Chapter 16

Well, it's definitely been a while. Almost half a year. My neglect of this blog has been on my mind lately. I've no idea where to even begin. Perhaps I'll give a month by month summary of news. Yeah, that should work.

June/July

Ciaran got a job in June. A Junior Engineering position. I'm not sure if I mentioned that in my last post and I'm too lazy to check so apologies for any repitition from here on in. I got plenty of days of admin work through the temping agency.

Mum and Alan came to Calgary in July. We went to Banff, Drumheller, the zoo and other places like that. That really seems like forever ago now but here's an ice-skating picture. Sampling the culture and all that.

It was actually slightly surreal having them over and it was sad to see them go.

August

August was house-hunting month. Our lease was up at the end of the month and although we could have stayed where we were living (and we were happy enough to do so) we decided to move a little south to shorten Ciaran's daily commute.

By this stage, I was working on a long assignment in SAIT (I think there were pictures in a previous post? Ah yes, this one.) and my commute was only 15 minutes whereas Ciaran's was an hour so we thought we'd even it up a little.

We found this amazing house just across the river from downtown but it was too expensive if we didn't find anyone else to move in with us. It even had a hot tub on the deck in the back garden. We put our names forward but I think we were a little too late. We were getting a bit panicky as it was coming to the end of August so we put our names down for this apartment on the 27th floor of a downtown high-rise. It actually worked out really well for us. We've been living here just over three months now and we're completely set up. It takes us half and hour each to get to our respective places of work.

September

The first weekend in September involved hiring a big-ass truck to fill our unfurnished apartment with the bare necessities.

Living the American dream

Our purchases included couches ($140 from Kijiji), table and chairs ($140 from Kijiji), bed and mattress (about $400 from Ikea), two bookcases ($20 each from Kijiji), cutlery, kettle, toaster, pots and pans, coffee tables, lamps and a host of other boring housey things which brought the subtotal up to about $1200. Not bad for a day's work.

The rest of the month involved letting our bank balances recover enough so we could book our flights home for Christmas.

October

Thanksgiving dinner, Halloween, work.

November

Our dollars had replenished to a level that we could drop another $1000 on a 43" plasma TV, a playstation and Modern Warfare 3. It has probably been one of our better investments.

November was also when winter really started to hit. Snow, -20 degree weather. The playstation served us well on the weekends where it was just too bloody cold to go out.

December

And now here we are in December. We decided last minute to go snowboarding. It was a painful but amazingly fun experience. We fell over millions of times and had unbelievably sore muscles for the next few days but as soon as we left the slope, we wanted to go back. Also, I got to drive for the first time since I left Ireland. First time driving on the opposite side of the road, first time driving an automatic, first time driving such a large car, first time driving in such snowy conditions but I have to say, I was fantastic ;).

I left the temping company to take a position with SAIT (the same admin position I was already doing). It's crazy busy in work at the moment but it's good fun with all of the Christmas cheer floating about the office.

Currently, I'm extremely excited about going home for Christmas. Leaving 9pm on Thursday the 20th. For a girl who doesn't normally squeal like a girl, I'm squealing like a girl over this. Dying for a fish and chips.

On the reading front, I've read the following books over the last few months:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur Clarke (exactly the same as the film)
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip Dick (pretty good, I've still to watch Blade Runner)
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (amazing)
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy (pretty much the same film, good book but quite depressing)
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (good book, meant to go and see it in the cinema too but never got around to it)
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett (also a good book and the film was fairly true to it)
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (so so so good, in fact it's that good that I've bought the book for someone at Christmas)
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (really good)
• 1984 by George Orwell (it's a classic for a reason, scary how much of the story has parallels with today's society)
• A Pixies Autobiography that I've been meaning to read for ages. The only physical book of this list; the rest having been read on my Kindle. It was actually really satisfying to physically turn a page. 

At the moment I'm slowly reading The Life of Pi by Yann Martel which I am enjoying but it's just taking a while to get through it. I think it's because I've been really busy lately.

Today, I'm going to bake cupcakes for this Dessert Smorgasbord we're having in work. This blog post was basically just procrastination from that.

Some more pictures from the last while as this post has been short on photos and long on text.

We went to see Crystal Castles. They were really good, it just sucked they played on a Sunday night. We had tickets to Grimes also but she got sick and cancelled.

Our bedroom on the 1st of September.

Brilliant sunset on Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving turkey.

Train ride back in July when Alan was here.

Winter's here.

Token video entry.