17 Jun, 2008

Grey foggy days

'The impact of the weather on something can be pretty depressing'

Thomas Cort (left) and Bridget Brimacombe wait for their flight at St. John's International Airport Monday. The couple who spent their honeymoon on St-Pierre, had their flight home to Ottawa rescheduled three times due to weather.—

Robbie Thomas was wishing for some plane luck Monday. An organizer with the 18th annual Festival of New Dance, she spent Monday hoping members of Toronto Dance Theatre makes it to St. John's in time to kick off the event tonight.

The 12 dancers and five support staff, including artistic director and St. John's native Christopher House, were supposed to arrive Sunday evening.

But they didn't get in because of the weather. The troupe has been rebooked and is set to touch down at noon today.

" We've got our fingers crossed," said Thomas, who manages Neighbourhood Dance Works, the organization running the festival which runs until Sunday in St. John's.

She wasn't alone in having her middle finger crossed over her index digit Monday.

Hundreds were inconvenienced as a number of flights in and out of St. John's were delayed or cancelled between Sunday evening and Monday afternoon.

The airlines are usually quick to respond, she said.

"Normally, in a situation like this, within 24 to 48 hours, everything is back to normal and the backlog is gone."

Thomas will also have to be quick to respond, whether the Toronto Dance Theatre arrives or not.

If the dancers get here as scheduled, she is expecting a " hideously tight turnaround" to get them on stage for the opening gala by 8 p.m.

If they don't make it, she says organizers are putting together a possible Plan B, seeing if some of the performers from this province can launch the festival.

"But there's a lot of technical difficulties with doing that," she said, "because once you've set up the theatre and programmed all the lighting and the cues and everything for one crowd, it is quite a major operation to change it over to another completely different show."

Thomas said her organization is small and bringing the Toronto Dance Theatre to St. John's has taken a lot of effort.

The fact the dancers didn't arrive Sunday means the festival has paid for beds that were never slept in and rehearsal spaces that were never used.

If the dancers ultimately don't make it — and the forecast at press time indicated conditions should improve — Thomas said her organization will be "chronically disappointed."

" The impact of the weather on something can be pretty depressing."

9 Jun, 2008

7 Jun, 2008

Tom and I are officially married.  We are heading off the Saint Pierre and Miquelon this morning (after I sleep for a few hours) for a week.  Update and pictures to follow later.

21 May, 2008

It's about two and a half weeks until Tom and I get married.  We are pretty much done with the planning.  I have my dress (it's perfect and it was less than 150$!  Thank you David's Bridal!), Tom has his suit, we have our rings and a place to get married.  My sister's making the cake, my cousin is taking the pictures, my mother and my aunts are making most of the food for the reception and my aunt, who used to be a hairdresser, is doing my hair.  That's one of the few things I have left to do, I have to decide what I am doing with my hair.  Also I have to buy myself a pair of shoes.  Finding the right pair of shoes will probably end up being the hardest part of the wedding planning.   

Even though our wedding planning has been stress free and easy going, for the last couple of weeks I've been having dreams where I realize that the next day is the wedding and I've forgotten to do something.  Then this morning I dreamt that I overslept and missed the wedding.  I'm not worried that either of these dreams will come true but for some reason I keep having them.

19 Apr, 2008

1 Apr, 2008

I loved YouTube's April Fool's joke.  Anyone who clicked a link on the main page got rickrolled.  I got quite a kick out of it because when I was a tween, Rick Astley was only second to the New Kids on the Block in terms of the music I liked.

 

28 Mar, 2008

Somehow a few days turned into a few weeks since my last post.  Anyway here's the update.

-During Tom's visit from January 17th to 21st we applied for a civil marriage.  We'll be getting married on June 7th at the Hull Courthouse.  I was surprised that the fee we were charged was taxed (GST and QST).  About a week after we applied to get married, I had an appointment to see where we are getting married and I had to bring someone who knows both of us to verify that the information Tom and I provided was true.  I got my friend/roommate Lisa to do that. 

-On my way to visit Tom on January 31st, while I was waiting for my bus in Montreal, a movie or TV show was being filmed at the bus station.  That was pretty cool.  While I was in Vermont, Tom and I attended our friends Paul and Elsbeth's wedding.  It was a nice wedding and short too (it was from 3pm to 6pm and that includes the reception). Unfortunately for me I was nursing a cold that day and was feeling somewhat miserable.

-On February 16th, Tom and I went to poker at Scott's.  I, of course, did not play poker (I like to keep my money) but I did play some Rock Band which was a lot of fun but I really suck at the drums.  Also this was the first poker game since Tom became vegan, so he was questioned about this.  A lot.  Especially by a vegetarian who loves her leather couch a little too much.    

9 Feb, 2008

I've been a little busier than usual and I've actually had a few things to blog about but no time to do it.  I'm having a slower week so I thought this would be the perfect time to blog.  I was home for Christmas from December 21st to December 26th.  It was a pretty quiet visit except for my parents new biting puppy.  He's very cute and good natured but he's still in that bad biting phase. My parents had to put the Christmas tree up on a table to make sure he didn't knock it over. He was just under 3 months old during my visit home. 

On December 27th I headed to Vermont to visit Tom.  It was mostly a quiet visit.  We did some ring shopping and Tom found his ring.  The only other thing we did worth noting was we attempted to make vegan chocolate cheesecake.  We are trying to find a vegan cake for Tom for our little party at my aunt's after the wedding so he can have cake too.  We had to improvise a little when we couldn't find medium tofu at the coop in Montpelier or at Shaw's.  We tried 1 cup of silken and 2 cups of firm tofu (instead of the 3 cups of medium tofu that the recipe called for). It turned out more like pudding with a graham cracker crust than cheesecake.  It was a really sad looking cheesecake; I should have taken a picture.

On January 8th, I headed home.  My first stop was in Montreal to visit with Bryna.  I hadn't seen her since the end of May or beginning of June so it was nice to catch up and talk about our wedding plans.  She's getting married on October 11th.  We had dinner and she drove to the Longueuil metro station.  After I got on the bus for Ottawa and was waiting for it to leave, I noticed someone get on the bus that looked familiar and at first I couldn't place her.  She too gave that look that she recognized me and that's when I realized who it was.  It was one of the math teachers from my CEGEP.  I had never had her as a teacher but Heritage was a pretty small school (there was only about 60 science students in my year) and she arranged for me to tutor one of her Calculus I students.  We talked about what I was doing now (she was happy to hear I was doing my PhD in Math), about my job interview at Heritage in December 2006 (she encouraged me to keep applying for jobs there), what she was up to (she's retired but will be working with the high schools and CEGEPs to make the new high school math program work for both of them) and who had retired from Heritage (which was practically everyone who had taught me).  She told me how a bunch of the retirees get together once a month and have lunch.  It was really nice to catch up with her.

Once I arrived in Ottawa I was suppose to meet up with my roommate Lisa at the Loeb on Rideau street.  She had army that night and my arrival time was suppose to be about the same time as when she was done.  Except my bus was 30 minutes late.  When I got to Loeb and I didn't see her I figured she had left thinking she had missed me.  I had very little time to decide whether I should wait (in case Lisa was late too) or take a bus since the next bus was coming in a couple of minutes and there wouldn't be another one for a while.  So I caught that bus.  When I got off that bus in Gatineau I had about a 20 minute walk.  At the beginning of my walk, I decided to put my purse in my backpack and when I was putting my backpack onto my back, one of the straps broke.  I was not happy.  Especially considering this was now the second roots bag that I had a problem with within a couple of months of purchasing it (I was able to return the first one and will probably be able to return this one).  When I thought things couldn't get any worse, I discovered that the shortcut I normally take to get home was one big puddle.  It looked like someone else had been able to get around it and I didn't feel like taking the long way around because it was late (almost midnight), I was tired, I was carrying my heavy bag with only one strap and I was so close to being home.  I tried to get around it but the puddle won.  I ended up with one wet foot but at least it wasn't far from home and wasn't terribly cold out (which explains the puddle).  Once Lisa arrived home we figured out that we must have just missed each other when she went to drive around and look for me.

That's part 1 of my update.  More to come in a few days. 

7 Feb, 2008

More than half of Canadians under 50 spend their disponsible incomes without thinking about their financial futures.

 

16 Dec, 2007

Here's a couple of videos documenting today's snowstorm.

The front yard this morning and the front yard this afternoon.

The backyard this morning and the backyard this afternoon.

16 Dec, 2007

It is 4 years today that Tom and I have been together.  We thought we were going to be able to spend this anniversary together but the weather conspired against us and Tom went home yesterday.  Our original plan was that Tom would visit me from the 12th to the 16th of December, which I later realized were the exact dates I visited him in 2003 when we just started dating (I also went home early because of bad weather).  Since Vermont and possibly Quebec and Ontario were getting hit with a major snowstorm today, Tom decided to go home early.

The only new development with us is that we set a date to get married; June 7th, 2008.  We're planning a small ceremony at the courthouse in Hull with my parents, my sisters, Tom's parents, and Tom's aunt and uncle.  Afterwards there will be a get together at my aunt Lynn's house with everyone who was at the wedding and my aunts, uncles and cousins.  Then on June 21st, there will be a get together at Tom's parents house in Vermont with his family and friends.

As for Tom immigrating to Canada, I'll probably end up sponsoring him after we are married.  The other day, I was looking at some of the paperwork we need to fill out and there's a section where we essentially have to prove that our relationship is real with pictures, letters, telephone bills, travel receipts etc.  Tom and I were looking through our old email and he found one from me that cracked both of us up.  There was no subject and the text of the email was "Level 3, 79% Bizzotch!!".  We probably won't be sending that one to the Canadian government.

10 Dec, 2007

On November 17th, I went to my sister's birthday party at her apartment.  She lives in downtown Ottawa and that's always interesting.  She was outside with one of her friends and when I popped my head out the window to ask her something and she was laughing pretty hard.  She pointed out a guy who was talking to her friend and told me the guy had peed himself.  She had been with her friend when the guy approached them but she had to walk away once she realized that he had peed himself because she couldn't control herself.  Aside from the guy who peed himself the night was pretty tame.  We had ice cream cake and my sister opened her presents.  One gift from a friend (same friend who talked to the guy who peed himself) was a big bag of cooked bacon along with a couple of other more typical birthday presents.  The bacon was leftover from legion where his parents cook breakfast every few weeks.  It was gift wrapped and everything.  So I think we all had too much bacon that night.  I slept over since the buses suck where I live now (they're fine from Ottawa to Les Promenades but from Les Promenades home they suck big time).  That night while I slept my sister made a move on me.  She woke me up a couple of times when she put her arm around me.

On November 19th, I headed to the passport office in Gatineau to apply for, what else, my passport.  The day before while I was still at my sister's apartment I had her fill out the section for the guarantor and she had to sign the back of one of the photos. I got to the passport office at around 9am (they opened at 8:30am) and was out of there by 9:50am.  Considering all the bad things I've heard about the lines at the passport office I thought this was pretty good but the line was significantly longer when I left than when I got there.  My passport was mailed to me less than 3 weeks later.  

On November 21st I was on my way to visit Tom for American Thanksgiving (or as it's known in the US, Thanksgiving).  As always, I was taking the bus and once we got US customs two customs agents got on the bus and asked if anyone had had any medical procedures recently.  When no one said anything they got a little more specific asking if anyone had had any x-rays taken.  Two people raised their hands.  Everytime we arrive at customs they scan the bus and I guess one of the things they scan for is radiation.  So they checked the rest of the bus a concluded that it was one or both people who had had x-rays that were the source. 

28 Nov, 2007

I don't always agree when Quebec tries to stick it to the federal government but this is one of those times when I could not be happier they are doing it.  From cbc.ca:

"Quebec has distanced itself from the Harper government's anti-Kyoto stance and will voice its dissent at an international climate-change summit next week, the government said.

Members of all three Quebec political parties represented in the National Assembly unanimously adopted a motion dissociating the provincial legislature from the Conservative government's position on the Kyoto Protocol."

You know how Harper has been saying that the Kyoto targets are impossible, well apparently that's not the case in Quebec.

"Quebec believes in binding GHG reduction targets, and is within striking distance of reducing its output of carbon dioxide by six per cent of 1990 levels, the premier said."

Hopefully embarassing the federal government internationally will cause some change.  Stephen Harper, it is time to stop blaming the Liberals (you're not the opposition anymore) and saying that the Kyoto targets are impossible to meet and make some targets that aren't decades away.

 

23 Nov, 2007

Last Friday, I helped my friend and roommate/landlord, Lisa, with bottling the wine she had made.  She had 30 bottles cleaned, sterilized and ready to be filled with the red wine.  She just needed someone to hand her the next bottle to be filled once one was filled and move the filled ones away; that's where I came in.  So we had all the bottles lined up ready to go and she started the siphon (by sucking some wine into the siphon aka the plastic tube).  At first it seemed to go well but about half way through the plastic clip that was suppose to stop the flow of wine stopped working and we had a couple of bottles overflow.  And then we found out we didn't have enough bottles.  So when she was done filling the last bottle and she tried to stop the flow by either using the clip or bending the tube or both (I can't remember) and that didn't work and the bottle overflowed.  She ended up lifting the end of the siphon high enough to stop the flow. She washed and sterilized 3 more bottles and we ended up filling two with what was left of the wine.  The wine now has to age for a month and it will be ready for Lisa to drink.

10 Nov, 2007

On Halloween, I was at my weekly meeting with my supervisor.  I was presenting to him what I had learned during the previous week when his phone rang.  He answered it and said a few things that caught my attention.  He said "That's great news.  She's right here.  I'll tell her."  I had no idea what he could have been talking about.  When he hung up the phone he told me that he and a secretary had gotten me a TA position starting January.  Before I had been told that I would never be able to be a TA at Carleton because it wasn't offered to me when I was accepted.  This has annoyed my supervisor (and me!) for the past three years because I had TA experience (from when I was at UOttawa) and I can speak english unlike a lot of TAs at Carleton.  This has also annoyed my supervisor because there are not enough algebra TAs.  Algebra tends to be harder and for this reason algebra students don't get as good marks as students in other areas of math and so they don't get offered TA positions when they are accepted to Carleton.  Now the new guy running the TA stuff has a different take on who should be a TA and when my supervisor and the secretary submitted my name, he had no problem accepting me.