Our Neighborhood: The Bridges

Another local feature that I want to highlight, these bridges are just down the street from our house. Jane will cross them every weekday in the 10mins that it takes her to walk from the house to work.

Our Neighborhood: Take Away...

The neighborhood we are in is just bloody lovely. I fully intend to produce a blog entry about the general area, but there are a couple features I want to pull out for special treatment. So, while our area is amazingly picturesque, it is not exactly overflowing with take away or delivered food options. We have had a couple pizzas delivered, neither was special and only one was hot. There is also a yet to be tried Indian place. No matter, there is one option that stands out. This place is a stone’s throw from our front porch, literally. Its only just opened, but the early signs are good.

I cannot be assed cooking dinner tonight, but that OK because the take away Pheasant Sausage and Braised Rabbit Pot Pie with Le Coprin Mushrooms will be out of the oven in apx 10 mins. ETA to my tummy, 15mins…

I Have Never Felt More Un-Australian

It’s my accent, or more accurately my lack of an accent relative to the locals. Its surprisingly annoying. Part of the joy of moving to a new place is telling people about where you came from and an accent is also a great ice breaker. Around here I sound just like everybody else. To make matters worse, G’day is still my default greeting so a lot of people must reckon I am and am a complete tool, bunging it on.

Bugger.

Gatineau Park

On the last day before Jane started back to work we packed up a bag and headed a good 20mins over the border to Gatineau Park. Once the troops were ready we went for a lovely walk. We also found the world’s least helpful trail sign. After the walk, we drove a bit and found a nice picnic area that offered a rather spectacular view.

God Does Irony

Our neighbors – and I do mean right next door – are Kiwis. It’s the DHOM for the NZ High Commission, her husband and their 2 kids. It’s tempting to subtly mock their accent, but I reckon I’ll aim for good relations, especially as their daughter is the same age as Lilian. In fact, their birthday’s are only 1 day off.

Great Big Baloons

Gatineau is roughly a 5-10min drive from our house. Its also in Qubec and hosts a bloody big annual hot air balloon festival every Sept. It’s a bit like an Easter show with an attached RV park and lots of hot air balloons (60ish over the course of the event) all doing their thing starting at the appointed hour. In this case, 5:30pm. The kids loved it. Lillian called out and waved goodbye to many, many balloons while Tom and I were lucky enough to have front row seats for one of the very 1st launches.

Plans and Ashes

My grandmother passed away this afternoon.

This was not a great surprise as her health has been steadily declining for years, but it is very disappointing. I have known since we 1st started planning for Ottawa that time was important. Our first trip was to be to Iowa to visit the grandparents for Halloween. Six weeks from now. She saw Tom when I brought him over in 2007 for Wagstock II, but she never got to meet Lillian.

Grandma was absolutely wonderful and I, along with many others, will miss her very much. She baked apple pies, loved kids and laughed easily. The absolute harshest comment I ever heard pass her lips was to call my uncle's ex-wife a "snotty snot". I should aspire to sink so low more often.

Posts here will continue, but the blogging-fire I had in me this morning has gone. I expect I'll be making arrangements to fly to Iowa fairly soon as well.

Its the Little Things...

The picture pretty much covers it. All I’ll add is that this is a totally legit product that I bought from my local supermarket.

The Week Before

The week before coming over we stayed in a serviced apartment in the trendy centre of Canberra, aka Kingston. We didn’t really have much choice after the movers have been through the house. I have to admit, I could see the attraction of living within an easy crawl of the numerous restaurants and pubs of Green Square. Especially for the well paid youth of the APS. The apartment itself was nice enough and large enough. I have certainly occupied worse.

The rental car was a hoot. We sold both of our cars and needed something for the last week in Canberra. After a painful series of interactions with the Thrifty rental interface, we got a deal on a large car (needs to accommodate 2 child seats). So, we went from a 12 year old Festiva and a 10 year old Corolla, to a Camry with just 2,000km on the clock. It was a smooth and quiet ride, surprisingly powerful as well. Putting the foot down did not result in a surge and sinking back into one’s seat. Instead, the car simply increased to a speed, typically in excess of the legal limit, and unless I was actually looking at the speedo I probably wouldn’t even notice the change. Nice.

We also spent the last week attending dinners with friends and a High Tea at the Hyatt with other friends. All of which simply reinforced the lesson that it should not require moving to another country to arrange to see people I actually like. It’s well established that the quality of our relationships in life is a powerful factor in determining general levels of happiness.

Finally, Jane’s parents came down and were an enormous help. They spent some quality time with their grandkids while we spent quality time with movers, real estate agents, blah, blah, blah. We all went out to Lanyon Homestead for morning tea. The kids had a fine time and the place is generally rather lovely.

Back on the Grid

The nice people from Roger’s have finally been around and connected us to the wider world.

Establishing a new household in a developed country when one is without the benefits of telephone or internet is painful. It took us nearly a week just to get enough ID together to manage the checks required to get a prepaid cellphone (read mobile). At the same time we were able to sign up for a bundled home package covering TV, internet and a landline. Sure, the soonest they could make it over to install everything was a fortnight later, but at least we had an appointment to rejoin the world. In the meantime we made due with extremely limited net access and the Yellowpages. Yes, the actual paper ones.

As far as this blog is concerned, I am going to try to push out extra entries covering the last few weeks and bring everything up to speed. This may see entries made out of chronological sequence because I don’t want to leave current events behind while I try to catch up.

You have all seen Pulp Fiction. I am sure you’ll manage.