All Things Practical: October 2006

Halloween

This was my costume for Halloween. (No, I didn't eat too much candy, I just have 3 layers on for the -2C temperature.) I got some odd remarks from the people I play hearts with, such as "Canadian, eh? Aren't the costumes supposed to be scary? Are you saying that Canadians are scary? You are, aren't you."

Then later in the evening, we went to go watch some fireworks. Now that's truly a west coast Canadian thing to do. Why does everyone shoot them off on Halloween? There are tons of backyard displays, but we went to one that Shane set off since he has a permit to do more fun things. He even had some that our pastor Craig thought sounded like "fairy farts."

Update (Nov. 1): It's amazing how few second looks you get walking down the street with a hockey stick on a regular day.

Pumpkins

Brad, Gulcan, Rebekah, and I got together on Thursday to carve some pumpkins using our ultra-cool pumpkin carving kits. Here are the finished products:

It is clear which one is superior. Need I say more?

Student Breakfast

On Wednesday mornings, some of the young adults from our church get together at 7:30am to hand out free breakfast to students that walk by our street corner. It's quite fun as you can see below. The interesting thing is that some people don't want a free breakfast! Some just pretend they don't hear you yelling and others will walk by all semester before they finally stop.

This past week (not shown) was hot breakfast week. We had pancakes and sausage and eggs to order. Quite the adventure. Pat is insane and starts cooking pancakes at 6am.

On some mornings, we get entertainment by the crazy sign guy that stands around at places around the city wearing sometimes offensive signs. He's not allowed to stand on the sidewalk in front of the church anymore because people would call the church to complain and we'd have to explain that he isn't with our church.

Thanksgiving in Port McNeill

This year I spent Thanksgiving weekend (Fri-Mon) in Port McNeill, BC at the north end of the island with Rebekah's family. It was a really great weekend and I had a fantastic time. Here's just a sampling of all the fun.

I ended up with a bullet with my name on it:

This was a gift from Rebekah's dad to remind me what would happen if I break her heart. He let me keep it because "there are plenty more where that came from." That was after I read the 10 rules for dating my daughter that were attached to a meter-long rolling pin.

No trip is complete without a visit of all the tacky sights. Port McNeill is known for Willie Mitchell and the World's Largest Burl seen below!

This burl is 24 tons and is so new that it doesn't have a sign yet. In fact, the World's Second Largest Burl (seen below) is still labeled as the largest. But it weighs in at a measly 22.5 tons.

Wondering why it looks different? It was starting to rot, so they covered it in fiberglass, and it is by a logging road so it is covered in dust.

Though the next 2 tacky things are not in Port McNeill, they were on the drive so I'll include them here. Below is the World's Largest Hockey Stick (62.5m) and Puck (3m by 1m) in Duncan, BC.

And, lest we forget, here are some goats on a roof in Coombs, BC!

Here is a picture of us with the steam donkey by the port part of Port McNeill:

You can walk down by the waterfront and look out on the other small islands and the mountains on the mainland:

Here is a better picture of the view:

This is downtown Port McNeill. There are 2 blinking yellow/red traffic lights out by the highway, but if you want a 4-way stop then you need to go to Port Hardy.

As for the weekend, it was full of merriment. We had a good thanksgiving dinner on Sunday. I brought a grape fluff pie. On Saturday, we had a great feast of seafood with baked salmon, smoked salmon, prawns, and oysters. We also played some games two of the nights.

It was kind of weird to go to a small town that knows of your existence. Going to church I met many people that had heard of me. Even at the grocery store the cashier said, "So this is the fellow?"

You can find bigger versions of the photos and more of them here.

Am I back?

Wow this past week has been a crazy computer week. I ordered a new $75 graphics card for my laptop and then it took a week to arrive from California, and then customs decided to charge me $12.97. So then I put the new card into my laptop and... it didn't work. Garr!!!

I then decided to buy a new laptop to replace the old broken one, and I needed one fast! Frustrated that you can't buy a 14.1" matte finish widescreen core 2 duo laptop anywhere, I was quite ticked. After a long time of searching I went home to watch game 7 of the NLCS. After the game, I fiddled with my old laptop a bit more and after some massaging, it miraculously came back to life! I now have it completely assembled and it is still functioning! The question remains... will it still function after I move it somewhere? That is, am I back to stay, or will the laptop be dead tomorrow? Tune in next time, same bat time, same bat channel.

Where is Sean?

Some of you might be wondering just where I am these days. Well, on Wednesday my laptop's video card decided to die completely after teasing me for several weeks. I ordered a new one and it should arrive sometime early next week. I sure hope it fixes the problem. This means I can only get Internet access by going up to the lab at school. So, I'll blog about Thanksgiving with lots of pictures when I get my laptop working again and get the images off of it.

P.S. I find it really funny that Blogger's spell check doesn't like the word 'blog'.

Ben's Request

Ben said, "btw, you need more pics of your lady on your website" so here you go. Actually, I don't have too many pictures, so here are some more corn maze pictures. Here's my favorite: