Girls' Night Out

Four of the girls from our regular group stayed here for Christmas, so we decided to have a girls' night out. Marie-Helene, Melanie, Jennifer & I went to a local nightclub for a evening of fun.


Melanie dancing Like a Prayer...

Tequila shots, served by one of Jennifer's students. That's one of the problems we have with going out here. There's too much risk of running into students. We have to go out in the off-season for that reason.

I had 7 martinis, which is more alcohol than I've had in the last 19 years put together. Fortunately, I didn't feel any ill effects.

Melanie was recreating an accident involving a young girl in 4 inch heels.

Christmas 2007, part 2

That's Molly's new toy, a plaid beaver from John's friend Hanna. Those are John's Yorkshire puddings on the right.

Our Christmas dinner.

The leftovers from the present opening.

Why is my kitchen always a mess?!

Christmas 2007, part 1

Thank you to everyone for the wonderful gifts. We love everything. Here are some pictures of us opening our gifts. We didn't have an actual tree this year, so the little gold one stood in. In case you are wondering about the picture of me, I have a cut on my thumb, and I stubbed it opening the box. And the green silicon cups John is modelling are actually egg poachers!

Lazy Poodle

Molly has been pretty tired lately, if you judge by these photos! We took her for a walk in the coulees today, which is her favourite thing. She had a great time, running in circles, and running between John & I. It was her Christmas present. We hadn't been into the coulees since before my accident in September. We were a bit sad to see that they are developing the area that used to be a great nature walk though. Hopefully we'll still be able to get into the coulees despite the new housing.

Truffle Heaven Party

Today some friends came over for the first annual Truffle Heaven truffle making party. It was great! We made chocolate peanut butter truffles, chocolate caramel truffles, and plain chocolate truffles. We also made caramel chocolate truffle cookies, which may be my favourite of all the things we made.

For lunch I served chocolate chunk scones, plain & pepper biscuits, a cheese tray, savoury bread pudding with goat cheese, and mushroom cheesecake. I really liked the goat cheese bread pudding. There was enough left over for John & I to have for dinner as well, so no cooking was involved thankfully. We were out last night and didn't get to bed until 2am, and I was up at 5:15 to get ready for the party. It's only 8pm now, and I think I'm going to have to go to bed shortly.

Here are some pictures from the truffle making. We know such an amazing group of people here. Everyone is so wonderful. The party attendees were Jennifer, Carly, Melanie, Marie Helene, and Michelle. We're all going to go out dancing over the holidays as well, which should be an amazing amount of fun!

Mountains

When I was out riding today I noticed that the mountains were as clear as they've ever been, so we went for a ride to have a look. Unfortunately, you'll have to enlarge the pictures to see them. My camera's zoom isn't that powerful, so they look quite far away. It's funny that sometimes pictures make things look farther away than when you are looking at them.

Riding Again!

I'm finally riding again. I rode to work on Friday, and it wasn't too bad. I used my brakes only a few times on the way down the hill. I was able to ride up both sides, although I had some trouble on the way back home. The wind was gusting to 65km/hr, so it was hard. At one point a gust knocked me off the sidewalk, so I had to walk a bit while it passed.

I rode for 25 kms on Saturday, albeit slowly. Today I did 2 hill repeats on the Paradise Canyon hill. I was going to do 3, but my rear end was too sore. I have trouble with power output from my left leg. My right is doing a lot of work right now. Hopefully as I keep riding this'll improve.

Although the accident was an interesting experience, I hope never to have to go through that again.