Posts from — January 2009

If you recall from last year, it’s that time again for Ice Bowl! Ice Bowl is a disc golf tournament that goes on all across North America to raise money for various charities.

It starts at 10am on Saturday, Feb. 21 at the Parkland disc golf course (Park 96). You can get all the details and pre-register on the Alberta Disc Golf website. If you are a woman disc golfer in Calgary I recommend you come out. WOMEN PLAY FOR FREE! Also, I’m looking to defend my title and it’d be great to have some competition. It would be awkward engraving my name on a trophy if I played against myself and won. It also gives you a chance to play the private Calgary course if you haven’t already. Proceeds go to a great cause and they have some fantastic prizes.

Hope to see you there!

Mais oui! Jeff and I are off to Quebec City. This trip is about the only to thank Air Canada for ever, and and I use the word “thank” loosely.

We canceled a flight last July for the Potlatch tournament in Seattle since it ended up conflicting with other tournaments. We had booked the flight in March, and Air Canada’s (lame) policy is that you must use your flight credit within a year of when the flight was booked. That meant that Jeff and I had a $650 shopping spree to use before March 12th. I just realized this on Thursday, so we spent the whole evening looking for a flight somewhere that wouldn’t cost us too much or take up too much vacation time. We have a long weekend coming up in February (Family day) and turns out Carnival is going on then, so we booked it.

Mary Ann and Robert will also be there that weekend so it will be fun to meet up with them for dinner or drinks. Apart from being bitter at Air Canada for the $240 flight change fee, I’m pretty happy and excited to be going. Combined with our ski trip to Sun Peaks at the end of month, this should be a really fun February.

I went to Carnival in 1995 and Jeff has been to Quebec three times but has never been to Carnival. See you soon Bonhomme!

Went to the Best of Banff Film Fest (BFF, not to be confused with Best Friends Forever) last night. For the past 28 years in Calgary they’ve taken the best films from the BFF and made a couple of shortened programs. Each program is around 2.5 hours so with intermission and stories about the films it makes for a very nice evening. A big group of us went last night and then went for drinks after. I really didn’t realize how late it was when we got out of the films (11pm) and it started at 7:30. I saw program “A” and it was incredible.

The first film was done by Ryan Leetch (aka my boyfriend), and he was as amazing as always. He’s a trials mountain biker. You can check out his stuff here:

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The film featured 2 riders along with Ryan, and they were also quite good.

The next film was an animation on orgami. I’m not usually one for the short animations as they tend to be really off the wall and too strange for me. This is the first short animation I really enjoyed.

Film 3 was on base jumping. What crazy f’ers. Seriously who does that? It followed the life story of 3 base jumpers and their journey to the Heavenly Pit in China. I felt nauseate just watching them. It was a good flick but I think I enjoyed the base jumping movie about Karina Hollekim “20 seconds of joy” last year a bit more. Maybe it was because that was my first real introduction to it so it was novel.

There were some cool movies in the middle of the program (rock climbing, avalanche safety) but the best film was the last one. Twist ending….the travelers did not accomplish what they set out to do and it was still entertaining. Two brits attempting to climb Patagonia and they failed and spent 4 days in a snow cave. They were characters and full of personality making it a great flick.

Maybe one of these years I will make it out to Banff to see the full program. If it comes to a city near you, I highly recommend going.

We’ve been trying to get back in the swing of things since Vegas. I’ve been tired and used to staying up late and sleeping in so it’s been a rough week. It doesn’t help starting the week tired from playing indoor ultimate till 11 or midnight on Sunday evenings. As for Jeff, he had 13 days off for Christmas then worked 3 days and had 11 more off for Vegas, so that’s why it’s been rough for him. The great thing about part-time is that if he takes 3 days off, he ends up with 11 off. How do I sign up for this part-time thing?

Willow had a play date with her BFF Bob today so she’s been sleeping all night. I went over to Jill’s place to work on a complicated budget for work and our cats played. Now she is exhausted and hasn’t moved (or been remotely awake) since we got home. Spending so much time on work budgets lately has somehow given me the desire to start my own personal budget. Jeff brought up the idea and Jill gave us a sweet template. It will be pretty cool to see where all our money is going.

Played a bit of squash and watched some TV. We’ve been slacking on the blog lately but it’s hard to get anything done with the tv, guitar hero, and “How I met your mother”. Big shout out to my stepmom Susan who has not been slacking on her blog! Nice work Susan. Keep the great stories coming!

In other news, I’m reading “Memoirs of a Geisha”. So far (about 1/2 way through), it is excellent. I’m probably biased however since I just went to Japan and can relate much more to the culture and history of Japan. Some of the places they mention I’ve actually been too, which is cool. And yes, we plan to post our pictures from the trip sometime in the near future (on our picasa site), but see above about being lazy and procrastinating. Speaking of my book…I should probably go read it. ‘NIght.

…..is that Lindsay, Jeff, Jill and Mark have a blast. They drink lots, do some gambling (now that Mark likes slots and blackjack), soak up the sun (just under 20 degrees the whole time), play disc golf at Sunset Park, go to the outlet mall, drink some more, stay up till 2 or 5 (depending on the night), see Phantom of the Opera (AMAZING), see O, Cirque de soleil (Jill and Mark only), conference (Jeff only), visit with Lindsay’s family (although they are slightly distracted by the blinking lights on the slot machines, we managed to get a little visit in), eat tons of great food and did I mention that we had a few drinks?

Jill and Mark were great fun! We had a blast showing them the in’s and out’s of sin city. Unfortunately I did not come back from Vegas this time with any diamonds, but it was great nonetheless.

Now Jeff and Lindsay are enjoying their 42 inches of plasma greatness. More later if we ever manage to put down the remote (or guitar).

I guess lots of people must care about us as we’ve been hearing non-stop lately about how bad it is that we haven’t put our winter tires on. Sure, we’ve had a ton of snow in Calgary this year (for Calgary that is), and it’s been icy but to be fair, Jeff and I managed to stay in and work from home and avoid the roads. There was a period a few weeks back where we literally didn’t step foot outside for 5 days.

My biggest worry in Calgary is not how our car will react (especially with Jeff driving and we have all season tires that are pretty good), but what the other morons are up to. I swear people get in their cars after work and turn their brains off. We are constantly avoiding getting hit and no matter how good our tires are, they will do very little if someone forgets to check their blind spot or rear-ends us while talking on their cell phone.

You’ll all be glad to know that we finally got our winter tires on yesterday. Even the guy who changed them lectured us. Now how long do we keep them on to make it worthwhile? I’m thinking till at least August

Time for a new year and a new blog theme (although I must say that I was sad to see the Christmas one go since I really enjoyed it.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately but I guess we’ve been busy. Or perhaps we’ve been too busy playing guitar hero! It’s true – we finally broke down and got a playstation and guitar hero. Now that we have the new TV coming on the 14th, there was no reason not to get guitar hero.

Back to work this week…normally would be rough after having so much time off but luckily we have another vacation to look forward to soon: Vegas baby! Jeff’s company (Dynamic Blogging, not the University) is sending Jeff to Vegas for an Affiliate marketing conference. Being the President you get to make great decisions like this one. And of course the VP should go along for moral support!

Jill and Mark will also be joining us and I’m going to see my mom, stepdad, nana, uncle and my mom’s friends down there as well. Everyone decided to meet up there at once so it should be a blast!