#32 - Playoff Time

So the Canucks made the playoffs. Legitimately clinched a spot. In fact, they are now 3 points ahead of Minnesota for top spot in the NW division. In fact, they are also giving Anaheim a run for their money for 2nd in the conference. They have a game in hand over the Ducks and are just on a tear. Mind you their games are close and usually involve a 1 goal win, but a win is a win is a win. When you have Roberto "Bingo Bango Bongo" Luongo in net for you, you really have to not make a showing to lose a game. I'm very excited for this year's playoffs. Tanya and I are going to attempt to catch some games at pubs and soak up all the playoff excitement and atmosphere. If you want to join us, give me a shout!!

Not much else to write about right now. Well, can't think of much to write since I am so tired. Work is going well. I took a day off last week which seemed to somewhat energize and recharge my batteries. I was recalled back to Nanaimo last week to be an Environmental Monitor watching a Log Jam being unjammed. The Koksilah River was flooded and ended up flooding Cowichan Bay Road (just google map these names and you'll see where I'm talking about). They brought in a grapple yarder to pull the logs out which was really neat. The significant portion of the work though was being back in Nanaimo. Tanya had Spring Break so she came out and we made it a mini-vacation. It also brought us some closure on our life in Nanaimo since we left so hastily without truly saying goodbye in November. While Nanaimo is quiet and everything is so convenient to get to, it is also a little too quiet for us big city folk who enjoy going to shops and places after 6pm at night (everything closes at 5 or 6 in Nanaimo, except a few restaurants). We really discovered that Nanaimo is a great place to visit, but in the end, we are very happy to have moved back home.

That's about it for now. Sleepy. I'll post on the experience of watching the Canucks vs. Flames this Saturday night live and let you know if we make it onto HNIC!!

Post #31 - Facebook

So, like Goma, I've received some invitations to join Facebook. This wonderous new website system that seems to model itself off of Myspace or Blogger or any number of these do it yourself website systems. The difference it appears is that everyone under the yellow sun has discovered Facebook except for me and Goma. I decided to go for it and create an account. Wow, not only was I inundated with requests from people to add me and add them to my site, I discovered that Facebook is the new version of alumni.net (which tells you how old school I am that I still reference that site). I have literally found people from not only high school and elementary school, but even pre-school. That has to be pretty amazing. My contact list is small, but seems to grow every day, especially surprising as to how many people are online with Facebook that I would never really have expected. So to answer Goma, while I am a major proponent of going out and meeting new people in real life, I would say that to get in touch with people you already know and haven't perhaps seen in the last 10, 15, 20, or even 23 years, Facebook.com is the way to go.

I'm keeping this brief since I want to watch last night's Family Guy before I go to bed, but hey, look at those Canucks. Lacklustre performance last night, but 14-2-3 in their last 19 games. Not too shabby. 1 point out of a playoff spot and they really seem to have Detroit and Nashville's numbers. Hopefully they have Colorado and Minnesota come playoffs.

Tanya and I have tickets (thanks to the 2 hour Timeshare presentation we sat through 2 weeks ago) for the Vancouver vs. Calgary game this saturday on HNIC. We'll be the ones holding up the "Bingo Bango Bongo" "Will you marry me Luongo" signs!! Keep your eyes peeled and your VCRs/TiVos/PVRs set to record 7pm on CBC!

GO CANUCKS GO!!!

Wow, Part II

So we arrived at night on November 29th back in Richmond after our harrowing caravan journey through Nanaimo to the Duke Point Ferry Terminal and made it to my parent’s house to park the U-Haul truck. However, the truck got stuck and so we spent a couple of hours with a bag of kitty litter trying to unstuck it which we did.

The next day we drove to our new place and with the help of my parents and brother and Tanya’s parents we moved in. However, with the mess of our apartment, we decided to postpone our first night a day as it took us longer to return the moving truck since it got stuck again once it was unloaded. Argh!! However, after a good solid weekend of unpacking and help from family and friends, we really got settled in.

I started my first day at Vancouver SEACOR on December 1st with a half day of orientation and paperwork. I’m part of the Remedial Systems Group in Vancouver with 50% of my time focused on that and 50% focused on regular site assessment work. Very interesting new work and some of the same stuff as in Nanaimo but new sites and different challenges. For example, it took me two hours to get back to Vancouver from Abbotsford one afternoon. A distance of about 90km. Conversely on the Island, two hours is the time to get from Nanaimo to Victoria (125km) or the almost time (2.5 hours) to Ucluelet from Nanaimo (180km). A trip of 90km is the approximate distance from Nanaimo to Union Bay to the North or Cobble Hill to the South. Each trip would take approx. 50 minutes. So yeah, some definite differences with travel times and mileage, but my field work load has been light, very light, so I’m happy about that as winter sucks for field work. As I am now two months into my new position in Vancouver, I have to say that the atmosphere is very different in Nanaimo. Not better, but different. The lunch room is awesome!!! and overall, I am very happy to be working in the Vancouver office. Plus the fact that I got a very nice raise last week. =D

I must say that things are different and we are very happy to be back in Vancouver. The commute isn’t too bad – ½ hour to work and ¾ of an hour home, usually. We are closer to friends and family, and we have all the great food here. Which is really the main reason we moved back. =) That and Tanya wanting to take UBC courses next year. Actually, I’m thinking of going back and finishing my Arts Degree, perhaps even do an MBA. Although we'll see where things go. Right now, I'm just happy to be moving forward with my career as a consultant and happy that our life back home is going so well.

More posts to come sooner than later. I promise!!

Wow, it's been how long?

Okay. It has been forever since my last update. A lot has happened since my Superheroes quiz thingy. Let’s start with where I left off…

In September I made mention of an opening in the SEACOR Vancouver office that I applied to. Well, As of December 1, 2006, I have been an employee of the SEACOR Vancouver office. It was somewhat of a stressful time after I applied. Tanya applied to the Richmond School District as a TOC and then received an interview. I was told around the end of September that the transfer was a done deal and that all that needed to be done was dot the “i”s and cross the “t”s. However, that took a whole two months which actually was sort of a good/bad thing. I got a chance to work on a lot of cool projects in Nanaimo and work my way up to starting the whole project management aspect of being an engineer. Tanya’s interview went well such that we were starting to contemplate what our future scenarios would be.

1. I get the transfer and Tanya doesn’t get hired by SD38. We would move back of course but perhaps in the Spring of 2007 to give her more time to make money in Nanaimo and to reapply to other school districts.

2. I don’t get the transfer but Tanya does get the job with SD38. This was the worst case scenario because we really didn’t know what to do. Thankfully it didn’t happen.

3. We both get hired. Well, it happened. Actually Tanya got hired first.

Yup, Tanya had her interview and then on October 31st, she called me to tell me that SD38 had called to hire her. She asked them for a day to think it over as scenario 2 seemed to be happening. So I called my boss in Nanaimo to ask him about the transfer since I hadn’t officially heard from Vancouver and well, frankly I would probably move with Tanya and look for a job with another company which he didn’t want to happen (I’m a hot commodity you know. But Tanya is a hotter commodity). He called me back in the afternoon and told me that I got the transfer and that I’d be moving at the end of November. Wow. That fast!!!

So the moving part was the next step. Finding an apartment which we did in North-central Richmond thanks in part to my mom checking the Richmond Review paper. Great location and really bright apartment (Tanya wanted bright after living in our Nanaimo Cave). We actually got the apartment the first weekend we went back to try and look. Very fortunate that the owner liked us and our references checked out. Thanks Brad!

So the whole packing process came next which was difficult since Tanya already started working with Richmond mid-November. She ferried back each week and came back on the weekends. It was a good time to do so since I was out in the field which posed a problem for packing. Surprising how much “stuff” you accumulate in 2.5 years.

The next big problem was the weather. Moving in November isn’t very fun. However, living on the west coast, you usually only have to contend with rain. Not this time though. It snowed. End of November in Vancouver/Nanaimo and it snows with a vengeance.

My brother unfortunately couldn’t make it out to help us move but Jeremy didn’t care about the risks of traveling so he caught a bus to the ferry terminal and we picked him up which was great because we would have flipped out having to move ourselves without his help. We were also grateful to our friend Brad who came out for a couple hours to help us load up the truck. So, after packing up in a downpour of snow, we handed in our keys, made sure the carpet cleaner arrived and then caravanned it to the Duke Point Ferry Terminal arriving just before the big snow storm hit. Nanaimo treated us well, but it was time to move back to Vancouver!!!

hmmm...

So apparently, I am part Supergirl. Well, at least I'm 85% Superman. I'm happy with that!!!

Which Superhero am I?

Your results: You are Superman

Superman 85% Green Lantern 70% Spider-Man 65% Supergirl 65% Robin 65% Wonder Woman 45% Batman 40% Iron Man 40% Catwoman 35% The Flash 25% Hulk 15%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Update #4273-2

This will be quick since I'm at work and shouldn't be doing this right now...

I'm at 188 points in my hockey pool. Naslund and the Sedins are doing well for me. In fact, the only players sucking right now are Alfredsson, Iginla, Tanguay, and Horcoff. The bad news is that Havlat and Sullivan are both out with injuries. Sullivan's is back spasms which I think is day to day, but Havlat suffered an ankle injury and will be out for 2-3 weeks. Boo-urns!!!

The Canucks meanwhile are 5-3-1 in their first 9 games. A couple of losses that should have been wins, but I think after this weekend of two straight come-from-behind OT nailbiters, they seem to have found a groove. Still not getting secondary scoring from Boulis and Morrison, but I like the idea of putting Taylor Pyatt in the Powerplay with the Ikea Line and Salo. Hmm... a big guy in front of the net on a Powerplay. Wonder who that reminds me of... =D

Otherwise, no news yet on the big decision awaiting Tanya and I. Big things for her today, but we'll not say anything until it happens...

Oh, and to the Seattle Shopping Roadtrip crew:

Our bet with regards to what sort of store Kohls is... looks like Dev and Tanya were right. Kohls is a clothing store similar in style to The Bay. They sell very similar products such as Dockers for men and other stuff for women. You can check out their website at http://www.kohls.com
Dev and Tanya both thought it was a clothing store in line with Winners, but I thought it was a hardware store similar to Home Depot. Dor thought it was a plumbing store because she saw the name on a toilet once... Actually she wasn't far off though. She might not have seen Kohls on the toilet, but Kohler which if you look it up at http://www.kohler.com is a plumbing/furniture/golf/engine company. A jack of all trades sort of company.

Anyways, that is about it for now. I'll be updating soon... hopefully with great news!!!

p.s. - Jerm, have a great trip to Singapore and Australia. Safe flight, enjoyable visits, and don't hit on too many flight attendants. Make sure you order a Foster's beer. They are big. Don't bring any frogs to Australia or you'll cause environmental havoc; don't get tricked into a game of knifey-spooney, don't insult the Australians otherwise you'll get a boot to the but; get me a didgereedoo, or a hat that says "Pobody's Nerfect"; Kangaroo pouches are slimey; make sure you complete your Yahoo Serious collection, and eat some bbq'd shrimp. Oh, and deep fried mars bars!!!

HNIC!!!

If you are reading this blog and you don’t know what those letters stand for, either you aren’t Canadian, or you should turn in your Canadian Citizenship card.

Hockey Season has begun and the Canucks are off to a luke-warm 2-1-1 record. While they are 2nd in the Northwest division, they are lagging behind Minnesota. This season promises to be a very different one for our Canucks as Todd Bertuzzi, Alex Auld, Bryan Allen, Anson Carter, Jarko Ruutu, Dan Cloutier, Ed Jovanovski, Richard Park, and Coach Marc Crawford are gone. The top line has been nicknamed the Ikea Line with Naslund and the Sedins. Line 2 includes Morrison, Bulis, and Cooke. A far cry from last season’s promising team that fizzled into a big bomb.

Hopefully this season will be different especially with “Bingo, Bango, Bongo, his name is Luongo” in net. Yes, you heard that correctly. It came out of Tom Larscheid’s mouth during the Canucks’ 3-2 win against Columbus this past Friday night.

What makes this season more special for me is the fact that I am participating in my first ever hockey pool courtesy the hockey fans in the Vancouver SEACOR office who decided to make it up. My players are listed below and so far have earned me 70 points.

Marc Savard --- Boston
Maxim Afinogenov --- Buffalo
Jarome Iginla --- Calgary
Alex Tanguay --- Calgary
Erik Cole --- Carolina
Eric Staal --- Carolina
Martin Havlat --- Chicago
Brenden Morrow --- Dallas
Nicklas Lidstrom --- Detroit
Shawn Horcoff --- Edmonton
Saku Koivu --- Montreal
Steve Sullivan --- Nashville
Jaromir Jagr --- NY Rangers
Brendan Shanahan --- NY Rangers
Daniel Alfredsson --- Ottawa
Simon Gagne --- Philadelphia
Mike Knuble --- Philadelphia
Shane Doan --- Phoenix
Sergei Gonchar --- Pittsburgh
Mark Bell --- San Jose
Joe Thornton --- San Jose
Markus Naslund --- Vancouver
Daniel Sedin --- Vancouver
Henrik Sedin --- Vancouver

Yeah, I know I’ve got the top Canucks line on there, but I have a feeling that they are going to do really well. Seriously though, it is hard to pick players for a pool, especially when you are limited to 2 per group and each group has 4 players you would definitely want to pick. Too bad I can’t travel into the future and see where the points are after game 75… oh well, we’ll have to wait and see.

Cool and Addictive

So I was checking out James' blog. James was an instructor at GEERingUp! in 2002 and he happens to have a blog as I and Jerm do. He mentioned an online game that I checked out that is very addictive.

James' blog: link is to the right under the other blog links.

Game: http://www.funny-city.com/jokes/unfolding.shtml

The other neat thing is the Pandora Project. You type the name of a song or artist and it provides you with streaming music from that artist and other music of the same or similar genre or style. You can try it out yourself here: http://www.pandora.com/

enjoy!!!!

THANKSGIVING WEEKEND ROAD TRIP

There I was, sitting at work at my computer, typing up some reports and I get an email from D&D in Richmond asking if we (Tanya and I) were coming back for the long weekend. I replied we were but were only staying until Sunday as Tanya wanted to spend Monday prepping for her week of TOCing. D&D replied saying they were going to the U.S. shopping near Seattle on Saturday and wanted to know if we could join them. I suggested they ask Tanya so Dev called Tanya right away and all she really had to mention was Seattle, shopping, and Forever 21 and Tanya was hooked.

Saturday morning came up and we all met at my parents' place to head down to the States. We decided to document our before and after with some photos...

Dor & Dev & Tanya & Me on our way to the States.

So, after listening to CKWX News 1130 and finding out that it was a 2.5 hour wait at Peace Arch and a 1.5 hour wait at the Truck Crossing, Dev told us about her sneaky route using 0 ave. to get to the Aldergrove crossing. The lineup wasn't as bad, but it took a while as 0 ave has to merge with the main road to get into the border line-up. After chatting for over an hour and watching a guy pee behind a telephone pole (yes, he thought the telephone pole would obscure him from everyone around), we made it to the border. I chatted it up with the US Customs officer mentioning we were heading down to do some shopping. Well, the girls were. I volunteered to drive and he asked why and I said my wife was with us and so he said "then you really didn't volunteer did you". =D Yeah, I'm pretty good at chatting it up with the DHS!!

So we headed down Meridian Road to Bellingham then caught the I-5 to Lynnwood to go shopping at Alderwood Mall. The girls made a bee-line to Forever 21, and I took a meander around the mall, buying a DX t-shirt and a belt.

5 hours later and the girls having rung up their credit cards to over $400, we headed back up the I-5 to the Seattle Premium Outlet Mall to do some more shopping. I ended up with a couple Nike toques for the upcoming cold winter of field work. The girls bought some shoes and Tanya found LeSportsac outlet which sells their purses 50% off retail prices. She bought 2!

We eventually made our way back to Cascade to grab some Jack-In-The-Box and back up to Canada which by that time was already 10:30pm. We got to the Peace Arch crossing and the Canada Customs officer lady asked us where we were from to which I replied Richmond/Nanaimo. She then asked if we were all Canadian citizens and I replied yes. Finally, she asked the total value of goods being brought over and I said about $550 (yes, we told the truth, it never pays to lie and get caught) at which point we were all prepared to be pulled over to pay duty/taxes, but she waived us on and that was it!! Wow, amazing!!!

All in all, a great day of a mini-road trip, fun, friends, food, and shopping.

Tanya & Dev & Dor & Me with our loot!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Holiday Meals

ROSH HASHANAH

So a few weeks ago was the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah. To celebrate, Tanya and I decided to make a traditional Jewish meal which consisted of really yummy foods each having their own meaning, but the theme for Jewish New Year is that of eating sweet foods to bring forth a sweet year. The above photo shows our dinner consisting of fishballs cooked in a tomato sauce, chickpeas cooked with leeks and onions, and carrot tzimmes which is a sweet carrot dish with apples and cinnamon. Oh, and of course the red wine!!! =)

THANKSGIVING

There we were, Tanya and I, in Save-On Foods a week and a half ago, attempting to buy some fish for our dinner when we passed by all the produce on sale for Thanksgiving. Yams, brussel sprouts, mushrooms, carrots, celery, cranberries, etc. The light shone in our heads and we decided to see how much Turkeys were. A far cry from fish, but we had never made a Thanksgiving meal together and decided to see what we could do. In the end, we bought a 5kg fresh turkey (and saved $10 with a coupon!!), yams, brussel sprouts, cranberries, carrots, mushrooms, stove-top stuffing, onions, celery, and marshmallows.

We stuffed our turkey very simply. Mushrooms, celery, onions. Put it in the oven at 450 F for 25 minutes to brown the skin and then lowered to 325 for 2.5 hours breast side down. This ensures the breasts cook in the turkey juices staying moist and juicy!! We cooked some yams and candied them in the oven with the marshmallows, steamed the brussel sprouts, made home-made cranberry sauce with the cranberries, and tried out Stove-Top rice stuffing. Then once the turkey was done, we saved the juices and made a very lean gravy by straining out the oil/fat. Tanya and I celebrated our first ever Thanksgiving together as husband and wife with a huge week-before-thanksgiving feast!!! =) Our leftovers? Turkey barley soup and turkey sandwiches. Yummy!!!!!