Posts from — July 2008

In case you haven’t heard yet, Jeff and I are off to Japan!!!! In less than 2 months we’ll be arriving in Tokyo and hopefully we know more than “Konnichiwa” and how to count to ten (a sad current state of knowledge of the Japanese language).

Why Japan? Great question. My company, Cybera, is hosting several conferences next year including OGF and IEEE Grid. It’s kind of a big deal and apparently I’ve agreed not to quit before October 2009 as I’ll be helping to run the conferences. As it turns out, IEEE Grid is in Japan at the end of September and my company needs to send someone to represent the company and learn some logistics for running the conference. It also so happens that Cybera is holding our annual summit in Banff on the exact dates of the Japan conference so all of the “important” people at work are obliged to go to Banff, allowing me to go and represent.

Jeff has so graciously offered to join me, which is fantastic as I’m sure to be a bit culture shocked. We’ve decided to make a holiday out of it and stay for a while after the conference. So far we’re planning to go see Hiroshima, Mt. Fuji and sumo wrestling and of course eat some sushi. If you’ve ever been to Japan and have some tips for us, we’d appreciate them.

I’ve also booked a trip to Ontario with my mom to visit my family. I’m looking forward to seeing my grandparents, cousins aunts and uncles. It will be a nice week of relaxation after Nationals.

Tomorrow is mine and Jeff’s one year anniversary. Hard to believe it’s been a year already…that flew by! Since we have practice tomorrow we celebrated a day early and went fishing at Ghost Lake. Didn’t catch any fish but it was great to spend the day on the lake and have a picnic.

Happy birthday to my Nana for tomorrow!!!!

For all of you who have been patiently waiting for the news, Bruce and Gindl are the proud new parents of a beautiful baby girl, Neva Isabell Laughlin. She was born Tuesday July 22, at 9:20PM in Dubai!!!! 3.735 kg, 52 cm long.
Mom and baby are doing great.

Disclaimer: The following recap of our weekend at Regionals will NOT do it justice. It was one of the moments you really had to see to believe, but I will try my best. The details might be a little off, but the adrenaline and excitement may have caused some memory loss.

Hell ya! Bronco is going to Nationals…by the skin of our teeth.

Saturday was a typical ultimate tourney day. The tournament was done in a UPA format with a round robin on day 1. As such, Bronco played Crude (15-6?), Oui (15-7), Psycho (8-15) and Red Herring (15-7). We ended up 3-1 which is what we pretty much had hoped for and expected. Pretty good considering we used our entire team. As a side note, I reached a personal milestone. Zero turnovers after day 1 for me (no drops or throw aways that I can think of).

Sunday. Day 2. Team 1 (Psycho) vs. Team 2 (Bronco). It was a battle from the very start. Bronco went up a few, and Psycho calls a time out to regroup and answers back. Points are traded pretty much the whole way. Bronco goes down a few points near the end and just ran out of time, losing 16-13. Psycho is going to Nationals. One spot left.

Meanwhile, Oui played Crude, beating them 17-9 and has a bit of time to rest as our game finishes up.

Game 2. Bronco vs. Oui. One spot remaining. Two fantastic teams left. Both teams clearly wanted to win.

We traded points with Oui until half. They take half 9-8. They proceed to score 4 unanswered points in a row.

It’s now 13-8. I blinked and it was 16-12, game to 17. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only person with tears in my eyes at this point. We had trained so hard and come so far to lose now. I’ll be the first to admit that I had lost hope. It would be impossible to win at this point. They had 1 point left to get and we had 5. Not to mention that if we scored on offense, we HAD to get a d-block to have the chance to score.

We scored on offense. Great work o-line. 16-13. TSN turning point. Cam Wong gets a wicked lay out D, Bronco converts and it’s now 16-14. Bad news….it’s our turn to pull and we have to get a D again. Duncan (our “coach”) takes the D-line aside and tells us a calming, uplifting story about the time that he was in the quarterfinals and was down 14-10 and came back to win. It might have been the way he told the story, or the story itself, but the hope came back. We get the D twice in a row and score to make it 16-16.

It doesn’t get much better than universe point. For all the marbles.

Jeff and I were on for universe point. I was not as nervous as I should have been since it was unclear among several players whether we had to win by 2 or if it was winner take all. I didn’t ask on purpose as I figured I’d know if we won when we scored. I feel like an idiot admitting this, but when I asked around later, I wasn’t alone. Not knowing gave me the extra confidence I needed.

I played the hardest D I could, just incase and I could tell the rest of my team was playing as hard as they could and I didn’t want to be the one to let them down. I guess everyone was covered and the girl with the disc couldn’t get a throw off to a dump, so threw to my girl. Just as I saw it go up, I closed the gap and went to leap for the layout D….and then BAM! Heath O’Fee comes out of nowhere for the collasal D, throws to Jeff, who throws to Leisl, and to Garrett for the WIN!!!!!!

It was amazing!!! One of the best feelings ever. Now I had tears in my eyes of happiness. I’ve never seen so many grown men cry. I will venture a guess that even if we win Nationals, it won’t feel this great.

I really do feel for Oui however. They gave us an amazing game. They are an incredible team and should be joining us for Nats, but the format is stupid and we only have 2 spots. It doesn’t help that alot of them are our friends and past teammates. Some of them took it better than others. Our friend Robert came up to me after and said “best two out of three?”. That was hilarious!

Here are some pictures from the weekend, courtesy of Randall Quon:

The rest of the photos are here. Jeff runs too fast and just showed up as a blur in the photos.

So much has gone on lately, I don’t even know where to begin.

Maybe we’ll start with the story about Sue’s stagette (last weekend so this could just about be considered old news…)

Sue stagette was a super good time and let my competitive personality shine right through. The organizers (great work gals!) hired a company to put on an amazing race. It was more like a scavenger hunt but still very fun. We were in teams of two, so I went with Mary Anne as winning everything is very important to her as well. Interesting that Mary Anne and I were partners and working together as this weekend will be the exact opposite. Our teams are competing this weekend at Regionals for a spot to Nationals…sadly only 2 of the 5 teams will get a spot (so keep your fingers crossed!)

Sorry for the digression…back to the stagette. So amazing race. Collect objects as you go along and find clues to your next destination. We went in groups of 2 all over the city, starting at Shank’s south. The race was explained to us (not the best impression from the company) and made one believe that the more clues you collected the better and that if you have the choice of objects or time, go for objects. So, we had about 50 objects to collect and Mary Anne and I decided we weren’t going back until we had ALL 50 objects, some of which were hard to obtain than others. We had to phone a friend (Jeff) to help us out. He was extremely helpful and got us a few items including a boiled egg, a pickle, a bag of dog food (so glad my sister left that here), a photo of me eating Christmas dinner with my family and a hickey…all the usual household objects. And to clarify, before Robert comes over and kicks Jeff’s ass, the hickey was given only to me.

The items we managed to collect along the way included: a stripper’s poster (and I managed to catch a bit of power-hour and do the awkward robot dance for a bit while some dude fetched me a poster), a piggy back ride from a cab driver, and a hard hat.

Unfortunately we did not win, despite our best efforts. We suffered too harsh of a time penalty. The funny thing is that we were in first place heading to the finish line and decided we better get all the objects and win…lame! Congrads to the Yanke sisters for the win, and of course congrads to the bride-to-be!

We all gathered at the Atlantic Trap and Gill and then over to the Pazarkas for a bbq. A feast it was! Delicious. Also delicious was the stagette-appropriate cake that Jill’s mom made!

Other than that just making travel plans and playing lots of ulti gearing up for regionals. Our friend Kris is coming from Halifax and bringing live Atlantic lobster for the whole team. What a nice guy! I’ll be sure to let you know all about the weekend later. Also, I’ll let you know how Jeff’s shoulder made out (he’s been super diligent and should be good to go) and also update you on our latest travel plans…bet you can’t guess!

So my parents were here last weekend and we set them up with a blog. You can check out their blog at sillylog.com.

Anyway, while we were setting up their blog they had to pick a theme.  I started to get jealous so today we finally decided on a theme…  voila!  The pictures at the top are places that we’ve been and we’ll try to update them after trips…  I think it’s a nice little touch.

I haven’t blogged on here for a while so just a quick update.

• Willow is doing great and hasn’t shown any signs up growing up yet, which is terrific!
• I had a slight shoulder separation but it’s starting to feel better.  I’ve told the Dr. that I need to play at regionals and he’s doing his best to have me ready.
• Speaking of regionals…. they should be exciting this year.   Five teams going for two spots to regionals….  which is kinda ridiculous if you ask me. Canadian Nationals (and ultimate in general) is one of the only sports where the host team doesn’t automatically get a spot at nationals.   Messed up, but that’s just my opinion.

Good times had at this year’s stampede as usual. We managed to get down to the grounds only once this year so far, which is very unlike Jeff and I since we normally average at least 4 days. However, I’ve had 4 stampede breakfasts so far, so that makes up for it. I love pancakes (or maybe it’s the syrup).

We went down with Larry and Brenda last weekend to watch my favorite stampede event: team cattle penning. If you have never seen this you should make a point of going next year for sure. You will not be disappointed!

The cows were especially stubborn this year. One group of riders lucked out and got all 3 cows together and were able to set a stampede record of 16.36 seconds! If you have ever seen the even you’ll know that that’s a stellar time.

Also, I would recommend getting milk and cookies when at the stampede. It’s the best deal going. $1 for milk and cookies!!! The stand is in the agricultural area. It’s a refreshing treat after fighting the crowds.

While at the grounds we also got our picture taken at the WestJet tent.

Me and my cowboy (and our little friend Jeff won at skee ball). We win bears every year at Stampede and take them to the Hitmen teddy bear toss in the winter.

As promised and after getting a bit of slack from some people, here’s my post about Ho-down.

Randall Quon took some fantastic shots of us over the weekend. To quote Tim Hogan, “its so great to finally play on a team where people take pictures of you”!Here are a few of Jeff and I, but if you want to see the rest of his photos, click here.

This is a great picture of Jeff playing defense and a great bid by Robert!

Jeff “break-king” throwing.

Lindsay catching.

Lindsay using her height advantage.

We went 4-0 on Saturday and played:
-Sasquatch (from Saskatoon). Super fast, athletic young team. Bronco won by 2.
-Dunder Mifflen (Edmonton/Psycho “B”) – really good game and we pulled off a win, but it was close. Really fun and good Edmonton players. Bronco won only by about 2.
-Oui – another incredibly fun, hard-fought game. Tons of D’s by both teams and lots of pressure. Traded points the whole way, but we won by about 3 or 4.
-Red herring – Edmonton’s C team (last year were Tickle Me Stalin at regionals). Traded points for the first half and then pulled away.

Day 2:
-finished pool play. Every team played 7 of the 9 teams; we had to play everyone but Clearcut (from PG) and LP.
-Crude-Beat them 13-0. They had a rough game, which was unfortunate as they have several great players on their team. I’ve been beat 13-0 by Riot before and it does not feel good. I’m sure Crude will come back with avengance at Regionals.

-Psychoplastic- really good game. Trading points. Tough battle. Their huck game was on and ours wasn’t so we fell a bit short and lost 12-7…but was such a good game. I was super proud of our team and sad we didn’t pull off a win because we were fully capable of winning. I’ll also note that we didn’t have Jeff (hurt shoulder) or Leisl (broken nose) at this point.

The format after pool play was top 2 teams go to the final, so it was Pyschoplastic and LP. Psycho took a gallopping lead, but then LP closed the gap. 14-10, 14-11, 14-12, 14-13….finally Psycho scored again and won 15-13. Good final with a messy start (long points and tons of TOs).

Ho-down was a great experience for Bronco and we learned tons to take to Regionals in 2 weeks. Five Alberta co-ed teams fighting for 2 spots to Regionals. Should be exciting!!! If you want to check it out, come to Saints Rugby fields on July 19-20th.

Next post…exciting times at Stampede!

Congrads to Emillie and Brad! They are the proud new parents of Nikolai Maxwell Zarikoff born on June 26th.

Congrads also to Cory and Jamie who added a baby boy, Jacob, to their wonderful family yesterday!!!

Jacob share’s his birthday with my grandma (happy belated birthday Baba!)

Both moms are doing well and recovering quickly.

And sadly, Markus Nasland was just traded to the Rangers…poor Canucks. Naslund is so dreamy. Oh well. Go Rangers (and Canucks, of course)!

Happy Stampede everyone!