Computer Disasters

I'm back!!! About two months ago my computer died so I've been using Tom's laptop. A couple of week's ago, Tom's computer took a turn for the worse... becoming very unstable and eventually refusing to boot altogether. Thank goodness for Rob, the geo department magician!! He was able to determine that it was just a fried memory card rather than the whole thing, and has just popped in the new part today. I'm participating in a Diamond Exploration Short Course at the moment... learning a ton about diamonds and kimberlites, and all of the stuff Tom does at work! It runs until thursday... so i guess after that i'd better get some thesis stuff done before Tom comes home. Stay tuned for pics of the awesome new mountain bike i just bought! It's a Gary Fisher Cake 1 - very cool!... and an update of the mountain bike course i'm taking in the beginning of June.

Cycling Wolfe Island

We finally got our bikes out this week! Thursday we had a "warm-up" bike out to Lemoine Point (about an hour round-trip after Tom practiced hopping things). It was a pretty easy bike, but I have to admit I wasn't used to being in the saddle and my bum got a bit sore. Friday we went out to Wolfe Island - just a short ferry trip from Kingston. We had planned to do an easy 28 km ride, but ended up taking a wrong turn (missing Button Bay, the whole point of the trip!). The weather wasn't horrible, but we were rained on (and a bit of sleet)... plus we were a little tender around the saddle, so we tossed the bikes in the car and went to catch the ferry. Unfortunately, the ferry schedule changes at lunch-time and we got there in time to see it heading away from the dock. Such is life on the island... as they say, there's always another boat, so we headed over to the Island Grill for lunch and caught the next one. During lunch, the sun came out and the weather warmed up. At least we got to enjoy it waiting at the dock for the ferry!

Thesis update

Looks like I'll be in Kingston for the summer. I had originally hoped to finish this May and head off to work somewhere exciting... or at least somewhere with better pay, but there's been the usual delays that have crushed my high hopes. I'll be done by the end of summer, so still within my 4 years. So far i think we're planning to kick around Ktown until the end of October or November — that gives me time to do post-doc NSERC applications, plus many of the oil companies swing by Queen's in October so that will give me a chance to do some interviews... and of course John & Fran are getting married in October so I'll definitely be able to catch that at least!... and I'll have a bit more flexibility this summer to go up and see the new niece or nephew.

Officially Spring

Well, it officially feels like spring now. Kali had her first bath of the season after a muddy session of wrestling at the morning puppy play-group... and I went running in shorts for the first time this year! Usually as soon as it hits 0 ˚C I'll be out in shorts, but this year there's been a lot of strong, cold wind... Friday was perfect though. +5, warm gentle breeze... couldn't ask for better weather!

Maple Madness

Six of us went out to Cataraqui Conservation Area to check out the maple bush today! It was an awesome sunny day, a balmy +2º C or so. I think it's the first time i've been out there for Maple Madness in the sun. We got to ride out there in a tractor-drawn, covered wagon. Definitely a fun, but bumpy, way to get there. Oh, and who could forget the recycle rap? I'm sure everyone who has been out there will remember it fondly... I'm not quite sure what this structure was for... but it was along the road back from the interpretive sugar bush trail. And then it was time for pancakes drenched in fresh maple syrup!! I meant to take pictures of the maply goodness, but got distracted by eating it. Oh well... I'm sure you can use your imaginations.

Agility

Just before christmas we started Kali in agility classes. She gets to do all kinds of neat stuff in agility... it's basically obstacle courses. The beginner agility class basically familiarizes the dogs with the equipment... A-frames, tunnels, chutes (a fabric tunnel), dog-walks (narrow bridges), jumping through tires, over obstacles, weave poles and teeter totters! Kali graduated beginner agility in January, and last weekend she graduated from intermediate... or rather I did... Intermediate agility mostly trains the handler how to give the proper signals to the dogs so they navigate the course in the proper order. We begin advanced agility this weekend, which will be more handler training. If we're still in Kingston this summer we're hoping to go into some beginner "fun" courses since the rules aren't as strict for these competitions. I'm hoping to get pictures of Kali on some of the equipment, but I doubt that will happen until Tom's back in town... and probably not until we get to practice outside because it's kind of close quarters with 5 other teams to worry about on the floor!

Ice Storm

We had a pretty impressive mini-ice storm about a week ago. The next afternoon I was out chipping an inch of ice off the driveway and decided to snap a few nifty scenery shots. It was a bit eerie being out there... every few minutes there would be a crash as large branches fell off the trees across the street onto the sidewalk. By mid-afternoon the sun came out and everything pretty much melted away.

Baby News

I just got some exciting news a few days ago (don't worry everyone - it's not me!). My sister Amy just announced she's in her second trimester so there will be a 4th niece or nephew running around by the end of July. (The other three are my sister-in-law Becky's kids, Ali, Cole & Owen. You can see them in the wedding picture posts - well, not Owen. He was only a month old and a bit too young to walk down the aisle with the other two!). I'm told it's too early to know if it's a boy or girl, but Tom and I have decided to come up with helpful baby name suggestions. Tom particularly likes the idea of having a nephew named "Dudley" or "Igor"... go on, say the last one... couldn't you picture some mom saying "Eee-gor, clean up your room... " We had a harder time thinking of girl names... maybe "Maevis". Does anyone have other suggestions for fun-sounding, highly under-utilized names?

Winter Kali

Tom, Kali and I went out snowshoeing yesterday and, true to form, I forgot to take our camera out of the bag during the actual hike. I snapped this shot of Kali in her winter gear in our backyard when we got back home though. I made the sweater for her (some of you might remember me trying to finish it over Christmas). I recycled one of Tom's old sweaters that he didn't wear anymore. It's very form-fitting, has ribbing on the little legs and the back half. I trimmed it with dark brown crochet stitches to prevent the extreme stretching the first attempt went through. Not bad for my second attempt at knitting (and second dog sweater).

More Wedding Pictures

Hey everyone! I figured I'd post a few more pictures from the wedding... I might throw on some more when I get them from the photographer, but this will be it for a little bit. The wedding was on Sunday, Oct. 8 at Whitney Manor in Kingston. It was the most perfect Thanksgiving weather... sunny and something like 18°C, although the wind was a bit cool in the shade in a strapless dress!

I think i'm just happy to be off my feet!

This is in the "Chapel Suite" - the room my parents & grandma were staying in... where we got ready before the wedding and where many of the pictures were taken... I may post pictures later just of the rooms and the building itself. I love this picture of my little ring-bearer Cole and my second dad (Tom Sr.). This was honestly one of the few times Cole stood still on his own! Wow that little guy has a ton of energy... This is my adorable flowergirl Ali. She was extremely cute the whole weekend and very excited about getting our hair done in curls, wearing her pretty dress and carrying her own bouquet (3rd time she was a flowergirl - and she handled it like a pro as well!)

Wedding Pictures - Round 1

Here's a couple of wedding pictures! More to come!!

GEMSTORM!!

Tom and I went to Gemstorm this weekend!! Unfortunately (kind of) we got a bit carried away when we hit our favourite dealer - Russian Stone. We picked up a couple of trilobites (top 2 pictures). There's a couple of pretty rare ones there - still waiting for them to send the official names. These are composite plates - I think it would be impossible to get these all occurring together naturally... and I'm not sure of their ages. I'll post the trilobite info when I get it from the dealer. The third one down is a couple of Eocene fish from the Green River Formation. The last one is a piece of red coral - i have a necklace made from the stuff so it was kind of neat to get a whole chunk of one.

In other news... Tom and I got married on October 8th... I'll post pictures when I get a few more... and also the promised polar bear shots from Tom's field season on Devon Island this summer. Stay tuned!

Racing side-lined

Hey all, I haven't been very good at keeping everyone posted on the adventure racing front. Unfortunately training has been shaky lately. Since beginning I was off sick for a week or so and just last weekend I sprained my ankle so I'm not wondering if the race is going to happen. I was playing with Kali in a field and stepped in a hole. She thought it was a great game, pouncing at me and running around in circles and I sat wailing in pain. Of course nobody was around to pick me up, but fortunately I was able to hobble home, and after a bit of ice, drive out to the Dr. I tried a nice after hours clinic first and got in after waiting only 10 min!... but then got sent to emergency anyway for X-rays and waited there for about 2 hours (brought a puzzle book so at least i was occupied). Once I got in to see the doctor he pronounced that it was a sprain and I didn't need an x-ray after all, gave me some crutches, and sent me home. Thankfully I've had some super helpful friends (thanks Kyle & Wanda) that have come by to take Kali for a run and met me for puppy play-dates. I guess it had the effect of making for a super productive work week school-wise (although it would have worked out better for timing if I could have used that saturday *shrug*)... but after more than a week with limited physical activity I am now getting antsy for a run! Good news...Tom will be home in a few days and I'll be able to start posting some pictures to liven the site up!

Racing Update and other news

Sorry about the boring-looking entries lately. Tom's made off with the camera and is now flying around Devon Island with it, but I promise to post some polar bear pictures and scenery shots when he gets back.

We've found a third adventure racer, and possibly a fourth. Unfortunately I've been off hard-core training for a week and a bit because of an annoying summer cold that keeps relapsing whenever I do something fun. Hopefully I'll be back in the game by next week - as long as a full weekend of softball play-offs doesn't knock me down again (we have 3 games saturday and up to 4 on sunday depending on how we do). Our first race sounds like it's going to be the Sea2Summit race on Aug. 26/27 in Quebec.

Wedding plans are progressing nicely. My wedding dress finally came in last week!! Only 2 months late, but still with plenty of time before the wedding. I got to go see it and try it on again... and now have managed to find all the accessories I'll need except shoes. Not to worry though (so far) because I'm in the process of making them! I'll post pictures when I get my camera back, especially if they work out. Basically they're going to be a combination of cork from a corkboard, cheap orthotics for shape (mostly just because i had them kicking around... not necessary), crocheted jute twine for the sole, and crocheted fuzzy white yarn for the upper. No shoes are allowed in the post-dinner reception room so they're going to be a sandal/slipper kind of idea.

Adventure Racing

I'm now officially on an Adventure Racing team! Okay, so we need a name and we're still sorting out our 3rd & maybe 4th team member, but we had a training session last night doing sprints up the steep side of Fort Henry. Keep tuned for trials and tribulation of training (and we'll see if it actually goes anywhere!... hopefully it doesn't end up like all of my K-town Triathlon training and end up just as training for fun while never doing a single race!).

Cephalapod Cache

I'm pretty excited - just got to hide our first geocache AND use geeky geology knowledge to do it! We found a nice spot with cephalapods so decided to use it in the name of the cache and expound a bit of Kingston geology in the description. Now we also have a nice spot to start our travel bug race. We've got a little stuffed "kali-roo" and now we need a little grey kitty for be "mookie" and then we're going to race them... maybe if Gnat the Brat were to take up caching we could race them down that way!

Crochet Sweater

Just thought I'd add in this picture of the sweater I crocheted at Christmas since I finally got around to putting Tigger on the blog. It took a couple of months and I still need to put a zipper or some kind of closure on it.

Tigger Scarf

I was going through the pictures on my digital camera and remembered that I had wanted to post this scarf. I spent a month or so crocheting it for my 3 year old niece for christmas... finishing it minutes before getting in the car to drive over for the big Hamilton Christmas dinner... In the midst of unwrapping gifts she discovered it... and gave a squeal of delight!... but so many presents to look at left it soon forgotten. Later in the evening she refused to even try it on so I could see how it looked on her... who knows if she's ever worn it since... so here's to the tigger scarf. I thought it was cool.

Silence of the Rams

This weekend was a pretty successful time for geocaching for team Kali-roo (me, Tom, & Kali). We managed to find 10 caches, including 1 multi-cache and a travel bug! Travel bugs are these neat little tags with bar codes on them. Basically someone sends them off with a mission to travel the world or to get to a certain destination. You attach something interesting to it and give it a name... in this case it was a broken bit of RAM. Here's a picture of Kali modelling "Silence of the Rams". This is a close-up of the "Silence of the Rams" travel bug. It started in New Zealand, flew to B.C., came through New York and up to Ontario. Click the post title to see where this bug has been.

Geocaching

Tom & I have recently taken up a new hobby - geocaching! It's basically a big treasure hunt using a GPS. You download sites from www.geocaching.com onto your trusty GPS and head out to find it, sign the log book, trade items in the cache, and then log it as found on the geocache site. There's a special extra category for geologists - actually two (check these out at http://www.waymarking.com/ click directory, then Earth Science). If you look under The "rockhounds" category shows locations to collect fossils and minerals, and the "earthcache" category shows the positions of interesting/educational geologic sites. Not many exist now but we hope to start adding to them!