Trip to Ottawa

Well, this trip was much more exciting than going to the airport. Jeremy had ordered some supplies for his project he wants to start working on (this has been in the back of his mind since sometime in undergrad I believe). So, we had to pick this stuff up and looked up a few other places to stop at - mostly pawn shops for more supplies for this project. We first stopped at Sears on the west side since he's looking for a new battery for one of his tools, but this store was mainly furniture and appliances. It's a much different Sears than we have in the US. Apparently there are several types of Sears stores as well. Turned out this is almost next door to IKEA! Whenever I'd go visit my friend in Chicago, we always had to make a trip to IKEA so I've been excited that one exists this close to us. Plus, it's one road down from the road we would normally take to the airport and very easy to get to. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of a strong enough need to stop. Our next stop was to Bed Bath & Beyond. We've been in need of some new pots and pans and Jeremy's been researching them online thru consumer reports, so we thought this place would have what we were looking for. Unfortunately, they didn't have what we wanted in stock so we'll still have to try to order them. However, most places we've had any luck at finding anything online are US stores and they don't ship to Canada. We'll have to see what we can do. Not too far from this place, was the place he needed to pick up his supplies.

We then ventured north and more into downtown Ottawa. I was trying to figure out how to describe it and can only come up with a mix between St. Paul and State Street in Madison, but more on the poor side (maybe more of a rural big city feel/look). It's much more impressive than downtown St. Paul, but it had that kind of feel and mix of architecture, but had many more big well known high end and small kinda grungy looking convenient type of stores and shops like the mix on State Street. The parliament area was amazing with all these great big old architectural buildings. I really wish I had grabbed my camera as we were leaving, but I didn't. I found a photo online of the parliament building if you'd like to see: http://www.freewebs.com/banbioweapons/Parliament-Ottawa.jpg

Other than that, I've been working on cleaning up the house. I finally finished the kitchen after 3 or 4 days and everything's clean and put away. I just have the bathrooms to scrub and I'll have to call it a done deal. We've hit the gym and are getting in some great workouts and feeling it the next day(s). We're done until next week since we'll need to renew our membership since our "month trial" is now done. We're confident of getting a year membership now. So, hopefully next time any of you see us, we'll have our buff bodies back!!! (ha ha ha) I think Lee's video game activities have rubbed off on Jeremy and he's now plugged in his nintendo and his playstation. I think I'm in trouble!

We're off in a bit to Kharren and Lee's friend's party tonight, so I'm going to sign off. Hope everyone has a Happy (and safe) New Year's!!!