So, a funny thing happened about a month ago...

On Thanksgiving weekend, I went to Regina to visit my family. It had been some time since I'd managed to get home, between the craziness of the field season and my first masters course. It was the first time I was back since mid-July.

I made a point of looking up Meg and Karl, particularly to show Meg my beard (so I could cut it off - at least mostly. I knew she'd want to see it first). On that Friday night they were having some people over from IVCF. I came over to ensure I would get to see them at least a little bit. I had also made plans with Bryan that evening, so I knew I couldn't stay long. I wasn't really expecting to know anyone there other than Meg and Karl (apparently, the fact that the Ramsey boys were still around had slipped my mind).

To my surprise, I met a rather interesting young woman there - Christine. We'd been introduced several months before at Meg and Karl's gift opening the day after their wedding, but that was the extent of our interaction. She was rather fetchingly dressed in this outfit:


I talked to Christine a little at the IVCF gathering. Meg made her feel my beard (after Meg had done the same). I certainly found her intriguing, but, with some regret, I left for my plans with Bryan.

Afterwards, I got in touch with Meg, and asked her if, by chance, Christine was single. Meg offered to ask Christine whether it was all right to pass on her e-mail address to me. I sent her an e-mail saying I'd be interested in getting to know her. Luckily, we got in contact by other means quickly after that, as her first few e-mails were lost because of a filter on my e-mail account.

Over the past month, we've talked a lot and managed to briefly meet for supper when I was in Regina for work in late October. It wasn't until this past weekend that we were able to spend any real time together.

On Saturday, we had our first official "date". We went out for supper, played mini-golf, and then rented a movie; it was wonderful. On Sunday, I attended Christine's church with her, and then we spent the rest of the day together. We officially became a couple this weekend.

Christine's room-mate, J.J., was kind of enough to take a couple of pictures to commemorate our first date. I'll put up two here.



It seems that, in the immortal words of Mike Myers, "I'm smitten. I'm in deep smit", and I couldn't be happier. Although this is a long-distance relationship, over the next month and a half we've arranged to see each other often. That'll be great. It's important that we see each other as much as possible, before I head off to the field in January.

One last picture: Christine taking a nap with my cat, Bilbo, on Sunday afternoon.

Oh, yeah, this thing...

So, I've been a little busy/distracted, and I guess my blog has taken a low priority.

Continuing with adventures in Quebec:
The first day we toured some outcrops in the Rouyn-Noranda, area looking at some of the features we would need to be able to recognize in the following days.

We saw some neat stuff, including some well-formed basaltic pillows, as well as pepperite which formed at the edge of a flow (both appear below).




The really neat thing this day was crossing a beaver dam to get access to one of the outcrops; as you can see, it was a bit of a balancing act, and some people got wet feet in the crossing, but no one got really wet, so it worked out okay.



Here's a picture of the beaver lodge nearby, and a close up of it.



Unfortunately, after that there was very little time for pictures. The next day we did two mapping assignments, on very short time limits, one in the pouring rain. The following day we did some more touring of sites, and started our third mapping assignment, which we then finished the field portion of the next day. During this time we were pretty constantly on the go, out in the field from about 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. each day, and then working on assignments in the evening; I usually got to bed around midnight. It was a good experience, I learned a lot, but boy was it tiring.

On the Saturday, we looked at a couple of other outcrops, and then returned to Sudbury. I spent the rest of the day working on assignments, and then over-nighted in the same B&B that I covered in my last post. On the Sunday, we had a lecture in the morning, and then we were responsible for getting ourselves to Toronto in time to catch our early morning flight the next day. I traveled down with one of the other students, we worked on the assignments on the way there and at the hotel, before getting up at 4 a.m. Monday morning so that we could get through security in time to catch our 7 a.m. flight to New Mexico.

Next post: New Mexico (hopefully sooner rather than later).