Moving

I've been thinking about moving for a little while and made the plunge recently to a larger place. I am a little further from the office which may or may not be a good thing. With the help of my parents we purged, packed and cleaned my old place over a couple of days. On the weekend, I moved into my new place using a 14 foot U-Haul truck that was 3/4s full. The weather cooperated as it was a sunny and a cool 8C/46.4F. It took about two hours to fill the truck and I fell in love with the box cart as I could move three boxes at a time. The drive to the new place took about ten minutes. It a little long to unload the truck at the new place as the elevator was smaller. I think that my new place is double the size of my old one. I'll blog more on the adventure soon.

During my moving week I stayed with my parents at a downtown hotel. It was more convenience for everyone and my parents did want to tackle the Ottawa city traffic. Our bedroom looked down onto a day care. As we drank our morning tea we would watch the parents drop the kids at a really early hour of 7:00 AM. The kids were all bundled up and looked like minature Michelin-man people. Before we would head out for the day we watch the kids playing during recess. Some would be making snow angels, other on tricycles, throwing snow, shoveling snow and have fun in the cold weather. One of the things they did brought a smile to my face and that was the hoola hoop. They had learned about wiggling the hips thing and we happy to throw it five feet away and to pick it up and throw it another five feet. They were getting joy from just tossing around some plastic. Another brought back memories and that was that all the kids had their mittens on strings. I can remember having my mittens on strings.

Guest blogger segment -- my father

The most notable incident occurred when returning to the hotel as we bundled up against the sub-zero freezing weather. Outside the hotel door was a stocky fellow in just a t-shirt and shorts puffing on a cigarette with a sarcastic look on his face. He ball cap said Junior Canadian Ranger. He was an Inuit/Eskimo and a member of Canada's Army of the North and our last frontier. Somehow he found the freezing weather to his satisfaction and felt right at home.