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.

I enjoy challenge. You probably do too. Without challenge their is boredom and routine. However, I have to qualify this. For challenge to be enjoyable:

1. it has to be solvable, or atleast appear solvable
2. you have to make progress every so often. be thrown a bone or two.
3. it has to be something that puzzles not a challenge because you are doing things the hard way or with an inadequate toolkit ie) rebuilding a car engine with only a toothbrush is not enjoyable

I made a herbed chicken parmesan with orzo pasta and baked broccoli, all from scratch. it was delicious!

I am getting all my recipes from a cookbook i bought called "cooking light: the essential dinner tonight cookbook". I recommend the entire Cooking Light family.

Here is the succulent, which we named Sunni, that I bought Tressa. He's growing - about two inches now and was transplanted.

as everyone who watched live, like me ; ) (free ticket from work), or on tv knows, this was a tough loss for rider fans to take. montreal alouettes beat the saskatchewan roughriders 28-27 in 97th grey cup. up by two touchdowns and two-two point converts with less than a quarter to play, the roughriders let victory slip away. lack of first downs when it mattered and a very costly last play flag. as rider fans we are not used to being ahead...comebacks are easier to take from the other perspective

and then the alouette fans came out of the woodworks! was a sombre scene in downtown calgary after the game - nothing like the explosive party it might have been...

tressa and i lucked out on our hotel - a fairly independent, brand new one - acclaim hotel - by the airport with rooftop hot tubs for only $130 night. i recommend it

we were very tired from driving, but managed to miss most of the blizzard that apparently took place (but not the overly cautious drivers who were causing some problems). and we saw a bad crash aftermath in a really foggy stretch.