NS Vacation: Thanksgiving Weekend
On Friday, Paula and Jimmy came down from Fredericton. Oh, and their two cats. For those keeping count, that’s 5 cats, 1 dog, 2 permanent residents, 3 West Coast Visitors, and 2 currently-living-in-NB’ers. The people outnumbered the animals by 1.
Anyway, they came down on Friday, and it was our (the West Coasters) first time meeting Jimmy. He seemed nice! Paula seemed happy, so all was good. I didn’t get a lot of photos of either of them, but here’s one at dinner on Friday:
Saturday was the my cousin Suzanne’s (nee Zinn) wedding. The wedding was held at St. Pat’s. St. Pat’s is a beautiful Catholic Church, and one that the Zinns and Forwoods have been going to for quite some time. It was built between 1883 and 1885. You can find out more about it here.
The ceremony was nice, and the atmosphere was great. Unfortunately the church is pretty dim inside, so I didn’t get any good shots, but a few of the ones that we did get are below.
After the wedding was a reception held at the barracks of the Halifax Citadel. Not the hotel, silly, the fortress. I didn’t know that the National Historic Site was open for wedding receptions, but guess what! It is. Anyway, the reception was spread through the top floor, with several different rooms having different foods and mingling areas. We stayed pretty much in the main mingling area, since it was a little more baby safe. Unfortunately that meant we missed much of the food, but we made up for it by stopping at that Paragon of Fine Food (yes, Wendy’s). It was at the reception that I managed to get a few more pictures of my sister! There were a few toddlers there, and one much younger baby. Aidan’s newest cousin Petranella (Anthony’s cousin Andreana’s 3 month old) was there, as was Sawyer (the “oldest” offspring of the cousins) and a few other young kids. There was one just about Aidan’s age (name now forgotten) with whom he hit it off, following her around a bit, and during the dance, dancing up a storm!
Anyway, it was another one of these times where we’re reminded how much the boy takes from us. We actually left — the boy awake — around 9ish, well before my parents. The boy stayed awake for the ride back to my parents’ (via Wendy’s of course), and luckily, went to bed pretty normally.
Sunday was a bit of a blur. Oh wait, I remember. Thanksgiving dinner. Gwen got things going with the dinner while Dad and I took Paula’s laptop apart. It is a Toshiba, and it would overheat and shut itself down when it got too hot. Coincidentally, Mom’s laptop had the same problem. In fact, they were both Toshibas, and apparently it’s a known problem. So, with the help of some instuctions from the web, we took Paula’s laptop apart. The problem is that the air intake is on the bottom of the laptop, and it sucks up lots of cat/dog/person hair and dust. It then blows this gunk over some cooling fins, but the fins do not allow the gunk through, and it accumulates on the fins. This reduces the effectiveness of the cooler, and then the system overheats. Anyhow, to clean the cooling fins, you have to completely disassemble the laptop … right down to removing the system board from the case. So, with the instuctions from the web, that’s what we did. It took much longer than expected, something around three or four hours. But, when we put it back together, it all worked, and as far as I know, it has solved the problem. After we got done with Paula’s we tackled Mom’s. It took a little less time, but essentially by the time we were done with Mom’s (also a success) it was dinner time.
As usual, Thanksgiving dinner was great. Gwen’s mother, grand-mother, and sister were up to join us too. I don’t think we got any pictures of the event, though.
Next, week 2…