We are really enjoying life in Calgary. I have a good job which I enjoy going to every day. The work in the office is challenging and I get opportunities to do field work every once in a while. At the beginning of December, I went with the road crew to New York state to install 2 meteorological towers for wind data collection. There are always lots of short trips for maintenance items on these met towers which gets me around the area. I am going to take Amie with me on Jan 1 to Montana for a 3 day maintenance trip.
Amie is learning some good skills at work. However she is looking forward to the end of her contract in March so that she can pursue other areas relating more to journalism and writing.
Back in November sometime, my mom came to visit and when she left, we noticed half our dishes were missing. After several days of pondering, I finally had the idea to open the dishwasher (which we had never opened because the landlord said it didn't work). But there they were, all in the dishwasher. About the same time, Amie discovered a website called freecycle.com which advertises free things that are somewhere between too junky to sell and not quite good enough to put an add in the paper. So before long, we found ourselves driving to a trailer park on the edge of town to pick up a dishwasher. The next phase in the adventure was getting it installed. This wasn't the easiest procedure since in involves plumbing and electrical work which are areas for professionals. That would probably cost money, so after several hours of internet how-to's and some "engineering", I got the dishwasher installed without ever turning off the water or disconnecting the power (The switches are downstairs and because the people who live under us are gone all the time, it would be a shame to wait for them to be home)
We have been getting out of the city whenever possible. At least every second weekend we get to the mountains or on some road trip. We are having to dig deeper for more adventuring ideas in Alberta. We went for Christmas to Regina to visit my parents and then Strathmore to visit Amie's parents who recently moved out of Calgary. One unique event in Regina was Christie practicing her nursing techniques on Robbie and I, or more specifically, setting up IV's on us. With good veins, it is not that difficult to get the needle into the vein. Robbie and I have very small veins on our hands which involved a lot of maneuvering under the skin with the needle tip – that was great. -steve-
