b’s blog

A titanic struggle between Gibbon and Tiger is captured on film.

On Sunday Adam and I went to Vegreville for the first Motorcross race of this season. We got there quite early, 8am for registration and then found out he didn’t have his first race for about 2 hours or so. His second race was another 3.5 hours after the first one so most of the day was made up of watching his friend’s races and chatting with people.

Adam finished 10th overall out of 26 unofficially in the intermediate class. Pretty good.

Motorcross racing is certainly different from the hare scrambles he did last year. Motorcross races are 15 mins long on a track with a gate start while the hare scrambles were hours long through the trees on a marked trail. I think I generally enjoy the hare scrambles better but they are farther out to drive.

Next week there is a cross country race so I hope to go with Adam and see what that’s like. I’ll keep you posted.

This past Saturday I went to my friend’s wedding. It was really neat because Zousar is Orthodox and the wedding was very different than your typical western wedding. Walking in there is a lot of chanting and a cymbal guy. The priest is peaking english but in a melodic chanty sorta way so I didn’t actually understand it and I also think a lot of it was in Arabic or something. Incense and many prayers later, they were married.

Their reception was at the top of the Delta and was great fun. Arabic men do a raised arm snapping to the beat thing and even Shauna’s dad got into it! I loved both the ceremony and the reception.

Now they are on their honeymoon and I’m housesitting. They have  beautiful home that is very well kept. It took me about 20 minutes to find the cutting board to prepare dinner tonight. I’d eaten the leftovers from the wedding celebrations before then.

Tuesday night Charlene, Ian and I went for free ice cream at Ben and Jerry’s. It was their bday and they celebrated by encouraging donations for Make a Wish Foundation for their yummy ice cream. Thanks to Winnie for letting me know about the promotion!

Ian also got an Xbox to play GTA4. I’ve not seen it yet but he really enjoys the game.

Went down to Calgary with Adam on Friday afternoon. We got there in the evening and went to Rhea’s “I got on the Force” Party at Richmond’s Pub. She is officially a cadet(?) for the Cowtown police. And it so happened that Adam starts his new job today and one of his friends from Calgary stated a job today too.

Always good to see Ben, Adam’s “little brother”, the Coton de Tulear. Greatest disposition.

The weather is a little crappy these past couple of days. Heavy snowfall warning for 3 days straight and at least 10cm snow for 3 days. The snow is the wet, heavy, sticks to everything kind of snow which is good for building snowmen/forts but not good for driving in because you get your wheel wells full of snow which makes turning difficult. Also, the city is having difficulty keeping up with street clearing because the snow just keeps falling and it just gets blown back onto the street from the windrows.

Now in these conditions there are plenty of rude, inconsiderate, crazy people who think because they drive a large truck, they can drive faster than conditions allow. You can see plenty of people with hazard lights flashing on the side of the road, or in some cases, the middle of the lane.

In addition, the snow can get as deep as mid calf in some places and if you have a car, you might have a bit of trouble getting through without getting stuck. I almost got stuck 2 times im my neighbourhood in my car. Usually, in these situations, you just need some patience and rock your vehicle back and forth until you manage to pop yourself out of the rut in the snow. Sometimes you need a push but for the most part, it’s a skill to rock your car out.

Today I was meeting Adam for lunch downtown. When I walked to the restaurant, I saw him stuck in a drift while trying to park. I ran over and proceeded to push from the rear while he was doing the rocking. While I was unsucessfully pushing(I was wearing heeled boots. Not good for pushing vehicles out!), a guy who was walking by asked if we needed help and joined in. Then another minute later, another man silently came up to push as well.

We got the vehicle out and I thanked the two guys who just turned and dissappeared down the street where they came. It made me feel happy. The city and it’s people sometimes surprise you.

Now I don’t know if they volunteered because they saw a little Chinese lady pushing a truck by herself or if they would have done it anyways but I like to think that they would anyways.

Went to a Scrapbooking retreat for the weekend. Just in time for the winter weather to really kick back in! I didn’t bring any winter stuff so lots of layering under my leather jacket!

I did get a lot done. Over 12 pages is good for me but I know others got over 40! Whatever! it’s not a contest!

This should be the last big winter harah before spring finally is here. It’s just strange that last Sunday I was walking in the river valley and stopping by the creek to sun myself on the lovely bank and this Sunday I’m freezing my butt off!

This weekend was a glorious -19 C. How can you go wrong when the sun is out and last weekend it snowed 5cm? Spent the weekend outside and had my first BBQ of the season on the front lawn of a friend’s house. Kinda ghetto/trailer but that’s where the sun was!

It only lasts for the weekend though, today there’s a snowfall/rainfall forecast and the whole rest of the week is supposed to shape up the same gloomy weather. blah.

This weekend was supposed to be  +5-6C but instead we woke up to about 10cm of snow and it kept falling for most of the day! How crazy is Edmonton weather? It’s Monday and still the snow is not melted away yet… April snow bring May flowers???

Charlene and I went to the concert at Rexall Tuesday night and it was a good one. I was excited because not only do I get to see Rascal Flatts but Taylor Swift is opening for them and has a platnium album with about 3 songs that play onthe radio that I really like.

But I realized while watching her perform, that this is her debut album and she doesn’t have a great stage presence. At least not where I was sitting, in the 200s in the corner. She didn’t seem to connect with the audience and said of lot basic lines that anyone would say on stage. “How’s everyone feeling tonight?”; “Everyone excited to see Rascal Flatts?” etc. She also plugged for herself and RF, voting for them to win some CMT awards, which are fan based awards.

She had on a really shiny, sparkly striped silver/white sequined minidress that seemed to me very blinding because the spotlights would reflect off her chest like a care bear stare. She had a drum battle on stage with a bandmate which didn’t impress either Charlene or myself because they just took turns banging once on the drum… a little too long and not entertaining. I don’t own her album so I only knew the ones from the radio but she performed those ones really well. At least you could tell she tried hard to make herself at home on the stage and to make it like she was the main act instead of opening for someone else.

 Rascal Flatts had two stages set up; the main stage had 2 storeys of video wall and the small round stage for an intimate feeling was set up near the rear of the floor. The small stage connected to the main by a retractable bridge. They came out strong by banging off the first 3 of their set right after one another. During the little breather, the lead singer,Gary said “The sign of a good man is when he admits an honest mistake”. He mistakenly called us Calgary during the introduction.

The songs were more familiar because they were from their more recent albums, just a couple I didn’t recognize that Charlene knew. They had a small little intimate party at the circular stage without Gary, where Joe did a lot of singing pared down, kinda unplugged like. It was a little segment where they sang a selection of songs the band liked. Joe was very charismatic and witty. Had a great repore with the audience and really seemed to enjoy performing and taking a leading role during this time. (Also, the drummer got to sing a little too. He’s Edmontonian so he got a little special mention and a small solo.) Gary came out at the end and joined in on the little stage for a  song or 2 before everyone headed back to the main stage and they finished up the last of their set.

 I found out a couple days later that Saskatoon was cancelled because of laryngitis so I figure the couple of breaks Gary took during the concert was to try and slow the progress or something. Lucky we got to see the show!