snowshoeing across the universe

hola! :)

i just finished a painting. it's not that good, but it's something i've been doing with my time so thought i'd stick it on the blog. you would think it's of the rockies, but nah, it's ruapehu.

i WILL stick some pics up of the apartment REAL soon... it is finally turning into a little home. we now have a couch (although it's a loaner from the shop while we wait for the real one), a coffee table, a tv and home theatre system, and a dining room suite! we went to ikea last sunday and went mental.

last weekend we hired a car you see, which makes furniture shopping completely painless! it was a really nice shiny car. a black one called a ford fusion. it was so intelligent - when we slowed down for the lights the cd player would automatically reduce volume, and then when we accelerated the cd player would get louder again! to compensate for engine noise! woah!

the main reason for hiring the car was so we could go for a one-day road-trip to banff for some hiking in the mountains. we decided to try snowshoeing! it's just like walking, but a little trickier. works those leg muscles real good. the scenery was stunning of course, but ger and i are really looking forward to seeing the mountains in summer. the snow seems to be getting a bit monotonous. we snowshoed for a couple of hours to get to the remnants of an old mining town called bankhead. there were some cool ruins there, i think it was abandoned in the 1950s because they mined all the coal. before having dinner and waving goodbye to banff we had a soak in the public hotspring. it was so scrumptious soaking in the soothing hot water while staring out at the towering mountains through the steam. pics of our day trip in banff are here: http://wedged.showcard.co.nz/gallery/album22

the weather is definately warming up. today it was 9 degrees and we had the blue-est sky, so much snow has melted. i was walking down the street without my jacket on! after meeting ger for sushi i went to prince island park for a stroll in the sunshine. i saw 4 squirrels :). i think i've timed leaving calgary quite badly. let's hope i can make it back here again in time for the last little rays of summer.

and now i'm babbling so nos vamos!

hope you're all happy and enjoying yourselves :)

big hugs,

me xx