and wet snowman material!

Tomorrow we’re supposed to get 12°C, [...]

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Natasha and I decided to take a break from setting up house (yes, a month later we’re still unpacking stuff) to go enjoy the gorgeous day on Sunday with a trip up to the Gatineau Hills for a hike around Pink Lake. It was good timing – there was really great colour on the trees, [...]

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So, how cool must “Chan’s Megastick” feel when it hobnobs with the other insects and discusses taxonomy?
“Hi, I’m Gary, a dung beetle. What are you?”
“Chaaaaaaaaaaaan’s MEGA-STIIIICK!”
And every time he says it, I bet the screen fills with a flashing scrolling anime background, and he transforms into a fierce robotic stickbug warrior.

MEGA-STIIIIIIIIICK!!!!

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Natasha and I caught a showing of “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” on Friday night, and really enjoyed it. The music throughout the film was really great – even though I admit I’m too old to chase bands around all night, I still love discovering hipster indie music and sharing it with my friends. Watching [...]

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After I’d left the Aviation Museum and had started heading back to my car, I caught a look through an open door at an engine being rebuilt in the workshop and wandered in to ask if I could get a couple of pictures of the work in progress. Sensing I was a bit of an [...]

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I had a little discovery the other day I thought was awesome – when a shaft of sunlight comes in through our office curtains and hits one edge of our glass desk, the light reflects around internally for a bit and comes out the back of the desk making this really cool pattern on the [...]

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I had a super productive weekend involving a lot of handiwork, which always feels somehow more “real” and productive at the end of the day than paperwork and pushing buttons. Highlights from the weekend include:

Built 4 dining room chairs (two arrived broken – bummer! Waiting for replacements)
Built a dining room table
Mounted curtains in the office
Hung [...]

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Before we left Manitoba, I had a chance to finally visit the Western Canada Aviation Museum, a huge hangar full of really fantastic and well-cared-for Canadian aviation equipment, from bushplanes to fighter jets. I took a memory card full of pictures of aircraft bits – all of those open jet engines are gold for a [...]

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We have a fantastic view out our living room window – I’ve wasted a bunch of evenings (and a major part of my retinas) watching the gorgeous sunsets over the Ottawa river. With a view like this, who needs a TV?

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I have two phone company reviewing biases – I worked at MTS in Customer Care (who are excellent!) for four years, and I worked at Sympatico waaaay way back in college, so when I say that Bell sucks, I really need to stress that I gave them way more than their share of chances and [...]

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