Why Savannah? Well, in addition to it being a beautiful place that neither one of us had ever been to, and the ability to be on the coast, (more on that in a bit) Savannah is home to Lucas’ boss and the company that he works for. Going to Savannah meant that we got to spend some fun time with Brad and his wife Marie, who are a few weeks ahead of us on the pregnancy scene, AND take in the beautiful scenery. Traditionally we take a trip that involves staying in a bed and breakfast on the ocean for our wedding anniversary, but with baby Liam due just 9 days after our anniversary this year, we realized that spring break would be our last chance to take a little vacation alone so we decided to roll the oceanside bed and breakfast into the trip, too.

Savannah was beautiful. Breathtaking, even. We left after work on Thursday evening to start the approximately 12 hour drive and finished on Friday, getting into town on Friday evening. We took our time, and that became the theme of our week; taking our time. We relaxed, went at our own pace, and took the time to stop and take it all in. That’s HUGE for us.

One of the smartest things we did was go on a trolley tour of the city on our first day of exploration. This meant we got to see all of the important landmarks of Savannah’s historical district without having to navigate a map or do the driving ourselves. We went with the original Savannah trolley tour company, Old Town Trolley Tours. The neat thing about the tour was that our passes gave us all day on and off privileges between all of the 15 stops. So to start, we hopped on a trolley that took us to stop 1, and we had a graphical map that showed and listed what was at the stop. If you wanted to get off the trolley for awhile you could, and then when you were ready to pick back up with the tour you’d just hang out at the stop and another trolley would come along and pick you up in 5-10 minutes to go on to the next stop. So while you could stay on the trolley for all 15 stops start to finish and complete the tour in 90 minutes, the on and off privileges meant we got to spend more time at various places of interest that WE really wanted to check out further. The trolley drivers were incredibly nice and they did their own live narration as we drove, pointing things out or explaining the history behind a building we passed. Some were excellent storytellers and threw in humor, too. We picked up so many little tidbits about Savannah on the tour, and appreciated that each driver had their own style and truly seemed to be having fun, as opposed to tours with pre-recorded narrations. (I’m looking at you with the pre-recorded driving tour of Civil War battlefields on cassette from that road trip we took when I was in 6th grade, dad.)

One of our favorite things to do while in Savannah was hanging out in Forsyth Park. The weather was perfect, and Forsyth Park was a beautiful place to spread out on the grass in the shade of the trees and people watch or just relax. Lucas loved the 2 hours of free wi-fi available while in the park each day, and I took my Kindle and my knitting and worked on Liam’s baby blanket. We spent a lot of time lounging in the grass talking about the future or planning where we wanted to go for lunch or dinner. Lucas installed the Urban Spoon app on his phone and we created a joint urbanspoon.com account together, so he spent a fair amount of time finding us great places to eat. Check out our reviews to see where we ate and which places we enjoyed the most; the most memorable food for me was dinner at the 17 Hundred 90, Papillote, and beignets at Huey’s. (Though the rest of the food at Huey’s was average at best.)

After 4-5 days in Savannah, we spent the last couple days of our trip at Tybee Island at the oceanside DeSoto Bed & Breakfast. It was a refreshing way to sum up the trip with more relaxing and some sun soaking. Speaking of sun soaking, I soaked up a bit too much sun on my shins, which I apparently forgot to slather in SPF like the rest of my body. The burn made walking and getting comfortable to sleep at night unbearable and tear-inducing, and I’m STILL in pain as I write this post a day shy of a full week later. The good news is that I have begun to notice a little improvement today finally, and while Lucas got a little pinker than planned on our beach day, too, he thankfully didn’t suffer as badly. But you better believe we won’t forget SPF (especially our shins) next time.

We really loved Savannah and definitely want to make it a regular vacation spot, as long as we plan to visit in early spring or late fall so as to avoid the heat of the summer. End of March/first of April was a perfect, breezy 70-75 degrees and sunny for us just about every single day. The city is heavily influenced by its Savannah College of Art & Design population, and we appreciated being surrounded by the artsy inspiration everywhere we went. It was almost magical. But the best part? It was one more place to add to our list of new experiences together and we took the time to really relax.

It was also great that our drive had Knoxville, TN as the halfway point, which meant we got to stop and spend some time with our friends Kara and Jake (@teacher_geek and @JayneHatJake) which was an excellent way to finish the trip, even though I was feeling a bit burnt and miserable at the time! We enjoyed some delicious food and amazing company. Thanks for letting us crash on your couch, guys! <3

So now that you’ve read all about it (and trust me, there’s so much more I could talk about! Like the Old School Diner… wow.) I know why you’re really here… photos! Amirite? Thumbs from the gallery are below, or go check them all out on our Flickr!

Saturday was our first day at the convention. Even though Dragon Con had started officially on Friday, I didn’t feel like we had missed too much. Mostly because the one panel I just HAD to attend was the Venture Brothers panel on Saturday afternoon. Lucas and I managed to snag front and center seats in the huge auditorium, being a mere four rows or so from the stage. Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick were so awesome. I especially enjoyed their question and answer format as they roamed the floor to theme music in between questions. I have to admit that my favorite part, though, was the depth of the various Venture Brother themed costumes people put together. We sat across from someone dressed as Hank who had built a life-sized Helper bot to accompany them. I posed with several Monarchs and Dr. Girlfriends and was tickled to run into a well done Dr. Henry Killinger, too, complete with his magic murder bag. Too amazing! I mananged to capture the hilarity of Doc and Jackson dancing at the end of the panel, which turned into Jackson falling out of his chair during one of his sweet, sweet dance moves.

Speaking of costumes, that was another highlight of Dragon Con for me. Many people went above and beyond with their costumes; moreso than I remember at Gen Con. Not only that, but most were also more than willing to stop and let you photograph them or were happy to pose with you for photos. I guess it’s an expectation that comes with dressing up for a convention. It inspired me to want to attempt my own costumes next year. I think Lucas and I would make an excellent Monarch/Dr. Girlfriend pair, though our group of friends also dreamed up the perfect scenario of us dressing up in a group Venture Brothers theme for next year together, which is even better!

For me, Dragon Con was such an exciting adventure. Yes, there were lines. Yes, there were rude people, and yes there were some frustrations… but overall it was a hugely positive experience for me. Probably because it was only my second geeky convention ever, with Gen Con last month being my first. The difference was that Gen Con was a working con for me, where I was behind a booth all four days and didn’t get much opportunity to check other things out, whereas Dragon Con was a play con for me, where I was able to experience everything that I wanted to experience since I wasn’t behind a booth. Don’t get me wrong, I loved selling GEEKSOAP at Gen Con and will be doing it again next year, but I will then follow up with attending Dragon Con again the following month as a way to unwind and experience it all, too. A working con and a play con within a month of each other? I can handle that!

Scheming Cylon

One of the biggest highlights was getting to meet @CatStaggs and pick up some of her signed art, and getting to meet Ashley Eckstein at the @HerUniverse booth and nab a shirt. Both women are so incredibly creative and are such inspirations! And of course the absolute best part of Dragon Con for me was that throughout the weekend we got to hang out with Chris and Devin along with finally meeting Kara, Jake, Lisa, Jessie, Terry, Dave and his friends, including Mike (another amazing artist like Dave!), and Eugene. Finally getting to put a face and a hug to the names and getting to spend time with all of these fabulous people was the icing on the cake and made Dragon Con such a memorable and fun experience. I only wish I would’ve had more time! After our big group dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe on Sunday, Kara, Jessie, and I danced together for no reason at all (which was a riot – video below!) and then we all went back and played the Battlestar Gallactica board game in our hotel. Are you surprised to hear that Lucas ended up being one of the cylons along with Kara?

So of course I took lots of pictures of our Dragon Con adventures and put them all together in a new set of our Flickr gallery appropriately labeled Dragon Con 2010! Hope you enjoy them. :)

Now that Dragon Con is over, Lucas and I are trying to focus long enough to get our things packed for the move next week. We move next Saturday, though we haven’t even begun to pack yet! Guess what we’re doing this weekend… ?

Hopefully I’ll get a moment to update once we get situated in the new place and/or even have a new recipe attempt to share soon. Have a great weekend!

We planned the trip to Vancouver over our wedding anniversary so that we could keep up with our tradition: spending our anniversary at a bed & breakfast on the ocean. Last year we stayed in a fantastic little B&B off the coast of Nova Scota in Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. It was heaven. This year we’re staying in a honeymoon suite of a great little  B&B off of Victoria Island. We’ll spend two days there and explore Victoria before heading over to the mainland. I am seriously pumped! It’ll be great to see family and friends and grab a few of the Canadian things to bring back with us that we miss. Like more Tim Horton’s coffee & some Cadbury 100 cal bars. There are also a few restaurants I want to be sure to hit before we come back, too. I’ve been craving a calamari salad from Moxies and can’t wait to have eggs benny from Shades on Main when we’re in Penticton. Yum!

We’re not the best at keeping up the family blog, which is too bad because we’ve had SO much happen in the past few months and a bunch of stuff coming up! Let me see if I can recap it all briefly:

1. Lucas got a formal job offer and is officially employed! (He just posted about it on our blog here.) He was offered a sweet full-time web development position with Southpoint Media. They’re based in Georgia, so that obviously means Lucas gets to work from home, which is awesome.  So he and the boys code websites for clients all day. I suspect that Oliver and Winston do more sleeping than coding, but they’re all enjoying it very much. :)

2. I started making and selling handmade geeky soap on the internet at http://www.geeksoap.net – it has been a huge hit and is keeping me very busy! Small business and handmade FTW!

3. A good friend and I (and our husbands) recently starting putting together an online geeky crafting community called G33Kmade! It’s going to be a hugely fun project, and together we’re going to be selling at an Exhibitor’s Booth at the biggest 4 days in gaming… Gen Con Indianapolis in August. Lots of geeky handmade goodness (including GEEKSOAP!) will be available from us… stop by and see us on Entrepreneur’s Avenue at booth #2732!

4. The 2009-2010 school year is almost over. Like, we have less than a week left now. I’ve been teaching the computer class at the middle school and it has been fantastic. My position for next year/which building I’ll be in is still up in the air with budget cuts looming, but part of the fun is not knowing what I’ll be teaching next year, right? ;) So the summer is almost here, and I’ll be relaxing and spending it prepping for Gen Con, making lots of geeky soap, trying to stay out of Lucas’ hair since we’ll both be working from home for a few months, and getting ready for vacation time in Canada. Oh, and Michelle is coming to visit us all the way from Calgary! Yay! Cannot WAIT to see her!

Whew! Did I cover it all? Some good things going for the Karpiuks in 2010, and even more good stuff on the horizon. :) Be sure to check our gallery for all of the photos when we return. Take care!

Once I receive my paperwork, I’ll drive back to Toronto (to return the rental car) and then fly home. As I cross the border, I’ll use my paperwork to register as a Permanent Resident; I’ll then receive my greencard and Social Security Number by mail within a few weeks.

As with any bureaucratic process, I spent most of the time waiting; I passed the time chatting with two couples going through the same application and sharing similar personal circumstances – sadly, I forgot to exchange contact info with them before we all went our separate ways. I even exchanged a few jokes with my interviewer – the interview started well when I congratulated him for correctly pronouncing my name over the intercom and it turned out he’s Polish/Ukranian and has a son named Luka.

Anyway, at the end of the day I’m just relieved that everything is approved and anxious to receive my documents and return home to my family!

PEGGY’S COVE

Our flight landed around 7am on Friday, and by 8am we were in the rental and well on our way to our first destination: the famous Peggy’s Cove. There are two routes to the cove, so we came in from the north and made our way back to Halifax from the south. The scenery of each route was quite different, yet equally incredible – both peppered with tiny fishing or industrial villages.

In the cove itself, there is a small information centre, a museum, a few small trinket/treat shops, and of course the lighthouse. Pretty much any time throughout the trip that we found ourselves on a shoreline, we could be heard taking in deep breaths, sighing happily, and seen smiling, but no other part of the trip brought us quite as much peace as sitting and staring out at the ocean from the large rock formation that the lighthouse is built on.

HALIFAX

After about an hour, we tore ourselves away from the view, stopping at the lighthouse giftshop long enough to send some postcards, and made our way to Halifax. We had lunch at the Red Stag Tavern, attached to the Alexander Keith‘s brewery, while enjoying the view of the harbour from their rooftop patio (the food here was amazing – it essentially ruined all other fish-n-chips for me). After lunch, we wandered around the harbour area, checking out the local shops and attractions. We spent the night at the Best Western on Chocolate Lake, where we were greeted by a very friendly chocolate lab, and slept like… well, like people who had barely slept on their inbound red-eye flight and spent all day exploring, I guess.

LOUISB(O)URG

We got up early on Saturday morning and drove roughly 5 hours to Louisb(o)urg (we’re not really sure how to spell it, and neither does anyone who lives there, apparently – we saw two signs within a few hundred feet of each other with different spellings). Along the way we passed about a dozen McDonald’s signs advertising McLobster, but we didn’t feel brave enough to stop and try it. The drive was mostly inland, but boy was it worth it. Lesley had found us a great bed & breakfast with their own private beach: Point of View. We were too late to tour the Louisb(o)urg Fort, so we spent most of the evening relaxing on our balcony, knitting, enjoying the view, and drinking twice as much wine and champagne as was really necessary. There is nothing quite as soothing as falling asleep to the sound of ocean waves just a few hundred feet away.

THE LOBSTER EXPERIENCE

While we were in Louisb(o)urg, we had dinner at a small shack on a pier, called The Lobster Kettle, and of course ordered the lobster dinner special! We’ve both had lobster before, but usually in some kind of processed state or, at best, a relatively fresh tail to accompany our steaks. We were not 100% prepared for the experience when the food arrived. It wasn’t until I was tearing open the lobster’s mid-section that it occurred to me that this lobster had been alive just a few minutes ago, and that the dark green guacamole-looking substance¹ now facing me was likely the remains of its last meal.

¹ photos available on request

LOBSTER BENNY?

We both love eggs benny, and we really enjoyed our lobster the night before, so we decided to see if we could find lobster benny for breakfast the next morning. A little googling led us to the Delta in Sydney, whose menu claimed to accept any and all substitutions and modifications to the menu. I asked how much extra it would cost, “to get some lobster on our eggs benedict?”

“$7,” comes the reponse. That seems a bit expensive for some lobster meat to replace the ham in my eggs benny, but I figure what the hell – we’re on vacation! Sadly, we did not have the camera with us – when the eggs benny arrived we understood the price: they had cooked a whole fresh lobster, half for each of us, and simply dropped it on our plates. It was a little more work than we’d expected, digging out our own lobster meat to add to our eggs benny, but it was worth it for the laughs alone – and the lobster benny was pretty good.

THE CABOT TRAIL

After breakfast we hit out on the Cabot Trail, which is easily the greenest and prettiest scenic drive I’ve ever been on. Unfortunately, it rained almost the entire time, so we mostly kept to the car and the occasional roadside giftshop or attraction; hiking and whale-watching are on our to-do list next time around. But, after three long years of fruitless scanning during roadtrips, Lesley’s dream came true and we spotted a moose!

We stopped for dinner in the largest Acadian village of Cape Breton: Chéticamp. After two consecutive meals involving fresh lobster, we opted for something a little tamer, and dined at Le Gabriel. By the time we had finished, the restaurant had filled with locals for the dinner rush, all speaking French – I think Lesley found this moment almost as peaceful as Peggy’s Cove.

It seems like if you blink, several months can just fly right by before you even notice!  Here it is October, and our last post was back in July.  You’ve not missed too much, though there are a few new things going on in the Karpiuk family.

Oliver is still Oliver, and Winston is still Winston.  Oliver has turned six years old today, can you believe it?  Also today happy anniversary wishes go out to my little brother and his wife as well as our friends Joe and Jeri.  Congratulations on your first year of marriage!

Lucas recently switched jobs completely and is now working happily at Shell in web development at their big Shell Canada building downtown.  I’m still teaching; guest teaching full time until a position opens up for me.  I like it well enough — I’m teaching and it’s a new classroom every day, which keeps things fresh and exciting.  They’re really keeping me busy and I’m usually booked solid every single day, which is great! I spend a lot of time explaining especially to the elementary kids that my last name is NOT “car puke” … :groan:  I’ve really gotten to know a lot of teachers and principals as well as been able to get a taste of what each school in the division is like.  One school has already booked me for every opening they have that they know of right now up through May, lol.  I like being in demand when it comes to my work.

On a sad note, we made a trip back to Indy a few weeks ago to be with family during my grandfather’s passing.  I was able to help with the arrangements by getting pictures together, and the video slide show that the funeral home put together was beautiful.  Rest in peace, grandpa.  You will be missed.

Last weekend our little family decided we’d plan a trip out to Lake Minnewanka in Banff National Park up in the gorgeous Canadian Rockies so that we could get the boys some fresh mountain air and take photos of the pretty fall colours before they disappear or are covered in snow.  Unfortunately the weather forecast didn’t want to play nice and it rained instead, so we’ve rescheduled our day trip for this coming Saturday.  We’re really looking forward to seeing the beautiful spot Lucas chose to propose among all of the autumn colours.  When we were out there last November it was so cold and the hiking trails were blanketed in several feet of snow. Cross your fingers for better weather this weekend!

So that’s what the Karpiuk family has been up to.  I know it doesn’t seem like a whole lot in the span of  just over two months, but we’ve been busy just the same. I’ve had no troubles updating my craft blog because as my darling sister-in-law pointed out, Christmas is just two months away (eek!) and I need to get cracking on gifts.  Plus I’ve recently been trying my hand at digital art and creating digital scrapbook papers and elements for my digital scrapbooking obsession.  Check out the pages I’ve made for our digital scrapbooks here. That will give you a visual of what we’ve been doing the past couple months instead ;)   But I’ll do my best to keep things updated here a bit better, ok?

Oh and Happy Thanksgiving next week, Canada — take care everyone!

The rest of the weekend we spent visiting with friends and family.  We had dinner with Lucas’ mom, spent time with Clay and Alyson and met baby Aiden, and had dinner and games with Lucas’ dad & Linda and grandma and grandpa Karpiuk.  It was boys vs. girls in an intense game that seemed to be a mix of a little Aggravation and Sorry.  The girls won, of course!  On Sunday we had a picnic lunch with the game crew on the shores of Okanagan Lake between Penticton and Summerland. It was beautiful.  Afterwards, the boys took a nap and Lucas took me on my first Sea-Doo ride ever.  We rented a 2-seater for a half hour and took turns driving. It was awesome!  We definitely need to get one of those.

So, the moment you’ve read all the way to the end for… of course there are pictures!   And knowing me, there are literally hundreds.  I think by day two of our long weekend I had already taken 237 photos. Mostly of the boys playing on the beach.  Can you imagine how photo happy we’ll be when we have REAL kids?  There’s even a couple little video clips I put together of some of our adventures that you can watch as a six and a half minute long movie HERE.  All of our photos can be found in our gallery under Travel, British Columbia Summer 2008, or via direct link to the HTML version of the gallery HERE.   Enjoy!

For those of you not able to attend, you’ll be missed! But don’t worry, there will be plenty of photos and even video of the ceremony to share when we get back. It’s even rumoured that you’ll be able to watch the ceremony live on the chapel’s website, (Just click the “View Live Webcast” link at the top of the page during the time of the ceremony), but I’m still looking into that. We for sure will take home a DVD of the ceremony with us that weekend, so you can expect either a copy or a digitally accessible version sometime after we return from our fabulous wedding weekend.

Beyond that, getting ready for the wedding is pretty much the only thing going on right now and occupying a lot of our spare time. What’s scary is that we’re pretty much done with everything, so I don’t know why I still feel like I should be running around like a chicken with its head cut off. If we can manage to finish up all of the tiny details we’ve got left AND not forget or leave anything behind (that’s the key) when we leave for Vegas, I’ll be amazed, haha.

To some of you– see you in Vegas! To everyone else, we’ll see you when we get back! Viva Las Vegas, baby!

-The Soon to Be Mrs. Karpiuk ;)

In my defense, we’ve had a day or two here and there where I’ve thought to myself “Ooh, it’s a little chilly out” as I was leaving for work in the morning, but as of Friday, there have been multiple days now where it’s actually flat out cold in the morning. Not just a little chilly, but actually cold. Friday morning I could actually taste autumn; it was definitely in the air. It may seem a little early considering it’s still August, but then I think back to how I blinked last year and missed fall; it seemed to go straight from summer to winter overnight. Maybe this year we’ll see a little more transition. I blame Global Warming. Regardless of what the weather decides to do here, we’re really hoping the weather holds out in British Columbia for the Labour Day (Note: Look! I spelled it with a ‘u’!) long weekend since Lucas, Oliver, and I are headed to Penticton for a little mini family getaway. We’d like to let Oliver go swimming in Lake Skaha for one thing, especially after seeing how much he enjoyed chasing the waves and actually swimming out as far as his leash would allow with us on the shore last time. We’ll be better prepared this go around and do a little swimming with him to see how he does with it. Pretty funny for a dog that gives off the appearance of being miserable when the bath water is high enough to touch his tummy. Our fingers and paws are crossed for good swimming weather.

So this week is my last official week at my office job. I say that with uncertainty… Thursday is technically and tentatively my last day and then we’re gone for the long weekend and then school starts for the CBE on Tuesday. The reason for the tentativeness is that I don’t actually have my teacher screening interview until this Wednesday. The plan is to interview, get offered a job, and then Thursday is my last day in the office because school will start after the long weekend. However, there are no guarantees until the interview takes place of course. It makes me so nervous! What if I don’t get anything? I’ll be back to the office job then, which isn’t a bad thing, it’s just not what I want. to be honest, I’ve got my heart set on getting a full time substitute position for this first working school year. Mostly because I don’t know the school system, the schools, or the curriculum, and another part of me is wanting to test out the waters for perhaps teaching younger grades for awhile. With a sub position I’d get a feel for the system and be able to check out a wide variety of schools instead of picking one blind. I’d also get the opportunity to teach a wide variety of grade levels instead of just grade 4, and then maybe the following school year I’d know if I wanted to try for a permanent job teaching grade 1 or 2 instead. I student taught grade 1 and taught grade 4 for four years, and while I love grade 4, variety is the spice of life. I just hate being in an in-between spot not knowing for sure, with the start of a new school year quickly approaching. Hopefully I’ll interview on Wednesday and hear back before the weekend starts so that I feel confident about Thursday really being my last day at the office and allowing me to relax on our long weekend vacation instead of worrying. If I don’t hear anything by the weekend, I’ll come back to a short week the following week and lay low, waiting it out, and hopefully will hear by the end of the week, which will be the first week of school. I’m not expecting much need for subs the first week anyway. If I don’t hear anything by then, I’ll give my boss at my office job a call and get back into the groove there. I’d just really prefer to hear from the school board before it gets to that point. One thing is for sure… I’ll miss my office buddies! As for the teaching interview, here’s hoping!

Enjoy your Labour Day long weekends! :)

I spent two weeks in Indiana visiting my family and friends, and Lucas came down to join me after his deadline at work was over to spend the second week with me. It was non-stop action; I think our itinerary was full every single day. That was fine with me because I’d not seen most of the family and friends back home in about a year, so the more I could cram into the trip, the better! I won’t bore you with every single thing we did each day, but some of the highlights include getting to spend time with my family, taking my little brother out to celebrate his 21st birthday (belated, since I wasn’t there when he turned 21 back in September), visiting my grandparents, shopping with my mom, visiting my old work and seeing all of my former students graduate from 5th grade, celebrating my brother’s graduation from college with our entire family, and bowling with friends. We also saw Scott and Amy in Morristown for a party, Somer for lunch in Cincinnati, Kurt who was in town from Pennsylvania with Kimmy (congratulations on your engagement!), and we got to hang out with some friends from high school I’d not seen in nine years. We had a blast! And I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of other things. I of course took several hundred pictures over the course of two weeks, and you can see a large chunk of those in our gallery under Travel -> Indiana Summer 2007.

While there was a lot I missed in Indiana, there was one thing I definitely did not: the humidity. I’d forgotten how sticky and hot Indiana’s weather was. The morning that my plane was due to leave at 7:30am, we’d had a freak snow storm that dumped about 6 inches of thick, wet snow on Calgary overnight. We got to the airport around 5:30am, and my flight was already delayed at least an hour and fifteen minutes. My flight would be delayed by 2 hours by the time they’d de-iced the plane and other technical precautions were taken care of. Which wouldn’t be such a big deal, except it meant I missed my connecting flight in Chicago and I got pushed back yet another hour once I arrived in the Windy City. All in all I was 3 hours late getting home, and I went from experiencing dry, below 0 C weather in the morning to enduring humid 35 C weather all before 7pm that same evening.

While we were on the trip I hit my one-year-in-Canada anniversary, so it seemed fitting that my Permanent Resident card was waiting for me on the coffee table when we got back Thursday evening; the card came in the mail for me while I was gone. Coming back on Thursday meant that we had a nice long weekend to get settled back into routine and relax before it was time to go back to work. We spent Friday during the day running around getting my Social Insurance number and my Alberta driver’s license, among other things. We also met up with Tom and Craig to go see Ocean’s Thirteen on its opening night, which I thought was pretty good. If you liked the other Ocean movies, you’ll like the third one. Now I’m busy browsing the paper and online sources for a summer job to occupy my time until next school year. It’s all so exciting!