Tag: Life of Tom

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 158: Vancouver, BC – A Day Of Pies!

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis got to work and his first task was to look into the floor plan of the office and see if there was anything obvious that would indicate an power coming from another floor.

There is apparently another floor doing work and they want to unplug something, but it says it links down to the floor Curtis works on.

Unfortunately, it couldn’t be found, so he has to speak with the building management to see if they know anything about it.

Curtis’ team had their quick daily meeting and then all split to work.

Someone at Curtis’ office made mini pumpkin pies, so Curtis had one…it was delicious!

Curtis continued the day with a few tickets and then had some questions to answer about his project.

Once he answered them, this caused a lot more work for the project, so Curtis spent the rest of the day dealing with that!

Kim’s Day

Kim started her day by ordering pies! Its Thanksgiving this weekend so Kim sourced some pies from a couple of supermarkets, the dairy free pie Kim will pick up in the evening from a supermarket up the road.

As it is Kims sisters birthday she had to call to say happy birthday, but her family were on the way to dinner so they arranged to chat a little later in the day.
Kim then spent a fair amount of time on calls and organising invoices again. When the pizza arrived Kim sorted out plates and napkins to go with it.

In the afternoon Kim ended up in back to back meetings. Her first meeting was with her teammate and they discussed budgets and other social events outside of the holiday parties. They both then went into a meeting with a vendor to discuss the plan going forward and this went very well.

After thay meeting they caught up again and Kims teammate taught Kim how to use the different ways to expense things.

After this kim had another quick 5 minute call with her sister before she headed to bed.

After that call Kim had a quick training session on how to upload the monthly social talks for people to see them. That was a great lesson because Kim forgot to find our before she took it all on!

At some point during the day a stationary delivery came so Kim put all the new whiteboard wipes into all of the meeting rooms. She then caught up on emails and headed home.

All The Pies!

We got home and Curtis watched the remainder of the Leafs game and Kim wasn’t feeling too good, so she had a lay down.

After that, we walked up to Whole Foods where Kim needed to collect a vegan pumpkin pie for work as well as 2 more, smaller, pies.

Once we got those, we walked back home and were very cold! We got in and each had some leftover beef and ale pie with mashed potato, to complete all the pies of today.

We watched two, 1 hour, YouTube videos about a trip to Iceland and it reminded us of when we went and loved it so much. Its actually where we got engaged, too!

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

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Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 143: Vancouver, BC – Helping Strangers

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis got to work and there were a lot of new tickets, so he went through those and started fixing stuff!

He did that for a while and then looked into purchasing laptop for someone, which took way longer then expected.

After lunch, Curtis spent all afternoon seeing how his project would work on a mac as he forgot to do that!

Once he figure it out, he took some screenshots and put them into the guide.

On the way to meet Kim wwhilst walking home, Curtis was stopped by two girls who said they had a school project and wanted him to help them.

They played him some music and asked him what language he thought it was (it was Persian) and what he thought of the song. Random but something interesting!

Once Curtis finished that, Kim showed up and we walked home.

Kim’s Day

This morning Kim had the socil team meeting, so she spent a bot of time preparing for that by organising the minutes from the last meeting and arranging the talking points for today’s. Other than that Kim took calls and ad hoc tasks for some of the morning.
The meeting went really well, Kim divided up a few of the action points rather than trying to take them all on herself. Mainly because she isnt around for Halloween and thats where a fair amount of the focus went. They set up some good ideas for further into the future too!
When Kim got back to her desk she made a few amendments to the quiz she has made for the other office. This will reduce the amount of potential cheating and gives us the opportunity to do the whole quiz again in a few months if there is a want!
Kim then sat down for a quick lunch. When she got back to her desk Kim made a good start on the holiday party invites. She made a base template and had a section that is customisable per city location.
Kim then had a little impromptu catch up with her manager for about 30 minutes which was nice.

After this Kim looked at some options for the holiday party for the UK office and then caught up on emails before heading home.

Evening

We got back home and Curtis made his dinner, which was the same as yesterday.

We watched a 45 minute YouTube video and then Kim got ready to head out to exercise.

Kim’s class was fun. Its was the class closes off the month where she put all the moves she learnt into nice little combos!

Once Kim got home, she showered and we watched the next Great British Bake Off episode.

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 134: Vancouver, BC – Happy Birthday To Curtis!

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Last night, at the stroke of 00:00, Kim gave Curtis his presents she had bought him!

One was an Amazon Echo Dot which is awesome. That should allow us to do some cool stuff at home and it’s just generally pretty useful!

The second was an alpaca ornament, which is amazing as Curtis LOVES alpacas.

Curtis then got a gift which he knew about, which was a slim wallet so it doesn’t take up so much pocket space. Its perfect!

When Curtis woke up this morning he remembered he gets a free Starbucks coffee for his birthday, so thought about getting it on the way.

Unfortunately, all Starbucks’ were too busy, so he didn’t bother and decided he would get it later on.

As soon as he got to work, he was asked to look at something and then was steadily busy from that point on.

He was able to get a lot done and a lot of it was project work. His team now has a project manager who was assisting Curtis and they’ve been able to get a lot further along now, which is excellent and Curtis feels great about it.

Curtis got a package whilst he was at work! It was two hats he ordered from Syndicate Original which he’s wanted to get for a while. They are great! He also should have another package coming tomorrow…his own birthday present!

Kim’s Day

Kim knew she had external visitors in this morning so she left a little early to make sure she was in for 830ish. Turns out that the visitors weren’t due to arrive until 10-11ish.

So Kim used the time wisely and booked in for a cake that is needed for later in the week and placed a order for pizzas for same day delivery.

Then Kim set up for the meeting by making coffee and grabbing some drinks from the fridge. The fruit then arrived so Kim took some of that to make a little fruit bowl too.

Kim then greeted the visitors and took everything up to the meeting room.

Shortly after this the catering arrived so Kim hid it around differnt fridges and left menacing notes to hungry office people!

Finally Kim then had some time to go through emails and catch up on some other stuff. The pizza arrived a bit before midday so Kim sorted all that before going on to the other catering. She collected more drinks, loaded the cart with all the food and headed upstairs! After she had unpacked she realised she didn’t have spoons so she grabbed those and went back up. Then she realised that some drinks had already run out so she went to top them up!

After this Kim ran out to pick some stuff up for the meeting tomorrow. When she made it back she grabbed some pizza before grabbing a new urn of coffee, a few replacement drinks and went up to the other floor to clear away the food.

When she got back to her desk after having some pizza for lunch Kim organised a hotel for someone visiting next week, which was great as the prices seemed so high!

Kim then took the afternoon snack up to the meeting and gave them a refresher of some other drinks also.

After this Kim spent most of her afternoon picking up emails and she managed to orgnaised 3 peoples business cards too.

Later in the afternoon Kim got the go ahead to clear up in the boardroom so she went and sorted that out before leaving.

Kim stopped at a couple of shops on the way home to pick up some stuff for Curtis!

Best Hockey Game Ever

We had the leftovers of yesterday’s dinner for dinner tonight. It was just as delicious as before, as expected.

We watched a bit of TV and spoke about our day and then we left at 19:30 to head to the ice rink, with more time than last week, just in case.

Curtis’ hockey game was one of, if not THE, best hockey games he has ever played! Not in terms of statistics, but it was very close, competitive and just fun overall. His team played amazing and won 2-1 against a team that was definitely better!

We drove home and just chilled out.

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 117: Vancouver, BC – Lunchtime ‘Taco Friday’

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis was busy right from 08:50-16:10 today.

Right from the get go, Curtis had some things planned and ready to get done.

He had to complete the cloning he did yesterday, which worked perfectly overnight.

He then helped someone having issues with Outlook on their new laptop. After this, he did some IT security work and then had to test the boardroom for a big meeting to ensure it was working and setup as required.

Once Curtis was done with that, he helped someone start a complicated purchase process and then began an onboarding!

A new person starts Tuesday, so Curtis had to get everything sorted out for them. (Monday is a day off in Canada)

Curtis took about 1.5 hours to setup their accounts and information, all whilst completing tickets and answering questions.

Taco Friday

Taco Friday is a ‘thing’ that people do in Scandinavia, for some reason, and we aren’t opposed!

We also do it from time to time, but this time it was for lunch.

We were lazy and couldn’t be bothered to make lunch, so we went do to Tacofino to have some tacos.

Kim got 2 chicken tacos and Curtis got 2 beef tacos. These were incredible. Spicy yet sweet yet meaty. Amazing!

We weren’t there long and then we had to walk back to our respective offices, but it was really nice to catch up briefly.

Curtis’ Afternoon

Curtis’ afternoon was just as busy as hi morning.

Along with doing tickets, Curtis had to setup a new laptop for the new person starting, as well as setup their desk and ensure it works.

After that, Curtis helped someone setup a couple of programs on their laptop and then he was able to get the fnal thing he needed to get done before having a drink with some people in the office.

It’s been a busy couple of days but he’s enjoyed it!

Kim’s Day

Kim spent a lot of her morning changing travel plans for 2 people. For one Kim had to change the 1 day trip for a visitor to the Ontario office. She also had to change a new starters return trip back to the UK, moving his flight to a week early and with a stop off in the states.
Kim also spent some time looking into the catering of large meetings going on the week after next.
Curtis and Kim had planned to meet up for lunch so she headed out to meet him.
Kim spent more time in the afternoon on the travel changes and finally started to get things approved and changed, which was great.
As we have a new starter in our UK office who is visiting at the moment Kim arranged to sort his business cards out while he is here. She added the info and sent it across for approval.
Kim then placed the order for the weekly shop to be delivered on the Tuesday for next week as it is a bank holiday on Monday!
As it is Friday Kim then went out to pick up the wine and beer for the Friday afternoon drinks.
When she got back it was time to set up the drinks and snacks for people to enjoy. Kim joined for a while and had a nice chat to 2 people over from the UK office before realising that she hadn’t sent across the business cards to be printed so she ran back to sort that. She then went back to join for a while longer before heading home!

Lazy Pizza Evening

We got home and Curtis played games for about two hours, some how, whilst Kim lay on the bed relaxing.

We finally decided to do something, so we watched a YouTube video and then had a frozen pizza for dinner as we had a big lunch, so we didn’t need anything bigger.

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 31: Vancouver,BC – Kim’s First day & Finally Wifi!

Kim & Curtis Hale

Curtis’ Day

Curtis walked to work this morning! The weather was pretty nice, even a bit warm. He got to see a beautiful view from the bridge.

Curtis got to work and saw a message about an issue in the boardroom, so went to sort that out.

Curtis had a colleague from the Winnipeg office visiting to show him some stuff.

Curtis got to see a lot today about how Apple Mac laptops are setup, so he went all through that.

As well as going through that, he looked at onboarding and offboarding people.

Curtis got some ginger chicken from the Vietnamese place opposite the road. It was a lot of food!

It was all of a sudden 17:00 and time to go home.

Kim’s Day

Kim got ready in the morning and then headed to Downtown for her first day at work. It was such a beautiful, sunny morning.

When Kim got to work she had a little tour and got a few things set up before heading into a couple of orientation meetings. The orientation went on until midday where Kim met with a few members of the team and learned more about her role and new company.

One thing that was cool was the kitchen! There are various types of coffee machines, including one with a milk foamer. This is very exciting as Kim will now be able to make amazing hot chocolates and coffees in the winter. There is also a massive soft drink fridge too!

At midday, Kim and the rest of the team went out for lunch at Zefferellie’s, a lovely Italian place just around the corner. Kim had a spaghetti with meat sauce, but only the half portion as the meals where huge! This was a really nice way for Kim to get to know the team in a relaxed environment.

When they went back, some of the team headed into a meeting to organise the company’s meeting rooms for the second half of the week as there will be an optional company wide hackathon, which is very exciting! This will give Kim a chance at getting to know lots of people in the company and really help out, a great way to start a new job!

After this meeting Kim continued on more of the orientation for another hour or so before heading back to get desk to do some reading and get a better understanding of the systems and apps.

Just before the end of the day Kim got a cool swag pack of a mug, backpack and laptop case!

Walking Home Together

We met after work and walked home together. Kim told Curtis about her first day and Curtis told Kim about what he did today.

The walk didn’t seem to take long at all and we even got more beautiful photos!

Wifi!

Once we got home, the guy from Shaw cable was there too, right at the perfect time!

He came in and very quickly set up the wifi and we were good to go. When we first tested, when nothing else was using the network, we got 320mbps download, which is excellent!

We then used this to setup the TV and xbox, as well as our Mac & phones.

We are now all connected and ready to go.

Walk

We went for a walk after the Shaw guy left, partially to look in shops for some things but also just to walk. The weather was still nice, so why not?

Grilled Cheese

We came back home as we got hungry and we just made some grilled cheese sandwiches and had some ketchup crisps on the side.

Curtis played some games in the evening and we watched some TV together, too.

It’s nice to have things set up!

This Time Last Year!

Mr & Mrs Hale