Clarity via Google Earth

(Be sure to click the picture and look at the full sized version)

This ought to give everybody a nice idea of our more immediate surroundings. Qubec is just over the big river to the left. Downtown Ottawa is apx 10mins off the bottom of the picture and a bit to the right.

Fundamentally Awesome

This has nothing to do with life in Ottawa, but it is too awesome not to share...



Of course he did. Given the opportunity, who wouldn't?

1st Time for Young Eyes

I will revisit the other elements of the Iowa trip before too long, but 1st I wanted to share pictures of these two very important moments in a child’s life.

The 1st snowy morning…

















Dinosaurs!


Even better, the triceratops is Tom’s favorite dinosaur. It was very good timing with the dinosaurs because we have been talking to Tom about bones, and I have been explaining the words herbivore, carnivore and omnivore to him. These ideas are a lot more interesting when discussed in a room full of massive dino-skeletons.

Ultimately, the preacher nailed it.

He said...

“Saints walk among us, although they do not know it”.

Other people spoke in greater detail, lovely memories all of them, but it all distills down to the simple truth that my grandma was a saint. As mentioned elsewhere, the harshest words I ever heard cross her lips was when she called my uncle’s adulterous ex-wife a ‘snotty snot’. She is one of just a handful of people who give me faith in humanity. Thomas Hobbes never met my grandma.

In a mid-western town of 900 people, some 200 attended the service. In my entire life I have never seen that church so full. People came from as far away as the West coast and, of course, Canada. I did not speak during the service. The opportunity was there, but those memories are mine and nobody in the room needed convincing as to what a wonderful women she had been.

The service also saw the creation of a new piece of family mythology. The Wagoners, with one exception, are a musical family. My dad (the eldest of the children), Uncle Tim and Aunt Teri all took their guitars to the front and performed ‘Angel Band’ from the ‘Oh Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack’. The night before while rehearsing, Thomas had insisted on strumming along while they rehearsed, so Tim took the little guitar Teri had given to Thomas and tuned it to open C. The idea hatched that, if Thomas wanted, he could go to the front of the Church to strum along with them. And he did. It was a funeral, so there are no pictures or film of the event. That’s fine. If anything it will simply make the event grow larger over time.

Like many others, I loved grandma dearly, and will miss her terribly.