As we wave a not-too-fond farewell to February, there are signs that the winter is on the retreat. The last couple of weeks have seen some increase in the day temperatures and indeed, the maximums have been in the region of a heady 2 or 3 degrees. This, for your average Albertan is positively balmy and there are mutterings that Spring is already here. We should guard against being too premature however as many people are of the impression that winter has not quite finished with us yet and are predicting one more major snowfall before we can break out the shorts and dry martinis on the deck. A few weeks ago notices went up all over St. Albert announcing that snow clearing operations were starting and that you can park your car on the roadside at your peril. The manner by which armies of snow clearing plant and dump trucks then appeared and proceeded to clear all the roads and local streets was most determined and any vehicles in the way would more likely have ended up as rather odd shaped and expensive snowballs. In our little cul-de-sac, a platoon of small machines arrived and proceeded to scurry about moving and dumping the snow into a giant heap in the middle of the road resulting in a rather large roundabout to be negotiated. Huge moraines of snow border the roads after the machines had done their work and these along with our own mini-mountain, are melting fast. Grass verges are becoming exposed, gardens are re-appearing after their annual hibernation and all the sidewalks are clear. Large ponds of water are materialising on the corners of streets and rivers of water from the run-off are starting to grow in size. Personally, I think that that is it for the snow. I can't imagine the St Albert highways department embarking on that significant snow clearing operation if they weren't confident that there was no more to come. Unlike your average householder, they only plan to clear the snow once thank you very much.
Tomorrow is March and the month of our house move. Apart from a cursory tidy up of the garage we have done absolutely nothing in the way of packing. With 31 days to go, we had better get going. Claire has been sorting out removal companies and has selected one for the move. Unlike the UK, removal companies over here charge by the hour, so the faster you move, the cheaper it is. It gives you a bit of incentive to pack and dismantle as much as possible yourself, although there are limits. I'm of the age and inclination that moving house is best left to large men with muscles and experience, whilst I adopt a more managerial role and oversee the entire operation by wandering around the house with a mug of tea and just keeping out of the way.
Charlotte's magic show at school was notable if only for the sight of 'professional' magicians trying to keep a crowd of pre-teens and their indulgent parents entertained for an hour and a half. Apart from one or two quite interesting illusions, most attempts were a bit squirm inducing, especially the trick of 'levitating' a small girl on a table by removing one of the end supports. It would have been more effective if I hadn't clocked the cantilevered wire frame holding her up and the girl had stopped fidgeting. Still, the event was in a good cause and Charlotte seemed to enjoy it, so I guess that is the main thing.
Next week sees me off to the frozen north for a couple of days as I head for Fort McMurray for a site visit. I'm staying in a construction camp overnight and driving myself from the airport to the site. Apparently, all I'm likely to see on the journey is the odd vehicle and caribou, so it should be stimulating then. I have orders to take lots of photos so no doubt I shall be posting some of them here. Watch this space. In the meantime, the weekend awaits. Perhaps a spot of skiing is called for.
Friday, 29 February 2008
Friday, 22 February 2008
Stantec United
One of the many objectives that I had set myself in my new life was to gain some degree of physical fitness. My relationship with anything in that sphere in the past has always blown hot and cold, I am either throwing myself into squash matches three times a week, attending the gym after work or even road-running (normally an occupation reserved for the criminally insane) or I'm the archetypal couch potato and walking into the kitchen to find a packet of crisps is a major effort. Recently, well the last five or so years really, the couch potato ruled and I have made it a condition of my Canadian occupation to overthow it. So, when the Energy and Resources department at Stantec - of which I am a part - decided to put together a soccer night after work when like minded souls could indulge in a little ball kicking, I signed up.
A little background information is probably called for here. Soccer? Surely you mean a little casual baseball or at the very least, ice hockey? This is North America after all. Well the fact is, soccer is big in Canada. Actually, to be precise, it is big amongst kids and women. There is considerable interest in the beautiful game here and there is a growing number of junior and women's leagues playing the sport. Real Canadian men, of course, play ice hockey or football and soccer has historically been derided as a bit wimpish. Football in North America is played on a gridiron amongst men wearing Dallas type shoulder pads, helmets and who have a propensity to shout meaningless numbers before hurling themselves into each other in a re-enactment of Bunker Hill. Soccer is the game which we Brits call football. Football over here is like rugby but without the skill, courage, excitement and primeval blood lust. You want to talk wimpish boys? Take off the body armour, play on real grass and stop interrupting the game every two minutes for ad breaks. Mind you, football does have one attraction which is well worth watching and they are called cheerleaders...
Soccer has also now become popular for companies looking to encourage team work in an indoor environment for comparatively little or no financial outlay. So Stantec, who already have teams playing in serious leagues, are very encouraging when a group of people want to start playing and have put up 50% of the cost of hiring a pitch, buying balls and most importantly, soccer kit. Thus it has come to pass that for a little outlay on my part, I am now the proud owner of shorts, socks and a loud yellow and black shirt with a Stantec logo on the front and the number 7 on the back (that was David Beckham's number, just in case you were interested, although any similarity between him and me starts and ends right there). Now every Thursday is soccer day, although to preserve my health, if not my life, I have limited my attendance to at the most, once every two weeks. It is amazing how much fun getting blistered feet, elbowed in the ribs and kicked in the legs can be. It is also amazing that even after such a long period of inactivity, my internal organs managed to go the distance without any of them expiring although the day after our 90 minute session, they do tend to do a lot of whinging. Claire views this entire exercise with a mixture of mild amusement and tolerance of course, probably waiting for me to get one knock too many and give up and this may be the case. But there is a little more to it other than this fifty year old trying to turn back the clock and fend off heart failure. For one thing, it is very sociable and I get a chance to mix with people I only casually come into contact with during the course of a normal day. It is not taken too seriously and is played at a lively but not frantic pace and there is a serious fitness element to it. It was of great comfort to find out that far from being the eldest I was of a median age, I could still play and most importantly, I could still walk afterwards.
Next Thursday, I must abandon the team temporarily in order to take Charlotte to a magic show being performed at her school. I hope the magician is good - I need him to get rid of the pain......
A little background information is probably called for here. Soccer? Surely you mean a little casual baseball or at the very least, ice hockey? This is North America after all. Well the fact is, soccer is big in Canada. Actually, to be precise, it is big amongst kids and women. There is considerable interest in the beautiful game here and there is a growing number of junior and women's leagues playing the sport. Real Canadian men, of course, play ice hockey or football and soccer has historically been derided as a bit wimpish. Football in North America is played on a gridiron amongst men wearing Dallas type shoulder pads, helmets and who have a propensity to shout meaningless numbers before hurling themselves into each other in a re-enactment of Bunker Hill. Soccer is the game which we Brits call football. Football over here is like rugby but without the skill, courage, excitement and primeval blood lust. You want to talk wimpish boys? Take off the body armour, play on real grass and stop interrupting the game every two minutes for ad breaks. Mind you, football does have one attraction which is well worth watching and they are called cheerleaders...
Soccer has also now become popular for companies looking to encourage team work in an indoor environment for comparatively little or no financial outlay. So Stantec, who already have teams playing in serious leagues, are very encouraging when a group of people want to start playing and have put up 50% of the cost of hiring a pitch, buying balls and most importantly, soccer kit. Thus it has come to pass that for a little outlay on my part, I am now the proud owner of shorts, socks and a loud yellow and black shirt with a Stantec logo on the front and the number 7 on the back (that was David Beckham's number, just in case you were interested, although any similarity between him and me starts and ends right there). Now every Thursday is soccer day, although to preserve my health, if not my life, I have limited my attendance to at the most, once every two weeks. It is amazing how much fun getting blistered feet, elbowed in the ribs and kicked in the legs can be. It is also amazing that even after such a long period of inactivity, my internal organs managed to go the distance without any of them expiring although the day after our 90 minute session, they do tend to do a lot of whinging. Claire views this entire exercise with a mixture of mild amusement and tolerance of course, probably waiting for me to get one knock too many and give up and this may be the case. But there is a little more to it other than this fifty year old trying to turn back the clock and fend off heart failure. For one thing, it is very sociable and I get a chance to mix with people I only casually come into contact with during the course of a normal day. It is not taken too seriously and is played at a lively but not frantic pace and there is a serious fitness element to it. It was of great comfort to find out that far from being the eldest I was of a median age, I could still play and most importantly, I could still walk afterwards.
Next Thursday, I must abandon the team temporarily in order to take Charlotte to a magic show being performed at her school. I hope the magician is good - I need him to get rid of the pain......
Wednesday, 13 February 2008
Madison
With all that is going on at the moment, the Arctic temperatures, the snow, the impending house move and my continuing attempts to get to grip with the workload, I currently find myself in another country for a week on a course designed to make even the most ardent lover of bespoke computer software go running for their gun. Stantec, like all good companies, utilise any slack time between projects in the best way possible - training. So they have dispatched me to the US of A to learn more stuff. So last Sunday I boarded a plane to Madison, Wisconsin and now find myself in a city gripped in their worst winter for 20 years. Claire and the kids were less than amused of course. There is little one can do outside of the house in these temperatures so everyone is getting a little stir crazy and my absence for six days does little to alleviate the problem. Add the fact that the people selling us their house have decided that they want to come back in the near future and remove some of their plants from the garden that they have only just sold to us and Claire is on the verge of wanting to kill somebody.
Refuge in Madison has only limited benefits it would seem. The hotel is fairly non-descript, with no in-house bar or restaurant, so I have to traipse around the local area looking for somewhere half-decent to eat. It is freezing cold and I seem to have hired the only car not fitted with all-weather tyres. I have managed to slip, crawl and slide my way to and from the training centre but it has been a less than enjoyable experience. When I do find a decent bar/restaurant, the only thing that seems to be playing on the sports channels is basketball and if their is a more boring and pointless sport on this planet (next to darts, although that can in no way be termed a sport), I have yet to find it. There is however, one exception to this and it deserves a mention. I did manage to come across a very decent bar/restaurant that is still home to what I think is a dying breed - the dependable, smiling, knowledgable and very comforting bartender. The white apron, the cheeky remark and that remarkable ability to remember your name, what you drink and your favourite movie. Once found, these places are always going to be re-visited and Jim Delaney's will always be a favourite of mine.
There is little else to do really. The hotel does have a pool, although there is some psychological block that gets activated after you have been outside in freezing temperatures that prevents you from wanting to plunge yourself into water. Maybe it's just me. So time passes watching movies, reading books and attending the course. I have managed to get the internet up and running on my laptop, so at least I can update my adventures. Regular calls back home keep me in touch with Claire and the kids, who seem to be behaving themselves reasonably well, although it doesn't compensate for the absence. I miss them all, even the 2.30am wake-up calls and the sound of Eleanor head-banging gently in her cot. Ah well, it's nearly Saturday. If you do ever find yourself in Madison West, driving along Grand Canyon drive, just pop in to Jim Delaney's and say hi to Tom, I can particularly recommend the draught IPA.
Refuge in Madison has only limited benefits it would seem. The hotel is fairly non-descript, with no in-house bar or restaurant, so I have to traipse around the local area looking for somewhere half-decent to eat. It is freezing cold and I seem to have hired the only car not fitted with all-weather tyres. I have managed to slip, crawl and slide my way to and from the training centre but it has been a less than enjoyable experience. When I do find a decent bar/restaurant, the only thing that seems to be playing on the sports channels is basketball and if their is a more boring and pointless sport on this planet (next to darts, although that can in no way be termed a sport), I have yet to find it. There is however, one exception to this and it deserves a mention. I did manage to come across a very decent bar/restaurant that is still home to what I think is a dying breed - the dependable, smiling, knowledgable and very comforting bartender. The white apron, the cheeky remark and that remarkable ability to remember your name, what you drink and your favourite movie. Once found, these places are always going to be re-visited and Jim Delaney's will always be a favourite of mine.
There is little else to do really. The hotel does have a pool, although there is some psychological block that gets activated after you have been outside in freezing temperatures that prevents you from wanting to plunge yourself into water. Maybe it's just me. So time passes watching movies, reading books and attending the course. I have managed to get the internet up and running on my laptop, so at least I can update my adventures. Regular calls back home keep me in touch with Claire and the kids, who seem to be behaving themselves reasonably well, although it doesn't compensate for the absence. I miss them all, even the 2.30am wake-up calls and the sound of Eleanor head-banging gently in her cot. Ah well, it's nearly Saturday. If you do ever find yourself in Madison West, driving along Grand Canyon drive, just pop in to Jim Delaney's and say hi to Tom, I can particularly recommend the draught IPA.
Monday, 4 February 2008
Moving on....again
As previously mentioned, there is a development surrounding the Palmer family and their colonial incursion. Notwithstanding our efforts to settle into our adopted country, we haven't really felt quite right in our new house - so we are moving...again. It is nothing to do with the quality of the house itself. It is well finished, with a bright, modern interior and a large back garden. It just isn't, well, home.
You see, when we came to Canada, we had a mental picture of what our new house would be like. We had specific requirements and this house pretty much filled them. It just wasn't what we pictured. We felt that over time we would get used to the kids sleeping downstairs or the large open nature of the living areas and that our initial mental images were just based on an ideal. It was only when Claire saw a previous house that we had coveted re-appear on the market that we started to question our decision. It was clear that Claire was less than 100% happy with the house and frankly that isn't good enough. We decided to chase that ideal again. The house went on the market and we re-engaged Shirley to act as our realtor. After pursuing, unsuccessfully, the other house that triggered our actions, we began looking in earnest again. Within three days we had a buyer, so the pressure was on for us to find something. I had to admit, the thought of traipsing around another 30 or so properties with the inevitable packing and moving to come filled me with less than joy, but our searching was short-lived.
It is one of those mysterious quirks of life, the unexplained kismet if you like of existence, that when you feel that you have embarked upon a doomed act and doubts begin to multiply in your mind, something happens that justifies everything. When we went to see this particular house, our expectations were not high. To start with it was old (that's the Canadian definition of old remember) - 1986 and it had an undeveloped basement. Now I believe, and always have done, that when something feels right it almost always is. When I walked up the driveway, it felt good. When I went inside, it felt better. By the time I had seen the layout, the potential for great things in the basement, the beautifully landscaped garden with the well appointed decking and hot-tub, the four bedrooms upstairs, the south facing dining nook and the location, I knew this was right. It had what I can only describe as great karma. It looks like a Canadian house should look, which is a difficult image to really describe in writing. It has two floors up with an attractive frontage, but most importantly, Claire loved it too and was already rearranging the decor and planning the interior. We bought it.
The new house is in the Erin Ridge area of St. Albert, a spacious development of mature homes, open parks and trails and populated by families. We know it well from our time living in the basement at Ken and Doreen's and they will be around the corner. The transit stop is 5 minutes walk away, in the summer we can walk to the local shops and restaurants and our new next door neighbour has, we are told, a daughter who has a baby-sitting diploma and is looking for work. Oh joy unbridled. We move on the 1st April and we can't wait. Of course, life must go on at our current address and with our hearts and minds set on Erin Ridge, we do feel there is a temporary air about our living accommodation again. There is the likelihood that Charlotte will have to move schools as well but when all is said and done, I know that this is the right decision.
You see, when we came to Canada, we had a mental picture of what our new house would be like. We had specific requirements and this house pretty much filled them. It just wasn't what we pictured. We felt that over time we would get used to the kids sleeping downstairs or the large open nature of the living areas and that our initial mental images were just based on an ideal. It was only when Claire saw a previous house that we had coveted re-appear on the market that we started to question our decision. It was clear that Claire was less than 100% happy with the house and frankly that isn't good enough. We decided to chase that ideal again. The house went on the market and we re-engaged Shirley to act as our realtor. After pursuing, unsuccessfully, the other house that triggered our actions, we began looking in earnest again. Within three days we had a buyer, so the pressure was on for us to find something. I had to admit, the thought of traipsing around another 30 or so properties with the inevitable packing and moving to come filled me with less than joy, but our searching was short-lived.
It is one of those mysterious quirks of life, the unexplained kismet if you like of existence, that when you feel that you have embarked upon a doomed act and doubts begin to multiply in your mind, something happens that justifies everything. When we went to see this particular house, our expectations were not high. To start with it was old (that's the Canadian definition of old remember) - 1986 and it had an undeveloped basement. Now I believe, and always have done, that when something feels right it almost always is. When I walked up the driveway, it felt good. When I went inside, it felt better. By the time I had seen the layout, the potential for great things in the basement, the beautifully landscaped garden with the well appointed decking and hot-tub, the four bedrooms upstairs, the south facing dining nook and the location, I knew this was right. It had what I can only describe as great karma. It looks like a Canadian house should look, which is a difficult image to really describe in writing. It has two floors up with an attractive frontage, but most importantly, Claire loved it too and was already rearranging the decor and planning the interior. We bought it.
The new house is in the Erin Ridge area of St. Albert, a spacious development of mature homes, open parks and trails and populated by families. We know it well from our time living in the basement at Ken and Doreen's and they will be around the corner. The transit stop is 5 minutes walk away, in the summer we can walk to the local shops and restaurants and our new next door neighbour has, we are told, a daughter who has a baby-sitting diploma and is looking for work. Oh joy unbridled. We move on the 1st April and we can't wait. Of course, life must go on at our current address and with our hearts and minds set on Erin Ridge, we do feel there is a temporary air about our living accommodation again. There is the likelihood that Charlotte will have to move schools as well but when all is said and done, I know that this is the right decision.
Our new home in Erin Ridge
Life, as I mentioned is full of quirks and no few ironies, so it should come as no surprise to us, that as the sold sign went up outside the house, we finally met the neighbours.......
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