Category — Matrix

As most of you Calgarians know, we had a dump of snow on Wed night / Thursday morning. Which is actually sorta surprising that this is the first dump of snow because normally for fall league we’ll play at least 1 or two games in the snow. AND considering this is the last week of fall league it seems about right.

So Lindsay and I were out playing squash on Wednesday night for our usual Squash night. As always, it was a good time. Oh and did I mention that Joan is a crazy good squash player? Seriously. Got my ass handed to me. No, not that ass.

Anyway, on the way home it was snowing pretty hard and I made a bit of a revelation. I think my car might be a Mexican. I say this because when I was growing up my parents sponsored some Mexican guys to come live in Canada with our family for a couple of months. Anyway, while they were living with us my parents we had to drive to the mountains so that they could see snow for the first time. I figured because it was the first time our car had seen snow that it might be Mexican.

Here are some pics that Lindsay took from the first fall snow fall. Our Mexican car and our back porch.

Two quick things.

1) We sold our car. Not the Matrix. The old Honda Accord. And yes, we got money for “that old thing” It went into the buy and sell on Thursday morning. Saturday morning I received a phone call. The guy came and looked at it on Saturday. Boom, sold. Funny thing is I haven’t had another phone call about the car since. I must be a really good salesman.   Maybe I should become a used car salesman?

2) House hack.

What exactly is house hack?

Exactly as it sounds. Hacky sack in the house.

I think you know you’re obsessed when you put your shoes on, move all the furniture, laptops and water glasses so that you can play hacky sack in your living room.

Hi, We’re the Sill’s and we have a problem.

—————-

Bad joke time.

Q: Why did we move our laptop’s before playing house hack?

A: So they don’t get hacked.

It’s official we’re over the 2,000 kilometer mark on the new car. In fact, we’re now at 3400 Kms. If we do that for the next 12 months we’d be at 40,800 Km’s.  I say that’s a fairly good stomp in the old Eco Print.  Although, we did go ’sans’ car for a month and a half. So that’s not bad.

As you can recall we were suppose to ‘baby’ it until 2000 kms. Well, now that we’re over it we can “rat-bag the shit” out of this car like we did to the Honda before. Oh wait, we didn’t do that.   Ok, how about “time to test out the old Toyota power”?  or maybe we should start some crazy street racing.   Or not.

So how did we put 3400 Km’s so quickly?

• Calgary – Kamloops
• Kamloops – Vernon
• dead battery – not kilometer related but worthy too note.
• “role reversal“
• Vernon – Calgary
• Calgary – Kamloops
• Kamloops – Calgary

That adds up fairly quickly.

In other news

• Lindsay is at the Banff Springs for a conference that her company is putting on. One of the girls at work was upgraded to the presidential suite. I’ll be sure to get her to make a post on that sometime soon.
• I’m at jury duty tomorrow or more precisely Jury Duty Selection tomorrow.

Wow, exciting times at for the Sill’s. Although, I’d rather be at a conference in Banff then at Jury Duty Selection

So we had our friends Mary Anne and Robert over for dinner Tuesday night. Mary Anne works downtown and asked me if I miss the commute downtown at all now that I’m working back at the university. I answered “no” right way, before she could even finish asking. It occurred to me that I should have told her this story to help support my story as to why I don’t miss the commute at all and why I enjoy carpooling with Jeff (and not a hundred strangers) every day!

This is a true story and happened in my last week or two of C-training downtown.

I was on the C-Train and during rush hour it is always so packed that once you get on, you have a few seconds to pick your spot and that will be your spot for the entire ride because you end up like sardines and there is little room for movement as more people get added at each stop. So, if you end up next to someone smelly, too bad. Just hope they get off at the next stop. I, unfortunately, always take the train to the last (or second to last) stop, so I have to suffer till the end.

On this particular day, suffering is what I did. There was a mother and a daughter sitting together, with her 2 sons sitting in a seat just in front. An elderly lady got on the train and the mother got the 2 little boys to shove over and share their seat with the elderly lady. The 2 boys thought this was a great opportunity to share their life story with someone. The conversation was pretty one sided but when like this:

Little boy: “I’m not an Indian, I’m native. I get to go to a white kid’s school this year. I’m not white though. I have yellow skin. It’s weird colored-look at it”(begins to take shirt off)

Old lady: “oh yes” (beginning to get awkward)

Little boy: “Look at your skin. It’s strange. Is all old people’s skin like this? Will my skin look like your’s when I’m old?” (begins to poke and prod old lady’s skin)

Old lady: “I guess it probably will.” (awkward)

Little boy: ” I know lots of old people, but most of them are dead. My uncle died, my grandpa died, so and so died” ie. lady you are on your way out.

Ok. Little kid you need to stop talking NOW. Everyone around is doing the universal robot/awkward dance by this point. The train is packed and I want to desperately move but can’t, especially since the mom is now sad listening to her son ramble on to complete strangers …

Anyways…I hope that my car rides with Jeff won’t ever get that awkward, but if they do, he can start taking the train!

So, with the upcoming Civic election on Oct.15th I might be considering the candidates platforms for improving transit in this city more than anything. However, they have been addressed by the Calgary Ultimate Association how they might assist us on getting better fields. I will post about that once we get the information. One candidate so far has submitted a very interesting response (completely insulting ultimate!!) Stay tuned.

Well, the time has finally come… The little Honda is going on sale. So sad I know. She’s been a great little car for me and my family.

A little time-line to recap

• 1989: Parents bought the car brand new in 1989 (replacing a sweet gray paint peeling station wagon kinda like the one below… how could you sell that?)

• 1989 – 1996: Good times growing up in the car (ok, not actually in the car)
  • Best memory for whatever reason was traveling to the Kootenay’s for a Sill Family road trip and chewing gum so long that it disintegrated in my mouth.
• 1996: I buy my first car a 1978 Grey Painting Peeling Mustang Mach II

• 1998: I head off to University in Victoria and need a ‘more reliable’ car. Trade the Mustang for the Honda… (my parents were probably drinking or something that night)
• 2001: While “courting” Lindsay I lend her the keys to my house, passwords to my computer and most importantly the keys to the Honda (and we’re married now. Soooooo……I don’t wanna say it was the car but ask her!)
• 2002-2006: Move to Calgary and have a great time with the little Honda traveling to tons of Ultimate tournaments (13 in one season!)!
• 2006: The little girl is starting to have problems and while she’s in the shop we go off in search of another car. Turns out it was a $30 part and costs less then $200. The girl is still kicking! Don’t need that new car after all.
• 2007: Married. On the way back from the mini-honeymoon in Banff the little girl breaks an Axle and Ball joint right in the driveway.
  • how lucky is that? right in the driveway
• 2007: Order and receive brand new 2008 Toyota Matrix
  • Fix the little girl because she was right in the way of the garage (as you can tell in the picture below)

  

  • September 26th, 2007: The Little Girl is officially up for sale.

  Realistically she has nothing wrong with her. She’ll eventually need a new clutch and a new U-joint on the left side. But won’t every car need some fixes down the road? Lindsay and I just don’t really need two cars. So we might as well sell her before it just sits in the driveway for the winter.

  I must say though, it’s actually pretty sad (as silly as that sounds) because she’s been around for so long. Seriously, what else has been with me since 1989 and went to University, met the girl of my dreams, picked that girl up and moved to Calgary?

After having a VERY hectic last week we hit the road. Drove to Golden in search of a coffee. Stopped in at A&W. Yes, I realize that there is a Tim Horton’s on the left side of the highway, but I’m a big fan (might be an understatment) of avoiding left turns as much as possible… In fact, Lindsay makes fun of me all the time about not wanting to take lefts…
Anyway. While in A&W the people there were talking about their bonus checks. That’s right, BONUS CHECKS… for working at A & W. And. They were getting around $450 as a bonus check. So, you’re 16 working at A&W and getting almost 500 bones as a bonus check! When I was sixteen I was working at Chapters Viewpoint Restaurant for $4.50/hour and the only bonus I got was when I would steal a tortilla chip or two…

Anyway, we went to Kamloops had a nice visit with the folks. Headed to Vernon and showed up near the start of the third game.

That night we headed out for dinner and to the party and because I was driving I was the ‘responsible’ one. Lindsay had a good time, a bit of a Role-Reversal, as she so kindly reminded me once or twice during the evening.

So that night we slept in our car. The MOST comfortable sleep that we’ve ever had at the Vernon tournament. Which is for the record, the coldest place to camp. Anyway, the sleep was terrific.

In the morning we woke up and went to start the car, “reeeer…. reeeeer” Uh, that doesn’t sound good. So we had to call Toyota Roadside Assistance, which was actually quite good. Finally, the tow truck showed up and we got a boost. What happened? Don’t really know for sure. We must have left a cabin light on or something… That’s my guess.

So we arrived to the fields in the second game of the day where the score was 6-3 for the other team. Anyway, we ended up losing that game. So Lindsay and I were able to play about 3 games….oh well, we ended up getting back to Calgary at a decent hour last night.

All in all, the point of this tournament was to go on a road trip. That was totally successful and the car is awesome to drive. We had a good time, good visit with my parents and had a chance to test out the Toyota Roadside assistance…. check, don’t need to test that out anymore.

Well, it’s about time I post a blog before Jeff changes this website to thejeff.net

Instead of writing about anything relevant (Jeff seems to have started a trend here), I’ll tell you about our trip to Cochrane last weekend. Turns out when you get a brand new vehicle, you really need to baby it during the first 2000km, but really baby it during the first 300km. So, because you are supposed to vary the type of driving you do during the first while, we decided to hit the open highway and take a quick jaunt to Cochrane. Leading the busy lives that we do, we were able to squeeze it in last Sunday between errands, playing ultimate and golfing. While in Cochrane we stopped at a place to buy a hacky sac (our new “off season” sport) but got referred to the Hempire since apprently they have the best hacs in town.

Jeff and I get to the Hempire (note: total hippie shop) and turns out a girl from my high school owns it, along with 3 other “pot stores” (as she likes to call them). Doing quite well for herself actually. We get talking. She asks me “what brings you to Cochrane today?” to which I reply “just putting some miles on my car”. I should have said…just being a typical Calgarian, non-hippie, basically polluting for fun and adding to global warming with my carbon emissions because I have nothing better to do on this gorgeous fall day!

Which she also interrprets as ‘wow it seems Lindsay has no friends and hasn’t come very far since high school…let me give you my number and we can hang out sometime since then you can do something other than just drive your car around being bored’.

Point of this story: there isn’t one. This is a blog and I can write pointless crap.

Off to Vernon for an ultimate tournament this weekend. Great excuse to put more miles on the car and it will be the last tournament of the season.

Lindsay out.

Well, we finally got our new car (with 11 Km’s on it) on Friday. And man, I must say it’s pretty! Lindsay and I are super SUPER happy about it. (and Heather was right, it’s a girl!) We haven’t named her yet but we might just go with little girl.

You can see the picture of the little girl at the bottom of the page… I think if you click on the pictures they get bigger.

So, we picked it up from the dealership on Friday afternoon after the quick orientation… which was quick, thorough and done by ASIMO the robot. Well, ASIMO is actually Honda’s robot but I swear Toyota has made a girl Robot version. Highlights include:

• Gas tank is right here on the left hand side of the car.
• CD player – This knob turns the sound up and down. The buttons with the numbers can be used to program different radio stations

Wow, thanks for the useful information! I was wondering how I was going to get gas into the car. But, she did give some useful information but would it kill her to make it a bit more exciting? Especially considering she basically has the best job in the whole dealership. Let’s see…

• Salesman – *sarcasm warning* yeah, that sounds like fun
• Financial person – no thanks, selling the extended warranty packages all day doesn’t sound like the best job to me.
• Person who gives tours to excited people with brand new cars – check!

So, today we took a little drive out on the Highway and went to Cochrane. Just to get out. Apparently we’re suppose to drive her at many different speeds and not for long durations for the first 2000 Km’s. And the first 300 should have a wide range including city and highway driving. So while we’re in Cochrane we picked up a hacky-sack. So now Terri, Heather, Lindsay and I are ready to be hacking masters as we all have our own footbags.

Anyway, without further ado. Here’s the little girl! Isn’t she pretty?

You heard it right big news today! And no the big news isn’t that the site looks completely different. That’s just me playing with the different themes that are available. I kinda like this one but I’m gonna guess it might be too ‘boy’ for Lindsay… I have a way of doing that.

But… I digress.

The big news is that we get our CAR today! That’s right our CAR!!!!!!!!!!! Vrooom Vrooom. We meet with the Toyota people at 4pm and get an orientation of the car and all that jazz. Then we’ll be driving away with our new wheels.

So what kind of car did we get?

What we haven’t told you?

Well, we picked up a 2008 Toyota Matrix. Built specially for us. We were able to choose, colour, options, add-ons, etc… Kinda fun.

I’ll take some pictures this weekend and be sure to post them ASAP! But in the mean time this is what we’ll be picking up in 3 hours (not that we’re counting the hours)!