A little too green...

This weekend we went inside, with permission, to check out the progress. Jeff took a bunch of photos, but true to my roots, the only one I think is interesting to put up here is the kitchen view! The colour we picked for the walls has turned out a bit greener than expected, but I'm sure we will get used to it. I like it against the maple cabinets. All that is left now is the flooring, tiles and the plumbing.

A good surprise was that they painted the whole house the same colour. When making the building plan, the painting was to stop at the upstairs hallway, leaving three bedrooms and three bathrooms unpainted. So, I have been spending the last three weeks stressing about paint choices and finally picked a palette. Walking around the house on Sunday, I was relieved that we don't have to paint the bedroom immediately before we move in so that there is something on the walls, and I think we can live with a greenish stony colour for a while. Painting has now moved to a weekend project per room, if necessary.

The bigger news in my mind involves our friends and new neighbours Noel and Dana. Noel and a very pregnant Dana came with us to tour our house on Sunday and all was cheerful and nice. I hadn't seen Dana since November when Jeff was in Costa Rica, so Sunday I finally gave her the baby quilt I had made (#5 for me) and checked out her big belly. Lucky I did, because unknown to Jeff and I, Dana was starting labour. The whole account is posted on Noel's blog and it's great! Just like all babies look the same and yet are completely unique simultaneously, I find birthing stories fascinating! This is their first kid and they went with the mixture of doula and doctor. It sounds like an excellent combination. Happily and excitingly Molly Rose is in our world :)

Move-in Revenge

We have our possession date - March 30th. I have been threatening to take any and all field work jobs around our move-in date, and now there actually is a good chance I really will be away! As some of you may know, when coming out west here (Fall 2004) I drove the u-haul across country and unpacked all by my lonesome. My then-pregnant friend Luka provided snacks, encouragement and door-holding, but the move-in was pretty much a solo show. I vowed revenge on Jeff then and there!

Because our possession date is March 30th, it doesn't give us much time to paint the bedrooms before moving in. Luckily we are paying the builders to paint the first floor, stairwell and upstairs hallway. Currently these spaces are all the same colour, pretty much because I'm such a design novice, I had no idea where to get them to stop the colour with an open floor plan! Over the next month I am accepting all tips and tricks regarding choosing paint colours. I'm finding it oddly stressful... :)

To end, I extend the classic moving invitation - I will provide beer and heartfelt thanks for all volunteer painters, packers and/or movers. Come one, come all! (though don't help Jeff too much - he has to pay for the solo u-haul cross country trauma! haha)

House Update

Nothing too exciting at the moment. We are supposed to get a call today or tomorrow to get our 45 day notice. But this is after I called two weeks ago to check on how the schedule is coming along, and they let us know that we were on the list to get a call later that week. Of course, that didn't happen and I called them again last week to remind them to call us. I got the same speech - "we will be calling you shortly". Then last Thursday, they called to tell us that they will be calling us before the 7th. Gee, thanks.

On the winter front, things are strange in Calgary; same as last year, but strange to me nonetheless. On both Saturday and Sunday, Jeff biked up to the new house. A bit windy, but dry, clear roads and above 0 degrees. At the same time, I drove out to the mountains with my cross-country skis and found almost a meter of snow base right off the road, more as you went up, and around -5 degrees and snowing. So here I was, bundled up and skiing through woods and there he was riding his bike. Strange, yes?

From biking up there, Jeff's house report is that our ceilings have been 'textured' and the drywall has been all taped and plastered. Cabinets, floors and paint to go. This means that we now have to finalize our appliance choices (well, they were finalized before building started, but we can change them before delivery). The main undecided factor there is the washing machine. Anyone have a favorite brand? We also want to upgrade the fridge we picked last summer, but we want to profit from the scratch and dent section of the appliance store which means that we need to pick it out less than a week before delivery. It will all require some coordination.

It looks like I'll be back north by the end of the week. I'll post my first book reviews of 2006 then. That first job in January got me started on a good foot - five books so far! Keep the emails and comments coming, I love hearing from you all.

Colour Schemes

Also on Saturday, I took this picture of the mostly completed siding. The exterior colour scheme is mushroom-y ("harvard slate") siding with sky blue ("pacific blue") roof trim and eaves and white-ish ("winter mountain") trim around the windows. As of our visit yesterday, the blue trim is on the little porch roof too. It's sort of prairie camouflage...

The 'inside' scoop

Well you asked for it! An inside shot. This now proves that I was tresspassing as we are technically not allowed in until we take posession, but it was unlocked and we really really wanted to check it out. I hope none of you will turn us in.

This image is looking from the dinning room to the living room. For those of you living in houses of your own this may look small, but those of us moving from small apartments will gasp at the huge spaces - ha! The little half-wall on the left is the kitchen island-to-be. We are super excited about that fireplace-as-room-divider.

This photo was taken this past Saturday when I got home from the oil patch. We went by yesterday as well and peeked in the windows with our headlamps. I'm happy to report that the drywalling is all up (no longer in piles on the floor as I show here). It does look smaller with the drywall up, I'll admit.

Zoe goes to Tumbler Ridge

Well, I'm up north again, and just got finished a week at one site. Today I got the news that the next job (supposed to start yesterday) has been delayed until Monday, so I have a weekend 'off' so to speak up here in Tumbler Ridge B.C. (google it!). I have a new guy with me that I'm showing the ropes to, and because most of the action of this job happens with the nightshift (crazy stable meteorology) I've been pawning them off on him. You know, so that he can learn... I have to say though, dayshifts are great! All in all, he doesn't seem too resentful (he does have to make the more critical decisions this way) and it's nice to know that in the future there will be more people on staff for these field jobs. I remember thinking that people were crazy when they said that someday I would get tired of jobs involving fieldwork and undetermined schedules, but here I am thinking they may be right... 2006 will see me turn 30 and maybe I'll just want to stay home. (30! am I old? am I young?)

Second topic - yea commenters! I love hearing from you all and I'm sorry I haven't emailed you all long heartfelt messages. Sitting in the middle of nowhere is no real excuse, but it's all I've got to cover my laziness. heehee.

I guess there is no real point to this post, but I'm working (sort of), it's late, I'm tired and have an internet connection available. This makes me feel a little less isolated. Thanks!

Starting off 2006

Today we finally had our mechanical walk through of our house! This means that the electrical and plumbing (and of course the walls, floors and roof) are "finished". Well.... not quite. In our walk through we found a few things missing (wires with no outlet boxes), but only two real mistakes. One is easy - they have an ugly front door on the place, definitely not the one I chose, easy to replace. The second requires more work. As Jeff is really looking forward to having a workshop in the basement, we are both keen to improve the ventilation. With the possibility of a fourth (!) bathroom to be roughed in down there, we decided to ask them to skip the tub and toilet, but to put in the vent fan and sink hook-up. This way we will get a laundry sink and next to it a place where we can install a hood fan over a table, venting to the outdoors. Well, they forgot to do this eventhough we filled out all the right forms. It looks like they will have to cut a hole in the side of the foundation to accommodate it - and that sounds hard to do... I'm excited to think that all these things will be under warranty.

People have told me this, but WOW! - my perceptions have really changed now that we walked through the space. It's huge! Well, it's bigger than a cheap 1 bedroom apartment, that's for sure. The whole process has seemed a bit abstract, but now that we walked around it, ran up and down the stairs a few times, and had our first real conversation with a guy in a hard hat, I'll admit - I'm Excited!

Now we are waiting on the drywall installers. Along with the boom in housing in Calgary there is the inevitable labour shortage, and we are waiting for our closing date notice expected as soon as the drywall is up. Fingers are crossed for early March. I'm going to feel so bourgeois - owning a house... imagine!

Priorities

Re-reading that last post, I had meant to talk more about the skiing and the hiking, but it all seemed to focus on the meals! Hahaha. Oh well... (they were great meals!)

True Day of Vacation

Ahh. Today is my first day of true, full, vacation. My sister and mum left yesterday afternoon, and this morning my only alarm clock was my bladder. It felt like I slept and slept - in reality I lasted in bed until about 8:45 am - it was the ultimate luxury. The familial visit was terrific, but I am now even more excited to have spare bedrooms at my disposal. Setting your mom up on your couch and your sister on the floor just does not seem like the most adult of situations...

We had a terrific Christmas eventhough Mother Nature was less than accommodating. When I was small we used to go cross country skiing around some local parks (around Guelph, ON) and so when thinking about mountain activities for this week, I turned back to the planks and sticks. I rented three sets of skis from the University of Calgary, and we spent some time on the 25th trying on the various boot sizes that had made it into the living room. On the 26th we packed up the car and headed west. Innocently, we stopped at Lake Louise to check out the ice castle and frozen lake before lunch and felt smug that we were headed for 'better snow' over in Yoho for our first ski. When we got to Field, the park guy at the info center laughed at my condition inquiry as the area was well into it's third straight day of rain. Even with rentals, skiing on rocks was not our intended activity. Luckily, there is a FANTASTIC restaurant in Field, owned by the friend of a friend of my mom's. Faced with nothing else to do that afternoon but drive to Golden, we got comfortable and ate! Good stuff.

Arriving at Golden, we checked into the Kicking Horse River Lodge (we reserved a private room at the Hostel), jeff went to the hill to pick up his pass-thingy, and mum, claire and I walked along the river checking out the ice jams. Dinner with our friend tracey at eleven22 perfectly topped our day of great food. With no snow for skiing, mum claire and I spent the morning of the 27th walking along rocky trails, looking out at the valley choked with low clouds. For a late lunch we took the gondola up to the Eagle Eye restaurant at the top of the mountain, still stuck in the clouds. I hear the vistas are breath-taking, I'll just have to get up there again sometime. In good family form, we spent the afternoon eating excellent food and puttering at the bottom of the hill waiting for jeff to elbow himself through the line up for the lower chair lift to get off the hill. After a little decompression/movie watching time at the hostel we went for dinner at the Cedar House. Awesome food once again.

The morning of the 28th we decided to head back to Lake Louise as that had been the only good cross country spot we'd seen all week. The weather finally cooperated and we spent an excellent 4 hours in -5 temps on great, groomed trails. In order to soothe our skied out bodies, we headed to the Banff Hot Springs - the ultimate tourist destination - and soaked with the most diverse crowd of cultures this side of Toronto. As having a good dinner in Banff between Christmas and New Year's without a reservation is about as rare as a sasquatsh, we piled in for the next leg of driving, getting to my favorite restaurant in Canmore. Good food every meal for days is quite a Christmas present!

When we got back to Calgary there was the crazy 'mom sleeping on the couch' situation, a slow quiet morning walking around the neighborhood, one last house check to the NW (we have shingles!) and I got them to the airport with ample time to spare. Though I do still romanticise Toronto, Calgary seemed quaint, small and relaxed yesterday and I was really happy that I could stay behind as mum and sis flew back east. This afternoon I'm heading wall climbing and then to yoga class, and tomorrow I'm going snowboarding at Sunshine - somehow I have to burn off all these three-course meals! It was nice to showcase my part of the world; it made me really appreciate the blind wisdom of the move west last year. I don't think I had any idea this would be my life at the end of 2005. 2006 here I come!

The latest from Tuscany

Tada! Here it is. My house is very simple - a box with windows, a very small front porch, and pretty much the only 'architectural' detail are those funky slim windows at the back of the first floor. I think that's as funky as the suburbs get... This photo was taken Dec. 22. My mum and sis are currently visiting for christmas and the four of us (Jeff, mum, sis and me) drove up for a little tour of Tuscany yesterday. I decided not to take a picture as the only change is that there are shingles on the little porch roof.

This morning we are packing up the christmas dinner leftovers (nut loaf, bread pudding and roasted veggies) and the cross-country skis (rented from the U of C) and heading into the woods! We're skiing around Emerald Lake in Yoho today just to get the blood pumping, and then tomorrow we're skiing and hot spring hunting based out of golden. I'm really excited to get out of town and into the mountains. The weather is beautiful these days and it is snowing like crazy up at the ski hills. My mom got us ipods all around (WOW!! THANKS MOM), so last night we were copying music like mad to rock out on our road trip. Though sometimes stressful, Christmas is a great time of year!

Likely my next post will be the reminiscing about 2005 and musing on 2006 - I feel the urge starting. Stay tuned :)

Vancouver Black Ice

Well, I survived my trip to Vancouver, but I did end up at my office Christmas party with a black eye. On Saturday morning my friend Julie and I got ready to ride and noticed that the seat post of the borrowed bike was seized. We pushed and we pulled, we kicked and we screamed, but it just wasn't budging. Personally, I love my knees; they have put up with a lot of abuse, but riding for 3 hours with a fast group of women I don't know with a seat more than 2 inches too low (!!) wasn't something that sounded fun. We made the decision to miss the ride and head to a bike shop to see if the strapping young men couldn't bust the seat post free. No Dice. But it was a beautiful day, so julie and I headed out on our own with me standing to climb all hills, start from stop lights, really any time I needed some pedal power.

We had a great time, though it was certainly nothing I could call a training ride. After about 2 hours we were heading home along Cypress Ave. (St.?), basically sprinting between stop signs and having a merry old time, when up ahead loomed a very shiny roundabout. Being familliar with ice, I slowed right down but I guess not slow enough, and my poor balance on a too small bike left me hitting the pavement. Classically, Julie couldn't get around me on the ice and fell too. As there were no cars on the road, we sat there laughing for a good while. Thinking about it, that was the first time I had fallen while road biking. The black eye came from my sunglasses as I rolled a bit when I fell. We then went slowly home, saw a number of cars slidding sideways down side streets, and decided we could rush and make it to a 1:15 yoga class. Standing outside the yoga studio, we saw the group of women we would have been with blaze past us. I am so very happy we decided to ditch that ride - they were crazy fast!

Switching to Julie's bike we went for a ride on Sunday as well, but the black ice was just freaking me out. No wonder everyone in Vancouver seems to have a mountain bike as their commuter. That city is all about traction!

Conflicting Activities

Tonight I am heading to Vancouver for my company Christmas party. I work for a small office of a larger west-coast company, so tomorrow night's shindig will have over 100 co-workers and their partners, niether of whom I have met. This will make my fourth work-related party this week, though it is likely to be the strangest. I know maybe 6 people at most. Four of us will be there from Calgary and we will all be seated for dinner together in the classic satelitte office pack. We are those strange folk from the backwoods, way over on the other side of the mountains. :)

In the midst of all this drinking, I need to be on top of my water intake as I will be staying with my friend Julie who is a strong cyclist. She has me scheduled for a 4 hour ride on Saturday (tomorrow!) and a three hour ride on Sunday morning. She assures me that I will not be heading straight up Grouse Mountain and that it will be 'easy'. Yeah, well, I've been on a few of her 'easy' rides and I think she has lost sight of the fact that I have not been on my bike since early September. For most of the good weather this fall I was up north at a rig! Adding this to the inevitable hang-over and I may be making a number of coffee stops. I am excited about being out there on the road, but am daunted by the company - both will be group rides with seriously fast women. I'm hoping they don't mind the green looking new girl hanging on at the back, drafting with all her might!

Juan de Fuca

I got my pictures back from hiking along the Juan de Fuca trail. I went a few weekends ago with my friend Kris who lives in Victoria. None of the pictures of me are all that great, but I think this one is just funny. Now that's a big tree. I'm not looking my best, but i'm small compared to the tree and I'm sure none of you will be looking to closely (please).

We went from Sombrio Beach, east to the suspension bridge. This portion of the trail has the 'difficult' rating, and the trail past the bridge to Chin Beash has the 'most difficult' rating. It was nice to try what is considered difficult on part of the West Coast Trail system, to get an idea of what to expect should we hike the whole thing one day. It is certainly harder than Algonquin! The Canadian Shield is nothing compared to this mud.

The day was beautiful and there was some sun in between bouts of clouds. A classic costal November day. After the hike we went to the Tugwell Meadery. I have to say, mead is tasty stuff!

Business as Usual

I was waiting to post until I had a new photo of the house, or something else equally fun. However, I have recently been frustrated by a friend's blog that hasn't been updated in a month (!), and so I am trying not to live by his example.

In terms of the house, there are windows and a plywood roof (no shingles yet) and the electricians are freezing their noses wiring up the place. Currently it is -15 today, and has been all week. I went out there yesterday to get you lovelies a photo, but unfortunately Jeff ran the batteries to 0% while in Costa Rica. I did have a nice chat with the electrician, so the trip wasn't completely in vain.

In terms of Jeff, he's happy and tanned. He had a great vacation surfing and exploring, fixed his damaged rental truck using a multi-tool and some hot water (three cheers for plastic bumpers!), and had what sounds like a typical Costa Rican adventure. He brought back the requisite photos of geckos in the hostel room, hammocks on front porches, and horribly unstable bridges, along with a few pounds of coffee and a liter of my favorite kind of salsa. Huevos Rancheros anyone?

In terms of books, on my last rig-trip I read the three novels in Alexander McCall Smith's series Portuguese Irregular Verbs. Personally, I like the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series better. Anything of excitement happens in the third book, leaving a lot of petty suspicions for the first two novels. The series is perfectly entertaining, but there are certainly better books out there.
Tomorrow I should pick up my photos from my Juan de Fuca trail hike, and will post any if I look o.k. - Ha!

Master A; Master Eh?

After days of no news from Jeff, he finally was rested up enough to pass on his views of La Ruta on Monday night. To quote:
"one of the biggest challenges of la ruta was the lack of information - the whens and wheres were never available. we didn't know where to leave our bags,when shuttles were coming, where to clean or put our bikes. it was all pretty random. the type a's were shitting themselves. our shuttle was so late on sunday that my bike was still on the truck when the race started. i used the nervous, pissed of energy to get to where i belonged in the pack. the stage started with a long tempo climb on good pavement before it descended into a loose, sloppy decent - fun!"
o..k..ay... fun... sure.... crazy guy :)
Also, before he left Jeff did what he always makes fun of people for - he put a computer on his mountain bike. But, because of this, he was able to give this tid-bit:
"the most notable thing about costa rica is how steep the mountains are - up, up, up. at some points we were racing at the breakneck speed of 4.5kmh. we would have been slower, but then we would have fallen over." oooo, that sounds painfully steep.
For those of you who evaluate people by numbers, the official results are posted at http://www.adventurerace.com/eng/results2005.htm Scan down the page and Jeff came in 45th. (He's Master A, for those of you not reading my titles).
The bum is now taking an easy week on the Pacific coast. When he gets back with the camera, I'll post a picture of two if he managed to get any snapped. I am absurdly proud of him, and hence the posting. This is me, shouting from a mountain top. By the way, did I mention he's awsome?

The first 'inside' look

Tada! Walls, floors, stairs and... a second floor! Half the roof trusses are up, but no roof yet (you can tell by all the sun pouring down our stairs). I would post the roof progress next week but I'll be on vacation! It's funny, at my apartment this morning the weather was not so nice, mostly cloudy and dark, but drive up to Tuscany and voila! Sun. it's going to really nice to live on the west side of the city - so far the weather has been very different from dowtown almost every time I've been up there :)

Jeff and I know a few other people who live up in Tuscany, and this picture from our stairs is for them. If you look really closely you can see Brent's deck about three rows of house-crops away. Noel and I walked from their little pod over to ours this morning and it took exactly 7 minutes. It's pretty great to have friends so close by. Now that I know it only takes 7 minutes to walk there I'm hoping I can fight off the car culture of the suburbs and never drive over. I'm trying to get used to my new neighbourhood on foot first so that walking around becomes a default habit, just like now living downtown. Next assignment: Check out the walk to the grocery store. Wish me luck!

...and he's off!

Well, Jeff flew off to Costa Rica. Dropping him off at the airport tuesday night was a strange feeling; I'm starting to realise how understanding he is about all the time I spend taking off for the field.

La Ruta starts tomorrow at ~5 am, so right now Jeff is getting shuttled from the main hotel in San Jose out to the coast. Looking out my office window onto the grey and brown view of Calgary, I can't even imagine the greens he must be seeing. Apparently this has been one of the wettest seasons in Costa Rica ever, what with all the hurricanes and such, and so the jungle must just be busting out! I have a feeling though that this is not so good from the racing perspective....

Strangely, tomorrow is a holiday in Alberta, and so I'll be heading to Tuscany to check on the house. I hope www.cyclingnews.com posts a report of the first day of La Ruta. Other than that, I have a quite weekend to myself. I'm now not heading north until the 22nd. I realise it's been over a year since I've been home without Jeff around! Crazy.

The Pfeifdom

Tada! Here it is... All the hassle is starting to take form. I am scheduled to go into the field on Thursday this week, but the client company is notoriously poorly organized in this case (I was supposed to be up right now), so if it gets postponed again - next week I'll show you all my second floor!!!! ROCK. (does that sound dirty? hee hee)

Currently we have a bit of a timing dilema. I'm heading north for a while and then for a vacation kayaking off Vancouver Island, while Jeff is off racing and surfing in Costa Rica for the rest of the month. Once the folks finish the framing they will not continue until we walk through and agree that all the walls and windows are in the proper spots. So, unfortunately it looks like the next building delay will be our fault. I feel pretty bad, whining about how slow they were to start our lot, and then not even being around when they will want to start the next phase...

On the Jeff front, La Ruta is an individual race so there will no time penalty excuses if you are watching his progress on-line. When I find some results I'll post them here too (or at least the link). The official race site is: www.adventurerace.com

in between laundry

Ahh Saturdays. Although I got back from Tumbler Ridge on Tuesday, I just didn't have the heart to tackle the laundry pile the next day. (No matter what, we have to take the day after we get back off, or sometimes two in a row - pretty nice eh? definietly a policy I support) So, today Jeff is off for a 4 or 5 hour ride around some mountains leaving me to the adult responsibility of cleaning up after myself.

To distract myself in the 45 minute increments between loads, I've been researching a new climbing harness. Am I really so addicted to gear?!? You see, I have found that in Calgary the ladies who use their legs all summer, use their arms all winter. More specifically, when I'm in town I've started climbing on Wednesdays with some friends from the SpinSisters mountain bike club. It's awsome. I think I went climbing 3 times in 2004, maybe twice in 2003. I used to go more often but it just seemed to slip away from me. Having a group to go with certainly helps the motivation. Last week I was working on clearing shallow overhangs. I'm no pro, but getting back into something that I know deep down my body remembers how to do, has a very steep and satisfying learning curve. I realise I should keep my field bonus for unexpected expenses associated with the house, but keeping with my long tradition of fiscal irresponsibility, I'm going to spend it on toys! Thank god climbing is cheaper than biking..... :)

This last time in the field I was training my new co-worker Niels, so I didn't get as much reading done. However, I did get to a Soho Press murder mystery, Thirty Three Teeth written by Colin Cotterill, a british author based in Laos. I really like the fiction coming out of Soho Press, as it's mostly international authors writing mystery novels - now that's a good combination! I'm now just finishing Empires of the Plain, by Lesley Adkins, about the life of Henry Rawlinson, the interpretation of cuniform writting and the discovery of the early history of Babylon and Persia. Gripping stuff! The Greeks had nothing on these civilizations. Although they are both very different, I recommend them both.

Well, I'm off to switch the loads!

Not unexpected

After being up in Tumbler Ridge, again, I came home and went to see my new house. I have gotten the word that things are now 'officially' a month behind schedule. I'm sort of pissed off because there is a lot two or three east of ours that did not even have a basement when I left, and now it has walls. And here is our plot. I guess I should be excited that at least there is wood stacked next to it and a pickup truck nearby. They have not forgotten about it, and hopefully, fingers crossed, by next week I will have a picture of walls!!!

Patience.