Dread Delayed

My first official snowboard lesson has been cancelled due to insane amounts of wind chill. Now I am sitting at home working on my annual Christmas craft. To do this I am sitting at the computer and I decided to listen to music. I thought I would put some of my old favorite cds on the puter here so that I could get them onto my ipod for the commuter soundtrack. This has caused me to discover that when I was young I knew people who could control the universe and concepts of time a we know it. My copy of King Cobb Steelie's You Said A Mouthful has a total playing time of 49:17:02:47. Wow! What is that? 49 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes and 47 seconds? That is some long groove they've got going...

Dreading the Chairlift

Just in case knowing the weather here in Calgary isn't a number 1 issue for you, let me tell you - It's COLD here. This weekend I broke out the cross country skis, shoveled off the car and went to the hills. I lasted about 10 minutes (which may be exaggerating a bit). It was around -23 Celsius plus the wind chill. The bike trainer in the basement never looked so lovely. On Saturday afternoon (at about -22) I pulled the amateur move of walking the 7 minutes to and from the grocery store. I was bundled up and was enjoying the bracing cold, but I forgot one key scientific fact: lettuce does not do well in -22. Neither does celery, bananas, mushrooms, tomatoes or apples. Luckily my dinner was saved as the ice cream pulled through just fine! I know that when Jeff is away and I'm cooking for one my meals suffer, but a Sunday night of mostly tea and ice cream was particularly unique. On Monday the temp hit -28 with a wind chill of -42! When I successfully walked the 6 blocks from the bus stop I felt like I had accomplished something significant. I even called my mom to tell her of my latest extreme sport - bus commuting! This morning it was a balmy -20 again (warming up!) and I am faced with a looming dread - my first snowboarding lesson is tonight. Not only I have the 'first-ride-of-the-season-do-I-really-know-how-to-get-off-the-chairlift?' dread, I might just lose my nose to boot. I've researched it though and a comforting thought is that they shut down the chairlift at COP (here in town) when the wind chill gets below -30. Isn't that thoughtful. Yikes that's cold. And Jeff is missing the whole thing. Last night he called from his hotel room in some small town in Texas and left the comforting message that including the wind chill, there is 100 degrees Fahrenheit difference between us. He's been showing the pilots he's working with the snow reports for Sunshine and Lake Louise and they just simply don't believe it, and frankly I'm in a bit of denial myself! Thanks for the support, honey.

Getting out

Here are some photos of the last touchdown of the Roughriders in last week's game against the Stampeders. As you can see I was in the middle of a very very green section (plus, note the mesh backed hat). I went with a friend who had an extra ticket and it was so good to spend the afternoon at the football game. I had been travelling so much and sitting there I realised that I had really isolated myself. Surrounding yourself with crazy football fans really helps to put your life in order. Ha ha! I'll bet you've never read that in any self help books. Overall I remembered that don't go to big sports events not because I don't like sports (I do) but because I don't like sports fans. They are so strange! All those people who act en mass sort of freaks me out; it just can't be sane.

Other than that things are good. Jeff is working way more than when he was at the bike shop, but he's enjoying the challenge and hasn't really gotten cranky about it yet. Me, on the other hand, am finally looking at a drilling season that I think I'll be able to stay home for. Even before the whole income trust thing, the gas industry has really slowed down. There is very little capital development going on these days, or maybe it just seems low compared to the insane pace of the last two years. Luckily, at work we have many other projects and I am doing some surface water modelling. I'm taking a little air vacation and am going back to my first type of environmental fluid, water. I'm still friends with my hydrology TA and I emailed her to let her know that some of what I learned in school is actually now playing a big role in paying my mortgage. How very exciting. So kids, stay in school and only go to football games if you absolutely have to. :)