CaptainOrange

Our family hosted a staff Christmas party for our friends in the Children's Department. It was a near thing, but Wendy managed to keep the house in one piece despite all the dancing and wild abandon. As you might predict there was a serious literary discussion while we dined. Anwyn was grilled by the staff over her opinions on such greats as The Hobbit , A Face Like Glass , and The Hunger Games . I think her comments were well supported by the texts and the library staff were in agreement that Anwyn may wish to start her career in literary review with all speed. She decided instead to show Henry (hereafter known as Hank) the purpose of her extensive Nerf weapon collection. Lori provided the dessert hit of the evening with her fantastic  carrot cake  -- although, it appears that Jenny is more fond of eating mice. I guess it takes all kinds -- a fact that could be attested to by the insane people that hired all of us to work in the same place. We were so g...

I think I just lost a button! Wendy and I are not much for partying. This year we started off Halloween a little bit early. We got some tickets to a Diabetes fundraiser and enjoyed ourselves dancing part of the night away with Jodi. The band played a little too much country for our taste but, for the most part they seem to read their audience well. We're just not typical, I guess. Anyway, the cool thing is that we got to design steam punk costumes for ourselves. I really love to make things and this was an awesome opportunity to play around with paint and cheap doodads that we found at Value Village. The two feature parts of my costume were the knee-length leather jacket which I found for $14 and a top hat. The hat was originally baby blue felt, which just wouldn't work for my particular costume. Although, as it turns out, it would've matched Wendy's outfit pretty well. Alas, the candied corn wound up in the trash :( Sadly, my camera had just arrived back fr...

Just a quick note. I will be among many story-tellers and poets participating in this young-ish annual event. Mostly, I'll be enjoying the other performers, but I will be telling at least one story. I've attended previously and it was fun (but loud). Here is a link to the Facebook Event . And here is what the event says, if you want to avoid going to facebook ;) 7pm-9pm at Lydia's Story time debauchery! This is not your toddler’s story time. Help us ring in Saskatchewan Library Week with an evening of performances for  grownups. There will be stories, music… and a full drinks menu.  Performers include The Seahags, No-Nos Improv Comedy, author Wes Funk, and radio personality Berkley Staite. Master of ceremonies will be our Writer in Residence, David Poulsen. Free! (Note: this is a licensed event) View Larger Map

Wow. So tired. I found the same thing in Honduras. When you have a full day of vacation, it's pretty hard to go back to your hotel and process pictures/video and then write about it all before you fall asleep. But, I missed you yesterday, so here goes... Saturday--am Beach House looks like an old fort We caught a boat out with Steve, from Quiescence. The trip was a little longer out than usual at 45 minutes. I was a little irritated that our trip was being hijacked by two young couples who wanted to go hunting Lion Fish. My irritation gave way when we found ourselves at an out of the way location that gave us the best diving of our trip. As it turns out, the two young women on our trip were from REEF .  The Reef Environmental Education Foundation is a non-profit organization of recreational divers who conduct fish biodiversity and abundance surveys during their dives, among other things. One of these thing is reducing the lionfish population. Lionfish are native to the...

Double Crested Cormorant We have started to fall into a really good rhythm here. What with the not throwing up added to lots of sun and diving, it is starting to feel very much like a vacation. Or at the very least, some place that I don't loathe existing in :) We did morning dives again, which means no coffee as we have to be at Quiescence  by 8am. We were on French Reef today. The two locations we did were called Hard Bottom Cave and Hourglass Cave. As you might expect, each of these locations offered some nooks and crannies to weave through. Neither contained any seriously challenging elements, but both were substantially deeper dives than yesterday. Speaking of which, here are some numbers from yesterday at Northern Dry Rocks . Dive 1 -- Minnow Cave 59 minutes at 4m average and 6.1m max Dive 2 -- Dry Rock (Not sure of this name and I think Brad is sick of me asking...) 58 minutes, averaging 4.9m and 7.3m max. Today's Dives:  Weather Hot and Sunny. Light ...

American White Ibis As you know, I like to have coffee in the morning. If you know Brad, you will also know that although he loves coffee (possibly even more than me) he does not love morning. What I'm saying is that I've had to make due with another of my weird animal coffee buddies. Meet the American White Ibis . They seem to be quite curious, and though they are a little skittish, they don't seem to mind posing for pictures. If you were checking Google+ early this morning, you probably noticed that I was feeling pretty positive about my chances for diving in Key Largo today.  I'm really not sure how I managed to be so upbeat after yesterday's gore-fest on the boat. But, I shall not keep you in suspense. I held my breakfast down today! Let the trumpets trumpet and the banners... ban. Brad and I did two dives after lunch totalling about 1hr 55min. The number of fish was really quite spectacular. I found this lovely fish in Florida [Nope! Link now broken....

7:30am Got up and headed for the dive shop. My G+ crew will recognize this optimistic video clip. Headache and stuffiness better but not gone. I decided to give snorkelling rather (than scuba) a try. This was a good plan for a number of reasons. The first reason was that I did still find it difficult to clear my ears, particularly on ascent. It's not a very big deal snorkelling because you don't go to the same depths and therefore there is much less equalization pressure on your ear drum and sinus cavities. Leaving the Keys The other reason that I'm glad that I snorkelled instead is that I was violently sick to my stomach 25 minutes after getting in the water. If you are down at 30 or 40 feet at the time, this can become tricky. You probably remember that I had this same problem early on in Honduras. There is one small difference. I took anti-nausea medication in advance this time. It just didn't work. I don't know if it is because I am immune to this ...

Tuesday -- 7am Still congested. Brad and I agreed that I shouldn't dive today. Extra sleep for me. 8:30am I've managed to get up, shower, and have coffee and a scone. All without hilarious incident. The view out the front door is... okay The view 50 metres out back is somewhat more inspiring Morning Coffee Companion Proof of manly shopping expedition 2pm Brad back from Diving. He reports that the diving was excellent and that there were a lot more fish on his first dive than we saw at the most fishy dive in Honduras. I'm excited to see if his stories live up to the tale. Brad can be given to such exaggeration. We went and found a local grocery store and stocked up on fresh produce and some bread. Tomorrow we will be barbecuing. 4pm Drove into Miami (an hour 1-way). We checked out a couple of stores that sell board/card games and found one to play when we are stopped places for coffee or to sponge free wifi. Additional pictures from thi...

I have been sick for a couple of days leading into this trip. It's a sinus cold, which is not conducive to diving. A ruptured aorta while in shark infested waters is about equivalent ;) Monday -- 4am Wendy was kind enough to help me fumble my way to the airport. Being sick, short on sleep, short on coffee, and panicked about forgetting something vital (like boots when mountain climbing for instance), Wendy seemed torn between kissing me goodbye and reporting me as a terrorist to airport security. Here is a breakdown of my first 10 minutes at the airport: Pass through security. Forget 1.5 day old iPhone5 in an airport security bin. Purchase coffee. Wandered upstairs to wait at departure gate. Walk back down for coffee that I forgot on the condiment counter. Return to my gate. Answer cell call from wife. Karma-Free Sunrise Wendy: Are you awake yet? Me: I left my new phone in a bin. A kind security agent found me as I was buying coffee and returned it t...

Obligatory Back to School Photo Of course the biggest change this month is that Wendy and the girls all went back to school. Phew! I love them--you know I do, but I'm still happy when everyone gets back into the rhythm of school. I get a little more time to myself in the morning and things feel a little less rushed... for me. Everyone else, on the other hand is in quite a tizzy. Wendy is walking downtown every morning to the SPSD division office and trying to destroy the demons of chaos that threaten our children's educational existence. She has a host of new responsibilities this year and it has been a bit of a wild ride for her to try and get it together. She needs new challenges like the rest of us, so I figure it's all to the good. We hosted a pot-luck dinner party for her colleagues last night to try and help the team gel right at the start of the year. Father walking stalking children to school... Leora is trying to get the hang of her first year of high ...

It's a whole new game. The score is tied at 3 victories a piece. I left the house at 4:40am--10 minutes behind schedule. I have often had company for this section of the journey, but this year I was on my own. The first new thing for this trip is the new Tim Horton's in Stonebridge. I availed myself of a little pick-me-up and headed East. The morning was cold and calm. The moon looked over my shoulder as I headed out parallel to the railroad tracks. All the rain we've had this summer meant healthy plant growth and the cool morning was heavy with dew. My shoes were shortly soaked through and I found it necessary to pause every couple of hours to strip off my shoes and dry them in the sun. A major change from previous years is that I didn't take a "real" camera. I had only my trusty iPhone3GS. I was feeling unsure about my ability to complete the trek this year and I was concerned about the extra weight a camera would add. That and Environment Canada pre...

I'm excited to announce that on Sunday morning, at about 4:30am, I will be departing on my questing marathon known as the City Walk. A brief history of how and why I started doing it can be found in a 2006 post just before I make my first complete circumnavigation. The score stands at Saskatoon 3 (1994, 2005,  2007 ) - Mike 2 ( 2006  and  2008 ). I'm out to even the score. As usual, you are all welcome to attend part or all of the marathon. I'll have my cell phone with me, so feel free to give me a call to meet up. Here is a map of Saskatoon with two previous trips on it, so you can have an idea of the route. Possible Itinerary:* 4:30am -- departure from Clarence Ave S (counterclockwise this year) 12-12:30 -- river crossing sans bridge (a first! Could save me 8-10km) 12:30 -- Picnic lunch on Spadina (hopefully... it will be near here ) 4:30pm -- North of YXE 7pm -- 11th St Esso 10pm -- Finish *later times show increasing approximation ;)

Anwyn with an awesome Spread Eagle (working on knees and toe pointing) Leo's are better than mine. Happy/Sad at the same time. Just a quick note. I'm pretty excited this morning. My family has had the use of Liz's trampoline (in exchange for our swings) for the last 3 weeks. This coincided very nicely with the enthusiasm I have for exercise when the Olympics are on and lead to many hours of getting over my adult onset dizziness :( I remembered with a certain fondness performing crazy teenage antics on David Rabuka's trampoline when I was in high-school, back in P.A. Some tricks --the ones involving serious core strength-- have given me some trouble, but back and forward tucks, pikes and layouts came back to me very easily... except for wanting to violently eject my breakfast after 5 minutes. Back handsprings, on the other hand, have given me a lot of difficulty for 18 years --ever since I spent a week loading box-cars up with 100lb bags of lentils. Back inju...

Well... things have been crazy busy since we got back. Now that I can think again, let's do a quick recap of the end of the holiday. Teela, Peff, Merlin and Viola were very good to all of us. We ate wonderful food and endured extreme heat. One of the things that we all enjoyed was a trip to a local kids' discovery centre. We had all sorts of fun blowing bubbles, testing our vertical jumping ability and testing various laws of physics. My favourite was a series of controls that operated a small crane. Wendy and I had some trouble sharing with the other visitors and spent an enormous amount of time trying to create various structures out of the supplied material. In this picture, you can see me refusing to yield the controls to a 4 year old girl. Play Nice Anyhow, when it finally came time to leave Indiana, we decided to bee-line for home. We drove to Minneapolis the first day and stayed at an awesome hotel. Part way through the next day, we arrived at the border. Now...

News flash. It's hot in Indiana. And apparently, we've been lucky and missed the worst of the heat (so far). Too Darn Hot! Still we've managed to do some recreational climbing... Frisbee Rescue Merlin in Camouflage Mode And go for a night ride on horseback. Anwyn and Spitfire Actually, the night ride was a little unnerving. We were undercover of trees and the moon rose late, so by 1/2hr into our 90 minute ride, it was dark enough that only the sharpest eyes in our group were able to see anything. It's a good thing the horses knew the route well -- even so, we had a few scraped legs and poked eyeballs. The horses also seemed to "know" one another pretty well (if you know what I mean) and my stallion gave me more than a few frightening moments when in season mares got a little friendly. As it was only my second time on a horse, I found agressive neighing and rearing to be a little above my skill level. But, what doesn't kill you makes for a...