becoming 30...

... is fantastic! i was looking forward to this and now relish being able to reply "30" to "how old are you?" (somebody hurry up and ask me!!). after a wonderful birthday, things have just kept getting better and better. i welcomed my 30th year skiing at sunshine on the sunday with mi amor, steve, chris and meli... beautiful mountains, great company and slidy thrills! then met up with some more friends for dinner in banff. on monday i was spoiled rotten by ger... throughout the day new clothes popped up in surprising places, until i practically had a new wardrobe! what a very naughty boy. we had dinner at my favourite restaurant with chris and meli, and when we arrived home ger surprised me with a cake topped with twirly candles! i felt pretty darn special :)

a couple of days later my boss told me that immigration had accepted world web's application to sponsor my work visa (very relieving news) and on top of that, i got a promotion! starting with my new contract in may, i will be in charge of articles in the content department, which means i'll be assigning article topics to the other writers, managing deadlines and doing final edits on all articles! i'm pretty excited about the new responsibilities and the valuable experience i'll gain for what i'm hoping could possibly be a career...

and today i had another surprise! a couple of months ago i wrote an article about the top 10 zoos in north america, of which i named calgary zoo as one of them. i arrived at work this morning and my co-ordinator called me to her desk to have a look at yesterday's "metro", a daily paper here... there was an article in it about calgary zoo being nominated as one of north america's top 10 zoos by world web... in other words, by me!! calgary zoo also released a press release about it, with my article attached, and they were apparently interviewed by two tv stations and the radio about it!! i had no idea that my article would spur such a reaction, but i'm thrilled of course! and it's great publicity for world web.

here's a link to the zoo's press release, with my article attached :):

http://www.calgaryzoo.ca/documents/Top_Ten_WorldWeb.pdf

now, i think that's enough about me. let me update you on my shining star!! ger is right now performing on-stage with the calgary opera (a very big deal)! mi amor is one of six goons (thugs) that are quite significant roles in the story (tosca), i'm so friggen proud of him! i've been to a couple of the rehearsals, but haven't seen the real show yet... i have that priviledge on sunday - woohoo! ger thinks acting rocks, and according to the director, he has a real talent (i heard him with my own ears at the opening night party). yep, the above photo is him in full costume (and yes i know all the girls in the audience will be drooling!), i'm a very lucky girl :)

anyway, im off to bed. goodnight to anyone who made it this far through this excessively long blog! :) i hope everyone's warm, cozy and well-fed.

xx

snow report

howdy folks! (are there any folks still readin' this?)

time has been passing rather pleasantly here in calgs. much to our surprise! apart from the -49 degrees we had back in january, the winter has been relatively mild. we've had a few chinooks blow through bringing a couple of days up to 14 degrees ABOVE zero! we also found out that we quite enjoy skiing. in fact we turned into total ski bunnies for a bit there - on the mountain every weekend for 6 weeks!! have now been to 6 ski resorts within 4 hours drive from calgs. they are all very beautiful, but that's because the rockies are. ger is a total natural and has now passed the stage of looking like a dork on skis. i, on the other hand, still look like a person frozen into the position of having a ski pushed up their bum, and i can't quite shake the niggling fear of sliding around on snow. ger is very brave and goes way faster than me, but always waits for me at points along the way :)

i put some skiing pics on my gallery, under the 'skiing escapades' album... http://dabunj.spaces.live.com/

well, since i last blogged, i joined a spanish class (yay! one of my new year's resolutions achieved) which i really enjoy. i think it's working too :). unfortunately i have to miss the final class tonight because.... i have a ticket to the hockey!!! this is something ger and i have had on the 'things to do in canada before we leave' list for a while now. it's a customer-shmoozing event for ger's work and his boss allocated one of the tickets to me!! we will be watching the calgary flames vs the colorado avalanches in style in a corporate box!!! so no chance of catching the puck, but i'm sure we'll get to see a few fights on the ice! YEAH! :)

and i have MORE exciting news... dad and debs are coming to visit in august!!!!! YEAH!!! they have their tickets!! pa & debs - i'm SO excited about seeing you guys here in CANADA!!!!! hurry up august! we'll get the mooses ready :)

i better go... am at work right now and therefore should be working i suppose.

chau!

hey dudes!

hope you all had a wonderful christmas and new year, and are excited about 2008! :)

we had a rad time in buenos aires with ger's family. christmas in argentina seem much like back home - lots of family, food and pressies - but on the evening of christmas eve, which is lovely with all the christmas lights and fireworks (fuegos artificiales). we spent new years on the beach in san bernardo (400km south of buenos aires city, which took us 9 hours by car instead of 4 hours due to the abominable traffic) with ana (ma) and aroldo (pa), ger's sister clara and her husband andres, and their beautiful baby boy bauti. san bernardo is a place that ger and his family have been coming to for holidays for all of ger's life and i was excited to see it. we stayed in a nice hotel right across the beach and enjoyed the brilliant summer sun for a couple of days. san bernardo is a buzzing little summer vacation town that is otherwise pretty dead in the off-season. it's pretty cool because it has that laid-back, non-commercial summer feel thanks to the fact that it is not a foreign tourist destination. i must admit that the beach really can not be compared to the likes of matapouri, but it was very pleasant nonetheless and an interesting introduction to arentinian beach culture: g-string bikinis, beach tents for rent, and mobile churro carts. the sea was warm and the brown water is not really a put-off considering it's just brown coz of the mix with river water. the beach was a relaxing little holiday from our holiday! the whole time we were in argentina the weather was perfect, in fact it reached 38 degrees in the city while we were at the beach (thank god we were at the beach, otherwise i think i possibly could have died) - it was so wierd jumping in the pool almost naked at ger's ma and pa's place when only the day before we were bundled up in matress-thick layers in calgary!

it's nice to be home again too though (in calgs). must admit that almost 2 weeks in buenos aires over the holiday season got at times rather stressful... it appears my self-teaching of spanish really isnt getting me very far and i felt like an idiot a lot of the time not understanding a thing! one of my new year's resolutions: join a spanish class! :) i'm also glad to be home coz i'm excited about the new year we have ahead of us, excited about my job, about being in canada and i want to make the most of it while we're here.

so happy new year everyone!! i hope that delightful things are in store for us all :)

if ya wanna check out some pics from buenos aires, go here: http://dabunj.spaces.live.com/

lots of love, d xxxooo

feliz navidad!!

have a rad christmas everyone!! catch up with you all next year!!

love, d xxxooo

moose!

ok, this ain't no moose, it's a completely loco pori, but we did see one on this chilly sunday... the above pic was taken at the start of the rawson lake trail which we did last weekend. not a very strenuous hike which is probably why pori felt like he needed to toughen things up a bit and do it half naked. just kidding, this was only a few moments of chest chill until he got his thermal on. actually didn't expect anywhere near this much snow as the thick white blanket hasn't yet covered calgary... however, rawson lake is about an hour and a half away in kananaskis country, not to mention in the mountains... so i should've worn socks that covered my ankles. dang. the hike was a three hour round trip hike up to rawson lake and back again and it was cold. the lake was completely covered in snow, hard to tell there should be a lake there at all actually. it was fun though, and a sharp reminder of where calgary's headed in about a month...

the highlight of the trip was the wildlife. we were so lucky to see so many critters, it was like we were on safari! when we arrived at the carpark at the start of the hike a large coyote scooted across it - the first coyote i've seen! then driving back home after the hike a deer ran across the road in front of us.... moments later a moose appeared on the horizon!!! this got me extremely excited as i have been obsessing about seeing a moose for quite a while. this one was HUGE and was just hanging out on the road. he disappeared into the trees when we got the car a bit close, but then came back out when i got out of the car to see if i could get a better look - he must've been hungry! so we sat there in the car for ages, hanging out next to the moose on the road. blimin' awesome! i must admit we were a bit nervous coz we got pretty close and they are known to charge cars! but he really didn't seem to mind much that we were there. we left before he did, and before we reached calgary we saw a couple of herds of elk too.

pics of the whole expedition are here: http://dabunj.spaces.live.com/

i better go study some castellano... and then i'm off to the gym, good ey?!

besos,

d xx

bloggy blog blog

oh my blog! i forgot about this wee pup. well, actually i suppose i didn't really, i've been meaning to write for ages n' ages, but something always comes up. the most blog-worthy thing that's been done by us fullas lately is our trip to vancouver a couple of weeks ago. i must admit that i haven't yet seen much of canada really (it's a big place), but i'm sure that in terms of cities vancouver must be one of the raddest ones here. it really reinforces the feeling that calgary is indeed a 'cowtown': although there are over a million people here and lots of tall shiny skyscrapers, vancouver has a sophistication and buzzing atmosphere that calgary lacks. also maybe because outside of the concentrated city centre, calgary dissolves into neverending plains. vancouver occupies lots of little peninsulas reaching into the sparkling ocean, and where there's ocean there's life, and the promise of adventure! oh how i miss the ocean! we did lots of rad stuff: beautiful stanley park, climbing grouse mountain and going to the aquarium are among the highlights. i narrowed our 704 photos down to 143, and put them on my gallery: http://dabunj.spaces.live.com/ check 'em out! :)

oh! and last night we went to a real halloween party! we went as basketballers from the 70's... borrowed the grooviest uniforms from a friend of ours. it was a big party and totally hilarious to see the amazing variety of costumes.... bananas, the flintstones and the rubbles, bowling pins and a bowling ball, a nut and bolt, a packet of jelly bellies, a hyperactive fire.... hilarious.

and that's about it! hope everyone's behaving themselves and having a rad time :)

love d xxx

woah nelly! where have the days gone?!

hola! :)

it is beginning to get chillier here in calgs, in fact apparently it's officially autumn on the 21st. dang. but last weekend was divinely hot :) (you never can tell here). we took advantage of the blue blue sky and went floating down elbow river on our big blow-up bed! using our jandals to paddle around the trecherous rocks and branches, it was a very exciting ride! it was so incredibly rad. we drifted down-river for about an hour then tied ourselves to a tree so we could just float there soaking up the rays. aaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. then we clambered out onto the bank, deflated our bed, rolled it up and walked all the way back to the car. sunday was just as gorgeous, so we went to glenmore reserve - a big lake surrounded in beautiful reserve land, right here in the city. we biked around 16km around the lake, keeping our eyes peeled for the bear that the signs warned of.

last wednesday it was pori's 30th! (despite his protests). we invited some of his friends around after work for pizza, beer, red wine and chocolate birthday cake smothered in m&ms. it was a really good evening and we were finally able to 'christen' the apartment with a little party :). i think he had a rad time even considering there were 30 candles on the cake ;).

the weekend before that we headed out to boundary ranch in kananaskis country and went horseriding for a couple of hours at the foot of the rockies. it was pori's first time ever on a horse and he was a total natural - next time we'll have to bring his cowboy hat coz dang he looks good on a horse :). my horse, nugget, was a little crazy and required a bit of concentration to keep in check, but that just makes things a bit more fun :)

and now i better go make dinner. g'night! xx

oh yeah, i added a couple of albums to my gallery that illustrate the above :)
http://dabunj.spaces.live.com