Activesteve.com is Born…

Well, alas poor Jonah has been undergoing a bit of a bad spell recently. We just passed his 3rd birthday, and until now, all was pretty good. However, this year has been a bit of a rough one for old Jonah. They say that mutts are generally healthier than pure-breds, but I’m starting to wonder. This year, Jonah has gone through ear infections, allergies, and “bum” issues, which I’d rather not get into. The latest problem is a combination of several, and we’re now worried it might be a sign of something worse. As you can see, he’s wearing the cone of silence this weekend, to keep him from chewing and licking himself raw. You can also see his nose growth which materialized in three days. He’s also got another ear infection! Woes me. Lots of drugs and resting for him. Maybe the new couch will help him. The trouble is that we suspect he may have Lupus. Not a great thing if he does. Basically, his body might be attacking itself (auto-immune disorder). For now, we’re trying a cycle of drugs, to eliminate other possibilities. If he has Lupis, we’ll have to do some biopsies, and find out for sure. Unfortunately, that testing ain’t cheap. But he’s worth it, despite his many annoyances, he is part of the family, and deserves our love and care. We’ll keep you posted if we hear more…

Welcome to another edition of TardySteve, the new website that I should be starting up. As usual, I’m running several weeks behind in updating the World Wide on my happenings. Well, what do you expect right? You get what you pay for ultimately, and the cheques just haven’t been pouring in for all my hard work 🙂 At any rate, I’m sorry I’m slow to write, but between working, travelling, racing, and training, it’s just been a very busy time. But this isn’t a post where I do any complaining, this is a post about celebration and happiness! I’ll start right off the bat by saying a hearty congratulations to my father Robert on his marriage to Nicole a couple weeks back! Yes, it’s true, you don’t have to be a youngster to fall in love, and be a romantic at all. He’s living proof of it. That’s what this little story is going to be all about, my last-minute trip to Nova Scotia in order to attend a private little ceremony for those two love birds. If you’re interested in browsing all the pictures we’ve got from the wedding, head over to the flickr folder. If you’d like to hear more about it, read on.

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.

You know, winter wouldn’t be complete anymore without a hike down to Jim Doucette’s cabin for a good old-fashioned winter poker night in Calabogie! That’s exactly what we did the first weekend I was back from the Dominican Republic. The notice wasn’t totally last minute, but it was a bit rushed for me to make up my mind about going or not. As such, I decided this time around that I would only go out for supper and the games, and head back into town later the same night. After all, I had some pretty intense training to go to the next morning, and I knew that if I stayed over, it would mean only one thing… too much partying with the boys. So sets the stage for the second winter invitational poker tournament at the cabin. This post will give you a little colour around this fun event.