Category: Miscellaneous babble

Stopped by the hops tower today and saw some of the first hops flowers showing up!

I don’t think they’ve been there for very long, but I’m glad some showed up. After all the growing the vines have been doing, I was starting to wonder if any were going to show up. Did a bit of research a couple weeks ago and learned that there are male and female vines, and only the female vines produce the hops flowers/cones.

I’ll watch these grow and see what they turn into.

Some nice bright yellows showing up on the trees this week.

After a mostly uneventful flight from CHS->DFW->YEG (the inbound flight at DFW was late getting in, so we ended up leaving about 20 minutes late), I made it in to Edmonton safe and sound.

My rental car ended up getting upgraded to a Kia Sedona mini-van because that was pretty much all they had left by the time I got there. Pretty sure you could cram a couple dozen people into this thing with room to spare.

After a quick stop at a Bell Mobility store to pick up a SIM card to use in my phone while I’m here, it was off to meet my friends Joe, Alexa and Tom at a Boston Pizza in St Albert.

Mmmm, Great White North.

Joe and Alexa are nice enough to let me stay with them again, which I greatly appreciate. Always nice to be able to stay with friends while I’m in town.

Not too much on the schedule yet, although that will change soon. Already have most of Saturday booked up with the family and a few other things I need to schedule over the week. The rest of my time I’ll get to play tourist and do some exploring again. Looks like I’m just in time to see the leaves start changing colour. That will be cool, it’s been a while since I’ve seen that.

With any luck, by the time I leave Edmonton, I’ll also have my Canadian Amateur Radio Certificate.

At my last regular eye exam, I told my opthalmologist that I thought it was time for a second pair of glasses that I could use for reading and other up close work, because I’m running out of nose room to push my regular glasses down so that I can see things near my face.

Unlike those reading glasses you pick up from the store, in my case they’re just a weaker prescription. If those store reading glasses came in clip-on form, they’d probably work just fine.

This time, I decided to try out Zenni Optical to get the glasses from. Connie ordered a pair of glasses from there a little while ago and was satisfied with what she got. I picked out what seemed like a decent looking pair of glasses on my face and put in an order. I wish Zenni gave more options for filtering frames besides just pupil distance and frame style.

The new glasses arrived today, just under two weeks after placing the order. So far everything seems to be pretty good. The glasses fit reasonably well, although the arms might be a little on the short side. Vision wise, they are good. I can hold things at a reasonable distance from my face and read them pretty easily. No unexpected distortions in the field of view.

So far so good. Now to see how they stand up to regular use.