Go

I've recently discovered the Edmonton Go Club and will be signing up as a member this week which is fairly exciting. In my first visit, I realised how long it was since I'd played, how crap I'd gotten and how wonderful it is to play Go with a friendly group of people. The strength in the club is quite amazing with at least one 6-dan and a whole lot of guys above 1-dan. Lots of people to learn from then! There's even a tournament on next month that I just may enter to see how it goes (plus a 10-course Chinese meal afterwards, how could you pass that up?).

The season

Kicking Horse, Fernie, Sunshine, Marmot, Panorama, even Rabbit Hill and Snow Valley. All of these snow destinations are within 6 hours of Edmonton (and the last two are within a half hour and 15 minutes respectively...) I went out to the Northlands exhibition centre yesterday with Ken to the Edmonton Ski and Snowboard show and have subsequently been infected heavily with snowboarding stoke. I'm taking my board in to get a pre-season tune up at Sundance today (50% off special from the show), I've got my Sunshine Marmot ski pass (great deals on lift tickets at those two resorts), and I've got a goodies bag full of little offers to entice me to the slopes before the season really gets under way. I even managed to pick up a Giro Nine.9 helmet at an absolute bargain price because it was last year's model and they were trying to get rid of them. My care factor about looking suitably fashionable on the slopes disappeared a long time ago (I still maintain that the cross-overs over a flanny are perfectly functional and distinctive) and since I'd been looking for a decent helmet that fits my unusually shaped noggin for about 9 months it was like having an epiphany seeing the stack of helmet boxes with the words 50% OFF plastered on them. There is a foot of snow on our balcony that I'm going to have to scoop off sometime today, I need to get some new winter wiper blades for the car and I'm starting to realise that my fitness levels are perhaps not what they should be. It is definitely the season my friends...

The little green DJ

So now that I've finally finished off posting the roadtrip photos and stories, it's time to catch up to real life again. Real life is defined as that which happens when you're not on holidays. After mooching off Col's parent's generosity with the use of their car(s) for the last 8 months we decided it was time to get ourselves sorted out with a ride of our own now that winter is on its way and so we're now the proud owners of a Honda Civic. And of course with the purchase of anything like a car it's considered obligatory to post some sort of photos of it so that I reminisce in 20 years about how people actually did crazy things like put pictures of their cars (and cats) on the internet. Insanity n'est pas?


Proud owner...


Sweet ride...

We've yet to take it on a trip of any length but are super happy with how it runs around the city and how economical it's been (even with my sometimes overenthusiastic driving).

For the technically interested:
'97 Honda Civic Si
(equivalent to US EX model that year)
2 door coupe, 5 speed. 1.6L DOHC V-Tec engine
127hp (~95kW), 183,000km on the clock
power everything, sunroof, 6 speaker Blaupunkt stereo