Going Domestic

most auspicious day

Never have I ever been accused of being a convicted criminal on my birthday before, until today. I was at the Moter Vehicle building in Mount Pearl to get a new driver's license, and the clerk working at the service counter was very skeptical of my Alberta license. She questioned me on all of the codes and endorsements (I can only drive a motor vehicle with the usual number of axels, must wear corrective lenses, etc.), but was really stumped on a few of them, and annoyed that I didn't have the answer key for the codes. I was a little flabbergasted when she asked me, "Why did you take a driver's education class? Do you have a conviction that you're not telling me???" I responded that I took a class to learn to operate a vehicle and learn the rules of the road, which I thought was normal,  but the clerk seemed really suspicious. Maybe it's common here not to take driver education unless ordered to by a court; I really don't know ... In the end, I must have been deemed trustworthy enough as the clerk took my Alberta license away, asked for $100, and gave me a new piece of plastic so can legally drive around Newfoundland for another five years. We're probably only going to be here for another 3-4 weeks :)

I was really hoping that my Knitpicks Options that I ordered on February 11 would be waiting in my mailbox when we got home from the Motor Vehicles office, but they're still MIA. Instead, the (t)rusty mailbox held for me a copy of The Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques, Just Hats, and a few cool things from Etsy, like a set of lovely stitch markers and my very own Black Apple print. So, still some awesome mail, and I only bought one of those items myself :)

think warm thoughts

Snowed in!
Originally uploaded by goingdomestic.

Well, this is what the three of us woke up to this morning, so it was a day better spent on indoor pursuits. For Chris, this meant working at home inbetween shoveling the Much Loathed Explorer out and clearing the driveway. Me, I decided to get a slight head-start on my next knitting project.

My plan is for Project #3 to be a baby hat, so my adventure actually started this past Saturday when I tried to find a 16-inch 4.5mm (US 7) circular needle at Michaels. The smallest 16-inch circular they had was a 5mm (US 8), which I am really surprised about. I really don't get Michaels. I don't really like shopping there either, but there are few alternatives in St. John's. Anyway, I bought the eights, and a set of DPNs in the same size. They only style they carried in both was bamboo. That was the only positive; I was looking for an excuse to try bamboo needles because of all the fuss being made over them!

So, I brought out my schmancy new bamboo circulars today, and the ball of el cheapo Red Heart aran weight that was the first ball that I ever bought (Michaels didn't have anything more exciting), and cast on for my project. The only method of casting on that I knew was the cable cast on, which I now realize wasn't the smartest choice for knitting in the round. It's not stretchy enough. I ended up attempting the double cast on method, and now am in awe that all of that wrapping of yarn around a needle results in a tidy row of knittable stitches. Then, I made that little knit stitch that connects the first stitch I cast on to the last stitch, thus starting me off on knitting in the round. Yay for new skills! Two in a single day!

Pick a snow pile, any snowpile ...

  Pick a snowdrift, any snowdrift ... 
  Originally uploaded by goingdomestic.

This is what my street looks like on a sunny day. I took this photo to illustrate the height of the snow piles after a snowstorm or two. Our rented truck was only a few inches taller than the piles!

The snow piles exist because St. John's doesn't collect snow after plowing, so all of the snow that the plows push into one's driveway have to go somewhere, so they go onto the lawn, on top of the snow that fell there. And that's the only place to put the snow from one's driveway as well.

Sometimes it's a bit tricky to determine which two snow piles I should turn in-between to end up in our driveway - they all look alike!

three hundred & sixty-eight days and counting

Well, the one-year anniversary of us landing at the St. John's airport for a temporary six-month assignment arrived on Friday. Today is Monday, and we're still here, three hundred & sixty-eight days later. I really love this little city, so I normally don't mind having had all of this extra time here, but waiting to move back is making me a little anxious. I feel that we're in some kind of limbo, where we can't really plan things here or there because I don't know how long we're going to be in St. John's or how soon we'll be in Calgary. Kind of frustrating.

Chris, Madeline, and I had another lovely restaurant meal this weekend - we went to the Tuscan Door for dinner on Saturday, and myprosciutto chicken (with Gorgonzola) was divinely prepared (certainly not overcooked like the review suggests!). I think that it made my Top Three Meals in St. John's list, up there with the dinner that I had at Basho back in August and the lovely brunch we went to at The Rooms last month.

Tonight is Stitch n Bitch at The Ship. I've only made it there once since coming home after Christmas - Monday nights seem to attract winter storms, but my fingers are crossed for better luck tonight. I'm still working on that scarf, and I've decided that while row after row of garter stitch is easy, it also takes a lot of time and uses a lot of yarn. I'm scoping out hat patterns for Project #3, but I don't think I'll start anything until I'm back in Calgary (land of several yarn shops) or my birthday needles arrive in the mail - whichever comes first.

definitely a monday

It's a technologically frustrating day today. We upgraded to Internet Explorer 7, and for whatever reason, I am unable to have multiple IE windows open simultaneously. Every time I select "open in new window" from the menu, the page opens in the current window. Bah. So, I've started using Firefox and the transition has been really smooth. And heck, Firefox appears to have a built-in spell check function!  Whee!

My other complaint is that ever since we installed Google Earth, I have been getting an error message every time I try to upload photos from my digital camera. I imagine that this is just an unlucky coincidence, but I'm still a little resentful. Mind you, Google Earth is rather cool to play around in. Chris and I managed to identify our house in Calgary - the map even showed our back alley and the foot path that has been worn into the green space behind our garage! The image here shows the part of St. John's that we're currently living in. We're the red dot. Not a lot of houses in this part of town. Quidi Vidi Lake is the body of water to the left, and Quidi Vidi Harbour is to the north of our home, and the ocean is the blue stuff to right, both north and south. It's what we used to be able to see out our back window before an embarrassingly monstrous house was built next to us this past summer ... Anyway, I am still grumpy about the issue between my camera and my computer's USB ports ...

pickier reader than eater

I have always loved a good book, but more often than not, my definition of a good book doesn't include anything in the science fiction or fantasy genre. I tried to love The Hobbit, but I kept losing track of who all the characters were and where they were going. I tried to get into Wicked, but I found myself skipping every single paragraph about munchkin politics, which was a fair amount of the novel. About ten years ago, though, I went through a phase where I was obsessed with Arthurian legend. Of course, I read The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

I hated it. I hated that it drifted from the Arthurian geneology that most Arthurian researchers believed to be true (which I accepted as proper, as well). This bugged me to no end! The book is more about early Christianity and established paganism running into each other than the exploits of the Round Table companions, and I felt that many of the characters deserved more development than they got in this novel. I know that I'm probably in the minority and most people rave about this book, but it just wasn't interesting to me. I think that my favourite pieces of Arthurian fiction are The Wicked Day (the geneology of this one still is irritating, but it's an interesting study of the character Mordred) and a trilogy by Persia Woolley (Child of the Northern Spring, Queen of the Summer Stars, and Guinevere: The Legend in Autumn), which I suspect may be out of print.  I don't know if I still have my copies of the Woolley books; I might have to borrow them from the library the next time I want to read them.

I have food related tie-in to King Arthur: the King Cake (galette des rois) tradition is alive and well in Newfoundland, or at least the part that I live in (though the Wikipedia entry only discusses the tradition from the context of New Orleans and mardi gras).  We didn't bake our own; Chris picked one up at Auntie Crae's after reading about them. Ours had a teeny tiny ceramic cow in it.

Nice to meet you, 2007!

I'm happy to be spending the first day of the new year at our temporary home here in St. John's. The three of us got to experience the ups of last-minute holiday travel (seeing everyone) as we took a last-minute trip back to Edmonton over Christmas. We also experienced the downside, namely that our bill for airfare, car rental, and crib rental was roughly the cost of our trip to Australia a couple of years ago. We didn't win the lottery this past Saturday, but there is always next Saturday to hope for ...

I knit a lot while we were out of town, and once we were back home I went out to purchase two more balls of each of the yarns for my scarf, which I decided needed to be longer. I am a little surprised at how much yarn costs (and thus, how much my scarf cost to make). I guess that's the price of being able to choose my fibres and colours.

I've spent the last two evenings fervently putting together a blog book via Blurb - they had a promotion for Typepad users awhile back, and Dec 31st was the last day to use my coupon.  I'm kind of grumpy because the book-assembling software kept crashing when I tried to access Page 18 of my blog book, and then when I tried to place my order, it told me that my coupon has already expired. Argh! I sent a note promptly to technical support, so hopefully this story will have a positive ending instead of leading to a rant.

that's what I call service

Something happened about three weeks ago that I meant to blog about, but had accidently forgotten.

Madeline and I arrived home from the YMCA one morning to discover a pair of notices from Canada Post taped to our door, signalling that we'd missed a parcel delivery. According to the notices, the packages could be collected from the post office nearest to us the next day. I was kind of sad to have missed the mail carrier, but it happens sometimes.

About half an hour later, I was in the middle of making a quesadilla for lunch when the doorbell rang. I opened the door to find our mail carrier standing there with two large packages for us! "I was driving past down your street again, and I noticed that your truck was in the driveway," she explained, "so I thought I'd drop off your packages!" I was stunned, but not stunned enough to thank the mail carrier profusely.

You see, when we were in Calgary, our mail carrier there often wouldn't even bother to ring the bell when delivering a package. He or she would just assume that we weren't home, I guess, because on several occasions I found a parcel collection notice in our mailbox when I'd been home the entire day. Grr!

they do it better in Newfoundland

I will readily admit that I find elections tiresome. I was an interested voter until the federal election when I was living in Vancouver in 2000. I didn't bother to vote because not a single candidate (or their staff) bothered to even stuff a brochure in my mailbox. My poor attitude was turned around on Friday when Danny Wiliams appeared on my doorstep. Having the premier of Newfoundland & Labrador personally knock on my door on behalf of his party's candidate somehow makes up for the all the other candidates who didn't care. He asked me if I was aware of the election, and I mentioned that I didn't think I was eligible to vote because I'm new to the province, and he assured me that I qualified as long as I've lived here for at least 24 hours before the election - it's easier to vote here than it is to get a job, evidently :)

When he asked me where I'd moved from I told him "Alberta", and he grinned, nodded, and said, "ah, good conservative country" which tired-of-all-varieties-of-conservative-governments-me had an internal chuckle over.  It's so stereotypical-Albertan!

I don't entirely understand or agree with the way this guy runs his government, but he was friendly and pleasant, and now I have a fun story to tell.

plastic wonderland

Yesterday Chris made a remark about the low profile that recycling seems to have in St. John's, and this brought up the topic of plastic grocery bags. You see, in Calgary, reckless use of plastic grocery bags is kind of frowned upon. Every grocery store sells reuseable bags made of canvas, hemp, or even a heavy-duty recycled plastic. One of the grocery store chains even charges customers for each bag they need, if they don't bring their own.

Here, it's a virtual wonderful of plastic bags. I can go into Sobey's to buy a carton of eggs, a package of chicken breasts, and a magazine, and I'll walk out with three bags. Well, I would if I didn't amalgamate my bag bounty before leaving the store so that I only have one bag to manage. One of our first purchases upon arriving in St. John's was a pair of larger Rubbermaid tubs to store Madeline's toys in. The clerk at the check-out counter at Dominion gave us a strange look when we said that we didn't need any bags for our groceries as they'd fit in the Rubbermaid tubs. I thought that her reaction was really strange at the time, but now I understand...

I did see a shopper with a reuseable shopping bag - once. Obviously, new to St. John's :)