Category — Friends

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.

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 (wearing a Beer Costume) 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.

Oompa-Loompa-Doompa-Dee-Do we have friends going to UPA and coming from Loops. (a little too random perhaps?)

Just a quick note to say good luck to GOB and HFA at UPA’s. Heather is playing Women’s on the Capitals (#44) and is listed as 5′ 10″ … also known as the only GSB on the team…. Weird. Greg (#32) is playing Masters on Throwback and is listed as 5′ 7″.

You can follow all the updates and scores at the UPA website.

The loops is because my parents and a good buddy Dylan (also from the Loops) will be in town this weekend for Halloween. 30days till I’m 30 on the 31st… scary! Anyway should be pretty fun weekend.

Please note that the picture below is neither Greg nor Heather but simply a result of searching for Heather Adams Frisbee in Google’s Image search.

Very exciting week coming up. Four days till we leave for Japan. The time should fly by as I’ll be super busy planning my company’s annual conference and Jeff’s trying to meet grant deadlines and write papers.

Good thing we haven’t left packing and planning this trip to the last minute…or have we?

Another super fun weekend, leaving no time to get organized. Hung out with our buddy Dylan since we was in town for work. Saturday we went disc golfing at Forest Lawn since it was a gorgeous day. Saturday evening we spent at a quick stop by Tim and Kir’s going away party as they are sadly moving to Whitehorse. We will miss them tons but they should be back often and now we have an excuse to travel up North!

After the party we went to a concert and saw Less than Jake and Reel Big Fish. You might be thinking “who?”…that was a popular reaction from everyone at the party who has never heard of either band.

They are both Ska bands, a mix between punk and big band and you can listen to them on YouTube: [youtube I0e6LUTjzX0]

[youtube PwAC9vWHUvM]

We were so pumped to to see LTJ, as we had never seen them before and we love them. What a disappointment!!!! They were terrible. At first we thought it was just the acoustics in Mac Hall, but we had seen concerts there before that sounded fine. At one point a song was just about over and I realized it was a song I knew. They were entertaining, although nasty at times, and definitely not appropriate for an all ages show. To be fair, it was the lead singer’s 32nd birthday so he was indulging a little… I think I’ll stick to listening to their CD’s from now on.

As for RBF, they did not disappoint. We have seen Reel Big Fish 3 times before (once with Goldfinger, once with Suburban Legends, once on their own) and this was definitely their best show. The determined for us that is was not the concert hall that sound bad, it was infact LTJ that sucked. They were so high energy and upbeat. Great show! I highly recommending seeing them if you are even remotely into ska of if you just have an appreciation for live music.

At least the crowd was entertaining during LTJ. One chick spent the entire evening taking bad photos. She never even tried changing her camera settings or taking the flash off. Bad photo after bad photo. She had Jeff and I laughing pretty hard most of the show. She must have taken 100 terrible photos. It was the best when the lead singer would come to the edge of the stage and she’d click the button just in time for him to turn his back and walk away. Timing wasn’t her strong suit.

As people got tossed from the mosh pit from crowd surfing, the bouncers would grab them. The first offense resulted in a marking on your arm, and the second time you were tossed from the concert. These bouncers didn’t mess around. Permanent marker, thick tip, 4 times up and down your arm. Saw a few dudes trying to wipe it off and head back to the pit. Yeah, good luck with that.

Had Mary Anne and Robert over for dinner. Was a fun evening (Jeff made fajitas) but now it’s time to hit the hay! Four more sleeps

No dead Bernie on our weekend, but it was a ton of fun. Terri, Jeff, Heather and I went to Fernie, thanks to Terri and the Toppers. Terri had won a free weekend at the Topp’s condo when we did the Heroes for Hospice scavenger hunt a while back.

I haven’t spent much time in Fernie at all (driven through it a ton) and it is fantastic! I forsee myself spending a bunch more time there, especially now that I discovered they have a disc golf course there. Jeff and I tried to play a course there years ago and then found out it was no longer open to the public. This weekend we were biking by some folks carrying discs and we asked them where the course is. Turns out it’s a full 18 holes with baskets! Unfortunately we didn’t have discs so we didn’t play but next time for sure. Instead we just lurked around the course, jealously heckling those that had discs and hacked and threw a frisbee around.

We got out biking twice. The bike trails are freaking fantastic in Fernie. I find the trails in Calgary only mediocre and it seems to go anywhere good you have to drive for an hour. In Fernie we left the car at the condo and could bike to the trailhead. We biked around by the aquatic centre on Sidewinder (exactly as it sounds…lots of fun switchbacks) and Broken Derailer. That wasn’t enough for Heather and Jeff so they headed up for another go. I was out of water and Terri had hiked 30km the day before, so we headed back and that’s when we discovered the disc golf course.

On the second day we started from Mount Fernie Park and headed towards a lodge. The trail had a ton of roots on it and was soooo much fun. I think I may have liked it more than Jeff as my full suspension was awesome!!!

It was such a fun weekend that I thought it was a long weekend. Lots of good eats (chips…yum!), good biking and good friends. You can read Heather’s take on the weekend too!

Here are some pics of the good times:

Getting ready

Terri braving the boardwalk

Jeff on the boardwalk

Driving down the highway with our reattached bike rack

Heather and biking funsies

Huge thanks to the Topper’s for an amazing event they put on this weekend. They organized a fundraiser for the Calgary Hospice Society and it was a huge success and a ton of fun. They managed to raise over $1000!

Everyone dressed up as super heroes (everyone, except those of us who skimmed the email and missed the part about dressing up) and lined up at the start gates. There was a 2 hour time limit to complete the course, which consisted of following maps and collecting clues to discover a secret location. It was about 10km, and the instructions said it involved a light jog through Bridgeland and Renfrew. However, we should have known better that the course was laid out by Adam and Julie (two really speedy, good runners) and it was a little more than a “light jog”. Add in the fact that Jeff and I are super competitive and had to finish as close to first as possible, and it extends beyond a light jog. We were one of the first teams back, but didn’t collect all of the clues and therefore didn’t win. They gave away some amazing prizes and Jeff walked away with a fancy PDA. Great work Team-o-Sill! I’m sure we would have come first if we had Scott’s brains, but he was late to arrive from his ultimate game (I think tardiness is also a side effect of Temocil).

There was a BBQ to follow at their place. We were supposed to go to the surprise party for Rob that I mentioned in my last blog, but running in the sun all day without water gave me a wicked migraine…I imagine it was a great party, and it’s not very often I turn down an offer for a night of Rockband with a fun group of folks!

Big birthday wishes going out to Amanda and Aubree today!!!

Big congratulations to the Wrigglesworths on the latest addition to their family.

Yesterday, Oscar James was born. 9lbs!

Mel is doing great, but not surprising as she’s a superstar. Interesting factoid. She is probably the only mother to ever give birth to 2 children 60 degrees apart (Lucy born at -30 degrees C and Oscar at +30 degrees!)

In other news, a big ‘Happy Birthday” going out Heather Adams today!

Now that painting is done and I have bit of spare time on my hands (and am procrastinating from cleaning the house and putting it back in order), it’s time to recap on things that went on last week that I didn’t have time to blog about.

Last Tuesday we went to a Flames game. Normally this wouldn’t be that interesting to write about, but I wanted to thank Jeff’s boss Elise for the great tickets! Not only was it a super exciting game (I know, shocking for the Flames), but it’s the first time in a while where I didn’t get a nosebleed from going to a game.

Then Saturday, back to the Saddledome again with more free tickets! Jana from work heard on the radio that in order to get people interested in the Roughnecks (Calgary’s professional Lacrosse team) they gave out free tickets. Somehow I missed this announcement but Jana was nice enough to give Jeff and I tickets! The Roughnecks won and it was also a super exciting game.

On Friday we went to Bruce and Andrea’s going away party. They are moving to Dubai and we’re going to miss them tons. It was a fun party, but I don’t like to encourage going away parties

I took a few pictures (there’s more on our picasa site):

Viv and Andrea looking at the scrapbook made by the Hogans.

Bruce and Scott

Bruce on the phone-hard to imagine he has anyone to call as all of his friends are in the room-they have ALOT of friends for the record.

Friends: