Recently, we put the call out to our readers to submit the questions about local matters that have you stumped. Today, we’ve got the answer to a question from Kathryn Berry: “Why are there are so few recreational classes offered by NWPR for adults, such as dance classes? There are lots for children and for seniors, but there seems to be a paucity of physical recreation for the adult crowd.”

Leaving the house with kids can be very hard work. Such hard work that it is often tempting to just not do it. I can’t get away with staying home anymore; my kids need to be run like dogs and if we don’t leave the house in the morning, that morning will end with me getting tied up and scribbled on with Sharpie or with a guitar being smashed over someone’s head, ’70s-rock-band-style.

Today we asked our readers on Facebook and Twitter if they had any New West questions that we could try to answer. I’ll be working through the list over the next few days. Today, we start with an easy one: Celine Pitfield-Heidrich asked us something that I’m sure many local Olympic fans have wondered about: what is the parade route of the Olympic torch?

I am one of those guys who is really out of place at a gym; a fish out of water. I spent most of my life as a slender book worm with little interest in sports but as age, fatherhood, a desk job and an affinity for a cheerfully empty pint of beer, I knew something had to change. I had to get active, channel that participaction! action and sign up with the program. For the first time in my life, I needed to get fit; but how? And when?
Looking …

Thanks to everyone who entered the contest to win a $100 gift certificate for Bamboo Yoga. We’ve read through the entries and chosen the winner: Marcy Koopmans, for her double-length Haiku. ‘Cause deep down, we all love someone who stretches the rules.

Of the five friends I have who delivered their babies at Royal Columbian Hospital, four of us had 30+ hour labours ending in emergency Cesarean sections. I have wondered how it could be that four out of five young, healthy women could all have so much trouble delivering our babies naturally that we would need our babies cut out of our bodies.

It’s a new year, and as a realtor, the beginning of January always comes with calls from past clients about questions regarding their property assessment.

He walks the streets in our neighbourhood,  shuffle shuffle shuffle, unkempt hair and shabby dirty clothes, eyes cast downward scanning scanning, always scanning. He’s looking for discarded ends of cigarettes while out on his binning runs – although nicotine is not the only habit Lottery Man has.
I didn’t notice Lottery Man before I was home during the day – Lottery Man is a diurnal being, and unlike a lot of binners, prefers to do his rounds by sunlight.  Lottery Man lives somewhere near me, and he bins in the garbage cans …

At three, every child wants to be a firefighter. Who wouldn’t, what with the sirens and the lights and the ladders and the shiny red fire trucks and the huge boots … nevermind the awesomeness of the firefighters’ helmets.

We have luxuriated in the lovely pine scent of our Christmas tree for the last month, but the time has come to lift the ornaments from its weary branches and pack it off to the annual firefighters’ tree-chipping fundraiser.