Author: Lowell

Progress

Our basement is slowly taking shape. The walls are roughed in and there is insulation in the exterior walls. Most of the plumbing and electrical has also been completed. We were told today that they would be painting next week.


Renovations

As some of you know, we decided to renovate our basement. The space down there wasn’t as functional as it could be–you had to walk through three rooms to get to the back corner–and it certainly wasn’t pretty or comfortable. After getting several contractors to quote us on the job, we decided to move ahead with the project. We were told, originally, that work wouldn’t begin until after Christmas, but then our contractor informed us, on the day before we left for Alberta for Thanksgiving, that he would like to start work on the day after we got back from our trip. This sent us into a bit of a scramble, since we hadn’t done any organizing of our things in the basement since we moved back. We were able to push the start-date back a day, giving us a day to move our things into our garage before demolition started. Here is the basement just before the start of demolition.

Here is how it looked after about 80 percent of the demolition was completed.

Being Nostalgic

So we’ve been back in Manitoba now for about three and a half months. It’s been (mostly) great–I say “mostly,” because it’s been difficult (so far) for me to be productive on my dissertation. However, it’s also been long enough to begin to miss some things about our lives in Massachusetts.

For one, we’re already missing the fall and winter seasons in Massachusetts. Not that anyone particularly enjoys winter, even Massachusetts winters, but the winters there were exponentially more endurable than they are here. It’s not winter here yet, but the colder days have been enough to make us dread the upcoming winter. And even though the fall season is pretty here, it’s more pretty and longer in Massachusetts.
I’ve also missed my running route. Part of my running route here is Wellington Crescent which, don’t get me wrong, is nice, but the route also requires me to run a significant amount on streets and sidewalks. In Northampton, I had a nicely reclaimed rail line I could run. There were mature trees along the sides and most of it was a significant distance away from busy streets and car traffic.
There is also just a sense of loss, knowing that we will probably never again live where our children were born and, in L’s case, spent the first few years of his life. I, and I’m sure Pam does too, have a lot of fond memories of our time there, and we may never again be able to spend significant time where those memories were formed. That makes me sad. Oh well, as the cliche goes, you can’t have everything.

How Times Have Changed

When I opened my web browser today, there was a story there about the fact that the American division of Blockbuster has filed for bankruptcy protection. That got me thinking about how times have changed. As recently as five years ago, Blockbuster was the only place to go when you wanted to rent a movie. Not so much any more. While in MA, we had a subscription with Blockbuster that consisted of a combination of mail-out movies and coupons for free in-store rentals. The subscription suited us quite well, because we, who weren’t really “in the know” about which new movies were coming out, still liked to walk up and down the aisles to see what had been recently released. We would then pick up a free rental with our coupon and go home and add various movies to our mail-out queue. Blockbuster Canada doesn’t have the subscription options that Blockbuster America did, and, although we haven’t really been watching movies since we moved to MB, we have been transitioning to a new way of consuming movies. Last weekend, we rented a movie on iTunes and watched it on our TV while it was uploaded from the computer we use as a media center. The experience was a good one, and we’ll probably go that route again. I have to say, though, that I still prefer to walk the aisles of the movie store to see what’s been recently released. For some reason, I find Blockbuster’s and iTunes’ websites frustrating in this regard.

Cars

As you know, we bought a Subaru Outback this spring. Pam has mentioned several times that she likes the car. Good thing. Otherwise, she would be in disagreement with these experts, who say that the 2010 Outback is the best car made for a Mom. Having read their opinion, however, I’m now wondering whether it’s also the best car made for a Dad.

Speaking of cars, do you know how much it costs you to keep your vehicle on the road? Recently, I thought it would be a good idea to take all of the bills we’ve kept over the years and compile a spreadsheet that would tell us how much it has cost us to drive our VW. The VW certainly keeps the fuel costs down, but I was somewhat shocked at the amount that maintenance and insurance add to the cost of driving. I haven’t double-checked my formulas on the spreadsheet yet, but the preliminary verdict is that it has cost us about 35 cents per mile (which excludes the cost of diesel) to drive the Jetta! If you add fuel costs, that means that a trip out Steinbach way and back costs about 50 dollars, and trip to Riding Mountain and back twice that much. Ouch!

Saskatchewan

On the long weekend, we packed up our camping gear and turned the Outback west toward Moose Jaw. The Friesens have established somewhat of a tradition where the Manitobans meet Aunt I from Calgary at Buffalo Pound Provincial Park, which is halfway between Winnipeg and Calgary near Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Given that it was feasible for us to join the group this year, we decided to do so.

In the middle of the open prairie, something we missed while living on the east coast, a valley opens up and you get a nice view of the lake below. L and cousin C had lots of fun hiking up the hill by our campsite to look at the lake and, perhaps, spot some deer.

Here Aunt I is trying to figure out how to refold her collapsible pack sink–some things take longer when there aren’t men to help out.

L got to try out minigolf for the first time and it was a real hit. I’m sure we’ll be doing more of it in the future.


Here L and cousin C are busy waiting for everyone else to get ready so that they can go try out the boat. L hasn’t overcome his fear of water yet, so he refused to climb in when the boat got to the lake.

Outdoor Fun

There have been several birthdays in our extended families over the past weeks. The weather has been beautiful, so we’ve celebrated them outdoors: at Birds Hill Provincial Park, the Assiniboine Park Zoo, and at Shady Oaks Campground.

K is drawn like a magnet to anything she can climb.

Here L is enjoying some quality time with Aunt C in our backyard. The brush in the background is from my efforts to tame one of the trees in the backyard. The title to our Outback finally arrived yesterday and we were finally able to bring it into Canada. I had to tame the tree so that we could park the Jetta on the cement pad.

Even better than eating a marshmallow is roasting it on an open fire.

Pretty soon cousin T will be as active as K is.

Here L is showing off his bocce ball technique.

A Whirlwind Month

Wow! It’s been a busy month. It’s hard to believe that a month ago we were still in our Massachusetts apartment. So much has happened since then. We loaded the Uhaul, drove the 3000 kilometers to Manitoba, unloaded, visited some family and friends, and tried to orient ourselves in our new setting. I think we’re about 90% unpacked. It would be nice if I was that far along in reacquainting myself with my dissertation. With all that’s happened in the last month, the dissertation feels like a world away. Hopefully that changes soon. Here are some photos.

Before we left Massachusetts, some of us went to go see the basketball hall of fame in Springfield.

Some of the nice things about being back in Manitoba are the big sky

and getting fed cake and ice cream and Grandma and Grandpa’s.

One Last Hoorah

The loading day is just around the corner and our moving help has arrived from Manitoba. We’ve spent some days showing them around, which has also allowed us to say goodbye to some of our favorite places in Massachusetts. We went to our favorite lighthouse on Cape Ann where we spent a nice hour on the beach while the tide was out. We also collected a sample of sand to take with us back to the prairies.


Yesterday we wanted to show our guests the view from the top of Mount Greylock. Unfortunately, the fog and rain made visibility about 200 ft.

Today we went for a walk in Northampton and took a last turn around the track at Smith College.