ye olde update

Ottawa tends to attract a lot of interns, and our church helps churn some through (although we do encourage/threaten them to stay/return). Julia was here from Alberta for a bunch of months, and just as she was leaving a few weeks ago we received Eric from BC.

I'm sure Julia will fondly remember her stay in Ottawa, having both totalled a car and lost a cell phone here.


We're doing our best to give Eric some memories too, like having to wear an arguably cool cowboy hat as the staff sang happy birthday to him at a restaurant. That's what he gets for letting slip that it was his b-day.


The evening of Julia's farewell we hung out at Justin's new apartment, which hadn't a stick of visible furniture except on the balcony. Justin's fairly new to town, not an intern, and has inexplicable loyalties to Toronto. We'll convert him yet. Since he has no furniture and loves soccer, I've discovered the perfect item for his living room: foosball for 22!

Sigh... I can't win

So... funny story. Remember that blue bike that a thief so kindly left behind for me after stealing my other bike? Gone. If that's not an anti-bike message I don't know what is. I mean, who acquires and then loses two bikes in a period of 24 hours!??

Next time I venture outside, I'm attaching myself to a tether so I don't get stolen too.

Huh. I guess this story wasn't so much haha funny as it was not-funny-in-the-slightest-sense funny.

Something borrowed, something blue...

Yesterday I went and bought me a bike. Carrie has one and she's been hinting that I should get one so we can go for bike rides and such healthy nonsense. So I went to the local bike recycle branch of the Salvation Army and happened to find a bike that's actually big enough for me. That was fortunate in itself because they only had a handful of bikes ready to sell. So I loaded it (well okay, half of it) into the trunk of the car and drove home. A nice new-to-me black mountain bike!

In other news, my bike got stolen last night. That's right, twelve wonderful hours of bike ownership was apparently all I'd get out of that one. (But I'll cherish those memories for many, many years... *sniff.) I'd left it outside in the carport but didn't have a bike lock for it yet. Just before going to bed I checked outside on a whim, and there it was, gone!

That's not the weirdest part. The thief left me his old bike so he basically traded up. What's wrong with this? Well, it's smaller; it's blue; and it's a rusty Canadian Tire special. So I'm pretty sure I got the raw end of the deal. I left my new blue bike out overnight on the off chance that the perp would come back and retrade, but no such luck. I guess now I'll sell this blue one to recoup some of my costs (dozens of dollars).

Carrie's bike has been sitting outside overnight for weeks, usually locked up but sometimes not. It's a pretty good bike too, but it probably helps that she keeps it behind the car and not out in the open.

Anyway, I was always happy this was a low-crime area. It just sucks that the "low-crime" part has to involve me!

Another month, another post

Well it's been a few weeks so I suppose some things have happened that may or may not be blogworthy.

The best news of course is that Rev. George Vanpopta from Ancaster has accepted the call to our church, so our vacancy - which has just barely started - is nearly over. Bonus: he was minister at our Ottawa church already once before.

Carrie's been kind of wanting a dog for a while, so recently we did a trial run. We dogsat for some friends for two weeks. And by we I mean I. The dog's only fault was that she craved attention. Oh, and that one time I found some 'nuggets' in the corner of the living room... but that was probably our fault. She never begged for food. In fact, she rarely ate, sometimes going an entire day without eating. A very well-behaved dog though; she hardly made a sound, never licked people, sat quietly through baths... basically she raised the bar so high that we know we'll never find as well-behaved a dog. So no dogs for us.

Contrary to popular belief, it's a dachshund, not a rat.

Dry:


Wet:


Her favourite spot:


A couple of weekends ago, we had some friends over from Toronto who were here for a wedding. Yay for a spare bedroom and oodles of space! We hung out with them on Saturday and even did a touristy walk downtown. We'll have to have company more often so that we get to see more sights.


Things aren't entirely green yet; most trees aren't exactly foliage-laden yet. Here's a colour-accented pic from the balcony.


This post is taking too long, so that's it for today.