We celebrated Thanksgiving here in Canada this past weekend. I hope everyone had a good one!

My long weekend was filled with Canucks hockey, a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner and time with the family, and of course… more furniture sanding, painting, and refinishing.

Thanks to the awesome people at Canucks Hockey Blog (Hi JJ and Mozy!), Allan and I won tickets to the Canucks Open Practice this past Saturday. Now, tickets were free anyway, but they scored us awesome seats in Row 1 right beside the players’ bench!

It was great to see all the fans come out to support the team… and also great to see all the families and kids there. It’s a great event that everyone can afford to go to, and the team put on an exciting performance.

The practice was filled with various drills and scrimmages, and lots of goofing around from the players. I especially enjoyed the showboating during the shootout at the end of the practice. We had an awesome time and it got us all pumped for the game on Sunday night (which the Canucks won in an awesome shootout of course… must have been all that shootout practice … right?).

The rest of Saturday and Sunday was spent mostly hunting for furniture, and sanding and painting. It’s amazing how much time it takes. We’ve spent dozens of hours already on just our dressers.

I spent Sunday afternoon cooking in the kitchen with my mom… and I think we put together a pretty nice spread! My dad did the turkey, which is (in my opinion) the best… he makes an amazing overnight brine for the turkey with fresh herbs from the garden… and of course it is cooked all day in the oven until it is fall apart tender.

We also had Kansas City ribs (no pre-made sauces, only fresh herbs and tomato sauce made from tomatoes from the garden, and oranges), avocado and beet salad, home made Ciabatta bread, roasted potatoes with carrots and blue potatoes from the garden, a vegetable tian with parmesan and bread crumbs, sparkling grape juice punch made from homegrown grapes, and some homemade chocolate crème brûlée from dessert.

Judging from the amount of food on Allan’s plate I think it turned out pretty good!

Monday was spent hunting for furniture, and finally completing the last coats of lacquer finish on the dresser. Here’s a shot of our setup in my parent’s garage. I will have before and after photos for you when all the bedroom furniture is done. We still have the bed to do!

Although I try to remember what I am thankful for every day at some point during yoga or prayer, Thanksgiving is always a good time to formalize it. So, here is what I am thankful for…

- Allan… my wonderful partner who means everything to me in this world! Thank you for always making me laugh and that we never get bored of spending time with each other.
- My amazing parents and my little brother… my whole family who I’m so grateful to be so close to.
- Our beautiful city and province where we can do all the activities we love to do
- Friends, for always being there for me
- My job and my coworkers
- A healthy body and mind!

What are you thankful for? What did you do this past weekend?

Last night was the single greatest, most meaningful moment to me in Canucks history. My favourite player, my hero, my captain, and my role model had his #16 lifted to the skies and retired forever. So many people have had so many amazing things to say about Trevor Linden over the past week, so I’ll try not to be too repetitive here.

You can read this post about how Trevor Linden and the Canucks have been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember. I got the chance to meet Trevor a couple years ago, and I can honestly say that he is just as kind and handsome in person as everyone’s made him out to be. Thanks for taking the time to sign my jersey, Trevor. You always had time for the fans.

Despite my best efforts to get tickets on Ticketmaster for this game, there weren’t any available even when they were advertised to go on sale. So I ended up having to buy them from scalpers back in September. It was worth every penny. I could only afford to go to one game this year, and this was THE game. I thought the #16 pins they were handing out at the gates at GM Place were a nice touch. I’m going to treasure mine forever.

GM Place really lit up nicely with the old Canucks colours. I still miss the old jerseys and the old colours. We were sitting 3 rows from the ice to the right of the goalies and it was a great view.

Linden imagery was everywhere, including the sides of the stadium.

Gino Odjick and other teammates showed up to pay tribute to Linden, but I cheered the loudest for Gino.

All the current Canucks players were wearing #16 jerseys for the ceremony and the warm up. What a cool sight to see.

Linden was given a Mike Wiegele Helicopter Skiing gift from his teammates. All I can say is… JEALOUS!!!!!!!!

Linden’s speech was incredible. What a stand up, classy guy. He somehow managed to make a night all about him, to a night all about his friends, family and fans. Somehow he turned around the spotlight on him, to a thank you to everyone around him. I was misty-eyed the whole night, but the tears started forming near the end of his speech. I have to admit I was really bawling by the time his number was being raised to the rafters.

There ceremony ended, and I’m sure many others like myself found it hard to switch over to the fast-paced rough hockey game that ensued. It was great to see the Canucks beat the Oilers, but my heart and mind was somewhere else.

I decided to go festive and wore Canucks Christmas stockings (with the feet cut out of them) as leggings.

I wore my Linden jersey (that I custom added a ‘C’ for Captain to). I’ve never seen so many Linden jerseys at GM Place EVER! The coolest ones were the old ones from his Junior years.

Face off…

Canuck players stand up and look out over the bench at an exciting fight taking place.

I took this photo of Burrows for Amy

This shot was taken right before the goal. Shame I wasn’t able to get the actual goal, but it’s a neat action shot.

GOAL!!!!!!!!!!!

It was a good win for the Canucks over the Oilers. What a great night overall. The folks at GM Place did a great job organizing the night… making the fans feel special and putting together something really memorable for Linden.

After the game, I stood and looked at Trevor’s number in the rafters for a while. Hanging beside Stan Smyl’s and the Canadian flag. I’m so proud to be fan of the greatest player to ever wear a Canucks jersey, and I will always cherish the memory of seeing his number raised.

I miss having Trevor to cheer for. I will always be a Canucks fan, but I can’t help but feel like it’s a little different now. I can’t help but feel a little empty without #16 on the ice.

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In other news, the Canucks just signed Mats Sundin. I’m not stoked. I want a good Canadian player to join the Canucks. But if he helps us get the Cup, that’d be great, but I’m still not a Sundin fan. Darn, why couldn’t you have gone with Naslund to the Rangers?! He’s basically retired. He was a Leafs captain. There’s no real educated reason why I don’t want him on the Canucks. It just doesn’t feel right. Isn’t this a step backwards? Doesn’t it feels like we just got rid of a Naslund-like character? *sigh* Didn’t we already go through this with Messier? I know there will be a lot of opposing opinions… Anyway. From Linden to Sundin. Times are definitely a’changing’.

It felt good to get up bright and early, before the rest of the world really started moving around… driving up the Sea-to-Sky highway towards Whistler Blackcomb with an orange glow in the morning sky.

It felt good to get changed in the parking lot, ride the gondola and chairs up, and strap in my boots, and lay board to snow for the first time in a long time.

It also felt good to find some small powder stashes, get my blood pumping again and get the ol’ muscles moving again!

However, It felt really, really bad to put a huge dent in my rail near the end of the day. Darn!

Let’s go over this in photos.

Whistler is still pretty green as you can tell. The snowbase was at 55 cm today. It was pretty rocky but there was still some soft stuff to be found.

I brought along my backpack and all my camera gear. Trying out the GoPro Camera here again, but this time for snowboarding.

Allan fiddles with the camera.

Lots of icicles forming on the chairlift. They started looking really beautiful.

Here’s a series of shots where I find some powder:

SWOOOOOSH powder turn.

This really caught my eye in the morning. I loved how the morning sun was coming up, just touching the faces of a couple rocks on the side of the mountain… everything was blue and cold, except for the warm yellow on just a few rocks… they looked like they were waking up.

Jersey Cream was as high as we made it, we decided not to hike today. It was pretty busy, but not as busy as it could have been on Opening Day. We rode the singles line and only waited a couple minutes in line each time. Not too shabby!

Yeah, let’s not talk about this too much. So I completely dinged in my rail on a rock… my beloved board is now in the Board Room board shop getting its rail completely replaced by the awesome and ever-caring hands of Anthony, board medic. I suppose it’s a good excuse to get a new board… but I wanted to have a powder board + a groomer board. Now I just might have to go for All Mountain. Ah well, such is life! It’s a bit dumb riding around on rocks but it was so, so worth it just to ride the snow again.

On our way back, we stopped at Granville Island like we do every week and picked up some groceries. Since we were completely ravenous after a full day, I picked out some free-range beef tenderloin medallions. Marinated it in some sauce, garlic, Habaneros peppers, and Jalapeno peppers. Then seared it on all sides, and baked it in the oven. Topped it with a nice peppercorn Brandy sauce and freshly picked wild BC chanterelle mushrooms. Side dishes are fresh organic veggies and butternut squash pesto pasta.

All in all, not too bad a day! Eating steak while watching Canucks is awesome. Watching the Canucks lose to Calgary after a well-played game was pretty tough. We also got some good footage for the in-progress snowboard movie project, so I’m stoked about that. I am looking forward to getting my board back from repairs this weekend, and maybe I’ll get another chance to get up to the mountain this weekend.

Word to the Wise… if you go to Whistler this weekend… watch out for rocks.

This Halloween for work, I decided to dress up as Trevor Linden, campaigning to be Mayor. Trevor Linden has always been my favourite Canucks player. Check my previous post on the Canucks, for a picture of when I met Trevor I have a great “Linden for Mayor” t-shirt that I was holding up all day at work today but unfortunately I forgot to bring it home with me.

I didn’t have a lot of time to put together a costume this year since I just came back from my trip, so I kinda went for the lazy costume. However, it is my own jersey and all my own hockey gear, so I think that counts for something, right? It wasn’t this revealing for work; I was wearing opaque leggings

In past years, I’ve gone as Cortana from the video game Halo (I painted it on myself, and made the Guilty Spark too!), and some other typical ones like the schoolgirl and angel costumes. Fortunately, those cliché Halloween costume times are past and I’m hoping to do more creative and interesting video game costumes in the future.

Tonight, it’ll be off to a house party and I’ll see if I can’t modify my costume to be a little more “party” friendly. I’ll update this post later with pictures.

Now that I’ve got the Halloween stuff out of the way, let’s talk about the tech/video game industry and the Vancouver/world economy. Things aren’t looking so great these days, it seems the high tech industry is a little spooked (har har) this Halloween too. You can read more in my previous post on the Vancouver video game industry. And to clear up all the rumours… no, I don’t work at EA — and I never have.

It looks like Electronic Arts (EA) is going to layoff 400 to 500 employees over the next little while. Ouch. That’s a LOT of people. It’s not looking so great for the folks over at EA’s Burnaby campus, which makes up about a third of the company. In its last quarter, EA reported a loss of $310 Million. And the EA stock tanked today after that news, down almost 5% last time I checked.

And the makers of Just Cause (Avalanche Studios) are going to layoff about half their studio in Sweden after losing a couple contracts.

Retailers everywhere are projecting lower holiday sales and less shoppers/traffic in general, so it’s not looking good for many “boxed” video game sales. I’m sure we will see this affect other Vancouver video game companies and high tech companies soon, even though video game sales do traditionally quite well in economic slowdowns.

Where’s the opportunity though? Microtransactions and free-to-play games. Web and casual games. Companies who take advantage of this market may be better positioned for today’s and tomorrow’s economy.

Silicon Valley isn’t doing great either. It’s also been suspected that Yahoo! is going to layoff a ton of employees, perhaps as many as 3,000. But that’s not concrete and many expect it not to be that drastic. And Sun Microsystems posted a much bigger loss than expected. They are planning layoffs as well.

And the economy is also finally affecting the ridiculous Vancouver condo boom. Many Vancouver condos and housing developments are being stalled, including Concord Pacific’s West Georgia Cosmo, and Onni’s V6A condo development, that still has its sales office open and is selling to unsuspecting buyers. Oh man. Onni is doing some seriously criminal stuff.

That’s it for today!

There’s so much to write about tonight — I feel like I’m playing catch up.

In preparation for my trip, the video game company I work for upgraded my Blackberry Pearl to the Blackberry Bold, since in Japan and Korea the only cell networks there are 3G (my Pearl wouldn’t work there). I’ll likely only get to use the Bold for the duration of my trip, so I’m determined to make the most of it! It’s got a fabulous large screen, backlit full QWERTY keyboard, GPS, and all the applications you could imagine. The camera on it will come in handy for uploading to my Facebook while I’m away. I’m hoping to get some blog posts in as well. The GPS is AWESOME. It can locate me within a couple metres on Google Maps and show me directions to anywhere I want to go. It can also tell what direction I’m going. And for totally non-work purposes, Facebook and Messenger work on it seamlessly. SO SEXY. Sometimes working in the industry has its perks!

I also haven’t had a chance to write about my last work trip to LA. After a presentation and some meetings, I headed out with my good friends (and previous business partners) from university Chris and Erik, who are now doing private equity down in LA. That’s the great thing about school… it always seems like there’s someone you know who is working wherever you visit in the world. We hit up Koi in LA, which was an amazing restaurant, and I spent the next evening shopping on Melrose.

Burton Women’s Supreme Snowboard Boots... so comfy. My boots last year were a half size too small, and I spent my 30 day season snowboarding with my toes curled under

Another pair of Burton long underwear that isn’t cotton and wicks moisture which is SO important in the winter, I couldn’t help myself from getting a SIGG Burton bottle, and of course, I had to get some underwear from Agent Provocateur. The designs on the underwear were SO cool. And the bra was really girly. I buckled under pressure.

Most of the stores were way WAY out of my price range, but I did manage to snag a couple goodies along the way.

Flashback to the present… tonight I spent a little time cooking up a red pepper cream rigatoni for Allan with hot peppers, mushrooms, shallots, and my favourite food, bacon. Okay, maybe a little too much bacon. Then again, can you ever have too much bacon? I’m sure we’ll die from heart disease one day. We always shop twice a week at, once at Granville Island and once at Capers. That way, we’re always getting fresh local organic ingredients. So hey, maybe it’ll offset some of the bacon fat.

Also, I can’t end this post without talking a little bit about the Canucks. This is old news, but Luongo’s new mask is fantastic. I love the ‘C’ over the chin piece. Also, I’m really happy with the direction that Mike Gillis is taking the Canucks. I know he’s not everyone’s favourite GM, but he’s obviously had an impact as evidenced in the pre-season. I’m also loving the trade he made for D-man Shane O’Brien and RW Michel Ouellet. Krajicek and Simek go down to the Lightning. And get this — both our new guys are Canadian. I’m loving our increasingly Canadian Canucks team. Keep it up, Gillis!

And lastly, man, I REALLY want one of these Marc Jacobs hair bands. They’re around $80-120 which is just ridiculous for a plastic hair accessory. But something about them just keeps me coming back. I’ve got my fabulous Marc Jacobs coat for fall, and these cutie hair bands would look perfect with it. The dilemma — I can’t choose between pink or black. Right now I’m leaning towards black. Any help?