Today we said "so long, farewell" to our baby girl as Nikki set off on her new adventure. She is heading off to Florida, indefinitely, to work in the mission down there and is flying there even as I type this. And in a twist of poetic irony, the day she leaves for the warm sunny climes of Florida, Edmonton is hit with a massive dump of snow. It was a bit touch and go getting her out to the airport at 5:30 this morning, in fact, I had to basically dig the car out of the garage. But the highway was driveable and we made it on time and were joined by Lee and Angie to say our goodbyes. Here are some more pictures of her leaving as well as a few of the snow we are contending with. We also had a little going away party for her with the rest of the family which included a little ice cream cake. So the house is once more a quieter place.
Speaking of travel, Dianne is off on a little business trip next week. While I am on a midnight shift, she will be jetting to Vancouver on Thursday morning for a continuing dental education seminar with the rest of her office staff. She returns on Saturday. And, plans are underway for a special trip in mid May for Dianne and myself to celebrate our 30th anniversary. The plans aren't concreted in yet so I won't divulge anything other than to say it will probably be in Nikki's footsteps.
We spent an interesting evening last night at the Quick and Dirty Festival at the U of A where Sandi was performing in a small presentation that she also directed. The festival consisted of a number of short dramatic presentations that ranged from quite good to "don't quit your day job". Sandi's was very good with some neat choreography set to a French Canadian song. Here is a short clip.
Well now that the T4's and other receipts have filtered in I guess it's time to get at the tax returns again. It doesn't seem as painless as it used to be, probably due to the ease of use of the tax software. I could never go back to manual returns. And the convenience of e-filing is wonderful. The checks are in the mailbox within a week and a half.
I have been reading recently of Sony's plans to introduce it's new Blu Ray technology for HD DVD's. Industry analysts are already foreseeing another format war similar to that which Sony waged with the Beta Max vs VHS fiasco of the early 80's. Two camps are emerging: hardware manufacturers and movie distributors that side with Toshiba's HD-DVD format and those that side with Sony's brand new but very expensive Blu Ray technology. They are announcing that the first players for the new disks will cost around $900. Yikes! Looks like I won't be jumping on any HD bandwagon soon until this showdown is over.

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