White Rock & Roll

I wanted to post this before I pass out from sheer exhaustion brought on by the crappiest day ever.. literally... I mean, it just doesn't stop! Where does that much poo come from?!

Anyway, on a more positive note, I spent a lot of this afternoon driving the kids around because, well, they were asleep, and that is a blessed state for kids to be in on the tail end of an afternoon.

So I was driving around the highways and biways of Halton Hills and ended up at the White Rock Ostrich Farm over near Rockwood. I have always meant to go there with the kids and hey, it was open and I was there with kids, so in we went.

Once the kids got over the confusion of realizing that they weren't at the park, they trundled over to the hay wagon and off we went on our own little private tour of the farm. Both of the kids were fascinated by the birds and Kara was always waving bye-bye to them when drove out of sight.

The high point of the tour was feeding time with the 'teenagers', who were all about a year old. Garrett had a giant cup full of dried corn, which is supposed to be like candy for the birds. Now we were pulled up right alongside the fence and if nothing else, I learned that ostrich necks are LONG. Garrett had a hoot feeding them and Kara thought it was hilarious unless one of them got that gleam in its eye and started making a move near her, at which case she made sure I was between her and the incoming beak.

We even got to see some little ostrich chicks. According to the farmer, this summer hasn't been very good for breeding as the changes in temperature are throwing off the eggs. That said, I'm sure they're having lots of giant omelettes!

Both of the kids got a feather, though we had to confiscate Kara's because she keeps sticking it up her nose. The lady was even nice enough to let us go on the tour without paying up front, as they only took cash and I just had plastic. I zipped into town afterwards and got the money to pay her, so we're all squared away, but it's nice to know there are people who still trust other people around these parts.

So yeah. If you're looking for something to do and have a half hour or so to kill, take the kids down and feed the ostriches. It'll blow their minds.

Playing A Few Brown Notes

So today has been a pretty crappy day, literally, both for the parents and the kids around here.

I went upstairs pretty late last night, as I got too much sleep the night before and was wide awake at 1:30. I decided to poke my head in to see if Kara was ok, as I could smell something stinky when I came upstairs.

Let's just say this. Imagine Kara, all sweet and innocent, curled up on her side fast asleep. Now add to this serene setting a lack of pants or diaper and what was essentially a shotgun blast of poo extending from her butt, across the sheets and against the back wall of her room. Amazingly, there wasn't much on Kara proper, but it took a combined effort to sterilize the room and Julie & I were up waaaaay too late.

This morning Kara managed to go through about 4 diapers in less than 10 minutes due to her constant eruptions. Things seem to be settled now, but I'm exhausted and still getting over the tail end of this cold, which has migrated to my chest. I'm just waiting for her to conk out now. Oh please, let her conk out...

I will say that I had to fight the urge to take a picture of her last night to keep in my First Date Photo Album Of Shame. Or to put up at her wedding.

Look Around You!

I think I might have singlehandedly set Garrett's education back several years this afternoon.

We were doing a bit of reading together after he came home and he asked me why I wasn't feeling good. I told him that I got the germs from him and his sister last week. Of course, Garrett wants to see what a germ looks like, so I trundle him down to the computer and look around.

A quick search turned up what I thought was a reputable series of educational short films from the 1970s. They held up ok until the "Germs originated in Germany" line. Then they just got silly.

We ended up watching one about ghosts and one about water, which is probably my favourite so far. I think I'm going to spend the night in bed with the laptop, 'learning'.

But I pity Garrett if he tries to apply what he learned about ant igloos out in the real world.

Feel Sorry For Brock Day

Remember how the kids were feeling under the weather last week? Well, it looks like I picked up their lovely cold. I spent the day at work yesterday bumbling about like Mr. Bean and blowing my nose until we ran out of Kleenex. So I'm off today and as soon as the kids get off to VBS and the babysitter, I'm curling up on the couch and drinking lots of soup. As Julie said yesterday, she knows I'm really sick when I sound awful but still stumble into work regardless.

Maybe I'm a one-man pity parade, but my tale of woe sure made this guy depressed.

Serenity Now...

Hey! Everything is working! Nothing has broken, thrown-up or crank-called around me in at least an hour or two. Hooray! I got some food and drink in me, so it's all good. I even beat Plants Vs. Zombies. Yippee.

I'm frightened to turn on the 360 though. I'm sure it'll red-ring or something nasty will ooze out of it or SOMETHING!

Speaking of oozing, I found it mildly amusing that the narrator of the "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" shows that Julie was watching over the last day or two is a man. Of course, I now also have a long list of words I don't want to hear again, in whole or in part, for quite some time. I mean, really? Jon Stewart can't swear at 11pm but I have to hear about all the gooshy bits of a home delivery all day long? Sheesh.

Stupid Keyboard

Ok. I don't know what the heck is going on now. I am using the wireless keyboard to type this as my good ol' G15 doesn't seem to want to actually work when I plug it into any of the USB ports on my rig.

I have a sneaky suspicion that there's some kind of crimp in the cable. It was working just fine on the laptop but hmm...

Well how do you like that? I did get the G15 working just now, but I have NO idea what made it turn on.

Have I mentioned that I am really, REALLY starting to hate this PC?

WTF Man! I Mean, C'Mon!

Boy, can an evening ever go downhill fast around here.

I spent about 4 hours or so outside painting our fence. Not a bad use of a lovely summer day, if I do say so myself, plus I got a big part of my summer project out of the way.

So I come inside to find Garrett complaining about a headache and generally feeling sick, so there go our plans for the drive-in movie tonight. No biggie. We've had a busy day and the movie wasn't starting until quite late.

Now Kara is in a bit of a 'I don't like to wear clothes or diapers' kind of mood lately, so I had to clean up some pee on the basement floor when she decided to engage in her usual after dinner exhibition. This isn't the bad part. No, this is perfectly fine and relatively normal for us so I didn't pay it any mind.

So the kids have their baths and we come downstairs to fire up Ice Age on DVD for a consolation movie. Here's where the evening goes ker-plooie.

Firstly, Garrett pukes. All over the chair. Then he pukes again, only a little to the left (and perilously close to me). Then he pukes AGAIN on the way to the sink.

Good times.

So we get everything cleaned up and Garrett has stopped erupting and the movie is starting, so I settle down in my chair to toss a Tweet up or update the blog. That's when the phone rings.

I could hear some laughing in the background and figured it might be one of Garrett's friends calling, since it definately wasn't work. Nope. Instead I get some teenage-sounding girl on the phone.

Me: "Hello"
Her: "Hiiiiiii...."
Me: "Um, who is this?"
Her: "Don't you know who I am? It's your lover!"
Me: "Uh... No." (click)

Julie walks into the room right then and laughed when I told her about the call. Then the phone rings again.

Me: "Yes?"
Her: "Hey, it's me, your secret lover."
Me: "If you call me again, I'm calling the police." (click)

So that was wierd. I was tempted to *69 the call, but Julie said it costs $20 (or maybe 25 cents) so I figured I'd wait until my secret lover called back and THEN I'd drop the hammer... So far, no call backs.

Now all of this is happening in something like a 10 minute span, I'm hot, I'm tired, I'm hungry and all I can smell is bile and puke stink. Garrett's busy trying not to throw up and Kara has FINALLY gone to bed.

I decide to chronicle these odd happenings on ye olde blog and pull out the keyboard tray to start typing this very post up. That's when I notice that nothing is happening when I type. Nada, zero, zilch.

My keyboard is dead.

I mean, c'mon man. WTF!?!

I would be fine with any of these things happening on their own, but stacked up back-to-back like this and on an empty stomach? No way.

So I fight with the computer, plugging the keyboard into a bunch of different USB plugs to no avail. Thankfully I had the laptop and after some futzing about with this thing, I did get the keyboard working again. Now to try plugging it back into the desktop to see if it was just a matter of a crimped cord or something fundamentally wrong with the PC. I'm about ready to toss that hunk of junk into a lake as it is, so we'll see. At least I know that the keyboard still works...

Pardon the bitching and moaning. Like I was telling Julie, if this is the worst I have to deal with in a day, I'll thank my lucky stars and be happy I don't live in Darfur or the other side of Acton. It's just annoying!

Sunny Days...

For such a beautiful day, it's pretty chilly outside, esp. for the first week of July.

I LOVE IT! It's like a warm summer day in Thunder Bay!

We spent the morning hitting the farmer's market in Georgetown and doing a bit of shopping and library browsing and then came home for lunch. I think I'm going to spend the rest of the afternoon cutting the grass and painting my back fence.

Unfortunately, it seems that Garrett might be coming down with whatever was bugging Kara earlier in the week. He was complaining that his stomach hurt and barely touched his lunch and now he's curled up on the couch. Of course, he keeps insisting we invite his friend over to play... And we had hoped to go to the drive-in tonight to watch Ice Age 3 and Night At The Museum 2. Oh well. We'll see how things progress.

No Fireworks For Us

While we did have a pretty busy Canada Day, what with a parade, face painting, ice cream and general carousing, it looks as though we'll be missing fireworks for the first time in memory.

The weather has been miserable at best around these parts and Garrett's mood was matching the sky near 7pm. If the weather were decent, I'd let him sleep for a bit and then we'd all wake up and go to the park to see the display, but as it stands, he was grouchy and tired and we'd all be grouchy and tired come 10pm or so when the fireworks go off.

Oh well. I'll just squinch my eyes really tightly and see if I can see some fireworks the old fashioned way!

LG Stands For Lookin' Good

Well, my car's "Service Engine Soon" light turned off after I tightened the gas cap, so that was my sign from above that it was ok to finally replace the hunk of junk monitor that was gradually blinding me.

We checked around at the local shop but their prices were far too high. So it was off to Futureshop we go! I ended up with this beauty, an LG 22" Widescreen LCD.

It fits perfectly in the cubby on the computer desk. It wasn't too rough on the wallet either. I got an open-box model for $50 less than the normal price and aside from a fingerprint on the frame of the monitor, it is in pristine condition. My eyes haven't quite adjusted to the fact that the screen is so big and doesn't look like it's smeared in vaseline. If only I could actually run games on my computer and take advantage of the real estate!

Of course, while I was busy setting up the new monitor and cleaning out the 6 inches of dust that had accumulated behind it, Garrett and Kara amused themselves with a selection of our finest markers. Sigh.

From June 2009

No Sleep? NO PROBLEM!

You'd think I'd handle a night of no sleep rather well, given all of the overnight shifts I've pulled lately. There's something significantly different about a planned night with no sleep and one where your daughter, for some strange and unknown reason, decides that she wants nothing more than to cry in her room until you bring her to bed with you, where she proceeds to kick you and your wife in the ribs from 3-4am onwards.

I even tried bringing her downstairs at around 5:45am to watch a Western, which should have lulled any self-respecting 2 year old to sleep. Nope. She got even more excited and full of energy.

I'm starting to see a bit of weariness creep in though. As soon as Garrett is off to his day camp, we're coming home and she's going to sleep... and so am I!

No Gaming Weekend

This has been a very odd weekend for me. Aside from one or two short matches against Garrett with Super Mario on the DS, I haven't played any videogames since Friday evening. Of course, we had Garrett's birthday party yesterday and I essentially spent the entire day at work today, but yeah.

I'm going to go rectify this situation right now.

I guess I did finish reading Scar Night (cool book, by the way) and got to take one of the guys out to see Transformers 2 tonight, so it's not like I had an incredibly rough weekend. The kids got into the sidewalk chalk today and found out exactly what kind of gooey, colourful paste it makes when exposed to puddles... fun times.

By the way, Transformers 2 was exactly the kind of movie I wanted, nay, needed. It's absolutely mindless but it's what I had hoped the first movie would have been: lots and lots of robots punching, shooting and blowing each other up.

Why Is The Pig Purple?

We went out to the splash pad in Rockwood today, which was an exercise in futility. The kids were hell bent to get there and couldn't stop talking about it on the way to the park but the second we actually got set up next to the water fountains, they both wussed out. Garrett did get a little wet but whenever the water started to spray, he would run off of the pad.

Kara, on the other hand, was in tears any time I put her under the water, so she just spent the day on the playground. Oh well. We'll try it again later in the summer and see if they can grow to love it.

The real point of this post was to state just how awesome the pizza is at Purple Pig Pizzaria in Rockwood. I'd heard good things about it but it was probably some of the best pizza I've had from a local shop. Now I want to order an actual pizza from there!