Cangames, Sens, and Ottawa

• Go Sens Go!
  
  
• OK, now that's done, I'll go on. Chris and Daniel spent the day at CanGames while Justin and I puttered about the house, went grocery shopping, and met our new next door neighbours, the third family to live next to us in the six years we've been here. No little boy for Daniel and Justin to play with this time, unfortunately. Then again, the two little boys who have lived there weren't exactly the nicest kids in the world, so ::shrug::
  
  
• People are funny. We came out of our house around 5pm, to go pick up Daniel from the games, and there were people screaming somewhere, which rather alarmed Justin. I told him it was probably just the Sens game, and that they must have won. Drove a little ways and heard people honking, yelling, etc; definitely won. Downtown was even more jubilant, what with there being more people around.
  
  Got to CanGames around an hour later, after a stop at Kowloon market, and there were still people driving past every so often honking and cheering.
  
  Picked up Daniel, chatted with Chris, and at one point I said, "So I take it the Sens won, then, right?"
  "The Senators? Really?"
  "Didn't anybody in here break out cheering?" (Aside: they're at a curling club, a few hundred people - mostly men - crammed in there. You would think they would've been glued to the radio/TV, and stopped all the games for a little while to jump up and down and cheer and collecting on bets.)
  "Um, no. I didn't hear anything. See, hon, there are sports people, and there are gamers. We're gamers."
  "Never the twain, is that it?"
  "Absolutely."
  
  
• Incidentally, it's funny, walking through a crowd of gamers. You hear the most interesting snippets of conversation:
  
  "...goblins, like all over the place"
  "Diet coke?"
  "Not that one, it's neutral evil."
  "...fifty hit points!"
  "...well his son's a gamer too, so his life is fulfilled"
  
  
• Went looking to see if the Spanish classes were cancelled today because of the long weekend. Turns out they were, no big surprise. Funny thing, though, I hadn't looked at the Heritage Language Classes info since I signed my kids up for it, but they really reflect Ottawa pretty well. These are classes run on Saturday mornings in schools around the city; they're run through the school board, and therefore free. All you have to do if you want your kids to learn a language is pick one and drop them off there. Cheap babysitting and education all in one. In the Spanish ones, about half the kids are from Spanish speaking families, and the rest are anglo/franco kids picking up another language. Don't know if it's the same at the other classes. Anyway, here's the list of what's available around Ottawa right now:
  
  ( No, there's no point to this list; I'm just a language and multiculturalism geek )
  
  
  We appear to have a fairly large Arabic population here. No wonder Chris and I noticed the distinct lack of hijabs in Florida; they're such a regular part of the landscape here in Ottawa.
  
  
• Because I'm an Ottawa geek, I wound up at a municipal gov site about Ottawa. Some stuff I already knew, but some that I didn't. Like, for example, we're a highly agricultural city. B'zuh? I knew we had a ginormous farm in the middle of the city, but I didn't know farming was that big around here. Also, 1/3 of our population is French. Also, almost half of us have post-secondary degrees, diplomas, etc. And 1/4 of us were born outside of Canada. 1/5 are visible minorities. And 94% of us think Ottawa's a great place to raise a family.
  
  ( But wait, there's more... )
  
  
  OK, going to bed now :)