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New Zealand sabbatical
My employer has an amazing benefit – after 5 years of employment with them, they offer a 4-week sabbatical (and after 10 years, 5 weeks; 15 years, 6 weeks!). I have to say looking forward to my sabbatical definitely kept me going during rough times over the past 7 years (I’m overdue taking mine) – I wonder how much it affects retention for them. And now I’ve only got 3 & 1/2 years til my next one! Most people seem to use their sabbatical to travel, and I was no exception. I opted to spent three weeks in New Zealand with my grandmother (my dad’s mom). She’s very special to…
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All of a sudden it’s June
Aaand…we’re back! From Jamaica, New Zealand, and many other local adventures… The last time I posted on here was March 30, which was about a week before we left for Jamaica for a wedding. Jamaica was incredibly fun – it was our first experience together at an all-inclusive resort (Nick had been a few times with family, I had never been to one) and it’s going to become a yearly thing for us. Being in the Caribbean where the only thing you have to worry about is if your drink cup is empty or what was the last time you applied sunscreen was totally the most relaxing vacation we’ve ever…
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March Updates
I’m cooking some collard greens right now!! Using this recipe. It smells absolutely DIVINE. I’ve never had collard greens before – I guess they’re a southern American thing – but the way that these smell, I think I could love them!! Another thing that we really love here are food trucks and Mexican Coke, which is made with sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup. I guess this shouldn’t make any difference, but there definitely is some kind of different flavour about it! I don’t know if I would say it tastes more “natural”, but it’s a different taste from regular Coke- I would say less sweet, and with more “spiciness”,…
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Spring in SJ, and the Winchester Mystery House
Well, it’s officially shorts and tshirt weather!! This also means it’s beer-on-the-back patio weather (Happy St Paddy’s Day!): And primo bike ride and hiking weather (not that the weather has been stopping us or anything anyway, but I needed a third thing): Oh yeah! And surfing weather! Surf’s up! Look at them all! But what this post is mainly about, is our visit to the Winchester Mystery House. There are billboards advertising this place all over San Jose. The billboards make it seem like a haunted house, but it doesn’t seem haunted…it just has a weird past. In 1884, Sarah Winchester, the widow of the treasurer…
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SF Zoo & The Flying Karamazov Brothers
It’s been busy and the weather has been super beautiful in San Jose!! It’s been distracting me from updating because I just want to be outside all the time, and then I’m too tired to update the blog! We’ve been up to a bunch of cool new stuff, but I want to start where we left off — when we came back from our Seattle road trip. The Friday after we got back, a friend was in town for work, and joined us at a play we were seeing that night at the San Jose Repertory Theatre (yes, they actually spell THEATRE correctly!!) called The Flying Karamazov Brothers. The play was more…
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Road Trip to Seattle & Back
I think I mentioned a while ago that Nick and I were planning to drive up to Seattle over the President’s Day weekend (Family Day weekend for those back home). Well, we did it, and survived, and we even had an amazing amount of fun despite being in a car less than a foot away from eachother for at least 7 hours a day. Honestly, I was worried I would not enjoy a road trip (it was my first), but it was SO much fun and I’d definitely do a long drive like that again! This was our planned round-trip route up the coast along highway 1 on the way…
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Playing Tourist in San Francisco
Nick attended at the MacWorld conference in San Francisco last week from Thursday through Saturday, so we seized the day and booked a hotel room in downtown SF for Friday-Saturday nights, and spent the weekend up there! It was a big weekend for San Francisco as the 49ers were in the Superbowl – unfortunately not a win for us, but still a great time to be in San Francisco all the same. San Francisco is such a beautiful city. I had been there many times for work, but never had the chance to just walk around and explore as a tourist. On Friday night, we went to a restaurant called…
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Great weather and great hockey
Well, it’s the end of January and seems to be warming up a bit here, slowly but surely! It’s been bike-able in the mornings (I define bike-able as over 40F/5C, which seems to be my threshold), and downright beautiful in the afternoons, getting up to 72F/20C on a frequent basis. I was running some errands this afternoon and (ecstatically) put the top down!! Last weekend we decided that instead of a hike we’d go for a long bike ride. We chose the Coyote Creek trail because it was close, paved, had good reviews, and we could go a total of 35 miles / 56km round-trip if we wanted to.…
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Stile Ranch Trail and GO SHARKS!!!!
Last weekend was another beautiful one with sunny days and highs around 23C/74F. I wonder if we’ll ever get used to it. I know everyone in Ottawa is laughing at me right now, but I do find that I miss the change in season from winter to spring. I love those first few days of spring, with temperatures warm enough to open windows (anything above 10C/50F counts as “warm” after a winter of -20C) and go outside with only a light sweater or jacket. I also miss the smell of spring – of the snow melting and new things growing. Still, I suppose the tradeoff is that one never has…
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Catch in the park, Sonoma, and Lagunitas Brewing Co
It’s been unusually cold in California this winter, but it’s been warming up over the past couple of weeks. Last weekend Nick and I went and played catch in the park on a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon, and had to wear sweaters. Even though it was only 55F/13C, an ice cream truck drove by! We went and played catch again today, and it was about 68F/20C. No sweaters today! We wore tshirts. But also no ice cream truck. The locals are telling us that it is most certainly still winter here, but we feel like this is spring weather (and it seems like so do a lot of people –…