April 30, 2004 - Friday night in Inglewood

CKUA.  93.7 FM.  Friday night blues party.  Makes me want to grab my harmonica and rip off a few good blues riffs, maybe I should do that.

It's funny, time seems to be moving so slowly.  In fact, time has never moved so slowly for me in my life, except maybe when I was fifteen years old and had ordered my first Columbia House shipment of fifteen cassettes tapes and had to wait six to eight long, long weeks for it to arrive.  What was in that musical selection?  I remember Queensryche, Ratt, GNR, Led Zeppelin, stuff you can easily download today in a matter of minutes.  Imagine that.  I had to wait six to eight weeks for my shipment...now I can download it overnight for free, if I so desire.  Well, you'll be happy to hear that I haven't been downloading much Ratt lately!  The only think I've attempted to download recently is an Arrogant Worms song called "Proud to be a Banker", though I couldn't find it anywhere.

So it seems to me that since the dawn of the internet,  there's only now two guaranteed ways to slow time down in this furious world of ours; commit a felony and get yourself some jail time or get your wife pregnant.  I can vouch for the second, my only experience with the first is a brief stint in the North Battleford cop shop after a Mai Tai drinking contest and a midnight tour in my blue '69 Dodge Dart, though in that state, time becomes a little warped anyway.

But the second, oh yes, I can vouch for the second.  My little baby is busy growing ounce by ounce in my beautiful wife's bountiful buddha belly.  It is taking so long, but I suppose I  should be thankful and trying to enjoy the quiet while it lasts.  I guess I'm just anxious to meet the little person face to face.

I haven't been writing a lot of journals lately, but you can expect the "new parent" effect with plenty of pictures and words after Fuzzy's arrival in August....if I can find time!

Kris

February 29, 2004 - Sunday morning in Inglewood

Three months into the new year, I'd say things are going very well for us.  Work has been busy but we've also managed to get away for a couple great weekend trips.  We recently went to Montreal and Quebec City to meet up with some friends we made in Argentina.  We also went to visit Marty and Jen in Ottawa for Marty's birthday.  From Ottawa we drove up to Sharbot Lake to stay with my aunt and uncle at their cabin.  It was such a treat to stay at a warm, secluded cabin in the middle of the wilderness.  The roads leading into the cabin were blocked with snow so we had to pack our gear on sleds and hike into the cabin across the lake, which is something we've never done before!

Just a short one for now,

Kris

December 25, 2003 - WestJet flight to Toronto

I think I might be on the verge of a weekend that actually involves sleep.  We are in the air over Winnipeg at the moment en route to sweet home Borges in Brantford after a hectic couple weekends in Saskatoon.  We're looking forward to some great Portuguese cooking and gallons of big John's turbo wine.

We had a great Christmas eve last night at "Casa Barbara" with the Davidsons.  And they really went to town on the prezzies!

I can't wait to settle into that nice couch downstairs and do lots of nothing, definitely a great chance to recharge the batteries.

Kris

November 22, 2003 - Calgary, Alberta

Winter is here and it's not going away.  The thermometer reads -25 degrees this morning so I likely won't be going for my Saturday morning walk!  It has been quite cold here for the past few weeks but I must admit I have been enjoying it.  There is no better excuse to hang around the house reading, drinking coffee and listening to great music than when it's cold enough outside to freeze the nuts off a polar bear.

Our old buddy Toddy Van Hees arrives Monday and will be with us for Christmas and we are very happy he's decided to come for a visit.  We have all sort of activities lined up for the next few weeks including my brother's stag party and wedding which is sure to be a raging success!  I'm also going to send Toddy out with Uncle Gerry for some he-man activities while I'm slaving away at work.

It is Ana's birthday on Tuesday, her favourite day of the year!  So make sure you send her an email, she will love it!

Kris

October 19, 2003 - Calgary, Alberta

It's the middle of October in Canada and the weather is still beautiful!  It is a lovely Sunday day and Ana and I just returned from having a coffee at the Serendipity cafe on 9th Avenue, a few blocks from home.  I went out earlier this morning for a round of "disc golf"; which is golf played with a frisbee-like disc (check out www.pdga.com).  There is a course ten minutes from here and it is absolutely free to play so I've been honing my disc throwing skills every weekend morning.

We had a big housewarming party last weekend and lots of family and friends were over to enjoy it.  Ana's folks came from Brantford for the long weekend and as well my dad and brother Curtis were here.  It was quite a hectic weekend but a lot of fun and gave us our first opportunity to show off our new house (I'll post some pictures here once we get them developed).  It has been so nice having our own place and waking up in our own bed every morning!  I guess most people take that for granted but for us it is something special.

We are planning a trip to Saskatoon next weekend to attend Sheldon Olson's wedding so that's sure to be a blast.  Besides that we (thankfully) do not have much planned up until Christmas, which should give us lots of nice quiet weekends at home - also quite a novelty for us!

Carrie is playing in Calgary tomorrow night and Tuesday and plans to stay with us here so we're looking forward to seeing her.  One of the places she is playing at is the Ironwood Stage and Grill, which is a five minute walk from our house, very convenient!

What else?  I've been lucky enough to reconnect with a couple of great friends from a long time ago; Ian Lavoie and Jeff Stone, neither of which I had seen since university days.  In fact, we all went for a round of disc golf together yesterday that was a good time.  That has been one great advantage of being in Calgary, there are loads of Saskatchewan people here; therefore some familiar faces.

Time to get back to my quiet Sunday (more coffee!!).

Kris

September 7, 2003 - Calgary, Alberta

Finally, it's all coming together.  Besides hemorrhaging dollar bills out our backsides, the past few weeks have been superb.  In that time we have both found jobs with WestJet, bought a new Hyundai Santa Fe, bought a condo, and bought enough stuff to fill our new place, such as couches, tables, lamps, carpets, beds, etc, etc.  Ana and Barb have been burning up the garage sales getting deals on all sorts of stuff.  In fact, I'm going to produce Ana's brand new reality television show called, "Extreme GarageSaleing -  Hosted by Junkaholics Ana and Barb".

The place we bought is in a groovy neighbourhood called Inglewood and steps from the river.  It is a semi-detached townhouse style condo which means no yard work and no shoveling of snow, yayyyy!  It is a three bedroom place with plenty of space so all visitors are welcome.  We have even decided to put a home gym in the basement for the amusement of my musclehead friends (Mike) who like to punish me.

Ana is working in the Marketing department of WestJet and loving it, especially since most of her co-workers seem to be quite insane.  I am working in the department they refer to as "Beanland" as the JD Edwards guy and really enjoying it.  The staff at WestJet constantly walk around with these big smiles plastered on their faces, leading me to believe that there is a "free drug" policy at work as opposed to the regular boring "drug free" office environment.  Either that or they really do enjoy their jobs.  It is an amazing company to work for as almost all of the employees are shareholders and are all focused on keeping costs down and, therefore, profits high.  I think we are going to be quite happy there.  The best part is that we can now fly for very cheap all across Canada so perhaps our traveling days are not yet numbered!

Kris

August 9, 2003 - Calgary, Alberta

30 degrees again today, there is nothing better than a Canadian summer!  Ana and I are back in Calgary after spending a couple weeks in Saskatchewan attending some great family functions.  My grandparents had their 50th wedding anniversary, Curtis and I threw a huge weekend stag for Marty, and of course Marty and Jen got married so it was an extremely busy time.  Most of the Olson and Gustafson family were in town so we had some nice visits with everybody.  The only bad experience was this wisdom tooth I had extracted, which had about nine roots and weighed half a kilo.  Now there is a giant hole in the back of my mouth that doesn't seem to be filling in.  Perhaps that's more information than you were looking for...

We are still hard on the job hunt and both of us have several opportunities we are now working on.  We are really looking forward to getting settled here and into a routine.  Ana's been hitting the garage sales stocking up on the things we will need for our place, which is pretty much everything from wine glasses to lamps to pots.  We've been avoiding any large purchases until we definitely nail something.  We've also been out test driving cars and looking at houses and condos so that has been keeping us occupied.

We have no other big plans for the rest of the summer so we'll just keep our heads down hunting for work and enjoying this time we have with Barb and Gerry which has been a real treat.

Just got off the phone with my friend Ian Lavoie whom I haven't seen for about five years.  He lives in Calgary now and is on the way over with his little son Jakob for a visit!

Kris