Oh, Canada!

So, hey, you ever been to Canada? If you're like me, the answer is, "Of course I have, since I grew up in Niagara Falls, NY, and Canada was 'Our Neighbor to the West'." If you're not like me, you're probably right handed and were born in the spring.

Anyway, the thing about about Canada is, they have the best candy bars. You know why that is? Well, it has to do with root-word origin. But among the many interesting things about Canada is how they take classic American products and improve on them by replacing the letters "SP" with the letter "K." You can see an example in the photo here:



Plus, in Canada, they have a real knack for giving things a name that tells you all you need to know about the item. (Think, for example, "hoodies," "dualies," "parkade," etc.) You can also see this in the name of foods. Like, for example, in this picture:



Whoever Mr. Noodles is, he couldn't have gone into a more appropriate profession, eh?

And, as you probably know, everything in Canada is written in both English and French. I have heard that this is to appease Quebec, so that they don't succeed. But sometimes the French word for an item makes it sound completely unappetizing. Take, for instance, the apparent French word for "root beer."



Don't think I'll be partaking of any of that anytime soon, thanks all the same, Piere.

So, what's with all this discourse on Canada? Glad you asked. What is with it all is that we went there over the weekend. As I noted above, Michael and I visited Canada quite a bit while growing up, and we are still pleased to go there, now that we are no longer growing up. This past weekend, we flew to Toronto (pronounced: toe-RAWN-toe), to play at our first ever Youth Specialties National YouthWorkers Convention, Canada-style. Quite a lot of fun was had by us. But, man, do the Canadians ever keep it cold up there. In our hotel room, I had to wear a hoodie, just to keep warm. Checking the thermostat, I figured out the problem.



I don't care if you are from the True North, strong and relatively inexpensive, that kind of temperature indoors is simply unacceptable. I mean, you'd think the pipes would burst if that's as warm as it gets inside.

Nonetheless, it didn't feel that cold, and we soldiered on with candy bars and hoodies.

Our hapless Buffalo Bills came to town the day we left so they could lose to the Miami Dolphins in Canada. (I don't want to talk about it.) But we flew out well before dawn on Sunday morning so that we could get to Baltimore and drive over the Severna Park, MD. (Sounds like a doctor's name, doesn't it? Our family pediatrician: Saverna Park, MD.) We were headed there to play at the 50th anniversary party of Our Shepherd Lutheran Church . . . which we did successfully. Had a nice time, enjoyed some ice cream afterward, and then drove on up to New York to stay at my place. The drive only lasted about 4 hours, but the level of difficulty was quite high, and we struggled mightily to stay awake. Then, this morning, Michael flew home to Los Angeles, and I put on my robey things and led Morning Prayer.

What's next, you ask? I'm glad you asked. This being December, we have some Christmas shows coming up. In fact, this is our 10th year of Christmas shows. You can find details on where we're playing by clicking on the link for finding details about where Lost And Found is playing their 10th annual series of Christmas Concerts in the United States. In other Advent news, I recently made some corrections to the sheet music for my version of "Oh Come Emmaunal," which sheet music you can get at our website. And in a final piece of it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas news, we're running some kind of special on our website that saves you money or something like that, which you can find explained here.

And, with that, it's getting to be about time to get out the holiday lights and decorations for the annual trimming of the Guitar Player. As you can see, we've already got a jump on the lights.