What a Year
It's been well over a year since I last posted to this blog. Apparently there are still a few people that check it now and then (well, at least Ben) and I'm sorry for not posting any updates. This past year has been full of events and I'll just run through the highlights instead of making a series of posts.
This time last year was incredibly busy for me because I agreed to teach the 3rd-year course on databases. I really looked forward to teaching a bunch of motivated 3rd year students. Instead what I got was a collection of people that took the course as one of the few required electives. It was good though, but very time consuming as I was also the marker for the course due to an interesting loophole in our union rules: if you are instructing a course then you fall to the lowest priority level when being considered for a TA position, however you can be moved up to the highest priority level if the instructor requests you. All it took was a quick email to recommend myself (I've always liked working with myself in the past) and I had the job. The extra money was crucial to making the wedding work.
Sometime last October I got to experience the Canadian (actually BC) medical system in all its glory. After a few days of feeling ill, I woke up and couldn't move and so Rebekah took me to the free clinic around the corner. They told me to go to the emergency room instead where I was diagnosed with appendicitis. Waiting a while in an emergency room bed, I was glad I paid my BC medical plan because next to me was an American student who never looked into paying and was then charged $200 for a nurse to look at him (he was dehydrated from too much drinking). They eventually told me that they booked me a surgery for later that night and everything went well and I ended up in a hospital room for a few days. After I was fit to leave, the doctor said I was good to go and they left me. I sat puzzled waiting for someone to come with some forms to sign and wondering how much I owed. Rebekah thought I was crazy and told me to just leave because I don't owe anything--I'm in Canada. What a weird feeling to just get up and leave your hospital bed.
Christmas was a good time, Rebekah and I went to spend a few weeks with my parents in SC. Coming home US Airways lost our luggage (again) and then it arrived later broken, but they paid us back for more than it was worth (even more than we requested).
The spring time was very busy as Rebekah has been working at the Christian Book and Music store full time so that left me as the wedding planner. We did pretty much everything ourselves and with a year to plan, it went well. Another semester went by with getting hardly any research done.
Finally, it was wedding time in May, which went very well. About 85 people showed up--a lot of her family and not much of mine--but that was very understandable due to the distances. After a year of planning, it was nice to see it all come together. In some sense it was anti-climactic in that way, but certainly not entirely anti-climactic. The reception was quite the party, with a large buffet dinner and lots of dancing. Our 8 months worth of dancing lessons paid off (not taken entirely for the wedding, and will probably continue this fall).
Then it was off to our honeymoon, an Alaskan cruise on Norwegian Cruise Lines. We'd recommend NCL as we liked how they ran things in many of the details (not that we really have anything to compare it to). The only problem is the lack of someplace to eat between 11am and noon. It stopped off in Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway. Ketchikan was mostly shopping (they all were) but we wandered around the streets and attempted to get away from the 4 cruise ship loads of people. Juneau was just a morning stop and we booked a whale watching excursion (not through the cruise ship) which was very good--we saw 4 or 5 humpback whales (killer whales are boring--we see those on the ferry to Vancouver). Skagway was great as we rented a car and drove it to the Yukon to knock that off our list of places we've been and to see Emerald Lake. The drive was quite fantastic and even made the skeptical Rebekah love the event. We saw tons of wildlife along the drive and cruise and lots of scenery that we don't see in the Victoria/Vancouver area. If you ever take a cruise, make sure you get a balcony room, they are definitely worth the extra money. The food was outstanding too and you can order as much of it as you want, all included in the price of the cruise. One thing we didn't expect to have on the cruise was 3 art auctions. Making a long story short, we ended up buying 3 signed and numbered prints of Mediterranean scenes and then won 3 free poster type prints of other items and got 2 other smaller pieces for free just for registering to bid. We figure some day we'll go on a Mediterranean cruise and buy some Alaskan art.
Over the summer I've been very productive with my research (still not sure when I'll finish--December?) and otherwise it's been fun settling into married life and getting our place furnished. We got the 3 prints we bought framed and bought a new couch and found a 27" used TV with the stand for only $60. We got a new bedroom furniture set, desk, kitchen table and chairs and a bookshelf as well.
This past weekend we went over to see the in-laws at a cottage a few hours up the island. We've also been camping this summer here and here, the former of which is a 17km hike each way to the NW corner of Vancouver Island and the latter of which is front-country camping overlooking the ferry route from Victoria to Vancouver.
That's it for the quick update. Any questions? Maybe I'll expand on a few things if you want.