I got home from Calgary on Thursday around dinner time. The flight was uneventful, but I ran myself down from too much going on in Cowtown and developed a head cold, so my ears wouldn't pop. Hurt like hell it did. My left ear took a full two days to finally pop. aside from that, the trip was awsome.
I arrived on Wednesday the 14 at aroun 11pm Calgary time and my Mom met me at the airport. By the time we got back to her apartment and got everythign settled it was about midnight, so there wasn't much visiting, since 12 Calgary time is 3am Saint John time. Thursday we were up and about pretty early and headed down to Black Diamond to see my sister and finally meet my nephews. Cole is 4 and 1/2 and Seth is 2 and 1/2 so suffice to say my visit was long overdue. We made a quick stop at Walmart (only becuase we forgot to stop at toyrus) and picked up some stuff for the boys. Always good to bring presies...it helps smooth out that initial shy period. The boys and I got along immediately though, and began playing. That's basically how I spent the majority of my time in Calgary, playing with my nephews... they are very very busy guys.
Friday Mom and I spent the day putzing about 9th ave, stopping from shop to shop and seeing all the overpriced and unique things to be seen. Then later that evening we went out with her Friend Suzy. Mom took Suzy and me out for dinner at Earles to celebrate our birthdays. Suzy is the day after mine.
Saturday and Sunday I spent at Amanda's house in Black Diamond, playing with Cole and Seth. Monday was my birthday (thanks for all the facebook messages) and we spent the day asa a family. We all went to the show. MomMom, James, Cole, & I saw Iron Man, and Amanda took Seth to see Horton Hears a Who. Then we all wandered down to sears and had a family portrait done.
Calgary is very very dry and within a couple days my skin was like sand paper, so when I woke up Tuesday morning with a sore throat I didn't think much of it. Mom and I headed out and did some stuff around town, then went for pasta, and then around 4:30 I met up with my Friend Colleen. I have a lot of friends from my past life as a musician in Nanaimo who now live in Calgary, and most of them are still working musicians. Our mutal friend Lena was visiting Colleen and so Collie dedided to have a huge dinner party. (lena is an amazing chef) What started out as 19 people snowballed into 24 and then slipped back to 22. At colleens I started feeling a fever coming on and was really trying to hold it together, because I was looking forward to hanging out with everyone. I saw Bruce and his new girlfriend (they're having a baby... or could've already had it), Bob & Dawn, a bunch of people I don't know, and of course my favorite jet screamin hooty babe... Alida Schedel. Alida and I played in the same band together for it's entire run so she's like a sister to me. I got some visiting, but near 8 O'clock I finally had to admitt to myself that I wasn't going to make it, plus I didn't want to be passing a cold or something on to a lady who was about to have a baby any minute, so Alida and Jimmy(he rocks her world) ran me back over to my Mom's. They came up for a drink and, of course that's when my advil kicked in, and I felt better.
Wednesday we headed back down to Amanda's place for one last day with my boys, and then Thursday I was onthe plane back home.
Cole and Seth are both awsome little boys and had such a blast getting to spend time with them. Cole is very imaginative and we were able to play all kinds of game without the aide of a lot otoys and stuff to bog us down. It was a really great time.
I really needed a good dose of family, I've been missing it.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Anniversaries
Today is a big day of anniversaries for me. Ten years ago today, Darrell and I got together for the first time. Three months later we were on the road to New Brunswick.
Quite fittingly one year later a complete stranger donated a gift that saved my life. Nine years ago today I recieved my donor bone marrow in room 143 on the 8th floor of the QE2 in Halifax. That was the day I was no longer allowed to leave the room for a few weeks, so I also quit smoking, and have never had the desire to start back up again. So May 14 has been quite the life altering day for me in the past, but since I'm flying across the country tonight, I'm hoping for nothing in the life altering category today. Unless of course my numbers come up in tonight's 649 draw.
Home today packing and getting ready to fly out this evening.
Quite fittingly one year later a complete stranger donated a gift that saved my life. Nine years ago today I recieved my donor bone marrow in room 143 on the 8th floor of the QE2 in Halifax. That was the day I was no longer allowed to leave the room for a few weeks, so I also quit smoking, and have never had the desire to start back up again. So May 14 has been quite the life altering day for me in the past, but since I'm flying across the country tonight, I'm hoping for nothing in the life altering category today. Unless of course my numbers come up in tonight's 649 draw.
Home today packing and getting ready to fly out this evening.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Leaving on a Jet Plane
Tomorrow I am off to visit Cagary, and see my Mom, Sister, and friends for a week. I'm getting quite excited about it too. There is a lot to do before I go and the time is ticking down. I would like to have the house cleaned up so I don't have to return to a disaster, but I'm not sure when I'm going to get the oportunity to accomplish that. I teach tonight until 8 which means today is shot, so hopefully I get some time before I leave tomorrow to get some stuff accomplished.
We had a super busy weekend. Friday night we had to make another midnight run to Moncton for fish. There was another group order happening and we decided to participate to get some more stuff we wanted. I talked to Janet at Ocean aquatics in Vancouver (Where the order was from)about eels, since we wanted to get another snowflake eel, and she told me about zebra morays. They had some nice ones there she said, so I also ordered one of those as well as the snowflake. We also ordered some more Chromis, a juvenile maroon clown, a neon goby, a clown goby, and three corals. The flight came into Moncton at 11pm so everyone met at the Tim Hortons by the airport and we divvied up the loot. Sadly the snowflake we ordered perished during transport, as did one of the 8 chromis, but we were extremely surprised when Derek pulled the zebra moray bag out of the box. Janet had said 18 inches, but that really didn't sink in. We had something much smaller in our minds... this guy was a monster compared to my imagination. An additional surprise was the maroon clown because he wasn't a regular maroon, he was a gold bar maroon which typically sell for $70, apparently I lucked into a sale and got $45 off. It makes for a nice contrast between him and the female he was bought to keep company.
We spent the majority of the weekend setting up our 70 gallon tank once again, to house our new eel and the maroon clowns. We moved it into the room we're using as our office so we can still paint the rest of the upstairs this summer. Once we're done painting etc we'll be able to move the tank and stand back out in the living area. Turns out the Zerba Moray was actually closer to two feet long and about 6inches around, so he's a big boy. He seems very healthy and is eating off the feeding stick with gusto. According to Janet and the rest of the literature I've been able to find on him, he is no threat to our small clown fish or any other small fish for that matter... crustations on the other hand.
Here he is:
Here's the new maroon clown
Neon Goby
Chromis' in quarantine
Open Brain Coral
Hammer Coral
Chalice Coral
We had a super busy weekend. Friday night we had to make another midnight run to Moncton for fish. There was another group order happening and we decided to participate to get some more stuff we wanted. I talked to Janet at Ocean aquatics in Vancouver (Where the order was from)about eels, since we wanted to get another snowflake eel, and she told me about zebra morays. They had some nice ones there she said, so I also ordered one of those as well as the snowflake. We also ordered some more Chromis, a juvenile maroon clown, a neon goby, a clown goby, and three corals. The flight came into Moncton at 11pm so everyone met at the Tim Hortons by the airport and we divvied up the loot. Sadly the snowflake we ordered perished during transport, as did one of the 8 chromis, but we were extremely surprised when Derek pulled the zebra moray bag out of the box. Janet had said 18 inches, but that really didn't sink in. We had something much smaller in our minds... this guy was a monster compared to my imagination. An additional surprise was the maroon clown because he wasn't a regular maroon, he was a gold bar maroon which typically sell for $70, apparently I lucked into a sale and got $45 off. It makes for a nice contrast between him and the female he was bought to keep company.
We spent the majority of the weekend setting up our 70 gallon tank once again, to house our new eel and the maroon clowns. We moved it into the room we're using as our office so we can still paint the rest of the upstairs this summer. Once we're done painting etc we'll be able to move the tank and stand back out in the living area. Turns out the Zerba Moray was actually closer to two feet long and about 6inches around, so he's a big boy. He seems very healthy and is eating off the feeding stick with gusto. According to Janet and the rest of the literature I've been able to find on him, he is no threat to our small clown fish or any other small fish for that matter... crustations on the other hand.
Here he is:
Here's the new maroon clown
Neon Goby
Chromis' in quarantine
Open Brain Coral
Hammer Coral
Chalice Coral
Thursday, May 08, 2008
What's the Deal with Lunch Hour?
My Mind is getting foggier and foggier as I get older, but I distinctly recall only getting ahour for lunch when I was in school. In fact not even an hour, because there was inevitably some teacher who decided his lesson plan, was infimitely more important than your nutritional requirements and kept you five mintues past the bell, then you had to drop off your crap at your locker, and by the time you actually reached the caf it was 20 after, giving you just enough time to wolf down some gross fries and gravy and meet up with friends in the hall to hang around until it was time to rush back to your locker and get your crap for your next class.
Of course that was junior high, in senior high we had a double block, so the class before lunch was the same class after lunch which meant you could just leave your crap there and race to whoever's car you happened to be leaving for lunch in. If you had a spare period and it fell on a double block that day it was awsome, and almost not worth going to school at all that day... but what the hell is happening at the highschools now? 10 to 11 there's a group of kids already lined up at McDonalds in Brunswick square waiting for them to start serving lunch, and the mass of kids stays in the mall and uptown until 2 pm. How long is the bloody lunch hour today? and when are these kids ever in school anymore?
I know all about spare periods..I majored in them, with a minor in skipping out, but the groups uptown are way way way too large to be explained away that way.
Of course that was junior high, in senior high we had a double block, so the class before lunch was the same class after lunch which meant you could just leave your crap there and race to whoever's car you happened to be leaving for lunch in. If you had a spare period and it fell on a double block that day it was awsome, and almost not worth going to school at all that day... but what the hell is happening at the highschools now? 10 to 11 there's a group of kids already lined up at McDonalds in Brunswick square waiting for them to start serving lunch, and the mass of kids stays in the mall and uptown until 2 pm. How long is the bloody lunch hour today? and when are these kids ever in school anymore?
I know all about spare periods..I majored in them, with a minor in skipping out, but the groups uptown are way way way too large to be explained away that way.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
What's Going On
In a word not much, and that was two words so there you go. Work is insanely busy these days. We have several clients all doing ongoing things at the same time, so there are a million things to do and everything needs to be done yesterday. My vacation to Calgary will be a very nice break. The countdown is on, just 8 more sleeps. I'm very excited to see my Mom and Sister, finally meet my nephews, and get a chance to visit with some friends while I'm there. It won't be a restful week by any means, but should be fun.
The weekend was spent trying to catch up to our life. With so much going on at work, and the ever ongoing renovation in the basement, the rest of our life has seemed to get away from us. So we did a lot of cleaning this weekend and I managed to finally finish and install the last two doors on the cabinet. I still need to put some glass panes in them, but for all intents and purposes it is finished. I will be spending time this week trying to finish trimming out the room. I would like very much to be completely finished this phase of the reno before I leave next week, so that when I return it is to projects that are awaiting their beginning as compaired to projects in progress. I think we're finally gaining on the mess, so it doesn't feel as opressive as it did.
Friday night we went to an AA meeting, which was an interesting experience. We were there to celebrate with a friend who was getting their three month chip. We are very proud of our Annonomous friend and their accomplishment, and we will continue to be there in any way possible to offer support and encouragment in their journey.
The weekend was spent trying to catch up to our life. With so much going on at work, and the ever ongoing renovation in the basement, the rest of our life has seemed to get away from us. So we did a lot of cleaning this weekend and I managed to finally finish and install the last two doors on the cabinet. I still need to put some glass panes in them, but for all intents and purposes it is finished. I will be spending time this week trying to finish trimming out the room. I would like very much to be completely finished this phase of the reno before I leave next week, so that when I return it is to projects that are awaiting their beginning as compaired to projects in progress. I think we're finally gaining on the mess, so it doesn't feel as opressive as it did.
Friday night we went to an AA meeting, which was an interesting experience. We were there to celebrate with a friend who was getting their three month chip. We are very proud of our Annonomous friend and their accomplishment, and we will continue to be there in any way possible to offer support and encouragment in their journey.
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