c9 | Entries tagged with family

What a weekend!

1_2_ready_go and I spent the weekend in New Brunswick visiting with family and friends, traveling on Aeroplan points thanks to our house's canny (and common) ability to suck money out of our accounts.

Awake at 5am Saturday, walk to the subway -- with the legally required stop at McDonald's of course -- and here we goooooo!!! (thanks Zach!)

Saturday saw us:

fly to Saint John
get our rental car - a Mazda 5, for those curious
get lunch at the Saint John Superstore
drive to Fredericton
visit simplisticton and purplemartini and their chilluns Z and K
drive to Scotch Lake, which is out past Mactaquac Dam, outside Fredericton, to stay with Vin's mom
eat too much

Sunday saw us:

eat breakfast at the Diplomat (the (in?)famous 24-hour Chinese-ish-and-Canadian restaurant beside the ~~Sheraton~~Delta
go for a 40-minute run (Vinny only)
Visit the UNB campus and walk around in the throes of nostalgia (Cam only)

UNB Safe Space

Lilies

here we goooooo!!!

off to find samosas (which are only assembled correctly in Fredericton -- I don't claim to understand, and I don't claim authenticity, I only claim absolute truth. Is that too much?)
next to Memere and Pepere's house. Say hello, refuse food several times, and fail to fix the allegedly universal remote control (Cam only)
off to Future Shop to find a better universal remote control without any USB-ness (Vinny's grandparents are not in the target market for Harmony remotes)
remote works, first try. yay!
O'Dell Park (no more fenced-in deer!)
Superstore (low-fat but let's be serious not really healthy either coffee cake!)
Ben and Jackie's for another quick visit
back to Scotch Lake for dinner

Monday included lots of tiredness, a drive back to Saint John, enduring a bit of inanity on TV, some tasty Chinese-ish food, and now we sit in the airport bored to tears. Damn you Aliant and your wifi hotspot that is neither free nor linked to any other hotspot systems!

Update later: On the approach to YYZ, around 9:30pm Eastern, we had the lovely sight of hundreds of towns, cities, and backyards setting off fireworks for Victoria Day! Nothing is so lovely as seeing an entire metro area twinkle and sparkle quite like that.

Hope everyone else's weekend was fun!

Just watched The Day After Tomorrow -- cute. Insanely impossible etc etc blah blah blah, but still exciting. Popcorn.

Also, my laptop's wireless has stopped connecting to my parents' router. ARGH! I have tried just about everything possible in this two-computer household to fix it, but everything else seems to be working perfectly, just not my (work) laptop. Frustrating. Luckily work bought the super-extended coverage, so guess who's getting a desk-side visit from Dell next week?

We're visiting my parents in Wasaga Beach tonight. The air here is pretty clean, and I think it triggers our sleep muscles a bit. We always end up very tired and in bed early here -- this is the latest we've ever been up here! Of course, it might also be related to the huge amounts of food we always eat here. *shrug*

Tomorrow it's back to the big city (North America's fifth-largest, I learned yesterday!) for shopping and hanging out with Bryce and Daryl. Sunday it's brunch then a BBQ. Monday, back to the grind.

Real life is too busy.

I remember when I used to type crap into this journal all the time. I also remember when all my friends didn't regularly post the exact same phrase in their journals. *dramatic sigh, etc*

Updates:

Still healthy. I went to the internal medicine specialist clinic a couple weeks ago and they poked and prodded, and then decided on more blood work and a CT scan. In fact they misdiagnosed something** it seems, at least according to my regular doctor. I hope they find something to explain the weirdness, and I also hope it's incredibly minor. "Eat more broccoli," they'll say. "No," I'll reply. They asked me to track my temperature each day over the holidays too, so I bought a digital thermometer to do so. I'm very consistently between 35.3 and 36.7 degrees. (I check before and after sleeping, so my body is kinda shut down at the time.

Still working for the back-medication-sounding company**. Moving out of recruitment and desk work a bit in 2008, back to teaching more. Somewhere between 50% and 75% seems to be the thought of my boss, but somewhere between 40% and 60% is my plan. Lot of benefits, including better compensation (to be determined) and plans to work with the IT team on internal programming and testing projects. Could lead to some fun stuff and a completely different area. Biggest benefit: getting to play with exciting new technology*** again. Should all happen in February or so. This company has a habit of dragging things out****, so who knows.

Christmas has been fun. My parents are taking 1_2_ready_go and me to Hawai'i January 9th, so we planned to skip their house for the holidays and just do New Brunswick. We flew to Saint John on Sunday, and flew back this morning. Quick trip! Nice to get down there though, as I haven't seen Vin's family in a couple years. My mom is a little insistent about us visiting though, I think because of my health, so we're going to head up there on Saturday for the night. Another quick trip, but at least the travel time is shorter.

Bizarreness Bulletin: We will be in Hawai'i January 9-18*****. I recently learned that my boss, our Toronto Branch Manager, and some local friends will be there at that time too. A little creepy.

* just a rash
** according to Sarah
*** also Vista, unfortunately
**** research our press releases for a depressolarious laugh
***** Kona for six nights (staying here) and Honolulu for two nights (staying here). Just for the shopping in American dollars. I know!

I still love this icon. If you live in Toronto or use our streetcars, check out www.mynewstreetcar.ca to sound off on what you want to see in the new ones!
Vincent is sick with strep throat, as am I. However, he's brand new to it, whereas I'm on day four of antibiotics. Learn more about strep throat from the medical experts of wikipedia!
I'm flying to Winnipeg today for a 2-day class. Back Wednesday. I hope my husband will be OK, I feel guilty leaving him home sick.
I just opened a new bank account for the money I'm collecting for our family reunion. *Another* plastic card to carry around. Woo!
While I'm waiting for my flight, having free internet would be wonderful, but neither YYZ nor YWG have free internet. Grrr.

I just booked some promo fares on Porter Airlines, Canada's coolest airline. Woohoo! They fly out of Toronto Island, which is about 25 minutes by public transit from us (and even closer when we leave from work), compared to an hour (or worse) with Pearson (Canada's busiest airport).

We're heading from Toronto to Halifax for the second weekend in August for the family reunion. The reunion is actually in PEI, but the chance to fly Porter for cheap was worth it, since to fly cheap we'd be heading for either Halifax or Moncton anyway, and renting a car anyway.

Exciting!

Current Mood: excited

Inspired by

kethara :

Ten things I've done that you probably haven't:

Visited South Africa
Slept in a tent across the harbour from Charlottetown
Written computer-based certification exams
Taken a greyhound bus from Kitchener to Toronto and back on a Saturday
Been on The National (Vinny and me)
Been quoted in The Globe & Mail (Vinny and me)
Flown in a jet where the staff outnumbered the passengers (Vinny and me)
Watched a cousin get married and then her child get baptized in a five minute span
Eaten President's Choice Blue Menu Reduced Fat Chicken Lasagna
Argued with Microsoft that they should be letting me install Windows Vista and not make my company pay (oy, what a day)

I don't know why, but all the news is bunched up together this week.

Sunday: C&V put an offer on a house
Monday: home inspection where inspector fell on Vinny's head which was not fun
Tuesday: Offer finalized
Wednesday: Cam sick
Thursday: My mother called to tell me that my grandmother died a couple hours ago. Also (of far less import) Rogers discovered we were getting full cable for the basic price, and cut off my Star Trek in the middle of an episode. (*rude*)
Friday: Meet with movers to get estimate, also have sushi with some friends
Saturday: Meet with mortgage broker and be in far more debt all of a sudden
Sunday: Go to mass with my parents and aunt and uncle to (a) be with them while mourning my grandmother, (b) witness my cousin get Catholic-married so that (c) her daughter can be baptized. Also my parents are taking their dog Mel to a spa, but that's not really affecting us.

Surreal week.

Hi Dad,

First off, an illustrative top-ten list I found:

10) In the 1990s, Canada ranks 109th among 163 nations in voter turnout, slightly behind Lebanon, in a dead heat with Benin, and just ahead of Fiji.

9) In 1984, the Progressive Conservatives win 50% of the votes but gain nearly 75% of the seats, close to an all-time record for the largest percentage of "unearned seats" [according to Fair Vote Canada --Cam] in any federal election.

8) In 2004, more than 500,000 Green voters fail to elect a single MP anywhere, while fewer than 500,000 Liberal voters in Atlantic Canada alone elect 22 Liberal MPs.

7) In 2000, twenty-two candidates become MPs despite winning less than 40% of the votes in their ridings.

6) The 2006 election produces a House with only 21% women MPs, with Canada now ranking 36th among nations in percentage of women MPs, well behind most Western European countries.

5) In 1993, the newly formed Bloc Quebecois comes in fourth in the popular vote, but forms the Official Opposition by gaining more seats than the second place Reform Party and third place Tories.

4) In 2000, 2.3 million Liberal voters in Ontario elect 100 Liberal MPs while the other 2.2 million Ontario voters elect only 3 MPs from other parties.

3) In 1993, more than two million votes for Kim Campbell's Progressive Conservatives translate into two seats – or one seat for every 1,000,000 votes. Meanwhile, the voting system gives the Liberal Party one seat for every 32,000 votes.

2) In 1984, when competing for the Liberal leadership, Jean Chretien tells reporters in Brandon, Manitoba, he would introduce proportional representation "right after the next election" if he became prime minister.

1) In 1993, Jean Chretien wins the election and begins his ten-year reign as prime minister. In three elections, he never wins more than 42% of the popular vote, but still forms "majority" governments thanks to the current voting system. He never gets around to introducing proportional representation.

(from http://www.fairvotecanada.org/en/node/148)

Here's a positive example of Proportional Representation you can read up on: Germany. They use MMP (mixed-member proportional), which I like a lot. Basically you vote once for your local MP, and once for your favourite party. Then the seats are allocated 50%+ by your local votes, just as we do now, and up to 49% by your party vote.

More countries to research: Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, New Zealand, Australia, Scotland, Wales, Ireland.

Popular misconceptions:

Instability? Since 1949, Germany has had only three minority governments. Most others were formal majority coalitions. We use the word coalition incorrectly in Canada -- we often think of it as a short-term backroom deal -- but these were formal agreements, with Cabinet seats to both parties, and a stable governing pattern.

Disproportionate power to the fringe groups? This is a false argument, because we already have this and we pretend that it's OK. The BQ got 12% of the vote in 2004, but got 18% (fifty-four) of the seats. The Tories for 12% of the vote in 1993, but only 0.6% (two) of the seats.

Seats for the Marijuana Party and the Nazi Party? Canada currently blocks campaign funding for fringe groups by requiring 2% of the vote. Most PR systems require 3-5% of the vote before you get any seats at all.

More elections?
Ireland: 16 elections since 1948, 1 election every 3.63 years
Germany: 16 elections since 1949, 1 election every 3.56 years
Canada: 17 elections since 1949, 1 election every 3.35 years

But Italy and Israel! Italy and Israel!!
"...both Italy and Israel have historically used versions of pure party list proportional representation (Italy recently switched to a system more similar to Germany's) that Canadian electoral reformers are not interested in introducing in Canada anyway." (See Myth link below) [That's a relief to me! --Cam]

More reading:

Myth #1: PR leads to minorities
(http://idealisticpragmatist.blogspot.com/2006/11/myth-1-proportional-representation.html)
Well-written and accessible PR FAQ
(http://idealisticpragmatist.blogspot.com/2005/11/proportional-representation-faq.html)
Descriptions and sample ballots for various PR systems
(http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/BeginnningReading/PRsystems.htm)
Fair Vote Canada (they're a little shrill, maybe with some reason)
(http://www.fairvotecanada.org/about_fairvoting)
A PR Library
(http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/prlib.htm)
Wikipedia Entry
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_Representation)

Hope you find this interesting,
Cam

I received a promotional offer from Wired yesterday that was too good to pass up: $12.97 CDN for a one-year subscription. $1.08 per issue. That's so ridiculous I had to sign up to show them the error of their ways.

Today I ruined any monetary benefit I might have gotten by also subscribing to FAIR. Oh well.

I'm looking forward to FAIR. Check out their current slate of articles. I figure it will give me more ammo to use against my Dad. Or more likely right-wing blogs and news outlets, since I'm more comfortable arguing with them than with my father.

* Please note that this phrase does *not* refer to Wired.

(items in bold already booked and confirmed)

22 Dec - pick up rental car, drive to Wasaga Beach
23 Dec
24 Dec
25 Dec - drive as far as we can
26 Dec - arrive Fredericton
27 Dec - Vincent attends high school reunion, Cameron hangs with his homies in Fredericton
28 Dec
29 Dec
30 Dec - drive to Ottawa
31 Dec - host NYE party with Pete
1 Jan - drive to Kitchener

Reminders:

Today is Vinny's birthday! He's tired of LiveJournal, so you'll have to wish him well the old fashioned way.
Today is also Talk Like A Pirate Day! So avast ye mateys and get to work!

1. Every time I walk by the payphone at the office, it has on the screen, "Please lift receiver." Seriously 100.0% of the time, I think of

jdhorner's story of confusion over why Montrealers kept walking up to phones, lifting the receivers, then putting them back again.

2. More recently, whenever I take two inner slices of bread from the bag, and return the heel of the loaf to its end position, I think of

msvu20's belief that it has a supernatural protective power, protecting the other slices from harm.

3. We have a squeegee in our shower, which we use to reduce the effect of the horrid, horrid KW water on our not all that special really shower tiles. Being a good geek, I have a pattern to using it. Every time I reach one spot in this wiping pattern, I think of my little brother. I have no idea why.

4. Our cat Lucky has similar colouring to a cat I had in high school named Winnie. I often almost call Lucky by her name instead. We have a program on the computer that cycles through our digital photos and displays them on the desktop while we're working (it's called Vital Desktop in case you're curious). In the collection there is only one picture of Winnie, but oddly when I see it I never recognize her. She doesn't seem familiar to me at all. It's like my brain has decided that Lucky looks more like Winnie than Winnie did.

5. The disposable cameras at our wedding were of a low quality (Loblaws brand; I'm cheap), and the lenses were not very good in some, leading to warped images. It's only visible when a person is on the edge of the frame. There's a picture that we love of

leapfish and our friend David (his best man David's boyfriend -- yes, David & David) smiling at the camera, but Vin is on the edge of the frame and is stretched slightly. Every time I look at this photo, I think of Quentin Tarantino. Just a little.

I dare you to think up things that remind you of things but not include any sex-related ones.

Finally got around to getting the vacation pictures off the camera...

( See them! )

Every couple years,

leapfish and I decide that driving several thousand kilometres over a short period of time makes sense. During the trip we always have second thoughts, but beforehand it always makes sense. And here we go again!

( Details and fun fun maps! )

What an exciting trip this will be! Jesus, I'm already exhausted just from typing out a description. The plan (and we all know how plans go) is to bring the digital camera and battery charger and take lots of fun pictures, since it'll be nice and warm and sunny (that's a hint for you, gods of weather) rather than below-zero like our last huge trip.

Time for groceries!

( Point by point, with pictures interspersed... )

Current Mood: exhausted

pretty random

Entries tagged with family

Navigation

Take me back to old New Brunswick

The Angst After Tomorrow

Boxes Day

Points and links...

Travel Excitement

A Meme to Distract Me

News all bunched up together

Convincing my Dad to consider Proportional Representation

Apparently you can find in-depth news articles* on glossy paper now.

It's the end of the year as I know it.

Happy Baarrrrrrrrrr!thday

5 Things that remind me of Things

Vacation Pics

Trip Planning

Exhaustion and a bit of a trip report

Profile

August 2015

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