Andrea's Picture a Day
Jason's photo website
Jess' weblog
Julie's weblog
Lara's weblog
Lara's Photo du Jour
My Daily Photo!!!
Ryan's weblog
Sailing webpage
Steam Brigade!!
Tera's weblog
Blizzard of the Decade · Jan 27, 01:31 PMI’m sitting here, drying off after running around at the dog park through two feet of snow!! It started snowing yesterday afternoon and hasn’t let up yet. Well, I haven’t written in a while, although I have been diligently updating my daily photo site. It’s a fun thing to do, now that I’m in the habit of it. And it will be really neat to go back at the end of the year and have a visual representation of everyday life, and the little events that happen that don’t otherwise get noted. And other than that, not much is really new. This semester isn’t horrible, although I don’t like my Thursday and Friday classes. But we’re already into week four! So at least it’s not dragging on too much. And once the semester ends, Andrea and Annette will be visiting (mid-April), so I’m reallllllly excited about that. Should be a great weekend. It also sounds like my sister and Shawn will be moving out to Vancouver Island sooner than originally anticipated — perhaps March or April! I can’t even express how wonderful it will be to have my sister living that much closer. Well, time to go have a snooze on the couch with Brimley. Toodles! |
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I can’t believe how much snow there is here! We went downtown this morning to have brunch with Jorg, and when we got there, it was beautiful, sunny, blue skies. And we thought that perhaps the blizzard had passed. But we headed home, and about 10 minutes east of Vancouver, it was that same blizzard! The highway was a mess, people couldn’t get up the exit ramps, and it took us almost an hour to get home! I am thankful on days like these that we spent the big bucks and got awesome tires. As soon as we got home, we took Brimley to the dog park for a romp (we drove this time), and there were tons of people stranded. No snow plows on our residential streets (really, no snow plows anywhere yet). 
So at the dog park (which is at the bottom of a hill), we put on the spanky new chains we purchased before the drive home at Christmas (and didn’t use), and we got home with no problems. And Colin’s been busy trying to help people get unstuck ever since. What a good little samaritan!One Week Down · Jan 12, 12:10 PMAnd twelve to go. That’s how many weeks I have left in the semester before I get another month off. Man, it’s going to be a tough one. Lots of three-hour classes, which I hate. And while some of them will be pretty interesting, like the digital media and communications course, as well as the course on human evolution, I fear that most of them will be pretty dull. I have several fourth-year business courses that don’t interest me much. And usually they require students to do presentations, which is always a huge headache for me. Students are notoriously poorly spoken and inarticulate, and many of them aren’t native English speakers, which means they’re also largely incomprehensible. Ugh. Not a good combination for a verbatim reporter. Oh well, only twelve weeks left. Yuck. In other news, I’ve received my printer finally — the printer of my dreams. And I played with it a bit last night and was not disappointed at all. Its main appeal for me is its focus on black-and-white photo printing, which with most printers is dismal at best. You generally get a yucky colour cast, or if you choose to use the black cartridge only, the photo quality is poor. But this printer, hereafter known as POMD, comes with a grey ink cartridge designed expressly for the printing of gallery quality black-and-white photos. I’ve only printed one sample so far, but I’m extremely impressed with the results. Yay!! It’s also oversized, like my last one, so it’ll be good for scrapbooking and for printing large photos to frame. Yippee!! Other than that, not too much to report. Looking forward to next weekend, when Julie and Jess come up for Toby’s 1st birthday party! I can’t believe Toby is already one. That was one fast year. Scary. Anyway, after that, there’s not much too look forward to until March, when (hopefully) Andrea and Annette come to visit me. But perhaps we can arrange a tent trailer trip in February somewhere. I like the idea of going down to Mount Baker for the weekend in our tent trailers and spending a day snowboarding at the hill. I hear they’re getting lots of snow, and I don’t think it’s an overly crowded or busy hill — both appealing qualities. I guess we’ll see though. Now that I’ve given away my snowboard, I am without, so I’ll have to rent equipment. Guess I better get going. My desk isn’t going to clean itself. Have a good weekend everyone!! |
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It's a Brand New Year! · Jan 5, 03:27 PMI started off 2008 being sick. I’m hoping the worst is over now though. The new year’s party at Tera’s place was lots of fun, and I got to visit with some people that I rarely see anymore, such as Tera, Owen, Art, and Simon. However, there were some sick people there, and I suspect they may have passed along their blasted sickness to me. Bad sick people! So school starts on Monday, and I’m kind of dreading it. I had several three-hour classes last semester, and it was really quite awful, physically and mentally. I hate classes longer than two hours because otherwise there are too few breaks, and I almost always have really sore shoulders and neck and the beginnings of a headache by the end of a three-hour class. The fun news is that I have just as many of those classes this semester as last. Great. And all of them are fourth year business classes, which likely means some gross advanced accounting. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the classes are at least half-way interesting. It makes things so much easier when I’m not bored to tears, watching the seconds tick by on the clock. Anyway, I’ve been trying to come up with a list of little events to look forward to during 2008. So far, it kind of pales in comparison to last year, with our big tent trailer odyssey, followed by a wickedly fun sailing trip. But that’s okay. So that’s our 2008 calendar sketched out for you. There are a lot of gaps, so if you’d like to pencil some fun in here and there, feel free! In other news, I’ve started up another little webpage. I intend to post a daily photo. Yes, daily. That means every single day. It’ll mostly be photos from daily life at the Fletcher house, since not much exciting happens more than six times a year. And so far I haven’t missed a day. We’ll see if I manage to complete the entire year without missing any days. Here’s hoping. And here’s the link. |
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Event number 1: Annette has enough air miles to fly out for a visit, and we’re hoping to convince Andrea to do the same — a weekend full of giggling and goofing around is just what I’ll be needing to get me through the next three months. Event number 2: Lee and Matt get married in May in Salmon Arm, so that should be a fun weekend with the whole Fletcher/Stokes clan. Event number 3: Canada Day long weekend, camping at Blue River with Annette and Andrea and their respective families. I’m really looking forward to that, and I hope the meet-in-the-middle camping weekend can turn into an annual tradition! Event number 4: Sailing trip, likely sometime in August, likely the 50-foot boat again, likely the same people, likely a wickedly good time again. Event number 5: Labour Day long weekend camping trip with Colin’s family. It was a blast last year, and I’m sure it’ll be even more fun this year! Event number 6: Christmas! Always a fun time of year, and then it’s onward and upward to 2009, which I’m kind of hoping will be a pivotal year. Home Again, Home Again · Dec 30, 04:38 PM
So after we arrived home yesterday afternoon, we spent some time unpacking the car and sorting through all of our Christmas loot. Our arrival home coincided with Jess’s arrival to Vancouver, so he came straight over and stayed the night. We played with some of our new toys, including the Nintendo Wii! Fun! Today we met up with Art for brunch and then went to the mall – ugh! – so Jess could shop for clothes. I had my heart set on picking up a new high-def TV, but after looking at them at Future Shop, I’ve had a change of heart. They look quite lovely when a high definition program is being displayed, but we don’t intend to subscribe to the high def channels, and only really want it for movies and for playing XBOX/Wii games. The non-high def channels look like pure shit — worse even, perplexingly enough, than our existing TV. So I’m annoyed really. It also would have been nice to get a slightly bigger screen than the one we have because we have the space for it, but I guess I’ll settle for our current TV. At least the normal channels look good. Anyway, at present we’re lazing around, wondering if Jess will return here after picking Julie and the kids up from the airport, and thinking it might be a good idea to tidy up our happy little pig sty. Tomorrow is new year’s eve, and we’ll be welcoming in 2008 at Tera and Owen’s new house in Port Coquitlam. Sure to be a fun time! So on that note, happy new year everyone!! |
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Almost Christmas · Dec 16, 05:08 PM
Anyway, just wanted to wish you all merry Christmas if I don’t get to do so in person, and I hope you all enjoy your holidays! |
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Yay! Two more sleeps until we leave for Alberta — I can hardly wait to get there! And for the first time, we’ve decided to break the drive up a little, instead of doing it all in one day. We’ll be driving to Jasper on Tuesday and staying at the Jasper Park Lodge, which should be a real treat. I’ve never stayed there, so I’m looking forward to some royal treatment. I hope we’ll have a chance to get some nice photos while we’re there, and if the weather’s not too bad, we’ll take Brimley for a nice little hike before we hit the road again for the last leg of the trip to Edmonton. And from there, nothing but fun! I’m really looking forward to the little party that Krissie is hosting on Friday night. All of my Alberta friends will be there, and we’ll play some music, drink a little (maybe even more than a little), and make much merry. Then on Saturday, we’re off to Barrhead for Michelle’s annual birthday fondue — yummy! And we’ll remain there until Chrismtas. I can’t wait for Brimley to open his gifts. I hope he doesn’t help himself to everyone’s gifts…
Go little Focus, pulling all of the poor west coasters our of the snow! It looks beautiful out there. We didn’t get any snow at all today…crazy.