We dined in our room on the delicious pastry we’d bought on Saturday, which went well with our instant hot chocolate.  It was a nice start to a dreary and ugly and sometimes wet day (only the second day of “bad” weather so far).  There was a steady mist and low hanging clouds for most of the morning, but a wind came up (we suspect it was related to the weather front created by Hurricane Kyle that’s headed toward Maine and Nova Scotia, Canada) and the ceiling rose quite quickly so that we had only grey clouds over us.

We drove to the area east of Québec City to visit a church built in Saint Anne-de-Beaupré in the late 1600s.  It was a magnificent structure and a marvel to have been built in that era without the modern mechanical and engineering technologies available today.  It’s apparently a religious attraction like the cathedral in Lourdes, France, because many “pilgrims” come to visit this church annually (according to signs posted around the church area, and the fact that there is a church-run hotel across the street).  It also has some interesting associated buildings and displays which Mom photographed.

We began our drive back toward Québec City, but turned south and drove over a high bridge so we could tour L’île d’Orléans, a huge inhabited island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River.  There were lots of berry and apple farms where their wares were being sold in stands along the roadways.  We even found a pumpkin patch and a corn field maze.  They celebrate Halloween in this part of Canada, so it’s interesting to see the piles of pumpkins offered for sale and some of the fields where they’re growing.

We broke with our tradition of picnicking for lunch.  We’d found an ad for a place where chocolates are made and sold, so decided to try to find it and eat lunch there.  It wasn’t a problem to find the place, so we stopped and had a nice sandwich and a bowl of homemade soup.  We then continued our tour around the island (probably about a 60-mile round-trip), but we cut through the center of the island to keep our visit (and mileage) short.

When we arrived back in Québec City, Mom got us to the area where our B&B is located, but we drove around for several minutes trying to figure out how to navigate the one-way streets.  Once we located our street, we headed in the direction of the address, but came to an intersection where the one-way direction changed across the intersecting street.  After a couple of “passes” trying to figure out how to gain access to our street in the proper direction (sounds like a Navy pilot who can’t get his plane back onto the aircraft carrier), I decided to stop in the street across the intersection and back into our street so I’d be headed in the correct direction.  Our building was only a couple of doors from the intersection, so we were able to park near the corner and unload our bags.  The B&B offers paid parking and it’s only in a small lot across the intersection where I was having so much trouble getting the correct direction.  Anyway, it’s a quaint little place on the third floor of a very narrow building, which means steep, narrow, winding stairs to climb with all of our baggage.  Reminscent of some of the places where we stayed in Europe!

After getting settled in, we made a walking tour of some of the area of “Old Québec.”  It was a walled city surrounding a fort on a high hill where many of the original buildings are still standing.  It was fun to walk and look at history dating to the 1600s, in spite of the cold wind coming off of the St. Lawrence River and the steady mist coming from the gray skies above.  This area is really what we’d expected, representative of the France we know.  We checked many restaurants (they all post their menus outside their doors), but chose one that specializes in omelettes.  Mmmm, an omelette filled with delicacies and accompanied by “frites” and a nice piece of French bread! It doesn’t get much better than that (except for snails in garlic butter with lots of French bread to sop up the butter).  We had to walk up a steep hill on the way back to our B&B, but it was good for our digestion.

We hope tomorrow’s weather will be more accomodating so that we can continue our walking tour of the wonderful sights here.

Engadget joked that this is one you kind of wish was one of those realistic-looking Photoshopped images — it’s not.

But wait, there’s more …

Okay, confession, for whatever reason, I like guns. When I was a kid I had one of those revolving rubberband guns, it should something like 10 rubberbands as fast as you could pull the trigger. Well, again thanks to the Web, here’s a guy that took that simple concept just a little bit further — I know who’s on my team for the rubberband war:

I think I speak for all guys, that rocks!!! I couldn’t leave out the video, you have got to see this thing in action, simply incredible.

[All of these pics and video are courtesy of Engadget]

This is a little higher on Maslow’s hierarchy than finding food or shelter, but it’s worth considering. The point is, we bug people too, and I’m sure there are people out there that can’t stand me! In The Trouble With ‘X’, and in his classic way, C.S. Lewis brings the point full circle to bear on us, rather than looking at others’ faults or shortcomings, why not look at our own — isn’t that what God wants us to do anyways?

The Savior put it this way in the Book of Matthew:

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? (Matthew 7:3)

So with that in mind, rather than working, and sometimes striving, to change those around us, let’s start by looking inward and see if we can change something about ourselves first. Do that and the world will be a better place.

Think about this: What a “world of perfect automatic beings would be like”?

Well, as a PR person myself, this happens to us from time to time, only it is actually condoned and, as a matter of fact, I am thrilled when the NY Times uses one of my news releases in it’s publication.

This all leads me to my political post today. My good friend, mentor & former classmate & colleague, Russ Page has done a bit of political posting and his post for today is great! So great, in fact, that I will republish his post right here on my blog–with quotation marks, of course.

“Sending the Wrong Message
This is the very message I am ashamed of and this is a great example of the exact “morons” I refer to in my post. The post isn’t about Bush and neither is that discussion, yet time and time again, that’s how people think the problems will get fixed. Blame it on Bush. The point is we have a problem in Iraq and a lot of people, including Hillary Clinton, supported going into Iraq. Stop falling for political PR rhetoric by changing the discussion to something that won’t fix the issue and start addressing the problem. The pundits I speak about know that contoversy is an almost sure win for press coverage, and the “it’s all Bush’s fault” message is so prevalent that no one ever stops to think about how to fix these issues.

The “Bush is an Idiot” Message is Hurting this Country
Bush may be an Idiot. Don’t miss the point here. There are so many people who focus so much on how they can’t stand President Bush that they only make the matter worse. Yes, I am saying that the Bush haters are contributing greatly to the problem. They spend so much time focusing on what they don’t want that they leave no time to focus on what they do want, which is a different president and to bring the troops home from Iraq. I want the troops to come home. A lot of people do. The mind is a powerful thing, and we create our reality everyday by the things we focus upon and think about.

More on My Hillary Post
I talked about how Hillary’s followers were acting like morons because she blatanly glosses over a question about how she could say she wouldn’t have invaded Iraq if she were president in 2002, yet she voted for it to happen. What was her response? The same as this “brain off” digger I talked about above. . . “It’s all George Bush.” It’s no mistake that people talk this way when political PR people spread this message far and wide and the media run with it. It’s just too bad we have so many people in this country not willing to focus on how to fix the problem instead of just pointing fingers. Bunch of sheepwalkers.”

Content courtesy of Russ Page, www.russpage.net

We need media who don’t just try or hope to move the masses through rhetoric and persuasion, but rather, we need media who are driven to move and will–within bounds–do all that is necessary to shift opinions or stand up to bureaucracy in pursuit of what is truly right! Those are my two cents, good night, and good luck.

My co-worker had an idea for an iPod accessory. What is the use of a remote to control the music played on your iPod if you can’t see the songs on the iPod? Maybe you’re like me and don’t want to listen to every song in the playlist and like to bounce from playlist to playlist. As you can see the remote operation doesn’t do me much good since my eyesight isn’t good enough to see the iPod screen 10 feet away–even if I could control the playlist selection from a distance. So my co-worker’s idea is to have an accessory that attaches to the iPod, making the iPod the remote control in and of itself. I would have the ability to scroll through my playlists and songs and then when I hit play, it would transmit the music to the stereo. So, if there are any iPod R&D people out there, please see what you can do.

What kind of things would you want your iPod to do?

What do you think, what’s Apple’s next big leap in the iPod market? Is cell phone where they’re headed?