A French Navy Ship

A French navy ship was in our backyard this morning. I wondered aloud "why does that boat have a basketball court on it?". Bryan excitedly corrected me that they were helipads. He was really excited. It's a something something amphibious something helicopter something (according to him).

From Bryan: If you're interested this is the type of ship that the French were going to sell to Putin, until Putin got sanctioned for all that Ukraine nonsense. But then the French sold them anyway, because they wanted money more than they wanted to sanction the Russians.

Please ignore the Canadian navy ship covered in rust next to it.

EDIT: Blogger analytics shows what country page views are generated in. Someone in Ukraine has read our blog today. Probably because of Bryan's interesting fact. We're all probably on a government list somewhere now. Thanks Bryan -_-

A picture of Max!

So cute!!

Love to everyone!

Sam, Bryan, & Max

Still no pictures!

I really shouldn't have ever said I'd post pictures of the apartment. It was a dirty lie.

Our house-warming party was a success!! After worrying in the superstore that there wouldn't be enough food, and then worrying right before the party that I had bought too much, it turned out to be the perfect amount. People showed up a bit before nine, and stayed until almost two. I'll admit, staying up past my usual 9:30 10:30 bedtime was difficult, but I powered through. There was wine to be drunk (drank? drinked?) after all.

This weekend Bryan and I ventured to Halifax Shopping Centre to buy shoes. Running shoes for him, and a second pair of Vibrams for me. My original pair turned out to be one size too small. If anyone would like a pair of size 39 KSO Vibrams, let me know!

Shoes. With toes. Shtoes, if you will. 

We are vaguely playing with the idea of some sort of running/jogging habit. We are both aware that we're not exactly healthy. And yet....we are both very very lazy. It's a conundrum.

A TV came in the mail for us. Thanks to Canada Post and their tracking website, which updates a couple hours behind actual time, we missed the delivery. Carrying a TV a block down an icy hill wasn't exactly how I wanted it to make it's journey through the front door. To make a long story short ("Too late!"), we now have a television and we play too many video games and don't do our work. The theme of this post is "Bryan and I are terrible at being responsible adults,".

Bryan says that he finally feels settled and adjusted to the weather here (until the season changes dramatically again next week).

Love to everyone,
Sam, Bryan, & Max

P.S. I also got a new record!

Enjoy my current favourite song!!


EMERGENCY EDIT!!! There was also a nor'easter. Our first. It was unexciting for the most part. That is all.

A Totally Timely Update

Many things have happened in a short period of time!!

1) Remember how I ended up in the hospital before New Years? Well it turns out that I have asthma now. Just permanently. Forever. We could all debate whether I did this to myself by adopting a rabbit and living with hay, but let's not. I'm on a puffer morning and night, and I've just been prescribed a pill as well. The pill is supposed to help clear out my chest and my nose, and so be more effective than just a puffer. We shall see.

2) Bryan got into grad school!!! Yay! Max and I knew he would. There's now the stress of funding and trying to make sure that he'll get money next year. There's never a moment of peace.

3) In an effort to procrastinate on work, I picked out our wedding china tonight. No, we're not engaged. But I didn't want to work, and I used a chrome extension to permanently block Reddit.

Blue and pointy - exactly to my taste.

Bryan gave his opinion with "Yeah, that's nice" or "No." while he worked on his assignment. He didn't really look up though, so I suspect he might have been choosing his response at random.

Love to everyone!!
Sam, Bryan, and Max

Let's be honest.....

.....This is what we were all expecting. I really did honestly try. I had a draft titled "Second Post?", and everything. 

So what's new? 

Bryan is almost fully registered now. The professor of his final course is back from India and signed a form. It only took a month. That's reasonable, right? All of his graduate school applications are in, and we now wait with bated breath. 

Max is growing ever more adventurous. This morning he brought his breakfast (a whole piece of kale) to bed. To my pillow more specifically. While I was still sleeping on it, to be even more specific. 

Fun fact: I did not make this image. Someone else on the internet has had this experience. 

I am ever the same. I code. I read papers. I mark the labs of first year physics students and worry. Why do I worry, you ask? This first year class is offered to life science students, and they take it because a physics class with a lab component is a requirement to get into medical school. I worry because these future doctors can barely write their own names on their labs, much less complete the work. If illegibility of writing were the only requirement to be a medical doctor though, they'd all be aces. 

Also, I've started a new knitting project. I was knitting a sweater (the Beatnik sweater) that has turned out to be too hard. Rather than persevere, grow strength of character, and power through, I've chosen to knit a different sweater. This new sweater is knit in the round (much easier) and has a smaller, less complicated cable pattern. Also, owls. 

They have eyes! Button eyes!!

Bryan and I have also spent a lot of our time lately playing board games. We've purchased two new ones: Tokaido and Gloom. Tokaido is a game where each player is a tourist travelling Tokaido road from Kyoto to Tokyo in ancient Japan, buying souvenirs and staying in hot springs along the way. Don't worry, it's more fun than it sounds. In Gloom each player has a family that they try to make as miserable as possible before killing them all off. The most miserably dead family wins!! It's just as morbid as it sounds!

Finally, we're getting more furniture delivered from Ikea on Wednesday. Hopefully the apartment will start to look more like a home and less like some rooms we put some stuff in. Maybe I'll post pictures... 

...If I remember.

Love to everyone!!

Sam, Bryan, and Max

First Post!!

We made a blog!

We thought briefly about recreating our Facebook pages so that friends and family could still keep up with us and see what we do. This seemed infinitely less painful.

Even if no one else reads this, I can reference it when talking to my parents. I never remember the things I've done in the past weeks, and forget to mention things like driving to Lunenburg.

Bryan has been here for a week now and things have been mostly a success. When we arrived the apartment building was in a slight state of disarray - pipes had burst, there was a waterfall in the parking garage and the lobby may have been slightly flooded. In my rush to leave the apartment back in December I may have left the apartment in slight disarray. Our first days back were spent cleaning, playing with Max, organising, unpacking, playing with Max, fixing our dishwasher that turned out to not really be broken, and playing with Max.

This week has been relaxing for me. For the first time in however many years (22 minus whenever I started kindergarten years) I don't have classes. I go to work (... or sometimes not), I read papers and try to conquer the ZEUS code, and then I come home. So far it's a nice change of pace, but I'm sure troubleshooting code and writing a literature review will have me stressed and frantic again in no time.

Bryan's week has been less relaxing. Between trying to get registered in classes and putting in grad school applications, he's been very busy. Even though the process of a professor giving a student permission to take their class is a simple one, it's surprisingly difficult to get flighty math professors to sit down and do it. As of the time of writing, he's not yet registered in two of his classes.

We spent this weekend settling in. On Saturday we bought a PS3, just to make sure that we don't work too hard. We've been playing Bioshock Infinite (who knew a shotgun could decimate a man like that?!), and waiting for Ni No Kuni to download.

Obviously we'll try to keep this blog updated so everyone knows what's going on BUT let's all be honest with ourselves - the next update will probably come in March.

Love to everyone,
Sam, Bryan, & Max