2008: Week 3

This week Calgary plunged into a more typical winter weather pattern - cold and more cold! My thermometer reads -20.5C as I write this, and there is quite a bit of snow outside. For now, the snow brings the challenge of driving on compacted snow and working out how to melt the frozen slush that has accumulated behind the wheels. I can hear the tyres scraping on it every time I turn. The real fun begins in a few days when the weather warms up enough to melt the snow. It takes quite a while to melt completely, so there is a cycle of melting and re-freezing overnight to give a road surface similar to a skating rink.

Other events of note include 2 restaurant dinners - Italian on Friday for a work function, and Ethiopian tonight with work friends. The Ethiopian was very good. It's a small local place, not very fancy, but around half the patrons appeared to be African, and food was excellent and reasonably priced. The Italian was good, but not as good as you'd expect for a $35 main dish. I don't think I'd be spending my own money there.

Best of the week
- New recipes - cannelloni and BBQ pork soup - which both turned out well. Filling the cannelloni was particularly fun.
- Varied teaching style in our French class with a substitute teacher who gave some very helpful critiques of our speaking skills.
- Sending off a second long-overdue paper to my PhD supervisor.
- Views of the snow covered Rocky Mountains on clear mornings.

Worst of the week
- Cold gray days. Calgary is usually sunny even when it's freezing - gray days are much harder to endure.
- Being far away from most of my good friends :(