Category — Friends

We have had our first two sets of visitors and it has been wonderful. It helped that we had full cooperation from Mother Nature and all of our guests left with some color.

Last weekend Larry and Brenda were here. We got out golfing at Michaelbrook Ranch course. Larry put on a clinic as he’s been playing daily for the last month or so. And he helped me fix my slice so that was useful. We fired up our new bbq on Saturday night for some steaks. We decided it was time to buy a new bbq when we noticed the grill was starting to fall apart on the old one. Not super surprising since we bought the last one for $100 from Canadian Tire and it lasted for 7 years! That is money well spent. On that same token, this new bbq should last 35 years.

The next day we had a quick visit in the morning (and Jeff’s tasty omlettes!) and they hit the road back to Kamloops. We went and checked out ultimate. Was just pick up goalti and it was pretty fun except for a few rules and strategies that Jeff and I found interesting (or annoying). It was the first time we had played outside this year and it was nice to be back on real grass. The wind wasn’t so nice though…

On Tuesday we played again at league. It was tricky to get us both on a team together (something about 2 superstars on one team not being acceptable…based on watching us at 2 indoor sessions and clearly these people were not paying attention to my million turnovers from not touching a disc for ages). Up until hours before league started Jeff and I were on separate teams but I convinced him to jump ship and we found a team together. It’s a team that has never played together before. Everyone is super friendly and keen to learn. And we won!

Jeff spent the week doing some amazing landscaping (update and pictures coming soon).

Then this weekend we had Jill and Mark come visit. It was a wonderful weekend (and nice to have friends again). They arrived early Friday morning so we had the whole day for wine tours (St. Hubertus and Summerhill), a brewery tour (Tree Brewing – highly recommended) and a nice dinner downtown at RauDZ. On Saturday we had breakfast with the Ellis family who was in town from Calgary for some much needed R&R. We all headed to the disc golf course for a round. The men stuck around for a few more rounds while us ladies went to a coffee shop. That was followed up by a wine tour and tapas at Quail’s Gate. We fired up the bbq on Saturday evening and watched the Canucks game. Too bad they lost since they were playing so amazing. Looks like they’ll just have to win it in 5 now. What a wonderful time of year right now when there just aren’t enough hours in the day to watch all the hockey that is on.

Today Mark and Jeff went disc golfing again but this time they went to marshall their own course in a local forest. Now to convince the city to fund baskets to make it an official course. Jill and I were on our way shopping but got distracted. We are trying to convince Jill and Mark to move here so we went looking at houses. Since it’s not really feasible, we went to look at houses that were as unlikely to own as them moving here. There was an open house so we stopped in and checked out a place for $1.5 milion. It was huge and amazing. Wine cellar, exercise room, tiered theatre, and gorgeous lake view. Unless we move in together it won’t really work…luckily it’s big enough for all of us!

I joined club 3-0 last week. I’ve been told by the experienced 30-somethings that it’s like club med but instead of rides, med stands for the medications my aching joints will need (nice one Makar)!

For my birthday this year I got three awesome surprises -  lunch, 30 presents in a box and a guitar!!! Last year my friends at the university planned a surprise “Lindsay day” and we had a picnic lunch. “Apparently” I was fairly resistant to the whole thing and asked way too many questions and made the surprise difficult. However, this year, I didn’t notice a thing or question when Jana wanted to go for a walk to External Relations on campus (carrying what later was revealed to be an empty envelope), using that as a way to get me to the atrium for my surprise lunch. We even walked by the atrium and Jana said “oh, there’s Jeff” and I said “strange, I wonder who he’s having lunch with…”. So I have a couple theories: either I’m dumber than last year, or I’m more laid back. Let’s go with laid back We had soup, salad and sandwiches. Heather was even able to make it since she was in town for the holidays so that was a fun surprise.

Larry and Brenda were pretty clever this year. Must be all that time spent coming up with things to keep Sage and Conrad busy. They sent 30 presents that I had to open in sequential order. They were a trip down memory lane. They started with a bib for age one, shoe laces for age 5, keychain for 16, booze for 19. Each present had significance to a particular age. 28 represented our wedding and 29 our kitty.  Thirty presents are sure a lot to open so I must be old. Was really neat and very thoughtful – thanks L & B!

Jeff bought me an acoustic guitar. I’ve always wanted to learn how to play. I tried to learn once in university but then my roommate with the guitar moved out. Then I picked it up last Christmas in Kamloops with Larry. It just seems that every time I start to get the hang of it, I was time for me to surrender the borrowed guitar.

The first day was rough. I could practice for about 3 minutes before my fingers were bleeding. I really need to build up some calluses. In between home renos I’ve been practicing a bit more and toughening up my fingers so I can play for about an hour now. It doesn’t sound good by any means. I am a two hit wonder right now: This land is your land and Free Falling. I’m also working on Walk the Line by Johnny Cash. We bought a book and Jeff is also learning. Eventually we will buy an electric guitar and jam. For now, we’ll just work on our C chord.

Rock on.

We haven’t had much time lately for blogging since we are in the midst of painting our entire house. In the last few weeks we have painted everything. All we have left is the kitchen and the office. Then we will be ready to put it on the market and move…..

We have lived in Calgary for 7 years, and although it has been a good city for us, it is time for a change. Over the past year we’ve tossed around a few ideas: Europe, Australia, Ottawa, Victoria, Kelowna. In the end, we decided on the closest and least complicated city: Kelowna. We spent some time there this fall (as well as having both grown up near Kelowna) and loved it. The weather is so much nicer (pretty sure it’s not -30 degrees there right now) and gets nice and hot in the summer. The biggest selling features for Kelowna is that we both get to keep our jobs and work remotely, we can have a huge garden and grow more than just peas and zucchini and we can swim in fresh water every day! The plan is to move in the Spring (maybe just a coincidence but we should be there in time for the first tourney of the year Sunflicker

We will dearly miss our friends and family in Calgary but we will be back often for work and ultimate.

Willow is very confused by all of the painting but she was born in BC so she’s pretty excited to be moving back home. Here are a few pictures of her supervising. She has only managed to get into the paint once (that we know of)…and painted her tail red.

Supervising with taping

Supervising while Jeff pulls off a sketchy move

Helping paint the trim

Ever so helpful

Apart from painting, didn’t get up to much this weekend since it was way too cold to go anywhere. Went to my sister’s baby shower. She got so many cute pink things. She’s really getting big and the doctors have given her a window of January to February, so it’s hard to say when it will come since if it’s late it may be born in March. I’m hoping it comes early so I have more time to spend with the little girl before we move.

We were able to catch a bit of the Olympic trail’s speed skating at the Oval on Monday. We saw the men’s and ladies’ 1000m short track. It got me very excited for the Olympics. Go Canada!

Lots of fun had at Sun Peaks this week for Larry’s retirement party. Stayed in a chalet on the hill that was literally ski-in ski-out. Just had to ski down to the Morrisey chair and then took a run back that took us to the doorstep of our place. I had been watching the weather in Kamloops for the last few months and it has been terrible for skiing. But, we totally lucked out and woke up to 16.8cm of fresh powder the first day. So awesome. Some of the best boarding ever. Met a guy from New Zealand who described it as skiing in custard. I’d say more like flour, but either way it was amazing. Wasn’t sure if I wanted to board again the next day since I was so sore (takes a bit of effort to pull yourself out of waste-deep powder all day), but it was too fun to not go. Day 2 was really chilly, but at least we traveled WestJet and received all of our luggage so we were dressed warm enough that it wasn’t so bad. The hot tub at the end of the day sure felt nice.

Thanks to Larry and Brenda’s great meal planning and Jeff’s good BBQing we ate like kings. Lots of fun had with Kevin, Tamara and the two little ones. I think I watched Finding Nemo with Sage 3 times, but luckily she was into that right instead of Barney (which she watched the entire way from Princeton apparently ). Here are a few pics from the week: http://picasaweb.google.com/jeff.sill/SunPeaks#

I’d like to take this special opportunity to thank Air Canada for this wonderful Friday evening during Carnaval in Quebec City in my hotel room. There are many festivities going on but instead I get to write a blog and watch TV. This is because they seem to have misplaced our luggage. What a moron I was to assume that my bags would arrive when I did with my bathing suit, mittens, snow pants, socks, long underwear or even underwear for that matter…Good thing it’s not -20 degrees with the windchill…oh wait, it is.

So we decided to go for a nice dinner and stay in. Making the most of it. As misery loves company, we are happy to say that we were one of 25 on the flight that arrived without their luggage. Looks like they managed to lose an entire trolley of bags. When the carousel stopped, I yelled at Jeff to sprint to the baggage claim line as I was unable to myself due to a recent foot injury (and have been limping around the city). Luckily by doing this we were among the first in line…which was important as it was 1:30am.

(Brief reprieve from the sarcasm for a sec). Today we had breakfast with Mary Ann and Robert, which was a great start to the day. We spent the afternoon shopping for a few essentials (ok, so I totally used the lost luggage as an excuse to go shopping!). We also took in some snow sculptures and had lunch in a cute little boulangerie (bakery).

I just spoke to Air Canada on the phone and it sounds like our baggage is on the way. Received at the airport (hopefully the Quebec airport) and the delivery process has been initiated. This process has been initiated for 10 hours according to the website, but hopefully it arrives soon. In the meantime, luckily they provided us with a nice overnight kit with all the essentials: an extra large men’s shirt, men’s speed stick, and half a tooth brush (Jeff’s toothbrush is actually missing half of the bristles…).

It is really neat interacting in French again; all those years of french immersion for Jeff and I are paying off. It’s amazing how much we actually still remember, and even more amazing how much we have forgotten. There were 2 people today who actually went along with the conversation in french and didn’t immediately switch to english after I spoke. Perhaps it was because I was making sense, or perhaps it was because they didn’t speak any english (I like to think it was the former

Well, gotta run. Time to put my extra large t-shirt on and watch the second period of the jeu d’hockey (Habs against Avs).

Salut!

Yes, you read this correctly. Christmas in January? We had our staff Christmas party on Friday afternoon. Our original party was scheduled for December but was snowed out so we postponed until now. We spent Friday playing mini-Olympics at Shank’s North. We broke into teams and played bowling, mini-golf, Daytona racing and pool. Super fun times. I would recommend this for a stag or stagette. Perfect for a little healthy competition among friends.

My team made the podium, but didn’t come first. I found this strange as 3/5 of my teammates came first overall in one of the sports and one of the guys on my team finished as the top male overall. I guess with these sort of stats we must have shone at times and not so much at others. I really think pool was our downfall. I blame the lack of beer at this point. Who seriously plays pool sober? Afterwards a few of us headed back to our place for some fresh fruit maragarits and guitar hero.

On Saturday morning we had our second annual Garage Hack party. We started this tradition last year after we took up hacky sack after our fall league ultimate games. In the winter we missed it, so we had a hack party in our garage. Last year Jeff made omlets for everyone but this year we had waffles. Great work on breakfast Jeff thanks to the fun crew with the hack skillz:

The whole crew hacking

Nice focus Terri!

Weekend summary: guitar hero, Shank’s, hacky sack, disc golf, coffee, margaritas, squash, Superbowl party, Rock Band, ultimate. All the makings of a great (but a tad tiring) weekend!

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.

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)

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!