December’s Done Already???

I can’t believe that it’s December 27th already.  The month flew by.  I was so busy.  I’ve barely had a moment’s rest…  I will not talk about the shittyness that is my knees in the post… Except for that…

First week of December I was in Ottawa on training for work.  Every 3 years I have to go on this course.  It’s a requirement of employment that I complete it.  When I started work here in 2002, it wasn’t part of my job.  When it did become part of my job in 2006/2007, it was fun.  Now it’s just a pain in the ass.  Like everything else at work, management has tried to take all the fun away.  And they wonder why moral is low.  No fun, dangerous situations, and screwed over time and time again during collective bargaining.  For the latter, I blame our union as much as management.  PSAC has to be the worst union in Canada.  We could do so much better…

After the week in Ottawa, I had 3 days at home.  One of the day’s was my little boy’s (not so little anymore) 8th birthday!  My wife and I took him and his friends bowling.  LOL.  They had a great time.  We gave them some soda and cupcakes and unleashed them!  Fortunately there were no other people around us.  I had to explain several times that you’re not supposed to throw the ball…

Very early the next morning (3:30 am to be exact), I got up and hit the road.  I went to Whistler for a pre-Christmas ski trip.  There were 9 of us in the group.  I only knew 2 of the other guys.  I got included in this by a coworker.  Fortunately they all turned out to be good company.  The travel day was filled with mishaps.  First of all we almost missed our flight (not really), even though we were there 55 min before departure.  Air Canada is stupid.  They rushed us all through, all the while scolding us for being late, only to get to the gate and have to stand around waiting to board.

When we got to Vancouver we went directly to the rental car area.  I had used my Airmiles to rent 2 vehicles for the group.  All we had to do was pay the taxes.  Ofcourse, everything was ker-fucked.  Airmiles, idiots that they are, booked my rental for September 11th instead of December 11th and there was absolutely nothing that the rental company could do to fix it.  I was so enraged and embarrassed.  I’d assured the guys that the cars were taken care of.  And ofcourse I couldn’t get through to Airmiles to tell them off.

After some lunch and a few stops for beer and such in Vancouver, we made our way to Whistler village.  Our condo was right on the side of the mountain.  I have never stayed in such a nice place.  I don’t know how we got it so cheap.  It has a 4 star rating.  Like I said, there were 9 of us and we all got our own beds.  I shared a bathroom with 1 other guy.  Every room had massive televisions.  The whole house was wired for surround sound and it was accessible via bluetooth.  There was a giant out-door hot tub with a fireplace beside it.  The place had every amenity you can think of.

The weather was not that great while I was there.  I really wanted to spend a lot of time off Whistler peak or in harmony bowl.  The visibility was just too shitty. I went up a couple of times.  I still had a blast.  I hit some great steeps and got some good tree skiing in off 7th Heaven.  My wife gave me a GoPro as an early Christmas present for the trip.  When I have time, I’ll do a little editing and get some vids on here.

The day after I returned from my trip, I did participated in Grizzly Gym’s first ever blue belt grading.  See previous posts on this.  I still haven’t made it back to train as a blue belt.  Just no time.  I really want to tie up that belt for the first time.  I even bought a ranked rash guard incase my first night back is nogi.  LOL.  I guess it will have to wait until the new year as I am working evening shift until then.  I have to say, now that it has sunk in, I’m pretty proud of myself for achieving it.  I can now see myself becoming a purple belt and maybe even beyond.  I’m also looking forward to competing as a blue.  A little scared too…  🙂

So after that I actually went to work for a couple of days.  lol.  I took the first day of my work week off so that I could attend my son’s holiday concert at school.  Kids are so funny.  they all did great.  I also had to arrange to get my car in to the body shop (just before I left for Whistler, I was getting out of my car and a large gust of wind slammed my front door open bending the hinges and damaging the fender).  I went to work for 2 days in a row and then had a vacation day so I could take my family on a little pre-Christmas trip.  It’s the only time we could coordinate our schedules so we could spend time together.

We chose to spend out trip at Blue Mountain.  My wife and I kept it a secret from the kids right until the morning we were leaving.  they had no idea.  It was awesome!  What wasn’t awesome was the freezing rain storm that we got the night before we left.  It was terrible.  a week later and there are still thousands of people without power.  Wer had to make a decision is we were going to travel or not.  It’s a 4 hour drive from my house.  We called the resort and found that we couldn’t get a refund…  In the end, I decided that we would go.  I’ll be honest, I was scared.  I’m confident of my driving abilities, but there are so many idiots on the road.

Well we made it without incident.  The weather was shitty the whole time we were there.  The skiing was hard because of the freezing rain.  The kids were troopers though.  They stayed out there for almost the whole day.  I think their favourite part of the trip was sitting in the outdoor hot tubs at night.  They’d never seen such a thing.  lol.  It’s the little things that make family trips so fun.  They’re also the parts that the kids will remember as being special.

The second part of our little family vacation was a trip to my sister’s house.  We hadn’t been there since my son was a baby.  The kids had an awesome time playing with their cousins.  The boys were thick as thieves.  My daughter followed my eldest niece around like a puppy.  It was awesome to see them having so much fun.  This was also the first trip that we had taken our little dog (Oscar) on.  He was nervous, but did well.

Last but not least was Christmas.  I defy anyone to tell me that they didn’t have a hectic Christmas.  Between presents, Christmas eve dinner at the wife’s aunt’s house, lunch with mom at our place, and lunch AND dinner on boxing day at my in-laws!!! I’m ready for a rest.  I started exercising again yesterday morning.  I went today as well.  It felt good to get back to some sense of normalcy.

PHEW!  That was a lot.  I’ll try to get some video of my Whistler trip up soon.  🙂