Snow-Motion

Merry Christmas to all from snowstormy Vancouver. This pic was taken Christmas Eve, 3.35pm. In the past 12 hours, another 10-20cm has fallen. Most unusual, but also, kinda nice and white! Happy holidays everyone! And from our friend Hubert as well (who used to have arms and a hat, but we were worried about him losing them).

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

This week Vancouver has been hit with an unprecedented amount of snow and a cold snap that, by Ontario standards, is perfectly normal (-12 degrees-ish), but by Vancouver, IS THE COLDEST EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE! No, seriously, it was actually the coldest temperature on record.

It was nippy yesterday when Dan and I went on our search to Granville Island market for the Baby Cheesus (for our cheese board on Christmas).And last night, the white stuff came dumping down and hasn't stopped. So we got hammered, had our mate Gregg over and watched ELF.

Anyways, Happy Solstice everyone - methinks we'll skip going out to the Solstice celebrations in town because it's a mite frigid. Plan now is to stay in, drink mead, hover round my witchy cauldron and celebrate the first day of winter and the longer days. From inside.

Cool Runnings and 'Ting

It's not often you're waiting at the airport to pick up your mum when you hear something like this coming over the tannoy: "Would everyone joining the Jamaican Bob Sled Team event, please make their way over to carousel number 6."

So you go over, curious, 'cos really, wtf? The Jamaican Bob Sled Team? They're like stars, mon! They had a film made about them! It's not like it's some lame Khazakstanian Women's Curling team (no offense), but JAMAICANS. WHO ARE BOBSLEDDERS. Awesome much?

So being a consummate professional/snoop, I got chatting with the welcoming committee - a mostly Pembertonian crowd, some Jamaican fans and a few airport staff waiving dem flags. Pemberton is close to Whistler, where the boys are, apparently, training for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. Keeeewl.
Wearing my offical BC jacket, we started talking tourism, natch. I met with a consultant for Pemberton's economic development and the owners of the town's Copper Dome Lodge, Ian and Michelle Porter. They're hosting the team during their pre-training and were pretty excited about their arrival - that and the fact I told them I would update Hellobc.com with this crucial bit of trivia, of course. ;-) They even invited my team up to stay or use their lodge for our meetings when we got round to doing our Pemberton visit as part of the community content project I'm spearheading for Hellobc.com. Nice folks. I hope they wave flags when we arrive.

Anyway.... I dispatched Dan to fetch madda (hmmmm, Mother v. Athletic Jamaican Guys Who Wear Lycra. Whom to greet first? Decisions!) while I hung around. Shameful, I know. But in the end, we collected mum, all her bags, and headed back to carousel 6. We had made it back in time for the arrival of the fittest.

Rrrrree-spec'!

The Puck Stops Here.

A few weeks ago, Dan and I put in a single request for one pair of tickets to a 2010 Olympics event. Sure, it's just the Men's Ice Hockey Qualification Playoff, but it's one step below bronze and a big step above the prelims.

And it's MEN'S HOCKEY. Anyway, I figured we'd have a better chance at getting tickets in the ginormo national lottery for the lesser-prio games as only 4,000 tickets were made available for the men's gold game (last count: 170,000 ticket requests were made). Plus, those were stoopid expensive.

Today, we won our little piece of the lottery. We're going to an Olympics hockey game. Of course, it'll probably be a playoff between Outer Mongolia and Khazakstan or something, but still. Dan and I figured that if we're going to be living in the hometown of an Olympics, we should *gulp* Share the Excitement. So we are. We are stupidly excited. And just had to share. ;-)

Kimberely and the Canadian Rockies