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Today was my first Family Day holiday while living in Alberta. I only became aware of this holiday a couple months ago while looking at the Christmas holiday schedule. It was nice to have a long weekend in the middle of February.

Since today was a holiday, many stores were closed such as the barber shop just up the road where I attempted to get my hair cut this afternoon. After realizing this, I headed down to the Superstore where they have a barber shop, plus a Subway restaurant and few other small stores. It felt a bit awkward getting my hair cut in a grocery store, but it ended up being one of the best haircuts I’ve ever received. This will definetely be the place to get my haircut from now on. I’ve blogged about this a few times before.

This afternoon after checking out TicketMaster to see if any big concerts or events are happening around the Calgary area, I found out that Gordon Lightfoot will be coming in October. Since Caitlin and I are both fans of his music, I purchased a pair of tickets which are 8 rows away from centre stage. Now we have to wait 8 months…

February 13 never had any significance for me until this year. It’s exactly 3 months (1/4 of a year) until I will be getting married!

After much ado, here are my 5 weird habits, in no particular order:

• When I take the bus/C-Train, I prefer to stand even when there are plenty of available seats.
• After cooking a meal, I tend to rinse off the pots and pans to avoid making it more difficult to scrape the hardened food off while doing the dishes after I’ve finished my meal.
• Since I’m an aviation nut, I love watching planes taking off and landing. This is also informative as it tells me which way the wind is blowing.
• I detest being late for anything, therefore I usually arrive at events either very early or right on time.
• I only drink the remaining milk out of my cereal bowl when I’m at a friend’s house having a social breakfast with a group of people. When I’m by myself, the milk goes down the sink.

Well it’s been a busy past few weeks as I’ve travelled to the east for Christmas with my family and starting to plan my wedding!

First off, it was great to get home for 9 days during Christmas since I hadn’t been home in a couple months. Caitlin was supposed to arrive on Boxing Day but Air Canada cancelled all of their flights into Moncton due to freezing rain. However, CanJet never turned back and their flights kept coming into Moncton during the storm. So, after 2 cancelled flights from Montreal to Moncton and a night in a shady hotel in Montreal, Caitlin finally made it into Fredericton. My dad and I headed out for the 2 hour drive on the snowy roads to pick her up. Her flight arrived on time, but her luggage, along with everyone else on the plane, was still in Montreal due to a weight restriction. The next flight was supposed to be arriving in an hour, but of course it was delayed by an additional hour, so we had some waiting to do. After getting all of her luggage, we finally made it back to Moncton.

The time we had in Riverview was quite relaxing even though we did alot of things as well and it would have been nice to have a couple extra days to do everything we wanted. We ended up buying the engagement ring in Moncton, our small piece of the Maritimes that we could bring back to the west.

On our way back to Calgary we had some more “fun” with Air Canada. First off, we only had a 30 minute stop-over in Montreal to catch our connection to Toronto. It would be tight but doable. However, our plane was delayed for 45 minutes in Moncton and we arrived into Montreal at 7:00pm exactly… the same time as our Toronto flight was taking off. Conveniently (and I mean that sarcastically), our flight was right on time and left just as we were running to the gate. Why are the flights that you arrive early for are delayed and the ones you need to be delayed are always on time?! We waited in the Montreal airport for another hour and a half since they had another flight going to Toronto. It was, of course, delayed which made it look iffy for us making the Calgary connection in Toronto. We finally arrived into Toronto and what was supposed to be a 2.5 hour wait if all of our previous flights were on time, we now had to run to the gate in order to catch our flight to Calgary. We made it in time, and of course the flight was delayed again. After 10 hours of travelling, we made it into Calgary at 1:20am. By some divine miracle which I am still amazed at, Air Canada did not lose our luggage. Somehow, for some reason, it actually made it to Calgary!

So, now it’s mid-January and Caitlin and I are starting to plan our wedding… which will be here in Alberta on May 13. Last nite was our “4 months left” date and I’m sure the time will go by really fast!

Well, it has been just over 2 months since I packed my bags and headed to Vancouver. Since then I have covered many miles, had many interviews, got a job, moved into an apartment, become a resident of Calgary, and had many other great things happen! I’ll be flying back to Moncton tomorrow afternoon to spend Christmas with my family and then have some relaxing time before heading back to Calgary on January 1. Caitlin will be coming to Moncton too and will be arriving on Boxing Day. It should be good times all around!

I survived my first full week of my permanent job in Calgary. It went really well and I’m getting familiar with the products and office culture once again.

On Friday evening, Caitlin and I flew out to Vancouver for the weekend to spend some time with her grandparents and to visit with Sean and Julie. We celebrated last nite with the Memphis Platter at the Memphis Blues BBQ. It involved alot of meat… too much meat in fact since we had some leftovers after we all had our fill.

It’s now Sunday afternoon and we will be flying back to Calgary this evening just before 9:00pm and arriving in just before midnite. Then it’s off to bed since I’ll be waking up early tomorrow morning for work again.

I spent the first few days of last week in Lacombe at Caitlin’s parent’s place while she was at a conference in Red Deer. I did several hours of online apartment hunting but didn’t come up with any available one bedroom apartments in the city.

On Wednesday afternoon, Caitlin and I headed back to Calgary and began the apartment hunt in the SW of the city. After having a quick lunch at Tim’s, we stumbled on a place in the Haysboro district called Hays Farms. They didn’t have any one bedroom apartments for rent but they did have a recent opening for a two bedroom. We took a walkthrough the grounds of Hays Farms and then went to see the suite which was really nice with alot of room.

Three hours after seeing the apartment I completed the credit check and paper work and I moved in with my suitcase, air mattress, and a sleeping bag. I’ll be spending the next few months furnishing the place.

Here are some pictures of my bare apartment.