The Voice Of Reason

Thanksgiving was a lovely feast as always. Staci didn't bring Bree because she didn't want her overwhelmed by so many people. Two of Rick's kids were also there with their families, 2 school aged kids under 10 and two 10 month old twins!

This week I've been knocking out the last few little details for the trip. We decided to go to the Fan Expo in Vancouver because there will be a number of actors there from a couple of tv shows that Graham really likes. They still don't have any schedules up of the appearances and no prices for actor  photo/autograph tickets. They're cutting it pretty close, I think. Anyway, we'll check the schedule and do that for one day or part of one day. I booked the day passes for that. Then also booked a rental car so we could drive up to Parksville on Vancouver Island to see our friends there. Had a hotel booked for overnight. I couldn't assume and certainly couldn't invite ourselves to stay with her and her husband because she's not been well. She had a stroke a few months back and when she had it, she fell and got a very bad concussion which is probably what's giving her more trouble than the stroke was. I had another friend who had something similar, a seizure followed by a fall and nasty concussion. Took him a long time to recover properly.

We hope to do a bit of driving around the island on the way up and back to Victoria where we're staying with my aunt and uncle (mother's brother). Called them this week, too, to confirm and give them the flight details. 

Not sure yet about going on a submarine tour in Hawaii. I know Graham really wants to and I would love it too but I'm concerned with the ladder/steps down into it. I won't have too much trouble going down but I'm worried about climbing up again. I don't *think* it's a straight up and down ladder, that it's on a bit of a slant but there are no photos that really show how far apart the rungs/steps are. I must go to the website and find an email address. I think I could manage if the rungs aren't too far apart. We'd want to pre-book that too. Let's hope the weather is consistently decent. Hate to book things too far in advance .

Have brought in my rolled coin to change to American money after work at the bank and sorted out our phone access online.  I used an online chat with the mobile phone company. They have a deal where you pay only $5 each day that you use your phone, which includes data roaming as well. That's $5 per day per phone of course, and it doesn't count if you're on wifi. Seemed like a pretty good deal. Having the maps alone might make it worth while.

We leave in three weeks from Saturday!

Vacation! (or nearly there, just the day to get through).
Lovely pedicure yesterday. I really have to do that more often! I do plan to get it done again before we go out west/Hawaii in November. I don't plan on doing any swimming but I might want to wear sandals with a skirt if we go out somewhere nice for dinner.
Didn't sleep well last night, in addition to having a sore hip periodically, I was too warm even with the ceiling fan on. You just can't win. It's going to be a long day today.

And just to catch up on books since I don't know what kind of time I'll have for reading over the next two weeks. This lot of books were all top marks for the most part or almost. I really enjoyed all of them for various reasons as they were mostly quite different from each other.
( 2017 books )

I'm currently reading several books, each by classic Canadian authors and a Jane Austen. I think I'll try to read all of her books. Not by the end of the year but over the coming months at least.

The remake of IT was quite good. I haven't read the book since the 80s so I couldn't say whether it followed it well or not but it only focussed on the part to do with the kids, not the adults years later like the original mini series did. I would think they are planning a sequel for when they come back and fight it again as adults. All of the child actors they had were very good, unusual really, there's always at least one that irritates me or more. Not all of the kids themselves are likeable but then that's just me probably but it don't put it down to the actors that irritate me, just the character and I would think the actor must be doing a good job if he's making the character annoying! The one playing the girl in the group was good, too. Really pretty. She's gorgeous now, she's going to be a stunner in 5 or 10 years. She's 15 now and kind of reminds me of Deborah Messing from Will and Grace. Her name is Sophia Lillis. Watch that space.

The man that played Pennywise the clown is Bill Skarsgard from the Swedish family of actors. You've seen his father in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and his brother Alexander was in True Blood. We've only just seen him lately in a creepy series called Hemlock Grove. Excellent stuff with vampires, a werewolf and lots of other creatures. Tim Curry played the original Pennywise but Bill did just as good a job, I think.

Since this movie was all about the kids and their experience, it went into more detail about the lives of most of them and about their fears which is what the entity feeds on. Their parents are not major characters and only appear if it contributes to either the child's state of mind or to their personal fears. If they do make a second movie about the adults, it should be interesting.

Afterwards, we found a place for a bite to eat along a little street in halifax that's lined with pubs and cafes. There are 2 or 3 places along there that are long standing, with the rest seeming to come and go. It's been difficult for the businesses this summer because they have been doing construction on the street all summer, between a major trade centre going up at one end and redoing the other end for pedestrians and making it look "pretty". Most of those businesses usually had outdoor patios built for the summer but most of them haven't been able to and the foot traffic is down a lot because of all the uproar. It's too bad because it's worth the inconvenient to find a decent place. Our meal was quite good. I had fishcakes made with garlic mashed potatoes and the salad was gorgeous, with apple and goat cheese and walnuts with a raspberry vinegarette. The slice of cheesecake, on the other hand was nasty. I don't know what htey used to thicken it but it was almost gluey and sticky. Horrible. I don't mind if it  isn't homemade on the premeses. I've had some decent cheesecake that was premade and even probably frozen but which came out creamy and soft. This could have been sitting on a shelf for a month.

All in all a Grand Day Out. Our houseguest comes next Saturday so we'll get a rental car on Friday and stock up on groceries.

Got to grips with the mop and bucket yesterday and took the kitchen and bathroom floors in hand. *so* much better now! They do get away from you sometimes. Now if I could only persuade myself to clean the oven! *shudder* apparently if you put a small bowl of ammonia in the oven overnight, it's extremely easy to clean the next day. I did buy the ammonia. I just haven't quite got there to do it, I have no ventilation in the kitchen so will have to tie something around my mouth and nose so as not to asphyxiate myself. It is still difficult because I have to get on the floor to reach into the back and there likely will be some scrubbing involved. It hurts my knees even with padding or pillows underneath. It's got to be done though.

We went out for a bite to eat last night and out for lunch today for a Corrie ping. We had borrowed Mom's car because the location of the ping has changed and it's a bit of a distance and a pain in the butt by bus. My friend picked us up before when we went to the old location but the new one is only 5 minutes from where she lives and I wouldn't expect her to drive to get us, take us to the ping and then home again after, way too far out of her way. We did an errand or two and then took the car back and are now home in our nest for the evening.

I was on call this weekend to support the tax bill generation processes over the weekend. I kept checking my work email and had my phone by my side if they needed to call me and for the first time I think in years, there was no big problem. Every year there has been something and it's different each time. I think I might have said that before. The emaiil when I got home said everything seemed to be done and he was starting up a final process which he can always cancel and rerun next weekend if need be. I'm quite pleased. I get paid an hour's wage for each of the two days so that's nice. I'd get more if I actually got called, of course. A minimum 3 hour at time and a half call out. Not complaining, I'll take the on call pay.

Finally, catching up on my book list...
( 2017 books )

I've got a new laptop at work. Well it's not new, it's one my coworker had and I thought I'd take that because she had things installed that I could use. Except most of what she had i had to upgrade anyway. What a pain that all is, too. Trying to get the right version of this to work with the version of that and no, that isn't working so try a different one. Gahh...

It's a nice, light machine, bigger screen than my old one but the screen resolution is too fine but it only gives me a choice of three settings and the other are not right either, I want one in between. Maybe when I hook it up to the monitor I'll have more choice. that's what I'm mainly doing anyway or at least with the big monitor, the resolution it's at now will be easier to read. I have to use my reading glasses with it and I suppose I probably would anyway. The old one is a little workhorse, 5 years old if it's a day and there's nothing really wrong with it but it's living on borrowed time really and has some anomolies that I had to fix with work arounds. I won't let it go until the new one is working exactly how i need it to work and at the moment it's still giving me grief.

Been warm and humid here the past few days and when it's like that, it's quite warm in the apartment. I don't know what we'd do if we didn't have the ceiling fan in the bedroom.

And ... Game of Thrones. Whoah! No spoilers but shit just got real. It's a very interesting development and it's going to be pretty exciting. I don't know if the result of it will play out next week in the finale or if they'll leave it for the next season which will be the last one.

Outlander season three starts in September so we're looking forward to that, too.

The big news here is a huge Ikea store opening up next month. We had one here many years ago but they closed it because they thought there wasn't the population to support it even though it wasn't really a very large one. This one will be the biggest one in eastern Canada apparently. It's enormous! The catalogues are being delivered in the city now though we haven't got ours yet. It feels like we felt as kids waiting for the Sears and Eatons Christmas catalogues!

 Fairly busy weekend, for us anyway. We borrowed Mom's car on Friday night and did a Costco run on Saturday as well as one or two other stops then had tickets for the IMAX showing of Dunkirk in the evening. I did stuff up the booking for our seats, clearly misreading the diagram for the seating plan and booked seats three rows from the screen instead of three from the back which is what I thought i had done. We did try to sit on the end of a row further back, hoping someone hadn't booked those seats but just minutes before the show started, the actual owners of the seats showed up. We apologized and slunk back down to the lower section which was all but empty so we did sit in the row behind where we were supposed to. It was a bit better. It wasn't too bad though, after all. The IMAX was pretty amazing for a lot of the scenes, especially for the aerial flying and fighting stuff. We don't normally go for the IMAX but thought this movie would be particularly good and it was. It's also in a spot where we definitely have to have a car to access and we don't normally have one. Highly recommend the movie even if you don't go IMAX with it. It's not really got a story as such, there's no romance thrown in as a back story or anything else around the events. It shows the personnel on the beaches, lining up for the ships and the boats to evacuate, the Messerschmitts bombing the ships and the Spitfires fighting them to prevent it.

Soldiers are jumping off the ships rather than go down with them if they're hit. Others are holed up in a beached boat which the Germans start using for target practice so the bullets are banging on the sides of the hull and coming through it and then when the tide comes in, naturally water starts pouring in. Meanwhile, a load of private boats, ferries, lifeboats and the like are coming over from England's coastal areas to help evacuate the stranded. They were conscripted by the navy but often were still piloted by the private owners. I read somewhere that most of the boats in real life were not little fishing boats, but were ferries and larger boats but I there must have been some smaller private vessels, too. The only "story" part of the movie was one of these boats, piloted by the owner and his two teenage sons and what happens to them. They pick up a very shellshocked pilot (or might be a sailor that survived a sunken ship) who's been shot down and is sitting on a floating craft. He doesn't want them to go "back" to France because he's sure it's certain death but the owner of the boat, played by Mark Rylance (one of only two actors I recognized) knows it's the right thing to do. 

Everything else is the soldiers, the fighting in the air, the tension of them trying to get on the ships then the ships being bombed or will the Spitfires shoot down the bombers? There's not a lot of dialogue but you don't even notice it. Kenneth Branagh plays a Rear Admiral who's overseeing the whole evacuation operation. He's good in the role, too. It was after this evacuation that Churchill made the speech about fighting on the beaches, in the air etc. "We will NEVAH SURRENDAH"! 

Anyway. Yes. Good movie. I wish my Dad had been alive to see it, he'd have really loved it. 

We did more errands on Sunday including dropping in at a ComicArts festival to see the lay of the land. We only just found out about it a couple of days before or it might have been something G. could have prepared for and set up a table. We wanted to see what  it was all about with the possibility of him going in it next year. 

We took the car back to Mom and stayed for an early supper/late lunch and came back home. Watched a documentary narrated by George Lazenby about his life, and how he came to get the part of James Bond, but though apparently was offered a contract for more, he never took them up on the offer. Most of it wasn't about Bond, since that was only part of his life.You did get the idea of what life was like in London in the swinging 60s, though. He was a model for awhile and had women and drink and drugs in his life. He's an Aussie by birth and came across very arrogant and flip which he seems to fully admit he was. Kind of interesting, anyway. 

Not sure what's on this weekend coming but the next one, there's a Corrie ping so I guess we'll borrow the car again. they've changed the venue to one a bit of a distance away from where we live. My friend usually picked us up but the new place is close to where she lives so I would not ask her to come all the way to get us, go all the way back to the pub and then take us home again. It's easier to get the car. Mom always tells me she'll lend it any time and wonders why I don't ask more often but I don't like to. We generally do ask maybe once every 5 or 6 weeks. If she comes over to visit on a Sunday, we'll sometimes ask her to run us down to the grocery store and we can then get a lot more or heavier stuff. G. usually goes to the grocery store once and sometimes twice a week to get things but he can only carry so much. 

Also saw that the Fan Expo in Toronto over the Labour Day weekend has some excellent guests but we can't go at this late date, with all our other vacations planned. The Comic Con in Toronto in March isn't nearly as good but we did discover there's a Fan Expo in Vancouver while we're there. They don't have more than a couple of guests announced yet but we'll wait a bit and see who they get. We decided if there's anyone really interesting we'll get a one day ticket. Don't want to spend all our time in Vancouver doing that, there's too much else to see, but one afternoon at the convention centre would be ok! Good timing. It actually looks better than the Comic con because it seems to be a wider focus than the comic one. They call it a Pop Culture festival so it covers a lot more, like Steampunk, science fiction, horror, in addition to comics and anime and manga. We will have to keep it in mind and go to the Toronto one next year. I think it must be the labour day weekend every year. Man, though, the hotel prices are astronomical over that weekend!

We can get a good deal on the flights because I've got a companion voucher for $99 through Westjet which cuts the price of the flights down. Good thing, we'll need the cash for the hotels! Still, a long weekend away in Toronto will be ok. We also think we will try to go back to the UK next year. Ohh.... maybe we can fly to the UK from Toronto and continue our vacation from there. Something to think about. Will have to do some organizing. I don't think we can organize a 3 day layover in Toronto on a ticket to the UK, flying here to TO to London. I think the airline would make us book two separate flights. It would be cheaper obviously if there was a way to book the Halifax/Toronto/London flight as one flight. Anyway, never mind, there's ways and means. Incorporating the Fan Expo in with the rest of the vacation is a good idea, though. 

Have developed a chesty cough. Crap. Was up most of the night though I have to say, the desperate act of using Vicks rub on my chest does help. Horrible Buckley's cough mixture does too. Tip: It works, it tastes disgusting, kind of like liquid eucalyptus, keep it in the refrigerator and you can get it down. At room temperature, your stomach may rebel. My dad called it Fuckleys. He was right.

Time for the monthly book catch up beneath the cut
( 2017 books )

 It's Tall Ships weekend!!!!!!!! I'm quite excited to see the ships again and there is quite a lot going on in the city as well. There's an Indigenous display on the waterfront where there should be lots of music and costume and that's always colourful. There are the ships of course, and they're free to go on board and have a look around. There are free concerts by local bands all weekend. There is a small island in the harbour that used to be fortified and it's cleaned up and open to the public this weekend though you have to buy a ticket for the transportation and entrance I think. Might do that, might not. hiking around it, though small, is all hills! Fireworks every night. I want to see them at least once, with the ships lit up for the night as well. There's a parade of the crew of the ships, that's a "maybe". I'm taking Monday and Tuesday off because I won't be fitting it all in one day. Tuesday is the Parade of Sail where the ships come down the harbour and back out in full sail. Gorgeous! 

One woman on the bus today said something like "you've seen them once, what's the point of seeing them again".. I can't get enough of them. It's one of my top favourite things about Halifax, the tall ships events every few years. I'll be paying for all that walking, though, because my heel is still sore though there's some improvement. I'll probably be back to square one by Wednesday though if i'm smart, when i do get home after the day out, i'll get the ice out and ice my foot down. That should keep ahead of it some. Home to charge up my camera batteries!

In addition, I think we're going to see that Valerian movie, probably tomorrow since it's looking like a bit overcast and showery. We can play that by ear. If it's not bad when we get out of the movie, we can always go down to the waterfront for a first look at the ships. 

 Bloody Air Canada! I suppose they are no worse than most airlines but they do piss me off sometimes. I got a call from the travel agent last night to say that Air Canada had changed the flights for our Hawaii trip, they weren't offering the return flight on the date we'd booked anymore. Or at least not that date. So the options were to shift the flight and hotel by a day later or cancel. But a day later has us on an overnight flight, arriving back in Vancouver first thing in the morning and then on another overnight flight to Toronto that same night. Nooooooo. I might have been able to do that 30 years ago but it would wreck me for a week now I think. But I asked if it couldn't be shifted back a day instead so she checked and said yes it could. I also asked if we cancelled and changed over to a Westjet package (they had a similar one with the same hotel) would we get charged anything by AC. Considering it was AC that moved the goal post, I expected the answer to be No and it was. She got back to me this morning and said it could be rescheduled for one day earlier so that's what we're doing. We'll head to Hawaii out of Vancouver on Nov. 14th instead of the 15th. We get back to Vancouver early early on the 20th instead of the 21st and head home the night of the 22nd. 

So now, I had to shift some other stuff around. I was planning that we would go to stay with my cousin for the two nights before Hawaii but this would only leave us with the one night. Not a lot of time for a good visit. I'd also have to do something about the airport hotel we'd booked for the night of the 21st. I thought maybe, if it wasn't too inconvenient for my cousin, we could go to hers when we get back from Hawaii. That would be a couple of days even if we might be a bit jet lagged from the overnighter. We might even get a day trip in somewhere, perhaps up to Whistler in the mountains. 

I messaged her and she said that would be great, she'd even pick us up and deliver us from/to the airport. I wasn't assuming, though I'd hoped she would. But we could have taken the skytrain from a station out in the burbs where they live. Anyway, with that done, I cancelled the airport hotel and rebooked it for the night before we go to Hawaii. We can take our stuff out there in the evening, have breakfast in the morning and either go into the city on the skytrain or do some shopping and get some lunch in the large mall that's close to the hotel. There's an airport shuttle from the hotel I think. THey'll hold on to our bags until we need to leave. 

Sorted. 

 We gathered to celebrate my niece's birthday on Saturday and I finally got to hold the wee baby!! She's soooo tiny, just nudging over 6 pounds now, which is more than a pound since she came home two weeks ago. She's doing very well though does have to feed a lot. She's keeping them hopping. Luckily, her husband is very good with the baby and even took over and let her sleep 4 or 5 hours while he looked after Bree. I think my niece pumps out milk for a bottle feed, too, so he was able to feed her. 

Anyway, I held her for awhile and then of course, there were others in line to have a cuddle including her uncles. It's surprising to see how besotted R. is over the baby, someone that never held one before and wasn't bothered but this baby, as he told his sister, is important. Awww! I still have a photo I took of him when he was five, holding her when she was about 6 months old. He's staring at her little face and they're both smiling hard. He kind of looks at little Bree the same way now! Warms the heart, it does. 

Staci's dad is driving down from Ontario next week to see the baby. He hasn't been here yet and planned a trip later in the summer but he's starting a new job in July so he's making a quick drive down now instead. I say "quick" but it'll take a couple of days to get here.  You can do the drive in one day but it's literally ONE DAY, a solid 18 to 20 hours, highway all the way. THat's without too much stopping other than gas, bathroom and a quick food stop. I used to live north of Ottawa and we would do the drive in about 16 - 18 hours in summer, driving all night. We'd break it up to an overnight stop in winter if we did it at all. Where Staci's dad lives is in Hamilton, which is about half way between Toronto and Niagara (which is west of Toronto). Google maps has it as a 17 and a half hour drive but it ends up being closer to 20 with traffic, break stops, tolls and other delays.

I just had a look at the maps and it would take 60 hours to drive across Canada, from Halifax to Vancouver. That's Google Maps not taking into account breaks, time to sleep etc. It's a big country. Actually Google gives the fastest route through the US, about 57 hours. You would have to take into account the exchange rate which isn't great these days though the price of gas is better than Canada's, it being taxed far lighter. I'd still prefer to stick to Canada though. I don't know if I ever would want to drive across the country but it would be a nice drive over the Rocky Mountains from Calgary or Edmonton to Vancouver.