A *real* Christmas list

Well, we'll start with the crappy: Bonnie and I lost the apartment. Apparently, somebody put another bid in in front of the couple we were working with. Bogus. Enough of that.

Did almost all of my Christmas shopping today and I, unfortunately, spent too much money (as usual). In any case, I'm pretty thrilled with everything I picked up and can't wait to send it all out and hear what everybody thinks about it.

Doing this reminded me that I haven't posted a real Christmas list so...here one is in case you're still looking to spend more money on me:

-Digital Camera (nothing fancy, just enough to point, click, and upload)

-Gortex gloves

-Something like gortex socks (don't even know if they exist but something to keep my feet warm and dry. Thick socks will *not* work as they won't leave any space around the foot and will actually make my feet colder. Something thin and, most importantly, dry. Also, those little pads that you crack and then they create heat won't work because there isn't enough space in my ski boots.)

-XBOX 360 Games (buy them used from stores like "Electronics Boutique/EB". They're exactly the same game and usually 1/2 off or more). I'll probably like any game. one day i'll even have a TV to play them on.

-Money (i'm not even kidding)

-A block heater for my car

I feel like I'm forgetting some stuff....

Anyway, i'm sure most people have already spent $1,000s on me so it probably wont' matter anyway. Right? Right?

brrrrr.....er

I want to start by thanking everybody for their kind emails telling me how warm it is back home - I hate you all. Today was the coldest day of my life. Skiied at -35 degrees on top of the mountain and got stuck in the gondola for proably about 20 minutes. who knows how long? it only got colder. Brutal.

Did I mention how cold it was?

In other news, it looks to remain cold out here and the couple with the apartment want Bonnie and I to move in with them. Now it's just a waiting game to see the place. I certainly hope that day comes soon because the projected move-in date is Dec 1. I also hope that comes soon because TRs just hired a whole bunch of new people and Rowan will be moving in with me on Wednesday or Thursday. As cool as he is, I don't want to share the palace with anybody and neither does he. We just figured that it would be best to go together instead of with some randoms (the average intellect of the new hires is...less than ideal, shall we say)

bbbrrrr......

'Tis a big weekend in Banff. First off, Lake Louise is having some big ski race thing which I alas won't be going to, but seems cool to me.

2nd it's the "Winterstart Street Festival" this weekend, and this is even cooler. They closed off the main street and set up a big snow ramp and tents and a big screen TV and various firepits and everything else. Last night they had an amateur "Rail Jam" (pros tonight), played "how the grinch stole christmas" and other winter-y movies, gave away free hot chocolate, and a bunch of other stuff. It's pretty fun.

What's more, winter seems to have gotten the hint. Upset by its (apparently) slow start and probably thinking that the town of Banff is mocking it through it's festival, winter turned down the thermostat to -25 degrees (no typo, -25. In November). That's cold enough to make your first breath when you step out the door not work as well as it's supposed to. It's also cold enough to make me not want to go skiing. Poor souls up there.

So in closing, I guess it's really cold.

Smatterings of coherence...

SO let's see

First off, some more good news from work. My boss rehired (or she just returned) the old Assistant Manager for Tony Roma's who has been there since day 1 in that role and knows...well...everything. I'd heard rumours about this for some time and got confirmation of it today not only when I saw the posted notice, but when she walked in at the end of my shift :p Naturally, this made me somewhat nervous as:

#1 - She and I had not been getting along for some unknown reason

#2 - The event didn't bode well for my own job

In any case, one of the first things she said is "I was concerned about coming back because I don't want you and Trevor to feel threatened. I'm not here to replace or override you, just to work as a complete, management team." Neat. Not only was that a great thing to hear, but it was more words than she'd said to me total ever, probably.

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New news on the money front. My raise turned out to be not as big as I was forecasting (though still over 50% which is still nice) however...I am being made eligible for tipouts for now which is excellent. Essentially, all that money that I complain about having to pay out as a server is not going to start going to me. Wootness. Mine is going to be 1.5% of total sales while managing which, given the nature of the restaurant and the business volume easily will make it to $100 or so on any given day. ($6000 dinner, very very standard, tips me out to $90)

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New news on the spending money front: I think I've found an apartment to live in with Bonnie (*gasp! a den of sin!!)

Ok now that the shock has resided, I'll continue the story...

I've been looking for a new place for a little bit now and responding to places with limited (read: no) success. I responded to an advertisement yesterday looking for a "couple" and met with the 2 people currently there today. They are extremely nice people and we seem to be looking for the same things in terms of atmosphere and living arrangements. What's more, the place is $1600/month, split between 4 people, including power, water, cable, and internet. I defy anybody in London to find a better deal than that.

When I questioned them re: the quality of the place, they coudln't say enough about how nice it is. It is also fully furnished down to pots, pans, and utensils with a great deal of brand new furniture (most notably, couches, beds, and mattresses). Apparently they know the landlord (which, apparently, goes a long way here!)

Of course, they've gotten several responses to the advertisement they put up and so couldn't really say anything right now without seeing other people, but i get the impression they were quite excited (as was I!) and I'm pretty confident this will work out.

I certainly hope it does because we've been doing a lot of hiring lately and I fear the day when I get a new roomate is rapidly approaching. As well, as much as I've grown to like my 2nd home here in the internet cafe, I'm tiring of spending all this money on internet. 3rd, it will be nice to REALLY unpack and have a home instead of a palace.

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Christmassy fun!

My loving and always one-step-ahead-of-me mother shipped me a big box full of christmas decorations! Huzzah! So Bonnie and I put it all up in my palace last night. Here are some pictures of the historic event!





awww....so cute. My own little Charlie Brown tree


I'm a cowboy!

Hungry? No thanks, I ate snow all afternoon...

And did I ever! Only skied for 4 hours today but I'm more sore than any day before this one. I couldn't even wear my goggles (thanks mom!) after the first couple hours because i fell face first in the snow so hard that they were absolutely smeared with the stuff.

Also did some back-country skiing today which was cool and awesome and I'm not sure if I spent more time on my ass than on my skiis. All in all though it was pretty darn cool and, for the first time for me, it was actually clear at Sunshine.

This has actually been a point of contention for me: why name the place "Sunshine" if there's never any sun there? And in fact, it wasn't sunny today either, it was just clear and the landscape was just phenomenal. Up to today, I could never see more than about 20 feet in front of me but today could see...well...really far.

Sunshine, as it turns out, is actually build on the continental divide which is also the border between Alberta and B.C. Went up a lift today that, about 1/2way up has a sign on the post saying "Welcome to beautiful British Columbia" and then a few posts from the top has another sign saying "Welcome back to Alberta". Thought it was cute.

My plans are to go up to Lake Louise tomorrow and try out their hill. I'm looking forward to it for sure.

Hmm...upgrades...

So I got home from work today (11 hours of managing, that went well, btw) after a weekend of both opening and closing shifts to a note on my table saying that i needed to clean up various parts of my palace. You see, a part of staff accomadation is that every 2 weeks they get to inspect my palace. It's done because a new person could move in at any time. Of course, a new person isn't moving into my palace and won't be moving into my palace because my boss (who pays for it) says so.

So as a result, it's just a pointless irritation for me. However, the price remains right so...

In any case, having now spent some time cleaning up the place, I have some pictures for you. Behold, THE PALACE MK II!!


Look at that! Room 216. Sure looks dark and scary...


Aw that's better. Huzzah for auto-focusing cameras!
What a beautiful bedroom. Check out that massive pile of change on the table - just one of the many perks of being a server. Also, please see the envelops and packaging material sitting on the table. It is for sending mail. Send me mail, and I will send you some back! (Offer not valid for my parents and email or for residents of Quebec). My address is:

Noah Borin
c/o General Delivery
Banff, AB T1H 1L1

Exciting! But you can't send independently shipped packages here (ie UPS, FedEx, etc). Only Canada Post or the US Post Office will do.

But i digress...


Look at all that cool stuff! And there's my ski equipment on the right. It's like my rec room!


This one looks across the room from the other way. What a dream kitchen!


This is my dining area!! Oops! There's my ski equipment again and a large collection of alcohol paraphenalia. Woot! (Missing from picture: The huge nearby bag of food given to Bob and I for the journey out here. I am still working on it)

In other news, I got a big raise today, a manager's key number for the computer terminal, and keys to the restuarant. Huzzah!!

Bonnie also moved to Canmore and is settling in there. She is not 10 minutes away - something I've already taken advantage of twice. Huzzah! I actually used driving my boss to Canmore (where he lives) today as an excuse to see her. He said "If you 'get together' with Bonnie, I get some credit for that." Cool boss :p

Now it's off to 3 days off and you know what that means : Skiing!! Sunshine tomorrow and Lake Lousie on Wednesday. Further huzzahs!

Short and sweet

Go Blue!

More mindless dithering...

So a few more days gone by, what's happened?

My buddy Anthony, who works at this internet cafe that i spend far too much time in, is a lvl 2 ski instructor and we went to the hill the other day. Ladies and gentlemen, I have done my first black run. Hoo-yea! I'm still alive. Even after we did several, nay, many, black runs, I am still alive. How about it! It continues to snow on a daily basis, especially up on the ski hills. I can't believe how wintery it is already.

Bonnie moves to Canmore on Sunday evening, which is sweet! She also bought a new car, some kind of SUV that is all plain-Jane and all. It's her first car. Awww, I'm so proud. In any case, when she moves to Canmore we'll be about 15 minutes away and each have a car. She wants me to take her to Tony Roma's for dinner. I think that's crazy but, the price is right (100% discount for managers) so, I suppose that I could survive it.

Speaking of managers, I am no longer on the staff schedule; my name has been erased from it competely. I am now only on the management schedule and have my 1st solo-managing shift on Saturday morning. unfortuntely, I have inherited the Saturday/Sunday opening shifts...6am...brutal brutal brutal. it does, however, mean i'm done early enough in the afternoon to watch the U of M vs Ohio State game this weekend. Excellent.

Tony Roma's re-opens tomorrow after our long hiatus. It's been nice but, I need more money. Will be nice to start earning it again.

My spine hurts...

2 days of skiing down and the only thing that hurts is my spine. Good thing it's not that important...

picked bonnie up from the airport in calgary late last night with her dad and then she and I drove back into Banff. It's good to see her again. We walked around a bit this morning and then went to lunch at the sushi train!

Ok, it's not called "the sushi train", it's called something far lamer. It's 100% cool though. YOu sit around the sushi chef and a train goes around with a bunch of flatbed cars behind it. The chef puts whatever he wants on the train and then when it goes by you, you pick it up and eat it. At the end of the day, the look at what plates you have to decide your price (the prices are based on the color of plate used). Man is it ever cool!!!

Unfortunately, the Calgary health region is shutting it down after 20-some years because they don't like that the chefs can't tell to-the-minute how long the sushi has been on the train. Apparently it's irrelevant that it's fairly obvious when it's no longer worth eating, and that rarely happens anyway because the place is always so busy. Bah...hopefully they think of something. THe place is a really cool, local's hole-in-the-wall.

Speaking of locals, I'm being fairly regularly recognized as one which means that at almost every place around here, i win discounts that take the prices down to almost normal price! Wootness. They are very kind to locals around here.

Back to trying to convince Bonnie to go skiing tomorrow...

Pheckin' A!

Wootness!

Sunshine Village opened their ski resort today and Rowan and I went out at 9:00am to take advantage. Let me back up...

Yesterday was the Tony Roma's staff party. Technically, it was the Christmas party, though there wasnt' a damn thing christmassy about it. We (the other managers and I) sent the staffers on an "Amazing Race" through Banff that took them all about 4-5 hours to complete. That's 4-5 hours of running around town, hiking up to the top of Tunnel Mountain (the small one that takes me abotu 25 minutes to do), scrambling down something of a cliff, finding all kinds of paraphenalia, and generally seeing everything there is to see in Banff. Oh, and when they got done, we made them chug 2litre bottles of pop. HA!

The prizes we had were phenomenal, with 1st place getting a $900 travel voucher to, get this, anywhere. That's a trip home for free for most people here. Not too shabby. After the race, our boss rented out our favorite pup (yes, Tony Roma's staff has a favorite pub) and we headed over there, drink tickets in hand, and proceeded to get SMASHED. And I mean....really really really drunk. On work. How about it?!

Back to my original story

Rowan and I got up in time to leave at 9:00am this morning (no joke! we made it!) After a couple stops, we made it to the hill for 11:00 and skied straight through till 4:45. Then the hill was closed. Actually, they closed at 4:00 and we kept skiing.

Sunshine Village is quite massive. What I think is damn interesting is that the parking lot is nowhere close to the ski slopes. You have to take a gondola about 15 minutes or so to get to 1 of 2 ski bases and, from there is where they have all their lifts, shops, restuarants, etc. It's fun at the end because, if you don't want to take the gondola down, you can ski along a tree-lined path for about 20 minutes down to the parking lot. Another benefit is that even their lowest runs are high-altitude which helps them with a more consistent snow base.

Today, being opening day and an early early early November 9, the snow base wasn't too big and on tops of some of the mountains there was barely any. We had some rocks sticking out and little saplings poking through everywhere, but they were all easy to avoid. The snow wasn't great either, but it certainly could have been a lot worse. There were only a couple ice patches and most of the snow was packed, but not icy. Occasionally we had some nice powder.

My new equipment is great. I was warm, comfortable, and (i thought) skiing well all day on my new gear. I'm so excited for a whole winter of this.

I just discovered that Sunshine has some webcams too, which can be found here: Sunshine Webcams if you ever are curious to see what I'm skiing in.

There's about 5 of us going out tomorrow. Should be fun. For now, I'm out.

Not sure....

So i'm not entirely sure what to talk about, but I felt like I should post something.

Not too much has been happening. work is continuing on and I'm improving on a daily basis still. The restuarant is closed for 10 days and I thought i had all of them off. As it turns out, I don't and will probably be working most of them. I'm happy about that because it means I get to keep some semblance of a cash flow. Not sure what we'll be doing but it appears to be a lot of manager-type stuff and what not. Who knows?

I went in to Cochrane today and did some shopping and taught some of Bonnie's mom's students their lessons. It really helps advanced students to get 2nd opinions on things, or at least that's the idea. I had a great time and it served to fulfill the musical void that has been going on out here.

In terms of shopping, all I can say is "WOW!" I got roughly the same amount of stuff as here in Banff for $70 instead of $140. Then i saved 7 cents a litre on gasoline! I also picked up some miscellaneous stuff from the drug store, and the electronics store, and went to get a haircut, but left because the line was too big. Next door was another haircut place, but it was $35 for a normal cut and there's not a freaking chance in hell that I'm going to pay that much for a haircut.

I also want to thank June for loaning me the books; I have finished them both. Anybody looking for a good read I definitely recommend "A Million Little Pieces" by James Frey. There has been some degree of controversy surrounding the book because Frey admitted that not everything in the book is truthful. However, the truth of the subject matter is irrelevant in a story as powerful as this one.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing anybody that comes out here - showing you all this place and where I am, and being able to see everybody. Come visit!

Also, I've had people ask so here we go.

***The things i need/could use/want ***

A small sauce pot
A basic model digital camera
Ski goggles


hrm...yea pretty short list. I'm quite well situated. I'll post more as it comes to me

ZOMG!

Why the ZOMG? ("oh my god" pronounced "zoh my god" for coolness, for you nOoBs out there) It's because the 1st ski hill is open here! I don't even have my pass yet!! What am I do do?!!? The rest are opening on the 10th. Sakes alive!! Definitely looking forward to this. Especially the 6 days off I'll have right around the 10th. Oh man!

So what else is going on? I've started management training here at the Banff restuarant and it's going well so far. It's difficult because we've been extremely dead - we didn't even hit $2,000 yesterday. Hard to learn when you're just standing around with nothing to do. But I did hit upon a side job in tutoring a co-workers kids in math for $20/hour. Not too shabby! Little extra spending money (who am I kidding? It's ALL spending money right now :p)

Calgary is probably not too far away.

It continues to be freezing cold. For my American viewers, it's been 5-14 degrees during the day. For all others, about -15 to -10...and it's only early November!! As you might imagine, the roads are as icy as all get out and, try as I might, I haven't been able to lose control of my car. A good buy! Something interesting about Banff too: not only is it too cold anyway, but since it's a national park, they don't use salt on the roads. It's all sand. I'm actually happy about this because it's so much easier on cars. Btw, my windshield wipers have been glued to my car pretty well every morning. I've started putting them up.

Sulphur Mountain

A couple days ago I took a hike up Sulphur Mountain before work. This is the mountain with the gondola that goes up it and a restuarant and everything else on top for the tourists. There's also an old weather station up there that a guy with the last name of Sulphur used to walk up every 2 weeks for 3 days at a time. Of course, there was no trail. Supposedly it took him 9 hours up in snowshoes. I'm sure it was uphill both ways too.

Anyway, there was more new-fallen snow and the sun was shining with no clouds in the sky, so I hike seemed in order. I chose this one because I knew I could get a free gondola ride down (honestly, who likes hiking down? Nobody. It's murder on your knees). I was also excited for a winter hike because I bought new ski poles on a huge sale the day before and was anxious to do SOMETHING related to skiing, even if only barely.

So out I trudged with all my winter gear and ski poles (without the baskets) and started hiking. The trail is 5.5km long and 700m vertical (over 3miles and about .5mi vertical). The hike was both awesome and disappointing.

It was awesome because I was climbing the east side of the mountain and there was no wind at all. SO even though it was well below freezing, it felt quite warm. Also, there was no wind to knock the snow off the trees, so the entire forest was still covered in snow. The views through breaks in the trees were equally breathtaking.

What could be disappointing about this? Well first off, there were too many trees. Most of what I saw was trees, trees, and more trees. Got a little dull. Second, there were too many people. While Vanessa would probably think I was completely alone, I probably saw about 6 other people while I was hiking and frequently had to stop hiking to allow the guy in front of me to get further ahead. What a nuisance!! Also, the gondola was squeaky and the trail runs under the gondola line for a lot of the way.

When I got to the top, things were definitely different. The mountain has a very small ridgeline on the top and the trail goes right up to it. So after about 90 minutes of nothing beside me but mountainside, suddenly, within a few steps, there was nothing on that side of me but....nothing. It also immediately got brutally cold because the wind started hitting me square on. I unforutnately had no camera, but luckily there was an artist on top to capture the moment:

What a masterpiece! There's me standing on top of the mountain with my big, beefy arms and my ski poles on my back like swords!! And then a little ways down are the tourists that can't take it on the top of the mountain. Silly tourists!! And the camerman even got the wind in the photo! Not sure how he did that but I'd say it's swell!!

The Hostel

Went up to "The Hostel" last night. Wow is that cool. As you might imagine, it's a place for everybody that comes out here without a job to stay. They put you up in a room, and get you working there somewhere in housekeeping, dishwashing, or whatever while you find a job. Swell!! They even have a bar, which is where we were, and the great fun about it was that everybody there had at least one thing in common: we're all away from home and have a personality willing to do something crazy like this. So it was like Cheers, even though pretty well nobody knew anybody else.

Also, they have lots of cool resources there like the board for people who need rides or riders. Looks like I may be able to make it home sometime in the Spring and, if so, I can go up there, put my name, phone number, and destination on the board under "need a rider" and "BAM" - i save 1/2 on gas and stuff. Woot!