The West Commences: Time change

It’s daylight saving time again, in most of Canada but not in some parts of BC and not in Korea, so I will be Skyping with Jay today an hour earlier than I have been. The transition was not difficult for me to make because I had my last 2 classes with SSASS yesterday. It was a sunny day of spring skiing. We took Shea up a chairlift for the first time in her life; it was a great success. She was not freaked out by anything. She loved looking down at the runs under the chair which with their combination of grooming lines and ski tracks looked like art work to her. She skied with a tether that Marie and I hardly had to hold, made turns that brought her dad who was filming her to tears and managed 3 runs and the ski back to SSASS as if she’d done it many times before. We were all in a mood to celebrate, and as it was Fox Fun Day, we did, with a fishpond run by SSASS for the kids, thank you cards with Tim Horton’s certificates inside for Marie and me from Shea’s parents and a barbeque for all. By the afternoon lesson with Amy, Mo and I were so warm we didn’t wear helmets. It’s against SSASS policy, but we decided to be rebels on the magic carpet. Amy also had a good ski, made her goal of 11 runs and gave us each a cute thank you card with her picture on it and a Starbucks card inside. What a day. I went back to Mo’s for a hot tub and was in bed by 9:00pm new time. I slept well and woke just before 7.

I’ve just discovered that my transition to daylight saving time has not been as easy as I first thought it was. My brain seems to have been knocked back a bit by the spring forward. I tried to Skype Jay 5 min. ago, at 4pm my new time, only to realize after he didn’t answer that in fact I should be calling him one hour later now, at 6. So I will write a bit and go to Mo’s for our regular Sunday dinner together at 5 and call Jay from there at 6, after the hot tub.

The last 10 days have had a vague yoga theme thanks to the fact that Marie turned 60 on March 8. Last Friday her friend Danielle had a laughing yoga party for her. The young woman who led it was an ex-stand-up comedian from Calgary who’s trying to start a new life here with laughing yoga. Good luck to her. I don’t know if there’s much call for that in Vernon; although, a friend of ours, Sherry Anne Kelly does it in Thunder Bay. We certainly had some laughs. At one point, we each had to tell a gibberish joke. Marie began and while we were still laughing at hers, she said, “ And now Jan will tell a joke in Korean.” At first I balked, but then I realized she had saved me because I hadn’t any idea what I was going to do and now I knew. I started saying random Korean words with exaggerated generic Asian inflections followed by a pause, a couple of quick short words and they were in stitches. I used to think that being able to joke in a language was a sign that you really knew it, but I can’t say a sensible sentence in Korean and yet I had half a dozen French Canadian women in stitches. The yoga was followed by champagne, so the afternoon laughed on. This Friday her husband George arranged a cross-country ski party with lunch at the Black Prince cabin for her. The conditions were perfect for skiing and the lunch was good. There was also the wonder of meeting a Masai warrior at the Black Prince cabin. He is married to a daughter of one of Marie’s friends and was there with his wife and baby girl. At one point I was standing beside him looking up and talking; I couldn’t resist telling him that every time I do my yoga balance move on one leg I imagine I am the Masai warrior I saw in a National Geographic Magazine when I was young. He seemed to find that mildly amusing, but as he was a man of few words, although he spoke English quite well, he just smiled and said that at one time he probably had looked a lot like the man in the picture, but he hadn’t looked like that for about 8 years, and when he did he had had a spear for balance.

Today is warm. I watered the cedars for the first time; I don’t think any amount of water will help about 4 of them, but the rest seem fine. I saw the first crocuses in the garden.

I often think of Jim, but tomorrow especially. He died on March 11, 2010.