Saturday, October 31, 2009

Boise Sightseeing & Other Happenings..

Happy Halloween everyone!

Last weekend the weather was nice so Katie and I took a little drive a did some sightseeing. Pictures below:
Boise Sightseeing Pictures!

Otherwise, things have been cruising along. My job has been busy with numerous projects, far more than our staff can reasonably tackle right now. The $3.4 billion smart grid stimulus package is expected to make things even more busy. At this point I'm a little worried whether we'll be able to keep up! Also, I've been having some ergonomic issues at work and decided to splurge on a fancy super adjustable office chair. Based on positive experience with the chair at Micron, I chose the Haworth Zody from a local purveyor of office furniture. It cost $600 but I'm confident it will be worth it! When you pay that much for a chair you get to choose the fabric pattern, color, and have a designer vet your choices. Sadly it won't be under my bum for another three weeks or so.

Katie's job has also been keeping her busy, but thankfully there haven't been any working Saturdays with her new position.

As I type we just got our first trick-or-treaters. Last year we only got 20 or so. Next weekend we're off to Texas for a mini-vacation to visit the Vickery family out there!

Monday, October 12, 2009

Turkey Day, eh?!

So, today is the official Canadian Thanksgiving, and we did it up right at the Vickery household! For all of our American readers, you may have always wondered why those crazy Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving at a different time than in the US...well, wonder no more! I've answered this question roughly 40 times in the past 5 days, so I'm basically a professional at this.
Canada doesn't have Plymouth Rock or the Mayflower to celebrate; our Thanksgiving is more of a celebration of the harvest, and since it gets colder earlier in Canada, the harvest is obviously earlier than it is south of the border. We eat the same food, and many of us watch football (both the American & Canadian versions!). It was really strange to me, when I first moved to the US, that Thanksgiving was only a month before Christmas...that's a lot of turkey in a month! So, there you have it...everything you've wanted to know about Canadian Thanksgiving.
Here in Boise, I cooked up a couple of turkey breast tenderloins with rosemary, and made some cranberry sauce from fresh berries (thanks for the recipe, Mom!). We also had Yukon Gold mashed potatoes. Of course I made sure to wish everyone at work a Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! Overall, it was a pretty low-key Thanksgiving - we didn't even get a day off, which is ridiculous in my opinion...I should be able to celebrate all Canadian AND American holidays!! (how great would that be?! I can dream)
This time last year, Mom, Dad, Dave & Greg were all here visiting for the long weekend, and we had a fabulous dinner with Bonnie & Gary. What a fun weekend that was - it was so great to have you all here - and what wonderful memories we have. Wish we could have been in Vancouver for this year's dinner, I'm sure it was excellent!

Other than the celebration of a Canadian holiday, it's been pretty laid-back around here. We got a Wii system last weekend, and have been busy learning all about that - we just got Wii Fit Plus this past weekend, which is really cool - each person has their own character (called a Mii...haha), and you play a whole bunch of different games & do workouts along with a trainer, it's like an interactive video game. Wii Fit has aerobics, strength training, and yoga, along with lots of other things, and it tracks your weight loss & BMI changes. So far we're both really enjoying it, and getting some exercise to boot!

I hope everyone is having a great Monday/Thanksgiving Holiday!
Love,
Katie & Zach