Posts from — April 2008

These past few days have been awesome in Calgary. Spring has finally sprung! (Well, until tomorrow when we’re suppose to get snow… but you know what I mean).

Anyway, today I woke up early and decided to bike to work. First ‘real’ bike ride of the year besides the whole messing around in our neighborhood rides. So, I’m riding along and just having a good time and starting to get hot. So I stop and unzip the sides of my pants.  Before I start riding I make a shoulder check for cars and see another cyclist coming up behind me. First thing that comes to my mind is

IT IS ON!

Seriously. I just gave’r up the next hill, around the corner up the other little hill.   Looked back.   Lost.     Good Race!

The funny thing about this is that I’m not a great bike rider cyclist or in amazing shape.  Apparently, I’m a competitive person.

I’m looking forward to when a real cyclist actually passes me.

Pretty good day in sports yesterday….2 out of 3 of the teams I was cheering for came out victorious. Philly pulled off a very exciting win so now I am shaping up pretty well in the hockey pool heading to the next round.

The Sharks were able to dominate the lames…oops….Flames in an uneventful game 7. Many thanks to the Monteiths for allowing me to watch the game at their house while cheering for the opposition. As badly as they Flames played, at least they made it to the playoffs, unlike some teams *cough* Canucks!

And disappointing loss by the Raptors!!! Com’on Raptors. You can do this. You battled back from about 16 points down and lost by 1!!! Great try by Bosh in the final seconds.

Happy Earth Day!

I was sent this fantastic article from a friend for Earth Day that I wanted to share with everyone. Check it out here.

Well, it’s April in Calgary and you know what that means.  Ultimate.  Snow.

Actually, last weekend was absolutely fabulous and were working in the garden.  Lindsay was cleaning up some flower stuff around the house and found this image below.  It’s a picture of a new tulip growing up through an old dead tulip from last year.  As you can see it’s using the old tulip for protection.  Was pretty neat to see!  You think I would have seen this in years past considering I’ve done the same task many times before.  However, I take the attack, destroy and clean approach.    I guess Lindsay’s approach might be a bit nicer.

Then this weekend we get a monster dump of snow.  Here’s a picture from a chair on our deck.   Ahhh, Calgary.

To kill the weekend away we’ve been doing stuff inside.  Like taxes and watching hockey.    No definite answer on the return (or having to pay) but looks like I might have to pay and Lindsay will get a return.  Good thing I didn’t buy a bike!   (yes, I’m jealous but will make do with mine.)

Big congratulations to the Wrigglesworths on the latest addition to their family.

Yesterday, Oscar James was born. 9lbs!

Mel is doing great, but not surprising as she’s a superstar. Interesting factoid. She is probably the only mother to ever give birth to 2 children 60 degrees apart (Lucy born at -30 degrees C and Oscar at +30 degrees!)

In other news, a big ‘Happy Birthday” going out Heather Adams today!

As we draw closer to the end of RUTRTW for the season, I’ve decided to add a new widget on our website since the Tim Horton’s one is boring, since we haven’t won a Matrix yet and Timmy’s is bound to run out of cups anyday.

And, hockey is so exciting  these days and hockey pools make it all that more exciting.

Now you can follow along as we battle for top place (winner take all) in our pool!  Jeff might not feel the same right now since he isn’t on top, but it’s still early and anything can happen once players (and half the teams) get eliminated in the first round. Stay tuned!

We got a huge dump of snow today here in Calgary. Apparently we got 23cm and broke a 96-year record. It made for a beautiful day. Snow all morning, sunny in the afternoon followed by snow again in the afternoon. It reminded me of BC… huge flakes; it’s like the sky opened up and puked out snow.

The strange thing is that nobody even saw it coming. Is it wrong to assume that weather people (I think they also call them meteorologists) only have one job? If you don’t predict a storm like this (or even call for snow today) shouldn’t you be canned?

This weather totally messed with my plans for tomorrow. Tomorrow is “bike to work day” and I just happen to own a new bike. How disappointing. Maybe it will melt over night. Or maybe I’ll bike someday next week and make my own “bike to work day”. It seems to have snowed every day since I bought my new bike. Sorry everyone!

Great night for staying in and watching the Sharks devour the Flames.

It’s an exciting time of year….hockey playoffs. We entered the annual Powell Pool last night. Being as fun as it is, it has grown in popularity over the years and has a record-breaking 14 people in it this year!!!

14 might have been a little over-zealous, but the prize up for grabs is $280! We play with a bounce so that every one gets a pick and then it reverses up the ladder. The last person to pick each round gets 2 picks in a row and is called the bounce. We believe it was designed around the Sedin twins since they are always a package deal and by taking them together you are guaranteed 2 points since when one scores, they all score. Too bad the Canucks didn’t make the playoffs and the bounce was less desirable this year. At least Jeff and I didn’t make the same mistake of bulking up on Canuck’s players.

The pool took a while last night since each person had to pick 6 forwards, 2 defense and a goalie.

It was hard to strategize with that many people. If you had first pick, you had to wait for 27 picks until it was your turn again. Guaranteed that the player you wanted was gone by the time it was your turn again.

Some people still tried to concentrate on certain teams. For example, I went with NY Rangers and Philly and the Avs:
Thorton – SJ
Jagr – NYR
Drury – NYR
Brunette – COL
Theodore – COL
Prospal – PHI
Briere – PHI
Timonen – PHI
Zidlicky – NAS

Jeff on the other hand had an entirely different strategy. Grab good players from all over and someone is guaranteed to make it to the Stanley Cup. Plus by picking players from teams playing against each other in the first round he’s guaranteed to make it to round 2!
Brodeur – NJD
Redden – OTT
Chara – BOS
Crosby – PIT
Forsberg – COL
Semin – WAS
Franzen – DET
Bertuzzi – ANA
Dupuis – PIT

We are tied for first right now, but I’ll keep you updated as we go along. Enough talking about hockey, time to watch some!

I decided to bring my concerns to the attention of Timmy Hortons and sent them an email. I thought I’d share the nice response with you in case you share my same concerns:

Dear Lindsay,

I would like to thank you for taking the time to contact us at our Head Office.  We appreciate your feedback regarding our contest cups.

Our ‘Roll Up The Rim’ Promotion is a very exciting time for both our customers and our company. The contest is in place to reward our loyal customers, such as yourself, and to thank you for your patronage.

Throughout the Roll Up The Rim contest, our take-out cups serve two purposes; one as the coffee cup, and the other as the contest “entry form”. If a customer has a hot beverage in a china cup, an entry form of some kind is still required, and in this case, it is the paper cup.

In the past we have investigated the option of having a scratch card rather than the roll up tab, however, having scratch cards printed would actually increase the paper usage because our cups are already going to be printed regardless of the contest, and thus, serve a ‘double purpose’. Nonetheless, a copy of your comments and suggestion for scratch cards have been forwarded to the appropriate personnel in our Marketing Department for
review.

It is through feedback from valued customers, such as yourself, that we have been able to continually grow as a company.  If you have any further questions or comments please do not hesitate to contact us.

Thank you again for contacting us and we hope to have the opportunity to serve you again soon.

Yours Truly,
THE TDL GROUP CORP.

Jeff and I are doing better than predicted at Roll Up The Rim To Win (RUTRTW) this year. As our score indicate on the right hand side of our website, we have won more than 1-10 as the odds state. That means that 2 people out there are about 1-60. I think one of those people are one of my coworkers…he’s about 0-160.

I like going to Timmy’s during RUTRTW, but there are a few things that bother me about going there. First thing, in order to play RUTRTW I have to get a paper cup and can’t use my travel mug. Secondly, they always try to give me two cups to make it less hot to hold, especially when I order tea.

They should just have a little tab of paper that they give you to roll up if you have your own mug. Also, have they ever heard of those heat sleeves that every other hot beverage company has adopted?

I’m glad it only lasts for a couple months of the year. Hopefully someone out there reads this and cares about the environment like I do. I guess I could just not go there but RUTRTW is soooo fun!  If I can’t win the Matrix everytime, I  love winning a coffee since then I get another chance to win!!