Category — Silly Stuff

Well, this past weekend (sunday) was my 31st birthday and with it brought the 4th annual treasure hunt. Lindsay really out did herself this year and has now claimed the title of Wife of the Year. Well, this years treasure hunt was completely different then anything previous and HIGH TECH!

Lindsay went out the day before and marked a bunch of locations on GPS and also hid a clue in the area. So when I got up in the morning Lindsay gave me the details of the hunt and the GPS. The instructions said to follow the clues and that food and drink were to be provided!

So off we went from our house walking with the GPS. The first stop was something like 1.5 km’s west…. and we hadn’t had breakfast yet (a must in the Sill household) so I figured we were off to Tim Horton’s for breakfast. I was close… McDonalds. There I found a clue under the golden arches which told me to collect my free sugar water coffee. And to continue onto clue #2. After a short breakfast at McDonalds (yes, I had breakfast at McDonalds but hey it’s my birthday….). Here’s a picture of me with my clue! (day 29 of the mustache looks pretty sweet huh!)

Anyway, next stop was Tim Hortons (where I was suppose to have breakfast) here I got clue #3 . The clue told me to take the c-train to Dalhousie. There I found my way to Chapters and found the clue which said I’d get the book “the purple cow”. Back on the c-train and down to Kensington. There, I found a barber shop where the clue told me Terri was going to donate for my mustache and I’d get present #1 (more about el mustacho later).

From there we went to Riley park to find out I was getting a disc golf stool. very cool! Next stop the zoo. There I had to lurk in the bushes to find a clue which told me I would get a disc golf disc of my choice. The final stop was back to our house for the Treasure! The grand prize was some really nice Cologne… oh and prize #1…. a Mach 3 razor.

As for the mustache and Movember. I was able to raise a grand total of $526!!!!! Thanks to everyone who donated. I was amazed at the number of people who donated so thank you to everyone. I shaved the caterpillar (as Doug calls it) on Tuesday morning. Here are the before and after pictures. Unfortunately, my license ran out and I didn’t get it on my drivers license as I went on the 2nd. Looking back I wish I had because they have the same rules as the passport office that you can’t smile or have your glasses on…. nothing about a mustache though. So maybe again in 5 years… or sooner.

First off, as promised in the last post, my sister and Matt are having a (drumroll please) baby girl! They’ve picked out a cute little name and I can’t wait to start buying little pink things. I went to the ultrasound and the 3D technology was very impressive.

We went to see Mayson and Carly’s new arrival today. They had a baby girl in October and named her Lindsay (after Carly’s cousin, not yours truly). She is super cute and very well behaved — given her name that may all change very rapidly . Jeff and I held her and I think I need to hit the gym since my arm was shockingly sore. Here we are with the happy family:

I spent the past week in Portland at Supercomputing. Yes, it is exactly as it sounds. All of the world’s nerds gathered at one location at once: Nerdvana. 12,000 nerds precisely. I spent my days in the Canadian booth playing air hockey with random stopper-byers and talked about high performance computing. The evenings were spent at vendor parties. I heard it wasn’t as good as past years but I’d be hard pressed to complain and it was impossible to tell there is a recession going on. Al Gore gave the keynote speech on Thursday. I was pleasantly surprised that my exhibitor pass got me in to see him. He was  predictable, lots of talk of climate change and the disastrous state of the world, but he was funnier than expected (global issues aside).

He influenced me to offset my carbon from my flight down to Portland:

I had never spent much time in Portland before this. The city is full of nice old buildings and great shopping (no tax!) and autumn is a great time to visit with the temperate climate combined with colorful leaves. I had no idea Portland has the highest vagrancy rate in the US. Hopefully the conference helped as it brings an average of $13M of revenue to the host city.

One random story from Portland. I had the luxury of having a glass of water beside my bed. At home this is not possible without paws in there knocking the glass over. I woke up in the middle of the night (dehydrated – see note above about vendor parties) and reached for my glass of water. Turns out I must have been sleeping on my arm and it was numb. As I was raising the glass to my mouth, my arm lost all feeling and I was unable to keep the glass upright and proceeded to uncontrollably pour the water all over the bed.

It is nice to go away, but it’s always nice to come home. Had a great weekend with Jeff and Willow. We watched movies, went to Aubree’s housewarming party, finally checked out the new Crossiron Mills mall (great work Sharma- it’s awesome), visited with Mayson and Carly and played some squash.

ps. Happy Belated birthday dad!

pps. Jeff’s mustache is really coming along:

Jeff has been busy growing a mustache in his extra time since I’ve been working lately. (Well, maybe he’s been working on his company lots too). Work is now slowing down but I was up in Edmonton last week and off to Portland next week for a conference. Added to the odd evening work function (AsTech Awards), he’s really been a good sport and keeping Willow company while I’m out gallavanting. Jeff is definitely in the running for husband of the year (HOTY). Cooking and even cleaning the house! I guess he’s really upped his game lately as his birthday approaches. I owe him a huge treasure hunt this year!

After the conference, Jill, Mark, Jill and I got away to Vegas for few days. When you are burnt out Vegas isn’t the best place to go as it’s not very relaxing, but it sure is fun.

The first day we went disc golfing. We played the first round as a group and then Jill and I went shopping and to the pool while the guys stayed to play several more rounds. It was a hot sunny day and then the weather went to crap. Went to the Hoover Dam the next day and to the outlet mall. That evening was spent at Penn and Teller. Great show. I always wondered if Teller was really a mute or not, and I got an answer at the show. He just acts as a mute but he can actually speak. They are magicians who show you a few tricks afterwards, which is cool.

New bridge being constructed at Hoover Dam

The next night we went out for a really nice dinner at Mix, on the 64th floor of Mandalay Bay. Expensive, but worth it! I got lucky the first night on the slot machines and Jeff did well at blackjack on the last day and made $150 killing time before our flight. For once we actually came home with money from Vegas.

Having just got back from Vegas, we had a pretty low key Halloween. I dressed up as an M&M and Jeff as Flash. We got about 60 kids. We carved pumpkins…Jeff had to buy the biggest pumpkin he could find and I bought a medium sized one. My mom grew one this summer and gave it to us, so it seemed obvious to carve a pumpkin in a pumpkin in a pumpkin:

We also made pumpkin seeds, but instead of roasting them and then just sprinkling them in salt, we soaked them overnight in a salt brine. By far the best roasted pumpkin seeds we’ve ever made! We also made a huge batch of pumpkin soup and pumpkin muffins. I don’t think carving pumpkins are the most ideal for cooking and baking, but the soup and muffins turned out pretty good.

Just had dinner with my sister and Matt. Next post, I’ll tell you if she’s having a boy or a girl and post some pics.

Hello world,

I’m back! Now that my conference is over life can return to normal. Sorry to everyone that I may have ignored for the last several months. If an email or a phone call was not related to the conference, I probably just ignored it. My apologies for anniversaries, birthdays, etc that also got missed.

The good news is that the conference went well! It was in Banff and we had people come from all over the world, including a guy who came from Iran and brought me a present. He gave me hand crafted container to say thanks for helping with his visa. In the end we had 450 register for the conference. Jeff and I also got to see people we met in Munich and Japan at the last couple of conferences we went to.

It was wonderful to be out in Banff for the week. Jeff joined me on Wednesday night since he has Thursdays and Fridays off. We managed to fit a game of squash in and it was an eye opener. I guess it’s hard to stay in shape when you’re at a computer for 14 hours a day. We must have been playing with a triple yellow ball

Right from Banff we headed to Lethbridge with Mark for a disc golf tournament. It was a bit much to wake up at 6am and drive to LA, but that’s the least I could do to spend some time with my husband who I have been neglecting lately. We played 36 holes on Saturday and 27 on Sunday. Saturday it was 24 degrees, which was pretty extreme considering it was -21 degrees the previous weekend in Banff. Jeff played well and managed a second place win in the advanced men division. I finished first out of one in the ladies advanced division and Mark was inches away from winning the $360 closest to the pin pot. The course was super long and windy on Sunday, but we had a great time. A few pros from Montana and Alberta were in attendance so we got to see them crush the disc.

Looking up at hole 4 of Lethbridge course

Since we all had to work on Thanksgiving, we celebrated by taking this Monday off and celebrated Lobsgiving. Monday also included a visit with Aubree and Amanda since Amanda was in town visiting from Seattle. After our visit I went to Lobsgiving. Kris flew in from Halifax and brought 10 fresh lobsters. Thanks Kris! Thanks also to Jill for cooking and Janick for making lobster pie:

Lobsgiving

As a reward for all of our hard work, Jill, Mark, Jeff and I are going to Vegas on Sunday! Forecast is 30 degrees!!! Can you say ice cold beer and pool? We also plan to visit the Hoover Dam and see Penn & Teller. Viva Las Vegas!

You know the band the Black Eyed Peas? … this post is about the Sills’ (or is that Sillz) black eyed bricks.

First off. The black Eyed part.

Saturday morning we headed out to help the Calgary Juniors with a little ulti. Good group of kids and a fun run. Anyway, during the game a guy on the other team tried to huck the length of the field, unfortunately Lindsay was about 6 feet away from him looking back to see where the disc was…. and boom. Right up side the head. OUCH! (been there). luckily it was on the temple right by the eyebrow and not anywhere else.

oh! and she’s doing fine. Luckily there was ice at the fields to put on it right away. I mentioned that we should put a steak on it. Her response: “I’m not wasting a steak on this!” (that’s why I love her)

Now onto the Bricks. Lindsay and I have been doing an ongoing project all summer. It all started when we ripped out the bricks for the underground sprinklers. When we did we notice that a) The bricks weren’t done correctly to begin with and b) we made a mess of the area that we ran the sprinkler line. So we set to the task of pulling up, cleaning off, creating a proper base (with weed block), adding sand, relaying bricks and covering with magic sand.

2-3 months later, Voila!

The front of the house

The side of the house

The back of the house

Willow admiring our work

I was lucky enough to experience playing football under the lights at McMahon stadium a couple of weeks back. My friend Sara was desperate for subs on her women’s touch football team. She told me it was super casj  and knowing about football was not required….

I showed up and they had jerseys, a coach and a play card – not so casj.

Things I learned:

-there is WAY more running in football than I expected
-I did not get the football gene. You’d think that’d I’d be somewhat decent having grown up with a father who played football his entire life and coached for 15 years. Negative-You do not catch a football the same way that you would catch a frisbee
-The football comes in HOT
-I am much better at defense than offense (not super surprised by this one but expected to be a tad less useless on O)

There was one fan in the stadium…Jeff stopped by to take a few pictures:

The game got off to a rough start as the ball had a magnetic force towards me. First kickoff, ball comes directly to me. Should add “the ball falls directly down when kicked and does not float like a frisbee” to the above list of things I learned. I totally missed the ball, but beginners luck for me, the other team was offside so I got a second try. Literally, the ball came right to me again (smart kicker probably aimed for me this time given my performance on the first attempt) and I dropped that one too, but in my defense it had a funny bounce. Didn’t touch the ball again on offense (tried to avoid it like the plague) but got a few good d’s.

Think I might head out and toss the old pigskin around before picking up on that team again….

August came and went with only a few blogs. Busy busy. Work has been crazy for me (with conference only 6 weeks away -eeek!). Just to give you an idea of how nuts things are, last Wednesday I was in Banff, Calgary and Edmonton all in one day for work. The amazing part though is that me and Jill spent WAY TOO MANY hours in the car together and didn’t kill each other Upon arriving to Edmonton we were homeless…might have left the hotel booking part a little late, not knowing that all hotels would be sold out for an AC/DC concert, but Nicole was nice enough to put us up (and put up with us). I got to visit my newlywed friends Jen and Tony one evening, and we had a wonderful visit and tasty supper so that was fun.

While I was in Edmonton, Jeff was in Vernon at his brother’s stag. The guys were playing disc golf at Fallow Ridge. It’s a crazy course…28 holes built on the back of some guys very sloped property. Check it out sooner rather than later if you haven’t already as there’s rumours that he is selling… From Vernon Jeff headed to Kamloops for a bit of golf with his dad and annual salsa making with his mom. That came just in the nick of time, since I think we were down to our last jar of last year’s salsa. If you’ve never tried it, don’t bother, it’s gross

Nationals came and went this year without us noticing. I’m kidding. I definitely noticed and I was sad to not have played this year, but hearing about all of the mosquitos and rain and mud and cancelled games made me really like my decision not to play. Instead, Jeff and I were golfing in Kananaskis. It was a wedding gift from 2 years ago and we finally got around to using it (ie. polishing up our skills so we allowed to use it). That course is amazing! Nicest course I’ve ever played for sure. First class service as well. They valeted our car all over, delivered our clubs, and even cleaned my clubs when we finished.

When we arrived it was raining and cold. We hit our pyramid of balls to warm up. By the time we tee’d off, the sun had come out and it turned out to be a gorgeous day. Lots of people cancelled due to the rain, so we were really relaxed with no pressure. We played with a very nice couple from Thunder Bay. We spent the round trying to re-instill some faith in Calgary for them as they had a gun pulled on them downtown the previous night. They were also the subject of thievery on the course – a sneaky squirrel climbed into their golf cart and made off with their snickers bar!

Jeff played amazing and I held my own. We had a fabulous day with lunch on the course to follow. Many thanks to Friesen, Mere, Shambles and Terri for a fantastic gift!

Jeff in cart

Picturesque hole

Lindsay hitting pyramid of balls

Last weekend we played our second ulti tournament of the year in Canmore: Wapooti.

Jeff playing defense at Wapooti

You can check out some more sweet photos from Randall Quon here.It was my first time playing Wapooti since I’m normally so burnt out by this time of year that I’m not interested. Since I haven’t been playing much all year, I’m actually excited to play ultimate still and I’m even playing a tournament this weekend in Edmonton. Jeff is going to play in a disc golf tournament on Saturday and join us on Sunday.

We had a whirlwind visit upon our return from Canmore with my parents on their way back from Toronto. Also got to see my sister and see the developments on her belly. It’s really coming along.

Dinner with family

Our cat has been keeping us busy. She brought a little live friend to play with in the house last Monday morning:

Mouse in the house

To top it all off, we’ve been landscaping our yard. We had to rip up a few bricks while installing the sprinklers and we’re still trying to put the yard back together. While some bricks were up, we decided to rip out ALL of the bricks and replace them. The people who laid the bricks originally didn’t put weedblock down, so weeds have grown up all over the place and the bricks were spreading. Jeff started the project under the deck by ripping out the rotting wood and replacing it with bricks. Who knew he was such a ‘Mayson’ (his middle name…haha).

Jeff under the deck laying bricks

We have finished the front yard and side so now we just have the back. Hopefully we can get it all done before the weather turns. Speaking of bricks, I should probably get back to them.

(of course in addition to our darling Sage and Conrad)….

My sister and her partner Matt are expecting. Congrats you two! How very exciting. Here is a picture of the little one:

She is due on February 24th. Here’s her belly so far. Cute since she’s in that awkward phase where she just looks kind of chunky like she’s let herself go:

We are very happy for you guys. We look forward to seeing our niece/nephew next year and eventually babysitting so we can load it up on sugar and send it back to your place

While I’m on the congratulation’s train….huge congrats to Heather and the rest of the Lotus ladies for winning Canadian Nationals today!!!

The first of three weddings we went to in July was for our friend Jenn (aka Shambles). We have played ultimate with Jenn for years. A few years back she moved to Edmonton for school and decided to take a step back from ultimate to focus on school, work and other fun things. At the time I never understood why anyone with talent wouldn’t play ultimate as much as they possibly could…until I tried it myself. Tonight for example, instead of driving to Saskatoon for a tournament, I was able to go to the driving range, play hackysack, clean the car, write a blog and finish our “cat house project”. We have always promised Willow a cat house (since she’s envious of her boyfriend Bob’s playhouse) so a year later….voila!

It was a joint project, but Jeff did most of the work. We bought some sisal and cheap carpet from Rona and made up the design as we went along. The curved piece is concrete tube used for pouring pillars. It cost around $100 in materials but something like this would normally sell for about $300! It was actually fun to make and I’m super pumped with the outcome. Willow is really happy with it and we found her in it tonight having a nap. Now to have Bob over to show it off.

Anyways, back to the wedding. Shambles had her wedding at the Glen Eagles golf course in Cochrane. The wedding took place outside the clubhouse. Very classy and we loved the polka dot theme. My table with other ultimate players were convinced that it was a frisbee theme and the little dots everywhere were discs.

Shambles married a gentleman named Tony from Croatia. Although we didn’t meet Tony until the wedding, he seems wonderful and they make such a cute, happy couple. They both looked lovely and the evening was filled with laughter and dancing (anyone knowing Jenn will not find this surprising!). During the slideshow I discovered that Jenn never went through the awkward teenage phase. She looked gorgeous in every photo. I would have thought that maybe her family just omitted photos from the awkward age, but every year was covered. I guess maybe I had enough awkward phase pictures taken for the both of us….

The following weekend we went to wedding #2. Our friend Sarah from UVic married Gregory (a great guy she met in high school and later moved back to Calgary to fall in love). The evening was spent catching up and reminiscing about UVic. They got married at SAIT – what a fabulous venue. The room they got married looked like a church, without being a church – high ceilings, stained glass windows. Then off to the Gateway for dinner and dancing. The original thing about this wedding was the ice cream theme – great thinking! Everyone got an ice cream scoop for their favor (and I had just been complaining about my spoon bending and that I needed a scoop). In the evening, instead of cutting a cake, they had Marble Slab ice cream shop come in and make cones for all of the guests. Mmmm….delicious.

Our friend Alix came to town for the wedding and stayed with us so we got a good visit in. We even made time for mountain biking. Not the best planning on our part as we bummed around all day and then went riding and totally ran out of time. We went from muddy to wedding gear in minutes. If we missed the train we would have missed the wedding so we all got our sprint on and got there on time (barely).

The third and final wedding in July was completely different. My friend Anne that I used to work with in the lab married Mahendra from Sri Lanka. They are two of the nicest, sweetest people I ever met. Come to think of it, that can be said about every couple in the weddings we attended this month!

Anne and Mahendra had a North American style wedding in the morning in a meadow in Banff. The setting was breathtaking as the meadow was surrounded with mountains. Next we headed to the Banff Springs Hotel for a traditional Sri Lankin wedding. That was so neat to see. There was dancing, sari’s, leaves, and a drummer. Just before the reception, we were able to fit in a quick game of squash since we were staying at The Banff Centre.  The reception was at the Buffalo Mountain Lodge – perfect venue for a wedding in the mountains. Fantastic food and we got to meet many of their friends and family. Anne’s relatives from Germany were super entertaining. We had them trying ceasars for the first time. One of her brothers described it as tasting like soup. The overall consensus was that they aren’t bad, but they are way too spicy. They stuck to beer. The next morning there was a brunch back at the lodge to finish off the celebration.

I’ll have to post pictures of the weddings at a later date as this post is long enough as is!

Now for the sad part of this post…the funeral. I am so sad to say that my Dad and Susan lost one of their very best friends, Joe Connolly. He died of a sudden heart attack this week. My dad has known Joe for 49 years! They both moved to BC eventually from where they grew up in Scarborough. They have worked for the same company and lived only miles apart for years.

Joe was a gentle man that probably didn’t have an enemy in the world. He was always one of my favorite of my parent’s friends and always made an effort to come over when I went home for a visit.

My dad and Susan were supposed to be coming to Calgary this weekend for a visit however the trip will be delayed as they are throwing a “celebration of Joe’s life” on Sunday.

Rest in peace Joe! We all miss you dearly.

We are heading out to Banff for the third of 3 weddings this month. Pictures and stories of all the happy couples coming soon!