May long weekend

Mom and Dad V drove up for the long weekend. Our church held its 50th anniversary celebrations although the actual anniversary was back in January. As a congregation of about 100 persons, we enjoyed hosting over 100 guests for the weekend. A great evening of dinner and entertainment was held on Saturday at a rented gym, and on Sunday lunch was served at another gym we rented for church services so most people stayed between services. Renting of gyms was required because our regular venue isn't nearly big enough for so many people.

Various memorabilia were sold to cover some costs and to fundraise for our (fairly new) school society. I got the T-shirt! Note the recently designed church logo.


Dad and Mom brought bikes along, but since Mom's love of biking is limited to letting Dad go for bike rides without her, one bike got used considerably more than the other. Mom was happy to walk the dog while the rest of us went biking. I now recall why cycling at dusk is not at the top of my fun list: catching mouthfuls and eyeballfuls of bugs isn't nearly as awesome as it sounds.

Dad and I went biking Monday morning to see what was going on downtown for the Tulip Festival. We apparently came out too early, as most things weren't set up yet for the day and things were quiet. But not-so-hectic is how I like it, and we had the scenic bike path along the river pretty much to ourselves.


We also encountered a friendly groundhog, which I recently learned is part of the local wildlife. But not exactly 'wild'.


Monday afternoon we all headed down to see what this Tulip Festival was all about.


Well, apparently it's about tulips. We didn't go last year since we didn't have guests over at the time, and really, why go anywhere if you don't have guests to show around?


Buskers are of course an integral part of festivals, and as usual they are amusing if not a little crude at times.


And what's a blog post without more dog details? Carrie got some yarn in the mail, and Daisy loves nothing better than to rip the packing paper into tiny shreds. We, however, love nothing better than to tie chunks of paper to her and watch her go crazy trying to rid herself of them. Good times...

April in review

Wow. Two posts in one month! I gotta cut back.

So what's happened? Not a whole lot. Weather's a fair bit warmer, snow's gone. The warm-up happened pretty fast; it wasn't wet and melty as long as I expected it to be. For fun, here are some pre-melt and during-melt pictures of the back yard.

Cold and frozen was great; the dog's curly turds were visible and avoidable, which hardly mattered since they were, of course, frozen.


Melting was less awesome. The back yard became a pool of sewage that often as not got tracked back indoors... ugh!


Aaaanyway... I finally got the dog fixed the other day. I'd heard all sorts of crazy prices so didn't know what to expect. I first checked the city clinic, hoping it was cheaper. It wasn't and the soonest they could get us in was October. So I called the local vet, who scheduled us for the very next day. For the operation, there was a whole slew of options, mostly involving hooking up the beast to machines to decrease her chances of croaking during surgery. I opted out of most of it (and was quite surprised these were optional -- I'd expected the worst), so the grand total was a measly $240. I like to think I got a fair deal.

There was also a cone available for sale, since the dog shouldn't even lick the sutures for a few days. Fortunately, we've done very well without one. The first couple of days I wrapped her belly in a length of gauze, and after that she paid very little attention to her new belly button. All that left now is to regrow her new bald spot.


We went to visit family in southern Ontario for the Easter weekend and somehow I managed to take no pictures whatsoever. The visit involved the usual farm stuff: collected some quail eggs, bought some ducks for the farm, extended a chicken coop run, reinstalled Windows (hey why not), did some trapshooting with a 12 gauge shotgun, visited more family, visited friends. Good times...

Last Sunday we had some friends over and feasted like kings. The weather was okay at first, and we could sit on the deck. But then in the space of a few minutes, we saw ominous clouds swirling our way; in even less time the wind suddenly picked up and pelted all sorts of airborne junk at us. And then the skies opened up. We hurried inside... and then realized that we needed the deck table inside for dinner. Needless to say, things got a little wet. Apparently a tornado actually touched down west of the city; I wasn't surprised as I'd seen a green glow to the west right when things were getting ugly.

The gang.


Cannelloni and quail were on the menu.


Dessert: someone brought tiramisu... delicious!


We went to look at some used furniture the other day in Smiths Falls, an hour out of town. We picked out a couple of items, which were delivered this morning.

Our new table and chairs. It only came with five chairs, but the other available sets of six just didn't appeal to us.


A dresser of sorts.


That's about it, I think. Let that tide you over indefinitely :).

Mont Tremblant

So last week a pile of us went to Tremblant resort. Said pile:


The drive took just under 2 hours and it rained most of the way... not great for getting us fired up. We arrived around 9am. Official check-in to the suite wasn't until 4:30pm so a few of us decided to hit the sloppy slopes.

The snow wasn't fresh and in places there wasn't much; the consistency was somewhere between slush and snow, but at least the slopes weren't just icy. Falling didn't hurt much but did make one rather wet.

Here are the views from the balcony... just a few steps from the slopes.


...and the cloudy view from the top of the hill.


...the resort:


...and the little lift that runs the length of the village. Because really, who likes walking?


That view wasn't very wintry; others were:


Spring in the foreground, winter beyond:


The main ride up the main hill was in a gondola. Those are usually nice, being heated shelters and all. No need for that this time. It was a very warm couple of days, so we would rather have sat in an open chairlift to cool off. Except when it rained on day 1... ugh!

Oh, and another thumbs-down for the gondola and for the entire village. It seems to be pretty much a ski resort. Ski, not snowboard. The equipment racks set up all over the village were 90% for skis, 10% for boards. And the gondolas have slots on the outside so you don't have to lug your crap into the cabin on the way up... except the snowboard slots were covered (they come that way from the manufacturer and it's up to the new owner to remove the cover plates) so we had to lug our boards in with us almost every time (we encountered two gondola cabins with open snowboard slots). Not cool at all. Hrmmmph... skiers!


The first day we went out for dinner at a local pub.


We started early on day 2. Because we were resort guests we could take advantage of First Tracks, a perk that meant we could hit the slopes at 8am instead of 9am for the masses. So a few us got up early to get some skiing/boarding in before breakfast.

Day 2 started off very foggy. That made it tricky going down hills, since we couldn't see 20 feet ahead of us, much less the signs needed to direct us to the right chairlifts (some weren't open yet).

"What fog?"


At 9:30 we went back to the suite where the we'd-rather-sleep-in-than-ski girls had prepared a delicious breakfast of waffles, syrup, bacon, fruit, whipped cream, and more.


Then it was back up the hill for us.

There was one spot where our lone skier Josh decided to fall over and go down a side slope face-first. I laughed and laughed. Here he is finding back his gear. Now, notice the earthy patch right behind him (for later).


Later is now. Coming upon the same run some time later, I decided to be adventurous and take the route partially travelled by Josh's face. Unfortunately I promptly ran out of trail and had to do something with my speed. Three options: bare earth, a tree, or up the hill.

I aimed uphill but ended up transferring all energy to said tree. Through my leg. I cried and cried. Maybe not, but it certainly smarted. These pictures I took while writhing in pain and needing a distraction. My knee still hurts a week later. I know, I know, I should have worn a knee helmet.


Day 2 cleared up nicely and it turned out to be nice (uncomfortably sweaty nice) and sunny. Definitely T-shirt weather.


Finally, an action shot. These were difficult to get due to timing. Most photo attempts ended up being of just after take-off or just before landing rather than mid-flight awesomeness or post-landing face plants. Here's one that worked out. Go Bryan!


Local thugs Reuben & Irene:


Local unruly youths Bryan & Heidi:


The goggles seen above are a novelty item I picked up at Whistler for a great (read: high) price years ago. Bullet-hole hologram... the perfect elicitor of stares.


I kind of forgot to take good pictures of the suite, but here are just a couple. A very nice suite with two bedrooms, a loft... and three bathrooms! A little overkill?


It turns out these suites are privately owned and are managed by the hotel. An owner is entitled to a couple weeks' stay per year. And for only ~$400K for a suite like ours. In my estimation, having the place occupied just over 100 nights per year would cover the mortgage payments. Since Tremblant is a year-round resort, that should be achievable. Hmmm...

mont tremblant, here we come!

So a while back we decided to buy some Mont Tremblant lift passes because they seemed like a good deal. The one problem with this was that we then needed to go out and use them at some point. Two per person, even.

Mont Tremblant, Quebec, is the nearest decent place to go skiing boarding, a little over two hours' drive northeast of here. Being owned by Intrawest, the resort is just another Whistler, but on a much smaller scale.

Anyway, our lift pass deal included 20% off certain accommodations. So at the end of March we and some friends will head over there for an overnight stay in a nice two-bedroom suite with a loft. Party time! (I'll get the hats.)



If this turns out to be a decent outing, maybe we'll have to try some New York mountains next year.