Still gorgeous

Tony and Angie hosted a baby shower for Fin (and Ian and Lorn) the other Saturday night. I got to hold him a bit. Ahhhh - he only puked once and didn't cry at all.

And with his rightful owner who made me give him back...

Third Day of Spring?

This was the weather on Sunday - will spring ever come?

Soul Man

A few weeks back my sister Carolyn went to see James Hunter at Dingwalls in London. He sings soul music which he writes himself, plays guitar and has a five piece band backing him - keyboard, drums, string bass, tenor sax and bari sax. She thought he was fantastic and looked at his website, which said the Dingwalls concert was the first in his world tour. Guess where the next place he was playing? The Polish Hall, Edmonton, Alberta. What are the chances of that?

So I went along with Steven and Natalie as that Philistine Richard didn't want to come (although admitedly he'd just spent and hour running around a football pitch - and scored four goals, I must proudly add). The concert was sold out, and the hall was packed. It had been set out with about 30 tables of 10 people, with a dance floor near the stage. Trouble was, the Polish Hall is a bit like a church hall, and there were no candles or decorations on the table to liven the place up.

The scheduling was more English Jazz Club than Canadian Concert. The publicity said 'starts at 7pm'. In fact the doors opened at 7pm, and the support band didn't start until 8.10pm and then played for about 45 minutes. James Hunter then didn't come on until about 9.50pm and played until 11pm. Steve, Natalie and I had agreed to go for dinner afterwards, but thst didn't quite happen. On the plus side, we had plenty of time to get to know the other people on the table.

Despite the ambience of the place, the late start after a long day at work and the lack of dinner, the concert was fantastic. The support band was from Red Deer (half way between Edmonton and Calgary) and played rock and roll type music and was very good. James Hunter was then phenomenal - a voice which reminded me of Marvin Gaye with amazing skill on the guitar and wonderful music. If he comes your way on his world tour, do check him out.

Tooth Hurty

Indeed Jacqui and I have been to the dentists over here and wow are they thorough. Just the check up and cleaning took about 3 hours for the two of us and now comes the painful part, I need fillings, first time ever but still very annoying. Jacqui is still filling free but they want to remove her wisdom teeth. As far as I could tell they weren't helping anyway :)

I have my second visit this Friday when I will be numbed and frozen and luckily our (Jacqui's) lovely health insurance is paying for all of this..............hmm......................I might get some pointy canines inserted to finally realise my dream of vampirehood.

Having written this I can now spot Jacqui's post saying almost exactly the same thing, oh well :)

Need break, too cold

Jack bloody Frost is well and truly in the house. -34 this morning wind chill to -40 coldest March the 10th in living memory. Temperature in two daystime should be +2, that's PLUS 2 degrees a change of 42 degrees. This country is confused.

Open wide

Last week we finally got around to having our teeth checked out, Canadian style. As we are both used to the good old NHS with its 20 minutes quick scale and polish, we were quite unprepared for the thoroughness of the Canadian dentists. I had booked appointments for 2pm Thursday afternoon for Richard, thinking we'd be done in an hour. Oh no. We were finally out by five o'clock.

The dentist inspected, x-rayed, scaled, scaled some more, polished, flossed and x-rayed again. Richard has a few small cavities which need filling and we both need our wisdom teeth out which seems to be the norm over here. The whole bill came to about $450. Ouch. Hurrah for health insurance. However, there was a TV screen in the ceiling so I was able to watch the history channel as the dentist worked. Makes it all worth it.

Science-tastic

This month, the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA) have been hosting a series of science nights in primary schools and a 'science olympics' on Saturday.

On Wednesday night, I helped out at a school in St Albert. There were a dozen tables around the gym, each hosting a different hands-on science activity and more than a hundred children visited in the two hours and tried these activities out. I was doing chromatography - the children drew dots with felt tip pens on a circle of coffee filter paper and then threaded a pipe cleaner through the centre of the paper. The paper was then placed on top of a cup of water and the pipe cleaner drew the water up onto the coffee paper and caused the inks to separate and spread from the centre outwards. Really simple but some really good results.

Saturday, the science olympics was held in one of the convention halls in Alberta - about 50 teams of six children doing various scientific challenges - the parachuting eggs was particularly exciting. I was again helping with the hand-son activities, this time making silly putty = copydex + water + food colouring + borax solution (water softener I believe). A great chance to make a mess and my fingers are still slightly blue.

And he is gorgeous

After cooking lunch on new arrival no. 1 last Saturday, we went to visit new arrival no. 2. Fin stayed awake for the duration of our visit and didn't cry at all, not even when I had a good cuddle. He's a brave lad.