Catching up Before the End

It's funny, I've had mountains of "free" time lately and somehow, none at all available to do the simplest of cumulative tasks. I've not replied to the nineteen emails sitting in my inbox, and keeping this site up to date has clearly not been a priority. However, in an effort to "clean house" so to speak before the New Year, I'll try to cover everything here. If you like to read everything, I suggest taking a moment to procure a beverage.

Carolling: A Reunion

Way back in October, I received a text message from my old friend Michelle containing a request to re-capture some of our better memories by going carolling this year, an annual tradition we once supported by hadn't attempted for nearly a decade. Excited at the thought of it, I agreed to play my role and she recruited Gary (another old friend) and a Soprano friend of theirs for the task. I did some digging of my own and managed to coax Merry out as well and with a group of five very out-of-practise choir folk, we set out on December 19th to bring some Christmas cheer to the suburbs.

The whole thing didn't go off nearly as well as we'd hoped at the start. The first neighbourhood we landed in seemed to be filled with people who didn't like carollers at all. No matter how hard we sung, no one came to the door. We quickly decided that Surrey sucked and that the uber-Christians in Langley were more likely to be receptive. We were right, and then tilted the odds even greater in our favour by selectively hitting neighbourhoods filled with Christmas lights and people we knew personally :-) This made the bitter cold somewhat more bearable since we were repeatedly asked in for free drinks and cookies. Had the night been kinder and our start been earlier, we might have hit more houses, but as it worked out, we collected $30 for the food bank and had a really nice time singing with old friends.

I'd also like to take a moment to thank Michelle personally for single-handedly organising the whole thing. Despite my best intentions, I contributed very little to the planning. Michelle is a rock star.

Christmas: Another Reunion

Fighting the odds, I managed to catch my flight out of Vancouver to Kelowna on time, bailing out of the Lower Mainland just before the Storm from Hell ravaged the area. My condolences to those who were booked on flights set to leave only hours after mine -- as I understand it, a whole lot of people spent Christmas in YVR this year.

I arrived here in Kelowna in preparation of two big events: Christmas and my cousin Ashley's wedding. Thanks to the latter, the former was filled with distant relatives whom I see to rarely as it is. Ashley's brother Fraser was here, all the way from London and he brought is girlfriend and their common friend, both from Spain. My (2nd) cousin Roy was here, as was his mother June and a big chunk of my uncle's family as well. All good people, all with interesting stories I've not heard before.

In terms of a Christmas "haul", the biggest most impressive gift was a hand-made cookbook from my parents containing family recipes from all the big chefs in the family. My father's pastas, my grandmother's famous soup... it's all in there. A really great gift.

Oh, and Lara, you'll be pleased to know that I got six pairs of socks as well :-)

The Wedding

If you've been following my Twitter feed, you probably already know that Ashley's wedding was outside, in the dark, on a mountain, under the trees, in the snow... with bagpipes. It sounds insane, and it was, but it was also beautiful. Ashley wore a gorgeous gown, and covered it with a pretty white hood to keep her warm during the (mercifully short) service. The bride cried, the groom cried, and I think even the Man of Honour cried. Young love is so cute. The Groom wore a black tux with red pinstripes and a white tie and, along with his groomsmen, bright red skate shoes. They were awesome.

The reception was about as fun and exciting as most receptions usually are. Lots of old people, lots of 80s and 90s music (courtesy of my brother the DJ) and lots of dancing. The bride and groom had a few really great performances on the dance floor and much fun was had by all. Only one blight on the whole thing really: one of the guests, a bridesmaid's date no less showed up in jeans, a hoodie, a cowboy hat, and plumber's crack. I tried to convince my mother to lecture him on his lack of respect but she didn't go for it. But yes, this is normal out here.

Catching up

I decided before I came up here that I'd spend a great deal of time teaching myself a new web framework called Django. It's a real framework (as opposed to Drupal, which is in fact a content-management system) based on a relatively new language called Python. So far the experience has been two-sided for me. On the one hand Django appears to do a lot for you so code is smaller and easier to maintain, but on the other hand I feel like a lot of the simplicity and art in coding has disappeared. Where you once saw a long, easy to read set of files filled with a series of very short declarative statements, you now have something that reads more like a novel. More compact yes, but is it art anymore?

I've also promised myself that I'd get through my emails this week -- all nineteen of them. This task, along with fixing up Stephen's site (I haven't forgotten about you!) has proven ridiculously difficult though, since Internet connectivity here is terrible at best. I have to syphon access from a neighbour's flaky router that routinely drops connectivity for hours at a time. At this very moment in fact, I'm writing this post into a file in the hopes that I'll be able to acquire some bandwidth later tomorrow at my father's store.

So that's everything for now. It's 2:30am now, but before I go to bed I think that I'll put together some good images for this post. I'll try to find some good shots of Christmas and the wedding. Next up is my New Year's recap post -- not sure when I'll have time to write it though.