Coquitlam!! Cont.

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Here are the beautiful stairs from the front hall leading up to the bedrooms.

And my beautiful bedroom. There might still be one more picture of my bedroom to come.

And here from the hall outside of my bedroom another look at the living room. Just to give you the perspective.

Now we go down, down, down to the basement with the media room.


Just outside the media room here is the hall to Doug's parents suite. You also might be able to see the door to the reading room.

The might be some more pictures to come. One more of my bedroom and a couple of the back yard. Maybe.

Horrible Idling Facts

OK, I just searched Tim Horton's Idling in Google and the second thing that came up was a project by the U of A. It's all about driving and conserving when you drive. What I wanted to look at though was the page about idling. It's horrible. On there it says that if every driver in

Canada avoided idling for just 5 minutes a day, we would prevent more than:

1 million tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere
This would be like removing 200 000 cars for 1 year
Collectively, we would save 1.8 million litres of fuel
We would save $1.7 million in fuel costs
You could save over $100 each year

OK, so that's the good part. The bad part is this:

Daily emissions at one Tim Horton's outlet:
University of Alberta estimates 385 kilograms of CO2 emissions per day.

That's just ONE Tim Horton's outlet. Just ONE!!!!! So that's 140 525 kilograms of CO2 emissions per year and 3 372 600 kilograms of CO2 per year in all of the Edmonton stores, by the way, there's 24 in Edmonton. Of course that's thinking that all the stores have a drive- through, they probably don't all... phew! But still, that is terrible!! In all of Canada per year Tim Horton's (assuming all the stores have drive throughs) emit 384 054 825 kilograms of CO2 per year. Ahhhhhhhhh! Once again that's assuming that they all have drive throughs! And if you count all the Tim Horton's in the whole world ( 2 733 in Canada, 345 in the USA, and 1 outside of Kandahar Afghanistan) that emits 432 676 475 kilograms of CO2 per year. Once again, assuming they all have drive through.

So there it is. The facts. It might be horrible but it's very, very true. So, if you want to save our environment don't idle and definitely don't go to Tim Horton's drive - through. Also if you want to know more about what I told you visit the Drive Wiser project put together by the U of A.

And don't even get me started with McDonald's!!!

Coquitlam!!

Finally after 4 days after being back from Vancouver I finally have pictures!! I couldn't post more than 5 pictures so there will be many more to come.

Here is my dad in the new office. It's a perfect size with a very nice desk.

Here's the family room. It's right in front of the kitchen and to the left of the Office. It has very nice big windows and to the left is a door to go outside.

This is the kitchen and eating area. This also has nice windows and in the eating area is the door to the backyard.

This is the dining room even though we hardly ever eat in it. I think you can see the humongous mirror to the left. If not it's a humongous floor to ceiling mirror. In the background you can see the living room.

Here's the living room. It is a very nice place to just sit and read or listen to music. Once again it gets lots of light from big windows through which you can see the backyard.

Once again much more pictures to come!!

Qbesq

I know, strange name but I didn't come up with it.

Qbesq is a website where you can make really col drawings like the one on the right. (I don't know if many of you will be able to see the drawing.) I made this using on the website. It allows you to make symetrical designs. You get to choose how thick your lines will be made and how many line there will be. You can make very presise images with thin lines or blotchy abstract images with thick lines.

This is a very cool website and I suggest you check it out and http://www.qbesq.com/.

Go Sweatshop Free!!!

Here is another great website that I found. It's called Stop Sweatshop Abuses and it is all about sweatshops and how to stop them.

For those people who don't know what a sweatshop is a sweatshop is: A manufacturing workplace that treats its workers inhumanely, paying low wages, imposing harsh and unsafe working conditions, and demanding levels. Factory workers get poor pay and are very common in the clothing industry. Some companies that use sweatshops are Nike, Disney, The Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Wal-Mart, Levi Straus, Old Navy and many more.

It is sad and disgusting to think that companies in this day and age still use sweatshops. Some sweatshops use child labour to get their work done. These children are treated like slaves and are beaten and payed very low wages.

If you think that this sounds disgusting and inhumane just don't buy anything from companies such as Nike that uses sweatshops. Also visit the Stop Sweatshop Abuses website and learn how to make a difference.

Another Swim Meet!!!

On Saturday I went to another swim meet with the Penguins swim club. It was fun but a lot different from the last swim meet that I went to. The last swim meet that I went to was the Penguins Challenge with just the Penguins swim club participating. This one was with the Penguins, the Olympians, Keyano, one from Drayton Valley, one from St. Paul and one from Leduc.

I did five races in the swim meet. The first one I did was 50 freestyle. I also did 50 breaststroke, 50 butterfly, 50 backstroke and a 100 IM. For those who don't know an IM stands for Individual Medley and is where the swimmer must swim a 25 of every stroke in a row. In the order of 25 butterfly, 25 backstroke, 25 breaststroke, 25 freestyle. This was the first year that the Penguins swim club handed out I Beat My Time ribbons (I know this because my mom was Chief Timer.) I got a I Beat My Time ribbons 4 times, in all of my swims except for my IM. I really should have got it for my IM because my mom (as Chief Timer) told me that my times form the Penguins challenge was: for 50 breaststroke 1:07. For 50 butterfly 1:07. (She forgot the times for 50 freestyle and 50 backstroke.) For IM 2:07. So obviously they just made those times up but I still did good without the extra ribbon.

Before the swim meet I was VERY worried about my dives for the swim meet. For the warm up we had to do a start for each stroke and swim a 25 of that stroke. My first dive for the warm up I think was perfect and the others were OK. But still after that first dive my worries were gone...almost.

This was a very good swim meet and a very good second swim meet for the Penguins swim club experience. It was also very fun! I will definitely be doing another Penguins swim meet (the next ones in February.)

More Snow!!

Scroll down to see the first part of this post.

This is what our yard looked like at 5:22 PM today. Notice that in the background the field of the school yard across the street is still completely white. I wonder why...

Now compare the picture of 8:55 Am and the picture of 5:22 PM.

CRAZY!!

Snow!!

And I'm serious this time!

It's very weird. I woke up at about 8 o'clock technically 7 because of the time change. Anyway I was awake for about 45 minutes before I looked outside my window and saw that there was a couple centimetres of snow!

It's going to be four degrees today though so it might very well melt. In Calgary though I guess it's still snowing and hard!!

By the way, the picture to the left was taken with my new webcam. Cool eh!!

But now that it's November fourth I almost feel ready for the snow to come ... for good.

New Stuff

Maybe you've noticed that I've added some new stuff to my blog. I added a new video, and four new websites.

MINDHABITS: Mindhabits is a website "Founded on social intelligence research by Dr. Mark Baldwin at McGill University, these stress busting, confidence boosting games use simple, fun-to-play exercises that help players develop and maintain a more positive state of mind." My mom sent it to me and it is very interesting! For free you can make an account and access four games with out any high scores and all that but it is very interesting without paying the extra 19 dollars. It has games where you must find the happy faces amid all the sad faces. This is a great website and I suggest that you visit on the link to the right.

Free Rice: Free Rice is a website that began on October 7 this year. It's a word game that with every word that you get right donates 10 grains of rice. "The rice is distributed by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). The World Food Program is the world’s largest food aid agency, working with over 1,000 other organizations in over 75 countries. In addition to providing food, the World Food Program helps hungry people to become self-reliant so that they escape hunger for good. Wherever possible, the World Food Program buys food locally to support local farmers and the local economy. We encourage you to visit the United Nations World Food Program to learn more about their successful approach to ending hunger. The rice is paid for by the advertisers whose names you see on the bottom of your vocabulary screen. This is regular advertising for these companies, but it is also something more. Through their advertising at FreeRice, these companies support both learning (free vocabulary for everyone) and reducing hunger (free rice for the hungry). We commend these companies for their participation at FreeRice." This is a great website and you should definitely check it out. In less than a month already 635,231,060 grains of rice have been donated so check it out!!

Stuff You Didn't Know: This blog is full of facts and things that you probably never knew before. For instance the longest one-syllable word in the English language is“screeched.” And the dot over the letter ‘i’ is called a tittle. Or the longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary,is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.The only other word with the same amount of letters ispneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural. This is a great website chalk full with interesting facts.

Big Things: This is a website with all the world's biggest things in Canada. It has categories for every province and it looks like actually Saskatchewan has the most biggest things. For instance the biggest UFO landing pad is in St. Paul Alberta. And the biggest Santa Clause is in Watson Saskatchewan. Or the biggest fiddle is in Cavendish PEI. This is also quite an interesting site with hundreds of worlds biggest things in Canada.

I also put a new video on the right hand side of my blog. It is the just released video for Civil Twilight by the Weakerthans. It is a very interesting and funny video from the new CD Reunion Tour. I hope it works on your computer though as sometimes it works on my computer and sometimes it doesn't.

If you have a blog and want to put some of the cool new features that I have put on my blog but don't know how to do it here it is. You go to blogger.com and sign in. Then you click Layout. Then you click Add a Page Element. It will give you a list of page elements that you could add. There are polls and pictures and videos a links. It is all very cool.

So check out all the new features that I have recently put on my blog. Hope you like it!!!

World Vision Charity

Me and some friends at my school thought that a great thing to do this Christmas would be to donate money to World Vision through their Christmas catalogue. You can donate many things. For 55 dollars you can buy to hens and a rooster to a family that needs it most in poor countries. For $1200.00 you can fill a stable with animals. The catalogue is full of things like that.

Today we brought this up with the class and everyone wanted to help. This is great but I think that the problem with this is that people probably think that we will do a bake sale and the World Vision Committee will quickly become the Baking Club. The same thing happened last year where I started an Earth Day Committee. The second day that I started talking about a girl in my class came up and asked if she could join the Baking Club. So me and Rebecca (my friend who also came up with the idea and is sharing the role of chair person of the committee) decided that this year we will definitely not be doing a bake sale.

Last week our class formed a Halloween Committee to put together a Halloween Committee. The committee and the party went very well. Every Thursday we have a class council meeting with our class government. Me and Rebecca put forward the idea of a committee for World Vision. Everyone agreed that this was a great idea. Later on someone thought that the people for the Halloween Committee should get paid with our class money Scholar Dollars. Then people thought that the World Vision Committee should get paid. I definitely do not agree with this idea! Anyway Aden in the class council moved that the Halloween Committee and the World Vision Committee get paid. It passed!!

Urgggggg!!!

The reason I don't want to get paid for this is because it's a charity. I think that a charity means that you help someone or something with no reward and I think that a reward even includes fake class money. Now people will join because they think that we will be doing a bake sale (which we will not!!) and they will get paid for it! Oh boy. In the committee I want people who will contribute to discussion and help the committee.

That's just my view.

But I do think that this will go well and I hope that we raise a lot of money for World Vision and if we will be getting paid, I for one will not be accepting it.