Good Morning. Here's the early morning view outside the hotel's 3rd floor balconies. It's a big park with small mountains in the background. 

Here's an orange tree in the hotel courtyard. I wonder if I can eat theses oranges? I'll have to ask. 

On our walk we came across a crew that was transplanting some date palms. What a big job. A crane pulled them up while I small backhow digged and pushed at the base. 

This is the same crew about 1.5 hours later. Where three date palms were early, only the last uprooted one remains! 

Me of UoP! YEAH!!! I made it! 

Another UoP building. 

The view of the hotel courtyard from my window. The outdoor pool is at the far end just out of view. 

This is the side of our Hotel. The date palms all around the city are beautiful. 

Phoenix is Niiiiiiice!

Here's a fuzzy poic from outside the plane a few minutes before landing. There's some funky rock formation there. Nice blue sky too! 

Air Canada is my Friend

We're HERE! Here's a couple of photos from our plane trip just prior to landing in Phoenix. Keep in mind I'm shooting them out the window! Crappy quality! The weather is beautiful here! 22oC today! And people are swimming in the outdfoor pool. How cool is that! (no pun intended!) 

Febfest!

The 1st annual Febfest in Kingston was AWESOME! Erin and I saw the first four games of the 3-or-3 hockey tournament. The NHL players were awesome to see up close! Red Wings alumni like Paul Coffey and Wendel Clark in particular! YEAH! Go Wings Go!

Don Cherry was there of course!

The hockey was lots of fun and the crowd was huge, they estimated it at 30,000 people! The mayor committed to sponsoring this event again next year! Right on Big Harv!

Now Erin set us up to volunteer at the dinner later on in the evening for the Girls and Girls Club and it was so fun and exciting because many of the NHL players came to the dinner. It was great to see them up close, to talk to them and they freely gave autographs as well. I personally talked to Dale Hawerchuck, Doug Gilmour, Wendel Clark, Joe Cirella and Dave Ellett. Erin got autographs and spoke to Joe Niewendyk, Mike Keane and Kirk Muller as well! Erin was the “autograph bunny” actually. She rocks! We also got a free dinner out of the deal and saw part of the auction. Dinner with at Kirk Muller’s house went for $3,900! Wow!

Overall it was a great day that was capped off by Siobhan’s b-day party…lots of fun despite missing the poker game! Next time organizers have to start the game EARLIER!!!!! HAHA!

Straight A still streaking!

I received great news on the weekend that I scored an A in my last Masters course on Statistics and Ethics in e-Education. YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s six courses in a row!!! And that also marks the halfway point of my masters! Six courses down and six to go; it’s all downhill from here (*grin*)

Valentines Days! (or how to score!)

It's no secret... I miss hockey. But I still know the meaning of "He shoots... he scores!" and I did just that Monday night for Valentines Day. I took a really long shot! I decided to make a really nice high class dinner for Erin to celebrate Valentines Day. (Those who know me, know that I almost never cook! I was really going out on a limb here!) I pulled out all the stops I could! Table cloth, linen napkins, white candles and customized "love music" (cheezy but always appreciated!)

The meal I prepared was influenced by Erin's suggestion. She loves seafood pasta so I went with her suggested theme: Shrimp Scallop Scampi over fresh linguini. I rounded it out with a homemade green salad with greek dressing and a lovely Honey and Oat whole wheat bun from Pan Chancho. For desert I picked up something else from Pan Chancho: a strawberry and white chocolate profiterole (that's french for cream puff!) It was awesome! I also served Erin white wine with dinner. It puts her in a good mood (haha).

The flowers on the table were courtesy of her. She surprised me earlier that morning with roses delivered to my work. I was so delighted to receive them. They are so beautiful, with multiple coulours: yellow, red, pink, and the kind with red tips and pink body. Very cool! The girls at work were a little jealous as I was the only girl in the office who got flowers delivered to work on Monday! (*laugh*) Erin is truly a keeper! I'm glad we can do things for each other like that on Valentine's Day.

It was a great day with a great girl! I wouldn't have done anything differently. Well, wait... maybe next year we can get tickets to a Detroit Red Wings game for Valentines Day? They might serve some seafood pasta at the concession stand?!? ... I'll have to look into that! (*evil grin*)

Yeah for Tiff and Wayne!

There was a little fun get together at Tiff & Wayne's new house last night. The place is great!!! We had lots of fun chit-chat and X-box carnage too. Everything said at the get together is IN THE VAULT by me. So you won't read any of it here. However, you can talk to Erin or Jen instead. I found out last night that both their vaults are a little "leaky" (HAHAHAHAHAHA! LOL!) (I'm probably going to get in huge trouble for posting this.... but what the heck...it's funny and I've been working out so I can take the beating!!! Look at these abs!)

Pull over: pooping in the forest is not a bad thing!

Eric's Commentary:
I just want to get this straight for my avid readers (*cough*), pulling over while on a trip and pooping by the road is not anything to be ashamed of! Pooping in your pants, however, is a different story. So kudos to everyone out there that has ever answered the call of nature after pulling the car over!!! It's the only logical choice!

Passport Update!

I received an ExpresPost delivery yesterdays that I picked up today. it was my passport. Everything looks fine in it too. It took exactly 21 working days from the day I mailled in my application via ExpressPost from Kingston to receive my completed Passport back. The Fed Gov't targets 20 working days from the day of receipt, so I would say they lived up to their words pretty accurately! Kudos to the Passport people in Ottawa!

I hate my flatmate!

No....wait....I don't hate my flatmate! Ted's my flatmate and he's pretty cool. Ultra-easy to live with.

But my mom found this cool blog called I Hate My Flatmate which is well worth a peek. It's the hilarious story of why one individual hates his flatmate! The comments are hilarious and numerous too!! I added it to my blogroll on the side bar. Thanks Mom! You're the best! Keep 'em coming!

Follow up on Griffin iTalk

K, I figured it out. I guess the 4G iPod Photo doesn't pass power to the pass through microphone correctly. Strange. So Griffin has to go back to the drawing board on the 3G iTalk because the microphone pass through feature will not work with this particular iPod. I learned this by finding this thread on the iPodLounge site. So I returned the iTalk today for a refund. I guess I have to be patient to see a new accessory developed that can record my voice onto the iPod from a lapel mic.

Friday night!

So, with Erin out of the country, I am having a very BORING Friday evening! But I did figure out how to publish my recently played songs from my iPod/iTunes to the web. Check this link out to see my list! That's cool in a geeky sorta way.

Griffin iTalk

I've been experimenting with the Griffin iTalk for the iPod. It's a neat gadget that aloows your iPod to turn into a voice recorder. So far the experiment has mixed results. The bult in microphone condenser works fine, the speakers is a bit crappy but who cares. What I really want to do it to use the microphone pass through feature to place a microphone on my lapel and to record my voice while I talk. Unfortunately, after trying out two iTalk units, I can't get it to work. All I can record is dead air with an attached external microphone. It's as if the iPod and the ITalk can't recognize that it's a microphone plugged in instead of a set of headphones. Darnit! I'm try to get help on the iPod Lounge forum. More to follow on this as it becomes available.