Hi-Pi

3.1415.. = π
3.14.15  = today

Analog Prizes

Advent has a lot of meaning. God sent his Son to Earth to take on physical flesh and blood because He loves this Earth. God's love for Earth is in direct contrast to the Greek dualistic disdain of the physical world as they believe it can not be as valued as the heavenly forms.

So, in honour of the Incarnation, I'm going to share some of the things of this world that have meaning and value to me!

Yo-yo - This might be my only toy. I pull it out every few months and give it a few zips to keep up my skills (which are adequate). Again, I like the weight and feel of the wood and that I can replace the string when required. I could use this yo-yo for the rest of my life - no need for replacement. 

My Wisdom Teeth - Amber is super grossed out by them, but I think they are awesome! I had them pulled in '98 I think. My dentist had me in a headlock so he could yank them out and fortunately, they all came out whole (and beautiful!). I keep them in a little leather pouch I made at summer camp when I was 13.  

Commemorative 400th Anniversary Canadian Silver Dollar of the First Acadian Settlement in 1604 - I don't go for much shiny stuff, but this was a must have coin. I picked it up at the post office in Robichaud New Brunswick in 2004. 

Razor - replacing blades in this solid implement costs me a few cents. I like the weight in my hand and that it gets really hot in hot water. Go stuff yourself Gillette!

Lord of the Rings Box Set - I found this 2nd Edition, 9th Printing, 1965 vintage set in a book store in Edmonton and I couldn't resist buying it. Only one of the books still has a sleeve, but the pages are still very crisp and I would be surprised if anyone has ever read this copy. I just checked eBay and there are 18 copies available there from $75-$405.

Wedding Band - I've been wearing this for over 14 years and I still think it's great. We got white gold just to be different. I like the silver look anyway. I have ECCL. 9:9 engraved on the inside. Amber's choice: Enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life which He has given to you under the sun; for this is your reward in life and in your toil in which you have labored under the sun.

Beret - My friend Kiki bought me this wool hat in Annecy, France in 1997. I do feel a little strange wearing this in Calgary where no other men wear berets, but it keeps my head warm and I like how it looks. I got it at a hat store where they make hats. They measured my head!

Billfold - One of the real problems with wallets is that they can get so thick. This little gem fits my drivers licence, health card, insurance card, bank card and 2 credit cards. It also has a billfold for cash or receipts. I love its sleek, leather feel and that it has metal in it.

Swiss Army Knife - Who doesn't like these things?! My first one was red and was stolen in Banff, so I replaced it. Then my second one got stolen in Guatemala, so I replaced it in Antigua with this black one. The case is fantastic too - think nylon canvas with a belt loop. I used to carry it on my hip for my Guatemala years. Now, it's frowned upon to be carrying a knife in school... I use it for so much.

Nominal Nation Visits

On the left is Malawi, where I spent 12 days. On the right is Mozambique, where I spent 5 minutes taking the following photo in a village (thanks to Richard for pulling over and letting me take a picture in Mozambique):



Kind of funny as the people in this village speak Chewa and Portuguese (and no English at all) while the people on the other side of the highway speak Chewa and English (and no Portuguese at all). I tried my Spanish out on them. They speak no Spanish at all.



This is me in the plane waiting for passengers to load and refuelling to happen while in Lusaka, Zambia. I spent 30 minutes there, but I wasn't able to form a deep connection to the people of Zambia.



I had a 6 hour layover in Nairobi. I actually walked from the plane to the airport on Kenyan soil and I ate a late lunch there. A tourist visa was kind of expensive and I was told not worth the effort since I was in Nairobi.

Life Goal #5 Visit every country in the world 

So, should I check any of these countries off on my list of countries? I had to switch trains in Brussels, Belgium once where I left the train station for 2 minutes to look around. I went through Swedish customs and immigration late one night on a train trip from Denmark to Norway and my train travelled through Sweden for some 8-10 hours.

Maybe, if it comes down to crossing off #5 or not and it comes down to whether I visited Mozambique or not, I'll cross it off, but for now I won't count Mozambique, Kenya, Zambia, Belgium and Sweden.

700 Posts

Blogging has slowed down a bit, but I'm still here. The last hundred posts were dominated by my tour of churches, my local church involvement, cohousing, marathon training, boardgaming, beer tastings, political musings, travel and of course my family.

Thanks for reading!!

Move #8 in 12 Yrs

Last night we moved into a rental home in the community of Varsity in Calgary. It's probably the easiest move I've done - lots of time to pack and load the truck, great help, and plenty of time to unpack.

We are on a path to downsizing/simplifying - I'll be blogging about that soon.

Since being married:

Baywood Park (Edmonton)
to Chester Ave (Montreal)
to King St (Spruce Grove)
to Metcalf Ave (Red Deer)
to Tactic (Guatemala)
to Barrio El Arco (Tactic, Guatemala)
to Citadel Pointe (Calgary)
to Vandoos Rd (Calgary)

That's 8 homes in 12 years. I need to find something that has accompanied me on all of these moves and ensure it makes it in all of our subsequent moves.

I can't slack off and not label stuff!

Fact One: We are selling our home and moving so I am packing.

Fact Two: I am an archivist. I think it is important to maintain records of our past - letters, recordings, photos, videos, a few mementos . . .

Fact Three: We have twelve labelled cassette tapes of either Amber or I speaking sweet messages to each other when we were long distance dating or music recordings - me playing guitar back in junior high and my high school jazz band recorded for a CBC program).

Fact Four: I also have 8 cassettes that have nothing written on them.

Fact Five: We no longer have a cassette tape player.

What am I to do?

36 today

... after 11 long years, I'm finally a square again.

Astrological Surprises

A little over a week ago at a cohousing general meeting, Amber led an activity just to break up the policy discussions. She began by dividing us up by our birthday months - Jan/Feb here, Mar/Apr there, etc... As I joined my March/April groupies, I was shocked at the exclamations of "Oh, are you a Taurus or an Aries?" and "I figured you were an Aries" and "Can you believe I married a Scorpio?" These are professionals all of which have had post-secondary education and yet here they were excitedly divulging their belief in the Zodiac.

By the way, I'm a Pisces. According to astrology.com, today:

 "You’re thinking quite a bit about your future and how things are going, so see if you can get yourself into a quiet corner where you can ponder what comes next. Things are looking up!"

but if I were a Sagittarius:

"Your mind is sharp today, and you should be able to figure out even the weirdest ideas today. Apply yourself to the hard stuff, as you never know when your mental energy is going to wane."

or if I were an Aries:

"You should find that people are easier to get along with today, thanks to some great energy that brings you closer together socially. It’s a good time to build bridges and to check in with distant allies."

None of these counsel morsels are uniquely helpful in anyway. When should I not be thinking about my future or not applying myself or building bridges? What's worse is that they are so self-focused, all about me succeeding and little regard for the other or growing through suffering. Success is defined by good days and bad days.

Old Friends

Over the last few weeks I had the great opportunity to catch up with some longtime very close friends. This is Alan. I first met him in a combined concert band in which we were the only two french horn players. I was in grade 6, he was in grade 5. Since we were reunited in 1994, we have been great buddies. Even though he lives in Edmonton, I only see him once or twice a year. We were able to spend a couple hours visiting each other on Dec 18.



Last week Justin passed through Calgary. The last time we saw each other was when he and Alan visited my family in Guatemala in May, 2008 (nearly 4 years ago). We spent a couple evenings together playing games and then a full day skiing at Nakiska. He lives in Tennessee.



Kris and I hadn't seen each other in nearly 7 years. So much had happened in both of our lives that it was hardly worth trying to catch up. We just talked about interests, current life situations, etc. over coffee at McDonald's (his pick!) for a couple hours. He's moving from Edmonton to Vancouver now.

The best aspect of continuing friendships is the shared history and trust that even though years pass, we can count on their compassion, concern and care always.

Conspiracy or Inattention?

The kids got pyjamas for Christmas. An unnecessarily large tag had to be removed from the inside of the top so the kids could wear their new outfits comfortably. I don't normally pay much attention to tags, but as I tore these out, I noticed the instructions to wash in English, French, & Spanish:


wash warm


à l'eau chaude = in hot water


en agua fría = in cold water

All the other instructions were the same, just the water temperature varied - and varied greatly! So, is it that people of different languages wash clothes differently? Is it that Joe clothing brand hired some lazy translators? Is it that someone thought it would be funny or cruel? Is it that it really doesn't matter?

FallCon

This last weekend was spent playing board games with other board game enthusiasts at FallCon, here in Calgary. FallCon is an annual convention where multiple tournaments are held, used (and new) games are auctioned off, the Canadian Game Design award is presented, and attendees can borrow from a library of hundreds of games to play with each other. This has been happening for 24 years now.

This was my first time attending. As such I wanted to learn as many games as possible so I signed up for each of the five tournaments so I could be taught the new games. This worked well as the newbies were usually lumped together at one table (typically 4 concurrent games would be played and the 4 winners would play in the final). I was also able to contribute to the conference by doing the 12-page layout for the program (got to reacquaint myself with InDesign).

Friday night I played a recently released stock game called Airlines of Europe. It wasn't too difficult to learn and gameplay went smoothly, especially with a facilitator on hand to answer rule or procedure questions. I lost, but I enjoyed the game and I'll likely play again since the lead organizer for FallCon is my friend and he owns (or houses) most of the games.

Following the tournament I played a familiar game with 5 other some available gamers called 7 Wonders. Since I was the only one to have played before, I taught everyone and promptly lost. I then joined a guy named Justin and we played 3 rounds of Lost Cities before entering an hour long amicable political discussion (he's a candidate for the new provincial Wild Rose party).

Saturday morning came early as I only got to bed at 1 a.m. and had to get to Jasen's house by 7:20 a.m. in order to catch a ride and drop our car off for Amber. I familiarized myself with my morning tourny's game: Dominion, a fantastic deck building game. I got the hang of it after a couple games and then won a couple casual games of it afterwards - a definite confidence booster. Following this I ate some tasty concession food while watching a friend finish his game. The Following tournament was another recent board game called Pantheon - a convoluted game with so many components, I didn't enjoy it as much. It took a while to finish as we were all new at the table.

With a little time before the auction and game design award, I learned to play a fun little card game called Jaipur with Marc, a cohousing friend also attending.

After the award presentation, FallCon organizers set to auctioning off 500 games in an amazingly efficient way. I think the top selling item fetched nearly $200. Other games went for as little as $1. I picked up Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers for a decent price, though I was hoping to get Dominion - but those copies went for $40+.

I began to develop a mean headache through the auction and by the end I was nauseous and developing a fever. I tried to wait it out, but ultimately Amber had to come pick me up. I groaned all the way home and threw up on arrival. Plus side: I fell asleep and was fully rejuvenated in the morning. Minus side: I missed the opportunity to learn Troyes.

Sunday, I learned another new game: Merchants and Marauders. Our group played for nearly four hours when typically a game can be played in 90 minutes, but again, we were just learning.

These board games are far more sophisticated than Monopoly, Candyland and Risk. The variety of strategies, defence vs. offensive tactics, and depth of content are astounding. Another terrific aspect of such games (and game conferences) is how it teaches us about how to live in community and what it teaches us about ourselves. Competition is one of several components to enjoying a board game and one best competes when there are others to play with - thus one must strike a balance between self and community.

I had a great time! I'll better prepare myself for next year's con.

Radio Shoutout

I got mentioned on the radio this morning. The CBC Radio 1 morning show, The Calgary Eye Opener, put out a request for listeners to send them photos of them listening to the program so they could see what some of their listeners looked like as they listened.

Amber took a shot of me eating my english muffin as I listened and I emailed it before leaving for work. On our way to work, we continued listening to the program and heard the announcers talk about my picture: eating an english muffin and corn bran  - so he must be a "regular" listener...

Har har!

I'm Behind

While I enjoy blogging, it's the desire to be thorough and engaging that requires a bit more work than I tend to have time for. I am behind 49 movie posts in my Zaak Watches Movies blog (the picture above is a screen shot of the unpublished draft posts). I have 10 draft entries waiting on this blog too.

Winter, that's when I'll do it. Yeah, winter.

600 Posts

At 600 posts, I feel pretty good about myself and my commitment to writing (albeit unprofessionally) on a regular basis. It's also pretty handy to go back and review the years and trips and anecdotes that made it onto Zaakistan: The Blog.

Thanks to you readers, especially those who leave comments and have blogs of your own.

Corporate Director

Dragonfly Cohousing, our intentional community that is planning a building project in Calgary, is in the process of incorporating. I volunteered to be one of the four directors just so I could blog about being a director of a corporation. I don't think I have any special duties (this is what I was led to believe) as a corporate director except perhaps reminding people that I am a director of a corporation.

One of our first decisions as a corporation will be that all decisions will be made using the consensus model. This means I will be able to wield as much power as the non-director share-holders. In fact I wield half as much as the single members since I share my vote with my wife.

I'm sure the most fun about all of this is the title. I think I should get a name plate made for my bedroom door: "Corporate Director: Zaak Robichaud"

Stampede Brunch Day at BCS

I thought I would be as authentic as I could for this theme day at school.

Amber hates it. My students love it.

Watch it over and over!

Beep.

ipod lint

jack will not stay in

ipod's port is jammed with lint

needle jimmies free

Stone Age Tournament

This post is about 3 weeks late. On New Years Eve four men traveled all the way from Saskatchewan to challenge me and Amber to a Stone Age tournament. (The proceeded to Banff Nat'l Park for some winter fun afterwards). Blaise warmed the boys up with some Jr. Monopoly while I finished making curry.

I organized a six game round robin for the six players. The top scoring three players would move on into a final game. The play was enhanced greatly with the presence of choice Bushwakker and Duchesse de Bourgogne beers - in particular, a seasonal treat: Blackberry Mead.

Play was very competitive, though we only got through a couple rounds New Years Eve and had to resume after breakfast on the first. Each player got to play two 4-person games and one double in the round robin. Game winners earned a small bonus of points.

Chris will lament that he was ill (and ill he was) and was therefore not able to present his finest game. Neal learned to play at the tournament, so it is understandable that he came in last. This means that Graham should be the most shamed for not cracking the top three. In fact, it is important to note that Graham's sole purpose was to beat me.

So, it came down to Amber (the sole female, well representing), Bryan (perhaps the most deliberate player at the table), and me in the final.

The turning of the decade was great fun; accentuated by my emergence as Stone Age victor.

Acadia's Favorites

Colour: Gold with green and purple sparkles

Dinosaur: Parasaurolophus

Food: Spaghetti
Show: Toopy and Binoo
Animal: Baby Turtle

Outdoor Activity: Playing Soccer with her Pink Soccer Ball
Indoor Activity: Playing with her Brother