Posts from — December 2008

Very busy Christmas in Kamloops. We’ll have to go back to work to get some rest. Had our niece Sage and our nephew Conrad here. They kept us extremely busy for 4 days. They are both ADORABLE but a handful and very good birth control. We had a ton of fun at the pool and opening presents. The cute kids helped to distract me from missing my family at Christmas.

We had so much visiting and chaos on Christmas day (grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles) that we never got around to opening presents until 8:30pm.

Since the little ones and their parents left (managed to get a visit in with Kev and Tamara surprisingly), we have been playing with our new toys that we got for Christmas. Santa was very good to us bringing us a squash racket, new googles and a 42″ plasma TV!!!

We used the squash racket at some interesting courts in the back of a pub in Kamloops (Malone’s). We also went up to Sun Peaks today to try out the new goggles. When we got to Sun Peaks there was some snow, but not as much as in the past when we’ve gone. However, around 10:30 it started dumping snow and the conditions in the afternoon were amazingly perfect. Tons of powder!!!! Had a few good wipeouts but was an otherwise super fun day.

Well time for dinner and a movie. Ahhh holidays!

Hope you and your loved ones had a great Christmas. Happy New Year!

Thanks to everyone who helped make “Lindsay Day” a huge success.

Yesterday was planned by Terri, Jill, Jana and Jeff and was named “Lindsay Day” in lieu of my birthday (Dec. 24th).

I really didn’t see it coming! When I got to work my desk had been decorated with balloons, streamers, flowers and a few of my favorite treats. Jeff was in charge of delaying me to work so we had a nice breakfast and coffees.

When lunchtime rolled around (didn’t take long after clearing the balloons), I was surprised with a picnic in the Atrium at UofC (what a great location that I didn’t even know existed). We had homemade soup, crackers, cheese, bread, sparkling juice and greek salad. Not to forget the oranges and cookies!  After work we went out for drinks and dinner with some fun folks.

I learned a thing or two yesterday. First of all, I am a control freak and really don’t like not knowing what’s going on. Secondly, I have some really great friends Thanks everyone.

Speaking of birthdays…A big “happy birthday” going out to my mom today!!

We were discussing how Christmas cards are so 2005, unless your Heather who makes a super awesome hand-made Christmas card every Christmas. So consider this an electronic Christmas card from Jeff & Lindsay.

Editor’s note: We really didn’t send Christmas cards in 2005….but you get the point.

Yes, we have a Christmas Theme and used the word “Christmas” seven times in the last three sentences. If you don’t like it, move along. Anyway, onto the year …

Editors note: Comments from Lindsay in Red and Jeff in Green.

January

We were flying back from Hawaii (from our honeymoon) on January 1st. Oh Hawaii…What a great way to ring in the New Year!

We went to Sun Peaks for our good Friend Dylan’s 30th birthday (what an old man). It was great times with phenomenal snowboarding at Sun Peaks per usual.

February

The highlight from February was one of the highlights of the entire year: I discovered and solved my migraine mystery. Turns out the thing that was causing my migraines all along was water (or a lack thereof). Not chinooks, hormones, or exercise. Who knew? (I did) If you are reading this and suffer from migraines try drinking a ton of water. I mean drink so much water every day that you pee constantly and feel like barfing from having drank so much liquid. (No seriously, I harped on this for a while)

My migraines caused me extreme pain and suffering for years. I was on every medication under the sun (vioxx, anti-depressants, anti-seizure medication, vitamin B, others…) to prevent my migraines. The medications caused terrible side effects from dizziness, to nausea to numbness in the extremities. Not to mention the potential long-term damage I may have done by taking so much Imitrex and Maxalt to take the migraines away upon onset. They are wonder drugs but not so wonderful.

Now I just drink lots of water everyday (more if I’m exercising) and I’ve had very few migraines. Of the ones I’ve had since February, I can attribute about 90% of them to dehydration.

Anyways, sorry to hi-jack this Christmas post…but this was definitely a highlight when reviewing 2008. I guess my wishbone wish came true!

Also to note was a nice visit from Larry and Brenda in February and my publication in Nature magazine.

March

I started a company! President Jeff just had such a great ring to it that it seemed like a good idea.

He was nice enough to make his loving wife the Vice President.

In March we also attended one of the funnest parties ever: Robert’s 50th. Hard to believe anyone we play ultimate with is even close to 50…maybe in age but not in spirit. I sure hope I’m still running around (or even walking around) when I’m 50 after playing the equivalent of “tackle football without equipment” (as our chiropractor calls it) for so long.

We also welcomed a new family member, our nephew Conrad, on March 11th.

April

as a side note here. Blog’s are awesome. Seriously. The year in review is so easy to do because you can just Michael J. Fox back into time and “remember” what we did. You would think I’d remember but you’d be wrong.

Some people who read this blog may be bored from the repetition. However, those who don’t care to waste their time on our babble can just read this and treat it like the Cole’s Notes of our life recently.

May

Major highlight #2 for Lindsay: Addition to our family. After a lovely visit to see Jeff’s brother and my parents in BC,

May saw our Cat-Dog Willow enter our life. She’s was so little and cute and won my heart over. For the record (ie: Wriggs) I still don’t like cats. I like Cat-Dog’s. We call Willow our Cat-Dog because she really like to be entertained, played with and has a full routine in the morning. Cat-Dog’s are awesome

We ended May with a trip down to Bozeman, MT to have a weekend-long shower. Where we learned the game psychiatrist! So fun!

June

Brief trip to Victoria for work, but other than that, June was really uneventful, except for our Garage Sale and the Toppers Heroes for Hospice Race!

July

We made it through our first entire year of marriage this month. So far so good. That sure flew by. Seems like just yesterday I was cleaning up from the wedding…er…so maybe I was. Still working out what to do with the dress….

Another significant event in July was Regionals.

August

After all the hard work to get to Nationals, we had a disappointing finish, but I guess if you can’t be top 8, you might as well win the Ninals!

I went on a trip to Toronto and had a wonderful visit with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and my mom (who came with me). Luckily all of my extended family (with the exception of my uncle in Australia) lives in Ontario so it’s like one-stop-shopping. I also visited almost every casino in Ontario…(when in Rome).

Went to Golden with some folks for a little disc golf at Infinity’s Sports Ranch.

Also had a second medical breakthrough – discovered I needed orthodics. Solved my ankle problems, back problems and sore foot problem. Guess it makes sense, the backbone is connected to the leg bone.

September

Great times had in September. Quick weekend trip to Fernie (thanks Terri!) for some mountain biking and relaxation. In case you haven’t heard, we also went to Japan. Amazing country, friendly people and a wonderful trip! Japan is seriously cool. Such a unique place and definitely recommended and high on list of places we’d like to visit (again). Highlights include Bullet Trains, Raw Chicken and Beautiful Gardens.

October

I started working part-time at my ‘real-job’ and part-time as President Jeff. We decided that it would be a smart move because I could get a lot more done and hopefully grow the company a bit. The one question I get lots is how’s the company doing. It’s doing fine and I love all the concern people have, however, this is also one of the reasons that I never told people about my sites for quite some time. You see to get indexed in the search engines takes time (makes sense that you just can’t throw something up and be highly ranked in google). So things I’m doing now is really for the future and so it can be slow going while things are growing.

The end of October also brought Halloween, one of our favorite celebrations of the year. This year Lindsay planned a 30 days till I’m 30 party. Man was it fun. Some of the highlights include meeting our neighbours in sock feet, Egg-up, 12 (or was it more?) people shot-gunning beer (including my Pa) and Anasol.

We went to Victoria for Pumpkin Pull. It was the first time I had been back in about 5 years. So much on the UVic Campus had changed but not much around the city felt different. It still really felt like home and was hard to leave.

November

Jeff turns 30! (I’m an old man now)

Oh and squash club is back in full force which is super fun!

December

We’ve been too busy writing this post to have anything exciting happen in December. Luckily we are snowed in right now and have time for blogging.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND ALL THE BEST IN THE NEW YEAR,

LOVE JEFF AND LINDSAY (AND WILLOW)

A nice quiet evening at home. Sport’s free (postponed our Tuesday workout to later in the week) to spend a relaxing night at home. Might do a bit of Christmas shopping if we feel like going out later.

Otherwise just made a nice dinner and are chilling.

Tonight we had Shrimp Coconut Curry. This one is a recipe we loosely follow from the curry container.

-Prawns or Chicken

-Veggies (eggplant, bamboo shoots, peas (snow peas or regular), carrots, peppers, onions)

-Sauce :

2 tbsp of green curry (we use Thai Kitchen green curry paste)

2 tbsp brown sugar

1 can coconut milk

2 tbsp fish sauce

1/3 chicken stock

Make the sauce. Cook the veggies and meat. Add sauce to veggies and meat. Serve over rice (I recommend basmati) and enjoy the feast. I thought for ages that I didn’t like curry but turns out green curry is delicious. Flavorful with a bit of bite.

Every year we make a point of getting our first tracks at C.O.P. Canada Olympic Park. It’s not the biggest hill or the best hill but it definitely helps us re-learn this snowboarding thing. This years trip was about more then just refreshing the muscles though.

If you remember back in January we bought some boots and bindings for a whopping price of $50… for both of us. Total. The only catch was they’re clip-in boots and bindings which aren’t usually the ‘norm’.

So up we went to the hill. Everything went fine and the bindings worked great. Our skillz were a little rusty but it came back eventually. We even stopped for a nice little hot cocoa. After coming out we clipped in and hopped back on the chair lift.

About a third of the way up the hill Lindsay’s boot disconnected from the binding and was hanging by the ’safety strap’. yikes! So we proceed to wrench her leg around and try and get her foot clipped in. After pulling and pushing for about 3 minutes we finally got it clipped in. Phewwwf.

Lindsay then pointed out the fact that I actually wasn’t clipped in either. Instead of trying the same thing I just decided I could ‘ride it out’ …. Let’s just say, I CAN’T “ride it out”. I had a fairly spectacular bail which would have rivaled some of my layouts playing ultimate or as good as Lindsay’s bail in the parking lot.

Anyway, what a great way to spend a Monday night.

Last night I went to indoor ultimate that Justin (from Crude) had organized at the NE Sports Facility. It was about as good as indoor pick-up can be. It was great to get out and run around and touch the disc. I haven’t really even layed a finger on a frisbee since Pumpkin Pull in October.

Meanwhile, Jeff stayed home and got a whole bunch of stuff done. He set up the Christmas lights:

We refer to it as our “ghetto light display”…it’s not the nicest light display, but more something you’d find in a trailer park, but its our small contribution (to global warming…)

Jeff also put our new clip-in bindings on our snowboards, fixed our curtains upstairs, cleaned out our deep freeze and made me dinner to come home to. Ahhh how nice…and delicious!

He made a pasta dish. It had carmelized onions, eggplant, spicy spolumbo sausages, yellow peppers in fettucini in an olive oil sauce. It was delicious (and something different that we had never had before; not to mention a nice break from ham).

Today we had soup that Jeff found cleaning out the freezer yesterday. It was one of the good batches of soup. Soup is a lot like our lasagna. Sometimes amazing and sometimes mediocre at best. Both of those meals are always made in mass quantities and sometimes feel like they are around forever. This soup was a chicken base with rosemary, leeks and carrots.

Our soups are normally made by cooking some type of meat in the crockpot. We cook the leftover juices with onions, celery, carrots and the carcus and boil the crap out of it. We put it in the fridge overnight and then skim the fat off the top. We strain it and add all fresh vegetables, herbs, noodles and then voila, soup!

We went for breakfast today with Heather, Kristin and Terri. After breakfast we hit the squash courts.

I came home and repotted our house plants. Willow really enjoyed this activity and helped out. Once all the dirt was cleaned up (ie. after I vacuumed the entire house), Jeff and I went for a walk in the winter wonderland. The snow dumped down on us today. We must have about a foot in some parts of our yard. Calgary doesn’t get snow very often, but today we definitely got snow. It’s the light, delicate snow that just brightens up the city and makes everything look pretty and clean. It was such a peaceful, nice walk.

Here’s a picture of Willow in the snow. She’s lost all outdoor privileges now that she’s able to scale the fence. Good little jumper but now only allowed in the backyard when we are our there.

Lastly, here’s a photo I took the other morning. The sunrises have been very nice to wake up to. Yes, the sun is up when we get up. That’s one of the perks of working for the University!

Overall a great weekend had in terms of weather, friends, food and sports!

Not too much exciting going on here, so we’ll try this theme out for a little while. Food is always fun to talk about and maybe our reader(s) will pick up a recipe or two along the way. Note: You may be extremely frustrated reading this site if you love exact measurements. Apart from baking, we don’t tend to do much measuring. It’s more like adding a bit of this and a touch of that. So sometimes we get lucky and it tastes really good, but you get the odd doozy. We have yet to make the same lasagna twice in a row!

I came up with this blog theme last week, but last week was a BAD week to start. We had 2 dinner functions to attend and ended up at pubs a few times for wings, so I wasn’t willing to confess my diet last week. Let’s just say I think my diet last week may have played a factor in my level of activity this week (squash twice, swimming twice, gym once).

On Sunday we made a ham and had a few friends over for dinner and a slideshow. Each person went through slides and we ended up seeing Japan, West Coast Trail, Nepal, Papa New Guinea, Phoenix (Ironman), Broken Islands, Guatemala and Kananaskis.

As a result, we’ve had to be creative this week with ham as we have lots of leftovers.

Day 1

-leftover ham, mashed potatoes (with leeks and onions), broccoli.

Day 2

Breakfast burritos

-scrambled eggs, ham, peppers, jalepenos, salsa, sour cream, avocado, cheese, all in a flour tortilla.

Day 3 – Macaroni and cheese

-basic cheese sauce. Make a roux (fat + flour), add milk and cheese.

-cook pasta, add steamed veggies (asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, peas) and ham

Day 4 & 5

Jeff wanted to make soup. I veto’d the idea as I think we still have split pea and ham soup in the freezer from last year and we should eat that first. Jeff’s response, “I just never like to see good bone go to waste”. LOL. In the end, we just had leftover pasta for a couple of days.

Day 5

Popcorn!!! We went to the movies tonight to see the new Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. It was incredible! Tons of action and very witty. Even a few good laughs. I’ll note that we probably enjoyed it so much since we just saw the prequel “Casino Royale” last month so the storyline was fresh in our heads.

We got to the show but the early one was sold out. Then we waited for over 20 minutes in line for popcorn. It would have cost $13 for 2 pops and a popcorn but we had a coupon from Airmiles. After my trip to the movies I’m going to have to say that I’m not noticing the recession affecting many Calgarians! But who knows, maybe they all had coupons too!