Trilobite

Christine moved out today. It was a bit sad. Celine and I will stay in the house until next weekend because the apartment isn’t quite ready yet. Steve has been very busy fixing and renovating everything, and installing the new sinks, counters, cabinets, ceiling fans, and everything else they bought for the apartment. Tomorrow Celine and I are going over there to help finish up the painting.

I haven’t had too much time to blog this month with all the excitement of packing and moving, but we still did manage to go out and have a few adventures. At the beginning of February we went hiking along the shore near Cartwright Point. The snow was very deep and it was quite a workout to walk even short distances. It was fun, though. We wanted to go to the tip of the point and have a look at Cedar Island a couple of hundred meters from the shore, but the road was marked with several very large “private property, no trespassing” signs.

We also went hiking on the hills around Fort Henry a few times, and found a very nice wood carving travel bug. We went to Wolfe Island to place it in a different cache, and on the way over we really enjoyed watching the ferry crash its way through the ice. A passenger on the ferry was nice enough to take our picture.

We are moving in two weeks. Christine has already taken most of her things to Doug’s house. Celine and I are not so ready. At least I still have most of my things still in boxes from my last move. Rheni bought loads of new stuff at Ikea and Steve has been very busy renovating the apartment. Celine’s parents were in town last week to help paint. I think we will have a very nice place to live.

A week and a half ago Celine went on a girls-night-out with a bunch of friends and I attended the corresponding boys-night-in. The girls saw Calendar Girls at the theatre and then went to a tapas bar for a drink. The boys played Settlers of Catan and rented The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. We all had lots of fun. I had a headache the next day. Too much Clint Eastwood, I think.

Last weekend we had Mexican Night at the house to bring back the memories of Christine’s and Celine’s vacation on the Mayan Riviera a year ago. We invited our friends Duncan and Renai over and cooked quesadillas and many other Mexican dishes. The jalapeno infused hot chocolate was especially good.

Today is Valentine’s Day so Celine and I are planning to go on the Lantern Snowshoe Hike at a nearby conservation area. The description of the event says, “It will start off with an evening journey through marsh, field and forests and end with a warm drink by the fireside. Come out with your sweetheart or bring the family for a lovely Valentine’s evening of either skating or snowshoeing or both.” I wonder if they will really give us lanterns to light our way.

Photos: rabbit highway, taste testers

Celine’s Amazing Ginger Cookies

3/4 cup unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour 
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp powdered cloves
1 1/2 tsp powdered ginger
2 tsp baking soda
1/3 cup peeled and chopped ginger
1/3 cup granulated sugar

In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in the egg and molasses. Mix the flour, salt, cinnamon, cloves, powdered ginger, and baking soda and stir them into the batter. Stir in the chopped ginger. Form the dough into 1-inch balls, dip them in the granulated sugar, and place sugar-side up on a greased and floured cookie sheet. They will flatten out in the oven. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes at 350�F and cool on wire racks. Keep the dough refrigerated between batches. Makes about 30 cookies.

The other day Celine and I went shopping downtown and were reminded of just how small a town Kingston really is. One shopkeeper asked Celine if the house had been torn down yet, and a bit further down the road another shopkeeper asked me where I will live when I move to Toronto. We don’t even know these people’s names, but they sure know a lot about us!

We went to look at our new apartment yesterday. It seems pretty nice, but needs to be painted. It’s a two bedroom on the second floor, downstairs from Rheni and Steve. We’re moving in next month.

Tonight Christine, Celine, and I went through our closets looking for clothes for the cerebral palsy clothing drive. It was a good way to get started on the sorting and packing. I threw out a bunch of old shoes.

I usually get only junk mail at work, but today something interesting came for me. It’s addressed to “Dr. Lehotay.” Ha. I like the address stickers pasted onto the letterhead.

Today Celine, Banjo, and I went geocaching in Lemoine Point. We have been to this cache before, but we wanted to drop off a travel bug. Afterwards we went to Queen’s where the first aid team was teaching CPR for free. The course was only an hour long, but the instructors managed to convey the basic concepts. At the end we were given Saint John’s Ambulance CPR level A certifications. We are even insured by St. John’s Ambulance for $100,000 of legal fees if we do a bad job resuscitating somebody!

Tonight for dinner I made whole wheat cr�pes and Celine filled them with shrimp, asparagus and peas in a bechamel sauce. Yum.

Grrr…. blogger.com and tripod.com have suddenly stopped working together and we are unable to post any blogs. (I am posting this entry “by hand.”) I asked blogger.com about it and they blamed it on tripod, saying tripod only accepts active ftp connections, which blogger.com no longer supports. So now I have emailed tripod and we will see what they say. I don’t have much hope, since the tripod ftp documentation says that they do indeed support passive ftp. I have a suspicion that the two companies are being intentionally annoying to each other because tripod recently launched their own blogging software. We may have to move the blog again. Grrrr.

Last Saturday evening Celine, Christine, and I went to Ottawa and had dinner at a Thai restaurant in Nepean called Baan Thai. It was quite good. Sunday we went geocaching and I was very excited to find the cache. I spent several days in November decrypting the clues for this particular cache, and Celine and I tried and couldn’t find it when we were last in Ottawa. But this time we were successful! I think it’s most difficult cache we’ve found so far. Photo: Banjo catching snowballs.

We had a very nice dinner Sunday night at an Italian restaurant downtown. We were walking around trying to find a place to eat and Celine saw a bottle of Big House Red on a shelf through the window. Well, we just had to go in! We sat next to the fireplace and warmed up after our chilly afternoon outside.

Monday was Celine’s birthday. We stayed home and had a quiet evening. Christine and I gave her some presents, which I think she liked.

I am very tired of fixing broken HPLC machines at work. I’ve been working on three of them for the past week or so. Hopefully they will stay fixed now, but that’s not too likely.

Ack! The ads used to be about conservation lands in Africa. Now they are about popup advertising! Big brother is watching me! Double-plus ungood!

I recently noticed that the banner ads on this page were kind of interesting (but not so interesting that I wanted to click on them). I did a bit of searching around and discovered that Tripod and Google work together to place relevant ads on all Tripod web pages. That means the ads will change depending on what we blog about. I can’t decide if I think this is neat or frightening.

By the way, if you use Internet Explorer and are annoyed by the popup ads on Tripod, you should install the Google toolbar. It lets you block popups everywhere, including on Tripod.