fall

The changing of seasons is a curious thing. I find that most people observe the change almost like a checklist or a scavenger hunt. Collect all the signs of fall/spring/summer/winter! Each marker of change that you observe seems significant at the time, but the following day you will observe a new one that seems even more final.

And there is no going back. Once you've checked off a marker of change, you can't uncheck it again. It's like a ratchet, always clicking forwards, and with each click you think, "Ah! NOW fall is beginning!"

Items on the autumn checklist may include:
- various shifts in temperature, such as the shift from "it is essentially warm with a bit of a chill" to "it is essentially chilly, no matter how warmly the sun is shining"
- seasonal smells detected for the first time, such as rotting leaves or snow on its way
- leaves changing colour & falling, each species of tree at its own time
- blackberries ripening and then shrivelling (this is a very noticeable marker of the end of summer in BC)
- chestnuts falling
- the first snow on the mountains (the first snow in the valley isn't an indicator of any season in particular, it's always just an indicator of freaky weather)
- etc.

Today's ratchet click towards fall was that it was the first day that I really ought to have worn a jacket. I went out in my simple zip-up hoodie and it was not enough. It was grey and chilly and rainy and it even thundered for about 20 minutes (which is a rare and noteworthy occasion in this coastal climate). The dog at work went crazy when it thundered, but not as crazy as last time.

On a different note, I would like to point out that my friend Adam The Astronomer has returned to Chile and has thus resumed writing his online journal. You may find the link to your left, or here if you're lazy. It's a good read for anyone who wants to read about professional geeks in action, or about Chilean pubs.

this is how much work I got done today

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

a good father

Today I had the opportunity to witness a good and loving father in action. Part of the beauty of watching this scenario is that I never understood a word he was saying (he didn't speak any English), but his love for his daughter and his wisdom as a parent was still so evident.

It was his daughter's first day at after school program, and he walked with her from the school to the program. When it came time to leave her there, she started to cry. He gave her a few reassuring words and then "left". She just stood there and cried more and more, and wouldn't accept any of our peace offerings of snack and a chair to sit down on.

At one point I looked up through the window in the classroom door to see her father standing at a distance down the hall, out of sight, but still carefully watching his daughter. After some time, when her crying only became more instead of less, he came back into the room and sat down next to her. Mostly he was quiet, but he also spoke some calm but firm words, as if to give her both reassurance and a pep talk.

Over the next two hours he would leave and sit out of sight in the stairwell for 20-30 minutes at a time, but would always return to his daughter to offer more gentle but firm words. He finally managed to get her to pay attention to a picture book I had offered, and it was beautiful to hear him describe the pictures in his quiet, calm voice.

It was a beautiful balance of firmness, authority, gentleness, and unfailing love and devotion.

it's that time again...

No, not "back-to-school" time. (Fooled ya!) It's time to post about what kinds of things people have typed into search engines that have led them to my blog.

- intricate scary floor pattern
- corset superhero
- bono vox is gay or not
- really ugly teenagers
- mennonite bastards
- justice anne mctavish
- part time non-german speaking student jobs in frankfurt
- how to behave when a colleague's mother passes away
- hate patullo bridge
- faithful husband

And the perennial favourites are still (out of the past 100 searches):
- superhero activities (6 hits)
- prayer for a dead hamster (5 hits)
- chopstick hairdo (5 hits)
I'm beginning to feel myself to be an expert on these topics, as they continue to generate a good number of hits even more than a year after I posted about them.

why I like canoes better than kayaks (avec prelude)

Prelude
Many things have transpired since my last post. In a nutshell, I had a week of vacation and Aaron and I went camping, then my best friend Liz showed up in town and we hung out, and then I went away on a work retreat. And now I'm home again.

Aaron and I went camping on Galiano Island, and we enjoyed nature. We spent time in the sun, on the beach and kayaking. We played in tidal pools. We saw deer, even baby deer, and they looked so wonderful when they bounded away! We saw phosphorescent micro-organisms in the ocean at night. We also heard some seals who suffered from night terrors and sleep apnea. Or at least that's what it sounded like.

Our camping trip was also pest-free except for the occasional wasp. Galiano Island does not have any bears at all, and apparently their raccoons and skunks are not interested in garbage or dirty dishes left out overnight. I got one mosquito bite in three evenings of sitting by the campfire in a tank top. Honestly, it was kinda creepy to be that unmolested by nature.

Visiting with Liz and her mom was also fun. Aaron got to spend more time with them than I did, because they were still in Vancouver the whole time I was away on the work retreat.

Finally, I spent three days and two nights in a cottage with my colleagues. It was pretty chill. My favourite part was canoeing. I have been both canoeing and kayaking in the past two weeks.

Here is why I like canoeing better than kayaking:

- The whole means of steering is far more tangible in a canoe. Foot pedals that turn a rudder simply do not have the same effect as a well-wielded paddle. I imagine the difference to be much like driving a standard as opposed to an automatic. You gain a more tangible control over things when you cut out the "middle man" machinery. You can't turn a kayak on a dime without resorting to canoe tricks (which are more difficult with a super-long buttless kayak paddle).

- I like the point of view better in a canoe. You are higher up, which means you have a better angle for looking down into the water, and the scenery in general looks better in my opinion.

- The seating arrangement is more comfortable. In a kayak your legs are stuck straight out in front of you and resting on foot rests. I like the properly seated or kneeling positions better, and you have more options to find a comfortable position without knocking your knees on the bloody kayak.

- I prefer taking powerful individual paddle strokes rather than trying to be a smoothly fluttering kayak whirly-bird. Again, it just feels more tangible somehow.

- When canoeing, you can switch the side you're paddling on and give some of your muscles a rest while still moving forward. When kayaking, the only rest your muscles get is when you stop.

- Finally, I simply feel more at home in a canoe. I have developed a full complement of canoe habits over the course of my lifetime, and I feel like a canoe is somewhat like a natural extension of my body. Not so much with kayaks.

I win!

This post is an Annemarie-style post in that it talks about housecleaning that I have accomplished today. When Aaron came home from grocery shopping, I challenged him to think of a visible surface (i.e., not inside cupboards) in the bathroom that I had not cleaned. So here's the scorecard:

Diedre's points (stuff I cleaned):
mirrors
faucets
bathtub
the soap dish in the wall of the bathtub
light fixture
the fan in the ceiling
the outside of the drawers
the ceiling
on top of the wall cupboards
the floor

Aaron's points (stuff I didn't clean):
the shower curtain rod

Other points I would have had if he had asked:
the back side of the toilet tank (and the wall behind it)
the toilet paper holder
the walls
other obvious stuff like the sink and the toilet bowl/seat

blarney

Tee hee! There are five honest-to-goodness Irish in the office today! They're chattering away with THICK accents and it's both fun and funny! I have to ask them to repeat themselves half the time, I can't understand most of what they say the first time around.

crazy bus drivers

Yesterday I walked past one of those bus waiting areas where bus drivers take their breaks between runs. I heard a strange noise coming out of one of the busses. When I looked closer, I realized that there were two bus drivers hanging out in the bus, and one of them was playing the BAGPIPES. How's that for a lunch break activity?

thou shalt watch Stardust

Aaron and I watched Stardust yesterday, and it was awesome! It was a good fairy tale/quest/adventure movie, filling the same sort of niche in my heart as The Princess Bride. It made me laugh lots too! I fully intend to buy it when it comes out on DvD (and that's saying something, because I usually just rent movies), and I fully intend to watch it many more times over the course of my life. And show it to my kids. And my parents. And everyone else. I believe this movie is completely appropriate for anyone who is old enough to cope with the largely goreless killing of disposable characters, the off-screen killing of animals, and scary witches.

I'm not very talented at writing reviews, so let me cut myself short and simply say: Watch it, it is highly entertaining. Now turn off your computer and go watch it.

fabulous frolics

Everybody should go and look at Annemarie's picture-filled post about our camping trip.

What are you waiting for? GO LOOK AT IT!!!

camping at Wells Grey

We spent the long weekend camping with Sam and Annemarie. We live in opposite corners of British Columbia, so we decided to drive to the middle and camp at Wells Grey Provincial Park.

It was fun and relaxing and we got to use our tent outdoors for the first time! (You may recall that we had already set it up in our living room and slept in it for two nights.) This is the summer of buying camping gear, so we also broke in a new tarp, camp chairs, camp pots/pans, and a new air mattress for Aaron. It was tres exciting. Maybe next time we'll buy our own cooler. And remember to bring dish soap.

We spent Sunday driving around the park and looking at various natural and historical sights. There was a carbonated mineral spring that was bubbly and covered in bright orange goo. When you threw rocks in, the goo closed up immediately over top and you couldn't tell that anything had changed. There weren't even surface ripples. It was as if the rock had ceased to exist the moment it touched the goo!

The other pleasant surprise was Helmcken Falls. I figured we were just going to go see a bunch of mediocre-but-cool waterfalls in the park, but Helcken Falls are the real deal! They are three times as tall as Niagara, although they are of course much much narrower. But there is a still quite a significant amount of water pouring over (they are not wispy), and there is a cool hollowed-out part in the cliff that has mainly been eroded by winter ice from the mist. Here is a picture that I found online, although I don't think it really does the falls justice, they're WAY bigger than that!

my personal highlight reel (from today's ultimate game)

1) I jumped up and knocked a disc out of the air before anyone else could jump up and grab it (there were 2 of them on me).

2) I was jogging along somewhat close to an opponent, basically just trying to get out of the way, when I noticed from her face and posture that she was about to catch the disc in about 0.6 seconds. I didn't have time to find the disc in the air, so I just ran right in front of her and managed to have the disc bounce off my side without me ever seeing it. It was a successful, if unusual, defensive move.

3) I caught a point. Apparently the opponents decided that a tired female was not worth covering, and I ran unhindered into the open end zone. And then I caught it.

it is finished

I finished the new Harry Potter book. I can once again prowl the internet at my leisure, unafraid of spoilers. I can once again return to work without fear of my babbling teenagers. Victory is mine! And I will not spoil it for the rest of you, so read on without fear.

I am beginning to realize that I am a master of "willing suspension of disbelief". So many of the little plot twists and turns were things that had occurred to me at some point before they happened, but I never stood back and fully fleshed them out in my mind. I guess I'm not big on predictions because I'm afraid that I'll be right (or wrong), and in the end I just want to experience the story in the sequence that it happens.

random spazzy angry people

Today we had a staff meeting over dinner in a restaurant. As we were chit-chatting and settling down, my boss Jo (female) made a light-hearted comment to a fellow staff member, "Ask and you shall receive...if you behave."

Enter random spazzy angry woman, seated at the table behind us. Let us call her PShAW (It's quite a funny acronym if you don't mind a P in place of an R). She says, "Excuse me, did you just say, 'Ask and you shall receive if you behave'??? I don't know if I can stay in the same restaurant as you!"

Several of us make small comments about how we were just joking. One of my more hot-headed colleagues may have come across slightly antagonistically.

PShAW says, "Excuse me, but do you know the twenty-third psalm? My mother just passed away!"

Hot-headed colleague answers without sarcasm, "I'm sorry for your loss." We settle back into our meeting. PShAW mutters under her breath, "'Ask and you shall receive if you behave'!" *more muttering*

We try to settle back into our meeting. PShAW calls over the waiter. "Excuse me, I would like to change tables please!" As she passes us, she says quite audibly to all, "I don't want to sit near chauvinists."

Throughout the course of our dinner meeting (which is quite long), PShAW leaves the restaurant for some time. She returns and is disgusted to see us still sitting there, and makes more antagonistic mutterings.

Finally, as we leave the restaurant, she is standing outside the door having a smoke. As Jo walks past, she says (audibly again), "There goes the witch. I hope all the grease goes straight to her ass."

And all this because of one rather innocent joking comment. We talked about her later, and we couldn't figure out if she was a Christian who was offended by a perceived mockery of a line of scripture, or if she was antagonistic towards Christianity and didn't want to be anywhere near someone quoting scripture in a public place. Nevermind the fact that her comments were all extremely disjointed and didn't make any sense. Chauvinists?! It was a woman who made the initial comment! And what does the twenty-third psalm have to do with anything? Thankfully we all had the wits to just keep our mouths shut and not quote it back at her.

I figure that either the loss of her mother was so recently painful that she was lashing out, or that she has some sort of personality disorder, or that she was just a normal person with major issues. My vote is with the personality disorder, I don't see how a normal angry person could come up with that crap.

morning brain

Today I will tell you a little tale about how poorly my mind functions within the first few hours of waking up.

I took a shower this morning, and as I was rinsing off my light grey washcloth in the showerhead, I noticed a dozen or more tiny dark dots on it that were not washing off. For some reason, I assumed that they were lice. And then I freaked out because that's really gross. I figured they weren't washing out because they were holding on to the comfy warm washcloth fibres for dear life.

And then I started wondering where on earth they could have come from, and how long Aaron and/or I have had lice, and how there could be so many all of a sudden without us noticing, and if I would have to cut off all my hair to get rid of them. I tried to pick one out of the washcloth, and thought it was odd that it came apart in a fibre-like manner, but then again I had never really been up close and personal with a louse before.

So, I got out of the shower and continued getting ready for the morning, because I didn't see what else I could do about it right then, and I needed to get to work. So I took my dark purple towel and started to dry off. I noticed, for about the 28th time, that this towel had acquired several tiny light-grey pills of fuzz from being washed with our light-grey towels. I wondered why our grey towels never got dark purple pills.

I kept pondering the louse problem. No light dawned.

Finally, when I was almost ready to go, I decided to take another look at the lice. I noticed that in the better light, the lice looked purple. I poked one. I thought it seemed to curled up tighter on the fabric. I picked it out of the washcloth. It trailed a few fibres behind it as if it had been holding on really tightly.

And then I finally figured it out.

Aaron can be very thankful that I had resusted the urge to run out of the shower and wake him up and make him kill the lice. He's even worse than I am in the morning!

reflections of a church bulletin doodler

Today in church I succumbed to the age-old temptation of all church doodlers: I coloured in all the O's on the bulletin (and also the zeroes). Instinctively, I tried to be very precise by colouring 100% of the area inside the O's, and 0% of the area outside of the O's.

Then I caught myself and thought some hippie thoughts along the lines of, "God is a creative and vibrant God! Why should we be limited by the institution of type? We should all be colouring outside the lines and across the lines; we should be thinking outside the box!"

Then I caught myself again and thought, "Nonsense! God created the universe to be quantized at the most minute levels! Empty O, full O, there need not be anything in between, for God's building blocks of the universe are beautiful!"

I continued to colour in the O's, a little less precisely than before, but still generally aiming for inside-the-lines perfection. I'll bet God loves both the organic mess and the quantum precision in the world.

it's geek time again!

In the World of Warcraft, Aaron and I now both have sets of armour that don't look ridiculously mis-matched and actually look decent as a whole for a change. (I once had a butt-ugly assortment of armour that I called my hobo suit.) To celebrate, we had a spontaneous photo shoot. Here are the results! I recommend clicking on the photos so you can see the bigger & better version.


In case you couldn't figure it out, I'm the girl elf with the green braid, and Aaron is the man-elf. The large cat is his pet, named William. I'm being cool and pointing at the camera! (It's a little hard to see at this angle.) And yes, we are standing on a giant mushroom.




Even in computer game photos, some loser will blink. This time it was Aaron.




Aaron flexes to show off how uber he is. William is unimpressed.



I give a girly cheer to show off how uber I am. Aaron is unimpressed.




And finally: our glory shot! Yes, I am being like Storm and making lightning. This time it's my poor little white kitten who is unimpressed. Meow!

bugs and snails and puppydog tails

Today at work we held a big sports day for the kids at our summer day camps. I ran the 100m sprint event, which was nice and straightforward.

The highlight of my day has to be this one kid who was completely fascinated with a bug on his hand, to the point of being oblivious to anything else. He stared at the bug while I was explaining how the heats would go. I had to call him up to the start line three times when it was his heat. The only time he broke eye contact with the bug was during my "on your marks, get set, go!" when he glanced up to see where he was going. He kept his head up for the first few steps, and then got worried that he'd drop the bug. He lightly jogged the rest of the race, eyes glued to that bug in his hands. Even when his group walked back to the start line to grab their stuff after the race, this kid still trailed behind with his bug. How cute!

romance alive and well among minivan owners

This weekend Karl and Terry came to hang out with Aaron and me after attending the bit Mennonite conference in Abbotsford all week. We had fun!

When we were all done with our picnic and frisbee-throwing at the park in Steveston, we returned to our car. Right next to our car was a minivan, complete with a pair of white, upper-middle-class, thirty-something, heterosexual owners. They were leaning against it and sharing a very romantic and intimate kiss.

We slowed down as we approached our car in order to give them some time to finish up. They took all that time and then some. Eventually we just walked right up next to them and got into our car. As we were buckling up, the woman started giggling a bit, presumably embarrassed due to how silly they were being with other people so close by. As we drove away, we caught the husband's eye, and we gave him a big thumbs up! He grinned, and they both laughed, and it was all very cute.

le beater extreme

On Friday, I took the ferry to a work retreat, and somebody was bringing this car on the ferry:


It looked like it had spent a year or two in the bush. Intrigued, I attempted conversation with the car's owner. I would have to deem the conversation a failure.

Me: "Neat car!"
Him: "That's what happens when you let a woman drive it for a few hours."
Me: *looking at my two female companions, trying to figure out who exactly he thought would receive his comment well* "That's not a very nice thing to say."
Him: "Huh? Why not?"
Me: *already walking away* "Because I can drive much better than that, thank you very much."

I wish I could have come up with a much cleverer response, but alas, I don't think that well on my toes. Any suggestions for a response to set my mental replays aright?