|
|
|
Monday, December 03, 2007
Winter Wonderland
Winter is finally upon us in the "frozen north". After escaping mostly unscathed for most of November, we have been thrown into the throes of winter with a vengeance. We have had cold temperatures for the last few days and yesterday we got our second dump of snow which wreaked havoc on the roads today. The snow kept coming for a while this morning and driving around town became a challenge as all the intersections began to ice up. Well, I guess we shouldn't be surprised as it is, after all, Alberta and this is to be expected. But it never fails to be a shock. Nikki and Christopher just returned home from a trip to India and England where they did some ministering. We haven't gotten the full report yet but we will soon find out how they faired on their first trip abroad. And speaking of traveling, Sandi was in Korea for a few days last month. She and a friend took advantage of some time off and being in the neighborhood to take a little trip to Seoul Korea and from there a bus tour of north Korea. Sandi said it was a very interesting trip and had some of her video deleted because she was taking pictures of a few things not allowed, I guess they are very strict over there about what is and isn't seen. I am just putting the finishing touches on our latest wedding video project which we shot back in September. About time too. It's starting to get quite busy here with all the preparations for Christmas. I have to get cracking on the annual installment of the Christmas Chronicle. Saturday, November 03, 2007
New Pictures
Over to the left I have cleaned up the picture galleries a bit and removed the stale items. There are a few pictures there now of our vow renewal from last week. Today I parked the truck in the backyard over the fire pit for the winter. I took the battery out so that means we can't use the truck until spring. I just didn't want it on the street all winter when it never gets used. It will only get plowed under the snow banks. I also managed to fix the door on the stove which has needed a new hinge for some time. Now the door closes tightly and the light doesn't stay on all the time. Tomorrow they are predicting snow here so we are all keeping our fingers crossed so that it doesn't happen. We have been lucky so far this fall and each day that passes without snow is one snow-free day closer to spring. Last night I rented the movie "Transformers" because everyone has been telling me how good it was. Lee and Angela came over for supper and afterwards we watched the movie with the audio cranked to a near ear bleeding level. It was GREAT!! I hadn't known what to expect, so I was pleasantly surprised that is was done so well for a movie spawned from a line of kid's toys. I think it's worth watching again. We were talking to Sandi on Skype last night and she was proudly showing off her new video camera which had just arrived. After the order had been canceled on her she went ahead and ordered another one which came the other day. She is quite pleased with the speed of it's arrival and is now busy studying the manual to learn how to operate it in time for her trip to Seoul, Korea at the end of the month. It's a Panasonic camera, similar to mine, only it shoots in HD and stores the footage on flash memory cards instead of tape. Sunday, October 28, 2007
Wedding Bells For Me and My Gal
Well, it's been a couple of weeks since my last post, so here's an update. This weekend has been fairly busy. Yesterday we had Craig & Robyn's wedding reception for the people who couldn't make it to the actual ceremony back in August. I premiered the wedding video and it went over really well with lots and lots of positive comments. I also got to play a little music with a guitar player friend of ours as he was asked to provide some live music during the reception. He asked me to play along so we did about four numbers while people munched on wedding cake. I played three of them on the soprano sax and one on the clarinet, which was a bit of a nice change. This morning Dianne and I renewed our wedding vows at the end of our church service. The pastor was finishing up a series on marriage and it had been decided that anyone who wanted to renew their vows could, so about 24 couples took part in the ceremony. Dianne actually managed to get into her wedding dress and I wore my suit with a tuxedo shirt and bow tie, so we were dressed to the nines, as it were. The ceremony went very well and Lee, Angela and Chris were on hand along with another good friend to witness the event. I'll post some pictures when I can. Last weekend I spent about two and a half hours up in the attic blowing new insulation over the existing stuff. We rented a blower and Chris helped me put 18 bags of new insulation up there, giving us about 14 inches of R value, so I hope it's a bit warmer in the house this winter. Two weeks ago I managed to burn my right hand quite severely when I opened up a valve by mistake on a coffee vending machine and had hot scalding water pour all over me. So for a week I had my hand half bandaged up, making it quite difficult to do anything, never mind work. But I tried and every evening Dianne would be shocked as I came home with the bandages all filthy from work. We've had some great weather this fall with mild days all along and very few frosty nights. We had a light skiff of snow late last week but the temperatures have climbed and it is just a gorgeous day today. We went down to Whitemud creek a while ago to see if we could capture any remaining fall color on the trees and had a wonderful time tramping along the creek shore. We spotted some beavers foraging along the bank nearby their dam and I managed to get quite a bit of good video footage of them scrambling about, no doubt preparing for winter. Lee and Angela just got back last week from a lovely working holiday in Hawaii. Lee was there for business and so he took Angie along and they both had a marvelous time. Sandi is still having all sorts of adventures in Japan and was in the process of purchasing a video camera online to chronicle some of her exploits. Unfortunately she was disappointed when the company she was buying from canceled her order with no explanation. She is getting quite frustrated as she is doing all this neat stuff without having a proper means to document it. She doesn't want to end up finishing her tenure there before she gets her camera, so she will continue to keep looking. Saturday, October 06, 2007
Happy Thanksgiving
It's Thanksgiving weekend and tomorrow we are having a turkey and it seems like a lot of people are coming over. So it should be good, although it's quite a lot of work. We're doing it tomorrow because Lee is going out of town on Monday and it wouldn't be the same. We've been talking to Sandi on Skype although it's been a while as she has been busy every weekend, but we got a chance to say hi last night. She was at a friends house and they were making pancakes. She is doing fine and having a blast. She has a lot of stuff on Facebook if you want to check it out. I don't quite understand Facebook although I really don't have time to spend playing with it. It just seems like a lot of time waste nonsense, except the bits where you can send pictures and videos to each other. I've pretty much completed Craig & Robyn's wedding video, just waiting for a couple of images from them to add in. I have to do a short video of this marriage proposal we shot a couple of weeks ago then I will start Jonathan Willis' wedding video. It won't be as involved as the one I just did so perhaps won't take as long. Then I'm hoping to take a bit of a break from the video projects and try to get my office furniture built so that I can work in comfort. We have booked our flights for Japan and will be going over there on March 21 to April 6. It's 6 months away and already we are getting excited. I have managed to get the time off work even though I won't have accrued enough annual leave days. I may have to take a couple of days without pay, but it will be worth it. Sunday, September 23, 2007
A Mazing Race
So the big Corn Maze thingy was last night and it was kinda fun, if you consider tramping around a cornfield for 90 minutes fun. We had to find some hidden posts in the maze and then answer a question to find which direction to go for the next post. The maze is interesting in that it is an actual picture if you view it from the air. You can see a picture of it here. We then spent the rest of the evening shivering around a fire pit at someone's house as the temperature dropped. Today after church we went to visit a couple who are friends of Angela and Lee's. They have just had a new baby and Dianne wanted to go and see him. They live on a beautiful little acreage about an hour south of Edmonton. It was an enjoyable visit, substantially warmer than the previous night and the baby was adorable. He was so good and I managed to snag him for an extended hold. Saturday, September 22, 2007
The Falling Leaves...
Another few hectic weeks have slipped by since my last post and now we are heading into the home stretch of September. The leaves are doing their all too sudden transformation thing and it's great to be driving down a country road and see all the colors. Then a large wind comes up and they're gone. Catch them while you can. I've been trying to get Robyn & Craig's wedding video finished but I've had other things on the go all week and haven't had a chance to do much. I want to spend some time today and get a large chunk done. However, we are supposed to be going out this evening to go through a corn maze with the staff at Dianne's office. Should be interesting. Dianne and I shot the video of a surprise wedding proposal at a local church last week and it went very well. We will be incorporating that footage into the wedding video that we will do for them next June. Next weekend we have our 6th wedding shoot to do as the son of some friends of ours gets married. We have been talking to Sandi fairly regularly on Skype and things are going really well for her. She is really enjoying teaching and has a wide range of students all the way from kindergarten to junior high. She says a few of the grade 4 boys are quite smitten with her and really enjoy it when she shows up. She is being quite adventuresome also and this weekend is going to do some repelling down waterfalls. Her and a friend are planning a short trip to North Korea in early November and already there are a few of us from Edmonton planning trips to see her in Japan. I have started playing in a small blues band which now takes up another evening for practices. This is a band that was started by an acquaintance of mine. There maybe a few gigs coming up so that will be something to look forward to. The renovations at the Harder house continue as Lee and I laid a laminate floor in their bedroom this week. He still has the hardwood for the living room to do and the baseboards. They hope to sell the condo quickly before the market deflates too much. Saturday, August 25, 2007
On The Down Side Of Summer
Another week has flown by here at the Chronicle and whoops,...looks like we are at the end of August already. You can tell that summer is winding down as the evenings get cooler faster and it's starting to get dark earlier, a sure sign that winter is on the way. I always hold out a little hope that September and October will have just a few nice warm autumn days and not be like last year where we came to the end of August and boom! into the depths of winter we went. I always look forward to the fall to try and get out and take advantage of the autumn colors and try and get a few good photos or maybe some good stock video footage. We have been chatting up a storm with Sandi now that she has had her internet connection hooked up. We contacted her last night on Skype and spent about three hours chatting, all the while seeing her face and she able to see us. She called again briefly tonight and told us of her plan to go hiking next weekend and to climb mount Fuji. She had bought some new hiking boots and had gone for a hike today to break them in. She starts her teaching assignment in a couple of weeks so she is taking advantage of the remaining time to get out and explore and experience as much as she can. Her car broke down last week so she scrapped it and bought another one, one that will be more dependable throughout the winter. It was a bit more expensive for her but it bought her peace of mind. She is still planning on purchasing a video camera and chronicling her adventures in video and will probably be posting them on line, so stay tuned for details on that. I am enjoying my new job more and more with each passing week as I learn more skills and gain more confidence to use them in public. I am getting to know the other staff better also and that makes me a little more comfortable and able to be more myself. One thing I do find interesting is going into all these businesses on service calls and seeing what they are all like. Some places have really nice, fancy lunch rooms and tend to pamper their employees whereas others just provide the bare minimum and conditions tend to be quite appalling. Of course it all depends on the type of business. The consulting firms and software development companies tend to be more upscale and the oilfield and manufacturing places are a lot more blue collar and tend to reflect it in their working environment. Nonetheless, it's fun to go in and meet new people and I do get a feeling of accomplishment when I can go in and repair their equipment so that they can make that all important cup of coffee in the morning. They are very appreciative of that. Monday, August 20, 2007
The Really Remote Shoot
Well, I'm three weeks into my new job with Aramark and so far all is going well. Even though I am still in training and have had only a limited time on the road by myself I am finding the job far more interesting and much less stressful than Connect was. I have made a few service calls solo, just minor fixes, and have quite enjoyed it. Once I become more proficient on the more complicated equipment I will be going on more complicated calls. The other guys in the shop are friendly and fun to work with and the whole place has a more relaxed atmosphere. Today I finally got my uniforms so now I will feel more like "one of the boys". Sandi finally got her internet hooked up and working so now we will be able to email and Skype her more frequently. She also has a page on Face Book and has been posting videos and commentary on her experiences as she learns the ins and outs of Japanese culture and explores her new surroundings. She has been doing a bit of decorating in her house and has bought a couch that folds out into a bed, so if anyone has a hankering to visit Japan, there's a bed waiting. Dianne and I are just getting over the effects of a rather nasty virus which we believe is the same virus that causes mono. I started about a month ago with a sore throat and feeling lousy and then last week Dianne got it and has been through quite a bit of pain, not only in her throat but also her ears. Even with antibiotics the virus held it's grip on me. Dianne is battling it with a battalion of homeopathic remedies and has seen some improvement over the past few days. I am about to start a new project, which is the wedding video that we shot last weekend in the woodlands around Canmore. Unforeseen circumstances caused us to have the wedding in a remote piece of bush in the mountains high above the Canmore town site. It was truly a peculiar wedding but nonetheless breathtaking for it's novel surroundings with mountains on all sides and some very picturesque scenery in the foreground. Hopefully this wedding won't take as long to edit as the last one. Saturday, August 04, 2007
Sandi Settles In
Dianne was in Saskatchewan all last week visiting her dad and having a little sister time with her siblings so I was left to fend for myself with only the psycho cat as a companion. Dianne came home last night after a very nice visit with her family. We got a call from Sandi last night to report on how things are going in her new abode in Japan. She is settling into her new house there although was quite disappointed at how dirty and cluttered it was as the previous teacher had not really lived in it and it has been unoccupied for quite some time. She is planning to get some friends over for a cleaning bee to fix the place up. When she called she was about to head out in her new car to look for some furniture for the place. She said the town she was in is very beautiful and quaint. She feels she is really going to enjoy herself there as she has already been taking part in some of the cultural activities including a community hot spring where bathing suits are not allowed. She will start teaching at the beginning of September and so she has been spending her time at the school studying her Japanese and meeting many of the students who still come to the school even during the holidays for various activities. Saturday, July 28, 2007
Good Bye Sandi
Dianne and I have just returned from Calgary where we said sayonara to our intrepid traveler, Sandi, as she heads off to Japan for at least the next year. We drove down to Sylvan Lake near Red Deer on Thursday evening and stayed the night there before getting a head start to Calgary so that Sandi could be downtown by 9:30. She had an all day orientation and while she attended that Dianne and I hung out together and did a little shopping before checking into our hotel near the airport. We then picked up Sandi and a couple of her new friends and brought them back to the hotel for the evening. Sandi spent her last evening in Canada with us as we went out for supper and then caught a little TV in the room. We had her at the airport bright and early this morning and after checking in and checking her bags we had breakfast and hung around the airport before seeing her off to the security area where she would await her flight. The first leg of her journey was to Vancouver where she connected to a nonstop flight to Tokyo. She will spend three days in Tokyo, orienting and seeing the sights before traveling to her assignment in Gi-Fu province. Hopefully she will be able to contact us as soon as she gets her internet hooked up. We have set up a voice over ip connection on her laptop so that we can talk to her and see her as well. Dianne and I had a leisurely drive back from Calgary stopping in Red Deer for a bite to eat. Wednesday, July 25, 2007
New Job
Today was the fist day of my new job and it went pretty well. It was mostly an orientation day in which I met a lot of people, signed a lot of papers, listened to a lot of explanations and had lunch with the boss. My next three weeks have been planned out with training, riding along with other technicians and generally learning the ropes. Looks like it might be fun. On the weekend we held a goodbye barbecue for Sandi and had about 40 people attend. The weather was great for it and we filled up the back yard with chairs, tables and guests. We were up until 3:00am Sunday morning singing karaoke which was a lot of fun. On Monday night the hot weather was disrupted here when a massive storm center moved in and at times it looked like we might get a tornado. The black clouds which swarmed in were turning and blowing in all different directions at times and when the clouds broke the rain was coming horizontally. Fortunately it did not amount to much and we got some much needed moisture. It has been quite a bit cooler since which has been a welcome relief. Saturday, July 14, 2007
More Changes
Here we are halfway through July already and we have been enjoying some extremely July type weather the last few days. Actually the term "enjoy" might be a slight exaggeration as this weather does play havoc when you are tring to work, especially in a non air conditioned environment. Temperatures have been in the mid to upper 30's for most of last week and it has been quite a sweat-fest at work. Even in the shade of a house it gets pretty warm and the only refuge I can get is when I have to do some work in a basement. Nonetheless it is nice to finally have some summer weather here. Who knows how long it will last. Sandi treated herself to a new laptop computer last week in preparation for her trip overseas. She bought a HP Pavilion and it is quite slick, even though it is running Vista. She is getting used to giving it permission to do everything she has requested it to do. I have been helping her get some programs loaded and some removed and just generally set up to where she likes it. It has a built in webcam and once she buys herself a headset we will try and get Skype running so that we can talk to her and see her in Japan for nothing. She just has a couple of weeks to go before she leaves and she is frantically running around trying to take care of all the loose ends of her affairs before she departs. She is having a big going away party here next weekend and has invited all her friends to say goodbye as she won't be seeing them for about a year. Some big news for me this week: I handed in my resignation and gave two weeks notice to Connect. I have managed to land a position working for Aramark Beverages as a service technician. It will involve going around to various offices in the city to repair, maintain and install coffee and food service equipment. I was finding that the billable hours way of payment at Connect was not working out for me and that my paycheck was never enough to cover our expenses so I started looking around again. I found this job online and was able to secure an interview and they practically hired me on the spot. So, now I start there on July 25. It's a fixed monthly salary with possible overtime and there is a benefit package, something we lacked at Connect. The money is still not quite up to where I would like it to be but I think it is at least a step in the right direction. It's a vast improvement in many senses. I won't have to be pulling wire in the dead cold of winter, most offices are heated and air conditioned. And it won't be quite so physically taxing. There's a bit of lifting involved but nothing really strenuous. So, I am looking forward to this change. Unfortunately I won't be getting any holidays this year except for one day between jobs and I am taking the Friday off that Sandi has to be in Calgary for her orientation. Dianne has a couple of weeks off around that time so she will have to find something to do with herself without me. Monday, July 02, 2007
June Update
Seems I've been out of the loop so to speak for an entire month as the last post was in May. So, with the beginning of a new month upon us, here is a bit of a recap of the last month or so. At the end of May, as you recall, Dianne, Angela and Sandi went down to visit Nicole & Chris in Crestview and had a fairly nice time. They were a bit delayed getting back as bad weather in Houston grounded all planes there and no incoming flights. So they were delayed leaving Pensacola and by the time they did get to Houston their connecting flight had already left. So, consequently, they were stranded in Houston and had to spend the night there at their own expense before they could get out on a flight the next morning. From then on everything went smoothly until they got home, albeit 24 hours late. Work is going pretty good for me. I have been doing some work that is not as taxing physically as I have been installing connectors, cover plates, and distribution panels in homes that are nearing completion. I have also been involved in a couple special projects installing home theaters and multi room sound systems in some pretty swanky homes. I took the plunge and installed the Vista upgrade on my laptop a couple of weeks ago. It lasted all of four days before I got totally frustrated and did a clean install back to XP. It was so annoying as every time I booted the computer it kept giving me warnings of incompatibilities with certain programs and the operating system, even when the program was uninstalled! And then the overblown security system started driving me nuts as it wanted confirmation from me that I was actually the one that had started the program and that I actually wanted it to run. Then it had to phone home every five minutes to check to make sure I was not running a bootlegged copy of Windows. I got so fed up that I scrapped the whole exercise and went back to XP. "You are beginning to realize the shortcomings of the new operating system. Confirm or Deny?" I had to put the wedding video that we shot in May on hold for a bit as I needed to get back to the Fort Edmonton project. They wanted a revised draft of the production with a few changes made to the original. I finished that up last week and sent it off and hopefully in about a week's time we will know whether the project's a go and the DVDs can go on sale or whether we have to do a bit more revising. I am anxious to get that project out of the way and finish the wedding video as we have a couple more weddings lined up for the end of the summer. I also have two or three smaller projects waiting to be started. I still haven't got to my desk building project and am still holed up in Nikki's old bedroom. Sandi is now less than a month away from leaving us for her trip to the Orient. She has received her placement and has been communicating with her predecessor there getting a low down on the living conditions and the lay of the land. He is selling her his bicycle and his microwave oven and has been giving her advice on all sorts of things. So now that things are more concrete in the planning, Sandi is getting really excited. She has to go down to Calgary on July 27 for a full day orientation and then flies out of there the next day, so we are planning to drive her down there to see her off. Our family cell phone contract expires this month so we decided to upgrade our hardware as we renewed the contract. So, Dianne and I are now the proud owners of a pair of matching Blackberry Pearls. Dianne was in sore need of a PDA since her Palm Pilot died some time ago and without spending a lot of money you cannot buy a basic unit anymore. So, we decided to give the Blackberries a try as they incorporate a cell phone, internet browser, PDA functions and a digital camera all in one tiny unit. We've spent a lot of time playing with them over the last couple of days as the learning curve is a tad treacherous. I got so wrapped up it with yesterday, sitting outside in the sun, that I totally lost track of time and ended up with a nice burn all over my front. It's not hard to see why these amazing little devices are nicknamed "Crackberries" as they can be quite addicting. Yesterday was, off course, Canada day, and we spent the evening at Angela and Lee's house on the river bank waiting for the firework display. We had quite a spectacular view and I tried my hand at photographing the show along with several other people who were there. The pictures turned out not to bad as you can see from this sample. I realized right away that I am going to have to invest in a remote shutter release cable as the time exposures are a little shaky from me holding down the shutter release button. So we are now into the official summer month of July and we are really hoping the weather decides to be what it is supposed to be for this time of year. The last couple of weeks have not been too bad, but it still gets very cool in the evenings. We've been trying to get out for our bike rides but have not had a lot of success in being consistent yet this year. We went for a ride tonight and it was very nice. It just seems that either something comes up to make us busy or it's just too miserable outside. Hopefully we can remedy that in the next few weeks. Saturday, May 19, 2007
All Alone
It's a cool, cloudy and gloomy day here in Edmonton and the forecast is for more of the same for the rest of the weekend. It's a good time to get caught up on a few projects. Dianne and the girls are down in Florida at the moment visiting Nikki & Chris so I am all alone here and am taking this opportunity to try and get a bit of work done. It's the holiday weekend and I relish at having an extra day off. I have started work on the wedding video that we shot last weekend. I'm just capturing the footage from the cameras at the moment and will start editing shortly. I also have some work to do on the Fort Edmonton Park video. Fort Edmonton finally got back to me with a few changes they would like me to make. We also have to incorporate some more features and for that I am awaiting new material. The footage from the wedding looks fantastic. The quality of the new camera is outstanding and the audio pickup worked tremendously too. I splurged and bought a $700 Sennheiser wireless mike setup and miked the groom for the ceremony. It's an omni directional mike and picks up quite a lot. I'm quite pleased with the quality. We shot with three cameras and Dianne became quite a trooper manning the second and third unit cameras at various times to get certain shots. She quite enjoyed it and now wants to go out shooting stock footage with me. We got some good shots of the Banff Springs hotel and Bow falls until the batteries died, but we also got some spectacular shots of the mountains that will look great in the wedding video. As I mentioned Dianne, Sandi and Angela went down to Crestview on Friday. They drove to Calgary on Thursday night and stayed with Dianne's brother David in order to get their flight out early Friday morning. The flight was considerably cheaper from Calgary for some reason, hence the drive down there. They will be in Crestview until late next week. Wednesday, May 02, 2007
More Mud
We had a fair bit of rain today which turned everything pretty muddy and made it quite miserable. It seems like we just get a couple of nice days and it gets ugly again for a few more. We are looking forward to a little road trip next week. I am taking next Friday off and Dianne and I are driving down to Banff for the wedding on Saturday. I will have to be at the rehearsal Friday night so we decided to make a day of it and go for a little trip. It will be good to get away together even if it is for one night. Dianne and the girls leave the following week for Florida, so I will be baching it for a week. It will give some time to work on the wedding video. I still have not heard back from Fort Edmonton Park about the video I did. Saturday, April 28, 2007
Head Shave Video Finally Up! Finally got the video of the headshave up on the net. After a couple of weeks Angie now has a bit of peach fuzz growing but I'll bet it will be some time before its back to her original length. Things have been going pretty good with the job and now that I'm a little more familiar with things and the weather has improved considerably its become quite enjoyable. The only problem now is that it takes forever to get home after work as I have to drive from the jobsite back to the shop in the west end and then drive home in rush hour traffic. They are going to start letting us bring the vans home within the next few weeks so that should improve things considerably, not the least of which I will be able to use the company's gas to get to work and not my own. Dianne, Sandi and Angela are getting excited about a little trip they are all going on around the May long weekend. They are going to fly down to Florida for a week to visit Chris & Nikki. I cannot go of course as I can't get any time off at all for holidays for another year, but Dianne has some time off then and so they are going for it. We finally managed to get out on the bikes briefly the other night, the first time this year after a rather ghastly spring. We seem to be in a stretch of seasonal weather at the moment so hopefully we will get out more often. With my new work schedule and the fact that I'm quite bagged when I get home from work I have had to forgo my daily 10k and my workouts. Hopefully in the summer we will still be able to do a ride each night, depending when I can get home and get supper out of the way. We are planning to go for a little ride this afternoon but the wind is quite blustery today so I don't know how pleasant it's going to be. I completed the Fort Edmonton video a couple of weeks ago but have yet to hear back from any one as to whether they like it or not. Very strange. So I'm not going to do any more work on it until I hear something. Instead I am gearing up for a wedding video project that's coming up in a couple of weeks. It's taking place in Banff so I'm looking forward to getting some good stock footage of the mountains and things. Then I have a wedding video to edit and put on DVD for another couple of friends. I would still like to get a tribute video together for Mom as well, so there is no end to projects. Some other friends have asked if I would be interested in doing their son's wedding in September. So hopefully I will get some experience and maybe start doing some paying gigs to help pay for some of the equipment I'm having to buy. As usual I have not kept the blog up to date and for that I apologize. I will endeavor to be more diligent in getting posts up. Saturday, April 07, 2007
Angela & Chris are BALD!!
Yesterday was the BIG EVENT! Angie and Chris both had their heads shaved for cancer research. There's a picture gallery here of the event and also a link to the left. It was quite a spectacle with quite a few people jamming into Tegan's small salon to give their support. Chris had decided to support Angie by shaving his head which is not a really big deal for him as he has done it before, but for Angie it was quite an undertaking as she had never had short hair most of her life, let alone being bald. Nonetheless, at 6:00pm sharp the clippers started whirring and in no time at all both kid's curly locks were gone. Chris' were all over the floor but Angie's head of hair was kept intact and was whisked away by a rep of the Alberta Cancer Foundation to be made into wigs for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. So far Angie has raised about $2500 for the cause and donations are still being accepted until the end of April online at www.albertacancer.ca/foundation/donations_online.htm. I shot some video of the event and am in the process of editing it so it will be posted within the next couple of days. Happy Easter to one and all. Thursday, March 29, 2007
Aches & Pains
Well, it's been just over a week now since starting the new job and so far things have been going pretty good. The one thing I am noticing is that it is quite physical and my muscles are rebelling after five months of hibernation. I have been doing rough-in wiring in some new houses and this requires lots of drilling holes and climbing ladders and pulling cable. I guess it is the toughest part of the job but is where everyone starts out that is learning this business. I have my own van which I am responsible for keeping well stocked with supplies. With the spring thaw going on here at the moment the worse thing to contend with is the mud. It's everywhere on these job sites and it's just one of those things you have to learn to put up with. Hopefully it will dry up quickly. It is taking me quite a bit of time to do each house as I am still learning the techniques and seem to be all thumbs at times, but as things progress I will pick up speed as I become more efficient. I had to take last Monday off to attend a funeral. We tragically lost a good friend of ours a couple of weeks ago. The son of our friends Lawrence & Doris Daher (Lawrence leads the IHS Orchestra ministry which I play in occasionally) was struck down by a car two weeks ago Saturday. LJ was crossing the street in his wheelchair after getting off a bus when a car went through the crosswalk and struck LJ and another woman. He was rushed to hospital where they thought he was in stable condition but an hour later things turned bad and he passed away. Most of us at church the next day were in shock. His mom & dad and family rushed here from Europe for the funeral Monday. LJ had made quite an impression on a lot of people in his 27 years of life and the funeral was a celebration of that. There were several write ups in the paper and reports on TV during the week after the accident. LJ was about to graduate from a network administrator program at NAIT. Dianne headed to Saskatchewan this afternoon to visit her dad and family while she has five days off so it's just me and the cat until Sandi comes home tomorrow night. Sandi has been taking a break with a friend in sunny California for the past few days. She is just about finished her classes for fourth year and will be graduating right away. She has still not heard back as to whether she has the teaching position in Japan yet, so she will probably just work at Starbucks for a while until she knows for sure Saturday, March 17, 2007
Something Going On
Whoohoo! a new post, FINALLY! Here's a couple of items of noteworthy news: On April 6th Angela will be taking the razor to her curly locks as she shaves her head for cancer. She decided to do this to raise money for cancer research in honor of her grandma, Sally Mildenberger. Here is the website you can go to to pledge a donation. Angie hopes to raise $10,000 for the cause. The Chronicle will be there on April 6th to capture this major event on tape and will be posting it on the internet shortly after, so stay tuned to this very blog. I have finally found a job! I start next Wednesday and I am working for a company called Connect Home Innovations, a young local company that specializes in installing computer networking, alarm systems, home theaters, music systems and home automation in new homes. I will be starting as an installer. I have had to buy a bunch of new tools as well as some new safety boots and a hard hat and I have been clomping around the house in my new boots trying to break them in. It's quite a departure from my previous career and I am looking forward to getting out there and getting dirty. I have also been working on the DVD project for Fort Edmonton Park, which I finally got the material for. I have to have it finished by the end of March and now that I will be working full time again I'm starting to feel the crunch. But it's moving along quite nicely and I think I will be done on time. The snow is on it's way out here in Edmonton as we have been having wonderful weather of late. There's still a lot on the lawn but we are seeing more and more grass everyday and the snowbanks along the road have diminished to practically nothing making it a lot easier for Sandi to park the truck. Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Starbucks Spoofery
Last week Sandi took part in the annual "Quick and Dirty" Festival at the U of A drama department. She and a group of her friends performed a little spoof of the Starbucks culture and it was quite hilarious. Take a look: My apologies for the fuzziness of the video but I had to compress it considerably to get the 10 minute clip in under 100mb's. Saturday, February 24, 2007
Safe At Home
Well, we bid farewell to our intrepid travelers, Chris & Nikki as they headed for home on Wednesday about 5:30 in the morning. At last report they were home, having arrived there in the wee small hours of Friday morning. They made good time in both directions and didn't have any trouble getting across the border on the way home. So, now it looks like they will be free to come and go, which will be nice, and they are already planning to come up for another visit, possibly in August. Sandi and I drove down to Calgary on Thursday so that Sandi could attend an interview for her possible teaching job in Japan. She met with members of the Japanese embassy at the University of Calgary and although the interview took only 20 minutes she feels it went pretty well. She is not assured a position yet and will probably have to go back for a follow up interview if she gets shortlisted. While we were in Calgary we took the opportunity to do a little shopping and I came home with a gorgeous pro video camera, the Panasonic AG DVC30 3CCD camera. I haven't really had a chance to field test it yet but just from having it set up in the living room for the last couple of days I have been playing around with it and getting a feel for it's features. It's one sweet camera and the best part is I was able to get it courtesy of Corus Entertainment as I used up the remainder of my retraining bonus for it. Now I just have to find some projects to use it for. I have a wedding to shoot in May and I'm going to try and build a library of stock footage that I will try to market online. But I'm looking forward to using it in as many projects as I can find. At present I am just building a computer system for a friend of ours who is taking university and is finding her old Win 98 machine a bit of drag. So I'm upgrading her to a nice Pentium D dual core machine that will really soar compared to her old one. There's still nothing promising on the job front as I continue to pursue various leads and ideas. I do have an interview set up for Monday afternoon so we shall see if that pans out for anything. I downloaded the pictures from the camera from our trip home and am about to go through them and get a web album posted as soon as I can. It's amazing how busy I seem to be with one project or another that the thought of having to go out and work full time as well seems hard. Oh well, it gives me something to look forward to retirement for. Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Home At Last
We are finally back home after a rather long week in Regina. Following Mom's passing on Tuesday morning we spent the rest of the week preparing for the funeral. There was some running around to pick up supplies as well as preparing photographs, writing the eulogy and the obituary and other things. The funeral was on Saturday morning in Sedley and there was a packed house. A mass was said and Mom's ashes were taken out to the gravesite. It was a fairly cold day so the service in the cemetary was quite short. Everyone then went to the gym hall for the reception. We are pleased to announce that Nikki and Christopher are home for a visit. Nikki's immigration paperwork was received by the government, so they decided to try and come for a visit. This was the day before the funeral and Nikki and Chris new they wouldn't be able to make it in time, no flights were available, so they jumped in their truck and started driving up. They left on Friaday afternoon around 5:00pm and arrived in Sedley about 6:00pm on Sunday. They were delayed at the border for 4 hours and at one point it looked like Chris would not be let into Canada and Nikki would not be let back into the states, but a miracle happened. Chris was granted permission to enter Canada and Nikki was blessed with an extension of her religious workers visa for three years, something that has never been done before. So that means she should be able to come and go as she pleases and in a short while her immigration should come through so that the visa is not necessary. So they are here for a week and a bit and have been travelling around visiting old friends and Chris has been trying to get used to our really cold weather. We had a lot of snow on Monday night when we arrived and today it has been blowing pretty strongly and drifting that snow all over the place. I think it's time to warm up a bit. I had taken quite a few pictures when we were home but I haven't had a chance to download them yet but when I do I will post a few. Happy Valentines Day!! Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Farewell, Mom
It's with a great deal of sadness that I inform everyone of the passing of Dianne's mom this morning, Feb 6th at 3:30 am after a long battle with cancer. Dianne and I have been here in Regina since Saturday when we were informed that she had taken a turn for the worse. Over the weekend she continued to decline and this morning we got the call that it looked like the end was near. She died peacefully with most of her family around her. She had been able to spend some time with the whole family earlier in the day. The funeral will be held Saturday in Sedley.  Celestina Mildenberger 1925-2007 Wednesday, January 31, 2007
The Wind Blew And The Snow Flew...
Well, we got another good dump of snow today and the weather has been pretty rotten overall for the past few days. Kinda makes me glad I'm not out working in it somewhere. I attended a two day job search seminar on Monday and Tuesday to see how to tap into the hidden job market that is supposed to contain 85% of the available jobs that only 15% of job hunters go after. It was a great seminar and I had wanted to take it about a month ago instead of now, however the scheduling was not the greatest over the Christmas holidays so I had to wait until this week. Still, it did give me a lot of information and a little bit more motivation. However, because it involves calling people up out of the blue more, I am a bit more hesitant as that is not one of my more favourite things to do. But it has to be done so I just screw up my courage and do it. Nothing positive has transpired, job-wise though, but at least I have a bit more ammunition and I feel like I am doing a bit more than spinning my wheels. Sandi has an interview with the Japanese embassy in Calgary in a couple of weeks to determine if she will be selected to join the program to go to Japan to teach English. She is quite excited about it and is really hoping for the best. We're not sure when she would go but it will probably be some time in June. She will have graduated from university by then and will be free as a bird, no better time to take advantage of such a wonderful opportunity. Friday, January 26, 2007
Wedding Video Completed
I have been spending a fair bit of time working on the video DVD for Chris & Nikki's wedding lately and it's just completed. Turned out pretty well I think. Tried a few new techniques and they seem to wok OK. I have posted a little trailer promoting the video on YouTube for those who want a taste of it. I do these trailers as bit of a lark, but they seem to get a good response so I throw them on the DVD along with a few other items of Bonus Features. Things have been pretty quiet on the job search front. I was supposed to be at a seminar yesterday and today on tapping the hidden job market but it got canceled, so I am scheduled to attend one next week. I do have a couple of things that I am working on and now that the video is done and before I start the next project I will follow up on those, probably early next week as well as get a few more prospects on the line. This weekend I am planning to clean out my main computer, which has been running rather sluggish of late. So I'm going to repartition and format the drives and do a clean reinstall of windows and all my apps. So that will keep me busy for a couple of days probably. Monday, January 15, 2007
Farewell and Good Luck
We had a great time on Saturday night at the Movie Central farewell party where we were able to say goodbye to many coworkers. It was a bit sad but overall a good closure as we moved on with the next phase of our careers. Many people were, like me, still looking for that ideal opportunity whereas a few had moved on to new jobs and some were even heading back to school. All in all it was a great time and I have posted a few pictures of the evening in the picture gallery as well as here . I have also posted another video to Youtube. This is a video made a few years ago to celebrate the Movie Central launch and features many past and present staff members. It's available here. Of course, most of this stuff will be pretty meaningless unless you actually worked at Movie Central but nonetheless it's kind of fun to see it. I am finally getting around to putting some new tires on the Nissan truck which has being running on some pretty bald summer tires recently, much to Sandi's chagrin. The roads here are so bad at the moment that she has been taking the Corolla to work and school because she is so nervous about driving the truck. Hopefully a new set of winter tires will help. I just had my holiday pay for last year deposited in my account yesterday and after all the deductions for taxes and whatever else it amounts to only about half of what we were expecting. It peeves me off that I have to pay into a dental and health plan that I can't use anymore as well as almost 30% income tax. I just hope I can get that back at tax time. Speaking of taxes, I guess one should start thinking about doing one's taxes. I am ticked that my usual tax software package is not available online anymore and is a lot more expensive in the stores. I am also wondering what to do about Nicole's tax return although she really didn't make any money last year so I guess it's a no brainer. But I guess this is the last year I will be able to file for her. She's in Uncle Sam's hands now. Nikki and Chris are moving in to an apartment this week after living in Alabama for the last few months. It will be nice not to have to drive for ninety minutes each way to get to work and back. They have also bought a new truck, which will make Chris very happy. They like their trucks down there much like our own Alberta rednecks. And they are still working on getting Nikki a visa so that they can come home for a visit. Hopefully that won't take too long. Thursday, January 11, 2007
Winter Woes and Fond Farewells
Winter's icy fingers gripped us like a vice today as temperatures plummeted down to the high minus 20's. This following a stormy day that dropped a ton of snow on us and a fierce wind that whipped it up into knee deep drifts. It was a good hour and a half job to clear the driveway and that's not counting the front sidewalk as we have a good Samaritan neighbor who drives his snow plow equipped ATV up and down the street after every major snow fall. Here's a few artistic-like shots of the snow yesterday:     Angela and Lee and our friend Melissa and her grandma stopped by on Sunday to celebrate Lee and Melissa's birthday. The kids also had a chance to open some late Christmas gifts from Nikki and Chris. Here's a couple of pics:   On the left I have posted a short video I put together to celebrate the end of an era. 23 years ago Superchannel signed on and I was there pushing the first button. This video documents that occasion. And now 23 years later, the sad farewell to the Movie Central/Superchannel origination center here in Edmonton, and once again I was there to turn off the last piece of equipment. On Saturday evening, the staff of Movie Central are gathering one last time to say farewell to each other and the pay television era here in Edmonton. Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Happy New Year
We made it home from Regina on New Years Eve about 10:00 in the evening, just in time to unpack our cases and ring in the new year. It was some holiday, for sure. On New years day, the kids came over and cooked us a turkey dinner and we all had a great time eating turkey and potatoes and stuffing and all kinds of pie and pulling on crackers and opening gifts and all that stuff. Here are a few pictures of the festivities as well as a few shots of the activities in Regina. The gifts were a little sparse this year but it was OK, but we did miss our baby as Nicole and Christopher were not able to make it up as they had hoped. It's the first Christmas we didn't have Nikki home with us to hand out the presents. They are now trying to plan a trip at the end of January provided the paperwork for Nicole's immigration goes through properly. It's back to the grind for Dianne tomorrow. (get it? "the grind" - she's in dentistry...oh, never mind) Not something to look forward to. I have started working on the job search. Put in a few resumes today and got an interview for tomorrow, so I shall see how that goes. For anyone who has not had a chance to peruse the Christmas 06 edition of the Chronicle I have posted it over there to the left above the picture gallery.
|
![[Powered by Blogger]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sXrYGp8muCxqTEMbDslzrtem5vZKmQmytQOS4z9-tgFFep1hpxIpITbqtTqelw6v4zYXil7wy7EuEKs2teIcILGUQLZYFzv2JX2UBpM5-u=s0-d){kind=small}
