Hello Everyone!!
Season's Greetings!
Season's Greetings!
Well, first of all, I hope that everyone has a very Merry Christmas,
and a Happy New Year! Season's Greetings!
And if English is not your first language...
Well, regretfully I've decided to go with a form letter this year. I know it's not very personal, but I really wanted to send some kind of a note to everyone with my Christmas cards, but I just don't have the time to do so (197 Christmas cards!), and chances are that the note I would send to everyone would be quite similar anyways!
I hope that everyone is doing well. I'm sorry that I haven't been
so good at keeping in touch, but I've been quite busy with a number
of things. Top on my list of priorities is to finally finish off my
Masters thesis! I will be much better with my correspondence once I
get that out of the way!
Okay, I think the best way for me to fill you in on what I have
been up to for the last year, is to categorize it. If you're not
interested in a particular subject, it will make it easier for you
to just skip right over it!
Okay, so here we go ... make sure you find a very comfortable chair, as this could take some time to read! :-)
Can you believe that I went to 7 weddings this year! And, NO, one of these weddings was NOT my own! :-) Hmm, all my friends are getting married, maybe I should take the hint, eh! :-)
Here is a little about each of the weddings which I attended this year, in order of occurrence:
1. Laurie Taylor and Kerry Bolton
Location: New Market, Ontario Date: February 12, 1994
I know Laurie and Kerry both very well through hockey. Laurie and I both played for the women's team at the University of Toronto, and on the same team in the Women's Senior AAA league for a while. Laurie was a referee at the Women's World Championship in Lake Placid in 1994. And, no, Kerry is not related to the Boltons on my Mom's side of the family!
2. Heidi Chalupnik and Tom Kubichek
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska Date: February 26, 1994
Heidi is my bestest friend in the whole wide world :-), who was my roommate at the University of New Hampshire for all four years. We also played hockey in Switzerland together for DHC Langenthal during the 92-93 season. I was very honoured to be the Maid of Honour at Heidi's wedding. But, why did she have to get married in ALASKA, in, BRRRRRR, FEBRRRRUARY, of all months! :-)
3. Raymonde Ouellette and Marcel Savoie
Location: Sudbury, Ontario Date: July 1, 1994
Raymonde is my boyfriend, Marc's, sister. Rumour has it that they decided to get married on Canada's Birthday so that Marcel would be able to remember when his anniversary is! :-) The bridesmaids at the wedding wore red dresses for Canada Day, and there were small Canadian flags in some of the bouquets. The song for the first dance was, "Oh Canada!" Just kidding! :-) This is the first wedding that I have attended which was entirely in French. Thank goodness for those high school French courses! :-)
4. Joan Weston and Ian McDonnell
Location: Newport, Rhode Island Date: August 13, 1994
I swear, Joan is the funniest person to ever hit the earth! I've done experiments, and I have concluded that it is absolutely impossible to go for more than 10 seconds without laughing when you are around her! Joan is another hockey buddy of mine. She plays goalie for the University of Toronto, and she also played on the same Senior AAA hockey team for a while. Joan is from Long Island, NY, but ironically married Ian McDonnell who grew up just outside of Keene (on the same road as us)! It's a small world, eh! :-) This was the first wedding that I have ever been to that had a dog as the ring bearer. Joan's bulldog, named Doughhead, was led down the aisle by one of the bridesmaids. Doughhead had a little pillow with rings on it attached to her back! Oh, Ian is also a goalie, so expect some goalies with NHL potential if these two ever decide to have kids! :-)
5. Sharon MacRae and Franco
Location: Lancaster, Ontario Date: September 10, 1994
Sharon is my first cousin, daughter of my Mom's sister, Guelda, and my Uncle Robert. Although I have lived almost next door to Sharon in Toronto for 3 years, we are both so busy that we have never visited! Franco comes from an Italian family, so the wedding was your typical Italian wedding which had a 48 course meal! No need to eat for a couple of weeks after that one! :-)
6. Roger Stark and Sheryl Oliver
Location: Keene, Ontario Date: September 17 1994
Roger is a cousin on my Mom's side. We went to school and 4-H together. The wedding dance was held at the Keene arena, which was my second home when I played hockey for Otonabee! It was nice to see Roger again, and so many of my 4-H friends whom I haven't seen since high school.
7. Steve Chalupnik and Kris Sneider
Location: Toledo, Ohio Date: October 1, 1994
Steve is my friend, Heidi Chalupnik's, brother. It was great to see the Brices and Chalupniks again at the wedding. These wedding reunions are becoming quite a habit! Gee, I wonder where the next reunion will be? Jill?!! :-) I should add that, Steve smelled much better at his wedding than I remember his hockey equipment smelling when I had to borrow it when I visited Heidi in Alaska a few years back! Yow!!! My parents, Marc, and I drove down to Ohio for the wedding. It just so happened that there was a gourd show that my parents wanted to attend in Mount Gilead (just 2 hours from Toledo), the day following the wedding. After attending the gourd show, we stayed with our friends Phyllis and Lou Drasler in Columbus, Ohio on the way back home.
Speeches and Other Promotional Hockey EventsThese types of events are a consequence of playing on Team Canada that I wasn't aware of when I first tried out for the team! :-)
Hockey Related StuffOkay, so as you probably have heard, I played for Team Canada again at the 1994 Women's World Hockey Championship. We trained for a week in Ottawa, and then we headed to Lake Placid for the World Championship which were held from April 11-17, 1994. Here are the results of all five games that we played:
Game 1: Canada 7 - China 1
Game 2: Canada 12 - Norway 0
Game 3: Canada 8 - Sweden 2
Game 4: Canada 4 - Finland 1
Game 5: Canada 6 - USA 3
Here are the final placings of the countries in attendance:
(1) Canada
(2) USA
(3) Finland
(4) China
(5) Sweden
(6) Norway
(7) Switzerland
(8) Germany
Here are the results of the games played on the final day:
Gold: Canada 6 vs USA 3
Bronze: Finland 8 vs China 1
5th: Sweden 6 vs Norway 3
7th: Switzerland 4 vs Germany 3
Unfortunately my groin/hip injury bothered me a lot at the tournament. I had to sit out one of our exhibition games and our second game in the World Championship (against Norway) because of it. It was very frustrating for me. Actually, after the final game on April 17th, I took SIX full months off from hockey completely to try to heal the injury! Wow, that's hard to believe for me, eh! :-) I just started playing again at the beginning of November 1994. The injury is a lot better, but unfortunately, still not 100%. I am playing hockey for the University of Toronto this year. I am not additionally playing on a Women's Senior AAA team, as I usually do. Playing on two teams would be too much for the injury, and I need the extra time to work on my thesis.
Here is what's on the agenda for International Competition in women's hockey:
1995 Pacific Rim competition: Canada, USA, China and Japan
(San Jose, California from April 1st-8th, 1995)
1996 Pacific Rim competition: Canada, USA, China and Japan
(location TBA, 1996)
1997 Women's World Championship: top 8 countries
(Canada, 1997)
1998 Winter Olympics: number of countries TBA
(Japan, 1998)
Notice that the next World Championship will be in 3 years time (instead of the usual 2 years between World Championships). This is because they would like the 1997 World Championship to serve as a qualifying event for the 1998 Winter Olympics. Everyone is asking me if I will tryout for Team Canada again. Realistically, I don't think that the injury will allow me to train at that intensity level again. I don't want to risk having the same frustrations that I did at the 1994 World Championship. Somehow I felt like I let my team down because the injury did not allow me to play to my potential. Since it is my country that I am representing, this is something that I did not like to have happen. So, the answer is that unless my injury all of a sudden improves by leaps and bounds, I really don't think that I'll tryout again. :-(
Hockey Cards
I now have my own hockey card! :-) A hockey card was made for each
player on the women's Team USA and Team Canada who were at the 1994
World Hockey Championship. These women's hockey cards have been
included in the 1994-95 Classic Draft Picks hockey card set. This
card set was released by the Classic card company in October 1994.
One women's hockey card has been inserted into each pack of the Classic Hockey Draft Picks hockey cards. There are 40 women's cards in the set, which are numbered W1-W40. Cards W1-W20 are the Team Canada players, and cards W22-W40 are the Team USA players. My card is number W17.
NOTE: The number of PIM (penalty minutes) printed in the stats on the back side of my card is 13 PIM for the 1992 Women's World Championship. This is a MISTAKE, as it should really be 0 PIM. I'm not a goon!!!! :-) (that was only in 5 games!)
Also, I have to warn you that the picture on the back of my hockey card has got to be the world's worst picture of me!! I don't think I've seen a worse picture of me!
Computer Hockey ArtworkI have some extra space to fill on this page, so here is a sample of my computer art! :-)
============================================================================== | | | ... She shoots! ...... She scoooooores!!! | | _ __ | | ~o ~o ~o ~o | |\ )_ | | \____/|) <|> (|\_____/ \/Y\/| | \__) | | /> /> \ /> . /\ | .| | | | z z . z z \_. z z z z | | | | |_/ | | | | TEAM CANADA - WOMEN'S WORLD ICE HOCKEY CHAMPIONS - 1990, 1992, 1994 | | | ==============================================================================
Four of my friends from Switzerland visited me in Toronto this summer. My four friends who came were Prisca Mosimann (Bizu), Petra Fankhauser, Rita Kummer, and Steve Kummer. It was great to see them again, and I had a lot of fun trying to give them a positive impression of Canada! :-)
Here are some of things they saw in Toronto while they were here:
We also stayed at my parents' farm in Peterborough, and went to our cottage on Long Lake (near Apsley). Some of the things in the Peterborough area that we showed them were:
When we went to Joan and Ian's wedding in Newport, Rhode Island, Marc and I decided to leave a couple of days early so that we would have a little more time to spend in the New England area.
We left Toronto early in the morning on Thursday (Aug 11th) and arrived in Montreal for lunch. We met with some friends of Marc's (Pierre Poulin and Caroline Houle). Then we drove down through the Green Mountains of Vermont, stopping to see some of the tourist attractions along the way. It was an absolutely beautiful drive. I'd take do it again in a second! The first night we stayed with friends of mine from the University of New Hampshire, Mr and Mrs Foote, who live in Rochester, New Hampshire. Rochester is just outside of Durham, NH where the University of New Hampshire is located.
The next day we visited Coach McCrudy, who was my coach when I played for the University of New Hampshire. It was great to see him again and to chat a little. We also drove around the campus at the University of New Hampshire. It sure brought back some nice memories! I saw Snively Arena for what will probably be the last time, as they will be rebuilding a new arena for September 1995. Mr and Mrs Foote took us to my favourite seafood restaurant, Newick's, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Yum, yum!
That night we drove to Cambridge, Massachusetts where we visited Richard Hungerford and Cynthia Winters who I had met on the computer. They are big fans of women's hockey and had attended the World Championship, so there was lots to talk about! It was getting late, so we decided to stay the night with them. Actually, we knew that if we continued driving to Newport and stayed the night there, we would be sharing a hotel room with eight of my friends from the University of Toronto, so it was just as well! :-)
The next day we headed to Newport, Rhode Island for the wedding. Unfortunately my car was not in a very good mood that day, so we had to stop for a few repairs! (This is off-topic, but my car, otherwise known as "Brownie," is resting in the garage at my parents' place this winter!) The wedding wasn't to start until 6:00 pm, so we spent some time looking around the Harbour in Newport. There was a big Jazz festival going on that weekend, so the place was a zoo! The wedding itself was a lot of fun! It was held in the Belcourt Mansion. After the wedding reception, and before the wedding dance, we were taken on a tour of the mansion. The mansion was incredible! Napoleon's tea set was even on display there!
After the wedding we stayed at a hotel in Newport ... eight of us were in the same room (Marc, Hilary, Sandy, Mike, Mary Beth, Rosalind, Shanon, and me)! We didn't get much sleep, but at least we saved some money ... the hotel room was $260 US per night! The next morning we got up early and went on the scenic Ocean Drive in Newport. This is a section of Newport which is along the Ocean and is known for its wealthy mansions. Newport was a popular place to build mansions at the turn of the century because of its desirable summer climate (a little cooler due to the Ocean).
After the Ocean Drive, we headed back to Toronto, driving through Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New York. We crossed the border at the 1000 Islands bridge on the way back.
One of my roommates, Hiroko, and I went to the Rolling Stones, Voodoo Lounge Tour concert on August 19th. It was great! :-)
We placed second at the Ontario Provincial Ball Hockey Tournament this summer. This qualified us to attend the Canadian National Championship because the defending Canadian Champion was from Ontario (and automatically qualified for the Nationals).
The great thing about the National Ball Hockey tournament this summer was that it was held in Newfoundland, the only province that I had not yet visited. The tournament was held in St. John's, Newfoundland from August 23-28, however we went a few days early to do the "tourist thing!" My boyfriend, Marc, also came for the trip.
Some of the "touristy" things that we looked at were:
St. John's is a nice city ... although I'm not sure that I would want to live there! :-) There were quite a few stores and building that were closed down. We think that we have it bad in Ontario with 15% sales tax, well, in Newfoundland, they have 19% sales tax!!! Yowch!
Here are the Results of the 1994 Canadian National Ball Hockey Championship. We won the silver medal in the women's division:
School / WorkOh, yes, I should talk about the thing that I said earlier was my priority! :-) My thesis! And yes, it definitely is my priority! I'd really like to finish my degree by the spring, but at the absolute latest, by next summer (1995).
I have finished the course work requirements for my MSc in Computer Science (a long time ago!), and what remains now is my Master's thesis. I work on this independently, and meet periodically with my supervisor, Scott Graham.
I'll explain my thesis to you, just in case you know a little about computers, or are remotely interested. If turning on the computer is a challenge for you, perhaps you should skip over this part! :-) My thesis has two main parts. The first part is a detailed workload analysis of the CDF academic distributed computing system (a system which is mainly used by undergrads at U of T). The second part is a simulation of load-sharing for a synthetic workload generated (using cluster analysis) from the process accounting data collected from the CDF system. The system being simulated is a large-scale distributed computer system (approximately 5000 hosts) which is cluster based and uses a hierarchy for load information exchange.
I'm also working as a teaching assistant again at the University of Toronto. The course that I am helping with this semester is a first year course called, "The Why and How of Computing." I hold a one hour tutorial session each week, I mark assignments and tests, and I hold help sessions for students needing extra help.
Things are going well back on the Hunter Farm in Peterborough,
although I haven't been able to make it home so often lately.
My last visit was in October for Thanksgiving. My parents, Ruth
and Terry, are keeping busy entertaining the guests who visit
their Bed and Breakfast farm. If you're ever in the area, be
sure to stop by!
My Dad is still working for GE Canada in Peterborough. He keeps busy on the farm looking after the sheep and the other animals, extracting honey, bringing in the wood, keeping the Christmas trees pruned, and whatever else needs to be done! The project for this fall was the building of a new two car garage at the east end of the house.
When my Mom is not entertaining guests for the B&B, she is busy with something else! She never stops ... it's going to take more than a little bit of arthritis to slow her down! :-) Oh, and as far as I know, she still holds a record for not ever letting anyone leave the house hungry! If you've visited, I'm sure you'll know what I mean. I usually gain 5 pounds whenever I go home ... but I guess if you saw my cooking, you'd understand why! :-)
My oldest sister, Leslie, is running her own business out of her
home in Etobicoke (just west of Toronto). She designs and sews
wedding dresses and a variety of other garments. When she is not
working with her business (and not repairing my hockey equipment
for me) she is training or riding in a Mountain Bike race. She is
currently a member of Team Ontario, and her goal is to make it
onto the National team one day. She has just recently been offered
a personal sponsorship from the Kona Bicycle company.
My youngest sister, Nancy, lives very close to me in Toronto. She just finished off her final work placement to complete her degree in Social Work at Ryerson. She helped out with the women's soccer team at Ryerson this fall, and is currently working as a swimming instructor at 3 different pools in Toronto, until a job in her field comes along.
Well, just in case I haven't contacted you within the last 3 years, I should tell you a little about my boyfriend, Marc Ouellette. He's originally from a French speaking family in Kapuskasing, Ontario (about a 9 hour drive North of Toronto!). We started going out in the spring of 1992. I met him while playing a fun hockey game with the guys in my department (Computer Science) here at the University of Toronto. We were on the same line (cute, eh! :-)). Marc is working on his PhD in the Computer Graphics area of research, and working part-time for a computer company in Toronto called Alias, and as a teaching assistant at the University of Toronto. Oh, he's also the statistician for the University of Toronto women's hockey team ... should guarantee me some good stats this season, eh! :-)
Where I LiveI still live in the university residence for graduate students. It's a great place to live because it's only 3 buildings down from Varsity Arena where I play hockey. I can roll out of bed at 6:50 am, and still make it in time for my 7:00 am practices! :-)
The four other women who live in the same suite as me are: Huong Vu from Hanoi, Vietnam; Hiroko Seya from Tokyo, Japan; Nada Kassabian from Novi Sad, Serbia; and Janette from Ottawa.
Contacting MeIn case you have access to a computer...
My email address is:
andria@sys.utoronto.ca
My URL for the world wide web (WWW):
http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~andria
My phone number in Toronto is still: (416)979-7250 and my parents' phone number in Peterborough is still (705)295-6253.
See, now isn't this form letter a great idea?! I would have never told you about all this stuff, had I decided to write personal letters to everyone! :-)
Well, that's about all for now ... and you didn't think I'd ever
stop! :-) I hope you have a great year, and I hope to be in touch
with everyone sooner or later (but hopefully sooner than later!)!
Take care and enjoy your holidays!
Andria
P.S. Congratulations to Hannes & Jacqueline (the family whom I stayed with in Switzerland) on the birth of Eva on April 2nd 1994. Also congrats to their next door neighbours, Ruedi & Mariann, on the birth of their daughter, Nadja. And finally, congrats to my cousin, Jamie, and his wife Brenda, on the birth of their daughter, Courtney, in November 1994!
URL: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~andria/andria/xmas/xmas_94_form.html