(Sigh). Just when I thought I was over it. More running nose. More coughing. Ick.

I took some photos of various Vancouver sunrises & sunsets.

Tags: sick

Well, 2009 has started and it’s coming in a bit rough. On top of the worries about the global economic downturn I was actually late for work on January the 1st. I have also been fighting a flu virus for the past week. Decongestants, throat lozenges, and tissues have been the core of my world.

Tags: sick

We had a nice Christmas. I spent the entire time with family except for the eve before because I had to work until 11:30. (Boo)

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Tags: Christmas

It snowed some more! I spent about 3 hours shoveling out the driveway. Garion helped for about 2 hours and Donavan was able to help for almost as long. I’ll post some pictures of the finished results in the next little bit as I have to head off to work now....

Tags: Christmas

We put up our Christmas Tree today and also went to an English Panto by Ellie King, “The Mother Goose”. I thought last years “Cinderella” was better but the makeup for the Demon King was decidedly better.

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Tags: Christmas

I got into a bit of a scuffle with some teenagers the other night. Read More...

I've been looking at my Blog for some time now and wondering why I don't get it updated all that often. I can answer myself and say that I'm to busy... Read More...

Tags: rant

Pictures from my Brother's Birthday Party
Read More...

Well, I am finally back to working on a morning start time. It is about time. I was getting pretty crabby having to stay up past midnight five nights a week. I am just not built for that sort of thing.On thursday morning the sun was poking through the clouds and I was lucky enough to be able to take a few shots before we lost the beautiful lighting conditions.

Saturday morning a work mate came up to me and told me that it was snowing downtown. She hauled me and my camera over to the other side of the building and lo and behold there was a film set going on and it had converted a city intersection into december. Andrea went down on her break and found out that the “snow” was essentially toilet paper...

I’m glad I didn’t have to clean that up.

Well, our vacation is over. Andrea and the kids arrived back at YVR yesterday approximately at noon where I picked them up and then had to hurry on into work after dropping them off at home. My return was last week.

Our trip started on June 19th with a ten and a half hour flight from Vancouver to Munich where we picked up our rental van and then drove south to Nagova, a small district in Slovenia nearby to Maribor. For a few days we stayed there, visited some of Maria and Andrea’s relatives. Vera, Hansi & wife, and Anton (Karl’s brother) (and some others that I will quietly update when I can get Andrea to help me).

On friday, Andrea, the kids, and myself drove up to Austria to visit with Joseph (pronounced Yosi). We collected Angela and her boyfriend Bernhart and then drove through France. Our highlights were Paris, Disneyland, Marsailles, Menton, MonteCarlo (in Monaco), and Venice (in Italy).

While we were in Menton, we received a phone call telling us that Anna, Hansi’s mother, Andrea’s Aunt, and Maria’s sister-in-law had just passed away and that the funeral was to be held on Sunday. Since it was friday evening and we were just finishing up with touring MonteCarlo, we decided to cut our visit a bit short and only spend an afternoon in Venice instead of the overnight we were originally planning on. This was a good thing to as the hotel costs for Venice were astronomical.

Sunday was spent at the short funeral service and catching up and (for the kids and myself) meeting more family. We met with Hansi’s daughters, Tatianna and Matia, as well as Andrea’s other cousins.

The next five days included visiting with Maria’s goddaughter, an old girlfriend living in Koper, and touring the mountainous northwestern part of Slovenia. We saw some caves, the base camp for filming of the “Prince Caspian” movie, and some beautiful scenery. Paris stole my camera and kept begging us to stop so that she could run out and snap a few shots.

The last few days before I was set to return was mostly spent visiting with Vera, Andrea’s cousin, and her family: Frank, husband; Bojan, son; Tatianna, Bojans girl-friend; Ziga, their son. We were planning on traveling to Austria to spend more time with Angela and Bernhart but a clutch problem with the Espace van forced us to put that on hold until after I was scheduled to leave. Since Andrea’s Slovenian was only sufficient for basic conversation we received alot of help from our tow-truck driver, a nice young man by the name of Primus (pronounced Preemosh)

It was all good though. I wish I could have taken more time off from work but I was getting pretty close to burn out as it was. Some pictures have been uploaded into the photo files under the Eurotrip heading.

Hooray! Finally I am on vacation. We will be leaving on tuesday on my first peregrination in quite some time.

Andrea spoke with someone from ICBC this morning after I left for work. Evidently the car is a write-off.

While I was driving home from Judo practice on Tuesday night some kids in their black Nissan??? rear ended me. Fortunately no one was hurt but my poor car was thrown out into an intersection where another car was forced to hit us on the side right about where the wheel is. The steering rod or some such was broken.
The two little bastards drove off. We figure that they had probably been drinking and didn’t have the #@?&*^% to take responsibility for their mistakes.

My cat, Kee, has not been doing all that well lately and I had decided that he was not getting any better on his own. The vet said that he most likely had failed kidneys or very advanced diabetes.

It felt that there was no likely expectation of recovery.

I don’t feel well right now.

With the good weather finally here I’ve actually gotten off of my rear and started running again. I’d forgotten how sore my legs can get...