Pat & Walter: March 2004 Archives

March 29, 2004

Couple photos of Jupiter

First image taken!...

Showing some stars...

Click to enlarge.

Posted by wbrooks at 12:27 AM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2004

Pat & Dawn in Tremblant

On the weekend of March 19 to 22 Pat went to Tremblant with Dawn (high school chum)

On March 19, 2004 Dawn and Pat arrived in Tremblant for a fun filled girls weekend. Friday night we enjoyed tubing near the Comfort Inn at St. Jovite. Basically, you hop onto a big tube and fly down one of the available runs that are marked, blue, black diamond, and double black diamond. After collecting your tube at the bottom you hook yourself onto a tube pull that drags you and your tube back to the top to try again. No real exercise but lots of fun.

Dawn had no problems remembering how to ski. I kept to my board and we enjoyed hitting the slopes both Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Sunday afternoon we went Ice Climbing on one of the frozen waterfalls near the base of Tremblant. Our instructor was an absolute hoot and once I got over the fear of repelling it was an awesome experience. First, we climbed a short distance up with only our crampons.

Next, we were given one ice pick and off we climbed up the waterfall. Dawn, went up first allowing me to follow using some of her ice pick holes for my feet. While one climbed the other worked the belay.

Then we moved to a more difficult area, and climbed with two ice picks.

We think this Ice Climbing will become a yearly tradition.

Posted by wbrooks at 08:09 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2004

Salt water aquarium

We bought a larger aquarium for our Cichlids, so we decided to convert the old 42 gallon tank into salt water.

It has taken a number of weeks to get the tank ready for fish. The first week was just to get the sand in the tank and get the level of salt at the proper amount. It's amazing how much salt we had to put into this. Then we bought some "live" rocks and let them sit for a couple of weeks. Live rock contain beneficial bacteria and such to maintain a healthy aquarium. Then we put in a half dozen turbo snails, and a half dozen blue legged hermit crabs. They had to be in for 2 weeks while we added more chemicals to get the calcium (I think) up and get some "pink stuff" growing on the rocks. Well today we finally have some real fish in the aquarium! We went with a couple yellow tangs for our first fish since they are supposed to be hardy. Of course, when I got home, I read that you shouldn't have more than one tang in most aquariums since they are territorial.

First pic of the yellow tang... click to enlarge.

Posted by wbrooks at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

Pete's 40th Birthday

Travelled up to Ottawa March 13th for Peter's 40th birthday party.

It was supposed to be a surprise, but I'm not sure if it ended up being one. Even if it wasn't, I think a good time was had by everyone. We started out with a well attended game of street hockey with the girls doing their best to try to amputate some fingers. Then we went inside for an awesome two man band (piano and guitar).

(I played photographer for the night)

[Click on images for larger version]

Street hockey...