Skirmishes on the playground

Apparently my country is now posturing with the Danes over a small island between Greenland and Ellesmere Island - why are we doing this? I don't know. But each side is staking its claim...repeatedly. Frankly, I think it's kinda interesting how this disagreement has been going on for three decades now, with each side routinely claiming the 1.3 km island and I'm pretty impressed that the solution has been to agree to disagree.

I'm particularly amused by the Ottawa Citizen cartoon depicting how Canada might stake its claim to the island.

They're ba-ack!

It's good to have at least two kids back. They enjoyed their time away. We enjoyed their time away. Now we enjoy our time together. This is the beauty of families - you love them when they're gone, and you love them when you get together again. My only regret is that I didn't get to take a month off and go with them and hang out at home again!

And the fridge is full again, but it won't be for long!

Our reunion is short lived though since one daughter leaves again tomorrow to go be a vacation nanny for two weeks in NH, so we'll get the joy of seeing her return home again - probably about the same time her older sister gets back from Honduras. That'll be a busy weekend too.

I love my family.

I hate days like this

Today has been one of those days that creep up on you and ruin all your plans. I knew when I got up this morning I had some errands and small stuff to do - I just didn't realize it would take all day, and I had expected to get several hours of reading done as well.

Needless to say, I haven't read anything but email so far today. And since the two youngest get home in a couple of hours, I'm sure I won't get anything done later today either.

I wouldn't mind so much if I felt like I'd accomplished something, but so far, my hands just ache, and I still didn't finish the minor car repairs that need to be done - mostly because I have wrong parts/not enough parts/not enough brains to figure out why what I'm doing isn't working.

I guess I can take solace in the fact that there's food in the house for when the kids get back...

Montreal

I really liked our visit to Montreal - I'd never been there before and at one point, we turned to each other and said things along the lines of 'If McGill has a program/job that one of us could take, we should consider it'. That's how much we liked the city.

The thing that really fascinated me about Montreal was the bilingualism. The official two languages of Canada are pretty much invisible in most of the rest of the country (government signage and packaging contain both, but not much else is evidence that there are two official languages). In Montreal, all signage is in French with only occasional English subtitles, and everyone who works retails seems to be fluent in both languages. Which is really kinda cool!

Language was the thing that had me worried about going on this trip - well, that and border crossing (but that always has me a bit nervous these days) - my French is not good - signs, packages, simple directions I'm okay on (you know, lots of nouns) but with longer things like a newspaper, and speech, I'm at a loss. I'm pretty sure I've forgotten almost everything I learnt in school. But we managed just fine - although I didn't attempt much French because I've retained so little of it, we got through fine. I did worry that we would find ourselves in a situation where we'd get stuck, but we were in the tourist areas, so it was never a problem. There was one salesclerk who walked away from us when we talked to her, but after watching her for a moment, I think the reason wasn't the language but just that she was a bitch.

It's also a very clean city - even the panhandlers seemed polite. Old Montreal is really neat, as is the shoreline and the view from the hills just above downtown (where we were staying) was beautiful. We rented an apartment for the weekend, that cost less than a hotel and had a kitchenette as well as including continental breakfast (a nice one too - no skimping there) in what our landlord informed us was the 'McGill ghetto', presumably because we were four blocks from the university and lots of students lived there. Really nice place - not quite what I think of when I think ghetto - but then again, can't say I've ever seen a Canadian ghetto before, so maybe there are more ghettos down east that are just as pretty.

Eddie was great! He made all kinds of jokes about the Queen - I'll never again be able to listen to 'God save the Queen' in quite the same way as before - and he showed us how to make the queen smile by creasing the $20 bill. He made an impromptu airplane which didn't fly and therefor prompted the only heckle of the night. He had told the audience just before his failed paper airplane that he was now a pilot, and the heckle was obviously something to that effect, since he replied in typical Eddie style, "but madam, I don't have to fold my airplane before I fly it". He was the perfect entertainer for that audience - fluent in French (though the show was mostly in English) and cracking jokes that he wouldn't be able to do in a show in America 'cause no one would get them.

We also saw 'The Daily Show: Secrets Revealed' with Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee which was a kind of roundtable with question period afterwards. It was also amusing. I wanted to try to get into the new Family Guy DVD screening (it doesn't get released till September), but the timing was too close to a show that we already had tickets for and we didn't want to miss out on the second one.

I'm glad we went, and I hope I can catch the festival again next year. The kids also want to go, so maybe we can take them up there over one of the fall holidays or something, so they can see it too.

We spent an extra night after the festival camping in northern Vermont before heading all the way back home. I'm happy to say that all three border encounters were just fine. Although the line was longer at St. Armand than it ever is at St. Stephens (in NB), we were waved right through. At the NB crossing, we've had to pull over and go into the office each time. We even went through the border patrol at the VT/NH border without any problems, though what or who they were looking for there, we couldn't tell. We at first thought drugs because there was a dog, but there was only a dog on the one line, and then we thought some other kind of smuggling because the only vehicle in front of us to produce ID was a guy in a truck, but then we thought they must've been looking for someone, because the only question they asked was where we were born and our citizenship. Odd. Does this happen often I wonder? We were already about 100 miles away from the border when this patrol stopped us, so I wonder what the purpose was.

Speaking of mileage, the car rolled over on the way back - 200,000 kms ! and it's still ticking... though I wonder for how much longer that will last...

Going to Canada from here always feels a bit weird. I feel like I'm going home when I go up there, and I feel like I'm coming home when I come back across the border. It's very strange to feel that you're going home both ways.

Isn't language fabulous?

Consider the phrase "The sun never sets on the British Empire".

If you type that phrase into google, among the results you'll the following two hits: one that proposes that America step down as a superpower, and the other which celebrates and encourages even greater "superpower" efforts in the world.

Notice how neither of them are about Britain? They've just appropriated the phrase from Christopher North's editorial in 1829 and applied it to another nation. It's also interesting to see how one phrase can become so loaded with meaning that it can not only be transposed entirely out of context, but can also be used within two diametrically opposed pieces.

The flexibility within language to bend and be shaped by such different wills and to such different purposes is fascinating - reminds me why I'm in this business.

There and back again

Loved the weekend in Montreal - can't promise as much description and pictures as my good friend's TO trip, but I'll blog soon.

She's alive* I survived** It's all good

*Honduras daughter called - she has all her limbs still in place.
**I marked 14 AWD third drafts today. That's my record and I never want to repeat it again!

But now I can leave for the weekend feeling good!

good news... more (unexpected) good news... lots of boring work... more good stuff

What more could a girl want?

Yesterday started out so horribly and ended so wonderfully that it kinda feels like it was a week's worth of stuff. I was so tired in the morning that I totally forgot it was my anniversary and so I didn't say anything to D before we left, which kinda bummed me when I realized it, and then teaching didn't go so good, and then I had some quick errands that ate up time and the day was shaping up to be pretty normal.

But then when I got to the department, I went to a dissertation defense (and actually understood some of it 'cause it was late nineteenth century stuff) where I saw not only the comps supervisor who I was expecting to talk to, but one who I have been emailing for a couple of weeks, nagging her to read my list. She seemed a bit surprised to see me, but being the professional that she is, recovered well and promised to chat. Hooray!

I must admit I did have difficulty concentrating in the defense because I kept wondering whether the two comps conversations I was going to have by the end of the day were going to be good or just get worse. Obviously from the title of this post, they went good. One list is entirely approved - wahoo! and the other is pretty much approved, with some minor changes, and, AND, the stuff that I'd earlier been told to scrap because I didn't need it, is now back on (with those minor changes), so I didn't waste all that time!

This is cool beans in local (teen) parlance.

Now I have another 11 or 12 hours of third draft marking - ugh, ugh, ugh! (I might have to finish the champagne we opened last night before making it through them all)

But then it's off to Montreal for the weekend! The comedy festival and my first visit to the city at the same time... can't get any better... just as long as losing your passport isn't a genetic thing...

So why can some people do it, and not others?

I've been taking the reading that doesn't have me tied to a computer out to the pool on occasion, which is just really nice. I read for a bit, and then I hop in the pool, floating there, thinking about the stuff I've just read - it's really a pretty ideal way to study.

But it's not an ideal way to study when there's too much else going on around me. I don't mean the kids playing and splashing in that pool - that's ambient background noise, and having three of my own, I've gotten pretty good at ignoring that stuff. It's conversations that distract me. Probably 'cause they're words. And I like words. A lot.

Now, I don't expect the pool to be a study place - if I want absolute silence, I should stay home (these days with the kids gone, that's possible), or go to the library. So I always bring my walkman. I usually select a seat that's far away from any groups that are already there when I arrive, so that I don't catch conversations, but sometimes people come in after I've settled in and start talking.

But some of them are alone.

That's what got me thinking. Are some people simply incapable of sitting - either sunning themselves or watching kids - without talking? The cell phone has made it possible for a person to never really have to be alone, and there are some people who seem to need their cell phone for that reason. There's one woman who regularly comes to the pool whose cell phone is constantly going off, and she usually comes with another friend, so either way, she's talking the whole time she's there.

Today when I arrived, I chose a spot at the far end - there were two people already there, but they were both regulars. One just lies quietly, not really doing much, and the other guy likes to talk, but after we've exchanged pleasantries, if I pick up my book, he gets the hint and lets me read.

Then a woman and her two children arrived. The kids hopped in the pool right away and she whipped out her cell phone. In response to the callee's response, she said, "Oh, well then I won't keep you long." (Which is why I didn't initially reach for the walkman) But then she proceeded to talk for another ten minutes. When she finally hung up, she immediately dialed someone else and was talking to a third when she called her kids out of the pool and left only a half hour later. She didn't strike me as a business woman trying to multitask by taking her kids to the pool while working the phone, since the conversations were pitched at a loud enough level for me to discern they were of a personal nature, not professional.

I wondered if I see this woman again, will she again be on the phone for the whole pool visit?

I've seen enough bus people and enough students to observe how some people can't seem to sit without doing something at all times, and therefor have to whip out their phone either to call someone or play games anytime they are required to sit still for a while.

I know not everyone likes to read and I suppose my early enforced religious education taught me to sit still and quiet for long periods of time - oh so very long to a young child! - but I wonder if some people just take to quiet activities better than others, who need the greater stimulation of a voice on the other end of the line. And, what did those people do before the invention of the cell phone?

Easy living

I gotta say, I'm loving these weekends that involve parties, beaches, bridal showers, watching movies, sleeping in, etc.

Eleven or so years of post secondary education made me forget that weekends can actually be fun - the last several years, they've just been opportunities to get work done, which, when you think of it, is kinda a suck-ass way to spend your weekends.

You know you live in a small town when...

... you pick up the local paper with the headline "Store 24 Robbed Again" and they don't have to say which Store 24 because there is only one.

At least I have something to look forward to in fall

The week has been a rather lacklustre one - a lot of work, some of it dull, some of it just busywork, and some of it just plain screwed up. I feel like I've done too much walking, too much waiting in lines, too much running around (including making sure that I still get a paycheque this week). Part of the problem also is that I'm trying to sift through the comments generated by submitting a list last week and finding the task daunting.

There have been highlights, like booking our weekend in Montreal, the writing group, and the news that there will be hockey next year - about time, guys! My weekend looks like it will be fun - now I just need to finish this week's work before I can enjoy it!

Hahahahaha

I'm going to see Eddie Izzard! Yes!

Food for Thought

Ran across this article about the dangers of blogging in academia at the Chronicle of Higher Education (courtesy Bitch. Ph.D.).

Of course I know all about being dooced, and I'd certainly wondered about my own potential position once I seriously re-enter the job market (I don't count packing textbooks into boxes last summer as a serious foray into workspace).

But now this Chronicle article has got me wondering yet again whether I should keep doing this or not. I began the blog frankly, because I'm lazy. I found after I moved, that I wanted to keep in touch with my friends back home, but would also get tired of writing the same things in emails to different people. And when I would try and change things up, I'd try to write about something different in my life to everyone I was emailing. But then I would forget who I had told what, and sometimes I'd get these confused responses because I'd tell the sequel to a story to someone who hadn't heard the first part of it!

So I started blogging thinking that everyone could just read about what I'm doing and I wouldn't a) repeat myself, b) tell someone only half a story, or c) be a delinquent emailer and only send an email once a year because I got tired of repeating myself etc. Now I just do it 'cause I like it. And I also think it's helped me loosen up in my academic writing, like all this blogging just lets me play with words so often that it's much easier to sit down and try to write serious ones.

Not many people read this thing (check out the statmeter), which is cool with me - the people who want to know (or who might be mildly amused at my so called life) read. Those who don't want to, don't. Their loss. So, I don't have a wide presence out there in the world wide gossip-monger. And I've tried to be fairly non-descript. Sure, you know some stuff about me. But chances are that's 'cause you know me in person (or think you do!), not because of what I say here. Even if you didn't know me in person, you're probably mostly going to know general things - even my recent rant about my university is probably pretty innocuous since I live in the greater Boston area and there's something like a gajillion schools here.

But this is the part of the article that gets me thinking:

Professor Shrill ran a strictly personal blog, which, to the author's credit, scrupulously avoided comment about the writer's current job, coworkers, or place of employment. But it's best for job seekers to leave their personal lives mostly out of the interview process....

The content of the blog may be less worrisome than the fact of the blog itself. Several committee members expressed concern that a blogger who joined our staff might air departmental dirty laundry (real or imagined) on the cyber clothesline for the world to see. Past good behavior is no guarantee against future lapses of professional decorum.

Huh?!

Okay, so I've worked in HR before - small company/non-profit - but I think I've interviewed enough people and screened enough applicants to know that past behaviour IS a good predictor of future behaviour - it's the whole idea behind Behavioral Descriptive interviewing. Note: 70% of the time BDI finds the behaviors employers want as opposed to 20% for traditional inteviews.

Believe me, BDI works. It's pretty hard to lie to a BDI question unless the candidate has prepared a script ahead of time. The questions are generally broadly enough based that you can evaluate almost any behavior or attitude type you need for the job at hand (what's sometimes actually less accurate is figuring out what kind of behaviors you value for a given position). The lesson? Past behaviour IS a good indicator of future behavior. Someone who is professional and discrete enough before being hired will continue to be professional and discrete after they sign the contract.

Also makes a good case for people in academia who have non-academia-type skills, you know, who might know that BDI works... like me!

What also disturbs me is the writer's admission that they Googled candidate's names. Now, the article does point out that several people included their blog URLs in their CV or even cover letter. That invites a look-see. BUT, not everyone did, and it sounds like this hiring committee decided to Google everyone they interviewed whether they were invited to or not.

This is the part where it gets dodgey. I wouldn't include this blog in a cover letter or CV - it's not professional in any way, and really just for my friends, so I don't think anyone else would be interested in it. But do I have to worry about potential employers snooping it out? (Not that a Google search will do you much good - it doesn't turn up this site - though it does turn up a woman with my name who saw a UFO and another who advertises on an adult page (at least she doesn't look like me))*

I'm not really worried about it - if a search committee wants to find out things about me, they can, whether I invite them to or not. I just don't think it's terribly ethical of them to do so without me being aware of it - sounds a bit like the Patriot Act then.

*I did however find out in my google search that something I wrote for a book review was quoted on another website, which was kinda cool 'cause it was an academic book review after all. I think it makes me sound kinda smart too (unlike this sentence!)

Well! That just feels like a big mistake

So, I was whining yesterday about how unmotivated I feel, and I decided that the best thing to do would be to push myself through to the next level.

I decided that I needed to get off my fanny and email off the second and third reading lists to their respective supervisors. I've been sitting on them for probably two weeks, hesitating to send them off because I wasn't sure they were ready, and I figured one way to shake myself out of the doldrums would be to scare myself (and the thought of actually sending them off was scaring me, hence, it seemed perfect).

Bad move.

I heard back from the first person only two hours after sending it off! - in an email with a two page attachment. She had some very good suggestions for wording the field statement part, which was excellent, since it was that part that I'd been fucking around with for the last two weeks trying to get it right and still not being satisfied with it. That was good and is easy to deal with. She also explained a bit more/better what she was looking for in the secondary source list, which was good, because now I have a clearer idea about what I need to do for it, but a bit bad because it gives me a lot more books to read - which might throw off my hoped for schedule (especially if I continue to have difficulty motivating myself - which will continue if the kind of things like the stuff to follow keeps happening).

The very first thing in her response - the thing that really was the most depressing even though I'm trying to just let it roll off and not bug me - was that she asked why I had a whole huge section of literature on my list. She said it didn't seem that I was interested in this literature, and wouldn't deal with it in my dissertation, so why was it on there? Why? WHY? Well, 'cause you told me to put it on there! You even lent me a book to help me compile that part of the list. No, I don't want to study it, but I put it on there because you told me to. AND. This is the big part. And, I spent about two solid months reading much of the material in that section - two months I could have spent reading other things.

*a wailing, gnashing of teeth, and growling ensues*

Two months (and I think that's conservative) spent on reading stuff that won't be on my list. I'm not talking an article or two, or even one book. I'm talking several books as well as many shorter pieces.

It's just depressing.

But it gets better.

Because I'm a trooper - or an idiot - take your pick - I go for a long walk, burning off some steam and return home with the plan to try to forget that I wasted so very much time on useless research and just try to focus on moving forward. What I need to do is focus on the books she's told me to go find - I don't know what books yet - I just know I have to read them. I'm an hour and a half away from the library, but I have DSL and the library has a slough of useful online databases. So, the logical thing to do is to do some research. Look up books that we have in the library, find their tables of contents, their indexes, figure out what's in them, then compile a list and physically go into the library, take them off the shelves (or order them from other libraries) and figure out if I should read them. I can do all this online too.

It sounds like a good plan, doesn't it? I thought it did.

I begin to make some progress; I'm finding stuff in the regular catalogs as well as in databases and online resources outside the university. I compile a list of about 40 books, but there are some books the university doesn't have, so I want to order them through interlibrary loan. I go to login. "Your patron privileges have been revoked" Crap! I took them the letter they needed last month, and I still got booted off. And it's 4:25 on Thursday. Offices close in 5 minutes, and most aren't open on Fridays.

But aha! I'll be sneaky. I have a faculty account as well as a student account. I'll get into the secure databases that way. "Your patron privileges have been revoked" Damn! I betcha this has something to do with getting kicked off Blackboard last week.

Yes, I seem to be persona non grata at the university these days. They don't have a record of me paying for gym privileges over the summer, so I have to carry my receipt with me at all times (yeah, I know, I'm not doing that one again!). And even then, some of the 'brilliant' work study people behind the counter are still suspicious about whether they should let me in or not.

And last week, I couldn't log on to Blackboard (the course management site for the course I'm teaching), because someone told them I was no longer working for the university. I wouldn't have minded not working for the university for the rest of the summer if it meant I still didn't have to go in and teach.

That was a pain in the ass to track down, because whoever did it, did it the Friday before the long weekend, and there was almost no one around over the weekend to fix it. Took till the next Wednesday to get back on. And of course I look like a dufus to my students because I can't get ahold of them 'cause their email addresses are all locked away on the site. As soon as I got access, I enrolled myself through my student account in my own course that I'm teaching, so at least if they decide to do this again, I'll at least have access to the email list, even though I won't be able to access the gradebook or any of the other instructor features.

But I'm kinda stuck till Monday in my research efforts. And I just realized I have yet to hear back from the other advisor - I'm not looking forward to that one.

Is this some subtle form of messaging? "Aliens go home"? Why not just send me a memo? If you don't want me here, just come right out and say it. I'm a big girl. I can take it. But right now you're just confusing me. You invited me to come here. I came from another country. I travelled 3210 miles, without a place to live at the end of the line to get here. That was faith. And you seemed to want me. You gave me an assistantship. And then you even renewed it - twice. If you didn't want me here, all you had to do was not offer me money. I would've got the hint. In fact, I would've had to leave - I couldn't have afforded to stay. But you gave me assistantships during the year, and even offered me a part time job in the summer. You're confusing me. Do you want me or not?

Makes my problems seem really rather irrelevant

So, I've been reading about the bombing in London. I'm not really gonna blog about the politics of it, and I'm not going to second guess whether the group that claims to have done it did it.

The thing that impresses me the most about all the accounts I've been reading about it is the attitude of those who have been involved, either responding to the crisis, or living through it. Londoners' attitudes have been compared to those of the Blitz, and they seem to be rallying together in a way that I'm sure is reminiscent of that previous bombing. And as commentators (particularly the British papers) have noted, they've always had the IRA to deal with.

I still however find myself feeling very remote from it all - perhaps in part because I haven't taken transit in the last couple of days and probably won't have to till next week (mostly 'cause I'm not working till then and have no need to stir from the nest of misery that's my life right now).

But I think even then I will find my attitude to my commute unchanged. It's hard to get worked up about a bunch of weirdos in some far away country maybe deciding to attack the transit system I ride, and even then, maybe attacking on the day I'm on it, and maybe on the bus I'm on. You see the odds? Whereas I've been at a station when they stopped the trains because someone was shot, and I've been on a bus where a man grabbed a woman but ran away before the cops could show up, even though he continued to make threatening gestures at her (and I think more generally at the other women on the bus as well). So, yeah, it's hard to get anxious about it. I think there's a far greater chance of my senile neighbor leaving the stove on and burning us all to a crisp in the middle of the night than me getting blown up on a subway ride.

But perhaps now that I've said that, I'm bringing such a fate upon myself.

Is that too fatalistic? Perhaps it is a bit dark. But I guess I figure there's not much that I can do about the things that happen in life other than how I respond to them. How I respond personally to the events in London is not to fear for myself, but to feel empathy for those people who are there, for those people who were injured, and for those people who had someone they care about die. I know that there are many people in London (and beyond) for whom this is a personal matter, and for them, I feel sympathy and wish them strength and the compassion of those nearest them.

I also am concerned on a more general level about the purpose of the attack - terror-ism - it is the desire to terrify an enemy, and it is that ratcheting up a notch of the terror everyone in the world feels everytime an act of terrorism is committed that I worry about. It feeds into a bunker mentality. Not always right away, but later on it does, as people continue to worry about it. At first, everyone pulls together, but then once the crisis is over, suspicion sets in. It's not just of unattended packages though, it extends to anyone acting a little weird, or maybe looking angry, or "suspicious" in some other way. And the worst of it comes when people start to be suspicious of anyone who doesn't look like them, or conversely, who looks like a terrorist (whatever terrorists look like in your dreams). That's the thing that worries me the most about these kinds of terrorist attacks. They make the world a more dangerous place for me and my kids. When everyone starts to look over their shoulder, when we start eroding civil liberties in the name of security, when ordinary people start to mistrust their neighbors and the people they meet everyday, the world gets to be a little bit scarier.

It gets scarier because when you don't trust anyone, you start just looking out for yourself. Which is a good thing (it's something that it's SO hard to get teenagers to do, or at least my teenager). But because my teen has so little worry about her own safety, she may find herself in a situation where she needs the help of a stranger. And that stranger might be unwilling to help her because he/she has retreated from society, has let the terror and suspicion get to him/her. And then my daughter suffers. To hell with society suffering. I worry about her suffering. And THAT's what I worry about whenever terror is used against ordinary people - that the world is becoming less safe not just because of the terrorists, but because of what it does to us all.

I'm in a slump

I can't seem to get any work done today... haven't really worked since the beginning of last week... at least not in any concerted manner that will move me through this program at anything but a snail's pace.

It all just seems so overwhelming right now. Too much I don't know. Too much I'm worried I need to know. Too much to read. Too much to pay attention to. I'm ready to give up. I want to give up. I want to sit on the couch and watch movies all day. I want to go out and go shopping, or visit friends, or just wander down to the nearest coffee shop (a good mile away, so 'wander' doesn't quite seem the right word). In short, I want to be doing just about anything that doesn't involve school.

Help!

Ahhh...New England in the summer

It has been raining most of the day - during the trek in to school, it was raining 'wicked haahd', which made travel difficult (and extremely soggy). You don't get rain like that on the prairies. It rains hard, but for a brief time (and usually only late in the evening or overnight), so it doesn't affect you unless you're a night owl or work overnights.

Here, this hard rain just kept coming and coming. Even with an umbrella, you're soaked quickly. Worst part today was that my sandals got so wet, and my feet inside them, that my feet started sliding around in them, and within about three blocks, I had a wicked blister on one foot - and this is from sandals that usually are the most comfy things around. Ouch. Takes all the fun outta meeting a friend on Newbury Street and having lunch together, though we made it a long lunch and by the time we'd dried out, the rain had let up a bit and we could walk without being entirely soaked. The good food and great company made up for the soggy weather though.

Now the weekend is over though...

Overall, this long weekend was one of the better weekends I've had since starting this doctoral program. In part, it's likely been good because I did virtually no work whatsoever - which of course makes today a day for a lot of work to get done.

The Canada Day bbq went off fairly well I think. I enjoyed myself (more than last year for sure), and I think if I play with things next year, I can get it down to spending even less time in front of the grill and enjoying myself even more. Most everyone seemed to enjoy themselves - there was one person who was really tired and left early, and another who felt sick (not my fault, honest!), and maybe a couple of dates who felt a bit out of place, but there's not much you can do about that after you've chatted them up for a bit.

We had a birthday party the next day to go to - which was fun - I think if I start hanging around with this family much more, they'll have to consider adoption, but if they don't mind, I don't mind! No, really, it was a really pretty neat party, and I haven't gone to a kid party that I haven't hosted in a long time, so it was nice to be on the other side of the fence for a while.

We talked about spending Sunday lying around the pool and then watching movies, but decided we'd be more active and drove out to Mt. Monadnock for a bit of hiking. My hips still hurt! We decided (perhaps a touch foolishly) to pick the straight up, straight down route up the mountain - on the map, we went up White Dot and down White Cross, which are apparently the most direct way up and back the 3,165 ft. elevation gain. The trail is rated 'moderately steep' which means it's not supposed to go above a 45 degree angle slope, but there are a couple of places where it exceeds that. And not many that go below about 25 - it's pretty much a straight scramble up what is likely a stream/waterfall bed during runoff. We've been to the White Mountains area of New Hampshire, which is much more scenic, but also a little farther away, so we decided to try Monadnock (and daughter 2 was excited to hear we'd gone to it since she'd been there with the school last year). Much more energetic day than staying home by the pool though!

Yesterday, we drove almost out to Rhode Island to a 4th of July bbq (sure, why not hit both holidays, right?) though we came back a bit early because we (well, not so much me) needed to get ready for a busy week ahead. The traditional kickball game was unevenly matched, but we had fun with it (even though I apparently can't catch a ball to save my life - something the other team worked very hard to exploit by kicking it toward me each time!)

But now it's back to work.

Happy Canada Day!

I'm taking a short break from prepping food for the BBQ to say Happy Canada Day to everyone (whether you're Canadian or not).

In honor of the day, I'm including a brief interview with the International Canadian Hide and Seek team. (Apparently, some people will believe almost anything a Canadian tells them - our reputation comes in handy sometimes)

And my favorite Molson commercial - Office Glen.