Dispatches from a happy Hullian

This post is in reverse-to-random chronological order.

First, some promised Oscar pictures:

This one is gracing my desktop at work.

Here's a recent indoor one. He needs only a little hand contact with something sort of stable to stay upright.

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Date night!

Last night, fairestcat came by, loaded us and Oscar up in her car, drove us all to Zen Kitchen, let us out, and kept going. She, random and the other people at fannish night took care of him for the night while Elizabeth and I got to have a fantastic meal and some time to ourselves without checking baby position constantly or worrying he'd wake up. Toward midnight, we were starting to miss Oscar (or at least wanting to put him to bed and call it a night), but it was definitely refreshing. We should definitely do that sooner than the eight months it took us to get around to that.

Raven’s Knoll work

Raven's Knoll, the campground that hosts Kaleidoscope Gathering among other pagan and pagan-ish happenings, is kept running in part on volunteer labour. The three of us went up with random on the weekend. Moving and stacking wood and brush was the main activity for random and me, and Elizabeth took care of Oscar and helped out in the kitchen. Working out there was fun both for the satisfaction of working (and stacking wood with proper ends on the stack — thanks, Dad, for teaching me that!) and for the universally pleasant company of the other workers. I was quite happy to get a better sense of Brendan, who led things and is there full-time keeping the place running.

Mum Update

Thursday and Friday, we headed up to my parents' place to see my mum and give my parents an Oscar fix. Mum's looking great and despite being a little out of breath occasionally, had lots of energy. Oscar also got to meet Jeannie the cleaning lady, who I think has been looking forward to meeting Oscar for about eight months now :)

Back to work

I went back to work on Monday. It was a little surprising how quickly work felt sort of normal to me; I guess it hasn't been that long. Most of Monday was spent getting things re-activated and catching up on what I was supposed to start work on, and yesterday and today were pretty meeting-heavy, but there looks to be imminent actual work, and a variety of it, with clients that I either know I like or get a good vibe from. I feel like it'll take a couple of weeks to say hi to all the people that make up the complete work experience, and thus be completely back, but I'm feeling good about the transition so far.

Pixel Update

Pixel had her stitches out yesterday, and looks much less scary and a bit happier today. I think she lost some weight when she was stressed and not eating in the cone, but not a scary amount as the vet weighed her and didn't worry. She's got a vaccine booster appointment in a month, if she's still skinny then we'll see what else needs doing. She was a little grimy looking after the cone for a while, but she's groomed herself back to her usual elegant coat.

1. What did you do in 2010 that you'd never done before?
Fathered a child (well, I guess some salient bits were done in 2009), grew peas, built a hardwood floor, drafted a will, published a statistics paper, took a train in business class, drove a pickup truck.
( thirty-seven more )

On Saturday, Elizabeth and I got married out in Ormstown, and celebrated with a bunch of family and friends.

Elizabeth has already posted some of her thoughts here, I'll add a few things for now, starting with pictures.
( photos )
The ceremony was intimate and intense: Elizabeth and I both were on the verge of tears while we made our vows. We'd both known Ellie Hummel before we asked her to officiate, and it showed in how she did things. We'd planned on getting married outside under the apple tree, but it was threatening to rain, so we packed everyone into the basement of André's farmhouse, which felt like a tiny church, crypt or castle, with stone walls and metal and painted decorations. It was pretty hot, and very crowded, but it felt right. We did burst out to the yard with the tree for a toast and pictures afterward.

Later on, Owen had picked out a poem involving love and Scrabble for us at the cake-cutting, which was quite appropriate. I'll try and get the author and title. The folks at StatCan Scrabble Club will be impressed.

The day as a whole went really, really fast, and sort of unfolded before us due to all the help and merriness from everyone.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before?
( ... )
39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
"Get onto the bus!"

Christmas was good, lots of family and food and time spent running around and getting ready with rottenfruit. Our parents met. I had my first encounter with the nut loaf, which was excellent. We saw frozen rippled sand, like a photograph of water you can walk around (which made up for the lack of snow until yesterday). Gave and got some nice things. Came home to Verdun this evening, which was also good. It feels like home.

It's been great doing the holidays together.

Went to the wedding of a couple of good friends on the weekend... those two are so made for each other, and they had a wedding with a good ceremony, heartfelt speeches and a really nice party. It was my first wedding with rottenfruit as my date, it was uplifting and happy.

My mum finished re-doing the kitchen back home.

We've been hanging our laundry out on the back deck, as we have a working washing machine and a dryer-sized doorstop in our kitchen. The cable guy came yesterday to add TV to our Internet and phone pipe. The level of boxes from moving around here has hit a plateau on the way down, I think.

I'm swimming in a to-do list, much of which is paying and interesting. I'm looking forward to the housewarming thing at the new place on FridaySaturday. The summer is going by really fast. I'm almost ready to kiss the CIBC goodbye.

I feel confident and stable, for the most part.

It turns out, Bell, when I cancelled my account, charged me $2.68 for "tolerance". Yes, I know what it means, but still, it's a nice illustration of telco manners.

I got to sleep until I was more or less naturally awake with my beloved last night. Not being a slave to the alarm clock feels very good.

Lots to do as usual: coding, administration-y stuff, studying... the end of the term is coming, though. I'm a little exhausted, but stuff is falling by the wayside a little more gracefully than it has in the past.

I'm having a funny relationship with the future right now. It's pretty unreal, even though I'm looking forward to, dreading and just acknowledging some fairly real things.

Back in Ormstown for a bit, with my parents and siblings and my sister's boyfriend, who's pretty much a permanent presence here now. The place is full of cooking smells and holiday programming on the CBC (Quirks and Quarks answers questions for Christmas, Sook-Yin plays cheesy classics, ...)

Things are pretty calm here, we're trekking up to my cousin's place tomorrow for the big feasting part of Christmas, clean white snow is on the ground, and we're getting the hang of being a little prepared.

gregorama's festive games night was lots of fun. Sorry I couldn't carry dzuunmod's Trivial Pursuit hand to victory... gotta get the sports question before handing off to me next time. The food, games, talk and general minor scandalousness were much appreciated.

Last night was the Avalon Singers' Christmas concert, my mum took Ellie and me to see them. Parts of it were echoes of first-year for Ellie, and Charpentier's midnight mass was familiar to me (from trying to help with Ellie's Lorem Ipsum Mass last spring). There were some really good moments in the performance, and a familiar face from Ellie's choir days (shipped out by the choir director at the last moment to replace one of the locals). It was a short trip out, but I was really happy that my mum invited us out for that. Logistics was a bit hairy (and my heroic sister un-haired some bus-related confusion) but to share some holiday-ish time was really good. What crimps there were (and an increasing desire to put back in to the transport generosity pool) are more incentive for me to get it together and get a driver's license this year (not a resolution, but a good idea). Meanwhile (and always), I am a seriously lucky boy to have the family, friends and beloved that I do. Ellie and I unwrapped our gifts to each other last night: I now have February-worthy mitts and am entitled to some shiatsu attention from aeon_of_maat, and Ellie has a pretty pendant in a cute box to re-turquoise her, and some voyeuristic transit reading in the form of Found. I'll miss her over the holiday weekend while she's in Ottawa... but I'm happy we carved out some time together.

I hope everyone reading this has a good holiday weekend, celebrating or not.

Look, it's a squirrel!

Yesterday was work, computer-configuring, tutorial, birthday dinner, more computer-configuring, sleep.

Spent the morning hunting papers for geometry, then went down to loupdebois' place with rottenfruit, for his birthday open house. Helped him enjoy his birthday gift from my sister and me (Soul Calibur III), drank some coffee, kicked around, read a Terry Pratchett picture book, saw some Kids in the Hall, and came home.

Then moonlightjoy called, asking whether I had a plunger. Fortunately, I did. Went by with it (she did the work, not wanting outside eyes to see her toilet in that condition), and stuck around for popcorn and beer. Now, I'm back here, sorting out stuff for a run at programming, or studying, or problem sets, or something.