The Week That Was

Okay, where to start? On Friday Sean Isaac and I finally finished our new route up on the Stanley Headwall, we called it Rhamnusia and the details are here at http://www3.telus.net/s2huisman/rhamnusia.html . Friday was a weird day for me, I had some doubts about the ice at the top, but everything turned out okay. I think I took that March 31st monkey and stomped it. Yesterday Shelley and I went to do some rock climbing in the Ghost, turned out to be a bit cooler than we expected but we still had some fun. Seems there is still a bit of snow up high and the wind off of it cools things down pretty good. Stuff in the sun is still nice and there were people at Silver Tongued Devil wall. We climbed up at Bastion Wall.

Thursday night we went over to Semple's and watched Vince Anderson's slides from his and Steve House's climb of Nanga Parbat. Vince was in town working for the month of March. Didn't get to climb with him, but it was great to see these slides and hear his story about that whole experience. Vince is cool, he doesn't sit around and say how great he is, just show's his stuff, talks about his doubts on the climb and tells the story. In my view that was the most signicant climb of the new century.

The markets were kinda weird last week. Fed raised a 1/4, market cratered for a day and then came back nicely. Oil is still pretty high. I'm still a fan of being short some of those names, but you have to pick your places. The Royal Bank has come off a bit from it's highs, I'd still wait a bit for that one. TD is probably a bit better play for the short term. Lucent got a buyer, wow bit of surprise there, and it's a French company to boot. What's next, Nortel? hmmmmm. Apple is up a bit from last week, no new products on their birthday, but the stock is still moving a bit. I'd stick there til $66. This market is getting a bit lofty right now.

Went to Calgary on Saturday for the heck of it. Wow that place is getting nuts. I saw that a 1048 square foot house sold in the NE for $269,000 by auction the other day. Real estate prices are getting stupid in there. I guess if oil stays high you could see some of these prices hold, but I just have to wonder. Buy when people want to sell desperately and sell when people want to buy desperately, gee i wonder where we are in the Calgary real estate market? Oh yeah, one other thing, don't go to the newest Costco that just opened on the first weekend it's open, wow was that crazy. Nice new store though. On the topic of great companies to own, there is a keeper.

Okay, well that's about it. It was a good weekend for the Flames. Lets hope they keep that momentum up for rest of the season. Kipper is playing well and we're finally scoring some goals.