Retired

Dave and I attended two retirement ‘parties’ this weekend; one for my mom and one for his dad.

My Mom worked as a nurse at a psychiatric hospital since she graduated from nursing college. She started off in the ward (working shift-work) and when I started high school she got a promotion to Outpatient Nurse. She would work in three different locations throughout the week helping many different patients. My mom is a very hard-working and dedicated person who helped teach me to be the same. She deserves her retirement and I hope she enjoys every minute of it. To celebrate, my Dad arranged a surprise dinner for her at one of their favourite places, the McIntosh Inn in Morrisburg. She seemed very happy to see all of us there (Tyler, Lynn, Dave and myself). We then went for a walk near the water in Morrisburg. It was a really nice evening – I am so glad my Dad set it up.

Dave’s dad retired from the fire department, in which he was a Captain. This is obviously I very honourable job as he risked his life on a daily basis to help save others. He too is a hard-worker and I know this is where Dave gets his work ethics. He will be spending just over half of each year here in Canada and the rest in Florida – that will definitely lead to a happy retirement. To celebrate, Dave’s parents and sister came to Ottawa for the day. We went out for lunch and walked around Hogs Back park and did a little bit of browsing around a few stores in Nepean. I really enjoyed the day and of course took tons of photos of everyone (and a few geese).

Bird in the Hand

As many of our friends know, Dave's dad is a fire fighter in Peterborough. He risks his life to save others on a daily basis but the other day they saved the life of a crow.

According to the email he sent us, they often get calls about cats stuck in trees and refer, amongst themselves, to an ongoing joke of a bird stuck in a tree. And then it happened - they got a rescue call for a bird stuck in a tree.

The crow had apparently gotten caught in the tree via some fishing line and could not break free. The homeowner who made the call had waited a couple of days hoping it would come free on its own but eventually called for assistance.

When the fire fighters arrived on scene they cut down the branch the bird was tied to and brought him down. They then cut off the tangled line and released the bird back into the wild. The really interesting thing is that the homeowner said the bird's family (other crows) had been bringing it food over the past couple of days while it was trapped. The birds then reunited once the bird was freed. (Thanks to John Koning for sharing this story and the photos.)

Pole Mounted Transformer

Last night at about 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning, there was a loud explosion, pop noise and a simultaneous flash from all the electronics in my bedroom. The pole mounted transformer that is directly behind my house exploded suddenly. Once I realized what was going on and that I no longer had any power in the house, I looked outside to find a fire truck already on the scene and fire fighters watching the transformer catch on fire. It wasn't a large fire and as it was raining they just kept an eye on it and waited for it to cease. They were however watching it carefully as the embers from the fire were being caught by the wind and landing in trees, on people's lawns and a few on the roof near the transformer. I ended up staying up most of the night watching the scene unfold as I am not comfortable sleeping in power outages. I am not afraid the dark when I can control it but I get really uneasy when I cannot turn a light on when I want to. Anyway, the fire was entertaining for the most part and didn't seem to be too serious. Eventually I started to drift asleep after taking a few photos of the incident. At about 6am the hydro trucks showed up and boy were they ever noisy. I had slept for almost an hour by this point but was unable to fall asleep again. They left at about 9:30 and the power was back on by 10. I was able to sign onto my work email and also get Chris registered for her classes without too much delay.
The pole now looks like this:*UPDATE* I returned from running a few errands to find the hydro workers back working on this pole as well as some others in the area. It looked like they were fitting them with something. I really don't know anything about the electrical poles and transformers, etc.