Posts from — November 2008

Spending the evening backing up my laptop. Not very exciting. My computer has a 100 GB hard drive, and it’s full. I went to burn a DVD today and I didn’t have enough memory. It’s tough to make room when you don’t have enough memory even to burn a CD, so I went and bought a 1 TB external hard drive. I’m backing up the entire thing: 1,521,640 items. So I thought I’d write a blog to kill some time…

Went swimming today at lunch, so not feeling super energetic tonight. It’s amazing how 30 minutes in the pool can be so tiring. It’s the perfect thing to do to break up the work day. One hour at lunch is enough to get to the pool, swim for 1/2 hour and get back to work. Plus, you don’t come back all sweaty unlike lunch hour squash. There’s times when I wish the university had a hot tub, but I guess it’s good that they don’t. I think that would prevent me from getting back to work within the hour and might result in never making it to the pool.

Now that ultimate season is over I find myself watching way more TV. I can’t believe how depressing the news is these days. Today for example the news was all about a virus outbreak (fifth virus…never heard of it in all my years of bio and microbiology but it apparently affects pregnant women), the Stamps big win and the cocaine problem (and therefore increased gang activity) in Calgary.

I found the latter 2 stories quite interesting and super shocking. First, I can’t believe that people go so crazy over the CFL. Good that Calgary is proud of their team but really, when you stop to think about it, there are only 9 teams in the CFL, so they have a 1 in 9 chance of winning the Grey Cup. Also, they have just under a 1 in 4 chance of making it to the Grey Cup. Hamilton has been so terrible for the last few years that it is actually more like a 1 in 8 chance of winning the Grey Cup. I’d mention here how football in general is not that exciting but I’m afraid I might get disowned by my dad.

The cocaine story was the super shocker. I just learned that Calgarians spend $1 million dollars a week on cocaine. What? Really?!!! I should start a program where the city goes one week without coke and then I can have 1 million dollars. I’m joking, but in all seriousness, this city is getting a little too rough around the edges for me. Very sad. They predict the recession will not change these stats much, but if anything usage should increase in the hard times to come. They also say it’s so bad in Calgary due to the high (no pun intended) level of disposable income.

Now you are informed and I’ve killed a bit of time and have backed up 12.37 of 100 GB. A few games of ping pong with Jeff should be good for another few dozen gigs. Gotta run.

Last night we went to see the Theatre Calgary play “The Christmas Carol” with Mary Ann and Robert. It was great to get some culture, catch up and get into the Christmas spirit all at once. We even knew one of the cast members, Dave Trimble, who plays ultimate. The acting great and the set was amazing. I’m a super fan of fireworks and they had a few going off. If you are wondering how Scrooge and fireworks go together, you should check it out.

Played some squash today. Our last two squash clubs have been marathon 2 hour sessions. Super fun times and a great workout. Makes justifying the bag of chips I ate during Grey Cup today easier (yeah Stamps!). The weekly lessons from Jeff have really worked to improve my game lately. I’ve changed my grip, improved my backhand and learned about positioning. I’ve tried to focus on one thing a session, but lately I feel that I have too many things going through my head at once. I guess it’s great that I have so many things to work on. I feel bad that I can never return the favor to Jeff as he’s much more advanced than I . However, this week we got Duncan and Robert out, who were able to give Jeff a few great tips. Should make beating him even more difficult…

Also this week I came across this article on CBC. Calgary will begin charging $3 a day to park to take the C-train (park and ride). This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in a while. There are so few people that take the train already, and this will just create more traffic on the roads. Also, it is $75 per month just to take the train but now for one person it will cost about another $75 per month to park. That will double people’s commute.

I think the city should start monitoring the train instead. In the 6.5 years that I’ve lived here, I’ve been checked only once on the train for my fare, yet I’ve always paid. However, I know people who have been taking the train for longer than that every day who have never paid..and why would they? Nobody ever checks anyways. All other cities have a turnstile or something to prevent you from not paying. If you monitored for even a little while, people would believe they could be caught and would therefore start paying. I think I’ve been checked on the train for a ticket as often as I’ve been through a check stop – once. Brutal.

Finally, a weekend to do nothing. Played squash on Friday afternoon followed by beers after work and stayed home and did nothing. Saturday went to Park 96 with Mark. He was going regardless as he’s become slightly addicted to disc golf lately, but it’s neat to see how much someone can improve at something when they put that much time and dedication into it. Saturday night stayed in and watched Get Smart. Was a pretty good movie actually. A little long, but otherwise good. I watched a bit of Get Smart with my mom growing up and questioned Steve Carell as Max (Agent 86) at first, but he did a great job.

Winter showed up this morning and dumped some snow on us, so it will be a great day to get things done around the house. Willow is having a great time discovering the white, cold wet stuff. She’s feeling much better after her eye infection.

Time spent in emergency vet for eye infection: 1 hour

Cost of vet appointment for eye infection (the night of a Stat holiday – great timing Willow): $200

Cost of follow-up appointment: $50

Having our kitten back to normal and healthy again: Priceless

Here’s a picture of her the day after getting back from the vet check-up. She had the entire house to sleep in but she spent 8 hours in her cage.

Since I just went through the pictures on my camera, although random, I thought I’d post this picture from Halloween. Carved pumpkins always make me smile:

Jeff carved the 2 on the left (a manga-inspired pumpkin and a funny mouth one), I carved the devil pumpkin and Brenda was super creative with the barfing pumpkin.

Favorite TV show

Jeff and I are hooked on “30 Rock” right now. It’s a series about a TV studio and it’s a bit off the wall in an Arrested Development sort of way. My description doesn’t really do it justice. We canceled our cable a few months back since we don’t watch much t.v. in the summer. Instead we just buy DVD series and watch them. I have also started Grey’s Anatomy, a close second, but am only 4 episodes in but it’s pretty good so far. This will all change on November 11th when season 7 of Scrubs comes out. What perfect timing…I just happen to have that day off.

Favorite movie

Roam. Roam is a mountain biking movie in a series by The Collective. I know it’s not mountain bike season but this movie is fantastic. My favorite part about it is the trials riding by Ryan Leech (I have a huge talent crush on Ryan) and the soundtrack is definitely a highlight.

Favorite websites:

icanhazcheeseburger.com and http://lvcabbiechronicles.blogspot.com/ and all my friend’s/family’s blogs

Favorite song

“All these things that I’ve done” by The Killers. Great lyrics..”I got soul but I’m not a soldier”.

Favorite CD

“Rise & Fall, Rage & Grace” by The Offspring

Favorite new purchase:

Heated mattress pad.

Favorite sport:

Squash!! It’s time to resurrect squash club. I was very rusty having not played all summer, but playing 4 times this week really helped. Jeff gave me a squash lesson and taught me a few key things and retaught me everything I forgot over the summer. He does things by instinct that I have to learn. For example, he noticed that I don’t watch the ball speed/direction going to the wall, just what was coming off. So, if he hit the ball hard and fast against the wall, I wouldn’t have time to get to the ball and my reaction speed wasn’t fast enough. I never thought of that previously and it has improved my game immensely.

Favorite thing to do to pass time:

Playing with Willow. She is still such a kitten and it’s awesome.

Favorite picture:

We took this picture in Japan and it’s currently my desktop.

Jeff always lets me know when November 1st comes around as it’s officially his birthday month. Luckily his birthday is at the very end of the month, so we get to hear about it for 29 whole days. This year, because of the “30 days before Jeff turns 30″ party we got to celebrate even longer!

I threw a party for him on halloween. He loves halloween, his birthday and parties, so why not put them all together. It was not a surprise as I hate keeping things from him as he always sees right through me. I did have a few tricks up my sleeve however to make it more interesting. Every year he gets a scavenger hunt for his birthday. This year, I incorporated it into his party. Almost every person that came got one of 30 puzzle pieces. Jeff had to earn each puzzle piece by doing whatever the keeper saw fit. This involved everything from handcuffs, to shotgunning beer to wrapping his body around a broomstick. We even managed to meet one of our neighbours in the process.

I’d have to say that it really got people intermingling. If Jeff was shotgunning a beer, we all were. I think nearly a dozen of us helped him out with that one. Even Larry – what a good sport. I think the floor may have took the brunt of that one…

I also made a slideshow of Jeff dressed up. The funny part was that most of the pictures we determined were not halloween when costumes were worn. Yellow parties, pub crawls, soccer games. Good times.

The last surprise of the evening was when pizza showed up at 10pm. It wasn’t Hot & Ready, but it was sure tasty!

Here are our costumes and a few other party pics. I went as a chicken and Jeff went as the guy from the game Operation. His costume was fully interactive. If you tried to play and incorrectly pulled a puzzle piece off, he had a buzzer that went off.

Terri and Jeff racing to eat chips for a puzzle piece.

Jeff piggybacking the Super Trooper Cop Dylan

Ali G and Sill Pickle Chips

My chicken costume…looking a little rough…feathers are a little ruffled I guess. Talking to Sarah Palin.

Jeff talking to the newlyweds Scott and Patricia.

Jeff’s mom Brenda (the smartie pants) with cute Jaya.

The rest of the weekend was spent disc golfing (one last gorgeous weekend before the snow hit last night) and hanging out with Dylan, who came in from Vancouver for the party.