Good News! Heading Home!!!!!

On October 2nd, my wife Reba, our daughter Summer, our dog Victory, and I left Denver, Colorado to embark on a two day drive to our new home for a month and a half in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I don't like telling people when I'm home or away, because there are some unkind people in this world who would like to know such information. But as we are almost home, I can talk about everything in retrospect. Things to note from the last month:

• Summer is growing
• She started crawling shortly after we arrived at the place we stayed
• She decided crawling was only useful for getting to something she could pull herself up on and stand
• She will be walking very soon
• She has sprouted four teeth (that we have found, mostly by her biting us with them)
• She misses Victory
• Victory has been living it up terrorizing the cat he is living with while we are out of the country. Also, the family watching him for us either already has or will in the next week most likely be having their first baby (yay for growing families)! We pick him up on our way back to Denver.
• Reba loves Edmonton, but not enough to move there permanently. I agree. It's too cold there. I've been sick with all the cold weather and trying to bike to work. But there has been lots to do, capped by a rodeo we went to Monday night. The science museum we visited shortly after our arrival was also cool (liquid nitrogen presentations are always entertaining).
• The Aurora Borealis was worth sitting out most of the night in the cold car for. If we had stayed out longer, we could have seen a more amazing wave, but the one we got to see was very impressive. Greenish blue waves of ionizing radiation flowing across the sky is an amazing sight to see.

Life has been crazy and will continue to be for some time. Our vacation to visit family in December will include me being on call the entire time. No pressure.... I have been receiving training from the hosting division of our company and will be working remotely from the US office on hosted build outs for client projects and internal use over the next 4-5 months as needed. I'll also be helping with server updates and other regular outage tasks (which will be fun if the VPN goes down). I'm learning a lot about the corporate best practices and will apply this knowledge to the US infrastructure as it grows. It turns out I'm filling in for an employee on short term disability (had I known this, the 12 hour debate with Canadian immigration might have been shorter). My work permit expires soon, so that's why I'm headed back to the US in a hurry. Reba has been giving me rides since it is too cold for me to bike to work with how sick I've been getting. She has also been making me wonderful lunches. It's fun to poke into the bag each day when I get to the office and dig into an orange or chocolate bar (there's usually a couple of each in there, I'm getting spoiled).

Life in Canada is a little different. Not as different as I was expecting. Adjusting to to KPH instead of MPH was easy. Buying gas hurts, because it costs around $1 CAD/liter, but the car can hold 60 or so liters.... Costco, Walmart, Best Buy, lots of the same stores here. Costco is insane. The prices are way better than other stores around here, so it is a mad house in there, wall to wall packed with people all the time. Reba found a sled for our now 8 month and 1 week old baby girl. It's the perfect size and is well padded, so she should love going for rides in it all winter long. If the snow we heard about over the last month and a half keeps up, she will get lots of rides in the snow to get the mail, take the dog for walks, and just general time outside. Reba found a big, fluffy, down snow suit for Summer, with lots of space to grow into, so we'll toss a few warmers in the arms and legs and tow her around for as long as she wants.

While we are on the subject, Summer is amazing. She studies everything. She thinks a lot. You can pick her up and stand her up on your lap and she will give you this look like she knows she can figure you out if she just works at it long enough. She is happy all the time, even when we aren't. She still only gets upset if she needs something. And as usual, it's sleep, food, or a change of diapers. She hasn't enjoyed the cold either, but she is getting over the cough she picked up a couple weeks ago. Reba's teeth are doing well too (she had two pulled the week before we left).

All in all, the trip has achieved it's goal of introducing me to the work I will be doing for the next half a year, and has helped the staff catch up on workload due to being down a staff member. It is clear that at least another employee needs to be hired, but the dollars don't allow for that at this time, so we have to take projects as they come and do our best to prioritize and not lose any time.

I can't wait to get home, sleep in my own bed (with Reba, Summer, and Victory all snuggled in), and play a little Minecraft on a computer that can handle it. I've had a Foxconn NetTop that can't handle much beyond websurfing and video playback, and to have a real desktop with my multi-24"-monitor setup back will me nice. And whenever it launches, I need to go pick up the Samsung Galaxy Nexus to replace a very aged (launch day purchase) Motorola Droid (OG).