Back at it and Tigers Hockey

We left Medicine Hat a couple of days ago, and Jodi and the kids are in Red Deer and I am in Edmonton. Me and my Dad went to a Tigers game, and they got blown out 5-1 by the Hurricanes. A couple of highlight reel plays on the Hurricanes side made the Tigers' goalie look pretty silly. I haven't been to a Western league game since I think I was about 16. It's quite a bit different now, with people around us doing work on laptops during the intermission and lots of text messaging going on, and no more 'smarties' colored seats. I can't remember seeing that stuff at NHL games recently, but the show at an NHL rink is much more enthralling. The sound system at the arena is terrible; we could barely hear any of the music or announcements, so that hasn't changed much over the years. I don't know if I just don't like hockey enough anymore, but the game seemed really slow. No one really stood out, and poor passing and unpolished skating styles kind of detracted from the game. I suppose I tend to critique too much having played hockey for quite a while, but after getting around that, I found a couple of players on Lethbridge were pretty good. In the end, it was a really good time, and thanks to my Dad for the ticket. They had a pretty funny contest during one of the intermissions. They brought out five appliances from Leon's onto the ice and situated them in a circle. Then, they blindfolded a guy and put him in the middle of the circle and spun him around a couple of times, and then he was supposed to go find all the appliances in the alotted time of one minute. Each appliance he found he got to keep. I think maybe it was the first time they tried the contest because either a) they weren't too concerned about dishing out $4000 in appliances (unlikely) or, b) they had no idea how easy the contest was. Needless to say, they made the circle so small, the guy took ten steps, found the first appliance, took another ten steps, found the second appliance, took another ten steps, repeat ad absurdum, and he ended up getting all of the appliances with time to spare. Pretty funny. Another contest had participants either answer a Tigers' trivia question or shoot the puck from the red line into the net. All but one of the ten contestants picked the shot. I was quite surprised at how difficult people found it to hit the open net. Only two managed to do it. A couple whiffed it just outside the crease, and one even shot the puck directly into the corner.

We had quite a fiasco at London drugs trying to get our passport photos for the visa applications. We had to redo everyone's except Jodi, and I think I did around eight redos. After you get your picture taken, you have to wait around 4-5 minutes for them to develop it and make sure you faced the camera and there are no shadows. So imagine us with our two young kids trying to get them to first, sit still for the picture, and then occupy their time while we got ours done without destroying the store. By the end of the hour or so it took, Reese was swimming in my arms and Erika had opened up her own shop in an adjacent aisle, organizing and promoting a collection of notebooks. In terms of my photoshoot, I don't understand what the problem was. I'm no photography expert, but if you continually develop shadows in the same top corners of the picture, maybe you should tilt the camera up a bit so the flash catches the upper part of the exposure? Or just brighten everything up with more exposure. No offense to the girl who took the pictures, but as George Bush so eloquently put it:

Jeff

$50 for a Criminal Records Check?

There are a few things we need to do to be able to apply for a visa, like get some wallet-sized pictures done, get criminal records checks, and notes from the doctor saying we are ok, and don't have communicable, bird flu diseases. Jodi got a criminal records check a couple of years ago when she was working for the EUB in Calgary, and I think it was around $10 to get it done. We were pretty surprised when we got down to the Medicine Hat police station and it cost $50 each. Stuff like that drives me crazy. How hard is it to look on the computer and print out a report on somebody? I suppose they inflated the price so we could pay for some cop's peppercorn steak at the Beefeater. Oh well.

We are in Medicine Hat this week, and I think we are going to try to take in some of the things I never did growing up here, like the museum, and some pottery place. Maybe elkwater too. The visa is the pressing process now that we need to figure out, and then we need to do the bank account thing. Finding places over there is also proving to be pretty difficult. Furnished or not? And when I say not furnished, I mean completely unfurnished. The unfurnished apartments in Germany might not have a kitchen sink, or fridge, or oven, and sometimes not even flooring.

Jeff

Finally, some dates...

I start my new job in Freiburg June 1. The project wasn't supposed to start until 2009, so they had to extend funding back a bit for June to work. So, the defence is scheduled for May 1, and then I have to figure out if I am going to a conference in Toronto from May 2nd to May 9th. The most important pressing thing right now is getting the visas figured out, which can take a while to process. I guess we have a couple more weeks in Canada than we originally thought. Oops. More freeloading...

We also got an apartment lined up for April 1, although we aren't going to be there. It is in a student village complex (1300 students) on the 7th floor of a 1960s building. About 100 m away are two bars, one which gets really busy I guess, so there is lots of traffic on Wednesdays and the weekend. And of course, the usual stuff accompanies the student bar scene: stomach contents in hallways and outside, increased crime/violence, more drug trades, etc. Okay, so it probably isn't that bad considering Freiburg is a pretty safe place to live overall, but get 1300 students together (90% undergraduates), 50 cent shot night and zero responsibility = mess. If it was just me and Jodi, than ok, we wouldn't have that bad of a time with it. But I guess I just didn't picture having to raise kids in a seedy environment. Maybe I am overreacting. At any rate, we have to let the reservation go for April, and reschedule for June, and maybe there won't even be a place available then. German housing ads are still pretty tricky for me to figure out, and we don't know which areas in Freiburg are good or bad either.

We are in Red Deer for the rest of the week, and then on Monday I am back in Edmonton and next week we are going to High Prairie to visit (read: freeload from) Dallas and Kory.

Jeff

Phone

One of the nicest things about not having our own place is not having our own phone line. Over the past couple of years, I entered quite a few contests because of my success in the Pepsi Xbox contest. So, I had to divulge our phone number on a few occasions, and of course, that information got sold to all kinds of telemarketers. On an average day, I think we got around 2 calls from telemarketers. We also didn't have call display, so we answered every call. We'd be changing a diaper upstairs or something and the phone rings and one of us would run downstairs to the phone thinking it might be important or relevant and it turns out being a telemarketer. Thanks, I just got poop lodged into the buttons of my phone for nothing. The worst ones are when there is just some calling service on the other end, like the reverse of an answering machine. Used to drive me nuts. One of the frequent telemarketers we got was some guy selling meat. Honestly, like I am going to by a side of beef from a telemarketer. Or the "you have won a paid vacation cruise, the cost to you is only $400". They've gotten so ridiculous now they even leave messages on our answering machine. We'd come home from Christmas holidays and have 5 or 6 messages from Meat Guy. They call at the worst times too; I would say about 50% of the calls would come around the time we eat supper. We would almost know for sure it was a telemarketer if we were sitting down to a nice bowl of shrimp primavera penne and lettuce wraps and the phone rang. I suppose it is a good marketing ploy, because they know people are eating so that's when they call - after people get home from work, and before they rush off to soccer practice or Tai Chi. I think it's just downright inconsiderate. Recently, I changed my tactics so I wouldn't get so frustrated. When they call, I pick it up, and then say, "Can you hold on a minute?", and then I put the phone down and let it sit there until I can hear that annoying, loud tone telling me I left the phone off the hook. I figure, it they want to waste my time, I am going to waste some of theirs. Good attitude, I know. I wish Canada had a federal program like the States where they can put your number on a 'Do not call' list for telemarketers. Apparently, they actually enforce it too and hand out some hefty fines to violators. Anyway, all I am saying is, it's nice not to have to pick up the phone and get a useless caller on the other end.

This is my last day in Edmonton this week, and then back to Airdrie for a while. For those that haven't seen these yet or want a refresher, here's Erika's 'new' glasses and Erika and Reese at halloween.

Jeff

Moving Out Done.

Friday was the last day I will have to move our stuff for a long time I hope. It actually went pretty good, the new storage unit was close to the old one, so we didn't break our backs moving the stuff. Stopped at Vern's pizza for lunch. They have the most meat on a pizza ever. This past weekend we had the guys' weekend in Airdrie with me, Brad, Tim, Kory, and Bruce. The girls were in Red Deer, and I imagine they had lots of long, insightful talks about life. Hee hee. It was a good time; we played Rock Band, ate out, and watched Rambo. It wasn't the worst movie, although I don't think I would watch it again. We actually started out in "Meet the Spartans", which turned out to be the absolute worst movie I have ever seen. I guess we should have figured that before we went in. Well, 20 minutes into it we left and Rambo was just starting so that is where we ended up.

Sunday we were supposed to have our farewell party in Red Deer at Tim and Lesley's, but their sewer had a cracked pipe and was backing up, so we stayed in Airdrie, and some people came there for cake. We got one of those digital picture frames with some pictures loaded on it of family for a going away present. Pretty nice.

Tomorrow I am off to Edmonton for a couple of days, and Jodi is sticking around Airdrie unless the sewer has been fixed in Red Deer. Not too much else to say, we have decided to not do a whole bunch of planning and getting excited (impossible) until we actually know the date we are going to travel over there.

Jeff

Moving Out Done?

Well, not really done. The stuff fit in the trailer, but not in our storage unit in Medicine Hat. We have a little family thing next weekend with Jodi's side, so I am taking Erika back down to Medicine Hat to stay with Grandma and Grandpa, and then me and Dad will move the stuff out of the storage unit and into another one, double the size. Fortunately, the new one is in the same storage complex. So, I thought we would be done Thursday, but I guess not.

The move itself was pretty crazy. The piano needed to be dealt with, of course, on the day we move out. The movers came and picked it up, and then we hopped in the car to follow them to the drop off location. The place turned out to be a fourplex, and I had no idea which one we were supposed to drop the piano off at. So, being the smartie I am, I just picked one and ended up walking in on some large lady, not adequately dressed, making beef stroganoff and her pitbull barking its ugly face off. She seemed pretty surprised. Anyway, after apologizing profusely, I phoned Megan (which I should have done in the first place) to figure out the right unit of the fourplex. The snow drifts on the sidewalk up to the door ranged from 2 to 3 feet, so the movers said they couldn't do it, and took off. I figured I would shovel the walk so it was ready for the actual delivery, and it took about triple the time I thought it would. We finally got home and my Dad was waiting to load the trailer and we dove right in. The trailer was really slippery and I think it was -36°C when we finally finished at 7:30. After a little more cleaning and loading of our car and Dad's truck, we were done for the day, with no real end in sight.

Thursday we slept in longer than we wanted, but managed to get everything packed by 9:00. Now, remember the story I told about the walkthrough, and how things were set up to go bad? Well, everything that could have gone bad, did. They completely tried to get every penny they could from us, and because I signed the original walkthrough, we really couldn't do much about it. We got 'in trouble' for things like dirty walls, the outside of our door being dirty, dirty light fixtures, and my personal favorite: the heat vents being dirty. We actually took the vents out and put in new ones for the duration and then put their's back in, so they were complaining about their own poor quality cleaning on that one. What really gets my dander up is they have no maximum they can charge for damage or cleaning. For other rentals we have had over the years, they can keep your damage deposit and that's it. Of course, because we are in a student residence, they can charge above the damage deposit, and unless you pay whatever they want, you can't order any transcripts or sign out books or any other university service. There has to be some rule against that. Anyway, we got to Medicine Hat at about 6:30 pm and finished unloading what we could at around 9:00 pm.

The next morning, I went out to the car to go to the spectacular Medicine Hat mall, and I thought "the car kind of smells funny. A little sweet. Hmmm...". Well, turns out I left the bottle of Kriter - champagne me and Jodi have saved since our wedding night - in the trunk of the car, and it exploded. So I tried to get the stuff out, but the smell lingered. We had to get Ziebart to steam clean it. It smells ok now.

We are now at Jodi's mom's place for the next couple of weeks. Well, sort of. Tomorrow I am heading to work for a couple of days in Edmonton, and then Thursday I am taking Erika to Medicine Hat, and on the weekend we have that family thing at Red Deer.

Sorry about the novel, apparently there's been a little bit going on. Here's a nice picture of me in the hotel room getting ready for my interview in Freiburg 6 weeks ago.

Jeff

Moving Day

Well, it's finally here. We are moving out of Michener today, after 3 and a half years. Looks like it is going to be just me and my Dad loading the trailer in the balmy weather. We hired some piano movers so we don't have to worry about it and hopefully they get their act together and get the piano out before my Dad gets here with the trailer. I don't want to have to mess around with them when we are moving. Here goes!

Jeff

3 Nights Left...

Only 3 more nights and then we are out of our place. Good riddance. We had Erika's birthday party yesterday, and I think it went pretty well, considering our place is in shambles. The Build-a-bear thing went really well, and all the kids seemed to enjoy it. Of course, Erika picked the pinkest bear with sparkles, and then dressed her pinky bear in pink underwear, pink shoes, pink dress, pink purse and pink wings. Apparently she likes pink. Jodi's cake was a masterpiece, as always, except the sparklers we used on it created some shrapnel on the icing. I also had a timely battery change for the camera right when we were singing 'happy birthday'. Typical. Ryan and Elyse were up this weekend too on Saturday and we ate and played some Wii sports. Erika took off this morning with Grandma Snyder to stay there until we move our stuff into storage in Medicine Hat on Thursday. It's going to be pretty quiet without her around. We also offloaded a lot of stuff to Tim and Lesley, Dallas and Kory and Kim and Shane, so we will have less to move Wednesday. By the way, the weather forecast looks spectacular for moving: a high of -30°C on Wednesday for moving out, and a high of -29°C on Thursday for putting the stuff in storage. Not to mention the -48°C wind chill we are supposed to have. Delightful. Thanks in advance to my Dad, Kent (haven't really asked him yet) and Tim for bearing the cold weather.

The piano problem is fixed, thanks Megan, who diligently found a home for it, and we don't have to roll it out in front of the BFI or down the road for that matter.

One more thing, for those not comment inclined (i.e. Lesley). If you want to make a comment (apparently, Lesley did, I don't think she even tried), you click on the link at the bottom of the post that says '0 comments' (well, they pretty much all say 0 comments, Chris broke our streak), and it opens up a new window. From there, enter in your message, then complete the word verification. After that, at the bottom, you can select to sign in as a gmail/blogger person, or you can pick the next little bullet and it will ask for a nickname, which can be anything and you don't need some kind of account to do it. Then enter the nickname and click 'publish your post' and then you are done. Enjoy Lesley.

Ahhh... goodbye Michener. Here's a nice picture from the back.

I'll get some party pictures up when we download them to my home computer.

Jeff

Yes I am Involved

How can I be attached to this place.... Today was my last day with just me and kids hanging out in Michener Park and I find myself feeling sad about this. Erika is heading off to spend a few days in Medicine Hat with Grandma Snyder after her party on Sunday so it's just me and Reesey as of Monday. I have dreamed of the day we would pack up and head out of here but now it's time and it dosen't seem like i pictured it. Maybe because Jeff still is not fully finished and we aren't moving into my dream house 10 blocks from here. Don't get me wrong this adventure is amazing to me and I know we are going to make a lifetime of memories as a family. At the same time we are a family of 4 now and with that comes so much responsiblity....so my adventuresome side can't run quite as free as it has in the past. Once we are out of here and freeloading off of family i'm sure I won't even remember my posh life in Michener and will be able to wrap my mind around this next time in our lives.

Well, that was definatley the feminine side of this blog. Alot of rambling about feelings. Sorry to the guys who visit, but hey the girls had to read about all the technical question/issues posted earlier.

Jodi

Moving Plans

So, my Dad is bringing a trailer from Medicine Hat on Wednesday the 30th, and we are going to load it all up hopefully that night. Then we have to stick around until 10 on the 31st for the walkthrough of our apartment. I am not looking forward to that. When we moved in, the person we did the walkthrough with marked everything in 'good' condition, with assurances that the imperfections in our place were actually 'good' compared to other units. Of course, being the trusting citizen I am, I signed the walkthrough form, even though our last rental in Edmonton tried to steal our damage deposit because of walkthrough sheet problems. So what I am saying is, now for the walkthrough, they could say "well, this massive hole in the wall wasn't here when you moved in," not like we have massive holes or anything. But maybe they will be really anal. Anyway, then we are going to move most of our stuff we are keeping and not taking to Germany into storage in the Hat, and hopefully have the trailer back to the rental place by the 1st. The first test is fitting all the stuff in the trailer, and then we have to fit it all in the storage unit which is even smaller. Arghh. Yes, arghh.

I thought I would include a picture of the city (Freiburg) in Germany we will be living in. Crazy.

Jeff