Powerful women

Wendy, Cathy, Veronika, Ilse
Originally uploaded by mars_discovery_district

I'm pretty strongly focussed on my career: doing well at it and achieving.

But I wouldn't necessarily call myself "powerful". Interesting when I work in a company that is so wonderfully rich with female role models. Certainly it's all led by my CEO, Ilse Treurnicht.

She's the first person that I've worked for that I've truly admired. And she's built an environment filled with exceptionally intelligent, talented women who make the organization sing.

Tonight, she was honoured as one of Canada's Most Powerful Women Top 100 Awards, in the category of "Trail blazer". It did what it was likely supposed to do: inspired me.

I'm so tough

It's not often that I get to use a saw, a drill, a stud finder and measure, mark, cut, pre-drill, sand, measure, drill.

My mom and my aunt Jane visited last Tuesday. We went out for dinner like other families do when they get together. (I rode my bike back home and they drove - we arrived at the same time. I love it when that happens. Everyone always thinks that riding a bike is so inconvenient, but really it's awesome: free transportation and parking, free exercise, pollution-free. And less stress biking around the city than driving around the city, let me tell you!)

another day, another renovation

It's been a crazy couple of weeks -- always something going on.

But this particular project had been planned since my mom's birthday/family reunion, just before Thanksgiving. My uncle told me that he was a whiz with the bricks and mortar.

And the next weekend we had available get down and dirty with my house exterior was this one. So my aunt and uncle came over with my mom who was the main "helper".