11 posts tagged “ottawa”
Ran a total of 23K during a recovery week. I missed two runs this week due to business travel. My week of running included a run with my boys in the jogging stroller (which was very hard work) and a run thru Assiniboine Park in Winnipeg.
Spent the afternoon visiting the Carp "Diefenbunker" Museum with the family. Since I once worked in a bunker of sorts, I found this a pretty cool museum. I picked up a cool "One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day" t-shirt and a RADIAC Calculator from their gift shop.
In 1958, at the height of the Cold War, Carp was selected as the site for one of the Emergency Government Headquarters (also known as "Diefenbunkers") complexes being constructed across Canada. The Carp facility would be the largest of such facilities, and the only one in the immediate Ottawa area. Construction began in 1959 in an abandoned gravel pit outside Carp. The underground 4-storey bunker was capable of withstanding a near-hit from a nuclear explosion. It had massive blast doors at the surface, as well as extensive air filters to prevent radiation infiltration. Underground storage was built for food, fuel, fresh water, and other supplies for the facility which was capable of supporting more than 500 people for weeks. A vault was also constructed on the lowest level to hold the gold reserves of the Bank of Canada.
The bunker was decommissioned in 1994, the local municipality took control of the facility, and a group of
local volunteers, recognizing the heritage and tourism value of the
Carp Diefenbunker, undertook to open the facility as a cold war museum.
Ran a total of 27.86 km this week, with all of these runs along the Rideau Canal. The canal is now open for skating and there are still plenty of folks running along and on the canal this time of year. I missed one run this week, on Wednesday, due to a snowstorm.
- Mon, 5 Jan 09 | 7 kms in 38:57 (5:33/km) during a light snow at -5C. First winter run along the Rideau Canal.
- Tue, 6 Jan 09 | 8.16 km in 46:01 (5:38/km)
- Thu, 8 Jan 09 | 5.82 km in 32:59 (5:40/km). First run with new YakTrax Pro traction assist slip-ons. They worked pretty well.
- Fri, 9 Jan 09 | 6.87 km in 39:10 (5:42/km). Coldest run of the week; -17C or nearly -30C with windchill.
Bus strike + snowstorm + daily commute = crappy day in Ottawa :-(
In Ontario there is a requirement, for older vehicles, to have a safety and emissions test before licensing. No big deal... or so I thought. My car is only five years old, it had a big check-up and overhaul completed last year, and it has not been abused. The emissions test went well but the safety check turned up some issues with my breaks. The problem was with only one side but you cannot simply replace the part on one side without dealing with the matching part on the other side. This, of course, doubles the price. Oh ya... now it was necessary to do a re-balance and alignment.
$1100 and a number of hours later, I now have a vehicle that I can license in the province of Ontario. I wonder how much that is going to cost me :-(
Whenever you start a new job, there is always lots of paperwork to get done.
I had my welcome appointment with the administration department earlier this week to accomplish all of this paperwork. The clerk that assisted me was rather young and, thus, was of lower rank. At the end of the appointment she handed me her business card so that I could contact her if I had any further questions. This was very professional and handy. What I couldn't get over was that she had a business card. I've been on the job for 13 years now and have never had my own business card. I've collected lots of these things but never been in a position to warrant my own card. I was jealous.
Generally our move to Ottawa went very well. While there are mounds of paperwork to go through and fill out, most phases of our move went very smoothly... until we tried to get our moving van unloaded.
Background: Our new neighbourhood has lots of new houses being built on the end of the street, which means lots of construction traffic: backhoes, dump trucks, concrete mixers, delivery trucks, etc.. The day before our moving van was to arrive, we watched a pool being hoisted over a house to be installed in the backyard. There were no parking signs posted up and down the street (I assumed because of all the construction) but local residents seemed to park out on the street none-the-less.
On moving day I had to meet the van driver down at the customs office in order to clear our stuff for delivery. Despite my driver being unimpressed with the slowness and surliness of our assigned Custom's Officer, I felt that the visit to customs went pretty well. We jumped back into our vehicles and it was off to the house to unload our furniture and effects.
With the rather large moving van following a few minutes behind us, we turned down our new street to find a construction crew busy repaving our road. Simply amazing. After some interesting conversations with our driver and the foreman, we realized that we had to wait until the afternoon to unload the truck as the asphalt work need to be applied and sufficiently cooled before driving such a heavy vehicle on top of it. Our driver and unloading crew camped out at a local coffee shop for a number of hours waiting for the repaving crew to finish their job.
Once the asphalt was cool-ish, we got back to work and the unloading guys did a great job getting our stuff into the house quickly yet without damage (apart from my poor tea pot).
I have not been able to get around to posting over the past few weeks as I've been rather busy getting ready for my move to Ottawa... here's a very quick recap:
- I now own a townhouse in Orleans (just outside Ottawa);
- In order to take possession of the place, we're now leaving Florida a month earlier than expected;
- I was supposed to spend the last week purging stuff that we do not intend to move and inventorying all of our belongings (as required by Customs);
- The entire family came down with a 12 hour flu over the weekend and caused us to be dealing with fevers, vomit, and diarrhea for five days;
- We've managed to purge a bunch of stuff but we still have lots of inventory to do; and
- My landlords have started to become very difficult to deal with. With three weeks to go, it now looks like we will be doing some painting in a house we are about to leave :-(
Since last November I was preparing to move to Halifax, Nova Scotia, this coming summer. Not only was I lucky to hear so early where I was going but I received my official paperwork in mid-February; almost a month early. The job was a great opportunity and something that I've hoped for many years. About a month ago I started with the phone calls and e-mails to see what I could be doing to prepare for my new job: reading, courses, training, conferences, etc. As a result of these inquires I started to learn that my position near Halifax was not as stable as originally thought. The fallout of these inquires resulted in my move to Halifax being cancelled as the qualifications for the position had been increased. We has already scheduled our house hunting trip to Halifax.
