company

This past week we were graced with visiting relatives who stayed in town for almost precisely 24 hours. My sister and brother-in-law took a Dutch uncle and aunt to Ottawa for a day, since what tour of Canada is complete without seeing Ottawa? Or Banff or Jasper? Or Niagara Falls? Or... um... Smithers? Okay, so it's tough to decide what constitutes a sufficiently complete tour, but they saw most or all of the above so that's a great start. Enough explaining for now; as was my essay-writing philosophy back in the student days: fewer words, more pictures. Well, I rarely wrote any essays, but that's another story entirely.

The first evening we did a nice walk through the local neighbourhood, past the Prime Minister's house (and no, [unnamed sister], that's not on Downing Street), past Carrie's work, past a bazillion embassies, and back home via a slightly crumbier part of town.

The guys:


The gals:


Oom en Tante in front of 24 Sussex (PM's house). Sorry Martine, there's not much to see from the road.


Slightly dirty water; this is where the Rideau River spills into the Ottawa River.


Awesome! Guns! Oh, and some sort of war memorial. But guns!


This the Pearson Building, where Carrie works.


The next day Carrie had to work so it fell to me to entertain... what a nightmare! Despite my lousy efforts, we stayed busy and saw plenty of things.

The Rideau Canal locks, where the canal meets the Ottawa River.


We even got to see the locks in action.


At the war memorial on Wellington, there was some sort of changing (or standing around) of the guard, so we spent a few minutes watching other tourists poke some fun at the gun-wielding guards... always a smart idea.


Finally we enjoyed a great buffet at Tucker's Marketplace Restaurant. I didn't know a place existed where you could get pizza, sausage, chow mein and ice cream all at the same buffet. Pizza! Crazy. But delicious. Oh and nice pose, Oom Geert.


Little story. Last year Carrie and I were in the Netherlands visiting up a storm. We were on the train from Zwolle to Assen (I think). At some random city in between, the train stopped at the station in between to pick up passengers. Well, who happens to walk into our particular train car at that particular time but Oom Geert on his way home from work! We'd met him a week earlier, so luckily we recognized him. Even in Holland we keep running into people we know!

carrie + lawyerness = andrewleavestown

So I was going to write all about my roadtrip to Nova Scotia right after Carrie got called to the bar but (a) I didn't get around to it and (b) I hoped some little elves would do it for me. Well, a little elf named Reuben pulled through and decided to blog about the trip, so why should I bother?

Here's the link to our escapade. Thanks Reuben, I couldn't have done it better myself! (Looks like I have some serious blog-writing competition.)

Canada Day

Why did I ever start a blog? So much work... and now I'm way late updating. And I'm updating stuff in the wrong order. Oh well, I can if I want, you're not my mom. (Unless you're my mom, in which case Hi Mom! *waves*)

So following June during which it rained almost every single day, Canada Day was beautifully sunny. As is my M.O., I didn't wear sunscreen; I sit inside all week and don't leave the house much, so when I do I may as well get all the colour I can.

Carrie had to work in the morning (I know, what's up with that?!) so I headed downtown with a couple of friends. Aside: I don't care much for naming all sorts of people on this site, assuming that people prefer not to be named. But I just came up with the awesomest geek names for this couple: r00b'n'r33n. You're welcome you guys.

Here's them on Rideau Street, the banner in the background unintentional but fitting.


Here's me phoning Carrie to please take the camera battery I left on my desk since the camera works better with it. Not the greatest start to the day. (Some of these pics are borrowed.)


First stop was one of the many performances going on around the city. Basia Bulat is a Canadian musician whose music is easy on the ears (unlike many others). While she was singing, the Snowbirds and CF-18s did a fly-by. Loud and spectacular.


Next we headed to Parliament Hill where the Governor General was finishing a speech. We'd missed Stephen Harper's speech, but then we weren't downtown for speeches. Some bands played for a while, after which things ended with a 21-gun salute.



Earlier we'd randomly run into a few more friends on the street, which was a little unexpected considering the crowds probably topped 300,000 people. For lunch we went to Major's Hill Park and enjoyed some tasty morsels at the Great Canadian Chicken Barbeque, thanks to our Parliamentary inside connections.


Later in the afternoon we parked ourselves on the grass by another stage and listened to some more music.


Then the waiting game... for fireworks at 10pm!

A lawyer and a bureaucrat

Okay, I've been delinquent in blogging and various things have happened in the last month, but better late than never I suppose. Earlier last month, Carrie's parents came for a visit to celebrate the grand occasion of her call to the bar. No that has noting to do with drinking and everything to do with lawyering. She's finally officially a lawyer and is qualified to practice law in Ontario. Side thought: why do lawyers practice law and doctors practice medicine? They've got more training than most of us and should already know what they're doing! Not exactly terminology that instils a whole lot of confidence... But I digress.

Anyway, after years of schooling and hard work, my dear wife has finally made it. But being a Dutch girl who works in law for the government, she's hit the trifecta: blonde and a bureaucrat and a lawyer. Good thing we don't live in Newfoundland or there would hardly exist a joke of which she couldn't be the subject. Side thought: we all have blonde moments (okay, for some they're moments, for others they happen to be extended periods of time, but anyway...), it's just that they're called different things for different people; if I were to have such a moment, I'd call it a senior moment. Again, I digress.

The ceremony for the occasion was held at the National Arts Centre. We drove since a 25-minute walk in fancy clothes on a hot day isn't terribly appealing; the $18 parking fee downtown made me rather thankful that I'm not one of those folks who work downtown and drive to work.

The NAC has a massive organ up front that someone actually played; I have no idea how much use it gets, but one thing was quite obvious at a certain point: the cleaning lady can't reach the top of it. Some scholar was giving a speech when a dove alit atop ye olde organ, stirring up the biggest indoor dust cloud you've ever seen. Fine, it was a pigeon, but that doesn't sound nearly as neat. Anyway, the bird received an ovation, which thoroughly confused the speaker until he noticed the bird as it flew away.



The event was similar to a university graduation, except that a special session of the court was convened for the swearing of the oath. Ontario gained just over 200 lawyers that morning; combined with 3 larger ceremonies in Toronto and a smaller one in London, there's 1000 new lawyers for Ontario. And that's just the summer crowd (there are smaller graduations in the fall I think). And that's just Ontario. I have no idea what the numbers are for doctors graduating, but you'd think if as many people are becoming doctors, our medical system wouldn't be too badly off. Except of course that doctors can practice anywhere (like in the US), whereas lawyers have to be called to the bar for nearly each province or state they want to practice in.



After the ceremony, we went for lunch. After that, the thought of having a lawyer for a wife, combined with the fact that my in-laws were in town, had me freaked out so I skipped town for the weekend, driving as far east as possible. Or something like that. But I'll leave that for another post.

Earlier in the week, we also went to the National Gallery to see art and stuff. There's a big spidey-looking thing in front of the building. Let's call it art.



Many rooms have spots where one can sit and contemplate... contemplate on what our government could have possibly paid for various oddities like stripes and other kindergarten-level designs. Marketing tip: if you put a frame around anything, you can probably pass it off as art and sell it. Okay, I may sound cynical, but at least there was a substantial amount of actual art (pictures that brighten up the room or look like something), so it wasn't a wasted visit entirely.


These walls have eyes.


Hmm... "a little more to the right... perfect, it's straight... something's still not right though..."