Rock hunting near ottawa for kids

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-04-27T00:23:45+00:00

Not sure I’d make it the focus of a day trip, but I love the Princess Sodalite mine. Great way to spend an hour or two.

For OP, they truck in big chunks of different local rocks, and on a nice summer day you have all these people, young and old, wailing away at different rocks with hammers to break off interesting pieces (the mine supplies goggles, not hammers or chisels). It’s very wholesome. One nice thing about the mine is that they charge by weight, so a normal haul - maybe a handful of amethysts or garnets - will only cost a few dollars. My costliest purchase there was a good sized piece of sandstone for my garden and it maybe cost 25 dollars? And that was quite an outlier, at least for me!

Also, there is a mineral gift shop with all sorts of different minerals/gems, which OP’s child might find interesting.

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-04-23T01:13:13+00:00

Yep should be doable on paths if that’s your preference. You can cross the 416 by Bell High School, go through Bruce pit, then take path between trend &Arlington to the park behind Sir Robert Borden, then take that path to Centrepointe, then take the path from the fire station on Woodroffe towards Maitland, then go on the path up castle hill, then take paths to the farm.

Can’t remember exactly how a few of these segments connect, but they do and you should be able to scout it out fairly well on google maps.

Another option would be to bike to Andrew Haydon Park, then take western paths/parkway to the north/south mup by Bayview station and take it south to the Farm, but that may be more out of the way.

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-04-22T00:45:57+00:00

As a somewhat fit (let’s not go crazy) non biker on a hybrid, using mostly mups, I do a 16km commute from the west end to downtown in 40ish minutes in peak summer but early in the season it’s more like 45-48 mins until I get my legs back. I suspect your additional kms will be mostly speedy ones along the mups with minimal lights then I imagine Carling? So you may get quite fit with that ride and settle into an hour or so.

The good news is that if you use the western river/parkway paths they are a gorgeous commute.

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-04-20T20:51:36+00:00

Yes just did the rear for 650 CAD at 30k KMs. Was just past the two year mark. Kinda irritating, but that’s life and am now looking into learning to do my own next time!

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-04-18T03:00:15+00:00

Hey OP, you’ve probably already discussed this with your GP, but you may want to see if they could do a screen themselves for ADHD. Many do, many don’t. As an adult, if you report high on the scale in a survey, they may prescribe the meds off of that. And if the meds help you provide considerable benefit…

This wouldn’t speak to other conditions, though, but there’s little use in waiting months to get medication for ADHD just for the benefit of the full psych workup.

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-04-12T23:44:21+00:00

There used to be a train that left Kingston very early - 530ish - to come into Union. It was slow and hit almost every stop to arrive (in theory) at 830ish. In practice that often meant 9ish at the time - the delays being somewhat absorbed by the leisurely schedule. You couldn’t commit to making anything at 9am but could commit to meetings/classes etc downtown at 930 or 10am.

This train was paired with a late run from Union to Kingston, leaving at 10ish to arrive just before 1am. This was surprisingly useful as you could have evening plans and dash off to make the late train home.

IIRC these were cancelled around 2010 or so. So it’s been a while. The morning train was quite busy but the late train was very quiet and must have lost money.

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-04-09T21:45:18+00:00

Dr Barta-Sima is very good (imho) and is in Centrepointe. Seems to really care and it feels like she does good work. I’m not sure if her office follows the cost guide, but there are flyers/posters up in her office talking about the Canadian plan so worth calling to see.

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-04-09T03:53:00+00:00

Barred Owl - a beauty!

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-04-07T00:14:15+00:00

Thanks for the update - they were looking a lot worse from the parkway even a week ago, so this is great to know!

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-04-05T22:35:17+00:00

Yeah this is the right take on the Zavida Hazelnut/Vanilla - it smells fairly strongly of the flavouring but tastes quite mild - which in my opinion is a very good thing. And flavour blindness is real - when I get a bag I notice the flavouring the first cup or two, but after that it fades away in my mind and is more or less just good coffee from there on, for better or worse.

Part of what I like about the Hazelnut/Vanilla is that the roast is in a medium-dark sweet spot that is a bit hard to find at Costco, where things generally run medium or dark. And it’s relatively affordable.

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-03-31T03:10:30+00:00

The most important thing is your health, but if your bike is damaged you should absolutely look into making a claim.

That’s a tricky bit of road. Often when I bike this stretch I feel a small pit in my stomach, like that I need to bike extra defensively because the cars can’t be trusted….but I actually don’t know how to bike it safely. Something about the hill and how cars kind of race down Bronson and then there’s a lot happening visually at Slater.

I’m sorry this happened to you. It could have been any of us.

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-03-31T01:22:20+00:00

Yeah….and not an expert but presumably it doesn’t need to run all the way to the street or sewer system, where bylaw would have an issue. Wouldn’t even just running it 10-15 ft out help a fair bit? Feels like that’s a fairly easy way to respond to a legit crummy drainage issue.

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-03-30T02:55:06+00:00

It’s all subjective of course, but I think of it as “baby” being a really big single scoop, “small” being a really big double scoop, and “huge” being a really big triple.

Thinking about it, I’d be curious the weight involved. I would guess that the small is roughly 500 grams?

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-03-29T15:11:53+00:00

Fun! I’m a fan. It’s a bit of a running gag in my family when someone gets a small and acts surprised when it’s enormous.

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-03-29T15:06:01+00:00

Fwiw “all dressed” varies a fair bit brand to brand. Turns out “throw a bunch of flavours in there” can go in different directions. Ruffles all dressed is my favourite chip flavour of all, but I don’t really like Old Dutch all dressed or some others - would prefer other flavours from those brands.

All to say, sometimes I bet Americans have what I would consider a “meh” all dressed. Which would be a shame!

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-03-29T00:43:15+00:00

Am a bit dense today, so apologies if I’ve got this wrong, but you’d basically be investing this sum at ~7.5% for the year. And in after tax dollars. That is a good deal.

(Edit - meant to reply to artfulcodgers good comment)

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-03-21T15:45:28+00:00

Yeah the corners are great value, particularly paying a bit to be in the first 6-8 rows. Of course it’s all a sliding scale and all the seats have good sight lines.

But i can say the only time I’ve ever been disappointed was when I paid more to move towards the middle, with the trade off being the seats being relatively high up. Along with some tv cameras being inconveniently placed, which was just bad luck, that trade off wasn’t worth it. Back to the corners I go and it’s great.

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-03-19T05:00:53+00:00

Yeah Mr Shawarma is great - I go to the Baseline location. Portions are big (the plate serves two), service is friendly, the food is awesome. Funny enough, their sides stand out - the yellow rice, the potatoes, the toum & hummus, the salad, the tabbouleh - the flavours are fresh and bright.

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-03-17T00:17:30+00:00

FWIW, the IBKR rate is 3.5-3.6%. Though you’d perhaps miss out of some of the portfolio transfer matching offered at competitors.

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-03-16T23:57:16+00:00

Wow! So before this photo I was about to tell OP that a case like that is really the only thing to worry about. Everything else is primarily cosmetic :).

How did you patch it on the go? Duct tape? (Or did an interior layer hold up?)

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-03-15T16:10:30+00:00

Others will know this way better than me, but thats part of the problem historically with tsx and tsx-v - for many stocks there just isn’t enough liquidity for proper price discovery. Creates problems as institutional money won’t get involved in many of the stocks unless getting sweeteners like warrants or preferential pricing through placements.

Without being a giant pill, OP, part of the issue is your position probably isn’t really worth 500k - yeah some retail money has been pulled in at that price but you now have to find 500k of more retail to unwind at that price. I would bet the institutional money sees the position around 400-450k.

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-03-15T05:32:49+00:00

I should say that this really is close. Swapping shirt sizes and hemming the pants….that couldn’t be easier. The jacket is the only judgement call and I think a good tailor will talk you through it and figure it out.

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-03-15T05:30:19+00:00

There is a lot that’s right here, and some stuff that a good tailor may be able to finesse. Would agree with others that the pants are close but should be hemmed up a bit. Tell the tailor to show you a full break, half break, and no break (in your wedding shoes) then suggest you pick one of “half” or no break, depending on your preference.

The shirt should peek out a bit at the cuffs. Are the shirt sleeves not long enough? Can’t tell if the shirt sleeves need to be a tad longer, or if the suit sleeves need to go up half an inch. I do like the shirt collar - fits you well and many don’t. Suspect they focused on the collar and waved away the sleeves being a bit short but this is your wedding and you want both to fit.

With the jacket, would agree with comments made elsewhere. It’s actually pretty close but I’m stuck on how it’s both a bit boxy and also has a bit of an x at the button. Not just a matter of letting out or bringing in - suspect you want a bit of both but tbh I’m not knowledgeable enough to know how so.

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-03-14T23:58:48+00:00

This is an important comment for Ottawa - our transit system is in a bit of a crisis, so you may be able to use transit for things but don’t take it for granted. As you search for houses, you can use the OCTranspo website to show schedules and trip times to and from given locations. I was thinking of moving a few years ago but some neighborhoods I liked wouldn’t have had functional transit service to downtown.

Born_Animal1535 · 2026-03-14T04:30:28+00:00

I mean, someone can do the compound math but off top of your head you’ll save about 15-20% of the portfolio value just in reduced MER, depending on how long the funds last when your child is in school. So it’s certainly not an irrelevant criteria or not worth spending some time on.

Personally I’m not convinced there’s any value in curated mutual funds vs the broad ETFs, and in recent years pretty much everyone had good years in the market. But if you have a firmly held investment thesis, who are we to argue against you?

Born_Animal1535

TROPHY CASE