Book Find

While putting some books away in an elementary school library last week I came across this book and couldn't help but take a picture of it to share:

The hen was my favourite.

Plant Sitting

Greg and I volunteered to plant sit our neighbour's peace lily while she was out of town over the holidays. Our instructions were: you will know when to water it, it will wilt.

So before heading out for our own Christmas vacation we filled up the plant with water and hoped for the best.

This is what we came home to:

This is most certainly not the plant we left and were hoping that this is just what wilting looks like. Thankfully we were right and after lots of water and less than 12 hours it came back:

A true Christmas miracle!

Lil Wayne Documentary

A few nights ago we watched this documentary about Lil Wayne (Tha Carter Documentary) that Greg stumbled upon (I was surprised to learn that you can have videos that are longer than 10 minutes of YouTube!)

Now we aren't Lil Wayne fans and after watching the doc I haven't warmed up to him anymore. But it was interesting to watch. If you have some time to kill or are in the mood for a look into a bizarre man's life check it out (as you might assume this documentary has lots of offensive language, heads-up):

A Delightful Saturday

*click the picture to the left for many more pictures*

This is the first weekend in awhile that Greg and I were home in New Glasgow. Somehow we managed to get a lot accomplished while relaxing quite a bit.

First up,  our first visit to the New Glasgow Farmers Market!

There was an open house at the Carmichael Museum that we checked out. The museum is a house jam packed with historical items from New Glasgow. There was also punch served and many, many treats. It was delightful. Oh and there was a penny farthing outside! That's a bicycle with one big wheel and one teeny tiny wheel - good trivia knowledge. You're welcome.

There is a garden behind the museum, many flowers aren't quite out in full bloom yet, but this one was just lovely!

Later on Saturday Greg unpacked a bin of childhood treasures, we had a good laugh over some items, such as these royal seals!

Christmas Movie (& Music) Madness

Well, not really madness, but it seemed to make a better post title.

Like many other people Greg and I indulge in a variety of excellent classic Christmas movies and also a bit of the less than classic movies.

We are saving the best (Muppet Christmas Carol, Muppet Family Christmas, A Christmas Story) for this week, but so far these are the gems we've taken in:

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The next movie, Fred Claus, reminded me that when actors have children they end up in bizarre movies.  Vince Vaughn, well that's not too much of a stretch, but Paul Giamatti, Kevin Spacy, Kathy Bates, Rachel Weisz, the list goes on!

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It really wasn't too bad of a movie, other than the parts that were created so kids could have a dance or laugh at quick moving clips of Fred and Santa flying through the main street in the North Pole strung together. 

One of the best parts of this movie was that I learned about a new to me Christmas song, Christmas Wrapping. It's from the 80's but I don't think I'd heard of it until Fred Claus. 

Check it out:

If you don't know the Waitresses you might know their song I Know What Boys Like:

Back to Christmas Wrapping, in searching for a video for the song I came across two covers, one makes sense, the other just seems strange. I'll let you decide which is which:

Oh yea, and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges was in the movie as an elf, a DJ elf - of course! And he has a Christmas rap: Ludacrismas, you can't resist:

Christmas Parade, New Glasgow Style

I cant' believe I didn't post this earlier, you'd think I had a busy week but I didn't do much out of the ordinary so I'm not sure what's up - my apologies.

Here we go, Greg and I took in New Glasgow's Christmas Parade last Sunday. It was a great day for it, the first giant snow fall hadn't happened yet so there were lots of dry places to sit on the sidewalk (or in the case of many children the place to run/roll around), the sun was out and it was pretty warm given the date.

There were standard elements to this parade: gymnastic teams, schools, fire department, food bank, etc. I took pictures of a few notable 'floats' or things I wanted to comment about:

Clowns, why does every parade have them?
What do they have to do with Christmas??

The Fire Department rolls up in style and with a Dalmatian!
I thought that was an old cliche that was no longer in style?

Ye olde timey vehicle, classic

It's easy to forget how simple it would be for a horse to crush
you, but from this close it seems like a possibility

Only in Nova Scotia: a herd (about 20)
bagpipers playing Christmas tunes

FINALLY I got candy, I'm not sure why the folks handing it out
feel adults shouldn't get it, I mean...come on! It's a parade!

The best and most terrifying way to end a parade - with taxidermy!
For real, those were living deer at some point, now they are
wrapped in strings of lights and posed in awkward positions.

I hope whatever Christmas Parade you made it out to this year was full of as much hilarity as the one in New Glasgow!

Strange Finds at Grocery Stores

Two interesting grocery store finds since we've moved to New Glasgow:

Giant pumpkin outside of Sobeys.
It was cut open at the top so you could see it was a real pumpkin!

Cheese Balls at The SuperStore
Cleary Christmas is approaching - hooray unhealthy holiday eating!

Birds!!

Too cool not to share, check out this video where A TON of starlings are flying together. They look like all kinds of things other than birds:




Found on Open Culture.

University Shenanigans

The CBC posted an article today about a Dalhousie professor who quit his job at the school because of a particularly long wait to get a university parking pass (we're talking hours).

Here's the article.

Now while I don't believe it's right to have people waiting in line for a ridiculously long time to buy a parking pass (which is WAY overpriced to begin with), I don't think it's necessary to quit because of it.

I was quick to respond to the CBC article, and it seemed that as of 12:30 today 68 people liked my comments while 12 didn't (click the photo to make it read-able):

I also like the person's reply to my comment...but you can't comment on a comment like Facebook so I thought I would post about it here.

After sharing the article on Twitter/Facebook I got some comments and posted more of what I thought there as well:

   

I wonder if the actions by this professor will result in anything other than his retirement? I'm also curious if/how Dal will respond.

The Time We Went To Sussex

On our way back from Fundy we decided to stop into Sussex for lunch, and boy did we luck out! They were having a GIANT flea market on something like an exhibition grounds. Here are some of our sweet finds:

Real My Littlest Ponies, and fakes - nostalgia!

Not sure what's going on here, but it was in the back of a pickup

Instead of a regular tricycle this kid got a head
start on the farming business

We learned that "Dick'r" means to haggle!

The most basic skis, ever

We then wandered the streets of Sussex, where we took in a lot of lovely murals. We also learned that Sussex has 26 murals, the second most in the country. Number 1 is a town in BC. I believe most if not all represent something that happened in Sussex. The one below is all about the Royal Family and their visits to Sussex:

This one is a bit more modern, as the artist captured Greg's likeness exactly:

We also spied this sign, and I really wasn't sure what the shop was all about...take a guess at what you think it's for:

It's for your pets! I'm not sure if I'd take my imaginary dog to a chop shop...eep!

Before hitting the road back to Saint John we did what we set out to, eat lunch. After finding out all of the cafes in town were closed on Sunday we were told about the All Seasons restaurant  so we hit it up. As you can see, their menu caters to all audiences, with a Tiny Tummies section as well as the Freedom 55 items. Greg and I both chose items from other pages.

Not one to drink pop, but I really wanted
root beer!

Labrador Conclusion: Last 24 Hours

After three great weeks in Labrador with incredibly hospitable people and awesome campers I'm back in Saint John. Now that I'm less than employed I have tons of time to do things and blog about them - lucky you!

But lets go back to the last 24 hours in Labrador. We had to end our time in Postville a day early to catch the only flight leaving the North Coast in order to catch our flight back to Halifax. That was a bummer as we had a rushed good-bye with campers. But at least we got to say good-bye!

We lazed around Goose Bay on Friday and decided to end our trip like we started, with hilarious drinks from Jungle Jims:

Strawberry Margarita & Chocolate Swirl
(or something like that!)

The next day was better, we got in touch with our camp contact from Nain who actually lives in Goose Bay and she showed us the town and we were even so lucky to make a homemade meal at her apartment - yay for cooking!

We visited this mish-mash of a store (it sold souvenirs, clothing, lingerie, toys, hunting/fishing gear and had a military museum in the basement!). So after some hilarious browsing we checked out the museum, here are some of our finds:

Bombs!

If there's a helmet lying around, I just need to put it on

Giant gun, doesn't it remind you of Walkers from Star Wars?

Front on view

NBD, moose antlers under a table

Moose head!

ROAR! Bear head!

After our romp in the store we headed down to an awesome craft store (Slippers and Things) that I actually had visited back in 2007 on my first visit to Labrador. And just like before the owner was one of the nicest people ever and fed us toutons (Brennen's first time) and encouraged us to eat as much as we wanted...YUM!

We headed to our new Goose Bay friend's house and made homemade spaghetti sauce and relaxed for a bit before heading to the airport.

Getting out of Goose Bay was a-OK, but we were flying through St. Johns then on to Halifax. That's where we encountered our troubles...sigh. Our plane was first just 2 hours late, mechanical issues from Ottawa where the plane was coming from, then it just kept getting later and later.

Top line of the screen, the plane wasn't schedule in until 1:05
so that meant we weren't going anywhere for awhile

Departure time, 1:30AM, note the time in the top right corner
it was already 1:36, but thankfully we were about to board

We eventually made it to Halifax, flew in at about 3:20 and I made it to my parents around 4AM. Despite this unfortunate ending to a great three weeks I had an AWESOME time and hope I get back to Labrador again!