Dom's Night Out

Dom and his boys went to see the Foo Fighters a couple of weeks ago. It was priceless. Dom was so excited he downloaded the words, e-mailed them to his friends and then spent the day practicing so that he could rock out, hard. Unfortunately, he missed his cue during the actual song. Maybe next time...

The Cleaning Staff

My mom tries to keep her cleaning staff a secret...however, last time I was home I managed to get a couple of photos. Notice the concentration? I hear they only get paid if they get all the crumbs off the floor.

Surviving the Storm

We'll call this GUEST BLOG NO.2 or STEVE'S WEEK OF "FREEDOM" PART DEUX (take note that the last so-called week of freedom was approximately one year ago ... I'm not drawing any conclusions from this but you can feel free to do so...). While the last time I posted a blog-entry my tongue was firmly planted in my cheek this time my intetion is to be dead-serious.

For those of you who may not know much of Eastern Canada got, (let's say) pistol-whipped (for the benefit of some of our more sensitive readership) by a nasty winter storm over the past weekend. Earlier in the week, the younger sister, our resident champion athlete, due to her physical superiority (for discussions of inferiority see a future blog entitled THE LIFE AND TIMES OF STEPHEN R ... I mean, seriously, I'd challenge any of you to live with a gold-medallist and a frickin' male model and not encounter feelings of crippling inferiority) felt no fear in proclaiming not once, not twice but three times "I think winter is over." Hubris of this sort seldom goes unpunished ...

So, the snow started on Friday night, really soggy bigs flakes (at least here in Montreal). By Saturday morning the wind had picked up and was basically blowing the snow sideways, replete with little icy pelletes (grappelle) that blow into your eyes like grains of sand and slap you across the face like thousands of tiny scorned maidens. Check out the views of Ste. Curmudgeon Avenue, first looking west toward the Market and then east towards Robin Hood (Prince of Neiges?).




In a normal city this type of storm might hinder the everyday lives of the citizens but in Montreal things continued almost as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. Check out our neighbour with his pets (its easy to keep the canine motif running through my blogposts with people like this around), I think their names are (from left to right) Monsiuer Pouf, Herr Gammers, Sloppy Joe, Mademoiselle Paris, Throw Pillow and Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Dog.



Anyway, I was headed up to the school/the North Pole to meet my friend Rob for beer (you see when guys get together without their wives they don't bother with food ... as John Lennon sang, "all you need is beer"). After nearly being knocked to the ground by a gust of wind which pushed me into a knee-deep snowdrift and then subsequently avoiding the horrible scenario of wiping out on ice more polished than the hairless skin on a male-model's chest, I managed to make my way to the metro. As I approached I began to become confused, like Zoolander in a way ... "who am I", I thought, Stephen Rogers, Drrr. or Roald Amundsen, explorer of the earth's polar regions and first man to reach both the North and South Poles. The fur-lined coat and beard may have had something to do with my identity crisis. [see photo]


Once in the metro, the reprieve helped me sort out the issue, until I arrived at the school and saw this scene where a group of students had gathered after a concert at the music building.


Imagine my surprise when one of them that I knew, lets call him Pete for the sake of anonymity, stopped me to ask what I thought about the ramifications of the aggregate harmonic columns in the Fifth Movement of Pulcininini's Opera No.1, Opus 34. I quickly chirped something back to him and went inside. I met Rob in the lobby and even though he was just visiting from the states where they hardly ever get snow, he was better prepared for the storm than even I was. As they say: "you can rob the Canada from under a man's feet but never from his heart" ... or something like that.



We went out and had a great night indoors. And, just to prove that I didn't make this all up, here's a photo of the day after from the doors that lead out to our balcony. The snow bank was literally taller than me and my (tall) tale.



Guest-blogger, out!!!

NYC

Steve and I took a bite out of the Big Apple this past weekend and wow, was it UNBELIEVABE!! NYC is a place that you just have to see to be able to believe it: the lights, the people, the energy, the noise...

You'll note that I went a little blog crazy here but that's only because we went totally NYC photo crazy when we were there putting our new camera to work! I think the most unbelievable part of this city is just that you cannot comprehend what it is like until you are there. There are huge buildings everywhere.

We drove into NYC Wednesday afternoon thinking that we were prepared for the driving thanks to all of the crazy Montreal drivers - ha! After a quick pit stops in the Bronx - for a cash machine to pay the bridge tolls (I turtled in the car while Steve made a very very quick stop into a very very sketchy corner mart) - we managed to navigate our way to Erin's place after which we immediately parked the car vowing not to drive again until we had to navigate our way out of the City on Sunday! We spent the first couple hours wandering Astoria which is where Erin lives and then caught up with her for the evening.

We got our first real glimpse of Manhatten Thursday morning when we followed Erin to her office which is located about two steps from Time Sqaure. After pointing us in the right direction, she went to work and we spent the first couple of hours just wandering around trying to get our bearings. We managed to hit a number of must see sights on Day One: Grand Central Station, Time Square, Central Park, the UN, Rockerfeller Centre, and the Empire State Building, to name a few.

While we woke up to the first major snowfall that Manhatten had this winter on Day Two it didn't slow us down and we spent the dayexploring lower Manhatten: specifically the World Trade Centre Site, the Stock Exchange, the Federal Hall, the Court House, City Hall and many more. We hit the Moma right before dinner thinking that we would be the only tourists taking advantage of its free admission and instead enjoyed the museum with us and our closest 10,000 other NYC tourists. That night we hit Tribeca with Erin for drinks and dinner.

On Day Three we took the Staten Island Ferry for a ride, hit a 7 story designer clothing store (well Erin and I did, Steve sat on the stairs taking pictures of the chaos and crying) and then wandered Soho for a couple of hours before wrapping up the night with a new music concernt and a Susan Sarandon sighting.

Sunday was a bit of a quite day as we spent the morning hanging in Astoria with Erin until we had worked up the courage to brave the traffic and head out of town. I never thought I would say this but driving home through the Montreal traffic seemed almost like driving in Spruce Grove!

As our sampling of pictures show, it was a great trip and so fun to catch up with Erin. Thanks for being such a host E-Ro, we love you.

Val David

Jenny came to hang with us this weekend - so fun, especially since it's our second weekend in a row hanging out as I went to Ottawa last weekend.
Yesterday the three of us - Steve, Jenny and I - went into the Laurentian Mountains and did some snow shoing in Val David. Val David is a really cute little town absolutely overflowing with cross country skiers and snow shoers. After our snow shoe we went and relaxed at the Polar Spa which is a Eurpoean type spa where you rotate between really hot, really cold and then relaxation. The really hot was a choice of either a sauna or steam room and the really cold was a dip in the river running beside the spa!!! Seriously, there is a whole in the ice where you can lay down for about 0.15 seconds before gasping for breath and racing out. Suprisingly, it feels wonderful when you remember to breathe again and then you finish the rotation with a time out period in a warmish room before you start all over again.
Today we are leaving Steve at home and heading up to the Plateau for some Montreal shopping!!!!!
PS. we miss you Glenno

More Avi

Since Jods has been way too tired to write on her blog but not too tired to send me some more photos of the new babe; and since I have done NOTHING since returning to Montreal except sit at my computer and bang out memo's on medical malpractice, I decided to update the blog with more pictures of Avi. Kate, Jessica...if you get over to see her make sure you take your cameras!

Aviana Violet

Jods sent me the first pictures of Avi. Of course she is gorgeous. We cannot wait to come home and snuggle with her!

Rudolpha Wynne

Rudolpha Wynne arrived this morning at 6 am. She weighed in at 6 lbs 8 ounces. Mom and baby are doing great. Despite the fact that I was the only one to believe from the get go that she was a girl, her actual given name is Aviana Violet. Also a very pretty name~
Osh and Ry were going up to take pictures this afternoon so I will post them when they arrive in my in box.
Congrats and lots of love to the whole Audenart family from the Heil/ Rogers/ Gauthier family out east.

Christmas Break

It's surprising that we have pictures of anything other than eating or drinking because it feels (and unfortunately looks) like all we did this past Christmas break. Our time at home was super busy but as always super fun! I worked for most of the time we were home and Steve spent a bunch of the break writing a paper: that being said we managed to pack in a million and one different activities: an early Christmas with Steve's family before the left for Mexico; a party at the cabin with our friends; a ski trip with the regular crew; the regular Christmas stuff with my family; boxing day with Steve's cousins and Aunt and then Vancouver for Jenny and Glenn's wedding , a couple of days with Kristen and Bill after the wedding, dinner with Trav and Jihye who just arrived in Vancouver from Korea, a night with Dave and Nicole and then Mark's wedding before we flew home. Oh yah, I threw in a root canal and physical on Steve's birthday just so I wasn't too cheery. He hates cheery people on his birthday! Anyways, here are some pictures from the differing events.

Jenny's wedding - what can I say other than she was the most beautiful bride and we all had such a wonderful time celebrating with her and Glenn.

Also, as the pictures show this holiday was dominated by a lot of different babies as well as a lot of guitar hero. Even my Gran played!

And finally, the picture of me and Aimes with the same outfit ... seriously that happened even an entire Continent apart. It really didn't help our single identify as "the Aimes" at the wedding!