Life in the Fast Lane

Well its been a while since the last update. My apologies. I thought I would have more time, apparently not.

So, Brooklyn is doing awesome. She's such a little cutie. She's giving lots of smiles now, which makes it much easier. Now we know when shes actually happy. Not just content or upset. Its great to know when she's happy. She has such a cute smile, but maybe I'm biased. :P

Lots of stuff going on at work. I'm pretty busy, but I feel like I'm doing a great job bringing the company up with technology. I'm really having fun doing these things, but I won't go into details.

In other news, we just bought a Bumbo. Its a seat for kids. We got it for half price at a kids stuff sale today. Brooklyn is able to hold her head up now, but her upper body still needs a little work.

Myrica also took Brooklyn to get her first shots. She did very well. She weighed about 11lbs 2oz if I remember correctly. Which is great for where she is. We also found out that she is currently in the 87 percentile in length. This was great to know seeing as she seems to be growing out of her clothes already.

Thats all I can remember for now.

Hope you all are well.

Cheers,
Adam

Renos, Laundry, and Spring, Oh My!

Hey all,

Now that things have calmed down a bit, I'm able to start blogging again. This is exciting for me. I just looked and we are 8 views away from 1000 views on the blog from January 19th till now. Wow, I am in awe and humbled that people find what I say interesting. I just want to say thanks and I hope you keep coming back.

So 2 weeks ago, we starting getting water pouring through the top of our windows in the laundry room and the bathroom. So we got the adjuster in and he said it looks like it's an ice dam on the roof and that it looks like we should be covered. So we got a company to come in to do all the drying of the insulation and tearing down the drywall that was water soaked. That weekend, My friend Aaron and and I shoveled off the roof so that we wouldn't have any more water coming in because of the ice dam, an it seemed to work. So far we haven't had any more water coming in. So now that everything inside is dry, we need to have a contractor come in and fix it all back up the way it was. So here is some pictures of the laundry room and the bathroom after everything was ripped up:

  

And yesterday, Myrica was playing on her Facebook account, and she is part of the group Smithers Buy and Sell. And what happened to popup? A washer and dryer....for $50. So Myrica and the seller went back and forth, and we agreed to them. So off we went to Houston to pick them up. We got there and checked them out and they looked awesome. Much newer than what we currently have. So we got them and brought them home. We tried out the washer yesterday right when we got home, and wow, it is quite. And fast. What a great buy, we really liked it. Here is a picture of the old and new washer.

New Washer

Old Washer

And now I have decided it is spring now. It has been very nice out lately. Myrica's mum has come out to visit this week. We are very excited to have her, and she is equally excited to see Brooklyn. It should be a great week.

Also, my Dad will be coming up at the end of the month for the weekend. We are very excited for him to come up, as he has not been here yet. So not only will he get to see is granddaughter, but will also get to see where we live and our life up here in the north.

And last but not least, my co-worker's last day was yesterday. Its a lose for the company, but with his family being in PG, it was the right move for him personally. I want to wish him luck in his new adventure and hope that he stays in touch as a professional contact.

And that's about all we got for now. I'll leave you with one of Brooklyn's first smiles. She seems to like her feet being tickled.

Happy Pi Day

Happy Pi day everyone.

Today is a day of irrationality. A day where we find our life in circles. A day where 3 isn't enough, but 4 is too much.

What is pi? (Thanks Wikipedia for helping me out)

Pi is a mathematical constant that is the ratio of any Euclidean circle's circumference to its diameter. Pi is approximately equal to 3.14. Many formulae in mathematics, science, and engineering involve Pi, which makes it one of the most important mathematical constants. For instance, the area of a circle is equal to Pi times the square of the radius of the circle.


So how did sure an unusual day start?
Well, Larry Shaw created Pi Day in 1988. The holiday was celebrated at the San Francisco Exploratorium, where Shaw worked as a physicist, with staff and public marching around one of its circular spaces, then consuming fruit pies.

Then, on March 12, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution recognizing March 14, 2009, as National Pi Day. (I think Canada should do something similar!)

So how to you celebrate Pi Day? Some people eat pie and discussing the relevance of Pi. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has often mailed its application decision letters to prospective students for delivery on Pi Day. Starting in 2012, MIT has announced it will post those decisions (privately) online on Pi Day at exactly 6:28pm, which they have called "Tau Time", to honor the rival numbers Pi and Tau equally.

Overall, Pi Day is a day to have fun with the the irrational constant.

Tell me how you are celebrating Pi Day this year.

Brooklyn and The Discovery of More Time

Hey Everyone,

It seems like it has been forever since I updated this blog. I have been so busy running around left right and center dealing with everything you can imagine.

As many of you are aware, Myrica delivered Brooklyn Sophia at 00:35 on February 8, 2012. There is a pretty crazy story behind it, but all I can say to all women out there that when someone say you'll know when your in labour, you can tell them, not always.

Myrica starting having what we though was the start of early labour around 21:30 on February 7th. I called the hospital at around 22:40 asking if we could come in to just get things check and see how far along Myrica was. They said sure come on it, and worst thing is they send us home. So on the way to the hospital, I phone Jo-Anne, Myrica's Mum, and tell her whats happening. She figures we are right in saying that we will probably be sent home. So we pull into the parking lot of the hospital at 23:35, and I go in to ask for a wheelchair. The had just sent another woman up to the maternity department so they didn't have one there (remember, we live in Smithers.) So I helped Myrica walk to the elevator, and get up to the maternity department. By this time it was about 23:40, and we got her into a delivery room. Lucky for us, our doctor had been called in for the woman who got there before us, and we caught him just as he was ready to leave. So we asked if he could check her, at about 23:50, he checked how dilated Myrica was and was as surprised as anyone to find Myrica was fully dilated and ready to push. So Myrica really started pushing at about 23:55, after the nurses franticly started setting everything up for a delivery. The doctor told us that this was the first time he has ever had a first time mum coming to the hospital fully dilated and not knowing that she was in labour. Talk about high pain tolerance.

After pushing about 7-10 times, Brooklyn made her appearance at 00:35, letting us know her lungs were working. The first time you hear your kid, it's an experience. She fed for about an hour straight right after birth and after about 1.5 hours, Myrica went to have a shower, and I took Brooklyn with the nurses to do all the measurements. Brooklyn weighed 7lbs 1oz, and was 51cm long and had a head circumference of 34cm and a full head of hair.

So all in all, it was super extremely fast. Here we are thinking that we'll have a at least a couple of hours to mentally prepare for our child to enter our world, and she gave us under an hour. What a keener.

So after just over a month of life with Brooklyn, we are figuring out our schedule. Not that Brooklyn was really that hard, she had a spell of bad gas for about a week last week but I think we tracked it down to some medication Myrica was taking. Everything else has been wonderful. She is becoming more and more aware every day, and when she makes eye contact with you, she's actually seeing you now, not just looking eyes because they look cool to her. She is smiling lots when she has gas, but its still a smile, whether conscious or not. She is such the cutie.

In other news, we did the practical section of our ice rescue course the first weekend of March. It was reall cool, learning about how ice forms, and the different types of ice, and some different rescue techniques to use for ice rescue. It was really neat swimming in the river at the beginning of March. That was really cool, both figuratively and literally.

Thats about all I can think of right now. As you can tell, I've posted this very early, but I've actually been up since 3, and decided to come into work at 4 this morning. Its actually been amazing. I've gotten so much done, is crazy what you can do when you don't have a phone call every 10 minutes. Having an extra 4 hours to get stuff done is absolutely amazing. I'm really liking it, and I feel like I have become 100 times more productive. This is probably a good thing as my co-worker just gave his notice and his last day is this Saturday. On that note, if anyone knows someone who would be interested in the job, let me know and I'll forward your name along. Here is a link to All-West Glass' careers page.

How you all are well.

Cheers

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Hey All,

I just noticed that I haven't updated in a little bit. so here it goes.

This weekend was pretty crazy. We had the Family Fun Day for Muscular Dystrophy on Saturday. It seemed much slower than last year, which isn't really a bad thing. And, unfortunately, the weather didn't hold for us. It was plus 3 degrees, and the ice was as soft as a sponge. there was also a whole bunch of water on the ice, and as you might imagine, if you fell, you would get soaked. So that said, the hockey game between the TVFD and the RCMP didn't happen, due to safety concerns (and the fact you couldn't really skate). That was kind of disappointing, but I'm sure next year will be better.

That said, it's been a weird winter so far. Its been extremely mild, with really only a week, maybe a week and a half, and cold weather. And now that Groundhogs Day says that it will be an early spring (the majority at least). And that brings me to my weekly/daily/whenever I feel like it question:

Where did Groundhogs Day originate?

Thanks to the (possibly correct and unbiased) wonder of Wikipedia, this is what we know.

The celebration, which began as a Pennsylvania German custom in southeastern and central Pennsylvania in the 18th and 19th centuries, has its origins in ancient European weather lore, wherein a badger or sacred bear is the prognosticator as opposed to a groundhog. It also bears similarities to the Pagan festival of Imbolc, the seasonal turning point of the Celtic calendar, which is celebrated on February 1 and also involves weather prognostication and to St. Swithun's Day in July.


Historical origins


 One historical origin is an early American reference to Groundhog Day that can be found in a diary entry, dated February 4, 1841, of Berks County, Pennsylvania, storekeeper James Morris:
Last Tuesday, the 2nd, was Candlemas day, the day on which, according to the Germans, the Groundhog peeps out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he pops back for another six weeks nap, but if the day be cloudy he remains out, as the weather is to be moderate.


Alternative origin theories

In western countries in the Northern Hemisphere the official first day of spring is almost seven weeks (46–48 days) after Groundhog Day, on March 20 or March 21. The custom could have been a folk embodiment of the confusion created by the collision of two calendrical systems. Some ancient traditions marked the change of season at cross-quarter days such as Imbolc when daylight first makes significant progress against the night. Other traditions held that spring did not begin until the length of daylight overtook night at the Vernal Equinox. So an arbiter, the groundhog/hedgehog, was incorporated as a yearly custom to settle the two traditions. Sometimes spring begins at Imbolc, and sometimes winter lasts 6 more weeks until the equinox

And now you know where the origin of groundhogs day may or may not have started.

Well Myrica is due tomorrow, so we will see if this becomes true. None the less, if something does happen, this will probably be one of the last places to know. But it will know, eventually. I can do updates from my phone to here, but its more a matter of time and prioritization on my part that will dictate when its updated.

Hope everyone is well.

Cheers.

And Still Waiting, and Speaking of Time

And we are still waiting. No baby yet. Myrica thinks she had her first true contraction last night. She didn't like it. So we will see what happens. I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of our little one. I'm pretty pumped, but this waiting is killing me. I know it will come out when its good and ready, but it would be really nice if it could come sooner rather than later :D. But, as I have always said (and I really have always said this, ask Myrica!), good things come to those who wait. Even if the waiting sucks, eventually some good will turn out of it.

On another note, I would like to advertise a little. For anyone who may be around Telkwa during the hours of 12-5pm this Saturday, February 4th, it is the Family Fun Day fundraiser for Muscular Dystrophy, put on by the Telkwa Volunteer Fire Department. There will be Fire Truck rides, sleigh rides, games and prizes, face painting, a silent auction. and to top it all off, The Telkwa Volunteer Fire Department will be skating against the RCMP in the main event hockey game. The series is currently tied at 1 a piece, so this year is a tie breaker. I have posted the poster at the bottom of this post for more information (in case I missed something). Also, here is a link to the Facebook Event.

And now that we are into February, I hope everyone remembers that it's a leap year and this month consisted of 29 days. Have you ever really wondered why we have leap years? Well i have, and I learned about it long ago, but for though who don't have my curiosity, here is why (thanks Wikipedia):

In each leap year, the month of February has 29 days instead of 28. Adding an extra day to the calendar every four years compensates for the fact that a period of 365 days is shorter than a solar year by almost 6 hours.

Some exceptions to this rule are required since the duration of a solar year is slightly less than 365.25 days. Years that are evenly divisible by 100 are not leap years, unless they are also evenly divisible by 400, in which case they are leap years. For example, 1600 and 2000 were leap years, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not. Similarly, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2500, 2600, 2700, 2900 and 3000 will not be leap years, but 2400 and 2800 will be. Therefore, in a duration of two millennia, there will be 485 leap years. By this rule, the average number of days per year will be 365 + 1/4 − 1/100 + 1/400 = 365.2425, which is 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 12 seconds. The Gregorian calendar was designed to keep the vernal equinox on or close to March 21, so that the date of Easter (celebrated on the Sunday after the 14th day of the Moon—i.e. a full moon—that falls on or after March 21) remains correct with respect to the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox year is about 365.242374 days long (and increasing).

The marginal difference of 0.000125 days between the Gregorian calendar average year and the actual year means that, in 8,000 years, the calendar will be about one day behind where it is now. But in 8,000 years, the length of the vernal equinox year will have changed by an amount that cannot be accurately predicted (see below for a picture). Therefore, the current Gregorian calendar suffices for practical purposes, and the correction suggested by John Herschel of making 4000 a non-leap year will probably not be necessary.

Attribute: BasZoetekouw

And that is the why we have leap years.

As promised, here is the Family Fun Day Poster so you can check my information above against to see if I was lying.

Cheers.