Silence is golden?

My mother always taught me that if I didn't have something useful to say, put my tongue between my teeth and bite. Now, my friends will tell you that I've never been really that good at heeding that particular bit of advice. But I haven't really had much to write about recently, so my blog has been silent for a few weeks. Here's some small things to catch up on.
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Today was ski day 58 for me. I'm up to over 369,000 vertical metres (1.2 MM vertical feet) and 800 runs. Last year, I only did 54 days, but I got in a LOT of vert (461,000 vertical meters, or 1.5 MM vertical feet). My vert per day this year is low because of snow hosting, but even the days I'm not hosting aren't 10,000 days. Ah well. It's a marathon, not a sprint.


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My girls competed in the Canadian National University Basketball championships and placed 4th in the nation, which impressed the heck out of me. That's better than the men's team did. They won their first game in the tournament by trouncing Regina, who had a 22-1 record (and beat us 3 times during the regular season). We won that game because for 3 quarters, we ran a killer, up tempo game and got up 20 points. We slacked off in the 4th quarter, and Regina fought back to within 6, but they were too deep in a hole to get out of (we had them 41-22 at the half).


But we lost the next two games (against Windsor, who went on to win the championships, and Ottawa) because we didn't play an up-tempo game. We played a slow, churning game and we're not good at that.


Ah well. Fourth in the nation is pretty damn good, if you ask me. I was proud.


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This week, we kicked off our next reno project. We received plans for our new kitchen, and met with several contractors to "get this party started". We have a bunch of hoops to jump through, so expect to be starting in mid-July, just after Stampede. We picked then because my brother is (finally) coming out to visit with his family for Stampede. I have to find a mountain for him to climb...


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Last May was Amsterdam. This May it's:

The Carolinas (with a lot of stops along the way).

(I have to work on my branding). We're going on a big lap of the South East USA, with stops in Devil's Tower, Mt. Rushmore, the Badlands of South Dakota, Kansas City, Memphis (both to eat BBQ), Atlanta, Charleston, Cape Hatteras, Washington DC, the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Great Smokey Mountains and then home -- just in time for me to go to Montreal for the Grand Prix.


Retirement rocks.


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My posts are not complete without photos. So here are some critters that have been visiting us recently.

A squirrel pulls a break and enter on the bird feeder

A herd of Pine Siskins on my feeder

My Clark's Nuctcrackers (who like suet)

A White Winged Crossbill (kinda rare)