Canada Day 2005

Howdy folks! Well, the October of relaxation just rolls along for ActiveSteve. The weekend after my nice relaxing trip to Mont Tremblant I had a few fun little plans lined up. The first such exciting plan was a Halloween shooter party on Friday night, followed by the Terri and Adam wedding on Saturday at the Beantown Ranch. Both events were a great time, and are a good prelude to my upcoming hiatus from Canada to the warm winds of New Zealand. I’ll keep the story brief this time, because frankly, I’ve been spending my work days writing, and have plenty of other things to keep me busy at the moment. However, just to keep things consistent, as always, you can check out some of the weekend pictures. They’re all from the wedding, as the Halloween pictures were inconsistent, and not particularly great. Explanation to follow.. read on 🙂

Alrighty then, second bar update in under an hour. How’s that for service! Lucky for me tonight is a slow training night. Just working out on the ole Bowflex, which gives me time to type between sets. That’s basically the reason I’ve been a slacker on updates as well as the bar building itself. I’m basically putting in lots of training time. Evenings and weekends. Running, swimming, spinning, wave-running, working out… Not to mention the snowshoe races, Winterlude duathlon, and upcoming winter adventure race! When I’m done, I’m usually pooped, and just feel like veggin’. Oh yeah, and add to that the intense Olympic fever I’ve got, forcing me to watch extra TV! Looks like I’m getting a bit off topic, doesn’t it? Sorry. Just felt I should explain myself. That and tonight I seem to have a little extra time to type away here. It’s nice for a change. Anyway, on with my story…

You know, for all the complaining people do about how cold and miserable the winters are around here, I must disagree with them. Take for instance a great weekend that I had on Jan 21-22nd. That weekend had all the trappings of a classic Canadian winter outing. A group of 13 of us guys got together to snowshoe out to Jim Doucette’s property out by Calabogie Peaks for a night of Poker, Cigars, beans and booze. What could possibly make for a better outing I ask you? The cabin, although not completed yet, was plenty comfortable for us. I hauled out a proper poker table, and Jim brought out a ton of food. To make the outing even better, Mother Nature blessed us with a dump of like 25cm of fresh snow. Were it not for that, it might have been a slush-fest. Instead, however, we were treated to a nice peaceful trek in the snow (and of course an associated shovelling of a path to the outhouse!). When we got out there, Jim put Darcy, Kevin and myself to work getting things ready for the rest of the crew. Once 3 other people showed up, I declared a shift change, and the 3 of us went out for a great little snowshoe around the area. Kev took a bunch of pictures throughout the weekend, and you can check them all out in his Calabogie Poker Night set.

Hi folks. Well, although summer is traditionally a time of relaxing and getting outside to have some fun, it’s also a time that some people prepare to embark on the next stage of their careers and / or lives. One group of such people that are close to me are my sister, my brother-in-law, and my cute little niece. You see, they’ve just gotten themselves packed up and ready to move away to Riyadh for at least the next two years on a foreign service posting! In spite of the fact that I’ve been training like a madman, and very much self-absorbed, they’ve been very much on my mind, as this is a big move, and means that I won’t get to see Helena entering the terrible twos. I’m going to lose valuable time in my plot to turn her into a little hell-raiser! Oh well, I’ll just have to count on Patrick to do that for me I guess. Anyway, this post is really just to say Bon Voyage, Good Luck, and Thanks for everything to these important members of my Ottawa family. Read on if you’re interested. Also, you can check out some of the pictures of the last few days of their time in Ottawa.