I'm exhausted. I've just returned from a 13 1/2 hour shopping spree in the States. What was meant to be a quick in and out turned into quite the shopping bonanza.

Does anyone need baby clothing, because I appear to have bought enough for an entire daycare. I got a little carried away and kept buying at each additional store we went into. My brother's soon to born little guy is going to have a full 4 seasons worth of cute little doggy clothes plus the bibs and blankets to accompany it.

I also picked up some great Barefoot Contessa gourmet foods for a friend. I'm going go Kelowna in two weeks for business and staying with her so I thought what better hostess gift than the BC...I love her! (said friend doesn't read my blog...I hope).

The border crossings both ways were slow. Coming back we waited close to an hour and a half. It actually passed pretty quickly with all of the excitement of watching the drug dogs search cars and then the alarm sounding that a car had run the border.

I'm currently going through a total hate on with my mobile service provider. My phone bill is out of control and I feel like they nickle and dime me for everything. I have all these extra charges for services I don't want like call waiting and three way calling which I can't drop. Ughh!

I'm now considering getting a land line again and reducing my cell usage as much as possible. I read today that landlines use far less energy and doesn't emit microwaves into the atmosphere, making it potentially healthier.

So the question for me now is, do I go with a regular telephone service provider or VoIP? My concern with VoIP is quality and reliability, especially when calling the NWT. Our Skype connection sometimes isn't that great as Trent doesn't yet have broadband and I have to call his land line. I'm just not sure the savings are worth the potential service challenges and questionable call quality

Would appreciate any feedback you have on VoIP. Is it worth it?

Wow...the office is like a morgue. The place cleared out about 4PM with the Canucks early start tonight. Fingers crossed they can salvage the series tonight.

My dinner and a movie night with Niki & Shannon wasn't quite as fun as I had hoped. We felt very sneaky tucked deep in our seats eating Mc. Chickens and fries that we'd sneaked in from the Mc. Donalds next door (plans had been to go for dinner but the Friday night traffic didn't make that possible). All that part was fun, it was the emotionally raw story of After the Wedding where the fun stopped and the sobbing started. It's been a while since the full throttle Jenn sobbing has made an appearance and an appearance it did make. Poor Shannon, I don't think she knew what to make of it. Despite feeling emotionally exhausted from the movie I highly recommend it. I don't think I can say much more right now.

I've just come home tonight from an event at the Vancouver Art Gallery. VAG have just relaunched their Young Patron's Program and I went to see what it was all about. The program sounds really interesting with lots of special events for members and the crowd looked to be quite diverse. Definitely a lot of young hip artsy folks with an equal number of young professionals. From the number of people at the relaunch event it looks to be very popular with many people lining up for memberships.

I was lucky enough to get a quick private tour of the House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective exhibit before the evening officially started. This installation has garnered quite a bit of press recently with the controversial insect exhibit which in just the last few days has been dismantled. I was quite taken by his re-creation of a Beaux Arts-style bank using 40,000 pounds of sand (I had no idea what a Beaux Arts-style bank was). I'm definitely going to go back when its a little less busy and take my time to experience the exhibit properly.

This posting is for all of the DBers out there.

I'm paddling for G&G again this summer so I've hooked myself up with a team to train with a bit out here. Here's is what we did at practice tonight. I'm calling it the shoulder blower work out. Please keep in mind that it is mid April and the first race is in the middle of June.

Warm Up - 2-3 min paddle
Work out - Starts, yes starts. We began with the first stroke then the first 5. From there we added on 4 sprint. We continued adding on sets of 4 until we were up to 8 sets, so 5, 8 (4). We practice the 5, 8 (4) a few times then all switched sides on the boat and went through the whole process again.
Cool Down - From about 350 m from the dock we took it in doing as many ups of 4 as it took to get to the loading area.

We did starts the whole hour and half minus the 2-3 minute warm up at the beginning. My tongue is starting to hurt from biting it as I try not to say a word. I'm starting to question whether the coach is working for the competition.

I also forgot to mention that we did all of this while wearing earphones and our MP3 players cranked all the way up so we couldn't hear anything.

I've been meaning to post for a few weeks now on SharkWater. If you haven't seen the movie, you should. Trent and I went to see it when he was here.

Once you get past the fact that Rob Stewart sounds like Keanu Reeves Sharkwater is a facinating and action packed documentary that will have you leaving the theater with a new respect for the most feared creatures of the sea. Hopefully it will also inspire you to check out savingsharks.com

I just learned that crocodiles are sea worthy...apparently they are called Salties. Who knew? I've just learned this on a program I am watching on KCTS about loggerhead sea turtles. I like them. This guy is from our diving trip in Hawaii a couple of summers ago.

Did my first big swim today.

We've be logging about 1200 m's most mornings but today we set a goal of 2000 m. I was a little concerned as my arms/shoulders were really tired at yesterday morning's swim but once I got warmed up they felt pretty good today.

To keep things easy I decided to swim a long warmup (500 m) then break the rest of the workout into 3 sets of 100 kick, 100 free, 100 pull, 100 breast and 100 free. I do enjoy the 50 m pool as it makes the workout pretty quick to complete.

I picked myself up some snazzy new goggles this morning. I have to say, they were pretty great, no fogging up at all.

I think I am going to sleep well tonight :)

Cool, I just saw Tommy in a commercial for the HBC Run for Canada.

Ohh and the Canucks just scored their security blanket goal. Woo Hoo!

Boo...the Stars just scored to bring it back to a one goal lead for Vancouver

Trent's busy this evening making our selections for the playoff pool. Hopefully we can improve on our 5th place (out of 9) finish in the regular season.

I've just returned from taking Trent to the airport. I can't believe our 10 days are over all ready! We had so much fun. Our time in Van was spent being quite domestic; doing errands, having dinner with friends and watching a few movies.


The 5 days in Tofino were so relaxing. We surfed (waves actually weren't great), went whale watching, visited the hot springs and took long walks on the beach exploring tidal pools. That is, when we weren't napping. I certainly have a found a kindred spirit in Trent when it comes to the late afternoon nap.

Surfs Up!