Evidently, the weather we had for Christmas is not normal, but having never experienced anything different I fail to believe what people tell me.
In any case, it was perfect.
On December 25th, Calgary was blessed with a cloudless day, the sun shinning as hard as it could. Around mid-day, it was +15 degrees outside. I kid you not! We took a walk around the neighborhood and we very nearly did it in t-shirts. If it wasn't that the motorcycle is parked in a corner of the garage, under its tarp and without a battery -- so that taking it out and putting it back in would require at least a couple of hours -- we would have taken it out for a ride. Over the weekend, we saw about half a dozen bikes on the roads and we really wanted to be one of them.
Needless to say that Calgary has no snow now. The forecast calls for another week of above-zero temperature. It's great!
Vero was a little disappointed that we had a snow-less Christmas, even with the incredible weather. So on the 26th we drove down to Lake Louise.
Lake Louise does have snow. Enough for the ski hill to be open; enough for the lake to be frozen and a skating rink to be open; enough to warrant us putting all our snow gear on to hike up to the lake Agnes teahouse.
So out here we have the choice: Christmas with or without snow? Stay in Calgary for warm, sunny and a snow-less experience; drive to the mountains to ski, skate and play around in the snow.
The 26th was also a different experience for us. I had been meaning to get a new TV for my office (to replace the really old one that now has the side effect of emitting more sound out the back than the front), so I figured we could brave the craziness of Boxing Day and drop by Best Buy to get one. After checking their website I learned that they opened at 6AM on the 26th. "We can do that," I thought: let's get there at 6AM and beat the crowd. Who else but us gets up so early anyway?
We got up a little after 5AM and got ready to go out into that gentle night (man it's dark at that time) down to the Best Buy, a 15 minute drive. We got there at 6:10AM.
Driving in, I saw a couple of people outside the doors, but it didn't have the coherence of a line. So I thought they were just hanging out there, for some reason. The fact that we had to HUNT for a parking space worried me a little, though. Anyways, since it wasn't a mad lineup, and we did get up for it, we walked to the door.
The "security guard" at the door (who wasn't much of a security guy) was all bright and cheery and chatted up a storm with us folks outside. How can these people be happy at 6AM on Boxing Day? They live in Calgary, that's how.
We had to wait about five minutes before they let us in. Inside: complete mayhem. The place was PACKED with people running all over the place. Craziness.
We found a TV I liked, not too expensive, and grabbed the box. A 24" TV is pretty heavy, we learned... Off we go, dashing through the isles to reach the cash, only to see a lineup there. Actually, we saw the BEGINNING of a line; the end was nowhere in sight.
At the head of the line, a bright and cheery employee (yet another one... crazy, I tell ya!) was directing people to the cashes and to the end of the line. Seeing us with our huge box and no cart, he told us to leave the box there and aim for the floating balloon that indicates the end of the line... on the other side of the store! We rushed there -- and a good thing we did because within five minutes the line had grown almost double!
Surprisingly, the wait was pretty short. It took only 20 minutes to reach the cash, where the still bright and cheery employee recognized us, showed surprise at how quickly we got there and pointed us to an available cashier.
Out the door we go with our big-ass box. At the door, the same (and still bright and cheery) security guard suggested we leave the box there, go get the car and this other employee will help us to load it. Which we did, and which he did (happy to see us pull up in a hatch-back).
We were out of the parking lot before 7AM. In and out within 50 minutes, a good ten of which were spent looking at the TVs and picking one.
And everybody, short of a couple of grumpy customers, was happy and helpful. Crazy, I keep saying.
So here's "Matt's tip to shopping for electronics on Boxing Day": avoid it if you can, otherwise bring a friend to wait in line while you pick up your gear!
