Guess what time of year it is?

I knew I preferred road travel!

I made what was supposed to be a quick trip back to the home town for a surprise birthday party for my dad. A party for 40 friends at the legion seemed like the right thing to do for someone turning 65. It remained a surprise and was well received.

As much as I love a trip home I honestly don't ever love the pressure of getting packed, finding a spot I trust to leave the dog, asking the neighbors to watch my house and then the whole airport experience. And in the interests of time, air travel generally wins out.

Well maybe not any more.

I took my usual decongestant before boarding the plane although I felt fine. As we were landing my ears crackled, popped and then wouldn't pop and just plain hurt like a bugger. I got off the plane and assumed that my hearing etc. would all return as normal and we carried on with the million and one errands necessary to pull off the party.

By later that evening I felt like I had a cold. Nonetheless I allowed myself to be dragged out for a girl's night out aka a reminder that I am no longer 20. The day of the party I had a smidge of a hangover and still felt like a cold was coming on. Today before catching my flight my sister decided I should check with a pharmacist because I was now having bedspins at night and had one very stuffed up ear and earaches.

The pharmacist said that if I was taking decongestants and my ear still wouldn't clear I should see a doctor. Pshaw I thought but then got "the look" from my sister.

After a 2.5 hr wait at the walk in - they should be called walk in and wait, I saw a doctor who gave me a lecture including sketches on the dangers of air travel when you have injured/ruptured your middle ear membrane and prescribed some nasal spray (yuck!) to try and get my eustachian tubes to open. And a suggestion to see an ENT since this has probably happened before and will continue to happen since he thinks there is something wrong with my septum. All said as though I was an idiot who should know better.

Next up, a ton of phone calls and emails to sort out a plan b.

And a inclineation not to get on a plane again....

Also wondering...where do you get new plumbing for your head?

Commercials I like

Ok total random thought tonight...maybe too much tv!

Normally I hate "feminine products" commercials but I have to say that the Kotex commercial where she asks men to go into the store to buy tampons for her is priceless. Especially the guy who offers to buy toilet paper instead.

I also love the way dude says "calms" on the Sensodyne commercial. I'm not sure he'd be my choice over Barry White for voiceovers (I have this idea that you should be able to choose the voice for telephone banking, elevators, your car etc) but it still catches my attention.

Winnipeg vs Calgary; the good, the bad and the ugly

I just returned from a trip across the prairies back to my hometown of Winnipeg. It wasn't my first drive back and forth and it probably won't be the last. It was one of the tougher drives - note to self: the May long weekend can bring snow to Calgary but the rest of the prairies aren't out of the woods either!



I couldn't help but compare the two cities/provinces at times.


The good:




Calgary is green (for Calgary) but Winnipeg has it beat for just how green a city can be - loads of trees, flowers in flowerbeds and pots and green grass. (and check out that sky!)


















The Wagon Wheel is open again in Winnipeg and their clubhouse and chocolate shake still beat anything I've found out here. They cook 5 turkeys every morning to make their clubs and if you order gravy with your fries it is real roast turkey gravy! The shakes are made from hard ice cream in the old school shake blenders with metal cups. Awesome. I also had charbroiled pork vermicelli from Pho No.1. It was a huge portion; nicely presented and the pork was amazing. And I think it was around $7 - a price you'd never see in Calgary for anything that size or that good.



Neighbors are often friends in Winnipeg. I know that happens here in some areas but even my dad's new, younger than him neighbors were willing to give him a hand and chat. The longtime neighbors stopped over when they saw my car in the drive and my sister was making s'mores with her neighbors around a firepit when I arrived at their house.


You can't beat the lake...the big lake. We went to Gimli and although the water was still really chilly it was a busy spot; not a surprise being about an hour from the city. And beautiful.























Kids' sports are like mini socials. The games are well attended and people chat while they watch. I had a super conversation with a mom of the opposite team's goalie at 3 on 3 hockey and had never met her before. I don't have kids in sports here but random, pleasant conversations with non-crazy strangers isn't something I've encountered in Calgary.

















The bad:

The roads in and around Winnipeg still leave a lot to be desired. Particularly highway 8 to Gimli which is both narrow and rough in spots and the Transcanada which is an embarassment across most of the prairies since it is our national highway. The absolute worst spots were around Moose Jaw SK. Winnipeg also has an interesting habit of marking pavement and putting up barricades where there is clearly no construction actually happening.

Lots of rain in Winnipeg means lots of people get water in their basements. And the City says that it isn't their fault the system can't handle it. Basement flooding has been a problem in Winnipeg for as far back as I can remember my parents rushing around bailing out window wells and hooking up pumps. Torrential downpours happen often enough and the current storm sewer system can't handle them - time to acknowledge that and make some changes which should include backup systems/pumps.
















Although Winnipeggers will be shocked to hear this; the increased house prices and high taxes mean that their cost of living is as high or higher than Calgary's - with lower wages. It appears that the real estate market there is still hot, hot, hot. Some things are less expensive but not nearly as many as there were 4 years ago.


The ugly:

The lower speed limits (100 on the highway when it's 110 even in SK), abundance of traffic cameras, high $ tickets and poor traffic flow (including unpredictable drivers which never seem to get pulled over) mean that driving in Winnipeg is not fun. Things may be closer and commutes shorter in distance than Calgary but driving is slow or full of lots of stops (and people stopping on yellow out of fear of those cameras) and is an exercise in frustration and surprise since you will have no idea who is about to cut in front of you, stop suddenly or change speeds randomly.

Downtown Winnipeg also feels grungy and unsafe. I parked on McDermott near Main at 11:30 a.m. and was happy to have another female leaving the parkade on foot at the same time as me. Even walking into the Lombard at Portage and Main didn't feel like the office-crowd spot that it used to and walking through the Exchange to grab a sandwich at prime lunchtime was dodgy at best. I had come to expect the drive along north Main street to be depressing but it seems to have spread right into the rest of downtown.

All in all, I had a great visit which went by way too quickly. And of course the main draw for Winnipeg that you can't beat is that Winnipeg is still home to my closest friends and family.

Dear Mazda

I used to love you. I loved my 1990 red miata even before you coined the slogan "Zoom zoom".

A couple of years ago I decided to try a new zippy little Mazda. I have to say it doesn't come close to living up to the 1990 miata. I'm sure you don't care but here's how you disappointed me:

It doesn't stick to the road

Hey Mazda - we have this season called winter here. And generally in winter it's pretty important that you don't slide off the road or into other vehicles. It helps if you don't hydroplane in the rain too.

It still doesn't stick to the road

After over $1300 in winter tires, the little bugger still wants to act like a hovercraft. This is not good for my nerves on my lengthy commute amongst big trucks and other vehicles not struggling to stick to the road.

It can't have a remote starter without invalidating my warranty because?

Hey when Santa calls (aka Dad) to find out about getting me a remote starter to make my winter mornings a little nicer you shouldn't tell him that unless he spends a fortune with you, this will invalidate my warranty. Especially when I paid extra for an extended warranty because I thought I would love this car forever. Paying you triple for something that is commonly sold aftermarket is just not cool - although my car is when it's -35.

Regular servicing empties my piggy bank

I know that all manufacturers may be guilty of this one but $300 for a service on a car that involves checking it over and changing the oil is pretty blatantly a cash grab.

There are not diamonds in the air in Alberta

And yet my windows have scratched like crazy. When I ask your dealer about it, the correct response should be "we'll check into it" not "hmm, that's really weird".

Opening the door with a fist should not be a well known approach

The ding on my driver's door above the handle, you know, the one that's there because someone figured out that if you punch the car there it will unlock on the 2006? Well the 2007 looks identical so guess what's been tried on mine. And you won't fix it under warranty...thanks.

My Dad's full size Buick got better gas mileage

Um, it's a little car. And it's a little zippy but not exactly ripping off the line kind of zippy. Why does it go through gas like a 12 yr old boy goes through pop?

It has a recall for what? RUST?!?

Ok, it's not even 3 yrs old. And you're calling me about a voluntary recall for rust? Seriously Mazda, WTF? My 14 yr old Ranger has one teeny tiny spec of rust and I'm not happy about that. How do you think I'm gonna feel about rust on a vehicle that I bought new for mucho dineros?

I don't know about you, Mazda, but I'm starting to feel like this relationship might not be working for me. Just sayin'...

When do you know what you want to be when you grow up?

When I was little I had a book about a little girl deciding what she wanted to be when she grew up. I didn't really like the book because I couldn't really understand how she was going to decide. That should have been a sign....

I thought deciding in high school what career path you wanted to take (and therefore deciding on University or Community College or trying to talk your parents into a year off) was difficult. Then after postponing it with a B.A. what I wanted to be became kind of an ongoing decision more about how to pay the bills than what I really wanted to do.

There were some boyfriend decisions...do I want to date him? or get serious? and at a fairly young age the decision to move in together and then get married. Four years later was the biggie - the decision to separate and then after years of fighting over what little a couple of 20 yr olds can accumulate, divorce.

Shortly after that came the first big career decision involving a relocation. Out to Calgary for the first time. When the job didn't pan out and income was tight came the decision to return to school and move home. This time I was a little more focused...well, after I decided between Law, an MBA and settled on a 1 yr diploma that seemed a bit risky but with quicker payoff than multiple years in school.

Next up was the decision to relocate again. This time for love. Out to the West Coast I went; just in time for the internet/tech bust. After some job and soul searching and an illness for someone in my immediate family I boomeranged back home. A few job changes followed and a separation then another go of things romantically...rinse and repeat. (In high school I think I once claimed that nothing is irreparable...ok, I was wrong.)

There were a few job changes but I thought I'd mostly decided what I'd wanted to be in the career area, at least for a while. And I thought I still wanted to be part of a couple so then came the dating someone from work decision (not a good idea...just saying in case you wanted to avoid that choice yourself).

And with almost cyclical regularity, another relocation. This one prompted by a new husband - the decision to get married this time seeming like an easy decision since when the question was asked things seemed next to perfect. (Note to self - not being cynical, but beware of things that seem too good to be true.) And the relocation involved remaining with the same company but changing roles so kind of a double whammy on the decision front.

Once relocated there was a few months before a career change - hmm...guess I didn't know what I wanted to be yet after all!

And not too long after that huge fissures formed in the perfect facade of my partner and I faced the difficult decision about what to do next. It became first a decision to just try to hold onto myself. A decision I never thought I'd have to make again. And of course this came bundled with other decisions like keep the house? sell the house? stay out west? crawl back home? file for a protective order? install an alarm? (so if more than one orgasm in short succession is multi-orgasmic then is more than one decision in short succession multi-decisive or a multi-decision?)

I think this was when I learned that sometimes no decision is still a decision which is sometimes ok when you've already made a really big decision. So I kept the house and stayed put and just tried to get it back together with as few additional moving parts to the big decision as possible.

So of course when I was mostly pulled together it was time for....a career change! This time with less decision on my part and more hustle.

And so this brings us to now...after life not requiring a major decision for a while it seems like they've banded together to form a gaggle of decisions to once again make me think about "what do I want to be when I grow up?"

• a mom?
• a mom by birth more specifically? (per the nurse "at my age")
• an out of province auntie?
• an in province auntie, sister, daughter (possibly requiring therapy) and friend?
• a reasonably well paid Albertan where my increases at least seem to keep pace with the high cost of living
• resident of a province where a raise is not considered a requirement and the cost of living seems to be rising faster than the Red River in the springtime?
• and if it's an Albertan resident, is it a more rural Albertan battling the ridiculous daily commute or a house poor city dweller close to conveniences but with much less house for more money and possibly requiring a rottweiler companion for security?
• a single spinster homebody? (maybe then I wouldn't worry too much about the 30 day challenge and the excess of "assets" I currently possess)
• ready to run the dating gauntlet again? (and how does this affect the first two decisions in the list?)

I really think when they start you off thinking about what you want to be when you grow up they need to be really clear that this isn't a one time decision. (Perhaps a focus on decision-making in school starting at pre-school?) And it's not just about being a doctor or firefighter or construction guy or dentist or whatever. I knew that Little Golden Book from when I was a kid oversimplified it. It's a whole frickin' host of decisions!

So guess what, just when you might think you know what you want to be when you grow up or think you're there? Life's got entirely different ideas...

Yes I bought Coldfx at Costco

And it doesn't seem to be helping...I am sick again! I was sick earlier in October too and I'm tired of it. This seems to be a similar bug that involves a splitting headache, body aches, stuffiness and fever and chills. Lovely. This time I toughed out 2 days at work since we had roadshow presentations and then dropped on Thursday. Today is Sunday and I felt even worse this morning including *new!* nausea. Of course I went out on Friday night and ran errands most of the day Saturday mistakenly assuming that I'd done my share of sick days. (On the up side I am down to 1 bank account so less monthly charges!)

This is interrupting my intention to get back on the fitness wagon once work became mainly sane again. Which is worrisome since I don't seem to be slowing down on putting on a few more curves. And yes, the elliptical is still in the living room...with a nice layer of dog hair.

So aside from the coldfx and lots of naps, I'm not getting anywhere too fast.

Tonight I've packed a spinach salad with chicken breast for lunch tomorrow - sounds healthy, right? A step in the right direction I hope. Once the bug is gone I think I have to check out the rec centre again...and try to get back to the routine that used to work for me.

Check out those pipes!

I have a problem. A car problem. I have a thing for them. If I won the lottery I'd be in danger of dropping my winnings on an assortment of vehicles. I have owned a mix of vehicles but some of my favorites were my '86 Camaro, my '90 Miata (both red) and my '96 Ranger. I actually sold a perfectly respectable new 2001 Sentra after owning it about 6 months to buy the Ranger because it was just too dull.

In the last few weeks, I have seen a few new ones to add to my list.

Last week I saw this one:










That's the 2009 Dodge Challenger. Even the gay guy walking down the sidewalk stopped to look at it. It might also have had something to do with the beautiful sound it made.

Then a few weeks back I saw this one:










That's the 2010 Camaro. I saw it in silver but liked this pic of it in yellow even more.

What's interesting about both of these cars is that their body styling hearkens back to the 60s and 70s muscle cars.

And even in this era of environmentalism and high gas prices there is still a demand for them. I like a lot of older or shall we say "vintage" things so it's no surprise to me that I like them but apparently I'm not alone since they're part of the mass market.

One of my girlfriends says that my love of cars and trucks means "you're such a guy!". Actually it just means that I'm the granddaughter of a mechanic who passed on his love of cars and I extended it to include trucks. And it's tough not to appreciate trucks when you live in Alberta.

And for my feminine side, I could use a cabana boy with the ability to detail a car properly and then I could be ogling two kinds of pipes. But I'm not sure I'd let him drive my car...

Ok Lion...you've made your entrance

I went to Home Depot around 6 o'clock tonight for some painting supplies (more on that later) and we had been melting most of the day. I could see brown grass, the sidewalk and most of the road other than some bits of ice at the edges.

Amazing what can change here in a few hours. I looked out the window here and it's snowing and apparently has been for a while.

Mother Nature has been playing the lion or lamb? game here since March began. Calgary weather is a bit like this all year round. Just when you think it's spring or a second summer compliments of a chinook, she wallops you upside the head with her purse and you get snow...possible in every month of the year here!

I used to think that long, cold winters were hard to take. Once I was here, I wondered how I had survived them even. But there is something to be said for predictability. In Winnipeg you know that winter is winter and summer is summer and all of the seasons are well defined. From November to March you'd better plug in your car and have snow tires or at least good all seasons. There is no walking out in crop capris with a spring in your step thinking it's spring and getting inches of snow and -18 under 12 hours later. And let me tell you that there is something cruel and harsh about thinking that winter is over and finding out that it's not...over and over again.

Some of you know I have moved a lot. And changed jobs quite a lot. So I can't say that I don't like change. Actually, I can say that I don't like it but that I have learned it's a means to something better...almost always. And the sooner you embrace that and get on with it - kind of like ripping off a band-aid - the quicker the painful part is done. Except for weather changes in Calgary. A lot of times the something better doesn't stay...which is just unfair!

....Back to the painting...today's warmer, sunny weather made me feel better about winter coming to an end. For me, that inevitably means that my spirits lift and I get more productive and back to renos and plans and all of that good stuff. Which meant that today I found myself hauling up paint from the basement and deciding the kitchen cabinets needed a refresh. I went to the depot for some paintbrushes and looked at other inspirations such as countertops and hood fans.

I came back home and dove right in...just like every other project. I took all of the cabinet doors off and decided to start with only the uppers - I did learn a bit from past jumping into everything at once experiences. I poured "Soho" into the paint tray and began painting the cabinet boxes noticing as I moved on that the paint was kind of acting weird but figured maybe it was the mini foam roller. And so I optimistically continued...loving the new color and congratulating myself for starting a project and getting out of the doldrums. I went over some of the weird looking spots from the beginning and the second coat looked more normal.

And then I thought...what if the cabinets weren't previously painted with latex. (Even though I had done a nail polish remover test that seemed to indicate that they were)

And the weird look is latex reacting over oil.

*&$*%#$@!!!

It was shortly after that I realized that Mother Nature was having a hissy fit of her own.

I wonder what she was trying to remuddle today. Maybe I'll leave her a bowl of chocolate ice cream on the steps...can't hurt.

Calgary - it's closer to Toronto than you might think!

Ok so it snowed here on Friday...and Saturday. And yes, it snowed quite a lot. Then it got bitterly cold - really not quite what would qualify as bitterly in Winterpeg but still when the wind chill is -39 here it's a shocker. So we had Sunday to get snow cleared and get used to the temps. Today we didn't have to call in the army but my commute in (on relatively dry pavement) took about an hour and a half. My commute home took 2 hours and 10 minutes.

Were there accidents? You bet. Were some of the intersections slippery? Yes again. Should it have more than doubled the commute? I don't freakin' think so!

Put down some sand and let's get on with things people. Wait, what's this I heard on the radio? It's too cold to put anything on the roads? Who came up with that story? Because in Winnipeg at -50 I have seen sanding trucks and graders out. But apparently here in the metropolis, it's too cold for that.

It is not so cold though that people would want to move into the center of the train to let other people freezing their arses off on the cement platform outside in -30 get on the train. It was a 4 train wait to get on a train going home. And the next time transit tells me it's only 3-5 mins between trains at rush hour I would like to know what kind of math they use since 4 trains = 32 min. Thanks for putting a clock on the platform.

So what do you do on a day like today when you get home? Make 2 kinds of dip (salmon spread and cream cheese with spicy mango chutney) and provide quality control for the buttertart slice; even though you tested it yesterday too.

And then go rant on your blog.

And hope you're not in the ditch tomorrow when you get your car back with it's summer tires still on.

**Update** I should have kept quiet about the commute...Wednesday my commute in also took 2 hours! Today I'm working from home...commute time 0 minutes; work attire - sweats and a Harvard Business School t-shirt that is too snug; multitasking - dog cookies baking in the oven :-)