ye newe update

For May long weekend (yeah I know, that's a long time ago) we went and visited the family "down south". A cousin and his wife and son were over from the Netherlands (incidentally, we met them there almost exactly a year ago) and it was my sister Diana's birthday.

Since Mom and Dad's place had the cousins over, we got to stay at my little sister Marian's place for perhaps the first time. We left Ottawa Friday after work and got there just after 11. Marian had explained where she left the key but I wasn't bright enough to find it. So instead of waking anyone up I skillfully broke into the house through an unlocked basement window. It was a snug fit and my feet had trouble finding a surface once inside, but in the end we got to spend the night indoors.


We hadn't met our latest niece Lani yet so that was our treat in the morning. What a cutie!


Lani snuggles with Carrie. She (Lani!) sported a mohawk all day... better visible in the pic above.


Lani's big brother Levi seemed to possibly remember us from our previous visit(s), but either way he warmed up to us quickly enough. Very entertaining kid, especially when he's enjoying chocolate cake!


As always we had to play Settlers while visiting Brian and Marian. It's just not the same otherwise.


We spent some time at Mom & Dad's to get our fill of everyone else, including some other nephews/nieces (Diana's kids). Megan is Diana's youngest and she's growing like a weed. Also such a cutie; what is it with those nieces of mine?


My cousin Wilson and his wife Marlies (with son Jasper) are in Canada for a month; they house-swapped with a couple in Burlington, which is a handy way to minimize lodging expenses on a long holiday like this. We took them to Niagara Falls one day, but it was very cold and a little wet, so luckily they had the opportunity to go again later on a warm sunny day. I didn't get any good pictures of just them, so I'm cheating and posting a shot from last year.


Jasper and Levi played beside each other, if not together, very well. Someone also got a very cool picture of them kissing goodbye (on being told to); I wish I had that one... it will probably come back to haunt them one day.


You might recall the house that Carrie built. Well, barn. And she did get some help. Anyway, here's the barn just before dusk. It has obviously survived the winter. The sign says "Barn 8"; barns are numbered in the order that they are acquired or built.

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!