The weather was excellent last weekend. I was on-call but, fortunately, the world is not without nice people. My colleague Virgil was very kind to cover me for couple hours so that we could enjoy our first skating experience in Ottawa.
There were impressive number of people:

My son Alex is a hero. He spent couple hours outside and by the time I could finally force him to go home the temperature went down to -15 with light breeze and somewhat high humidity. According to the local weather network it felt like 25 below zero.

Couple weeks ago we went skiing for the first time in Canada. We choose Camp Fortune for few hours of night skiing - it’s only 15 minutes from downtown Ottawa.
I’ve got one shot to share. It’s not the best but hey my Olympus C-5060 is quite old. I guess I have to think about proper [...]

Today we had a “bye-bye Doug” dinner at Lone Star Texas Grill. From left to right - Alex Jr., me, Paul, Nicole, Olga and Doug (already switched to UK time zone as you can see):

They have excellent Fajitas. Of course, they serve Corona which is my second favorite beer after… eh… well, you know. They [...]

Finally, I have some time to post few photos for those of you who haven’t seen Ottawa at night. I wish I had a better camera and wide angle lenses to capture certain scenes. Maybe next year…
You can see the the full album here and few highlights below:

My life is much better here in Canada since few month ago when I discovered that LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario - the only Liquor Store in Ontario) caries Guinness in cans. Coupled with salt and vinegar chips - it’s a perfect dinner for me.
It could be the ideal breakfast as well but [...]

It looks like finally the weather is “nice” enough for skiing. Recalling our skiing trips in Austrian Alps last year I can’t stop thinking about my favorite food there - Knoblauchrahmsuppe. Yum-Yum! I think I can translate it like garlic cream soup. I had to find some local substitutes here in Canada. Nevertheless, it tasted [...]

Last weekend we went to the Canadian Museum of Civilization. We liked very much the Canada Hall. The Grand Hall and the First People Hall were not that interesting mainly because Alex Jr. was pretty much bored there. Obviously, he enjoyed more the Children’s Museum area.
Very impressive was IMAX theater where we watched the Deep [...]

UKOUG 2006 is over and I was planning to finally provide a bit more details about it especially now when wireless internet is usable - during the conference there were way too many people connected and it was difficult to get in. It’s really nice that they left a Wi-Fi access point working after conference [...]

Doug Burns posted a long awaited Cow today. This is quite different from what I see here in Munich.
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PS: Others on the pix are my son, wife and sister.
PPS: To many TARs updated last days - I just realized that I put dots on empty line just like on [...]