24/02/08
Well kids, things can really change overnight around here. Yesterday, the riding was seemingly easy, with great weather and good wind. I was in very high spirits for the evening, and decided to stay up a while and have a few beers with all the motorcross people. After all, they were going to be up late and making noise, so there wasn’t much sense in trying to go to sleep early anyway. I also figured that the next day would be a pretty easy day, as I was only heading a little over 85km, and the trip was supposedly pretty much downhill. That meant I could have a somewhat lazy morning, and not have to be on the road right away. However, to add to the issues related to staying up late drinking beers, it also started pouring while we were still all outside on the front deck. Not nice. Luckily, I had the foresight to put my bike, trailer, and most of my gear under a protective roof so that it was kept nice and dry. Anyway, read on, check out the map, pictures, etc.
Well, another day has passed, and certainly not any less interesting than the past few for me. It seems that wherever I go, interesting things will follow me. When I last wrote, I was reporting from the Sunrise Lagoon Resort, where we had been storm stayed as a result of the cyclone that had just passed through. Well, not only were we stuck there, the boats travelling between the islands had actually been canelled as well, so even if I wanted to go somewhere, there was no way for me to move around anyway. Not only that, but my nagging illness wasn’t going away either, and it seems to follow me in waves, with hours of feeling okay, followed by hours of feeling totally crappy. Those crappy hours are increasingly annoying, and has resulted in people offering me all sorts of medications and remedies from their homelands. I’ve accepted a few, but none seem to actually be doing me any good yet. Besides that unfortunate stuff, read on for more tales of fun from Fiji with ActiveSteve!
I just had a look at the last time I posted anything on the bar project, and realized that I’m way overdue. Last posting was January 16th!! My apologies to all my loyal readers 🙂 Although things haven’t been steady, I have definitely made a lot of progress since the last update. I had to first go out and buy a router table, and then put it to extremely good use by routing all of the various pieces for the bar. Who knew cabinet making was such labour-intensive work? I can definitely appreciate why custom-built cabinets cost big bucks. Every step along the way has unique challenges. In the picture to the right, I’m holding up a couple of my favourite examples of routed wood. These pieces are for the cabinet doors. I’m not even sure of what all the steps were called for those pieces. I think I did some rabbets, mortises, tenons, and even some radiusing. Of course, when it’s all done, to you, it’ll just look like a cabinet door. To me however, I’ll remember that at the onset, it was a rough piece of 1×6 Clear Red Oak, 8 feet long, and some 1/4″ Oak plywood! There’s a certain satisfaction in doing something all by myself from scratch. It can be pretty relaxing.
Well, it’s that time of the year, isn’t it? Office Christmas parties. This year, as a result of vaious things, I’m ‘lucky’ enough to attend 5 different events work-related. First, there was a luncheon at the Keg in the Market for all the employees under my executive director. Decent food and a few drinks, with nothing too outrageous taking place. Second event was a CRTC-wide Christmas party held, of all places, at the Legion over in Hull! The food again was good, and there was a fun band. The odd part about this party was that it is attended by mainly Broadcasting people from the CRTC (95% of the attendees). What does that mean? Well, I didn’t really know anyone, and it was on a work night, so Jody and I didn’t stay too long. Next up was Jody’s work party, which was held at the Rideau Club! Hoity toity, fancy schmancy, say what you will, either way you look at it, Suit and Tie is required. That doesn’t mean they stay on all night though! Like last year, this party turned out to be a spectacle of people getting progressively ‘tipsier’ as the night wore on. Now this is what I call and office Christmas party! I’ve put some of the pictures up on flickr, but some, out of respect for the people I didn’t know, were left out! I had originally planned not to drink too much, since Kev and I were planning to go snowshoeing the next morning. However, all that changed when Jody accidentally knocked a full glass of beer (not unlike the one in this picture) all over my suit! Since I smelled like a brewery, I decided I might as well play the part. Needless to say, we closed the party, and there was much bellowing, singing, and dancing. Luckily, we went home at a reasonable hour, and I got enough sleep to go exercising the next morning.
