Midnight calls

Phil and I recieved a call from the ball team on Saturday. They were having the year end BBQ and decided to call. We were very touched. Phil and I had spent the day at his company open house, then we all went out for dinner and then we went out to the bar with a couple of Phil's co-workers and their wives. At about midnight Phil's phone rings. He talked for awhile then handed the phone to me. With all the background noise I went out side so I could hear everyone. I talked to Kelly first, then Andrea, then Sandy and finally Dan. During this whole time I have a couple mosquitos pestering me but it wasn't bad. I'm sure I could have talked to more people but it was about the time that I was on the phone with Dan that every mosquito in Sexsmith decided that I was the best thing on earth. It was like a scene from 'The Birds'. I'm casually swatting away then suddenly I'm fighting for my life. I felt bad Dan was saying how much we were missed and I'm, "That's great, gotta go, ba bye." I still get a little hinky thinking about it.

So if anyone reads this, who got female MVP, male MVP, strike out king/queen, or any other awards?

Phil and Andrew at the open house. Yet another storm this one flooded parts of Grand Prairie.

The same storm.This bolt was actually miles away frome the house. We've seen more lightening storms since we moved here than the entire time we lived in Kamloops. We get at least 3 a week.

For Sandy house pictures.

Looking into the kitchen from the living room. Living room.

Tumbler

I spent most of last week hiking in Tumbler Ridge with my sister. We camped and then did day trips. We had a great time. We hiked to a few different falls, to the Dinosaur Prints and then we did Boulder Garden. Then to celibrate we hiked through The Valley of Death. It was actuallly quite pretty.

40 Picture Perfect

Lots to post about. I celebrated my 40th on the 7th. It was a great time. It was a good mix of people. Mom and John, Chris, Dave and Roberta, Sheila, Clyde and Julie, and my family of four. Very relaxed and fun. Unfortunately I can't post any pictures because two days after I down loaded all my pictures to the computer it crashed and I lost all my photos. All my photos. With the move I haven't been able to find my blank discs and I kept forgetting to pick some up when I was in town. So all my trip photos were lost. (Phil is really hoping he can recover them.) I'm glad I posted as many as I did so I have some record of them.
I got some great gifts for my birthday it felt like my own personal Christmas, very flattering and humbling. Earrings, golf balls, golf gloves, some cool serving dishes, a pedicure, a charm bracelet, a robe and them my big Santa gift a new camera. Its a Pentax K100D. I have two different lens. A 18-55 and a 50-200. It's not a small camera which is exactly what I wanted. I've been having a lot of fun playing with it and all the different effects it can do. The original picture. Sepia. Black and white.
All the effects are done on the camera so I can change them while I'm on the road during my trip. There are a bunch of different features that I am still learning about. I'll be years perfecting everything.

Wind Storm

Chris (my sister) and Brad (her boyfriend) stopped in for a quick over night visit on Thursday. They were on their way to Edmonton to support Brad's daughter as she was competing in a body building competition. (She ended up taking first place for Canada.) We had finished dinner and were playing pool down stairs when a nasty thunderstorm rolled over head. I looked out the window and said, "Look at how fast those clouds are moving." When suddenly the trees in the backyard bent right over, the stack of three chairs, the cooler and a shovel went flying off to the neighbours empty lot. That was the end of the pool game for a while. We went up to the living room and watched out the front window while the cloud circled menacingly. The rain was coming down in sheets while the thunder and lightening boomed overhead. Our neighbour said driving home in it was insane. They were on the highway, doing sixty with the wipers on full and could hardly see the road. Chris was ready to check out the crawl space and being a good hostess I would have joined her. A lightning strike.

We watched as some of the wind gusts tore the flashing off our neighbour's house. It was quite a show. We all kept waiting for that circle of swirling clouds to start spiralling down. It's hard to see but the flashing is missing on the peak of the shorter grey house on the left.

One of the thunder clouds a little later.

Most of these pictures were actually taken a while later after the bulk of the storm had moved off.

Genetically ingrained shopping habits.

Shopping with Dad and Vera was funny. Vera shops like me while Dad shops in a more male fashion. At times I could tell he was getting frustrated with us. After another futile attempt at getting both Vera and I out the door at the same time, I said, “Kind of like herding cats, eh Dad?” He scowled and nodded. He just doesn’t understand we shop differently.
I truly believe women shop to fulfill a very basic evolutionary need. It harbours back to the hunter gather society. For over 200 000 years we have been gathering to sustain our families. It was not as easy as just grabbing everything in sight. With limited space in our baskets we learned through, touch, colour, and smell which fruit would sustain our families best; that the perfect shade of a ripe apple, was different from a raspberry, was different from a strawberry, etc. That their textures were different and so were there smells. We learned to be selective and that yes just the right shade matters. Gathering takes time. Hours of careful selection followed by an equal amount of time for preparation.
Men on the other hand would stand around in small nervous groups, pick out the weakest looking animal in the herd, race in, race out then pound each other on the back in a fit of machoism.
So it is little wonder that after 200 000 years of genetic ingraining that a woman can take two weeks to find a pair of shoes that she will wear once, and that a man will buy a shirt in three minutes that he will have for twenty years. Evolution.