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Saturday, December 31, 2005
It's Auld Lang Syne Time Again
Here I am poised on the brink of a new year with my last post of 2005. Hard to believe we are now halfway through the first decade of the new millennium. Seems like only yesterday we were in this same position breathlessly awaiting the collapse of civilization as we knew with the Y2K disaster that never happened. This year the only excitement will be to see if Dick Clark can survive through another ball drop in Times Square on New Year's Rockin Eve. I, of course, will be able to view it from the comfortable confines of work. No dangerous, noisy, booze infested party for me. And then it's downhill until March and the end of winter, although I think winter has forgotten about us here in the frozen north. There is absolutely no snow on the front lawn. But it only takes about 72 hours of constant snowfall to throw us back into the Alberta winter we have all grown to love. And I'm sure it's on it's way. So it's a Happy New Year to all and we'll see you next year. Thursday, December 29, 2005
Another Christmas In The Can
So another Christmas has come and gone and for us it was a great Christmas as usual. We had a super Christmas dinner on Sunday evening with all the kids and Lee's mom & dad and sister joining us. Here are a few pictures of our Christmas eve festivities as we opened our gifts. Dianne has been off this week and as well as recovering from a nasty cough has been relaxing and doing a bit of visiting. We went to see Chronicles of Narnia the other night and really enjoyed it. We have had the annual Christmas/New Years jigsaw puzzle on the dining room table which has to be done by new years day or else we have no where to eat our NY's dinner off. Hooked up a webcam to the computer yesterday so we will see how that works and maybe you will be able to get live glimpses into the Chronicle offices in the near future (not likely!). Here's hoping everyone had a joyous Christmas and all the best in the New Year. Friday, December 23, 2005
T'was A Couple Of Nights Before Christmas...
After a rather hectic day running around doing grocery and last minute gift shopping, it's good to be able to relax a bit. I think we are pretty much prepared for Christmas here. The girls spent the day doing some Christmas baking and the last minute presents were wrapped and placed precariously under the gift-bloated tree. Tomorrow night we will break with tradition once again and after coming back from church we will open gifts to accomodate the fact that I have to work early on Sunday morning. Then there will be the big feast on Sunday afternoon when I get off work. Nikki arrived home safely on Wednesday night to the awaiting arms of her family including Sandi as shown here:  She has spent the last couple of days getting in touch with her friends and picking up her all important cell phone so that she can once again be in contact with the world. She was quite tickled with her new room and said it was perfect, just what she wanted. I had a chance to catch the Singing Christmas Tree telecast on TV the other night and was somewhat dissapointed and a bit embarrassed. The production quality of the program was so sub par that I could not complete watching the whole thing. The picture quality was awful, the sound mix just as bad and the camara work missed all the action. All in all it did not do justice at all to the great show put on by all the volunteers and witnessed live by over 12,000 people during the course of the run. Hopefully the DVD, which sold for about $20, was a lot better. Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Homeward Bound
So we made it through another weekend and another midight shift, and the Singing Christmas Tree is done. Last night was our final performance and afterwards we had a little wrap party to say goodbye to all the guys we met during the run. Overall it was a very enjoyable experience, however Saturday and Sunday were a little tough with being on nights but everything went reasonably well. For anyone interested they are televising the show on Access Network tomorrow night (21st) and the 24th at 11:00pm so anyone with satellite who can get Edmontons' Access channel should be able to get that. Well we are just about an hour away from heading out to the airport to pick up our little traveller. Nikki arrives home at 12:38 local time, approximately1.5 hours from now. She is very excited about coming home and we have been busy preparing for her arrival. Her new room is finished. I put in the closet organizer and the new sliding doors today and Angela and Sandi have been busy decorating the room up. Here's a sneak peek of the finished product which will be unvieled to Nikki in a couple of hours. We are sort of finished our Christmas shopping although there are still a few things to get some people but I'm not sure what we are going to get. I am off the next couple of days so I'm sure I will be power shopping during that time. Other good news is that Angela has found a new job. She will be working full time five days a week, no evenings or weekends at the General hospital here in the city coordinating a senior's drop in center, or something to that effect. I'm not quite sure of all the details. Needless to say she is quite excited about the position and that she gets her own office. She starts early in January and has given her notice at the nursing home today. Good on ya', Ang!! Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Deadline!!!!!
Just taking a break from trying to hammer out this years edition of the Christmas Chrock, er Chronicle which is starting to become a wrestling match. In other words me trying to wrestle out some sort of cognitive narrative in an ever decreasing time span. I will be lucky to put this thing to bed before Christmas eve, so don't be alarmed if you don't get your copy until Easter. In other news, we had a threatening bit of a snow fall last night that thankfully didn't amount to much, just enough to force my creaking bones out of bed this afternoon to shovel. The roads were pretty slick last night on the way to work but I did see some blue sky this morning so at least the roads should be dry. We have been trying to get all the Christmas shopping wrapped up by the end of this week although it doesn't seem to be going too good. Two words for this year = "gift certificate" Nikki is due home next week so I will have to scramble to get her bedroom put back together. The closet organizer is built, it just has to be set up and the closet doors need to be installed. Not much time, I have the Singing Christmas Tree again all this weekend. I have a few days off next week so maybe she won't mind bunking down on an air mattress on the kitchen floor for a couple of nights. Sunday, December 11, 2005
Deck The Halls...
Just finished the first weekend of performances for the Singing Christmas Tree and so far the production has been a stunning success with packed houses for the first four shows. Dianne and the gang came to check out tonight's show. Afterwards we came home and had a little birthday celebration for Dianne with some ice cream cake. Here are some pictures:     We also managed to finally get our Christmas tree up after sorting through the tangled mess of lights and replacing the burned out bulbs. Dianne and Angela decorated it this afternoon and they did a pretty good job.  The snow on our front yard is pretty much gone so it looks like we will have a brown Christmas after all unless something drastic happens in the next couple of weeks. Frankly, I'd prefer it to stay like it is and just give us a powdering on Christmas eve. Wouldn't that be nice? Wednesday, December 07, 2005
That Saddam... What a Character!
This is starting to look more like a circus event than a trial as Saddam refuses to appear in court. This trial already looks like a mockery and I would hate to be in the prosecution and the judge's position having to deal with this nutcase. I'll bet we'll see more Gong Show before this is over. Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Woops!
It seems I am exceeding my server space quota each time I post pictures to the blog so it looks like I am going to have to break down and clear out a few old files, a daunting task as I just bunged them all into one big folder and have no idea what they are all for instead of being neat and tidy and putting them in appropriate folders. Oh well, if you see some of your favorite archived pictures disappear you'll know why. I guess with the new year we should start with a revamped blog. Now let's see when I can find the time for THAT project. Stuff FromThe Weekend
It's been a chilly couple of days here in the frozen north. I had to get out and shovel some major snow in -18 weather yesterday after rummaging around in a drawer for my touque. The roads have been a little slick from the snow and the wind and even after putting about 60Kg of sandbags in the bed of the truck, it still was an adventure in driving in that thing. Sandi is being pretty apprehensive about taking it to school until the roads are properly sanded. Dianne and I had a busy but enjoyable weekend. On Saturday we went to the La Ronde restaurant where we had a scrumptious three course dinner. Everything was great except the Caribou stroganoff which was a bit like eating big chunks of stewing beef over a bed of noodles. We let them know we weren't happy and they gave Dianne a free salad and dessert. Then they brought some chocolates with a sparkler in them and everyone sang happy birthday. Here is a picture of the birthday girl and one of us all snazzed up.   On Sunday we had a Christmas banquet at church for our Alpha group and I serenaded them all Kenny Gee style with a couple of numbers on the soprano sax. (unfortunately no pics) The rest of this week will be taken up for me with rehearsals and performances of the Singing Christmas Tree. We had a big rehearsal tonight with all the actors and the choir and it was basically organized chaos, but by Friday evening everything will miraculously fall into place, as these things usually do, and it should be an outstanding show. I am really looking forward to playing in it although it will be a bit tough on the second weekend as we are doing two shows per day and I will be right in the middle of a midnight shift. Got a chance to try out the new saw last night and I am very impressed. It's like a knife through butter red hot. I'll post some pictures of the project I'm working on when I get them finished. Saturday, December 03, 2005
Ho Ho Ho ...sorta...
It's been another busy week and I haven't had a chance to post much to the blog. But we have finally gotten our winter here in Edmonton as temperatures have been down around -13 and we have received a little bit of snow. Not too much to be treacherous but enough to make it look wintery. I'd take a picture of it except that it is dark out. Maybe I'll post one tomorrow. I bought and opened my Christmas present early as I have need of it before Christmas. It is a Bosch 3915 Sliding Compound Miter Saw and it's a beaut. I'll be using it to build a couple of closet organizers for the downstairs bedrooms, one of which has to be done before Nikki comes home on Dec 20, hence the early Christmas present. I was down in the shop this afternoon lining it all up and I can't wait to try it out. Hopefully my projects will be that much more precise now that I have this baby. So we are in for another election this January. It will be interesting to see if those Liberal crooks are voted back in or will those easterners finally go with the unknown and vote in the Conservatives. Dianne and I are off out tonight for a swanky meal at the rotating restaraunt at the Chateau Lacombe. This is a treat for her as we will not be able to attend my work Christmas party next week as I am playing at the Singing Christmas tree. So this is compensation for that. We are celebrating her birthday which is also next week. Dianne so looks forward to dressing up and going out at Christmas time. Gas has shot up again here. We were enjoying 71 cents/litre and the price had been falling about a penny a day for the last two weeks. Then all of a sudden it shot up to 79. I'm positive that the powers that be are just toying with us.
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