Posts filed under 'Highlights'
Today I was sworn in as a citizen of the UK. It all started in earnest back in November and 5 months to the day, it was wrapped up (slightly off their time estimate, but still not bad). Karen and I filed into a room in Toronto at the consulate along with about 20 others who were applying for citizenship, I had to stand up and pledge my loyalty to the Queen and country (something my American friends think was a bit crazy, but hey I’m Canadian, so it doesn’t really matter much) and then I was done. Officially, I qualify for “British by Descent” which means that I derived my citizenship from my parents (Mom) and I am not able to pass it on to my children. Next step is to apply for a British passport (and work on my colloquialisms) so travel and work within the EU becomes that much simpler.
April 23rd, 2007
Today was the day I sat down at got my hair cut. After 9 years of having long hair, I’m fulfilling an obligation (”I’ll get my hair cut when you make me a VP!”) that I made off the cuff about 7 years ago, never thinking I’d have to make good. A large portion of folks gathered downstairs at lunch to watch the cutting happen and encourage the scissor holders (and also support me in my time of need). Laura was very nice and also had her hair cut for charity which made me feel less alone in the ordeal. Polly had cut her hair for charity earlier in the year which was also a wonderful gesture. In the end the highest donation was supposed to actually do the initial cut of my hair, but Robert couldn’t make it, so it fell to Shae. Overall, it was a good cause with the hair going to Angel Hair for Kids, and $2500 being split across several charities. People took some photos of the event (so I could remember the horror) and Howard put together a wonderful video to help me relive the event to the end of my days.
Overall, I feel sad. I liked having long hair and not sure I suit having short hair although I definitely look like “the man”.
April 2nd, 2007
Today was the yearly ski day trip up at Beaver Valley for which Chad joined me. We had a not bad day (it was a little cold) and we had some fun going down Avalanche (the double diamond). The fun really started however when they closed off part of the hill and we were forced to find an alternate route down to the lift. Well, we happened to see a path through the trees, so of course we slowly and carefully picked our way through the trees (so that we wouldn’t lock our skis under fallen trees and crack up) and had some fun zipping through the woods moving from one section of run to the other. We had some hairy times when we had a few drops of 3-4 feet and some tight skiing between very close packed trees, but we didn’t kill ourselves or get caught, so we kept doing it until we were done for the day.
February 8th, 2007
I haven’t been this sick in a while… staying home from work for the last while because I must have Norwalk or something, have a lot of dual action (if you know what I mean). Made several trips back and forth in the dead of night and at least one of them forgot to sanitize which didn’t please Karen. But was walking spew zombie, so hopefully I’ll be forgiven.
January 30th, 2007
Flew to Germany this week — some serious changes on the German management side, did several presentations with Kirk around the changes in structure within R&D (that not everyone is pleased with). I’ve now been given responsibility for all of the EU work as well as what I owned before — guess I’m a worldwide guy now. That is a very daunting task especially since I don’t know the German side even remotely as well as the North American side of the business. Definitely up for the challenge but I hope I can rapidly develop some significant relationships.
January 16th, 2007
I got to be part of Kyle, Casey and Ian’s broadsword vs. quarterstaff fight sequence. I was lucky I got to play the boardsword guy and fight the other two off… It was a pretty fun sequence and we got rocking through to the end of the class. We got asked if we could perform it on Saturday for the group because we were the tightest group, but sadly Laura (one of the quarterstaffers) had to fly home on Saturday so we had to pass on the honour. That was cool… I remember the first time I went to Banff in 1998 I was a little disappointed when I didn’t get picked to be on stage (but then again, I was just a beginner at the time). Moved on a chain workshop with Kyle (from Sydney Stage Combat) and Tony (doing Bartitsu) — that was fun and interesting but the woman I was fighting didn’t speak English very well and kept wanting me to rush through it which made it difficult for us to work together. Kyle and Tony made it look slick and seamless however.
January 5th, 2007
Ok, so took a long bus ride and got in early this morning (like 3am) but at least I had a nice huge bed to sleep in. Got up early (missed warmup), no clothes yet from the airport so I dressed in my stinky jeans and headed to see what classes I could do today. Had a few options and ended up taking Casey Kaleba’s falling off furniture (just standard back rolls off tables and the like, nothing crazy); even more cool in the afternoon I had Tony (Wolf) who was reviewing his process for creating fantasy fights (similar to what he went through for Lord of the Rings). He chose the Ramen and the Cords as the base culture from the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (one of my favourite books) which made it very familiar, educational and exciting. Still no clothes at the end of the day… that worries me as tomorrow is New Year’s day so I don’t think I’ll see anything delivered then either. Everyone got dressed up (excluding me) and went to the facility bar to ring in the new year with the rest of the fighters.
December 31st, 2006
… to one and all. Karen and I got up at the crack of 10am and opened gifts. It was very fun and we both very synergistcally got each other similar gifts (books we wanted, hoodies to keep us warm and tv series we like; she also got me a new carry-on suitcase which I desperately needed). Yay! Had a very loafy day and watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest on DVD. Karen wasn’t feeling well early this morning and that persisted into the evening and wasn’t feeling spectacular so I went and visited S+S (and Fergy, Mary and Melanie) for dinner which was a nice get together. Happy Holiday’s everyone, hope that people had a great Christmas day and got all the things that they might have wanted from Santa.
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December 25th, 2006
We had Allan, Pat, Elinore and Bill over for christmas eve dinner (and gift exchange) since Karen’s dad and Elinore are going to her family for Christmas day. It was nice to see them and I was happy that Bill (who recently lost his wife, Elinore’s daughter) was able to join us for at least a bit of nice company during the holidays. Karen made a special treat for us for dessert, Pönnukökur! They were very yummy (and reminds me of special Sundays at Grandma’s house), truth be told I ate more than my fair share.
December 24th, 2006
Today was mom’s 60th birthday (happy birthday mom! call you soon!!) Unfortunately I’m flying pretty much the only time I can get a hold of her. I’m really really happy to be going home. 10 days away is a lot of time (no matter what fun you might be having). Meetings went well on Monday and Tuesday in the Munich office with lots of interesting stuff going on there. Going back the third week of January for even more work - not sure I want to do that, but I guess we’ll get what we get. Got on our flight home, but apparently it was “space pod class” because we didn’t have seats, we had little business-class zones. Very strange and apparently it was new to the flight attendants as well. Got my photos of the entire India trip finally uploaded.
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December 19th, 2006
We went off to Mysore Palace to see some cultural icons of India. You’re not allowed to wear shoes in many areas including the palace and the many temples, so we walked around with a guide barefoot and listening. We hopped on an elephant for a short ride around the palace grounds which was a fun silly thing and then headed off to a group of local temples up on a high mountain. There is a lot of begging and constant payment for services (no matter how insignifcant) that really is tough to deal with if you happen to be a Canadian (as we’re not really used to the pressure sell). I felt bad for the guy who was taking us around the site because he was just shelling out the money constantly (pay to keep our shoes, pay to get a coconut, pay to break the coconut open, pay to bless the coconut, pay to be blessed, pay to have a kid tell us the capital city of Canada). In the end, I ended up donating money too, but I made the mistake of not paying attention to what I was giving the temple monks and instead of 50Rp (about $1.50), I gave them €50 (about $75.00) by accident. But you can’t blame me, if you compare them, they look very similar in colour. In the end, I should get massive karmic blessings for such a donation. The day rounded out by a return home and me feeling like complete crap (either because of too much sun or because my stomach was finally succumbing); luckily the internet had started working again (it had stopped earlier in the week for me) and I quickly checked mail and went to bed.
December 16th, 2006
Damn! Yet another year goes by and I miss starting the tradition around the Yule Lads. I want to get started with this (especially when we have kids) so that it can be a fun (albeit zany) part of the holidays. For those of you who don’t know, Iceland has 13 Santas and a Yuletide Cat that will eat your children.
December 13th, 2006
I went out and picked up a slingbox today. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a device that hooks into your audio/video system and allows you to stream the video feed remotely over the network. It was more difficult to setup than I thought (had to look up instructions on the internet for getting my airport express working), especially since you need to connect to the slingbox via local LAN before you can configure it to be accessed remotely. Once I did all that (about 2h of fiddling), it worked perfectly and I can now stream video (from our TV and PVR) from anywhere in the world provided the bandwidth is fast enough. I definitely recommend getting one of these, especially if you travel a lot.
December 4th, 2006
Not sure if people have seen this before, the first is done by Jonathan Dietrich representing me at play (done just recently) and the second was done by James Storm representing me at work (years and years ago; colourized by Mike Leatham). I think both of them do a good job of capturing the stereotypical me. It is kind of fun to imagine what your daily life might look like as a South Park or Simpsons episode.
November 27th, 2006
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