Thursday, January 2

Today I am grateful for:

My little car broke down, but safely and close to home. We don't know what's wrong with it yet, but we were able to use our X-Terra to tow it to the mechanic, whose yard is only about 2 miles away from us. I had to drive the X-Terra while my sweetie steered my little car as I towed it. I was pretty nervous, because I've never towed a car before, but I just stayed slow, and made gentle, slow turns. I was careful to keep my speed the same so I didn't get rear-ended, and decelerated gradually. We made it, anyhow. So, three or four things to be grateful about: No one got hurt, our mechanic is close, we had a vehicle to tow with, it was still day time.

We still managed to get to the city. We wanted a fun day today. We went to the art gallery, which is open late on Thursdays. There is a great installation of Christian religious iconography from the 17th century, and wow is it amazing in person. In Canada, there aren't a lot of old things around, outside of First Nations items or fossils, so it's rare to see such old artifacts. It's tempera paint on wood mostly, and there's something so different about seeing this kind of work in person rather than just pictures of it. The minute detail, for one thing, and how vibrant the colors are, and there's a certain depth that a picture never captures.

Then we made it to an art supply store, and I bought probably more than I should have, but I'm looking forward to using it.

Then we went to a second hand book store, and I found a couple of art books to keep with the theme of art today.

We got some groceries, after a quick burrito. Somehow it was refreshing to buy groceries in a store we only go to once in a while. This particular store is the same chain as our normal store, so we can find the food we're used to, but it feels like we're in another country because it's in a part of the city where there are a lot of new Canadians who were recently from India. It's such an interesting feeling.

At home I still managed to do some vacuuming.