44 cm and counting

Of snow that is. Finally a bit of winter :) A great day to go snow-shoeing, even though is was a bit chilly (-7 and super windy!).

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!! 

See you in 2013...

For better or for worse...

The start of the new year has been pretty good, until I got sick on Tuesday. Normally when people in the office are starting to cough and show runny noses, I just keep doing my thing and avoid any of those symptoms. That was, until this year. I felt down and blah for three days, had zero energy and just felt plain miserable. Thursday night something 'broke' and I came down with a full blown cold, which for some reason made me feel better! Well, to some extent...

On top of not feeling fit, we finally got hit by a hint of winter this week. Thursday we were treated to an extended period of freezing rain, which switched to snow Friday morning. After all said and done, we received about 20cm of snow on top of a layer of ice. Falling snow always has something romantic. Until the snow plough comes by and it takes about two hours to shovel the end of the driveway. The driveway itself is not a problem. In less than half an hour, everything is clean. But since we're on a corner lot, we get snow from two streets which simply amounts to a lot. And we haven't even had a real serious snow dump yet!  The mess we faced on Friday was about 3 ft high and 4ft wide (~0.9m and 1.2m). Not fun!
We're now seriously considering buying a snow blower. Not so much for the driveway, as just for the snow dump from the street ploughs. Maybe lazy, but if you're stuck it's nice knowing you can get out in a hurry if need be, without having to spend hours clearing a path...

Nolan taking a break in the snow bank after shovelling

Nice view from our living room

Kids playing hockey on the street

After the nice dump on Friday, temperatures dropped significantly on Friday night, with a high of -18 degrees on Saturday... Even though I still didn't feel great, we decided to get out on the snowshoes anyway, and I think that 'fresh' air has actually done me well.

We walked to the Greenbelt (literally 10 minutes away), put on our snowshoes and went! We both love getting out there, watching the sun through the trees, making our own paths in the freshly fallen snow (we stay off the regular paths so not to hinder cross country skiers), and just enjoy being out there. And even though it's 'chilly', as long as you keep moving it's really nice!

Sunday morning, our typical running morning, was even colder. I wasn't sure if I'd be up for a run, but I felt much better, and decided to try at least 6 k. We dressed warmly (almost overdressed!), and we ended up doing just under 10k. Not bad considering I hadn't done anything for a week!

And just in case you're curious, your lungs won't freeze when you run in -23 weather! We cover our nose and mouth, but once you're going, that comes off as well. You should try it!

And this one just because I'm a crazy cat lady :)

Training and the return of winter...

This past week I was lucky enough to take a three day training session on Learning Organization Community of Practice (LOCoP) for advanced practitioners, focusing on strategic planning. The session was facilitated and led by Sylvie Lapointe, who is an absolutely fabulous teacher. She started her own company, L2Emerge, a few years ago but used to work for CFS. If you ever need a facilitator, I highly recommend her!
The days were intensive, but very productive. The funny thing is that we never thought that we would actually talk about strategic planning, vision, etc. Beforehand I thought the session would more focus on the preparation before you facilitate a session, which we talked about as well, but it was so much more! And on top of it all, it fit in perfectly with our National Research Forests session that we planned for Monday and Tuesday.  We received some great guidelines for a 'Taking Stock' exercise. Guess what was on our agenda for Tuesday morning? Indeed: Taking Stock. We thought we would just talk about it for a bit, and move on, but now we actually have the tools to make it successful. Same for a mission statement we're trying to come up with; we now know how to tackle this effectively without it being too dry, and making sure everybody is involved and have their say!
This training also fits in very nicely with the SRI International training I took in the fall. The approaches are slightly different, but they both offer very valuable points and advice, and we'll be using both strategies next week. It is just really nice that an investment in training is actually useful.

I was supposed to leave for Petawawa this morning to guide a group of university students around the PRF, but woke up to a crazy blizzard! It was a bit unexpectedly, especially since we received 30mm of rain yesterday, and were maybe secretly hoping that winter would come to an end. No such luck! So I decided to cancel my trip, and now I'll go up tomorrow morning instead. Missed my coffee date with Krista though :(
We almost went running as well, but decided last minute that it would probably be a disaster and went snowshoeing instead. Never knew that snowshoeing in wet, fresh snow could prove to be such a great workout! We were both sweaty and had our heart rates racing! We put them on about 5 minutes from our house, and just snowshoed down the streets. There was more than enough snow, and now plough in sight! Until this afternoon of course, when we could go out and shovel the end of our driveway again. I guess being on a corner lot does have one disadvantage: we seem to be getting an awful lot of snow dumped on our driveway. And consequently, our snowbank is the highest in the street!

Snow!

In a previous post (see here), I showed some pictures of Murphy, showing off his cute self. Since he's really good at that, I decided to add some more. Just one warning, there are a few of them...

But Fertile can look cute as well:

Quite the princess:

Murphy loves the stairs. His favourite place to sleep when we're watching tv.

Yesterday we finally had a bit of a snow storm. Sure, in some place it caused some havoc, especially in the United States, but I guess we got a little bit as well. I think in the end we might have ended with another 20 cm, but it was the blowing snow that really made it feel like we received a 2-foot dump.
A few more photos to get an impression. Next time there will be more text!