The return of splatman

I’ve been enjoying the skiing lately when we finally manage to mobilise the four kids and actually get to the local ski hill (not to mention my not working being a factor in achieving the feat) but one of the things that I am learning about myself is a seeming inability to not test my limits. Part of the reason for that at the moment is it doesn’t take much for me to actually reach my limits.

Added to that is the fact that the kids are skiing with us and despite possibly have limits that they should reach before I reach mine (very debatable) the reality is that they don’t have one limit that I reach well ahead of them ... fear. The other seems to be the ability to fall down and not care (though admittedly they aren’t doing much of that of late.

And its not just the skiing.I

It’s a simple fact these days that I have two dodgy shoulders (which is actually important to this story). One stems from a touch football incident that I incurred what is probably over 6 years ago now and the other, from a more recent incident. this well documented case. Now last week, on Christmas day in fact , I decided to take the boys and their new sled things to the sledding hill to try them out. The first thing that happened was that I slipped going down the steps by the bbq and jarred both shoulders. Ouch. The second thing that happed was that I took a fine running approach in order to execute a beautiful and fast sledding run.

In reality however, as I sought to gracefully propel myself forward through the air and onto the sled for a wondrous and awe-inspiring sled run I stood on the trailing edge of the sled. Which meant that whilst I was in fact propelled through the air, it was with no grace and indeed with no sled. Instead I landed ungracefully on the far side of the sled in a rather unfortunate mess in the snow. Splat.

Now I didn’t pull up too badly from that encounter, the right shoulder wasn’t good, but I wasn’t crippled either.

So it was that I was skiing with Emily and Thomas on the weekend, following Emily down the hill with Thomas trailing behind. Now most of the time I get down the hill comfortably without even going close to falling over (exceptions occur when one is looking wildly around to find out where the small one went). And of course that’s where testing one’s limits come in.

Michael Sam and Thomas have already progressed to small (foot high) jumps and of course if they can do it, I can too right? Well the first time I could and even the second time i landed without major incident, it was just that one ski popped off when I landed ... but I stayed upright! So that was fine.

But on the occasion that I have been distracted from (kind of like skiing with small children) we were on a different run and it wasn’t a jump that was my undoing. There is a small slippery table-top halfway down the hill that one can choose to go over (note I said choose, the wise and sensible amongst us choose not to). I’d seen Thomas go over it and I had nearly gone over it myself earlier in the day. But I decided that I needed to work this one out. So Emily went over ... and stopped right near the end, which caused me some consternation as I was rapidly approaching. Now I can’t say for sure that that was my demise, but regardless of whether it was that distraction or merely the exceedingly early limit of my skill, when I went up onto it, I lost control. It seemed like my left ski was left behind and so I tried to lift my foot and bring it forward.

After that it was all rather amusing. I know that it was amusing because the four or five pimply faced, snot-nosed good for nothing layabout snowboarders who happened to be seated nearby collapsed in paroxysms of laughter as I once again propelled myself ungracefully through the air. This time I again landed face first sans skis. Ouch.

Of course at that point, Thomas, who was trailing me and doesn’t understand the concept of NOT going over the feature skied into me from behind.

Fortunately he didn’t manage to hurt me further. Of course I was less than pleased when he indignantly had a go at me for getting in his way and ruining his run!

And so now, although not terribly seriously injured, I sit here with rather sore shoulders from recurring wounds, wishing I had a younger man’s arms.

Suckered

Last week we were leaving the house to go skiing when a guy came to the front door trying to get us to have a carpet cleaning demonstration. Now I wasn’t the one that answered the door or this wouldn’t have happened. But as it was, Caroline was the one that answered the door and by coincidence, about 2 days earlier, Emily had decided to do some painting in her room … and of course got some paint on the carpet.

Caroline, seeing an opportunity arranged for them to come in and do a demonstration (they were only in the area for the weekend) when we got back from skiing.

So upon our return from skiing, these two guys came in, along with their spiffy looking vacuum cleaner to start giving us a demonstration of their product. It turned out to be a very impressive product (Can’t remember the name of it, but that’s really not the point).

But I of course was wary because they were door to door salesmen, I don’t own the house and really couldn’t be bothered listening to a sales pitch at 5pm on a Sunday afternoon. Besides, I’d been scarred once before by having to sit through 45 minutes of a cooking system demonstration that Caroline had organized (and then not got home in time for) so that we could get the 4 free steak knives they promised … but that’s another story.

Of course being Sunday night and being the time that it was, when they hadn’t finished the demonstration in the first hour and before they got to the real hard sell, Caroline had to go and start prepping dinner … leaving me to bear the brunt of the assault. Yay me. I listened and watched and let them run their spiel, agreeing that their product was impressive and that if I was in the market for a vacuum cleaner that I would indeed think there’s was worth buying.

They tried hard. They asked if we ever traveled or if we liked the idea of traveling. I pointed out to them that we’d only traveled half way around the world to be there for them to even speak to us, to which the guy replied, “Man you keep shooting me down!” And by golly I enjoyed it.

They kept trying to build an economic justification for the purchase of their product, asking how many times we thought we’d have to pay someone to clean the carpet, how much wear and tear it might save … blah blah blah, to which my response was,

“We don’t own the house and we’re only here for another 12 months (yeah, I lied) so I really don’t give a toss about the carpet.”

“Oh but what about your bond, surely you don’t want to lose that?”

“Actually the company owns the house and there is no bond.” Another shot for me.

Then he started going into the health aspects and kindly vacuumed Michael’s bed, just to show me all the dust mite carcasses and feces and stuff that my child was sleeping in, trying to show me that we were putting our lives at risk.

“One in six people get a respiratory problem from these things and there’s six of you in the house …”

“Yes, but none of us have and if you extend out our families and there’s still no problem, that one in six doesn’t quite hold up to well …” Bang.

I tried to cut him short to say that given we’d be leaving the country in 12 months, I wasn’t interested because the power is different and so it would be useless to me. He stated that they would happily record the machine for us, went through the life time warranty and of course threw in the free trip to Mexico.

I pointed out that when you have four kids, a free trip for 2 to Mexico is far from a free trip. Got him again.

The whole time that we’re doing this, his mate is down on his arse in Emily’s room applying spot remover to the carpet for us. Poor bastard.

I decided that things had gone far enough, I could smell dinner and I really just wanted them out of there. So I gave him a home truth. “The only reason that you’re in this house is because you happened to come here on a day when we had paint on the carpet and you said you’d get it out. I don’t want your vacuum cleaner.”

That of course launched the questions about why I wouldn’t buy a product that I had clearly agreed had benefits for us and was a quality product … did I really want those dust mite feces on the beds?

I told him I didn’t want to the vacuum cleaner. He rang the office and I overheard him at a complete loss as to why he couldn’t sell me this vacuum cleaner when I had agreed with him that it was a great product that I should probably have in my home. I took great delight from there in getting them out as quickly as I could, mystified as to why the couldn’t have my money.

Merry Christmas

For the last I don’t know how many years, about 2 or 3 weeks prior to this, I finally get around to putting together a Christmas letter that we stick in all the cards that we send out to our family and friends.

Well this year is different. This year, I missed that date and so there is no letter. This will have to be the substitute, given that we only realized when it was too late that we’d missed the deadline for sending cards back to Oz. No cards, meant no letter either. The other change is that in having moved over here to Canada, there’s a lot more people aware of and reading drift, so much of what would normally go in the letter is already covered and known amongst our family and friends. But I couldn’t help myself and had to put some sort of quick summary of our year together just to post it at drift as a way of wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and to let you all know that we are indeed very much thinking of you at this time of year.

If you’re reading this for a while then you’ll probably be well aware that the year has been full of adventure for us. It started way back prior to Christmas last year with me leaving my Rail contract home of 6 years to go and head up our contract with Santos as an interim measure until they were ready for the Temby’s to descend upon Canada. Of course having made the big step out of the rail contract, it then became a waiting game as to just how long it was going to be until they actually wanted us over here. Uncertainty certainly wasn’t an overly pleasant companion to have during that period, though it was great for me to get to work with a group of people that I’d worked with previously.

Of course in the end we finally got a date for the big move and shifted into the ‘oh my freaking god, what are we doing’ mode of operation that seems to go hand in hand with a decision to move to the other side of the world.

The kids held up remarkably well during the process and I was so busy working that I had little time to think about it. As is probably commonly the case, Caroline was the one that was most heavily burdened with the effort and I don’t think I could ever publicly thank her enough for the effort and stress that she went through in order for this to actually happen for us.

But move we did and in the process, managed to spend 3 days at Disneyland in LA. Its one of those magical dreams that I had as a kid, that one day I’d get to go to Disneyland and its still a little hard to believe that it actually happened. I don’t think our kids quite appreciate just how much of a dream it was for their parents to get to go there. Spoilt little buggers. But it was a great three days and if anything says just how magical that place is, it is the look on your little girl’s face when after standing in line for half an hour, she get’s to meet some Disney Princesses and have her photo taken.

For the boys it was more about getting to go on a buzz light year ride where you get to shoot at targets and keep score through the whole ride. I just know that our Godson Cameron would be in his element on that one!

Of course, LA was just a stop over and so we then made the extra two flights that were required to get us up to Fort McMurray, Canada. Before I left, I said to a number of people, “the hardest thing about agreeing to go to Fort McMurray for a stint will be making sure that we get out of there.”

And I still vividly (maybe because I’ve been reminded once or twice) remember Caroline saying when we arrived, “I’m glad that we’re getting to see Fort McMurray, but I’m even gladder that we won’t be staying here.

So one statement was a prophecy and the other a statement inducing doom. Or maybe they both induced the doom, who knows? But sure enough after coming into work without being really sure exactly why I was here for a space of time, I was given a temporary position, which has since of course been made permanent.

We’re getting used to Fort McMurray and we’ll survive (though will probably still push for something different if the chance comes up) and we’ll probably even look back with fond memories … eventually. The biggest issue was that we were emotionally invested in being elsewhere and it took (is taking?) some time to redirect that bond. If nothing else, we’ve met some great people up here that will surely be friends for a long time to come.

Anyway, enough of that, it’s probably time to mention the kids.

Michael started this year in year 5 back at St Thomas and was doing well, enjoying his cricket and soccer and doing well at school. He played c-grade cricket this year which meant that for the first time he got to wear all the protective equipment for the first time and they played in whites with a ball that had a firmness somewhere between a real ball and the rubber kanga cricket ball. He continued to do well at soccer, especially as a goal sneak. He seemed to have that instinct to get himself into the right place to finish off the goal even if he wasn’t necessarily the one to carry it 20 yards to get to a shot. (Sounds somewhat like my own goal scoring habits … just get on the end of someone else’s work and make it all look good!)

Coming to Canada, he pushed forward 6 months and started the year (in September, start of the school year here) in year 6 having only completed half of year 5 back home. Despite the trauma that the first week induced (for him and subsequently us) due to a lack of time spent outside during the day, he has settled in well to school and is continuing to do well, especially with his math and seems to be surviving being very much at the youngest end of the spectrum. We’ve even asked for him to be extended with his math as it appears he needs to be more challenged in this area.

Sam continues to be Sam (yeah, I know, who else would he be?) and also appears to have settled well. His report was superb in all areas and we’re very proud of it. He of course did half a year in grade 3 back home and jumped forward to start in year 4 over here in September. Unlike Michael, Sam is the one that is prepared to put effort in in all areas of his school work, not just the bits that he really likes and doesn’t seem to be rushing to get it done as quick as he can regardless of how it looks (Mikey likes to be finished so he can get on with other things). Speaking to Sam’s teacher, he’s a quiet member of the class, but I don’t think that’s really any change from where he’s been in the past.

Thomas continues to be our Trooper. He’s in year 2 this year with only the half year in year 1 back home at the start of the year. He was probably the one that we had the toughest decision with in regard to what year we put him in when he started here in December. With the speech issues, he wasn’t really where he needed to be, but we were very conscious of what happens when we come back home and they’re all likely to drop back 6 months again. We finally decided that we’d push Thomas forward, knowing that if we had to, we could hold him back and give him a chance.

We seem to have been very fortunate with the teacher that we’ve landed with for Thomas. She’s older and seems to have a genuine interest in doing what ever she can to assist him with his speech. His reading continues to improve, though he’s well behind where he should be and of course that affects things like his writing because of the effort that’s required to get all the words down. In isn’t quite as intuitive for him as he’d like it to be and as his teacher said, it’s like he sees what all the other kids are doing and when he’s been working really hard for a long time, he wants to have done as much work as all the other kids have. But he retains his persistence and patience (though by the end of the day is shattered and homework can be a real strain).

Emily has participated in two early entry things this year, one at a normal school and one at a French Immersion. I’m assured that she’s learning some French, but whenever I ask her to say something in French to me, she flatly refuses. I did catch her singing a song in it once, which was very very cute. As it is when she says “Do I have French ‘mersion kindy tomorrow Mummy?”

One of the biggest challenges for her is the fact that she doesn’t actually get to start full time school yet and so will be behind where we would have liked her to be if we were still at home. She misses the cut off by 21 days (its on February 28) and that is extremely frustrating to know that she’s so close. She is definitely ready. It means that she’ll be doing kindy next year which runs from 8am until 11:07am. Don’t even ask me where they come up with the times. She seems to be loving things over here though, as independent as she has ever been, though possibly even more demanding. She has attitude to spare and one can only hope that she’ll be challenged a bit during her time in Kindergarten to try and curb some of the energy! Something tells me that’s a false hope.

Caroline I would have to say has her ups and downs with where we are at the moment. I think her transition has by far been the hardest and she has definitely shouldered more than her fair share of the burden. Between the emotional demands of the move and the disappointment with the location being so far removed from anything we really want to see, it’s been a big stress. Add to that the fact that I am working long hours and the fact that just when she thought she might see the last of any of the kids being at home full time and then got Emily back, it hasn’t made things easy for her.

At least she’s met some nice people and has started playing ringette. There’s no ‘field’ hockey up here in Fort McMurray and I know that it’s an escape that Caroline is really going to miss whilst we’re here. The ringette has enabled her to meet a few people and give her an opportunity to get out of the house, its just unfortunate that the timing of the commitment seems to be a little screwy (8:30 on a Sunday night! – it was even later for some of the season).

I won’t say too much here though, as it’s probably better to let her describe things in her own words.

Sport has certainly been different for us. We left in the middle of our soccer and hockey seasons and so we’ve all had to adjust. I feel like my departure from Flinders was a forced retirement. I’ve managed to play one game since I got over here, filling in for an U18 side and all it proved to me was just how quickly you can get unfit. When you’re working demanding hours and the family is adjusting to a new environment and country, it’s hard to say, I’m going to spend my Saturday afternoon playing football. We’ll see how things pan out next summer.

Winter has been fun for us so far, as we’ve taken up ice skating and skiing. Michael and Thomas have probably taken to it the most. Thomas is a little dynamo. He was the first one ‘skid-stopping’ (my term for it, nothing technical) on the ice and loves getting out there. Sam is cautious but improving. Michael and Thomas have both managed to score their first goals for ringette, within about a week of each other. Michael then went on to get a hat trick 2 weeks later! I think it’s that goal sneak thing coming out.

We’ve all taken to skiing, getting out almost every day that we can to the ski hill that’s about a half hour from the front door (yeah, life can be tough). Sam again is the hesitant one, but I think we’ll turn him around before too long. Half his problem seems to be that he can’t be bothered putting all the gear on to cope with the cold weather. After a few heart-in-mouth moments, Emily has come a long way and we’re now happy to take her down the easiest hill, with her falling over occasionally as she get’s distracted and forgets to pay attention.

I managed quite a spectacular fall last weekend and I know that Caroline has gone down once or twice, but all in all, we’re impressed with how far we’ve come given our lack of a history with the sport.

And again, Thomas is the fearless dynamo. The different runs have progressively opened at the hill and last weekend the third run opened and his set up with various jumps and rails for the more adventurous skiers. That’s not us. But apparently it is Thomas. He and Michael have taken to jumping quite happily and I can only say thank God that at this point, the jump they’re going off is about a foot high! Caroline and I have both tried it, but I struggle with reconciling the fact that in 3 years (or significantly less) our kids might just be those nutters that are getting 6 feet of air!

All in all, we’re getting through this and of course have managed a few travels so far to Banff, Jasper, Edmonton and Calgary and have even booked our flights to come back home for a visit in Feb next year. The rest of the travel calendar still needs to be assembled.

That’s probably more than enough for now as it’s going to go forever on drift, but I’d like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Please make it a safe one!

~Dave.

Fantasy Hockey (or Pucked!)

An email went out at work a couple of weeks ago inviting the staff of the Upgrading unit to participate in a fantasy hockey tournament.

Now to put things in perspective, I never entered the footy pool back home because I knew that I wouldn’t care enough to get around to putting my tips in each week. I figured starting the year of without having forked out any money was a win compared with throwing 40 bucks away for everyone else to have fun with.

But this time around, I’m in a new country and I figured that it would be a good opportunity to build some bridges and become a part of the team. I knew that I’d be in a for a shellacking, but that wasn’t the point of my entering.

Now there’s guys from the soccer club back home that used to talk about their fantasy teams, but I’d never paid any attention or been interested in it. So I tell you what, this has been an eye opening experience!

It started on a Saturday morning with an 11am conference call to go through the ‘draft’. Yes, this was a hell of a lot more commitment than I’d anticipated and the bloody thing hadn’t even started yet. I panicked somewhat but Caroline had a stroke of genius and suggested that I call her friend Nancy’s husband Bob, who happens to be something of a hockey nut (yes, I’m a local now, there’s no need for the ice). He was on night shift the night before the draft and went to extraordinary lengths for me, printing out statistical lists of the top players, by position (wings, centres, backs, goalies).

I dialled in to the conference call at 11am with the other 11 participants in the competition, lists of players spread out before me, thinking I was ready. How wrong was I! I had the first draft pick which was about the only thing that really went right for me.

What followed was something of a traumatic hour. We each had to pick 18 players to make up our squad and given the pool I was in contained, Aussies, South Africans and Canadians and many of the actual Hockey player’s names are French and Eastern European, added with the fact that even when I could understand the name that was stated I didn’t know who they played for, by the time we were about three names in, I was lost.

That of course meant I was one of the people at the back end of the draft that every time I named someone heard a resounding chorus down the line of “gone!” I had been expecting an online draft where I could at least see who had disappeared of the selection list! All I can say is thank God Bob was there.

Anyway, I did survive the draft, but it turned out that that was really just the tip of the iceberg. Hockey get’s played 7 days a week here and it was only on about day 2 and three that I came to the double realization that a) you needed to change your team line up to match up with your players that were actually involved in a game on any given day and that b) you didn’t actually have to field a hockey team, just 12 players for your line up (so you don’t have to have a keeper in your line up and they could all be fullbacks).

Having said that, at the end of the first week, I dipped out on knocking off the VP of Upgrading by 3 points, 111 to 108. I was pretty chuffed with that up until I saw a message posted on the league message board that read:

Scrubbers Needs a New Manager (Apply Here)
Sad, could have been a big upset with the upstart from downunder spanking canadian wonderboy....... Nice 43 points sitting on the bench.

That’s great, except I don’t even know how I find out how I left the 43 points on the bench!
2 days in to week two I’m down 41.1 to 22.9. Might have to find out just how I avoid leaving those points on the bench.

Until then, I’ll just have to deal with my trauma and see what I can do.

ski bunnies

Yes, I know, it's not working. And frankly, it's just ever so annoying!

'cause Mum said so!

Right, there's a fair chance that you've already seen this because its bloody brilliant and therefore all over the web. But just in case you haven't, check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anSpBUxsgAU

It was an accident ...

So the other day I came home from work and Caroline said that Michael had had a bit of an accident. I asked what had happened, concerned that it might be serious.

It turns out that Michael fell over. But that wasn’t the injury. It turned out that in falling (if we’re to believe the story) that he managed to end up with his tongue against a pole. Now quite some time ago as we headed into winter, i really did intend to say to the kids , “If someone says to you that you should lick a pole during winter, don’t.”

As Michael unfortunately found out, just like in the movies, when you lick a pole and the temperature is somewhere south of -15 degrees Celsius, it sticks, which isn’t really a problem.

It’s a bit like the old adage that falling never hurt anyone. It’s the sudden stop at the end that really does the damage. Similarly, sticking your tongue to a pole is easy. Pulling it off is a bugger. And that’s what Michael found out as he pulled his tongue from the pole and left some skin behind.

He’s adamant that he really did fall. I have my doubts.

Lighting the way

One of the remarkable phenomena that I’ve noticed over the last week that I will never see at home relates to lights and ice in the air.

As I described in an earlier post, you get the fairy dust effect when its nice and cold and the water in the air is turning to crystal.

Over the weekend I noticed another effect that people had told me about but that I hadn’t seen (well until now obviously). When the air gets this cold and you have crystals in the air, some of the powerful lights that are about the place (like floodlights used to light up parking areas of industrial complexes) end up with a vertical column of light above them.

It’s kind of like a spot light has been directed vertically above the light post. When I was first told about it, I was informed that what it actually is, is a reflection of the light on the snow/ice beneath it that then lights up the crystals in the air. Regardless of how it actually occurs, its amazing to see these spearing columns of light shooting into the night air above the light posts. I doubt I could capture it on camera, but it’s something that I won’t forget.

The video of Emily I've tried so hard to post ...

For some reason, blogger seems to be unusually cooperative today, so i've been able to post this:

c c c cold

Yes, it’s a bit of a recurring theme at the moment, but I promise not to make it the subject of every post from now on (maybe most of them, but certainly not all of them). But I feel that following this morning it’s worth another mention.

I called the previous post on the topic minus 27 and that’s fine, but this morning I got up to go to a breakfast meeting and couldn’t help but notice just how cold it was on the way there. For a start, the bloody air was frozen! Ok, so not literally, but it was cold enough that there were ice crystals forming in the air. As I drove in to town, the headlights of the car lit up thousands of glittering crystals that gave the effect of someone having shaken glitter (or maybe even fairy dust) over the town. It was a remarkably beautiful sight that only went some way to offset the sheer horror of the car’s external temperature reading that sat at a cool -32C!

As the two photos below show .. at least it warmed up as the day went on! (The sun now reaches its peak about 30 degrees above the horizon - these were taken about midday).





The local ski hill opened last weekend and we endeavoured to get there late Sunday to try it out. But of course, us being the Temby’s we stopped in town first to visit the ‘festival of the trees’ (a local pre-christmas thing where pre-decorated trees are auctioned off to support the local hospital) and had to stop to buy ski boots and skis for Caroline and myself. Needless to say by the time that we drove to the ski hill, things were getting a little bit tight time-wise.

After the 47 trips back and forth that are required to get everything ready and then the pain and horror of getting everyone changed and into ski-boots etc, we finally got onto our skis to find an attendant standing at the top of the hill we were about to go down telling us that the run was closed for the day. We’d missed it by 5 minutes! Happy? It takes four letter words to describe how truly happy I was at that point.

So yesterday, being Saturday, we made our way back out to the hill (despite the -22C forecast) to have our first ski. With everyone set to go and without really knowing just how challenging the hill might be (though we’d been assured that it really was mild) we stood at the top and I went through a quick review with Emily ... pizza and french fries (that would be ski tips together to form the snow-plough wedge and parallel to go fast). She knew what was required and so I told her to go with me and we’d ski across the hill (rather than the more direct route the boys like to take).

Caroline and the boys went first and then Emily and I. Well, Emily had her ski tips together and started down the hill after me. I went across the hill and glanced over my shoulder. Rather than a nice controlled snow plough across the hill like I was anticipating to see coming behind me, instead I saw our little pink and purple-suited Emily with her snow plough pointed straight down the hill and as she accelerated rapidly past me, beyond the nice easy start and onto the somewhat steeper section beyond. She squatted down as she picked up speed and stuck her arms out sideways like little wings and shot down the hill. There was just the faintest note of a little terror in the cry that emerged from her as I called out to Caroline (thinking that she was ahead of Emily).

When Caroline responded, it was clear that Emily was all out on her own and so I pointed my own skis down the hill and raced after her. There was a flatter bit after that first more adventurous slope and I thought that she might pull up as I screamed, “Pizza! Pizza!” at her over and over again, but her her momentum carried her over the cusp again and down the next steep part of the run. I caught up with her half way down that bit as she’d fallen over. The rest of the way to the bottom was a test of a parent’s nerves as I tried to get her to follow me and survive at the same time. Given the amount of time I’ve spent skiing, I didn’t exactly feel like the most qualified educator for the subject!

We had some lunch after that to calm everything down and then after much pleading, allowed Emily a second attempt. It was much improved, but not so much that she won herself a third. She’s been booked into lessons instead. The rest of us had a better time of it, though given it was about -25, more than 2 runs at once was more than this man’s toes could bear!

And finally, since starting this earlier today, we’ve had dinner, Caroline has gone out and the kids are in bed. What did we have for dinner? A BBQ. Because i simply had to challenge my BBQ’ing skills and be able to say that I’d cooked steak outside, on the BBQ when it was -25 degrees. And now I can. Though I did find out in the process that the BB! Cover doesn’t like being frozen. It likes being pulled off the BBQ when it’s frozen even less. Which is why, after scraping the snow off, it came off in pieces!

minus 27 (or wind chill)

It's been getting steadily colder here (as one would expect of course) but the thing that one continually faces as a foreigner from warmer climes is that when you slip and say, "It's getting cold out there," the locals laugh at you and say, "cold? that's not cold, wait until it hits -30! (or 40 or so).

Well yesterday when I left home at 7am for a Sunday breakfast meeting (don't even ask) the external temperature indicator on the car gave me the cheery news that the termpature outside was -28 degrees. Just lovely!

And I have to say, that given the forecast high for today was -22C, I have officially given Caroline the right to claim to be cold! Hey, it's the least that I could do.

And as if that's not cold enough, they announced on the radiator that the windchill factor meant that we could expect it to feel like -34C.

I didn't spend a lot of time outside today and one of the reasons for that is that I haven't really managed to get around to buying myself a decent pair of winter shoes yet. And I really, really need to do it in a hurry.

When we left home, I really had no concept of what it might feel like when the temperature plummeted to something akin to that on the 5th plane of hell, but I can now say that I'm getting more than just a conceptual understanding.

It doesn't take long when you're outside to feel the effects. And the first thing that I've noticed it on is my ears. There's nothing like coming in from a short walk outside and having to touch them with your hands to make sure that they're still attached. I really should remember to take my beanie with me to work tomorrow.

At least at the moment we look like only having a week around the -20 mark before heading back up to a significantly more comfortable range around 0 to -5C.

February might be another matter.

Daylight

It’s becoming rather obvious that we’re headed into the deep dark depths of winter here. I mean we’re a long way from truly being there given that its only November, but the signs are certainly there.

I’ve been leaving early for work (like between 5 and 5:30am) because there’s been industrial action blocking the entrance to site, which if you’ve read about the traffic here, you’d realise that it causes the problem to spill out onto the highway and cause chaos for one and all.

And of course when you leave at that time of day, there’s no light, it’s pitch black. Then the first indication that you have that things aren’t quite what they used to be is when you are sitting at work and realise that the sun is just starting to have an effect on the shading of the sky and its already 8am.

But then you get to enjoy the nice sunny sky as you work your way through the day until again you happen to notice that the sky has darkened and apparently night has descended upon you. The temptation is of course to pack up the computer and head off home. At least, that’s the temptation until you glance at your watch and realise that it’s about 4:15pm! Bugger, not time to go home yet.

I can't wait until we hit the shortest day of the year (in about a month!).

So the other day I had a meeting in town and didn’t drive out to the site until after 8am (can’t remember the last time that I did that … I think it must have been the first day that I went to site). It was quite enlightening to do the drive in daylight again. The first delight was driving across the bridge that spans the Athabasca river. It’s almost completely frozen over now and with the snow having built up on all of the frozen bits it’s a fantastic scene upon which to cast one’s eye.

And then I got to drive along the highway, following the valley between the trees, which having lost their leaves, are now gorgeously decorated with snow. It’s one of those things that manages to continue to surprise me about this place. For all the stress that’s work and the struggle that Fort McMurray can become, the natural beauty that surrounds us is gorgeous.

Spam!

Spam spam spam spam, everybody loves spam ...

Apparently, because of the large number of people now on the list to be notified when I update drift in my gmail account, google has decided that I am spam.

In order to try and continue to provide you with notifications (which I figure people like due to the sporadic nature of my posting) I have set up a group within google to which people on the list should find themselves members of.

If you weren't on that list and would like to be notified, drop me an email at davedrifts@gmail.com and I'll see that you get an invite.

Winter Wonderland

We’re beyond the first snow now and things have certainly turned our world white. We must have had another 6 inches of snow over the weekend, which is both fun and frustrating.
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I came home from Banff last weekend to shovel about 6 inches of snow off the driveway but over this last weekend, must have done the job 3 times. This morning there was another couple of inches on the drive and I had to just ignore it and leave for work. I’ll have to do it when I get home.

Mowing the lawn used to be one of those things that I’d get sick of having to do every 2 weeks at home, so I know by the time that winter’s over I’ll be well and truly past the whole drive and footpath shoveling thing.

Of course there are positives to all these things as well. I still find it simply amazing to gaze out the front window and see the world all white. It is surely the biggest reminder of just how far we’ve come from home. And the snow is fun.

One of the things that I’ve started to do is turn the deck that adorns the side of the house into a sled ramp for the kids. They commenced in a small way, but if you’ve seen the sand castle that I decided to build earlier in this blog, you’ll understand how the engineer in me needs it to be bigger and better. It’s a pity that the end point for the run happens to be a mesh wire fence. I guess as winter continues and I manage to make this thing bigger, I’m going to have to do something about that. It’s one thing to go sliding into a snow drift, or up a small ramp that slows your speed and something else entirely to come to a sudden halt in a mesh fence!

Yesterday I took the kids to a small hill near our house, plastic toboggans and magic carpet in tow and we spent a fun half hour trudging up and sliding back down the hill. I can’t wait until the local ski hill opens. Apparently that have a tube run there where you slide down in a big inner tube and then get hauled back up the hill again. Sounds cool.

And of course, there’s always the debunking of the ‘Hollywood Myth’ when you get to go somewhere and you’re only expectations have been set by what you’ve seen on TV. For instance, when you see snowy scenes on TV, the roads are all crappy brown. They sure as hell are here. In order to assist in providing traction for vehicles, they first plough the snow out of the way and then they put down grit. And it’s dirty brown. So whilst you can gaze out of the window of the car and watch the winter wonderland pass by, stretching in front of and behind you is a dirty brown streak that likes to get thrown up and adhere to the car. I can’t see much cleaning of cars going on in the next couple of weeks, other than to kick the frozen mud and ice off the mud flaps perhaps!

Staying Put

So we’ve finally come to the concluding point regarding where we’re going. We’re going to stay in Fort McMurray. After a lot of crap around the whole decision, minor things like actually having someone say to your face, “We really want you to be here,” for the sake of being able to move forward and a little personal sanity (for more than just myself of course) I drove the issue to a decision point.

We’ve a renegotiated contract to go with the deal so that will help ease the burden somewhat, though the real effort is of course, now attaching ourselves to the emotional component of the decision and making the most of our opportunity.

Ideally the best thing to help us to stay here would have been additional leave to enable us to take better advantage of the opportunity to travel, but the implications of driving such a bargain to the rest of the workforce meant that it was an unrealistic goal (though one I’ve planted seeds of elsewhere …). So the next task at hand is to put together the travel plan for the next 3 years (which is already down to 2 years and 7 months) so that we have things to look forward to when we’re feet deep in snow.

Ski Bunnies

I had to go to Banff for work over the latter part of the last week (yes, life can be truly terrible) and because we’re in Fort Mac, I knew that I had to offer the chance of an escape to Caroline and the kids. Strangely, they said that they wanted to come. So on Tuesday we all drove down here and after spending Tuesday night with friends from work in Calgary, came up to Banff on Wednesday. We stayed at the Rimrock Resort whilst I worked and then moved to our current location, the Douglas Fir for the weekend.

During the research for the trip, we found out that this weekend (a long one as there’s a holiday for Remembrance Day) also happened to be the opening weekend of the ski season (oh darn!).

The original plan was to ski at Sunshine but due to a lack of snow, they’d delayed their opening. We found this out before we got there fortunately and we were able to discover that Lake Louise was opening yesterday (Saturday the 10th.) So we booked ourselves in for lessons (well five of us, Emily got day care).

The skiing yesterday was at best arduous as there were no lifts open that we were allowed to access on the introductory lessons that we’d booked. The t-bar that they usually use for this simply didn’t have enough snow down and they only had one run open at the resort.

The result of this was that if you wanted to ski down hill, you had to first walk yourself and your equipment uphill. Now there’s some mad people about that like to walk up mountains for the express purpose of skiing back down, but let me assure you, I’m not one of them. It didn’t help that Caroline had hurt her back and so I lugged two pairs of skis up each time.

But we did make some progress and gather some competency along the way. The boys were in a separate lesson and had an absolute ball. Unfortunately for Emily, the kiddy ski wasn’t running yet, it starts later in the season.

Probably the most notable thing about the day was the fact that it snowed almost all day (which we hoped would prove for better access today). And of course when you’ve never really driven in nice icy snowy conditions, you want the first time to be when you’re on an unfamiliar road, in the dark.

That’s what I did. For most of the way it wasn’t too bad but the visibility was at time cut back to only a hundred metres or so. The worst part was that you couldn’t see the lines for the fresh snow and so were really just following in the tracks of the cars that had gone before you. Which seemed to be fine until at one point, I glanced in my left side mirror to see an semi-trailer looming up alongside me with what in that terrifying moment seemed to be all of about 12 inches between us as he gave a blast on his air horn. I’m not sure if he was warning me not to stray or announcing to me that he was there, but the result was something of an underwear changing moment and I was just glad that I managed not to panic and maintain my line as he thundered on by!

Today was significantly better weather wise and we had arranged to have a private instructor for the five of us that were skiing for the day. She took Emily for a half hour at the start and end of the day so that the little pink thing didn’t miss out entirely and had the rest of us for the time in between.

Having and instructor helped us with the confidence and also meant that we had lift tickets to access that one open run. Caroline and I approached it with relevant levels of trepidation, where as the boys would have been quite content to snow plough their ways straight down the mountain! Skiing next to Sam on the first placid part of the run, I enquired as to the sullen look on his face (entirely inappropriate for where we were and what we were doing). He replied that it was boring and he wasn’t allowed to go fast enough!

So Caroline and I concentrated on learning to turn and control our descent down the mountain and the boys tried to operate on the basis that turns weren’t really what they were there for. But we all managed to get better and we all managed the odd tumble. It wasn’t helped by the fact that with only one run open, everyone that was there, skiers and snow-boarders of every level of ability were all mixed in together.

Although not as terrifying as the semi-trailer, hearing a bunch of snow-boarders carving their way across the icy surface of a steep incline above you as you try and remember all the things you’ve been taught and not crash was at a minimum unsettling.

I was well pleased when the first one managed to veer into me as I leant on her and pushed her over without coming undone myself. I skied off merrily, me 1, snowboarders 0. Of course, later, on our last run, one managed to take me out and I was less than impressed. Because of course it was on one of the steep icy inclines and getting my skis back on was not a challenge that I particularly wanted at that point. Me 1, snowboarders 1.

Michael had the best fall apparently. He claims there were somersaults and all involved and given the graze that he has on his back, I’m inclined to believe that he is at least in part telling the truth! Neither Caroline or I saw it as we had other things to worry about.

And of course, best crash of the day probably goes to me. Because when it comes down to it, location and audience is a big part of any crash. So I chose the perfect spot for mine. Having completed the entire mountain, we had to traverse the almost flat land at the bottom to get back to the chair lift. As I tried to work my way up the slight incline, I over-balanced, toppled, waved my skis everywhere and went down upon my considerable arse! Right in front of the three hundred or so people waiting for the lift, whilst doing nothing that could be considered in anyway challenging!

But all in all it was a great day and we all walked away with tired legs and smiles on our faces.

a brief pause

Right, I'm off to Banff for a work thing and so I've dragged the whole family with me. Of course some blithering idiot (aka me) left the power cable for our laptop in Fort McMurray and so there won't be much posting this week.

And given the problems I've had staying connected to Blogger lately, the post prior to this one remains image and video-less. But it will happen!

Pack your bags!

Sometimes I turn the computer on and when drift comes up as my homepage, realise that it's been a while since I've updated it. Of course, I like to update it when I have something to say or a story to tell, not just for the sake of seeing something no tool to write with nearby). And then sometimes things quite simply leap out and say, "blog me!" Tonight was one of those nights, I'd been out at a work function and when I came home, did the rounds saying goodnight to the kids ... watch the attached video and you'll see why I put this here straight after!

Right, I've had all sorts of trouble trying to get either a photo or the video attached to this post, so for now, description will have to do.

I went upstairs to say goodnight to the kids, avoiding the suitcase that had been left on the landing of the stairs. I said goodnight to Thomas, looked in on Michael, but Emily was nowhere to be found. I went back down the stairs, past the suitcase to see if she'd fallen asleep on a couch or something silly.

As I walked back up the stairs to see if perhaps she'd done something crazy like decide to sleep in her wardrobe, I almost walked past the suitcase again. Thinking myself mad, I opened the lid of the suitcase.

Sure enough, curled up with her quilt, inside the suitcase was the little pink thing, fast asleep!

The Great Barbie Massacre

Since we left Australia, there's something that we haven't quite managed to get around to doing. If you've seen some of the photos, there's a small chance that you might have picked it up. Of course there's a good chance that you haven't taken any notice either.

Michael and Sam haven't had a haircut. I attempted to fix that a couple of weeks ago, but with limited time, I gave up after about the third hair place because there was no way we were going to get through it before they had to be at ringette.

Other than having really long hair, it was a pain in the proverbial with Sam if for no other reason than his hair seemed to work its way out from under his helmet and into his eyes (a head band soon fixed that but don't tell him I told you). But it wasn't really that much of an on-going prospect and so it was time for them to get a haircut. And I volunteered to take them.

I had asked Sam if he'd like his short at the back like mine and he was fine with that. Michael was a little more reserved and decided that he'd like to see Sam's hair before he committed.

So Caroline dropped us off and I took Michael and Sam into the hairdressers. There wasn't a whole lot of English being spoken in there, but that was no reason to be concerned. I outlined what I was looking for with Sam's haircut, a number three at the back and some length left on top.

Part of me thought that maybe it would be a good idea to do this in stages, but that number three was ripped straight up the back of his head and there was no going back.

When it was done, Michael decided that he too would go down the same path. And so we have two boys with very short hair. By the time that it was finished, I looked at the floor and it looked like there'd been a Barbie massacre ... all those long golden locks on the floor.

Photos to come

Red Rover on Ice

Yes, I'm a kid with a new toy, but this was taken tonight and I thought I'd share for all of you back home

yes, its sideways

ok, so this is sideways, but its damn cute, so turn your head and have a look (and I promise not to flood this with video!)

Ice Ice Baby

Just seeing if this works ... if it does, here's some video of one of the first skating lessons :o)

Pumpkin Fun

One of the best (and most anticipated) things about getting to live overseas is getting to participate in new traditions and cultural experiences. I can't say that I'd given it a lot of thought before leaving home but and I guess that to some extent that's because as a commonwealth predominantly anglo-saxon country I guess I didn't expect things to be overly different to home.

It's not like when we lived in Singapore and found out about the amazing traditions like the Festival of the Hungry Ghost. Having said that we'll embrace anything that looks like it's going to be a bit of fun. And so as the end of October drawers near, we are getting into the Halloween spirit in a way that we've previously only seen on TV.

We really started on Saturday night with a Halloween masquerade ball with a part of the Suncor organisation. All I can say is that when it comes to dressing up, I am a rank amateur! Then on Sunday we had some help from some locals to really get into the swing of things. They invited us around to carve pumpkins!



It was certainly an initiation over and above what I would have expected. Of course when you think about it, it makes sense that there’s patterns and specialist tools etc to help you carve your pumpkin but when you’ve given it no thought, its a big surprise.



I was fine with the decorative carving bit, but like the kids, wasn't interested at all in the de-gutting of the things.

nine

During the past week, our little man Sam turned 9. So I thought that it was only fitting that I sit my butt down and write a little about the number two son. (I actually did this a couple of days ago, but then managed to lose the lot … always a wonderful thing).

Sam is a delight (well most of the time). He’s distinctly different from his brothers and the child most likely to dish out a hug. Sam takes great delight in surprising me with crushing hugs. And I of course, never complain about that.

The other day, one of the other Aussie Mums over here said to us, “You know I can’t quite work Sam out. Every time I think that I’ve got him pegged, he surprises me and I realise that I don’t have it yet.”

I think that’s very true of Sam and in many ways he could have been a Gemini as he switches from what I perceive to be his usual generous and easy going manner to the little guy who’s picking on his younger siblings or berating his mother for a minor infraction of what he perceives as common sense and decency (usually a sure indication that he’s over-tired).

On the day of Sam’s birthday, he received a remote control helicopter. Just a little one, that’s supposed to be indoor friendly. When I was leaving for work, the helicopter was on being charged, so I didn’t think to say “don’t fly it outside.” But when I was almost at work, I realised that I had left my phone home and so turned around to go get it. I’d probably been out of the house for about 40 minutes. Of course as I came in the door I learnt that the helicopter had been taken outside for a maiden flight.

Sam, being generous as he is, had allowed Michael to be the one to try it out for him. It flew. Landing seemed to be the problem. Well, not so much landing as the location for it. Michael managed to land it on the roof, which is of course now a rather tall prospect compared to what I am used to at home. And given that we are new to town, I am yet to have gone down the path of procuring a ladder with sufficient reach to make it to the top of the house.

Now if this had been any other child in the family, a) they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to have the first turn and b) they would have been so distraught and angry that I would have been confronted by a screaming ball of hysteria the moment that I walked in the door. But Sam was calm and philosophical, accepting the fact that he’d said that Michael could have first turn and with that ultimate childhood faith in his father to get it back for him (given that it’s days later now and will be the first chance that I get to borrow a ladder, I really need to try and do that for him today … when I finally get out of the office). It’s one of those ways in which Sam surprises you.

But Sam is also still the little guy who is afraid to give some things ago because he feels that he won’t be good enough for them. Sometimes, he thinks that its better not to go out and look bad rather than give it a go. And so at the first game of Ringette that he went to, he spent most of the first half sitting on the bench, adamantly refusing to take part. It took me back to the day that I had to drag him into the basketball stadium just to have him sit on the bench. Which we then managed a week later to be getting him on the court (not participating, but on the court) to finally a point where he was happy to go on, as long as he participated in his way (which mainly meant taking the free throws from the side lines). But he did eventually go out on the ice and do his thing (which given his skating ability didn’t really involve chasing the ring or other skaters around the ice).

Sam simply isn’t as competitive as his older brother. He’s happy to be a part of a team and happy to play, but he doesn’t really deal all that well with the fact that everyone doesn’t just get a turn at it. I take this from the basketball experience, where he was quite happy until people would attempt to snatch the ball from him. He wasn’t prepared to stick his hand in and take it off them and really just looked like he wished that people would give him some time to dribble the ball rather than try and snatch it off him (he did get good at hanging onto it when they did try that!)

So he’s more than happy to shoot hoops on his own, or with me where there’s no pressure and the only competition that’s introduced is at his instigating. He likes cricket and I think part of it is that even though there’s a team playing against you, there’s the separation in the way it’s played. It’s not a bad thing. Its just hard for a competitive old bastard like me to watch sometimes!

But all in all, as I started with, Sam is a delight. He loves his maths and does well at school and most of the time is a polite little man who’s fun to be with. Happy Birthday Sam.

Genetic Theory

Following on from my previous genetic theories (which only long time readers of this will be aware of … the bbq and gladwrap genes) I have a new one.

As I’ve walked about Canada, there’s something I’ve noticed. Canadian girls have short legs (yes, that’s a big generalisation). It’s not something I’ve particularly gone out of my way to notice, but as I’ve meandered the streets and stood around in shopping centres as we collect the things we need to survive, I’ve paid passing attention to some of the women.

From my observations to date, compared to what I am used to seeing, Canadian women seem to have short legs when compared to the length of their bodies. And I believe that its genetic.

Here’s my theory:

Canada gets cold. Really really bloody cold (yeah, I can’t wait). They end up with all this snow and ice and stuff on the ground that apparently makes walking somewhat more treacherous than we are used to.

Therefore, a lower centre of gravity might just be a benefit when it comes to keeping one’s feet in these conditions. Shorter legs, lowering the height of your butt would similarly lower your centre of gravity. So I figure this is why the women that I’ve observed have a lower leg to body-length ratio.

It would also assist in minimising pain from slippage because you would fall from a lesser height!

I wished ...

I was driving Emily home from somewhere the other night when we had a conversation that went something like what I’ve captured below.

“Mummy might have another baby Daddy,” she said to me.

“No, I don’t think that’s going to happen Emily,” (I didn’t go into technical details at this point).

“It might Daddy, I wished that Mummy would have a baby girl!”

“Hmmm, well not all wishes come true Emily.”

“And if she did, I’d look after her. I would teach her things and put her to bed and get her dummy for her and feed her. Mummy would have to carry her and do some other things though.”

There was more to it along the lines of what Emily would do if she were to have a little sister, but that’s the nuts and guts of it really. Personally, I’m hoping for a triumph of science over wishes at this stage!

Seven

Yes, this week, Thomas turned seven. I can’t believe it, but then that seems to be the case with every birthday these days and I’m sure that my mother shakes her head when she thinks that I am 30 + that number.

I feel bad that it’s taken me 3 days past our little man’s milestone to get around to writing it and I’ll have to make sure that I take the time to post this (and the other couple of posts that I’ve prepared) so that it’s not another week until I finish the task.

Thomas is a super-dude. Given the start that he’s had with his speech over the seven years, I am constantly amazed at the patience and perseverance he displays as he goes about the tasks that are set for him. I was out watching him at his ice-skating lesson last night and its wonderful to see him starting to glide about the ice, taking off cheekily whenever he get’s a chance to have a little skate rather than stand in line and wait for instruction.

Its representative of the cheeky sense of humour that’s he’s developed thus far. There are of course times when one is tired and it seems that he’s taken things a bit beyond the bearable stage, but its usually hard not to at least have an inwardly grin at his antics (whilst outwardly trying to guide him in to a different place!).

He remains generous and caring in his outlook, to the point that on the night of his birthday when McDonald’s screwed the order for his birthday dinner (resulting in Michael and Sam having no fries) he happily handed over half of his little bag of fries to Sam so that he didn’t miss out (unlike the little mischief who wasn’t about to have a bar of this sharing crap – must take after me, not Caroline, that one). It was simply a precious moment of generosity.

So far Thomas has managed two trips to hospital with blood gushing from him, first his head and then, as recently documented, his thumb. Let’s cross our fingers and hope that seven doesn’t bring any more of those. I’d be quite happy if his one and only ice related injury managed to happen off the ice before he ever knew how to skate!

A Matter of Taste

You know, when you leave Australia and head over to Canada, you tend to think that it won’t be that different from home. Sure there close to the beast to the south, but it’s a Commonwealth country under the same Queen, so there’s got to be a few similarities, right?

Well when it comes to food, there seems to have been a few key departures from what we consider normal. And these are important departures that you really should be warned about before you leave the country.

Caroline bought a packet of jelly beans so that we could decorate some cakes for Thomas’ birthday. I like jelly beans. I tend to go for the red ones first. But this time, I didn’t, because I’d learnt something since coming to Canada. Over here, red isn’t raspberry. It’s cherry.

Now I don’t like cherries even if they’re real and I doubt very much that cherry flavoured ‘candy’ (or lollies as we are wont to call them) taste anything like real cherries. Regardless, I happen to think they’re disgusting. So I didn’t take a red one. I took a yellow one. No surprise there, it was quite tasty. And the orange one was nice too. Caroline took a green one and I knew from her face that it wasn’t what she’d expected.

I mean, what flavour do you expect when its green (I can see my sister cringing already, she always hated green lollies)? I personally expect lime. Caroline wasn’t about to tell me what it was either, she wanted me to taste for myself. Summoning up the true depths of my courage, I picked one up and bit into it.

Spearmint. Or as it tends to be otherwise known (from the memory that it recalls via association with the flavour) toothpaste. Yum. Not. Jelly beans should never, ever, in any way what-so-ever, taste like toothpaste.

Yep, it’s the little things that remind you you’re not at home!

Thin Ice

Caroline and all of the boys have taken up ringette this winter and so there has been a large commitment made to ice-time. Its all ramping up and the boys are all starting to have more fun as their ice-skating competence increases.

In addition to the ringette, the boys and Emily have been booked into skating lessons which should hopefully get them moving around the ice with even more confidence and help them to catch up to some of the other kids.

So everyone had been ice-skating except dear old Dad. We were headed into a sports store to get some skates for Caroline ahead of her ringette debut and seeing as it was a Sunday, I went along as well, which thrilled the kids. They were obviously keen to see their father on ice-skates.

At the store, I decided that seeing we were going to be living in this wintery wonderland called Canada for a couple of years, then it might be in my interest to get a little bit better at ice-skating myself. And unlike back home, where the thought of having your own pair of ice skates in the cupboard seems just a little bit whimsical and pointless, over here, hiring skates seems to be unheard of. So I sat my butt down and said to the sales guy, “Get me the cheapest pair of ordinary skates that you can, I won’t be doing much more than the occasional casual skating.”

$180 later, I am the owner of a pair of ice skates. Ouch! Apparently that was the cheapest pair that I could get in that store and I couldn’t be bothered shopping around

Of course, I was really pleased walking through Walmart today to see skates on the shelf for a cool $59. Come in sucker.

All I can say is I’d better really get to love this ice skating thing!

I survived our first session without my precious butt managing to come in contact with the ice, though it was something of a close call. I haven’t managed to get out to see Michael and Sam have their turn, because the one time I did was the day of the thumb incident. But I have managed to see Thomas have a go.

It is so cute! This little guy is all dressed up like a hockey player and at first, can’t skate to save his life, but he’s trying his hardest and improving all the time. He’s actually getting a grasp of the basics and you can see him starting to push off and glide, rather than try and run across the ice like one of his little Aussie mates. And it’s the moments when they think they’ve got it that are the funniest. You can see that they just start to relax that bit and then bam! Hello splatsville. But because they’re all padded up in their gear, they don’t actually get hurt.

Last night they did a ‘power skating’ session. Michael and Sam were on the ice and Sam was waiting due to insufficient equipment (we’ve enough to get two of them on the ice at once, but not three – more scrounging required). They play a game like red-rover (or British Bull Dog) where they have to try and skate across without being touched.

Well in the first game, Michael ended up being one of the last three by lurking around whilst everyone else madly chased each other at great speed across the ice and then basically limping in his own crazy skating style whilst no one was watching. The problem that that created for him was that he had to be one of the three in the middle to start the next game.

So when you can’t really skate and you have to chase down these tiny tackers that blaze around like they have rocket propelled skates, what do you do?

Well obviously you pick on your little brother who’s at the same level as you rather than try to get to someone faster. But it was hilarious. Because Thomas is getting close to as being as good as Michael. But when he saw his big brother try and advance on him … splat! Which of course got Michael excited because his target was now prone, but in his attempt to speed up and nail his quarry … splat! He went down on the ice as well. And so it went over about a third of the ice rink.

Tom would get up and skate for a metre or three and then splat. Michael would get up and start closing the gap and then splat! Man I wished that I had a video camera to capture that, it was absolutely priceless.

But I think my favourite memory of the night is Thomas standing on the ice in front of me, hanging onto the edge of the rink, grinning his missing-front-teeth grin through the face guard of his helmet as we tried to communicate through the perspex that’s there to keep the puck (and probably hockey players as well) from meeting the crowd.

Jasper ... pt 1

Don't get excited, there's no update (well other than this of course). I've managed to type up a couple of things over the last week and they're all sitting on my USB drive waiting for me to upload them. Unfortunately, my USB drive is in Fort McMurray and We're all in Jasper. This weekend is thanksgiving and so we get a long one. We took off from Fort Mac Friday night and overnighted in Edmonton. After a brief shopping stop to pick up a bike for Thomas' birthday and some choice leather goods for Caroline and I, we hit the road again, arriving here at about 3:30pm.

We managed to stroll down most of the main street and stopped at a restaurant for dinner (glad that I had the small steak, because I nearly exploded and I reckon the big one would have been most of the cow that had been carved out of the jacket I bought earlier in the day).

So yeah, this is just to let you know we're alive, we're having fun, we've escaped Fort Mac for the weekend and are looking to a fun day exploring Jasper tomorrow ... hopefully including a bus trip to a glacier. Should be an expensive hoot!

Will post more upon our return from civilisation.

~dave

Fall

Fall is here. And given that we are surrounded by trees almost anywhere you look outside of the town itself, it makes for a spectacular view. There seems to be a mixture of poplars and evergreens across the landscape and the poplars are all turning a fantastic shade of gold.

And given that the city is nestled in a valley along the river, some of the drive to work is breathtaking especially at that point that you come over the hill and look down over the valley.

Of course, with the season passing to fall and the year passing the equinox, the days are rapidly growing shorter, so most of the time that I am on my way to work these days, it’s in the dark. And it won’t be long until the drive home is also in the dark. And the lovely golden view is already being peppered with grey as many of the trees have lost all of their leaves completely.

Although I have to wonder at the naming of the season fall. Autumn gives no indication of what to expect, but when I think of fall, it presents me with images of leaves gently drifting down to the ground as they lose their tenuous hold against the winter.

Over here, it seems to be happening so quickly that I think perhaps the season might have been better named dump.

Traffic Report

Every morning on the way to work we get a traffic report on the radio. It means that you get to hear when some goose has rear-ended some other goose and there’s going to be serious delays on the highway.

Yep, on THE highway. There’s one of them. There is NO OTHER WAY TO GET TO WORK.

So what good is the traffic report?

Experiments in Elasticity

It’s a long time since I did maths at university and considering that I managed to do one of the subjects twice, you’d think that I’d remember a little more of it. Sadly, what I remember amounts more to remembering the topics about which I now know I know nothing.

I couldn’t find the determinant of a matrix, let alone change its base. I know for a fact that I didn’t know what a Fourier Transform was when I did maths, so there’s no chance of me telling you what that’s all about now. And of course the only limit that I’d ever approach these days would either be the blood alcohol limit for driving of the limit of my own maths knowledge. I’ll let you decide which might be reached quicker.

Things I do remember from maths, whilst a significantly shorter list are infinitely more fun. Ask me some time about the Lumberjack Song or Burger King day.

But the thing that I’ve remembered off and on since leaving uni that I wanted to talk about today is a fragment of a lecture.

I remember one day that we were told that traffic flow could be simply (as in it’s a simplified model, not accurate or easy to do) with springs. Essentially, traffic flows as if there is a spring between each vehicle. When you think about it, it all seems perfectly natural. As the car in front of you accelerates, a gap opens up before you, stretching the spring. You speed up, shortening it again and if you over-accelerate, you compress the spring, closing the gap, potentially causing you to brake as they continue to accelerate again (stretching the string again).

It’s one of those tiny things that has always amused this small mind when I get into heavy traffic. And I just thought that I’d comment on it, because by God have I spent an inordinate amount of time in heavy traffic lately. Thinking time.

And when you’re stuck like that, it’s very tempting to experiment with the traffic’s elasticity, braking late, accelerating quickly and then jamming the brakes on again. I wonder if I could cause a traffic jam, just through random and erratic braking and acceleration patterns. My guess is that I could slow things a bit, but that I’m more likely just to piss everyone off and that the person behind me would just give me more room. At least until someone got in between us and I had a new victim.

But it’s not really worth trying because I’d be unable to gauge my success unless it made the radio.

The things we do

It was about 12pm Saturday that I was discussing shopping with Caroline and how we really needed to get down to Edmonton in the near future so that I could get some clothes for winter as I brought one windcheater and my ski jacket with me and bought a rugby top the last time we were in Edmonton. That was it for me in terms of jumpers and things to keep my torso warm as the temperature plunges. It simply wasn’t going to be enough.

We quickly assessed our commitments for the rest of the afternoon and Sunday and I half jokingly suggested that we just get in the car and go. 15 minutes later we’d made the decision and set about getting ready to drive for 4.5 hours down to Edmonton.

We stopped at our new house (the one we get to move into this weekend!) and grabbed the cargo carrier for the roof of the Explorer (yes, Caroline does get some useful things from garage sales) then came back to the town house to grab the last of our stuff and go.

I seem to remember telling the kids that all that they would need was a change of underwear and something warm because we’d be staying overnight and coming home the next day.

But of course, then someone mentioned a swimming pool at the hotel and the possibility of ice skating at the mall and suddenly the car had way more stuff than I had anticipated. But then, I should have learnt to accept that by now. I think we finally managed to get away at about 4pm.

We drove down to Edmonton and the kids watched some stuff on Michael’s portable DVD player (the one that we bought for the car needs a new fuse apparently) and on the laptop and were really good the whole way there.

We got in late of course, at about 9pm or so having only stopped once for a quick pit stop. We packed the kids into bed without dinner (though Thomas and Emily were in our room and complained bitterly. Especially poor tom who’d missed out on Dinner the previous night when he was stitched up in the hospital).

Caroline and I lashed out and ordered room service with a bowl of chips in case either Thomas or Emily was awake when the food arrived. Emily was, so she had some chips to eat before she finally crashed out.

Two late nights in a row meant that we all slept in (except for me. I managed to wake up at 5am and toss and turn until I gave up at 6:30 and got out of bed). So we managed to get to breakfast at 9am and again lashed out and all had the buffet.

With stomach’s full we managed to load ourselves back into the car to head off to the West Edmonton Mall.

Someone persuaded me that we should stop at Toys ‘R’ Us on the way and so the first hour of the available shopping time passed in the way that all time in Toys R Us passes. “Can I have … I want … look at this …”

I left a bit frazzled at the end of it and so it wasn’t the best start to trying to find clothes at the Mall. Especially because we hadn’t been able to find a special treat for Thomas for being so brave at the hospital. This meant that we were going to be haunted by that failure right up until the time when we finally would find something. Not good when you’re trying to park 4 bored kids in a store whilst you try on clothes.

Rather than expound on the pain and frustration, let’s just summarise with the facts:

Sears is shit.
Emily was happy to try on clothes, be they too small or too big (there was at least one top meant for an 18 month old that she walked out of a change room wearing, and one ladies’ small).
The boys wanted no part in trying on clothes and were right miserable about it.
We shopped for an hour longer than I’d planned and didn’t get away from Edmonton until 5:30.

But we did get away and managed to get home safely, if late and slightly terrorized from driving in the rain.

And of course, the one fundamental thing that I noted during the trip (which I of course really already knew, but had reinforced) was that men shop differently from women.

I’ve heard it expressed as Men will buy a $1 item that they need for $2 whilst women will buy a $2 item that they don’t need for $1. In our case it amounted to this:

Dave walks in with three boys who need clothes but are less than happy to try them on. Dave picks clothes out in the right sizes and says “Do you like this.” When the moons align and they say yes, he forces them to try them on. Now having the size, it is a simple process of continuing the ‘Do you like this,’ line of questioning.

With three boys 90% sorted, Caroline came past and got involved. The end result was that 95% of what I had went back, the boys suffered through a lot more trying on, they all ended up with clothes and it probably saved us 20-30% of what it would have cost if I’d gone to the till.

Clearly this is the way that we manage to stay afloat financially. Caroline is a better economic shopper than I am.

But it was more stressful. (At least we were all friends by the time we got into Fort Mac at 11pm or what ever the time was).

Tom(s) Thumb

As part of the effort of integrating ourselves into the society up here in the frozen north, we’ve enrolled the three boys to play ringette. For those of you from back home who have no idea what that is (like us) its a little similar to ice hockey, but rather than hitting a puck around the ice, you move a ring around by sticking a stick in the middle of it and flicking it along the ice. And apparently you don’t get slammed into the walls as much either.

The one truly common thing between the two games is of course that you need to ice skate. On Friday night, Michael and Sam had their first ringette practice and of course neither of them had ever been on the ice before. So when I looked out and saw kids a foot shorter than them hurtling up and down and skating backwards, I worried somewhat for their egos and with Sam in particular, about how his willingness to give the game a go would fare. After all, I still remember dragging and bribing him into the basketball stadium the first time and watching him refuse to go on the court for the entire game!

I’ll let Caroline fill people in on the joy that she’s had chasing down the equipment that you need for the game, because she’s had a heap of fun trying to avoid spending hundreds of dollars when the stuff may not be used for long. Basically, you need all the same padding as ice hockey. Which meant that for the first half hour, we waited patiently whilst Michael and Sam got padded up with some assistance from a couple of ladies and their kids who had people on the ice already.
It was very cute to see a young girl of about Sam’s age enthusiastically helping him to put on elbow pads and helmets and things. Of course, whilst appreciating the help, I don’t think he was at all interested in any further sort of friendship there!
Finally though, they carefully made their way down the stairs to the ice. Michael was the first one out, hanging desperately to the side of the rink and the guy that was helping him. Sam ventured out even more tentatively to give it a go as well. The sticks were very quickly discarded in favour of simply trying not to end up on one’s arse.

Michael was of course the one more willing to try and Sam to his credit had a bit of a go, but seems to have some balance issues. After a couple of minutes he came off the ice and sat and I was worried that his entire ice skating career would end right then and there. But to his credit and my enormous relief, he was talking about having another go when he’d had a rest.

Michael decided to come off for a rest as well. He came back through the gate in the rink and the woman helping us closed it behind him. It was at that point that we heard Thomas cry out and realised that he’d managed to get his thumb caught and crushed in the hinge side of the gate! It was quickly opened again, but it was at that point that the blood started flowing. He had a cut about a cm long down vertically down the pad of his left thumb.

A quick and desperate search for medical aid and ice (ironic how hard it can be to find ice at an ice rink) ensued. I ended up out the back of the rink with the rink attendant getting a bag of ‘snow’ from where it had been dumped by the zamboni whilst someone inside had managed to find an icepack. (The attendant told me that they’d been cleaned out the day before when someone broke their ankle ...(ouch?!)).

I quickly took Thomas to the car and left Caroline with the other three at the ice rink as we dashed off to the Fort McMurray hospital.

Thomas was super brave. Once over the initial cry, the next most upset he got was when he was talking about his trip to the Port Lincoln hospital in the ambulance and how he’d been given a bear. The tears really started to flow when he realised that he didn’t know where the bear was! The poor little guy was devastated at the thought.

We managed to get to the hospital without doing anything silly in the car, though it was a tough trip for me, torn between wanting to get there as fast as I possibly could and sticking within the law of the road whilst Thomas casually bled in the back seat.

The first stop was triage. We were quickly directed to the registration desk where the fun started with getting entered into the computer system. I bit my tongue and answered the questions, noting the 25 people already sitting in the waiting room. It was about 7:50pm.



“No I don’t have a health care card, its still being processed.”

“Yes, I am from Australia, but I am on a work permit and living here”

“I’ll have to pay by credit card.”

“I realise the doctor may prefer cash, but I simply don’t have any and have to pay by credit card.”

As we went through this, I pulled the ice pack off Thomas’ thumb to see how he was going. There was still plenty of blood seeping from the wound and he was quite red down to his wrist, but it had slowed significantly. Of course, all we’d had to put on the wound at the rink was a band aid and an ice pack (and this was clearly a cut that would require stitching) so I asked if they might have something more appropriate to dress the wound with. A nurse walked past at this point and the wonder of a blood stained child came to the fore. Suddenly the registrant was told the rest could wait and we were whisked away to x-ray to see if there was any further damage from the crush.

After some quick x-rays we were taken through the waiting room (no doubt being cursed by everyone there at getting treated so quickly) and beyond the magic door to wait in the treating area.

And we waited.

Caroline showed up with Michael, Sam and Emily. Emily was very cute with her concern for her brother, asking every now and then, “Are you okay Thomas?” concern etched into every feature.

We debated whether Caroline should take the kids home and I catch a taxi with Thomas, but decide to see how things panned out for a bit. Michael went to the car and picked up his portable DVD player which entertained the four of them.

At some point a nurse came in and we thought we were getting close to being seen.

Vending machines were raided to provide a little sustenance as we continued to wait.

Caroline went out with the other three to get some dinner which ended up consisting of Wendy’s on the front step of the hospital.

We waited some.

At some point in time Caroline asked about timing and we found out that there was only one doctor on duty. Ouch.

At about 10pm (though it could have been a little later), a nurse came in and told Thomas that she would put some numbing stuff on the wound to prepare it for stitches so that he didn’t have to have a needle which was something of a relief.

Then of course, happy that things were happening, we waited some more.

At about 11pm we were asked to move rooms and were taken to a room clearly set up for minor procedures such as thumb repairs. At last it looked like we were going to reach the place we needed to. So we waited. And of course as we waited, I wondered about the fact that the bit of numbing stuff that been put on had been put on something like an hour ago. I wondered just how effective the external application of it would be.



Finally, some time after 11pm we saw the doctor for the first time. He apologised for the wait and then quickly disappeared. He returned again about 15 minutes later, ready to go to work. The first thing that he did was pinch Thomas’ thumb with a pair of tweezers to see if Tom could feel it. He said that he could. He did it in a couple of places around the wound and Thomas felt all of them. Then he pinched air where Tom couldn’t see and asked Thomas if he could feel that.

Thomas laughed for the first time in several hours, saying,”No, you didn’t even touch me!” Very perceptive and amusing, but of course it also meant that the numbing agent had been pointless.

So the doctor picked up a needle.

Enter Michael the Useful.

As the needle was picked up, Michael takes one look and exclaims, “Woah!” And takes a backward step, which of course does just so much wonderful stuff towards reassuring Thomas, who was about to have it stuck in himself about how painless the anaesthetic might be. I moved Michael out the way and the needle went into Thomas. I felt for the poor little bugger. He’d been so brave all night, but that was too much and the tears escaped. Though it must be said, he was still as controlled as he could be, which considering how much sleep he’d had and the time of day was amazing.

Then came the stiches. Emily of course was fascinated as the doctor started to put a stitch in Thomas’ thumb. But only for the first one. I think the whole bloody wound and needle in my brother was a bit much for her then, so she sat down quietly.

But four neat little stitches in one by now, bruised and swollen little boy’s thumb and we were done.

And at 11:55pm, we all walked out of the hospital, simply glad to have Thomas back in one piece. Even if he is tied together with string.

Disappointed

As I noted in my email announcing the last drift update, there was a 70% chance of snow yesterday. And for those that pointed it out to me, yes, I understand the irony of the fact that I was complaining about the heat and now am pointing out how cold it is. The thing that’s surprising me is just how quickly we’ve gone from one to the other.

I didn’t see any.

It was funny though, because Tuesday when I saw the forecast, I looked forward to being able to go home and tell the kids that we might get some snow tomorrow. I wanted to see their faces when they realized that we might get our first snowfall. The instant I walked into the door I had kids yelling at me, “Daddy, its going to snow!”

Whilst I might have been robbed of the small pleasure, I was delighted to see the enthusiasm on their faces. The excitement was palpable. Thomas was chattering madly about how we might be able to get out the skis that have been purchased and try them out! I tried to point out that whilst there MIGHT be snow, there certainly wasn’t likely to be enough that we’d get to do anything fun with it.

Eventually as I packed them off to bed I had to make a promise that if it started snowing, I’d wake them up so that they could see it.

But to be honest, I think Caroline and I were equally as excited about the prospect of it snowing as the kids were. Though I would have been happy if it was just for one night and then we didn’t see it for ages. We were both guilty of looking out the window as we went about the night time ritual, just in case it had started already, but there was no snow.

I have to admit too, that the first thing that I did in the morning was look and see if there was any sign of the whiteness. There wasn’t. It was just bloody cold. So we get to wait a little longer for snow. I can handle it. Its already cold enough thanks. There was ice on my car this morning and I can see that I will soon be going out to turn the car on so that it heats up some 15+ minutes before I want to leave in the morning. The seasons are turning fast!

Industrial ... Stupiditiy or Traffic, part 3

There’s been a large scale process of Union voting in the time that we’ve been in Canada. I can’t pretend to understand the ins and outs of the industrial climate here at this point, but I’ve got a couple of bits of information that help me to understand. Some of this could be wrong and a little ill-informed, but its just to paint a picture, not to discuss the finer points of Canadian Industrial Relations or its laws.

There’s an overriding agreement that says that when the unions are negotiating, they all do so at the same time. When something like 75% of the unions have agreed and signed on to the agreement, the others are forced to arbitration with no legal right to strike.

If they haven’t got that many unions signed up, then they have the right to strike, but have to provide notice and meet other conditions.

As of about 4 days ago, they were about 2 unions short of getting to the 75% that would remove the legal right to strike.

The Carpenters Union issued notice of intent to strike. It went to the courts with a result that it was ruled that any strike would be illegal. Over the next four days, 2 unions signed up and now the right to legally strike is off the table.

And that’s where we are today. The union is playing it smart and they aren’t putting the members at risk by striking. Instead, when they’re off duty, the are operating ‘information pickets’. What this means is that groups of them stand at strategic points with signs seeking support from their follow workers.

What this meant for me today was that there was about 50 of them on the other side of the highway waving placards and generally being well behaved and peaceful … well back from the traffic and all.

Which would be fine if it wasn’t for the bloody rubber neckers. And I should point out that this is far from restricted to Canada. Singapore was a classic for it. Now if you’ve been keeping up with recent posts and have kept track of this ramble, you’ll be taking into account the volume of traffic that comes down this highway as I return from work. Buckets of it.

But put one person on the other side of the road with a sign and some twit thinks that he needs to read it. So he slows down. As does the person behind him. When all the other twits decide that this is a good idea, I get stuck at the other end of the bloody line doing 30kms/hr on a 100km/hr highway taking an hour to get home instead of 30 minutes. Not that I’m bitter at all.

It just means that the day before I leave this place, I want to go stand just off the side of the highway as peak hour starts with a sign that can only be read by a fifth grader in a pickup truck that reads something like:

“Before I leave, I just want to cause my own little traffic Jam”