Update: End of 2010: The Orange Room has closed permanently. Boo!
Will, Briana, and I found ourselves with some toddler free time this past weekend, and after mistakenly planning to hit up Perogy Night (it’s this coming Friday, people!) we ended up at The Orange Room. This simple place has been described as “the closest thing New Westminster has to hip” and has also played host to one of our tweet-ups, prompting Haiku Empress and guest poster Marcy Koopmans to refer to our gathering at the Orange Room as the  ”least awkward meet up of …

Locals have been speculating about the probably path of the Torch route through New Westminster for some time, but today the real deal was revealed.

When it comes to registration in “programs of choice” in the public school system, there must be a better way. In New West, we don’t have parents camping out on the sidewalk overnight to be the first in line to register their kids (thank goodness) but our method is still crazy. In New West, instead of having the insanity begin the year before a child enters school, it begins at birth. As soon as you have your child’s birth certificate, you can sign them up for the school and program you hope they will enjoy six years later. You can even sign them up for late French Immersion, 12 years in the future.

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.”

There is something comforting about rows and rows of books – the colors of the spines, the smell of them, the visual appeal of the irregular heights and widths. I love the look of new pages, white as snow and with lines of text that draw my eye along like a magnetic force. I love aging pages, too; yellowed, and sometimes with the mysterious thumbprints left by readings past (I am a notorious re-reader, friends). Books are treasures. They are artifacts of great worth.

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.

For those of us who welcomed a new baby into our lives in 2009, losing the baby weight is likely top of mind when it comes to our 2010 resolutions. As part of our Hyack Your Health series to help New West folk keep our New Year’s resolutions, Caroline Neitzel from Thank You Mommy Wellness offers a few tips for new moms starting post-partum workouts.

Throughout January, Tenth to the Fraser is spotlighting advice from local experts on how to successfully follow through on New Year’s resolutions. This is a guest post by Svetlana Balysheva from Bamboo Yoga.

Cough cough, hack hack. Sound familiar?

I quit smoking October 1, 2003 and have never smoked since. I had decided I didn’t want to turn 30 and still be a smoker – 12 years at a pack a day had taken its toll on me – I had a continual hack, I couldn’t smell a thing and my fingers were an embarrassing shade of yellow – so I gave myself a 6 month cushion before that pivotal birthday and picked a day and quit. Sounds simple, right?

As we get into the swing of things in 2010, it’s time to start following through on those resolutions! To help you out a little, we’ll be running a series of posts with advice from local folks on how to help keep common resolutions.

Let’s start by helping those who rang in the New Year with a baby in tow! Here are four nutrition tips to help lose that baby weight from Caroline Neitzel of Thank You Mommy Wellness.

Happy New Year everyone! As 2010 dawns and hangover treatment begins, it’s time to knuckle down and do something about those resolutions you drunkenly swore you’d really keep this time. Since ‘getting fit’ is one of the most common pledges come January 1, we’ve partnered with Bamboo Yoga to offer a $100 gift certificate to one lucky New Westie.
To win, you must demonstrate that it’s not just your body that’s well-rounded (ha!). Write us your best Haiku poem inspired by life in our fair city, and leave it in the …