Low key St. Patty's 2010

Brady, the son of eeyore Tressa bought me for being together for one year, and I at the house warming.

Above right - some of the food at the house warming. We also got some very nice gifts - like a sexy spice set, cactus with yellow flowers and sticky needles, and spirits. Thank-you!

on saturday we had a "house warming" for our condo - though she has lived there for two years now. we ate, drank and played games with friends - it was good.

We have worked hard preparing for our vacation to mexico (16 hours to go!) and are packed and ready.

now we get a week of much needed tropical relaxation, fun and adventure.

i have two great things coming up which blend love, travel and music

tressa and i will have dated for one year next weekend. we met on st. patrick's day, but the first date was a little later. next weekend we happen to be in regina and will visit some places that we enjoy and have a night on the town.

next, we are going to mayan riviera, mexico from march 31st to april 8th! i was there last year and am returning to be part of tressa's friend angie's wedding. i really enjoyed the trip last year but have tours that i did not get a chance to experience (was not enough time). the rio secreto, or secret river, tour lets you put on wetsuits and head lanterns and go in an underground cenote system with narrow tunnels. exciting!

as well we will visit xcaret which is a giant nature eco park - partly natural, partly manmade - that might take the entire day :) - animals, plants, snorkeling

i am excited to be going with tressa and for the buffets...ha. so much good food.

finally, david gray is coming to saskatoon, and i am a fan. i have got tressa to like him too, and we have 3rd row seats in a small-medium sized ("comfy") venue on may 18th

So what is new with me?
Well, a lot! In chronological order:

I watched some very good World Junior hockey games including both semifinals. The second semifinal between USA and Sweden was very, very good. Extremely fast and skilled players. Thought Sweden should of won that contest.

Got sick (ok I guess this part was not 'good fortune'). Had strep throat for almost two weeks, missed some work and had a low key New Years.

Tressa's luck turned around! She has had a lot of good fortune in 2010 including health, accolades and financial events. She is my lil' panda and I am very happy to still be with her.

I finished doing a technical review for the first round of editing of the upcoming book PHP: The Good Parts. It turned out to be more time consuming then I thought it would be, but was an honour. For my effort, I get some free books of my choice from O'Reilly and my name in the book, so that is very cool.

tressa is a good cook. she gave me two good reasons to learn how.

1. her meals tasted much better than mine - so I thought "I should cook too, then meals would always be good"
2. it is somewhat embarrassing to not be able to cook (and now I feel better since I can cook half a dozen good meals)

here is a sample meal by tressa - beef kebobs with a baked potato and caesar salad. yummy!

there are additional benefits - financial, convenience (leftovers), health

recently in saskatoon and throughout the province, we have experienced frigid arctic air and strong winds. this has resulted in a week or so of -30° C to -35° C temperatures with windchill of -40° C to -50° C.

this means frequent car starts if you work at a place without plugins, boosting friends, frostbite in a few minutes....mexico sounds nice about now. so does my automatic car starter getting installed in mid january (should of booked when the temperature was nice)

on the plus side, this is good movie watching weather.