I was reminded to post again due to the situation happening at Acadia. It was over 2 1/2 years ago that I posted this about the strike while I was living in Toronto. Let’s hope that it’s a short strike… but also that we get to see the guy with the awkwardly large hand costume again!

The day consisted of taking the old steam train around the park, floating around the Glenmore Reservoir on the old-fashioned paddle boat, and looking through the old houses, churches, and stores.

Pictures coming soon…

After going through the checklists, the instructor and I headed out to the runway in the Diamond Katana. There was a decent wind of about 13 knots coming from the south, so we departed from runway 16 ahead of an WestJet flight coming in on final. As we were cleared for takeoff the instructor said that I would be controlling the aircraft for takeoff, so I grabbed the flight stick and pulled back a bit, and we were airborne.

After takeoff we headed west, just north of downtown where I had a great view of the Shaw building where I work. When we reached 5500 feet, I took control again and kept us in a straight line towards Priddis Corner/Bragg Creek. As we left the Calgary Terminal airspace, we were handed off to Springbank and we climbed to 6000. Upon reaching Priddis Corner, we took a right turn towards the mountains and the instructor let me try some turns. After my turns, he asked if I’d like to see what a sharp turn felt like, so he took control and did a 45 degree turn to the left followed by a 60 degree turn to the right. Then he asked if I had ever felt zero gravity, which I replied “only on a roller coaster once”. Soon thereafter we were nose-down towards the ground for several seconds, experiencing zero gravity.

Once we completed these maneuvers, we made the turn back towards Calgary following the Banff highway. As we entered Calgary Terminal airspace we were instructed to descend to 5000 from 6000, so the instructor showed me what a ’slip’ is like where we dropped about 800 feet within 5 seconds and then leveled out at 5000. We were then cleared to land on runway 10 which gave us a great view of several other aircraft taking off on runway 16. After an hour of flying, we were back on the ground. Now I’ll just have to start saving up to get my private pilot’s license!

Picture of the Diamond Evolution’s cockpit

Other new/interesting stuff going on:
- Tomorrow will mark 4 months into my job with Shaw and my desk is moving to a corner cubicle/office with a view of the mountains and Bow river from the 12th floor.
- Caitlin and I will be celebrating our 1st anniversary in less than 2 weeks!
- Last week we saw ‘Hot Fuzz’ at the theater. It was a great movie and the last 20 minutes was the best part! Then we watched ‘Shaun of the Dead’ on Friday night which stars the same British actors/director as ‘Hot Fuzz’.

Tomorrow morning we will be going to the Farmer’s Market and then Caitlin’s parents are coming down for lunch, so it should be a fun day. Then we’ll have to find some indoor things to do during the next couple days when the cold weather hits us.

I’ll finally be getting my first vacation day on Monday since I started working at Shaw in early January. And looking ahead to the next 10 days, I’ll only be working for 3 of them which will be great to have a bit of time off for once!

There isn’t too much to talk about this month… everything is going well with work and other things. The only new ‘news’ is that we have started to have our groceries delivered to us instead of doing any grocery shopping. It isn’t necessarily because we are lazy, but due to a company called SPUD (Small Potatoes Urban Delivery) which has a wide-array of organic produce and other healthy foods which some of the grocery stores don’t have. If you live in their delivery area and are interested, let me know and I can send you a promotional code to save some money off your order.

Until next month…

Caitlin and I had a great time on the east coast for Christmas. We spent about 10 days in the Maritimes which included a nice Christmas with my family, going to Halifax, and seeing all of the Acadia folks in Wolfville for a classic lunch of Scott Skins at Joe’s.

Our trip also ended our “vacation” of not having to work for the past couple of months since I started a new job the day after we arrived back in Calgary. I’m now a software developer for Shaw Communications and I’ll be doing some J2EE development, for those who are interested. With a job at a cable company also comes the employee discounts and other benefits of digital cable with every specialty channel you can think of… which sure beats not having cable during the past year and a half.

As the end of January nears, both Caitlin and I will be celebrating our 26th and 25th birthdays, respectively, next week. We will be celebrating this weekend by having our annual Birthday supper at the Calgary Tower and staying a night at the Palliser Hotel Calgary.

Well… that’s about it from us.

Caitlin and I had an early morning yesterday as we arrived at the Calgary airport around 6:00am for our 7:00am flight to Moncton. After checking in, which only took 10 minutes, we were faced with a security line of atleast 300. We ended up getting pulled out of the line and put through the express security line and we made it through that in only a few minutes. All in all, we only had about 20 minutes of waiting at the airport on the busiest travel day of the year. Not bad at all! Our flight back to Moncton through Hamilton went really well except my in-seat satellite tv was on the fritz, but I made due.

We are now on the east coast for the next week and a bit, so we’ll have plenty of time to enjoy Christmas, visit Halifax and Wolfville, take in a Wildcats game, and just relax before heading back to Calgary and a new job.

Thursday

We were up early to catch our morning flight to Vancouver. However, during the nite a snowstorm descended upon Calgary which make for a slow drive to the airport in morning rush hour traffic and snow. We left in plenty of time and arrived well before our flight was to depart. Our flight left on time and we were in Vancouver by 11:00am.

After a quick lunch at Harvey’s in the airport, we ventured out into the rain to take the bus to Sean and Julie’s place. This took just over an hour and we reunited with the Sullivan’s who we hadn’t seen since their wedding in July.

For supper, we all went out to a Cuban/Mexican-style restaurant on the Drive and our nite entertainment came in the form of going to the new James Bond movie. It was showing in a old movie theatre just down the street and we watched it from the balcony which is something that neither Caitlin nor I had ever done before.

Friday

On Friday morning, Caitlin and I headed out to Granville Island and visited some of the small shops, the market, and had a great lunch at Sammy J. Peppers.

After lunch, we headed across the Lion’s Gate Bridge to West Vancouver for a walk on the Sea Wall and to visit Caitlin’s grandfather. Then we headed back to downtown Vancouver in the evening rush hour to catch the SkyTrain back to Sean and Julie’s place. For supper, we headed to Memphis Blues BBQ which is now a traditional supper spot to celebrate my new jobs (I’ll explain more in my next post…). After eating our fill of meat, we headed back to play some Halo before calling it a night.

Saturday

After breakfast on Saturday morning, we all headed out to Science World for the Body Worlds exhibit which was both fascinating and a bit gruesome at the same time. The exhibit involved over 200 real body specimens which displayed how muscles, nerves, organs, etc all work together. It was definitely an eye-opener and quite interesting. It was a bit unnerving to realize that you were actually looking at a skeleton of a real person and not something made out of plastic.

After taking the Body Worlds tour, we headed further downtown for a late lunch at Milestones. By this time, it was already starting to snow with a few flurries and we headed back to the house to wait for the concert!

Shortly after 6:00pm, we headed down to BC Place for the Rolling Stones concert. It was just a short ride on the SkyTrain but there were huge lines waiting to get in as security was a bit tight. We finally got into the stadium at around 7:30 and could hear Bonnie Rait finishing up her opening set as we ventured to our seats.

We finally got to our 5th row seats just after 8:00 and had a bit of a wait for the Stones to come on. As time ticked by, the seats kept filling up and by 8:50 the place was packed with 51,000 fans. At 8:50, the lights went out and the Stones intro video started on the massive screen. With a blast of fireworks and bright lights, Keith appeared on stage and started right into Jumpin’ Jack Flash. The following two hours consisted on a high-intense show as the Stones wrapped up their Bigger Bang Tour in Vancouver (also the highest grossing tour in history!). Mick was full of energy as were Keith, Ron, and Charlie as they went through their 20 song set. The setlist, along with some pictures can be found at IORR and more pictures taken by other fans can be found at flickr.

After the concert, we made our way back through the slushy snow and huge lineups to meet Sean and Julie at the SkyTrain station and then had some pizza.

Sunday

We woke up to a blanket of snow on the ground which is quite rare for Vancouver. As it continued to snow outside, we stayed in and had a pancake breakfast and played some Halo as we stayed close to the fireplace. For lunch, we ventured out to a Thai restaurant and had some very tasty curry.

Shortly after 2:00pm, we said our ‘goodbyes’ to the Sullivans and headed downtown where we would be staying at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver for the night. We trudged along with our suitcases in the wet, slushy snow and finally made it to the hotel.

During our check-in, the woman checking us in said that she was also from New Brunswick and that she wanted to treat us well. She upgraded our room from a basic room to a deluxe suite which came with a kitchen, huge living room, huge bathroom, and king-size bed. After marveling at our nice room, we ordered room service since it was still quite nasty outside and we wanted to enjoy the room to it’s full potential.

Monday

We were up early to catch the bus back to the airport for our early afternoon flight back to Calgary. Most of the Air Canada flights were cancelled, but our WestJet flight was only delayed by an hour. We arrived back into Calgary where it was -39 with the windchill… quite a change from the warmer Vancouver weather. Surprisingly, our car started fine and we arrived back home just before 8:00pm, after a terrific trip to Vancouver!

Leaving for the Stones concert:

Walking the SeaWall: