holiday

I'm well on my way to taking my first full weekend off of work since September. I've resisted the impulse to do much of anything useful with the entire stretch of time since Friday night with the exception of having watched a couple of movies -- one quite hideous and the other very interesting. I was surprised to find myself in the company of two of my kids for the Herzog film -- it's probably the only one I would let them watch at their current ages. My 11 year old plopped herself down beside me telling me that she was going to 'humour me' by watching the film. I told her I didn't care whether she stayed or left, thus ensuring that she would need to be palpably repulsed to hoist herself from her seat. Not only was she not repulsed, but she seemed rather enthralled, and truly resonated to the theme of clashing cultures and laughed out loud at feeble Western efforts to win over the ancient aboriginal mind with malfunctioning techno-baubles. She's 11. I love her more than I can say. My 9 year old daughter seemed to take much less from the film, but loved watching the expressions on the faces of Australian aborigines and imagining a large, green military plane as an ant (you'll have to watch if you want to understand). I adore her wide eye for pattern. Other than this, it's been mostly reading a good book completely unrelated to work, eating chocolates, drinking a little wine, and enjoying a night of beautiful stars in a scalding hot tub (our guilty pleasure still) in the company of my amazing wife. Oh, and there's been the usual steeplechase of preventing our two toddlers from dismantling the house completely. It's amazing what can be shoved down those forced air heat registers.

I needed this. I've got a busy week coming up -- a flying trip to the west coast for some visits to fast-talking 'sales engineers', a talk to give to people who know much more than I do about my research, a final exam to administer (and then convince other people to grade while I fly away), and a bunch of Christmas shopping, all of which will need to be done online if there is to be any hope at all for our kids getting more than lumps of coal in their stockings.

This time last year I was wading barefoot in the Atlantic Ocean, even sneaking in for the occasional skinny dip when I thought the risk of being carted off by the RCMP was moderate to low -- or at least lower than the risk of cardiac arrest from shocking contact with not exactly balmy waters. Things have changed. This is neither better nor worse, but it is a wild, interesting and unexpected ride.