Our Apartment

So we are officially renting our apartment now. It is a spacious multi-room dwelling normally used by royalty but for some reason we can afford it. No actually its quite small but perfect for the two of us. The kitchen is a decent size (see the pic with Irene in it)

The apartment also sports a dining / living area thats big enough to have a decent amount of people over. Living Rm with a View^

The master (sorry) only bedroom is hopefully big enough for our bed and all of Irene's clothes. We shall see about that.

The view is a decent sunset view of the Ottawa River and the Gatineau Hills in behind which can be quite nice. The only thing with the sunset is that the apartment can get really warm in the summer.

In the basement of the apartment there is an excercise room and two squash courts, laundry room and a pool table. I need a pool cue. There is also some storage space and a bike room. We also are paying a little extra (10 bucks/month) for indoor parking. All in all it will be exciting.

We are moving all of Irene's stuff up this weekend. Packing on Friday and unloading it all on Saturday morning. Hopefully we can start to get the place set up on Saturday too.

I will be living there till the wedding. Just think, little ol' Reuben has to be a bachelor for a few weeks. Should be interesting.

Thats it for now. You could probably check Irene's blog for a more emotional and in depth look at the apartment situation if you were so inclined.

^Irene in the Kitchen (no - not where she belongs)

The Bedroom>

Coincidence

A weird thing happened to me today. As I was driving to work I absent mindedly checked out the car I was following and noted a bumper sticker that I recognized. Now the weird thing was when I was on the on ramp onto the 417 on my way home 8 hours later I was behind the exact same car. Now what, I ask you, is the chance of that happening?

Update on my Life

So for anybody that actually reads this blog:

As of Monday, February 6 I have started my job at Farrow Architects after turning down several job offers. So far the job is great. The people are great (really busy but still great). The job atmosphere is good too. All in all I am enjoying myself immensely. The firm has about 10 people so it is not so large that you become a dismissable number. The guy I share my office with, an intern architect from Carlton U. is into exactly the same music as me. It works out well as we can play music without pissing each other off. I still find it amazingly coincidental that he not only has heard of Sigur Rose but loves their "hopelandic" music as much as I do.

Irene and I have chosen an apartment which will be availiable on March 1st. It is William Mosgrove Towers in Ottawa. For a one room apartment it isn't too bad. It features a large kitchen and living / dining room with beautiful sunset views of the Ottawa River and the Gatineau Hills in the background. It is also right on bus route to my work so I plan to sell my car. Any takers?

The wedding planning is progressing and I am confident that everything will come together for the big day on March 18th 2006.

Thanks for joining us more updates will follow...

A University Education

I often wish I had the chance to get a University Education. I would have majored in something like the languages, sociology, psychology or the classics. These types of courses or majors or whatever you want to call them will not teach you how to put together a building or how to design a ship. Those types of skills will definitely make you money out in the real world. But is life all about money? Of course not. Life is so much more and to experience it you must learn about how it works - not how to work it. So that is why I would want to experience a university education. It would teach you about life. Not necessarily skills for life but about life in general.

The reason I did not go to University was:
A) The cost: I could not afford it and still would not be able too. I never made as much money on my summer jobs as my University going friends. But I never needed to make more because God always provided the perfect amount. My bank account was always at something like $0-25 when I started my next job. And if I had been requiring more money for something like university I am sure it would have been there.

B)The pressure: I never did all that well in High School. I got average marks quite consistently. I did quite well throughout the year especially on assignments where I found that the harder I worked the more marks I received. What ended up bringing my mark down from a high 80 / low 90 to a more average sounding 70-75% was always the exam. I was never good at studying and it showed. The other thing I disliked was writing essays. I have been told that I wrote decent essays (that is what the marks said) but I think I got the marks by making the title page look fantastic. Either way I disliked organizing my thoughts into a clear, concise and coherent 1000 words as I am sure anyone who reads my blog can agree.

Both of these reasons turned out to not be valid. First of all money is not a big deal when you are young. You will have plenty of time to make it back once you start working. And when I look at half of the idiots in university now I can definitely say that "If they can do it, so can I." Also one of the things you learn in university is how to organize your thoughts into a clear, concise and coherent manner. If that is not a useful skill for any job I don't know what is.

So to sum this whole blog up I just wish I went to university and then to college. I find college teaches you to be too logical. That is a great quality if you are building a house or designing a ship but not so useful when debating the war in Iraq or the effects of so called “freedom of the press” in Denmark etc. I guess what I am trying to say is I really respect those smart people in universities even though most of them are too idealistic for their own (or anyone’s) good. But that is what makes a university education so good. It makes you more ready to accept change and to incite it (or to know why it should or should not happen). But look at all the good changes that have happened because of what was started in a university. Obviously this is a very debateable point but really where would we be without universities and the issues they have been dealing with since the renaissance.

Wedding Planning

This is wedding planning from my point of view. I think I am the average guy. I am not one of those guys who says its the woman's job to plan it. I do not think it is right to say that all I will do is wear a tux and show up and say "I do." But I am definitely not the kind of guy who really enjoys the whole experience of wedding planning.

In my opinion the whole wedding planning situation is over done, over emphasized and over blown. From my experiences so far anything and everything that has to do with a wedding is automatically over priced. For example you can buy a normal pen for what? Five cents? But a beautiful feather pen with some large synthetic feather sticking out costs thirty dollars. (I bet you get less ink with that too seeing as the feather is taking up all the room in the pen.)

It seems that everywhere you go people ask you about details like what colour are the dresses and what type of flowers you are using. People seem to assume that you will be doing what is traditional in our part of the world. That is spend obscene amounts of money on one day. I heard the average amount spent on weddings is far into the 10-20,000 ($CAN) range.

That said, the day is very special and I can not wait for it to come. I want everything to run smoothly and I want everyone to have a good time. So there seems to be a fine balance between caught up in what the world does and actually having a wedding where the one thing that really does matter is the fact that two people are starting their lives together. The focus should be on the fact that God is at the center of all of this and not how many tiers there are on the wedding cake. I think our wedding has found that perfect balance (or as close to it as Irene will let me).

Irene has all these dreams about what she wants her wedding to look like. I can visualize it too but I have heard from almost everybody who gets married that you do not remember much of the big day. Thats why you get pictures I guess....