Rhubarb!

I finally got a rhubarb plant!

A friend of ours who live a block away gave us part of her rhubarb root, and I have planted it in the backyard. I have been missing having rhubarb.... and the bonus was, that she also gave me a bag full of stalks.

I ahve since found a website devoted to all thing Rhubarb: The Rhubarb Compendium - You name it, it's there. Found some great recipies, and made jam tonight.

Oooooo can hardly wait!

cycling and gas

Was purusing the net this morning and found this...

mirrors my sentiments exactly.

The Apology

It's 11:30 at night, and I am watching a re-broadcast of today's apology for the residential school policy of the Canadian Government.

What has impressed me the most is the calls for reconciliation and moving forward together that has come out from every leader so far. If even a portion of all the words said so far are realized in action, we will be much better off as a country.

Ever since my aunt passed on information providing us with the heritage of my Grandfather (her dad), I have become more and more interested in reading about the Metis and the Cree of the Manitoba woodlands. Inside the package she gave us was a copy of a script signed by our Great-Great Grandmother in the Red River settlement. Grandpa was Metis.

I don't know if he ever went to residential school. He always told us that he was adopted, so I am not sure that he did attend such a school. I do know that he kept that part of his heritage private - he always told us to put down French in the census results.

Getting back to the apology - I'm glad that the First Nation, Metis and Inuit leaders were invited to be present on the floor, and that they were able to respond on the floor of the House of Commons. Having thier words to listen to, and to have them in the Hansard is important. All MP's needed to hear what they had to say.

Since I have begun working in the inner city of Winnipeg at an elementary school I have found this topic very compelling to me. Likely it is because of the Seven Teachings that the school division expects us to pass on to the students. I have found these to be profound, and to fit within my personal Christian beliefs without conflict.

So I watched today's ceremony with interest, and with pride and hope. I know that this is the beginning of a journey - not just for those who reside on reserves or who are considered First Nations, but also for all Canadians. We have to build a new relationship together.

I QUIT

Oh yes...

After "toughing it out" for a couple of weeks, I gave my notice at my second job. The amount of time it would take for me to fulfill the job, and the amount of work it would take, wasn't worth the return. I'll look for something else, and Suz is doing the same. The loss of income will be missed, but not the hassle of getting out there.... I'm actually looking forward to having Saturdays at home....

WBC done, plans for next year.

Well, the WBC had the year end concert at the end of April. Grandma and Grandpa B came out to watch, and I think they enjoyed the concert. Nathanael thought he sang well, and really liked having the extra family members present to listen. The whole choir did a great job, and we had guest artists from the U of M who did some wondering Jazz Music for us at the end.

Next year, there will be a lot of stuff for the boys to sing - plans are for concerts throughout the year, as well as the two the choir puts on themselves. Should be a fun season.

May News

Wow.... been a while...

You would think that with the amount of time I spend on computers, I would have time to spend on writing something in here, but alas, that is not the case.

What it has come down to is that I am doing other things with this machine, and not spending time on the browser as much. Likely not a bad thing, but....

I've got 5 things in the head right now, so I'll enter them as separate posts....

HTC Update

As of today, I have found a couple of neat programs for the Pocket PC platform:

Tuner

Metronome

Stopwatch

Still looking for a freeware chess program....

Job changes....

Well... it was due to happen sometime.

Yesterday at my second job, I was told (with lots of others in the same situation) that my job description has changed. We are now to "promote" - ie sell - a product that we provide technical support for.

It's been two years since I did the training for this phone support job. At the time, we were told there was no sales involved. Since the new product came on line, there have been incentives to promote it to people calling in for assistance with other products, but the promotion part was on our own, at least that was what I inferred.

Yesterday's session was good in that the expetations were very clear - the job has changed. Start doing it.

A bunch of years ago, I did outbound sales for phone companies from the states. I lasted 4 months before I couldn't do it any more. I hope that this is different. At this point, the "Promotion" part is the only part I'm uncomfortable with.

Friday Thoughts

Today is the first day that I have tried to do a post with the new phone. It is quite different trying to use the tiny keyboard or the writing area to make the words. So far I would say the easiest is the keyboard with the stylus and the word prediction turned on.
Just got the Bible installed as well - even got some surfing done.
Well, should go and do some other stuff for awhile.

New Toy.....

The old Palm has finally bit the dust this past week. The right top corner has stopped working, and it is starting to drive me nuts, as what started as a small section gone has turned into a large 2cm by 3cm unusable corner.

So Friday I took the plunge into the market and am trying out a HTC Touch. It's on a Rogers $10 plan, and I still have a week to see if I like it. So far, I am liking most of what it can do - the calendars working OK, and I figured out the syncing part Sunday night. The only part I don't really like too much is that it uses Outlook to sync to. I've gotten so used to Palm's desktop and to Thunderbird that to use Outlook again seems weird.

I did briefly consider Blackberry as an option - except that the plans were not really good - most of the carriers out here wanted $30-45 a month for the data plans. The neat thing about the Touch is that it has Wi-Fi - I've already got it surfing at home and at the dance school Nathanael goes to, and today I got it linked to a Second Cup hot spot.

What gets me is that most of the software that I have on the Palm will not be usable on the Touch. oh well.....