Most of this post was adapted from an e-mail I sent updating a friend of mine. So Simon, if you’re reading, you can skip this entry (but I’ll re-iterate my invitation to come down sometime this winter).

On Thanksgiving:
We had a gathering at our place with our neighbours (the husband is originally from Saskatchewan) and a friend of Liza’s. There were five kids between all of us so it was quite the menagerie when all was said and done. Syd and I made four pumpkin pies for the shindig. I was pretty pumped by the end when two and a half of them were still uneaten. Then Liza started handing them out as people left and a little part of me died when each one of them left. Seriously, she was throwing them around like they were frisbees (“head’s up! Pie comin’ at ya!”) with no concern for my own pie-eating enjoyment. She even had the nerve to buy low-fat, sugar-free, taste-free whip cream but I countered with my own private stash that I keep in the freezer whenever I need to whip up a quick cheesecake. The Saskatchewan-ite and I had to eat ours outside in the patio under the cover of the night, lest our health-conscious wives find out and confiscate our contraband dairy products.

On Hurricane Season:
Still one more month of potential hurricane goodness to go but it looks pretty calm these days. People keep saying not to let your guard down but you know what? Screw ‘em. I’m letting it down.

On Liza and Syd:
Liza and Syd are doing fine. Have developed a beautiful mother-daughter bond that usually ends with one of them storming off in anger while the other turns to me and says, “You deal with her!” Syd had a fever last night which should have been distressing but she is way too funny when she’s sick and sleeping. Keeps acting out her dreams. Last night, I had to get up on several occasions to beat her pillow. She'd sit up and scream, “Daddy! Daddy!” then point to the pillow and say, “Hit it, daddy! Beat it!” Not sure what she was dreaming or what the psychological implications of her actions are but at 2:30 in the morning, any parent will tell you: Kicking the snot out of that pillow is the quickest way to get back to sleep.

On Switching Careers:
I’ve started studying for my soon-to-be-revitalized actuarial career. Was surprised how quickly things started coming back to me, particularly the reasons why I left the field in the first place. I swear you need a philosophy degree or a whole lot of drugs to understand some of the mathematics in those books. If mathematics is one of the universal languages, I plan to be illiterate for a long time.