Pictures from Carribbean

I've post some of the pictures from our recent trip down south, you can see them here.

I didn't take an awful lot of pictures, I think a part of that was that we were on a boat most of the time, and part was some of the things we did we were too busy to take pictures (like snorkelling).

-kdh

Impatience

Is it impatient to use the door close button in the elevator? I know that in some buildings they are no more than a placebo to give people the illusion that they have some control over it, but in our building they actually are quite functional. Is someone being impatient if the use them to merely to speed up their trip when there is no one else running for the elevator?

Now, when I get into an elevator with a stranger who has positioned themselves near the buttons (such that it's awkward for me to get in to the corner to push the door close button), and they themselves don't push the button, it feels like an eternity waiting for the door to close... think of all the things I could be doing with those 2.5 seconds of my life!

I figure that I might have saved about an average of 5 seconds a day using the door close button. That's about 2 minutes a month! or in the two and a half years that I've lived there, I've probably saved myself about a whole hour that would have been wasted in the elevator! Imagine the time I could have saved by living on the 9th floor instead of the 10th!

-kdh

Welcome, Clare Elizabeth Ho!

I think everyone who reads this likely has already read this news at another site, but Rob and Rebecca welcomed their first child, Clare Elizabeth Ho, into the world yesterday morning just before 3AM. Everyone is doing well... they arrived back home just before sunrise and have already received a good number of visitors (family and friends).

Congrats!

-kdh

Parity

With the Canadian dollar being roughly at par with the US dollar (and a brief stint above parity), it got me thinking.... if the Canadian dollar were to continue to rise in value against the US dollar, at what point would they stop accepting US coins at par in Canada? When a US quarter is only worth 22.5 cents? 20 cents? 15 cents? Would they change the mechanisms in vending machines to accept only Canadian currency?

For a long time when the Canadian dollar was only worth 60 US cents they would not accept Canadian coins in the states... and I would bet that in most places they still don't, but I think that has to do with the fact we are small (in population, and economy) and they are huge.

-KDH

Happy New Year

Happy new year to every one out there... although Susanna keeps telling me that doesn't start until early February!

Susanna and I are back from our second cruise in 6 months (seems really decadent, doesn't it?), this time it was in the Caribbean with stops in Cozumel, Belize City and Nassau. The trip was fun, although for the second half of the trip the seas were a little rough and the air too cool to spend much time outside on the deck of the ship. We managed in our three days on shore to visit a Mayan ruin site, to go snorkeling on a reef and to play on the beach in some big waves (so big that the life guards would barely let us go in the water).

I don't have any pictures up yet (and I don't think I really took that many), but when I do get them up, I'll let you know.

-KDH