Happy Birthday Ray!!!

Today Tom Cruise, Montel Williams, Quebec City, and the great Ray Delia celebrate birthdays. I'm excited to be spending Ray's 38th birthday with him this year. Last year at this time he was traveling to Moncton to interview for the job with the Wildcats. It has been a pretty low key day. Had some fresh cinnamon rolls this morning, watched some tennis, opened up a couple of presents, and just got done doing some last minutes errands before flying out tomorrow morning...the nice 6am flight out of town. I'm sure we'll figure out somewhere nice to go for dinner tonight to celebrate. Happy Birthday!

Oh Canada

Happy Canada Day!!! I can't believe that July 1st is already here! I guess that's largely due to the fact that it's been rainy and in the mid 50's & 60's this past week...but today finally feels like summer. I am still trying to figure out what people do here for this day of celebration. I look down the street and nobody has flags out and I haven't heard anything about fireworks tonight. All I do know is that here in Moncton, the city is pretty much shut down, like any other holiday.

My big plans for today is to stay in my pj's as long as possible (it's already after noon), watch Wimbeldon and relax. I LOVE this time of year! One day I'll make it to England to catch this tournament live. Watching always makes me want to get my tennis racket out and play.

Extended Vacation

An unexpected turn of events has extended my 15 day vacation to a permanent one. You see, my job with the cancer society was a contract position that was to last until January. I found out this week on Thursday that due to restructuring of the office, my position has been eliminated. My last day in the office was yesterday. It is not terrible news and I'm actually a bit excited that it has opened up some much needed free time. The upside is that I will remain on payroll and will continue my benefits until September 5th...nothing like getting paid for sleeping in and going to the gym! Like they say, all good things must come to an end.

Sooooo, Uncle Ray & Charlie Palooza officially began yesterday around 1pm. We kicked it off last night with dinner & drinks with Bill & Lyne and then headed over to the Bowlarama for a couple of games of Canada's very own, small ball bowling, bubble hockey (see video below; Ray dominated all three games!) and the crane game.



There are travel plans in the mix as well. Our flight leaves on Friday the 4th of July to Charlotte, NC. We will be spending a few days at my sister's house and "Pigeon Holler" (actually Pisgah Forest, but Ray can never remember that so this is what it has become) before heading back to beautiful Myrtle Beach. I am really excited that we are going back there. The condo that we stayed is perfectly situated right on the ocean and I can't wait to do some more shopping (Nike outlet here we come!!), enjoy the great restaurants (mmmMyabi!) and hang out on the beach. We weighed all of our options and with the cost of flights and travel these days, this option was by far the most cost effective. Plus, it's kinda nice that we know what to expect by going back.

Great People in New Brunswick!

The number one and best part about living here in New Brunswick are the people I have met since moving here. I've never lived in a place where people are so friendly and welcoming. The two couples pictured above are Kevin & Linda on the left, and Mary & Derek on the right. I met them this afternoon at a dinner reception that was held as part of the 2nd Annual Dave Horsman Memorial Golf Tournament. The golf tournament was held in memory of Dave Horsman who passed away from cancer. Kevin is Dave's brother and Derek is his nephew. I'm not sure if it was because of the cocktails they enjoyed on the course, or they're just naturally entertaining, but it was an absolute pleasure sitting with them. In fact, they will be receiving an e-mail with a link to the blog to check out the picture - Hi!!! It was really nice meeting you today.

The picture below is of Helen Horsman presenting the Canadian Cancer Society (me) a check, in the amount of $1,450.00, raised from the event. Helen did a wonderful job organizing the tournament, which 42 golfers participated, in memory of her late husband. Truly a fantastic family.

Golf in Prime Time

Let's start by saying this, Ray & I think golf should only be on our television as a precursor to a good nap. This brings us to last Sunday. Due to the 4 hour time difference between Atlantic Canada and lovely San Diego, we had prime time golf. And thanks to Tiger, the two of us were absolutely riveted to the drama at Torrey Pines! Literally, we came off the couch more than once with Tiger-like fist pumps of our own!! We were so into this golf tournament that Ray recorded the playoff round on Monday...we avoided all media contact so we could be surprised when we watched...this is where it gets dicey.

This was the US OPEN...that's United States for those scoring at home. Well, we recorded on TSN (Canada's ESPN & in Ray's opinion it far exceeds ESPN)...it seems that the US Open was not the #1 viewing item on the world's agenda...you see, at about the 10th hole of the playoff TSN cut in to inform us that they would be taking us to EURO 2008 for today's tournament action in SOCCER!!! WHAT?!?!?! After not viewing any mediums all afternoon so we didn't know the outcome...BOOM...we get shut out from the dramatic sudden death conclusion of the US OPEN!!! We ended up catching the ending on youtube...another indicator that we are not in the good ole USA....

Scenic Hopewell Rocks

This morning we were sitting on the couch and felt like doing a little day-trippin...so Ray hopped on the ol' computer and found a place called Hopewell Rocks that's about a 45 minute drive from home. Ancient geology and powerful tides created the backdrop of the picture above. Behind the rock formation is the Bay of Fundy, one of the Marine Wonders of the World (or so we were told). The Bay of Fundy sports tides the height of 4-story buildings and a coastline filled with these huge rock formations. We are literally standing on the ocean floor in this picture...pretty cool, eh!?!

This is an uplifting little piece of information prior to walking down to the ocean floor. If you look closely, it says "To avoid being trapped by the riding tide YOU MUST return to the stairs by the time shown here." Luckily we were there at 1:27 and had plenty of time to explore. Certainly worth synchronizing your watches to...I'm thinking the 4-story tides could prove to be quite the treacherous swim.

Relay For Life Moncton Huge Success

Well I have finally been able to breathe a sigh of relief...most of my time and energy for my first 6 months with the Canadian Cancer Society has been spent on making Relay For Life in Moncton successful...and that it was. There were over 200 cancer survivors (yellow shirts above) in attendance, 59 teams, a total of 660 participants, and 3,583 luminary candles lining the track. I surpassed my goal and have raised a total of $175,577.02 from the event! I would like to note that this is the most ever raised over the past 7 years of this event here...so that feels really good to be a part of. Thank you to all of you that helped support this event. It has taken me awhile to write this post because I have been absolutely exhausted from last week, both physically and mentally. I ended up working last week Mon-Thurs until 9pm at the office and then was on-site from 8am on Friday morning until 10am on Saturday morning. I think I shut my eyes for about 45 minutes around 3am. All-in-all, everything ran very smoothly and received a lot of positive comments from participants that said it was the best one yet here in Moncton!

Now I'm on to the next thing. I'm in charge of a few golf events throughout the summer and then curling in November. Ray and I are both taking June 30-July 15 off to relax and hopefully get out of town. No, we still don't know where we will be going - but I'm sure we'll figure that out.