Thursday, March 23, 2006
Where to begin...
Wow! It's been almost two weeks since my last post. That's bad, Derek! Very bad! All I can say is that I'm sorry to all of my millions and millions of readers and fans. Or is it dozens and dozens? It's been so long since I've been to university that I've forgotten how to count. Anyways, after my last post I just enjoyed time with my family who visited me in the Hat and then I got stuck working out of Strathmore. More on that last bit in a sec.
We actually went skiing! After all the talk and years and years of promising to take the kids skiing we just decided to do it on a whim. Thus I've concluded that plans just muck things up, and I will now just make life altering decisions at the drop of a hat. But let me digress. We went skiing, and that's the important part.
Did you know skiing was expensive? I did! Did it lessen the impact of the cost to my psyche? No, no it didn't! But once I strapped on the boards I forgot all about the cost. And the even more important part was that all my girls were there with me, and they loved it too. They wanted to go again and again and again. But unfortunately money doesn't grow on trees (I've tried planting Loonies), and we had other stuff to do.
So we enjoyed the day of leisure on Kimberly mountain! We had actually planned on going to Fernie, but by my calculations, once we hit the road from Creston we wouldn't make it there in time for the kids and Michelle to make the lessons. So as we're passing through Cranbrook I noticed a sign for Kimberly and a little symbol of a dude skiing on it. Right then and there I made a drop-of-the-hat decision to go to Kimberly. It was only 50 or so kilometres away from Cranbrook, and if their lessons started at the same time as the ones at Fernie, we'd make those, too. Well, we made it to Kimberly after a bit of worry about finding the ski hill, but we found it and we got our rentals, lift passes and lessons (not for me...I'm the so-called expert of the family) which were actually scheduled for 11:30am as we missed the 9am ones.
Oh well, we hit the slopes anyway. Rylee decided to try it out before lessons started and seemed to get the hang of it. Lessons, however, helped her learn to stop. I was a little worried about my timid oldest, Kristen, but it seemed that my worry was unwarranted. She took to it like a fish to, um, and underwater ski hill. It did take her a little bit to get the snow-plow technique down. When she seemed to start losing control she would just sit back on her skis which disabled any ability to stop what-so-ever, but she would whiz in and around people and other objects till she slid to a stop. Her instructor said, after the lesson was over, she needed to work on stopping, but her avoidance skills were top-notch. Other than a couple of tee-bar incidents with Rylee, everything else went beautifully. We will definitely be doing that again.
A couple of days later we visited Drumheller and then the next day we visited it again. It's only a 5 hour round trip back to Medicine Hat. Our specific goal when visiting Drumheller was to go to the Tyrrell Museum which is the world famous Alberta dinosaur museum. So we drove out there to visit this wonderful place, and we only stopped for lunch and to climb up the innards of the worlds tallest dinosaur (only $10 per family for 5 minutes of fun...sheesh!). After climbing this monster, I stopped in the gift shop to pick up a pamphlet on the museum we were heading to and just happened to glance at the operating hours the managed. This is what they said:
10:00am - 5:00pm Tuesday through Sunday
*closed Mondays, except for public holidays
Guess which day of the week we decided to visit. Yup! And it wasn't a public holiday either. I was intent on not coming back, but Michelle reminded me that I sort of promised Kristen, my avid dinosaur nut, that this would be one of the highlights of her visit to the Hat. So we went back the next day, and you know what? Now that I knew the name of the bloody museum I saw all sorts of signs for it along the highway with "CLOSED MONDAYS" in big, bold, hard to miss unless your me letters right there for everyone to see. GAAAAAAAAH! It was a cool place though. And the kids had lots of fun, too.
I tried to make it worth while by reading as much as I could, but the kids just wanted to see bones and stuff. I still managed to learn that the T-Rex isn't the largest predator that roamed the Earth but the Giganotosaurus was. This kind of upset Kristen a little as she is a big Jurassic Park 3 fan as well. In that movie, they had a Spinosaurus that was much larger than the T-Rex and also tended to beat them in a bloody confrontation to which Kristen would exclaim, "Sweet!" So she was convinced that the Spinosaurus was the largest predator and refused to agree with my hypothesis that Hollywood is full of crap. Half way through our tour she reasoned that the Spinosaurus must be "tied" with the T-Rex. I gave up at this point!
I was very sad to see my family go. Actually, I didn't even get to see them go as I had to be in to the shop at 4:30am once days off ended. So I just kissed their foreheads in the morning and tried not to cry...too much. I actually received a call the night before to pack an over night bag because my crew was heading out to Strathmore. So I did just that; I packed an over night bag. At that point I discovered that I had misplaced my 24 hour access card to the shop gates. After hectic and then slow paced searching I surmised that it wasn't in any of the vehicles, the apartment or my jacket where it usually was. As it was the same jacket that I wore skiing, I further surmised that the card was currently enjoying a ski holiday on Kimberly mountain. Ugh!
I managed to get in to the yard after waiting for someone else to come and open the gate, and I met the supervisor that I hadn't met before. I brought him up to speed on my card loss and he told me that I'd be able to call the office to get it replaced. I said that wouldn't be necessary as I could just talk to the appropriate person when we got back the next day. this amused him somewhat as he said, "We're probably gone for six or seven days!" I guess when he said that I needed to pack an overnight bag I should have asked how many overnights we were going to be spending. That was on the 15th, and today is the 23rd which is the day I got back. No I didn't turn my underwear inside out and backwards during that time. I just visited the local Walmart. They're freakin' everywhere! I even notice one in Drumheller on both days that we were there.
Well, the nine days went okay with a minimal amount of hiccups, and now I'm back in the Hat. It's time to get some supper and maybe play a little Playstation 2. So I'm going to sign off now, and since we might be in the midst of Spring break up, I might be able to update a little more frequently. In fact, I'll explain Spring break up on my next update. Right now, I'm hungry!
Ciao for now!
We actually went skiing! After all the talk and years and years of promising to take the kids skiing we just decided to do it on a whim. Thus I've concluded that plans just muck things up, and I will now just make life altering decisions at the drop of a hat. But let me digress. We went skiing, and that's the important part.
Did you know skiing was expensive? I did! Did it lessen the impact of the cost to my psyche? No, no it didn't! But once I strapped on the boards I forgot all about the cost. And the even more important part was that all my girls were there with me, and they loved it too. They wanted to go again and again and again. But unfortunately money doesn't grow on trees (I've tried planting Loonies), and we had other stuff to do.
So we enjoyed the day of leisure on Kimberly mountain! We had actually planned on going to Fernie, but by my calculations, once we hit the road from Creston we wouldn't make it there in time for the kids and Michelle to make the lessons. So as we're passing through Cranbrook I noticed a sign for Kimberly and a little symbol of a dude skiing on it. Right then and there I made a drop-of-the-hat decision to go to Kimberly. It was only 50 or so kilometres away from Cranbrook, and if their lessons started at the same time as the ones at Fernie, we'd make those, too. Well, we made it to Kimberly after a bit of worry about finding the ski hill, but we found it and we got our rentals, lift passes and lessons (not for me...I'm the so-called expert of the family) which were actually scheduled for 11:30am as we missed the 9am ones.
Oh well, we hit the slopes anyway. Rylee decided to try it out before lessons started and seemed to get the hang of it. Lessons, however, helped her learn to stop. I was a little worried about my timid oldest, Kristen, but it seemed that my worry was unwarranted. She took to it like a fish to, um, and underwater ski hill. It did take her a little bit to get the snow-plow technique down. When she seemed to start losing control she would just sit back on her skis which disabled any ability to stop what-so-ever, but she would whiz in and around people and other objects till she slid to a stop. Her instructor said, after the lesson was over, she needed to work on stopping, but her avoidance skills were top-notch. Other than a couple of tee-bar incidents with Rylee, everything else went beautifully. We will definitely be doing that again.
A couple of days later we visited Drumheller and then the next day we visited it again. It's only a 5 hour round trip back to Medicine Hat. Our specific goal when visiting Drumheller was to go to the Tyrrell Museum which is the world famous Alberta dinosaur museum. So we drove out there to visit this wonderful place, and we only stopped for lunch and to climb up the innards of the worlds tallest dinosaur (only $10 per family for 5 minutes of fun...sheesh!). After climbing this monster, I stopped in the gift shop to pick up a pamphlet on the museum we were heading to and just happened to glance at the operating hours the managed. This is what they said:
10:00am - 5:00pm Tuesday through Sunday
*closed Mondays, except for public holidays
Guess which day of the week we decided to visit. Yup! And it wasn't a public holiday either. I was intent on not coming back, but Michelle reminded me that I sort of promised Kristen, my avid dinosaur nut, that this would be one of the highlights of her visit to the Hat. So we went back the next day, and you know what? Now that I knew the name of the bloody museum I saw all sorts of signs for it along the highway with "CLOSED MONDAYS" in big, bold, hard to miss unless your me letters right there for everyone to see. GAAAAAAAAH! It was a cool place though. And the kids had lots of fun, too.
I tried to make it worth while by reading as much as I could, but the kids just wanted to see bones and stuff. I still managed to learn that the T-Rex isn't the largest predator that roamed the Earth but the Giganotosaurus was. This kind of upset Kristen a little as she is a big Jurassic Park 3 fan as well. In that movie, they had a Spinosaurus that was much larger than the T-Rex and also tended to beat them in a bloody confrontation to which Kristen would exclaim, "Sweet!" So she was convinced that the Spinosaurus was the largest predator and refused to agree with my hypothesis that Hollywood is full of crap. Half way through our tour she reasoned that the Spinosaurus must be "tied" with the T-Rex. I gave up at this point!
I was very sad to see my family go. Actually, I didn't even get to see them go as I had to be in to the shop at 4:30am once days off ended. So I just kissed their foreheads in the morning and tried not to cry...too much. I actually received a call the night before to pack an over night bag because my crew was heading out to Strathmore. So I did just that; I packed an over night bag. At that point I discovered that I had misplaced my 24 hour access card to the shop gates. After hectic and then slow paced searching I surmised that it wasn't in any of the vehicles, the apartment or my jacket where it usually was. As it was the same jacket that I wore skiing, I further surmised that the card was currently enjoying a ski holiday on Kimberly mountain. Ugh!
I managed to get in to the yard after waiting for someone else to come and open the gate, and I met the supervisor that I hadn't met before. I brought him up to speed on my card loss and he told me that I'd be able to call the office to get it replaced. I said that wouldn't be necessary as I could just talk to the appropriate person when we got back the next day. this amused him somewhat as he said, "We're probably gone for six or seven days!" I guess when he said that I needed to pack an overnight bag I should have asked how many overnights we were going to be spending. That was on the 15th, and today is the 23rd which is the day I got back. No I didn't turn my underwear inside out and backwards during that time. I just visited the local Walmart. They're freakin' everywhere! I even notice one in Drumheller on both days that we were there.
Well, the nine days went okay with a minimal amount of hiccups, and now I'm back in the Hat. It's time to get some supper and maybe play a little Playstation 2. So I'm going to sign off now, and since we might be in the midst of Spring break up, I might be able to update a little more frequently. In fact, I'll explain Spring break up on my next update. Right now, I'm hungry!
Ciao for now!
