Badger and Michelle's Capital Adventures

Its been a busy three months since my last post, but you know how it is; when called upon to recall things that have occurred its always very difficult to come up with anything noteworthy. Let me try to list things out as best as I can.

First and foremost; Michelle successfully completed her French training, and contrary to the experts who said that learning a second language would be beyond her grasp, she actually excelled at her training and nearly acheived a level 'C' in Oral proficiency. All jokes about 'oral proficiency' aside, I'm super proud of her and so happy that all her hard work paid off. The difficult part now is keeping up her skills so that when she is retested in five years we won't have to go through the trial of language training again.

Through the hollidays I unfortunately was stuck working graveyards the whole time which prevented us from getting away to visit family. I think that as long as I am working retail I'll be unable to get away for Christmas.
This year however it did allow for us to start some of our very own Christmas traditions. Forgetting to defrost the turkey is something I hope to relive year after year. After massaging it in the sink for an hour I was able to get it in the oven without any other problems.

Once the bird was settled in the oven we proceeded to have the most relaxing holliday possible. We went and caught a movie and left the turkey to cook. Once back home we leisurely prepared the rest of the fixin's for dinner. Maybe cooking for two, or perhaps not having an audience made
things go alot smoother. Perhaps the wine had a hand in that as well.

New Years Eve came right on schedule and with it came the Resolution run to mark the completion of our 10k training clinic. We'd both caught winter colds during Christmas, but I had recovered enough to run in the freezing -17 temperatures. Michelle stood and cheered me on at the finish bundled up so much I'm not sure she saw me cross the line. In spite of drugging myself up before hand, my knee gave out after 7.5k so I had to walk the last quarter of the race. I finished in 1 hour 12 minutes. Pretty good, but I think I can break the 1 hour mark if my knee doesn't act up.

Once January arrived things slowed down for me at work so I decided to volunteer with the Running Room to help with their Learn to Run clinic. Its wild to see how much you've progressed when you start off a new class at two minutes walking, one minute running. We're up to 8 and 1's now but attrition has taken its toll and there are only about one third of the original class left.

We've also had two visits from Michelle's friend Noemie since I last posted. She's great fun and its always nice to see her. Michelle really looks forward to her visits. I guess I don't gossip and 'girl talk' as well as she'd like.

It was pretty warm for most of January. Lots of snow and ice rain kept the canal closed right through the first week of Winterlude. The weather improved and the canal was packed last weekend. We skated downtown and walked across to Jaques Cartier Park to look at the snow sculptures (Pictured left). The snowboarder is BC's contibution to the contest. The matching toques we are wearing were lovingly made by one of Michelle's french instructors. Thanks Caroline! They are super cute and we love wearing them.

Late January we discovered that my Grandpa was sick and he was admitted into hospital. They operated briefly in the hopes that they could help his liver/kidneys/gallblader function well enough that he could get better but unfortunately at 93 you don't really have the energy to recover from a whole lot. My brother and I flew home in the first week of February to see him
but by the time I arrived he wasn't awake to speak. He passed away in evening February 8th after everyone had a chance to say goodbye.

The difficult part about someone passing is the questions one starts to ask oneself. My Grandpa lived right next to me for sixteen years and I never really spent any time with him, I took for granted that he and my Grandma would be there. Also, he was married to my Grandma for 63 years. It scares me to think that I might be left behind, or leave Michelle behind after 63 years of marriage.

It makes a person question why they toil away at trivial things when important things, like spending time with the ones you love, slip past.

Which I guess leaves us on kind of a down note. But I'll close by saying how much we both miss everyone out west and how we wish we could be home to spend more time with everyone. It makes us really excited to get west again to see everyone.

Badger