Spring (inside that is...)

It may be close to -40 outside, but in the living room we are enjoying spring. In November I tried forcing bulbs some tulip and hyacinth bulbs in the basement. I've learned a lot of important lessons that should make next year's forcing endeavors a little more successful. The most important thing is to order bulbs that are good candidates for indoor forcing (you think duh?, but I didn't consider this as much as I should have). The Princess Irene tulips are fabulous because they are short and don't flop over, but the Apricot Dream tulips are flopping all over. For hyacinth, the woodland varieties don't stand up very well; I wish I would have bought normal or grape hyacinths. It doesn't much matter, because I am enjoying the flowers I have.

Sierra posted this on Feb 28, 2007 from the garden | | permanent link

What can I say? It's true...

He may be a eunuch, but he's still a ladies' dog.

Sierra posted this on Feb 23, 2007 from the doghouse | | permanent link

Birkebeiner Bonanza

It's been a little over a week since I raced the Birkebeiner in Edmonton, but this is the first time that I've been back and able to post. Every year on Valentine's weekend the entire van der Meer clan skis the Canadian Birkebeiner, a 55km ski race near Edmonton. Despite the fact we can't seem to get ourselves organized to spend Christmas together, Birkebeiner weekend finds the whole family waxed and ready to go. The Birkebeiner is based on the old Norwegian legend where two Viking warriors strapped Prince Haakon to their back and skiied 55 km to safety. These days the baby is replaced by ergonomically designed backpacks filled with the latest in cold weather clothing, camelback water pouches and caolrie packed power bars.

The highlight of this year's ski was the fact that I, for the first time in my 20 year history of skiing the Birkebeiner, was the first van der Meer to cross the finish line...or so I thought. In a cruel twist of fate, my moment of glory was dashed by some mysterious Scott Vandermeer, who unknowingly destroyed my greatest wish. I should probably just be happy with a personal best, although if I ever meet this Scott Vandermeer I may have to accidentaly take his knees out.

The Birkebeiner tradition goes beyond skiing, there is a very important eating component to the week-end. Not only do we go straight from the finish line to the Viking Feast, we also follow up our marathon ski with a marathon buffet. The Coast Terrace Inn buffet is an extravaganza of food. This year, I decided to try moderation, since the last few years I've left the building in excrutiating pain (ironic that after the weekend my stomach hurts more than my legs). I went with a three plate approach:

The other important week-end event is the crowning of the family award. This award goes to the family who has skiied the most amount of kilometers. This year, our good friends the Tetrault's won; a rather interesting fact considering they had 4 skiiers and we had 5 skiiers, and we all skiied the same distance. In the end, a nicer family couldn't have won the award (except us, I guess). TThe winner of the Family category got the ugliest beer mug I've ever seen. The Tetrault's joined us at our buffet breakfast, where Roger generously presented us with our own 2nd place Family Award. You can probably use the photos to figure out the winner and loser.

Sierra posted this on Feb 20, 2007 from the outside | | permanent link

Livin' Livid

As expected, yesterday’s flight ended in rage and a renewed vow to never again fly Air Canada. As per the request of the airline, I arrived at the Ottawa airport two hours before scheduled departure. Made my way through security and waited patiently at the departure gate. As we approached boarding time, I approached the desk to ask them if they thought the plane would be on-time, because I had a quick connection to make. The agent (who was very nice and accommodating), let me know that the plane was ready and waiting, but one of the flight attendants hadn’t yet arrived. As it approached departure time, they even paged the flight attendant, saying that the flight crew was waiting for her. Scheduled departure time game and went before the flight attendant strolled up to the gate. Once she was on the flight, the gate agents announced that we would now have to wait until the flight crew finished their safety check before we could board. An hour later, we finally started boarding. When we got on board the head flight attendant apologized for the delay saying that the flight crew had a late start and no-one had worked on this plane before so the safety check took longer than anticipated.

I’d like to be clear on something…I have made more than my fair share of mistakes at work and at home and I don’t expect anyone else should be immune to error. However, showing up for work late, when you’ve never done that type of job before and messing up 150 people’s schedules because of it, is a little bit aggravating. I had to be up at 5:30 am to catch my flight. I set an alarm clock and had the front desk give me a wake up call, if I had shown up at the same time as the flight attendant (and the plane actually left on schedule), I would have gotten charged a “no show” fee, had to pay for a ticket change and gotten not an ounce of sympathy from the ticket agents or anyone else at Air Canada. Because of the delay in departure, I missed my flight to Whitehorse and had to spend an extra day in Vancouver waiting around. I was lucky to have friends here and I feel much more sympathy for the 10 or so passengers that were supposed to be heading to Osaka, Japan and missed their connection.

I think I will write a nice little letter to Air Canada, not because I think they will respond, but because I am so annoyed that putting my rage onto paper might be therapeutic.

Sierra posted this on Feb 19, 2007 from the outside | | permanent link

A Day in Ottawa

I've been in Ottawa since Thursday, but today was the first (and only) day that I had time to explore. I started the day with a run on the Rideau Canal. Apparently, it's Winterlude festival this week-end, so the canal was packed with skaters. In fact, I spent most of the run wishing I was on ice skates. Then I saw an awesome sleigh and spent the rest of my run wishing someone was pushing me across the ice. Although running the canal is loads pf fun, there are a few small facts they fail to tell the tourisits. Apparently some of the trails don't get cleared and are used for skiing and snowshoeing. It is NOT a good idea to try to run on these trails. At one point, I was trying to run up a hill and realized I wasn't actually moving (think Looney Tunes with legs moving furiously while the rest of you stays perfectly still).

After getting back to the hotel I went on a monster mission to find some new clothes. I'm starting a new job next week and need some new clothes to help mask my nervousness and give the appearence of incredible professionalism. I'm not a big fan of shopping, but managed to leave the mall with a new black suit and my very first pair of witch shoes (high heels with a ridiculously pointy toe). So far, the shoes are working out as expected. I managed to wear them for a full 2 minutes before shooting pains started working their way up my leg. I'm approaching the shoes like the marathon training, I just need to take my time working up to a full 8 hour day. By 2010, I'm sure I'll have them mastered. Unfortunately, the two minutes wasn't quite long enough to test the theory that heels make your butt look perkier. Frankly, I'm more interested in finding some piece of clothing that just reduces the overall size of my rear end.

Tomorrow I catch the early morning flight to Vancouver and then have a quick transfer onto the Air North to Whitehorse. With a little over 12 hours to go, I can confidently say that both me and my luggage will make it home safely! I'm sure this confidence will dwindle as flight time approaches, by the time I'm in the airport my overwhelming hate of flying will return.

Sierra posted this on Feb 17, 2007 from the outside | | permanent link

The Airport Lounge

I have lots of exciting things to post about: the Birkebeiner ski race, my new job, Steve's birthday, the blossoming bulbs in my kitchen, my new short (and very dark) hair and my newly planted tomatos. Unfortunately, I'm sitting in the Legend's Bar and Grill at the Vancouver aiport with limited connection time and no pictures. This is leg three of my busy travelling schedule. I was in Edmonton over the weekend, landed in Whitehorse on Monday night, drove to Ross River on Tuesday, returned on Wednesday night and hopped on an Ottawa flight this morning at 8:00 am.

At this point in the day I'm a nice combination of annoyed and exhausted. I've decided that it is virtually impossible to have a completely pleasent flight. In fact, it seems like in-flight service is steadily declining. My anger-du-jour is that I decided I wanted to only have a carry on instead of checking luggage. I left all my liquid and gel based toiletries in Whitehorse, only to get to the airport and be told that I had to check my bags, because even though they fit in the handy dandy carry on measurer, they weighed 4 pounds too much. After that slight annoyance, I realized that I forgot my running shoes in the hallway at home and so I won't be able to do the Rideau run I was hoping for.

I get on my Air Canada flight to Ottawa in two hours and am already stressed out by the knowledge that I won't get anything to eat on the 5 hour flight and I have to pay for my ear phones if I want to watch the movie. You would think for $825 they could afford to toss me a bag of peanuts and cheap ear buds. I have no cash, so I'll probably spend the next hour scouring the airport for an ATM and something edible (and relatively cheap). I don't land in Ottawa until 10:30 pm and have to be at the Senate for a meeting at 9:00 am tomorrow morning. I haven't checked the Ontario weather lately, but I'm crossing my fingers for sunny and plus 25 C. In fact, while I'm at it, I hope that Ottawa has suddenly become a coastal beach front resort village with free Mai Tais at every restaurant.

Here's to hoping that me and my luggage make it to the Capital.

Sierra posted this on Feb 15, 2007 from the outside | | permanent link

The Furniture Has Landed

Almost 6 months after the wedding, the furniture we received as a gift has finally landed in Whitehorse. Thankfully, the wait was well worth it because the new couch, daybed and chair are fantabulous. Every member of the family has carefully chosen their special piece. I get the daybed, which is the most perfect place in the world to enjoy a Bailey's and coffee and watch the sun rise. Tony likes the chair, where he gets a great view of the backyard and Starbuck's a fan of the couch. I think that the walls will need some new paint and a lamp would be really helpful. But, all good things come in time...

Elsewhere in the house, the downstairs bathroom is at a stand still that will likely continue until guests come to visit and they have no sink to wash their hands. Damn that procrastination!

Sierra posted this on Feb 08, 2007 from the livingroom | | permanent link

The Good, the Bad and the Scary

This week-end was ski-fully delicious. I spent both Saturday and Sunday up at the Mt. McIntyre ski trails enjoying yet another nice week-end. On Saturday, I did a nice long 30 km ski in preparation of next week-end's Birkiebeiner ski race.

The ski was fabulous. The weather was great and the views superb. As part of my trek, I put up a sign for the newly named "Mulloy's Meadow", a beautiful stop on the Lower Valley loop that commemorates the 75th birthday of Ken Mulloy. After putting up the sign yesterday, I skiied out the morning with Ken, Beth, George and Christine. We stopped to show Ken his birthday present and enjoyed some coffee, cookies and chocolate before heading back to a huge birthday dinner at Beth's place.

The only bad part of teh ski was the accidental loss of my MP3 player. While skiing along Copper Haul Road, I somehow dropped it out of my jacket pocket. Once I realized it was gone, I turned around, but it was gone. This is the second MP3 player that I've lost in the last 6 months. I think I should just start carrying around an old school ghetto blaster, at least I wouldn't be able to lose it.

The scary part of the trip happened when a dogteam went tearing by me on Copper Haul Road. Don't get me wrong, the dog team driver was completely in control of her puppies. But, it was Starbuck's first time near a team and I had no idea how he would react. Thankfully, he was distracted by his tennis ball, and sat patiently on the side of the track waiting for the team to pass. I had heard horror stories (never corroborated) of dog teams attacking, so I was pleasently surprised that all the dogs stayed completely blood free.

Sierra posted this on Feb 05, 2007 from the outside | | permanent link

The Curse of the Broken Pole

For the second time this winter I have broken my ski pole. This seems rather extraordinary because I had managed to go 25 straight years without ever breaking a pole. I will admit, the first break may have been my own fault. I was skiing with Lisa and my sister, Kirsten, when I saw a nice pine tree piled with snow. I immediately reverted back to the age of 10 and smacked it with my pole right as Kirsten was making her way underneath. In an ideal world, this would have sent buckets of snow cascading onto her head. Unfortunately, that didn't happen and about 1/2 a kilometer later, my pole spontaneously broke in two.

Yesterday, on a ski out to Lower Valley with Beth, I was climbing a hill when my back-up pole busted right through the middle. Not an ideal situation, considering we were at kilometer two of a ten kilometer ski, but even more annoying considering I don't have a back-up, back-up pole to get me throught the season. This time, I did nothing to instigate a sudden breakage, in fact I have absolutely no idea why it would randomly break. I'm going out today with borrowed poles and hope that I have a break-free ski.

Sierra posted this on Feb 03, 2007 from the outside | | permanent link