Posts from — January 2008

So I might have exaggerated the whole 1923 thing but you’ll see where this is going…

This week has been mighty chilly here in Calgary. Probably the coldest that Lindsay and I have experienced since moving here almost 6 years ago. On Monday morning it was -50C with the wind chill. In fact walking to work this morning we were both saying how warm it was… only -10C.

Anyway, because I’m a bit of a dork and like graphs. Yes, I actually do like graphs. I’ve saved a couple of weather charts from this week (told you I was a dork!) . A guy has setup a weather website named WX.ca. It plots the weather patterns at various locations around Calgary. Anyway, I took a couple of screen shots from that. This first graph is from when the weather was decreasing. From -3 to -30 in 24 hours!

This other one is from this morning and the temperature is increasing! From -28 to -8 in 24 hours!

So how does 1923 get into this? Well, my Grampa turned 85 this January 26th and I missed his birthday. In all fairness though he’s in Hawaii soaking up the sun. Not bad for a guy who was born in 1923! Happy Birthday Grampa!

We spent the first half of Sunday in the kitchen making all sorts of tasty stuff.

Jeff made cinnamon buns. I helped make homemade pasta and stuffed manicotti (with ricotta and spinach). The cinnamon buns were super sweet and tasty and the manicotti turned out perfect even though it was a typical Jeff and Lindsay recipe where we add random stuff that we think will taste good into a bowl and hope for the best!

As for the homemade pasta, I highly recommend trying to make it if you haven’t already. It is super fun to make and the results are definitely worth it. We made fetticini and it was delicious and so amazingly fresh tasting. It took quite a while since it was our first time and we were figuring it out. Next time it will be a breeze. The great thing is that there are only 2 ingredients needed to make pasta: flour and eggs. No preservatives, salt or other hidden crap. And it freezes really well too!

We bought a pasta roller from Stokes for $20 and when Jeff was buying it the saleswoman told him all the old Italian ladies in Calgary buy her out of stock constantly.

Here we are making pasta:

While I’m in the mood to post pictures, I might as well post some random ones. Here’s the ambulance Jeff got for Christmas and built. Maybe he should have been a Civil Engineer instead of Electrical:

We also did a bit of “spring cleaning” (way ahead of the game), inspired by Heather’s blog on cleaning out any old clothes she doesn’t wear. We did the same and ended up with 2 huge garbages bags of clothes (this photo is to inspire you to do the same):

After all of our hard work on the weekend, we rewarded ourselves with some floor hockey and Sunday evening ultimate. Now we’re just trying our best to stay inside and keep warm. I hope wherever you are reading this, it is warmer than -42C!!!

Today, Lindsay and I were running errands at Market Mall. As we were walking through SportChek and we came across a table with snowboard boots and bindings on sale. Since our boots aren’t so comfortable we stopped and took a look (plus we love a good deal). We soon realized that the boots were $9.95, marked down from $199.95! AND… they had three sets of boots… two 8.5’s and one 10.

After trying them on all three pairs of boots we found they fit our feet quite well!

Yes. you read that correctly. Three pairs of boots. If you didn’t know I have crazy different sized feet. One is a 7-7.5 the other is 9-9.5 and the funny thing is my left foot is almost identical to Lindsay’s feet. I tried to find a picture but couldn’t so maybe I’ll put a picture up another time. If you’re reading this and you’re might foot twin (or would that be reverse twin?) please PLEASE leave a comment and maybe we can trade shoes.

Back to the boots. Why were they on sale for so much?

They’re the clip-in snowboard bindings which are discontinued and not super popular. However, anytime I can get two different boots for $20 then I’m sold. So we ended up buying three boots and two pairs of bindings for $60. Sweet deal! Now we’re going to go snowboarding on Thursday night at COP to try them out. Anyone interested? I know the hill sucks and its suppose to be super cold but whatev.

In other news I just wanted to send a shout out to the Calgary Police. We went through our first Road Stop last night on the way home (Lindsay was the Dd). It’d be better if it was more then once every 5-6 years but a good start nonetheless.

We have now finished putting all of our Hawaii pictures up on our picasa site (link on right of our homepage, or go to http://picasaweb.google.ca/jeff.sill ). They are in 4 different folders.

The next step will be to put up the highlights of our wedding photos. We have recently been inspired by our friend Samantha who made a wonderful slideshow of her photos and figured we should do something with ours.

That’s all for tonight. Arms are tired from this evening’s training and it actually is challenging to type.

Jeff and I are in the full swing of our winter activities. We have decided to train hard all winter for next year’s ultimate season as we are pretty excited that Canadian Nationals are in Calgary this year!

I am taking a hip-hop class on Monday nights with some other ulti girls and although we are somewhat dance-challenged (at least I am), it is great practice for coordination and SO MUCH fun!!! I love the dance we are learning right now to the song Paper Planes by MIA. February 4th is bring a friend week and if my long lost sister ever calls me before then I might bring her since she got all of the dance talent in the family. Jeff refuses to come as my friend, although I think that would be entertaining!

Tuesday evenings we have left open for swimming or squash. I personally would pick squash every time…

Wednesday nights is our indoor dryland training program. We had our first session this week and it was ROUGH! Somebody puked in our group of 12 (not me, but it was close) and there was a lot of whining going on. We had a brief warm up, followed by some sprints, some strength training (push-ups, abs, etc.) and then some wind sprints. It’s a 10 week program and I hope it gets easier as we go along. No pain, no gain!

Thursdays are the other night reserved for squash or swimming (or relaxing). This week we had to forfeit squash for the Best of Banff Mountain Film Festival. It was awesome and highly recommended. We saw on film on base jumping “2o Seconds of Joy” that was fantastic (but crazy) and a film on mountain biking called “Trial and Error” by Ryan Leech (a God in my opinion and a talent crush of mine).

Weekends are for squash, floor hockey once and a while, and ultimate on Sunday nights. In the event that I come into some cash, I will also go snowboarding in Sun Peaks every weekend.

All of this talk about exercise is making me need a nap.

Back in 1977 Meat Loaf released Bat Out Of Hell and on that CD Meat Loaf belts out a classic “Two out of three ain’t bad“. Air Canada has belted out another tune 3 out of 4 ain’t bad! Now you’re probably wondering why I’m quoting Meatloaf from 31 years ago….

So, this past weekend we flew to Kamloops on Air Canada for a friends 30th birthday at Sun Peaks Resort. When we arrived in Kamloops one of my bags was missing. Arrrg! So Lindsay was making the claim through Air Canada and made a snide remark that WestJet has never lost our bags. To which the Air Canada lady said, “Well, three out of four isn’t bad.”

What kind of remark is that? Sure you get a B if the test was out of 100. But I’m fairly certain that in the airline industry you’re striving for a little higher then 75% bags to the correct destination conversion. You’d like to assume that they’d be going for 100%… I think the grading scheme would look a little something like this….

• a) you get all bags there you get a 100%
• b) you get 3 out of 4, 1 out of 4… basically anything less then 4 and you don’t pass , 0%

Although, maybe I have too high of expectations.

Anyway, the time at Sun Peaks was awesome. We were staying at a house / condo on the hill which was a Hike out / Ski in. Similar to a ski-in / Ski-out but you have to hike to get to the hill, hence the hike-out. The place is apparently the cheapest on the mountain to sleep the most people… For those looking for a place to stay at Sun Peaks.

In other news, Dylan turned 30 successfully. We got to see some friends we haven’t seen for a while. We met some characters that Dylan likes to hang out with. And Lindsay and I even managed to snowboard around a dozen runs. We felt almost felt like we could snowboard…. Sun Peaks is a such a great hill and we totally recommend it for any skiers / boarders out there. Great snow and tons of runs! All in all a fun weekend!

I’m sure that title will get me lots of hits on the blog that I don’t want, but it seems fitting.

This weekend we’re off on another trip this time to Sun Peaks in Kamloops. Our good friend Dylan, my best man for those of you that were at the wedding, is turning 30. Old, I know! (Don’t remind me. ) So Dylan, being the great guy that he is, has booked a condo at Sun Peaks for the weekend to wisk away his 20’s in style. Now why is the title appropriate you ask? Well, Dylan calls Sun Peaks, Bum Cheeks. You see growing up in Kamloops Sun Peaks was always Tod Mountain. However, when some investors purchased the mountain they found out that Tod actually means Death in German (or something like that). I guess Death Mountain isn’t the best marketing name so they had a little contest to name the mountain. Anyway, Sun Peaks is the ‘new’ name and by ‘new name’ I mean back in mid 90’s…. not to date myself or anything. So we’re off to Bum Cheeks.

For those that don’t know Sun Peaks Resort is a pretty sweet mountain! Lots of terrain and lots of different runs to play on. One run “The Five mile” is even 8km long (or 5 miles)! Last year we went to Sun Peaks during Christmas holidays and had a great day. The day was filled with fresh snow and skiing with my brother (who put up with us even though it was our 3rd time ever on a snowboard). This time we’ll be boarding with some friends and it should be a great time. Plus the condo has a hot tub!

Quick little tip about flying with a snowboard (or ski’s). Apparently if you call Air Canada and tell them you’ll be flying with a snowboard (or ski’s) then it’s free. However, if you just show up with your snowboard (or ski’s) then it’ll cost you $50. What kind of weird rule is that? It’s not like they can make more room on the plane. Anyway, thanks to Conrad we’ve saved ourselves $100. Now let’s see how it actually works in practice! Although, if you just booked with WestJet you wouldn’t have this problem because snowboards and such aren’t charged extra. Good thing we booked with Airmiles and have a free flight!

Ps. Our big nasty Dog has decided to come home and dog-sit our house. So that’s convenient!

I’ve decided to use my lunch break at work today to vent.

The City of Calgary is really something. Yesterday they announced that the city-wide recycling program will now not be in place until 2009!!! Can you believe it? I sure can’t. That’s freaking ridiculous! There currently not a single free place in the city to recycle plastics. So, Jeff and I have been collecting all of our plastic recyclables since we moved into our house in October 2005. That means we have every yogurt, egg, and shampoo container that we used since 2005. That’s alot of plastic!!! The typical Calgarian would have just thrown that in the trash by now x 1 million people, that’s alot of waste. Now, to wait another year….for such a developed country we sure are undeveloped in some ways!

How many shopping centres have been built since they originally announced the program? But they can’t get a few trucks and plastic bins together?

I need a job in government. You get to talk about things you are going to eventually do. I’m great at that. You should hear how nice the walls in my house are going to be when I paint them one day…and to get paid for that. How wonderful!!!

End of rant. Back to work Sill.

This past weekend was pretty good. We spent quite a bit of time doing nothing and by “nothing” I mean, ultimate, squash and skating.

Ultimate was indoor with the Calgary Ultimate league. We ended up being the captains of the team, which turned out good/bad. Good because you’d think we would end up with a little control over our team. Bad because we had no control over our team. You see Lindsay and I are both considered “5’s” and so our total added to 10 and we had last pick every round. (Highest total picked last every round). Anyway, the team ended up about as good as it possibly could have considering the format. I’m not really complaining because it’s just for fun but other players who should also rank themselves a “5″ ranked themselves lower. This got them a pick ahead of us and others. This is a pretty good strategy….if you don’t mind cheating, at indoor, during the winter, for a chance to win nothing.

Enough about that.

What’s with the sound of my skate? We went skating on the weekend at Bowness Lagoon. I brought a puck to kick around. Every time I kicked the puck my skate made this sound like it just completely broke. I might just be paranoid because of the time we went skating with Andy Krull and he broke his skate. But seriously it sounded like it was going to just snap.

Alright to round up this post we were at Costco tonight buying Terri’s favorite foods: Nuts and more nuts. A neat thing to try next time you’re shopping at costco is count your items and then simply multiply by $10. I bet the total will be pretty close to your total cost. Our total tonight was 13 items so approximately $130 and our total was $118. Not bad. Not bad.
Note: If you’re buying a huge ass TV or something like that I’m pretty sure this won’t work.

Jeff had a chance to mention his highlights from Hawaii, but I’ve been sick in bed for the last 5 days, so now that I’m feeling better I’ll voice my favorite hawaiian moments (in no particular order):

1.) Swimming with dolphins in the wild. So very cool. Opportunity of a lifetime that we just stumbled upon.

2.) Trying to surf for my first time ever. Very tough, but very fun. Even caught a wave or two.

3.) Snorkeling in about 10 different places on 3 different islands. We saw so many different fish and GROSS eels (which I was afraid of, but not as afraid of as snakes so that’s good).

4.) The weather. Sunshine and average temperatures of 25 degrees. Even when it rained it was warm.

5.) Volcano National Park on the big island.

6.) Nice steak dinner and Canuck’s jersey for my birthday from Jeff, and to top it all off I was in Maui!

7.) Driving through the lush rainforest and seeing all sorts of cool vegetation and flowers.

8.) Learning how to boogie board and doing it every day. So much fun!  Way easier to learn than surfing and way less work (oh, and cheaper too!)

9.) Hacking in Hawaii.

Lowlights:

1.) Getting sick and spending my last two days there sick in bed (luckily it rained).

2.) Trying Kona coffee and finding out that it was put on a pedistool all this time and its not as good as I thought it was going to be.

3.) Seeing sea turtles twice and not being able to get to them because of sharp, shallow coral separating us from them!

4.) Near death experiences driving the road to Hana and getting to the end (finally) at the seven sacred pools and not being able to swim in them because of all the recent rainfall.

5.) Having to come back to snowy Calgary and “back to reality”