Road Test? Check!

Now we just need a car!

-Ali

Thanksgiving Weekend

Hi, everybody! Here are some pics from when Andrew's parents visited us Thanksgiving weekend. The first three shots are from the Botanical Gardens at Acadia, but the rest are from our hike to Cape Split. I had never been there before and didn't really know what to expect.

The trail was 16 kms round trip! I think I stopped taking pictures on the last 4 kms. By that time, I felt like my feet had turned into wooden blocks on the ends of rubber bands! See if you can spot two photos where we have basically become part of the landscape.

Later that evening, we went to the Blomidon Inn for a special dinner. I had the best salmon ever and then slept like a log. Ahhh. It was truly a lovely day!































-Ali

Katie Won

... as predicted. She and Preetha went head to head for eighteen rounds in the regular spelling round, but Preetha finally buckled under the weight of "bourgeois". She clearly did not know the word. A few words before that she got temporarily stumped by another French word, "dossier," with which she also seemed unfamiliar, but managed to figure it out. Meanwhile, Katie aced both "fricassee" and "sassafras," both of which I would have gotten wrong. It was real exciting.

Then Alison and I got to go to the wrap banquet afterward, and sit with the president of Acadia University and his wife. Giant cheques and bags of Japanese electronics were given to the kids, who then played hide and seek and swung each other around ecstatically.

I'm hoping we'll have time to get to the Wolfville farmers' market tomorrow morning before my parents get here, but there's also a certain amount of cleaning up that needs to get done. We'll see I guess.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian friends. And if I have any American friends, happy Columbus Day, you crazy messed up maniacs. If you vote for McCain I will start building a home deep underground that will make CERN look like the Empire State Building, and into which you will no longer be welcome. Not even if you are bearing iPhones and Twinkies.

Anyway, sorry. Everyone have a nice long weekend.

- Andrew

Wow!

I'm so thrilled to tell you all that I sold a print at the ViewPoint today!

This one:


I'm beaming here... beaming!

-Ali

Identifying with the Pain Body

Sorry I haven't posted in so long. I'm just now realizing I've been somewhat depressed. No real good reason for it, but then it wouldn't really be depression if there were, would it? We've got this exciting new life in a really cool house, but mostly I don't feel like doing anything to enhance it when I get home from work, and can't seem to make myself get up early in the morning to do the things I need to do to stay mentally fit.

I've been blaming the cold weather and dark mornings, but I don't think it's just that. I miss my friends. I'm creatively uninspired, and have no musical projects I'm working on. I think about the absurdity of life a lot, and worry about all the people I know. I'm nostalgic for times when I wasn't even happy.

This weekend at the softball playoffs I found out that my friend Tim is moving back to Toronto tomorrow. It's a good move for him, 'cause he has a loving family back there and things aren't working out as rosy in Halifax as he'd thought they would. But it still totally bummed me out. At the end-of-the-season party I decided it would be a good idea to get drunk, since everyone else was already plastered when I got there. It IS weird being the only sober person in a roomful of people you love, but still that would normally not convince me to partake, because I know how badly alcohol affects me. Well, so of course it did, and I acted like an idiot, and got REALLY depressed for the next couple of days...

But in the end, that was actually a good thing, because it made me realize there was a problem. I started rereading Eckhart Tolle's Practicing The Power of Now yesterday, and it's really helping me a lot. I still feel sad, but now I can actually feel myself feeling sad. My friend Meg also burned me a CD of him reading an earlier book, so I'll probably listen to that too. Now I'm listening to some Roberta Flack, whom I've never actually checked out before but there was one of her records among the vinyl being given away for free outside the Wolfville head shop a couple of weeks ago and I picked it up and it's really great and exactly what I seem to need. It is a sad and beautiful world.

Anyway, there's plenty of happy stuff to tell about too. We've found a weekly yoga class here that seems like the kind we like: slow and aware, with lots of variations and reminders about breathing and attitude. I was going to go tonight, but didn't feel like it without Ali, who's in Halifax. I've actually only seen her for an hour in the past four days!

Oh yeah, happy stuff. Alison did a couple of full days of paid shooting last week for Acadia, on my recommendation, and I got to direct her. It was a lot of work, but nice to work together and everyone's pleased with the results. My parents are coming for a visit this weekend, for Thanksgiving. I hope they feel like doing some walking, because I'd really like to try hiking at Blomidon. There's also some local winery/vineyard tour stuff going on that I bet they'll be into.

And Super Speller, Canada's national spelling competition, is filming its semifinals and finals here this week. I went to the first day of taping yesterday, and it was quite exciting. Or, at least, it would have been if the excitement hadn't always been put on hold while they fixed technical problems. But the twelve phonically gifted kids are adorable and impressive. In a sense, they're all winners. Unfortunately, in another, more accurate sense, only one of them will be. My money's on Katie.

And also, Meg turned me onto this great and totally stupid show that really makes me laugh even though I know it is wrong. And Alison and I have (separately) been watching Californication, David Duchovny's recent (very adult) Showtime show, on DVD, which also makes me laugh misguidedly.

So don't worry, things are looking up, but I just wanted to let you know what's going on, because people don't generally talk about it when they're feeling down and then other people are like, hey what's wrong with that guy, why doesn't he ever call me or want to hang out, I guess he must not like me anymore, and that of course just makes things worse. And also, who knows — maybe someone can even relate.

- Andrew