New floor!

No more shag... Kind of sad, but not really. Instead we have this -




The wood is Acacia, which is a common wood in the Philippines. Very hard and dense. We like the distinct wood pattern and are quite happy with our choice.

Next up over the holidays, painting and new curtains for our room. When will this home reno business end?!?!?

Topsy turvy

Last weekend, Ed and Brian added a cable outlet to the east wall of our living room. The existing outlet is on the west wall and I wanted it on the opposite wall so that we can utilize the space in the room better. Here's what the room looked like with the TV on the east side of the room:




I am very happy with this layout. But I will have to wait a few days to enjoy the room again. This week, we are getting new hardwood flooring installed upstairs, hence, we've had to clear out all our stuff from up there and spread it around other parts of the house. As of this morning, this is how our living room looks like:




A small price to pay for getting this beautiful, original 70's shag carpet replaced with hardwood:



Pics of the new floor to come next week...

iPod touch surprise

I came in to work on this wet and gray Monday morning and found a very nice gift on my desk. An iPod Touch! It's a thank you gift from Navarik for all the hard work that has gone into creating and building our product - Navarik Inspection.

I've been with Navarik for seven years (longest I've ever worked in one company) and it remains such a great place to work. I truly am lucky to have a job that I thoroughly enjoy and to be in a company that makes me feel very much appreciated.

Go, Navarik!

New toy

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a new software for my Garmin 301 GPS system. Ascent organizes the data collected by my GPS while I’m training and I can use it to study how I’m progressing.

The main screen shows a calendar of the activities downloaded from my GPS. When I select a specific activity, it shows the speed, pace, distance, time, heartrate, etc. Every little thing I’d like to know about my run or paddle. The map is really good too because if I click on a particular lap or distance in the list below the calendar, it highlights on the map where that lap or distance was.



There is a full view of the just the map. Very entertaining to see how far (or not) I went. In this one, I was in an OC6 and we paddled from Burrard Marina to Stanley Park past Siwash Rock and close to the Lion’s Gate Bridge. The view of the city from the water is fantastic. As you can see from the image above, we paddled around 10 km that morning.



The activity detail graph is what I find really useful. I can study my speed or pace over time or distance, which is really helpful when training. Or for races, the coach can see how the team did at different legs of the course. Pretty neat tool. The green line graphs the speed and the red line graphs my heart rate.



I like my new toy. I could spend hours just analyzing the data collected by my Garmin. Geeky fun!

Silvia Dotto pottery

When “someday” becomes today...

For the past five or six year, I’ve attended Circle Craft every November. And every year, I go to Silvia Dotto’s display to admire her work. And every year, I tell myself that someday, I will have a few of Silvia’s serving dishes. Someday. Two years ago, Yvette had the bright idea of asking Ed to get a flat platter for my birthday. I absolutely loved the platter and have used it many times since. (Thanks, Vet and Ed!)

A few days ago, I got an email about the up-coming Culure Crawl from Silvia and she announced that after more than 10 years of making them, she will be retiring her serving collection. She will be putting her creative energies into new endeavours. My initial reaction was NO!!! Her pottery is so beautiful. But I can understand her need for more artistic challenges.

I decided that I have to get one more piece before they go away. (Ed agreed!) So last night, I went to her studio to pick out another platter. Well, I ended up buying a bowl (in aqua) AND a platter (in espresso brown). It was just so hard to pick just one. Totally not budgetted whatsoever but I didn’t really care. These pieces are what heirlooms are made of. And they will be put to good use.

I parked them on our dining table last night and just stared at them with a smile on my face. Someday is today. And it felt really good.