Author: Lowell

Rainbow Falls

Pam was working on Sunday about a week and a half ago, so I decided, on a whim, to take the kids to see Rainbow Falls. We packed a lunch, got in the car, and drove out to Whiteshell. When we got to our destination, I was disappointed. I realized that the falls I wanted to take our kids to go see wasn’t Rainbow Falls—I’m still trying to remember the name of the falls that I wanted to go see. After I got over my disappointment, I realized that we could have some fun playing in the water anyway. The falls I intended to take the kids to are much bigger and not the kind that you can play around in. Thus, I didn’t take along any swimwear or life jackets. But we made do. K splashed around in her diaper and L rolled up his pant legs. They got wet anyway, but we were lucky enough to find a dry pair of pants in the car after the fun was over. We stopped for some ice cream on the way home.

Somewhere along the line, L learned how to make silly to the camera.


The Fish Museum

L came up to me the other day and told me that he wanted to show me his fish museum. I went to the living room with him and this is what he showed me. He had taken the letters from our alphabet sponge puzzle, separated them according to colour, and arranged them into fish. Here they are on display at the fish museum. I don’t remember which fish is which, but I know that one of them is a flying fish, one is a Canadian fish, and one is an American fish. Perhaps L wants to be a museum curator when he grows up.

Insignificant Significant Insignificant News

Yes, you read the title of the post correctly. I have some insignificant significant insignificant news. I found out on Saturday that my application to teach the logic course at the University of Winnipeg this fall was successful. So why is this news insignificant significant insignificant news? It’s, as you may have guessed, insignificant news that is, just a bit more significant than other insignificant news, but still pretty insignificant. Are you confused yet?

Let’s work our way from right to left. What makes this insignificant news? Well, I’m 95% certain that, had I not gotten the contract teaching job at the University of Winnipeg, I would have gotten equivalent work at the University of Manitoba, so I wasn’t in the position of being completely out of work if the U of W thing didn’t work out.
What makes it significant insignificant news? Well, as some of you know, when I finally finish my PhD, I’d like to get a job in academia. And, as I’ve been telling some of you, my chances of getting a job in academia are rather like your chances of winning the car you bought a raffle ticket for. Given these odds, not only is it unlikely that I will get a job in academia, it’s even more unlikely that, if I am fortunate enough to get one, it will be anywhere near Winnipeg, Manitoba. The philosophy department at the U of W has, shall we say, been going through some rough times recently. Some people didn’t like some other people, and eventually, a bunch of them decided to go their separate ways. (If you know someone connected to the U of W philosophy department, don’t tell them that I know about this or that I’ve written this post. That could defeat the purpose of my trying to get a teaching job there this fall.) That means that they will be hiring for some long-term (tenure-track) positions in the near future. The reason my news is significant insignificant news is that, maybe, if I am around the department, do my job well, and get to be liked by the right people, I might be considered for one of those positions.
What makes it insignificant significant insignificant news? Well, even if everything goes as well as it could for me at the U of W this coming year, my chances of landing a job there are still, well, about as good as your chances of winning the car you bought your raffle ticket for.
Anyway, in all seriousness, I’m looking forward to the course. It will be a bit of a challenge in that some of the material I will be presenting in the course was material that made some of my graduate-level courses difficult. It will also be significantly more convenient than teaching at the U of M would have been, because I can walk to work if I feel like it—not that anyone feels like walking to work in the middle of winter.

2:03:32

That’s how long it took me to complete my first (half) marathon, 13.1 miles. I missed my goal by 3 1/2 minutes, but, given that I was battling a cold all week, I’ll take it. The race was fun till about mile 8, while running through Kingston Row, when suddenly the pace of my breath began to quicken and I knew that the rest would be a real battle. I managed to keep up with the 2-hour pace runner till about mile 10 and then began to fall behind. Oh well, maybe next time.

I came in 1481st place–just a few placings out of the big money (laugh). 985 men and 495 women crossed the finish line before I did. Lest you think that puts me at the back of the pack, there were 3812 people participating in the race.

Here I am showing off the new hardware I can add to the trophy case.

The Big Day

The big day arrived and the commotion began. Here are some of the junior members of the groom’s family waiting for the bridal party to arrive to take some family pictures.


Although K cooperated by looking at the camera, she stayed with the look of consternation. She was probably thinking, “Why are all of those grown-ups looking and acting so silly?” I’m not sure who is the most well dressed. I guess if one was going to be politically correct, one would say that the bride was. But I’m sure that a parent of two of the smaller members of the wedding party could be excused for choosing someone other than the bride.


After most of the formal pictures were taken, the parents relaxed a little bit and let the children run around on the grass.

Everyone made it down the aisle, but there was a moment, about 10 feet from the doorway, where the three of them stopped to gawk at all of the people who were gawking at them.

Wasting Time

I’m in a celebratory mood. Why? The academic pressure is off. The paper I was working on was well received by my advisor while I was visiting Massachusetts and I gave my students their final exam Monday morning. So how am I going to celebrate? By writing a frivolous blog entry during the time I would normally be working.

My work bag, the bag I carried my books, laptop, lunch, etc. in, was slowly falling apart. I think I paid about $30 for it at Walmart 7 or 8 years ago. It had served me well, but it was time to get a new one. So about 2 months ago I started casually browsing online during my free time to see what was out there. I didn’t really know what I wanted. I knew I didn’t want a backpack. I often wear sport coats on teaching days and, although you do see people wearing backpacks with suit jackets, I’ve always thought it looked a little odd. I also knew that I didn’t want anything on wheels. You see these bags in airports all the time, but you don’t see them on university campuses. I wanted something that looked at least quasi professional, something that wouldn’t look out of place over my shoulder while wearing a sport coat, but I didn’t really know how big I wanted the bag to be or what sort of features it needed to have. So I started looking.
Somewhere along the line I found out about Timbuk2, a company out of California. They got into the bag market by designing bags for bike messengers, but I became interested in some of their bags designed for more businessy types. Shortly after I became interested in these bags, I began to notice that I would see Timbuk2 banner ads on all sorts of different websites. It then dawned on me that I was experiencing targeted advertising. Google must have tracked my searches and browsing behaviour and began to feed me Timbuk2 banners on different websites I browsed to. I’m not sure how disturbed I should be by this. On the one hand, I’d rather see banner ads for things I’m interested in than for, say, M&Ms or Norton Antivirus Software, but if Google is tracking my search and browsing behaviour, what other information is it gleaning about me?
Anyway, I made of a point of going bag shopping while I was in Massachusetts, and found some places that sold Timbuk2 bags. They seem like excellent bags, but their classic messenger bags that were stocked by most of the retailers I visited weren’t big enough and were a little to loud in color for my liking. Their “Commute 2.o,” a bag for more businessy types, didn’t fit my laptop, so I had to look for something else. I went everywhere. I went to a luggage store. I knew I didn’t want a wheelie bag, but I looked at them anyway. There’s another reason to avoid them. The wheel apparatus makes them so heavy that the carrying handles on them are pointless. Fill them with stuff and you wouldn’t want to carry them any further than you would want to carry a loaded small suitcase. I thought about a fancy leather bag, but I didn’t want to spend more than $200 on a bag that would be on the small side. After visiting about half a dozen other stores, some of them more than once, I settled on this bag by Jansport. I paid the $100 for the bag and then excitedly left the store to move the contents from my old bag to the new one.
I quickly realized that the new one was a bit smaller than my old one. This was a bit of a disappointment and, although I liked the look of the bag, the way it felt on my shoulder, and many of its features–a particularly nifty feature is the fact that it has magnets sewn into the top flap that keep the flap closed even when it’s not buckled, making it much quieter to open the bag than many other messenger-style bags that have velcro, a useful feature when you sometimes get to a lecture or talk a few minutes late–I felt myself beginning to sour on the bag just minutes after I purchased it, a feeling that quickly began to snowball. After having spent weeks researching bags and going to about every bag retailer within driving distance and then spending a not insignificant amount of money, I had a bag that I wasn’t immediately in love with. I told myself to try to keep an open mind. Maybe, I thought to myself, this bag would be just fine if I changed my habits a bit. Instead of having one bag that was often packed full and too heavy to be sensibly carried over my shoulder, I could transition to packing lighter with my new bag and just carrying a second, cloth bag with me for when I need to bring a few books home from the library or haul around a stack of a hundred student writing assignments. Having lived with my new bag for about a week now, I am liking it more and more. Maybe I didn’t spend $100 for nothing after all.
Anyway, that’s my completely frivolous post. And now that I’ve written it, I think it makes me seem a little girly; I just spent a half hour of my life talking about a shopping experience and, not only that, a bag shopping experience. Oh well, I’m comfortable in my own skin. I can handle it.

The Holidays

The holidays kind of snuck up on us this year. Perhaps it was because we didn’t have to book flights far in advance and make sure our shopping was done before we had to leave. At any rate, Christmas arrived and we were hardly ready for it. Once the celebrations started, it felt like we were on a roller coaster, going from one party to another. It was a lot of fun while it lasted, but I think I am speaking for everyone around here when I say that it was good to have a week where we didn’t really go out at all.
Pam found a pair of skates for L at a garage sale earlier this year. We’ve only strapped them on twice so far, but L is already showing signs of improvement.

One of the good things about the Christmas holidays is that it gives us an opportunity to see (Great) Grandma F. When I sat down to chat a bit with her this year, she commented on how remarkable it was for her to be enjoying relatively good health at this stage in life given the boughts of rheumatic fever she had when she was young. We’re blessed to have her with us. I’ve been meaning to take a multi-generational picture for a while now. This year we finally did it.
The Christmas tree just about didn’t make it up this year. It was packed away in the garage with about half of our other possessions while the basement was being remodeled, and we didn’t have access to it till about a week before Christmas.
L and K have a great mom. She makes reindeer cupcakes!
Even though the play microwave was K’s gift, L had nearly as much fun playing with it as K did. When L was about K’s age, he couldn’t get enough of the kitchen set that was in the nursery at the church we attended in Amherst.

A “Finished” Basement

The contractors have left and we have our basement back. We can’t say that our basement is finished—more on that in a bit—but we no longer have to let the contractors in and out. Hooray! We like it and we look forward to settling in and making use of our new space.
Even though we are mostly satisfied with the finished product, the renovation didn’t go as smoothly or painlessly as we would have liked. We got really tired of the general contractor by the end of the project, because, as it went along, we got the distinct sense that he was just in it to squeeze as much as he could out of us and the subcontractor he had hired to do most of the work. I had to learn how to put my foot down and, at times, speak my mind. By the time Christmas loomed, we were as anxious to have him out of our basement as, I’m sure, he wanted to leave. Eventually I just said that things were good enough. We paid him the last of his money and he left, leaving me a few odds and ends to look after myself.
We didn’t want to spend the money to break up the existing concrete floor, so we had to work around it. The old floor sloped steeply around the drain, and so one of the things I had to do was build a level platform in the laundry room for the washer, dryer, and freezer to sit on. K and L think the new basement is a blast and they had great fun running back and forth on the platform while I was building it.

I finished building the platform and then went to hook up the washer. When I opened the taps, water went everywhere. Having sat closed for two months, the old shut-offs had developed leaks. Off to the hardware store I went to get some plumbing supplies. We are very happy to have laundry facilities of our own again. We were both tired of carting loads of dirty diapers with us when we went to visit family.

The bathroom is no longer in the middle of an open room. We think we’ve done relatively well given how little room we had to work with. Unfortunately, the contractors didn’t get the shower quite right and they have to come back to fix a leak. We hope that fixing it doesn’t involve taking the entire shower out.
It felt like a nice large room after the contractor’s tools were moved out.
Unfortunately, until I finish the shelving in the laundry and furnace rooms, all of the stuff that we moved out of the basement into our garage is now back in our basement, piled in the middle of the family room. Sigh. When we moved back from MA, we never really bothered to unpack the stuff that was in the basement. We didn’t want go to the trouble if we were just going to have to repack and move it if we decided to remodel. I told Pam the other day that we will finally be unpacked from our move when the pile that’s now in the middle of our basement is gone.

Almost Finished

We are now into the second month of our basement renovation and we’re starting to get tired of having to live around the things that used to be in the basement. Good thing the project is nearing completion. Painting will probably start later today or tomorrow and we’ll begin seeing the rest of the finishes like flooring and trim shortly after. The space is starting to take shape and we’re looking forward to being able to use it.