Learning

On wednesday of this week, we had a holiday for memorial day (the 11th of November and all the import that that implies). That however, is not the purpose of this post. Michael has had a project looming over him for a while that he wanted my help with as it involved constructing a moving vehicle. Having the day at home gave us some time to tackle it.

Whilst getting ready to do that, I came across Sam in his room who was very upset. Enquiries lead to the revelation that it was because he had some school work to do that involved having to draw some pictures. And he couldn’t draw them (must have inherited my lack of artistic ability). He was attempting to draw planes and birds, from scratch, with nothing to reference to help him.

It was a bit later on that this caused me to pause and think about the two different approaches that I was seeing between Michael and Sam.

Michael was very much in the mind set of getting the least amount of work possible done at the latest possible time so that he could devote his time to more enjoyable pursuits.

Sam on the other hand, unprompted was trying to tackle his homework and was upset because he couldn’t live up to his own exacting standards.

I helped them both, showing Sam a few tricks that would help him produce pictures of a quality he’d be happy with that didn’t involve the internet or a computer and he was happily on his way.

I also helped Michael to get his model constructed and working, as well as showing him a good way to document his design. Of course, once the model was built, Michael was happy to put the whole thing aside and move on to those more enjoyable pursuits. Sam plowed away at his homework (admittedly a less demanding task) until it was complete.

Michael needed some prompting to pull out the assessment guidelines to be sure that he was covering all his bases, but once prompted, at least took some time to look over it (well most of it) and make sure that he’d get a good result. It must be said that his chief concern was that the car that we’d made would go fast!

And then, there’s Tom. I feel for Tom, because Sam is usually coming home from school and telling us that he managed to get very high marks for his various tests. Michael doesn’t announce things in the same way, but he usually does very well. Tom doesn’t do badly, but with the legacy of his speech difficulties, things are significantly more challenging for him, so we build him up with his good results, hoping that he can focus on the fact that he’s doing well, rather than the fact that he can’t quite make it up to the extra-high standard of his brothers.

We’re all learning still.

delayed

Today (well it was when I wrote this ... 2 days ago now) was supposed to be a happy day, because Mum and Dad were going to be arriving in Fort McMurray to visit us. The obvious use of tense here gives away the fact that that isn’t going to happen. Apparently they missed their connection in Sydney by 10 minutes. I don’t know the details of why, but I blame Air Canada because they seem to be good at that sort of thing (I have no idea if it’s true or not, but they should have bloody waited!)

That means that having put the kids to bed full of the excitement and anticipation of Nanny and Poppa’s imminent arrival, they get to wake up to disappointment and an extra sleep added to the count.

The other highlight for this week was supposed to be the pool table that we’ve ordered for Christmas arriving at our door. Although it’s for Christmas, when we ordered it we were told that as they had a delivery already going to Fort McMurray on the 28th, they should be able to get it up there at the same time. That certainly had us excited.

Having heard nothing from them since placing the order, I thought that I’d check and make sure that it was still going to be arriving as planned. After all, we’ve all been looking forward to having the table in the house (it was quickly decided that there’d be no waiting until Christmas!) So I called through at lunch time only to be told “it seems that the delivery has been delayed and won’t arrive until the 2nd of November and of course that means arriving in Edmonton on the 2nd, so I asked when I could expect it to arrive in Fort McMurray. “Oh, I’m not sure, you’ll have to speak to your salesman about that, he’s at lunch just now and I’ll have him call you back.”

One day I’d just like to have someone give me some good news *sigh*.

eleven

Yes, it’s one of those posts. On the 16th of this month, Friday, Sam turned 11. I sat down to write about it earlier and managed to get as far as the title before things got in the way, but had to come back and mark the occasion. (I won’t have to stretch my brain on a birthday post until March after this … unless there’s a big call for one call Thirty Nine in February?)

What to say about Sam at 11? Well fortunately there’s nothing negative that I have to say. No running off and joining a gang or the like at this point. Sam is probably the quietest of the four kids. He keeps his head down and quietly plugs away at what ever work he has to do and needs little reminding. He managed honour roll again last year and from what I’ve seen of the start of this year, there’s no reason to suspect that he might not do it again. I have no concerns for him academically.

He’s been devouring my bookshelf this last year. I don’t quite recall which of the books it was that he really started to get into, but it took some convincing to get him onto the next one. He’d reached the end of a series and wanted something to read. I kept throwing Feist’s Magician at him, but it took several attempts. Of course, once he started, there was no putting it down. Between he and Michael, they’ve slowly been identifying the gaps in various series that I have. At first Sam seemed to be on a mission to find the book with the largest number of pages and that anything with less than 600 or so simply wouldn’t be acceptable. He’s come around now and will read almost anything. It might start to hurt me if we have to buy book at Australian prices one day.

Sports wise, Sam is all about minimization. He enjoyed soccer over the summer and played in the under 12 development team with Michael. That proved to be a bit much though when he had to do something soccer related up to four days a week. He was happy to play a bit, not a lot. He didn’t play ice sports last year and although he’s a good skier, isn’t interested in anything particularly organized. He simply doesn’t like having to put a swag of clothes on. He’s been holding out with the shorts as long as possible as the temperature here starts to slide. He’ll be playing indoor soccer this winter and skiing when he feels like it. He’s also playing volleyball again at the moment (school sport is weird here) and I think again that one of the reasons that he likes it is that he gets to take clothes off rather than put additional clothes on in order to participate.

Sam hasn’t quite clicked with the Canadians though has made a couple of friends. There doesn’t seem to be anyone that would fit a best friend category and I think that he’s pretty much put that sort of thing on hold, pending a return to Australia. Of all the kids, Sam is the one that has most explicitly stated that he wants to go home.

Just this morning we were talking over breakfast and he said that what would be really good was if we could be home for his birthday next year (this was his third in Canada) but still get to be here for Halloween. That’s one little holiday I think our kids will miss when we go home (though I suspect its all about the candy!)

Speaking of breakfast, one of the unexpected joys of Sam’s volleyball is that the practice is usually before school, so he has to be there between 7:15 and 7:30am. That means that I get to drive him there. There’s something special about getting to have an early start to the day with Sam. He’s a good morning person generally and when you get him one on one like that, happy to have a chat and tell you things that might otherwise be lost in the noise of a busy family.

So on Volleyball days, we eat breakfast together and take a quick trip to school. It’s got to be one of my favourite times of the week! It’s a time when I’m reminded of his ever growing maturity, his imagination, fragility and the complexity of his evolving personality.


Happy Birthday Sam!

Oh Shit.

One of the main reasons for getting to Edmonton was to shop prior to winter. We went through the outlet stores on Saturday and on Sunday, headed off to the West Edmonton Mall.

Of the unacquainted, it’s the fifth largest mall in the world (and the largest in North America), has an amusement park, a water park, mini golf, an ice rink …. etc etc. We thought we’d get the shopping out of the way first and then take the kids to the water park as we hadn’t been back there since the very first time.

As we shopped, we started running into fellow Fort Mac based Aussies who like us had taken the opportunity to bugger off for the long weekend. So it was that I found myself chatting in Gap Kids, with the kids looking at clothes (um yeah, sure, so some of them were just terrorizing each other and everyone in the store – its LIKE looking at clothes) and Caroline was trying to sort out payment.

I looked around to do the obligatory head count as it had been a while. Michael? Check. Samuel? Check. Thomas? Hmmm, oh wait, there he is … Check. Emily …probably in a change room with 436 different things to try on. I chatted a bit longer as I continued to scan the shop looking for her. I couldn’t find her and checked with Caroline if she’d seen her. Nope. The people we were chatting to? Not for a while. The heart notched itself up just a fraction (after all, I was used to not seeing a kid for a bit and finding them hiding in the middle of clothing display or sitting down out of the way waiting) and I started to search the store. It’s at the point you start calling out your child’s name that other people start to take a bit more interest.

It’s when you think you’ve looked through the entire store and all the change room that your heart accelerates to the point where its beating is like a drum placed within the ear canal. When you check just outside the store and there’s now collectively 6 adults looking and you still haven’t found her, headlines start to work their way into your conscious despite your best efforts to continue calmly looking.

The staff at Gap closed the doors so that she couldn’t’ get out without us noticing, Caroline had raced off outside to start searching the mall (hey, there’s only about 800 shops and 570,000 square metres to look through). I rounded up the boys and started to describe (and wonder) what she was wearing so that security could be informed. Thomas quietly enquired if Patrick could come back to our campsite.

Before things could get too bad, we had a call back from security to tell us that they had Emily. I think there must have only been 2 minutes pass between the call being made from gap and getting that call back. You know you’re looked after when that happens. The things I think about that could have been alternatives are simply too horrible to even write about.

I called Caroline to let her know and was escorted to security where I was instantly clung to and somewhat relieved.

I didn’t even stop to ask where they’d found her or who had brought her there, I was simply too happy to have her hanging on and not letting go. I was impressed with the way the Gap staff handled the situation as well. I just hope that’s not from lots of practice, because no one really needs to go through that!

Optimist vs Pessimist

This weekend just gone was Thanksgiving here in Canada. It’s a good concept for a holiday, but I find that having not been brought up with it, it’s a little hard to really go all out for. Though having said that, it did provide us with a long weekend and thus a chance to escape The Mac.

With winter not so much looming as crashing down around us, we also saw it as the last chance for the year to get away in the Caravan. We considered a number of options and ended up deciding that we’d go to Edmonton. Growing kids facing a new winter meant a need for some clothes that would extend beyond knees and elbows and as I kept an eye on the deteriorating forecasts, it also meant that if things got a little too chilly, we should be able to get into a hotel.

Weather was my chief concern for the trip as I tend to get a bit nervous about icy roads between here and Edmonton and facing the trip with the caravan as well, you might say that I was shit scared. I was watching the weather, and road reports in the days leading up to the drive and the pessimist in me saw the worst: snow everywhere, sections of roads marked as being in poor condition and general hysteria inducing conditions. When I got home Wednesday I was suggesting that maybe we should be planning a hotel trip rather than the caravan.

The optimist in Caroline laughed in the face of my ‘childish fears’ (my words, not hers) because when she looked at the reports, she didn’t see it from quite the same perspective. I saw patches of road in poor conditions and roads showing conditions to be ‘unkonwn’. To me, the pessimist, an ‘unknown’ condition report means that it could be in a devastating condition, it could be so bad that the bloke that was supposed to report it is stuck in the ditch because of all the black ice that he’d driven over. To Caroline, the optimist, it simply meant that the road was perfectly fine because ‘if there was anything to report, someone would have reported it.’

The fact that it was snowing as I drove home on Saturday afternoon to commence the journey only reinforced my fears, but under the assurances of my optimistic wife, the caravan remained shackled to the back of the car and off we went, snow gently cascading about us. It was only a bit of a flurry, not too bad and the road itself was dry, so that was a good thing.

It also happened to be bloody windy. Big gusty winds kept trying to shift us sideways, which to me, the pessimist, meant that if I hit some ice, there’d be a nice helping sideways shove just at the right time to throw me in the ditch. After the first hour of driving I was able to relax a little. The snow was still falling and the wind was still blowing, but I’d come to terms with it a little and the white knuckle factor was down to a 3/10.

Of course, Caroline was ok, because it was going to get better, but I expected that worse was to come. I was right.

We stopped for dinner 200kms out of Fort Mac and Caroline went in to order while the kids and I waited in the car. And as the sun disappeared over the horizon and it got darker, we waited some more. It was somewhere around there that I turned the light on in the car to keep reading and noticed that the car lights were still on. I’d turned the ignition off though to save fuel, so when Caroline came back and we went to take off, all I got was ‘tick tick tick’. No ignition. Fortunately the girl behind the counter had jumper cables and we were off again in short order. Of course, that wasn’t the ‘worse’ that I’d been expecting.

As we continued our journey through the dark, the snow started to get heavier. If you’ve never driven in snow at night, let me set the scene for you a little. Unlike rain, snow doesn’t hit the windscreen unless its really wet heavy snow and you’re moving at a slow speed. With the powdery snow that we get up this way, as you drive through it, it get’s picked up in the airstream over the top of the car and flies up and over the roof before it ever hits the windscreen. And unlike rain, when the headlights hit the snow, they’re just reflected and your visibility drops dramatically, quicker than is experienced with rain.

The interesting and fun part of it is that as the snow is picked up by the headlights and flies ‘straight at you’ (as a result of driving into it of course) you start to feel like you’re in a star wars movie, because as the snow flies toward you, its just like when they go into hyperspace in star wars and all those white lights suddenly fly past you on the screen. The bad thing is that as it gets denser and denser, you simply can’t see down the road enough. On this occasion, it was bad enough that with no oncoming traffic and no one in front of me, it got to the point that I couldn’t tell where the edge or middle of the road was and whether there was a corner ahead or not. The road turned totally white within minutes as we were enveloped in our own little mini-blizzard.

The white knuckle factor at this point was a solid 10/10. It was going to take some seriously industrial strength extraction to remove my hands from that steering wheel and I felt like my heart wasn’t so much beating the crap out of the inside of my chest, but had more like left my chest cavity, tapped me on the shoulder and leapt out the window with a cheery wave. I could feel the tension in places that had no reason to be tense whilst driving the car, not they cared, they tensed up anyway.

I would have stopped, right then and there had there actually been anywhere to stop, but there was no shoulder to speak of (not that I could tell shoulder from actual road) and it was more likely that someone would crash into us blindly if we were stopped than moving. I took comfort from the fact that when I dared to take a micro second long peek in the mirrors all I could see was a string of headlights behind me about 30 cars long. As I crawled at about 40km/hr, they weren’t going anywhere and so for someone to hit me, they’d have to go well out of their way.

We survived. The snow backed off after probably all of 10 minutes, even if it felt like it had been three hours and we made it all the way to Edmonton where I got to set up the van with the snow quietly (and not densely) falling around us. We cranked up the furnace, crawled into our beds and welcomed ourselves to sleepy bobos!

Of course on the way back, as we left to come home, it started snowing again. As we drove, it got worse. Caroline made a comment like, “I didn’t expect it to be this bad.”

I calmly told her that as resident pessimist, I didn’t think it was as bad as it was going to get and that the 5-10cm of snow that had been forecast for the city on Tuesday was more than likely to arrive early to make the drive once more a nightmare. Fortunately, I was wrong. The drive home was pleasant and we were able to appreciate the beauty of the fresh snow, with a gorgeous fall (that would be autumn for most of you) backdrop, the birches in full colour

Winter is Coming Here?

This weekend coming up is Thanksgiving here in Canada, which for us, means an opportunity to flee the Mac in search of some fun somewhere else. We’ve elected to head down to Edmonton to get some pre-winter shopping in so that the kids are ready to head off to school through the cold and snow. We might just manage to take them to the water park at the West Edmonton Mall or sneak in a moving or something as well.

It was also going to be our last trip away in the caravan before we had to winterize it. Yes, in Canada, unlike back home, we don’t keep using the thing through the winter. There is in face a requirement to do a couple of things to prepare for abandoning your van from the months that the snow is on the ground (yeah, 6 of the bloody things at least!) It has something to do with the effects of below zero temperatures on water. If you happen to forget about it, you leave water in all your lines, the water pump, the water heater, the shower hose, the toilet piping … and of course water expands as it freezes. Not a good idea. So we have to put antifreeze through all of the lines.

We had planned to winterize at the end of our trip, but as I mentioned once before in this blog, fall doesn’t seem to last all that long here and the first flurries of snow actually came through Fort Mac yesterday. And for the rest of this week, we’re facing temperatures hovering around the freezing point. In fact when I clambered leapt gazelle-like from the bed this morning, it was at -5C. So before I left for work, panicking slightly due to the fact that we’d not yet drained any tanks or lines in the van, I turned on the taps and the water pump to have them eject a trickle of mushy water. Not good.

I had to leave it like that to go to work, but am fortunate enough to have a super star wife who during the day made her way underneath with a hair dryer to thaw the drain line so that she could get the tank to empty. What a trooper!

So now, the winterizing is mostly done (I’ll have to move the van to get the slide out to access the water heater when I get home) and we’ll just have to hope for improved driving conditions tomorrow on our way south and not use any water! Sounds like a hoot. At least they’re not predicting lots of snow over the weekend, just not very warm temperatures.

nine

Today, being the 2nd of October, marks the 9th anniversary since the closing ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Or maybe that’s 9 years and a solitary day extra. The reason that this little tidbit of information happens to lurk near the fore front of my mind is of course because on that occasion 9 years ago, Thomas decided that he’d had enough of the snuggling in the womb activity and wanted out.

So whilst watching the closing ceremony for the Olympics, Caroline quietly arranged for Michael and Sam to have a sleep over at Oma and Opa’s, let her parents know that things ‘might be happening’ and we toddled off home to our place. It was some time early in the morning that we made the trip in to the hospital for the commencement of true excitement.

Anyway, 9 years on and we were greeted this morning with a very chirpy young chap (whom I suspect made it out of bed at 5am) quietly enquiring as to what time he had been told he was allowed to come in and see us to receive loot presents. Being that it was at that time 6am, I informed him that I had told him 6:30 so he could go away and come back later on. Had it been later than 6am when I was asked, and had my brain been firing on more than 25% functionality, I would have told him to come back at 7!

Between running off to get dressed, find the cameras and wake up the older brothers, Caroline regaled the happy chap with the tale of the end of the Olympics er, his birth day. Then he tore into the paper that so inconveniently hid the contents of the presents with a grin from ear to ear.

After another year in Canada, Thomas continues to grow up. He’s an avid builder of Lego, especially star wars and can often be found tinkering in his bed late at night when he’s supposed to be asleep. He’s also developed some of the passion for reading that permeates the family which tends to be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because we all want our kids to read a lot, a curse because he uses the ‘I have to do my homework reading’ as an excuse to delay the drift to Noddyville when we boot him up the stairs for the night.

He continues to be an avid hugger, for which I am thankful and is in fact the most adventurous eater of the four kids, willing to try almost anything at least once and often surprising us with what he likes.

I don’t know that there’s a lot more for me to say at this point, so I’ll just end with Happy Birthday Thomas.

Thinking of Texas

When I first started writing this blog way back in 2001 I really had no audience nor awareness of what the intended audience for my blog would be. Since then, I’ve found that on a number of occasions, I’ve had to stop and think before I let the tirade forth. Perhaps it means that things aren’t as honest as I would really like them to be, but in a world where people have lost jobs for what they’ve put in a public sphere, one has to be a little circumspect. This was, to some extent one of those times. Perhaps I haven’t let it all out, but when it comes down to it, at this point in time, this is about letting friends and family know what’s going on in our lives. I try to inject a little humour at the appropriate times and every now and then I might even pull out something obscure, but I find when it comes to talking about what’s going on with work I have to limit it to a more factual rather than emotional accounting of what’s going on. Having said all that …

I’ve been a little distracted over the last couple of weeks. As a result of a number of things, I recently decided that I’d kind of had enough of what I am currently doing work wise and that it was time to pursue a change.

A discussion or two later about how this could be achieved and what the options were and suddenly it was looking like things could possibly happen even quicker than I had imagined. Apparently one of our US companies has won a couple of contracts (or hoping to in the very near future) and that may have opened up a chance to get back into contract management. It would also have meant a slight change in scenery.

I’d made some phone calls and due to the vagaries of catching senior management across international time zones, hadn’t actually heard anything for a week or two. Then just when you think, “Either this isn’t happening or I need to make another call,” you get some information. Another call or two later and just as you’re about to pack the kids in the car and bugger off camping for the weekend, you get a phone call from the States that leaves you thinking of Texas.

Apparently one of the opportunities that’s about to open up is located down South in the Lone Star State and with winter fast approaching us here in the soon-frozen North, dreams of a big house with a swimming pool and a nice cheap Porsche or BMW in the driveway began to infiltrate my mind.

So this morning, it was time to dust off the CV and broadcast it South to see what might eventuate.

And of course, whenever you do that, the fun really begins. Shortly after sending it I caught up with my boss up here (as promised) to let him know how things were going. I was quickly told that his conversations with our current client about potentially releasing me indicated that they should be able to make me available about July. July 2010. Yep, 9 months from now.

Talk about an instant stop on all those warm weather fantasies. Its straight back to planning for -40C again. I think New Year’s skiing, Disneyworld and a Carribean cruise might have to be in the works this time round. Anyone care to tag along?

Syphilis

No, don’t be alarmed, it’s not what you think. I don’t have it. Um, yeah, well anyway, I think I mentioned some time back the levels of general amusement that were reached when I watched medically related advertisements on North American TV, well the other day I nearly drove off the road.

I was on my way home when an advertisement came on the local radio station (which I try to avoid via podcasting of Triple J and BBC Radio 1) to mention that Fort McMurray has the highest rate of syphilis of any city in Canada. Lovely. I mean this is a bit different to Triple J covering some of the topics that they do, because that is a radio station that’s aimed at a particular demographic (one I’m quite certainly no longer a part of) where as this is the equivalent of SAFM back home.

Its just delightful to hear an add about a sexually transmitted disease on the local station, signing off with: “Syphilis, its back! Get tested!”

Tasty what?

GPS

I hear stories about people that buy GPS units for their cars and how it saves them a world of hurt. The theory goes that pre-GPS, there are poor directions, miscommunication, angst, even the occasional disagreement or suggestion of inability to read maps.

It sounded like a good idea to me, especially for those times that one wants to do something crazy like drive around LA (we had one for that trip and it was indeed a saving grace) and so I thought I’d get me some of that ‘eliminating directionally challenged discussions action’. We bought a GPS.

Now I should, in fairness mention that Caroline was never a bad navigator, nor directionally challenged and together we’ve managed to find our way all over Europe without the assistance of the new fandangled technology. However, it couldn’t hurt to have something that you just program and follow without having to resort to the map every time you get somewhere new right?

Well it turns out that I apparently have ‘better than GPS’ because whenever it gets turned on, Caroline pulls out the maps anyway and decides that where ever it is going to take us (and it doesn’t matter if it’s in fastest or shortest route mode) it simply isn’t as good as the route that she is going to take us on. So we don’t have discussions about being lost, we just drive along ignoring the instructions and watching the thing re-route itself to suit the whims of the more determined!

Apparently the technology takes information from thousands of users and massive data banks to determine which route you’re going to follow. Well I’m tending to think of them as ‘could have been’ routes. It could have been quicker, or it could have been shorter, but there’s no way I’m ever going to know! After all, we’ve got a map. Surely that’s better than some fancy shmancy satellite gizmo.

At least if I’m ever left to drive somewhere on my own, I can just set and forget and live with the consequences.