Fun

Merry Christmas everyone! We can hardly believe how quickly 2016 has gone by and that the new year is almost here.

So many things have happened that it’s going to be a challenge to summarize them all here without making you read for the next hour. But hey, challenges are fun! This year Ada got a brand-new full time job that she will start in the new year. She and her family also traveled to Hong Kong and China, and saw tons of interesting things including the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. Chris worked hard on developing Goal Buddy (as did Ada!), as well as his other computer projects. He said that his big goal is to become a better communicator.

You may have noticed that our smiling faces now accompany our posts. This is to prevent confusion among our long time readers who may think that Chris is joining the Edmonton Police (he’s not, Liv is) or that Liv has a behemoth garden (she doesn’t, I do). Also, so you can see our smiling faces.

If you are looking to do the same for your blog, you can follow the steps I took.

Using old technology is a bit like driving a Model T on the Indy Speedway. It can be a bit scary, but most of the time it is incredibly frustrating and everything seems to be zooming past at a mind-boggling rate of speed.

Case in point: I have a version of Photoshop from 2002. It’s a robust program that I know inside out. It can do a lot of things, and when it came out, it was pretty mind-blowing. But, it’s from 2002. That means it is 14 years old. In Computer Years, that is like comparing something from the Jurassic Period to Present Day.

Unforeseen circumstances.

It isn’t a phrase that makes you jump for joy. Instead, it is a vaguely menacing combination of words that foretells of something throwing your plans off the rails. For me, it was a leg injury. If you have been following this blog series, you’ll know that I have been training to apply to the Edmonton Police Service. Things were falling into place. I had collected all the supporting documents for my application (transcripts, first aid certification and so forth), and was studying hard to write the entrance exams. I was in the best shape of my life, thanks to working with a personal trainer.

Math.

Few people tell me that they love math.

It brings back memories of sitting in a small, windowless room, back in grade 11, with my math tutor. My tutor smoked cigars. Lots of cigars. He smelled like a giant cigar. I really didn’t want to be there, but my math grades were abysmal. I tried - superficially, at best - to memorize the patterns of algebra, but desire to receive a non-abysmal grade in that class was overshadowed by a large teenage helping of “not giving a …”