Wednesday, October 29, 2008

*yawn*

I’ve been meaning to update for a while, but I really don’t have that much to say. More of the same I guess.

The first weekend after the honeymoon we hung out at home all weekend. On Saturday I unpacked some wedding/shower presents to find them homes and on Sunday I started to Winterize the garden – started, still have at least half a day left!!! I’ve taken out half of the annuals and cut down the perennials. I have to do some replanting – moving flowers around in a way that makes more sense, get rid of the golden rod (we let it grow this summer since we didn’t know what it was. As soon as it became obvious, we cut it down, but the roots were too deep to pull out), and cut down the tree in our garden – a really ugly over pruned pine tree that I have hated since day one.

Last week went by slowly. Only one day of field work, and nothing too exciting happened.

Last weekend – as I wrote on Burger’s blog comments – we went to see one of Arash’s favourite bands in Toronto (a Persian rock band). We just drove down for the evening. We also cleaned the house… not exciting.

It’s weird. Now that the wedding is over we have all this extra time on our hands. Weekends upon weekends with no plans, no project that I work on in the evening and on the weekends. There are a heck of a lot of thank-you cards to write, but the list of presents is at my dad’s house along with most of the presents, and we want to include a photo with our thank-you cards, and our photos aren’t ready yet… I guess what I should be doing is spending time working on the house – touching up the paint problems and stuff like that, but meh. I’m bored of house renovations. What I really want to do is organize another event… perhaps I will have a Christmas party…

In other news, we spent some of our wedding money this weekend. We went to Leons and got a new table, chairs and buffet (for our new dishes, glasses, and cutlery). I’m very excited to have a table that can comfortably fit 6 around it!!!

http://www.leons.ca/shared/product/product.aspx?ItemId=1377171&ChildItemId=1377171

Only difference is that we didn’t get the hutch to go with the buffet, so we just have the bottom part of the cabinet shown.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Well, I’m back.

It has been a busy two weeks. First the wedding. Then the Honeymoon. And then (well, overlapping really) the cold from hell.

Wedding went well. It’s more fun GOING to a wedding than actually being the one getting married, I have decided. I didn’t get to visit with anyone and wasn’t really able to relax and enjoy myself until 9:30. Arash agrees. He asked if we could get married again because the whole thing happened too fast and we didn’t get a chance to enjoy ourselves. Oh well, it’s done, it was nice seeing everyone but way too brief! I’m super sad that I didn’t get a chance to visit with Quinn and Rod and my Vancouver cousins longer. I think that was the most disappointing thing about it.

The good news was… and everyone who was at the wedding knows this by now! Was that my sister had her baby on Oct. 1 so was able to come to the wedding after all!!! Yay! Still didn’t get a great chance to visit with them though, hopefully in the next couple of weeks we can head down that way so that I can meet my new niece .

Honeymoon was good but with both ended up getting sick. I’ll run through the highlights.

Sunday – Flight was delayed by almost 2 hours when a) Air Canada over booked the flight, b) they downsized the plane and c) there was a mechanical problem which meant than an additional 6 people were kicked off the flight and refused to get off. FUN!

Monday – Dinosaur Museum. Cool. Visit with Niki – extra cool. Little Logan is so cute! Not cool – hotel charging $16/day for internet! Boo!

Tuesday – Drive to Jasper via MEC where we spent too much money – we bought a new camping stove, and I got a thermarest. Camped in Jasper. When we were setting up our tent Elk wandered through our Campsite. Arash tested out the bear spray and it got in my face irritating my eyes, nose, mouth and face. Ended up going to the Jasper hospital. Very cold at night. Down to about -2. cough starting to get worse

Wednesday – hiked up Whisters peak in Jasper. My first mountain. Arash was proud. Cough getting worse in the cold thin air. Got very wet in hike with sweat and SNOW! And cold. Decided to get a room in the town of jasper instead of camping for fear of getting more sick

Thursday – Drive from Jasper to Banff. Stopped at: Mount Edith Cavell. Cool. Athabasca Falls. Very Cool. Columbia icefields. Downright cold! I remember when we were there in the 80s being able to walk on the bottom of the glacier but you are no longer allowed. Global warming has made it unsafe to do so. Boo! By the time we got to Banff Arash was starting to feel more sick. We had a nap and went to dinner and then to bed.

Friday – we puttered around Banff for most of the day. Found a place to eat breakfast, had a nap, went to the Cave and Basin (original hotsprings) and then to the new hotsprings. Then went into the Banff for dinner and passed out when we got back.

Saturday – had breakfast at hotel. $60 for two!!! Wow! Went for a hike in the afternoon. Got about 1/3 up Mount Rundle and had to call it quits. Both of us were having major difficulties breathing. At this point my cold was still in my throat and chest, but not good for physical activity. Went back to the hotel and went for a swim in the outdoor pool and then out for a nice dinner for a 1 week anniversary ;)

Sunday – woke up sick as a dog. My cold moved into my head and had a very runny nose. We checked out of our room and drove up to lake louise. We were both in pretty rough shape, but we got to see Lake Louise and Moraine lake (partially frozen – this was the lake that used to be on the $20 bill. We were both feeling way too lousy to do any hiking  how horrible!!! We went back to Calgary – got there by 5:45 pm. Our flight wasn’t until 12:15 so we decided to catch a movie – Body of Lies – not bad but no Syriana.

One word. Taking the Red-eye while sick = no fun. I was hacking up a storm the whole way back to Ontario so I didn’t get much sleep. I made myself stay awake on Monday and go to bed at a normal time to adjust to the time zone, but it didn’t help my cold any. Monday was miserable. Tuesday I called in sick and ended up sleeping for 5 hours during the day. Today I’m feeling a little more normal though everyone at work doesn’t think I should be here. At this point I think my cold sounds worse than it actually is thank-goodness.

Today isn’t so bad at work. I have a tonne of things to do so that is helping. I am sad though. My friend Mandy had her last day on Friday, so I miss her .

All in all a good honeymoon though. It kind of sucked that we were both sick but it didn’t slow us down too much and it was good that we were both sick so that the other one wasn’t disappointed in not doing as much as we wanted.

As for the election. I’m in denial, I don’t want to talk about it ;) Actually, I posted my thoughts on Jen’s Blog. I don’t think Dion was the problem, I think the problem was the idea of changing the fundamentals of the tax system when the economy is in such trouble. Also, the people who call themselves liberal but have gone to long lengths to make Dion look bad.