It's Mostly The Fireballs

Well, isn't THIS a timely comic from our good friends over at Nedroid.com.

Busy Night

Last night was a bit of a whirlwind. Garrett went over to his friend Tommy's house for his very first sleepover and seems to have survived it intact. We took the opportunity to have Kara sleep in her big girl bed (aka the toddler bed) and that went more or less splendidly. I'm not saying she stayed in bed the whole night or anything, but we're one step closer to getting her out of the crib.

I was able to finish off Brutal Legend on the Xbox 360 last night. I loved the worldcraft and storytelling that went into the game and it has made me at least appreciate what good heavy metal music sounds like (to the point that I can't get Dragonforce's Through The Fire And The Flames out of my head) but it really could have done without the real-time-strategyesque stage battle missions, though I'm not sure how they could have pulled those battles off otherwise. Good game that was definately worth the $10 I spent to rent it but I might have been miffed if I dropped $70 on it.

And I got my new computer last night too. It's still in the box and awaiting a thorough decontamination of the PC enclosure under the desk (and a bit of wire detangling) but I plan to spend at least the morning or early afternoon working on getting it set up so I can spend this evening in its thrall. They had the unit in the store open yesterday and it was a thing of beauty to look at its innards.

Castoreum. YUM!

Good Saturday Morning to ye! I figured today would be a great time to share this list of ingredients that may or may not be in your favourite food. I'm definately keeping an eye out for castoreum from now on... it's beaver anal gland.

I'm perfectly fine with the bug parts in my candy, but not beaver butts. And who knew that sand was a main ingredient of Wendy's chili... well, you do now!

T-t-t-trick Or T-t-t-treat

Last night was probably the coldest Hallowe'en we've had since the kids started trick-or-treating. Garrett and Kara did the parking lot in front of our house before Garrett wussed out and went home to hand out candy with Julie for most of the rest of the evening. He seemed to be much more excited to be the guy checking out costumes and doling out candy than actually receiving any.

Kara, on the other hand, was a real trooper and the cutest little dolphin around. We did all of the houses in the townhouse complex and a few across the road before her resolve faltered. By that point, she had two full bags of candy to Garrett's 8 pieces of candy, so I dragged him back out into the blustery night air in order to avoid a catastrophe later on when they started comparing hauls.

There was a guy dressed as a Thriller-era Michael Jackson at one house and Kara was petrified of him. I think that was the only part of the evening that scared her. Everyone loved her dolphin costume and she was quite the polite little lady with all of her "Tick or teats" and "Tank yoooou"s. Garrett, on the other hand, didn't wear the mask I picked up for him downtown, which really churned my butter. But he had a good time and ate lots of candy so that's all that really matters.

I'll post some pictures tonight when I get home. We're still suffering from a distinct lack of desktop computer at the moment and that's hampered some of my usual image dumps. But fear not, for spooky pictures shall abound this evening!

Crappy Computer!

Well, I was going to upload some more pictures and show off Garrett's trip to the Museum last week and the costumes from last weekend, but just before I got Garrett out the door for school this morning, my desktop PC decided to go spazzy and stop working.

I'm not sure exactly what is going on with it, but it's pulling the ol' "There's No Keyboard Attached" trick that it did a few months ago, which is incredibly infuriating when you have no less than 2 USB keyboards hooked up to it at a time and it acknowledges neither of them.

I'm going to have to snag one of the surplus PS/2 port keyboards from work again and see if it can rectify the situation and get me back into Windows, which seemed to fix things last time it went screwy. If not, well, I'll just grab the drive and start hitting the stores and see if I can find myself a nice new rig. I was hoping to wait until the spring before I upgraded but at least Windows 7 is out now. Stupid computers.

And I was already a bit grumpy BEFORE this happened. Grrr.....

Sick Of My Vacation

As usual, I finally get to take vacation and I've been 'blessed' with the honour of being the last person on my house to come down with this stupid flu/cold thingy that is going around. It wasn't the 'DEATH COLD' or anything, but I've been pretty sapped of energy since late Friday/early Saturday and putting my shed together yesterday (with a lot of help from Codeboy) drained me.

That said, I was able to lounge around in bed over the past few evenings and watched Wolverine: Origins (which wasn't as bad as I imagined but that's not saying much) and finished both Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story and Uncharted 2. Now I can start playing some Demon's Souls or Borderlands or GTA: Chinatown Wars... if I can stay awake after Garrett goes to bed.

Of course, I know I'll be feeling just peachy by the time I go back to work on Wednesday. Sigh.

It's Not Rocket Science

But it is brain surgery. My dad had some work done on his noggin last Friday and should be home from the hospital as I type this. He was undergoing a procedure to reduce and/or eliminate the seizures he has been experiencing for upwards of 15 years (and which were getting progressively worse).

According to my mom, there haven't been any seizures since the procedure, which is awesome news. As long as he doesn't do anything silly over the next few weeks and just relaxes for a bit, he'll hopefully be right as rain.

Thanks for all of the prayers and well wishes from everyone who saw my tweets last week. They were much appreciated.

Return To The Old Stomping Grounds

I took Garrett downtown today to visit the ROM and had a grand old time. I'll post a bunch of the pictures shortly, but that's beside the point.

WHAT HAPPENED TO YONGE AND BLOOR?!?!

We wandered over to my old place of business (ie. the place that cost me my education) to see if GEM was still around and lo and behold, there was naught but a giant crater where that whole block of businesses was. Yeesh.

And when did Yonge Street (at least between Bloor and Wellesley) become Little Japan/Korea? Every 2 feet was yet another sushi bar, korean grill or combination thereof. Not that I'm complaining. I was just wishing that I'd had this kind of selection 10 years ago and that I could have convinced my 5 year old son that sashimi is a good thing. Alas, he didn't want to go for it, though he did try some bubble tea.

Speaking of bubble tea, we went to one called 'Real Fruit' bubble tea where Garrett asked for a chocolate tea and got a pink, strawberry tea. He liked the tapioca bubbles and now I owe him a proper, non-pink, chocolate bubble tea!

We also found a mask for his Incredibles costume at a theatrical store, so it wasn't a wasted trip down the ol' street. But boy, did I ever start to feel old.

Don't Call Me!

I'm on vacation for a week and a half. A glorious week and a half where I don't have to think about work. I hope. Now to see if the house can manage without my wisdom and guidance until the 28th...

I'm taking Garrett to the ROM on Wednesday and we're going to have a whole day in downtown TO to soak in the ambiance. He's excited to go on his first subway ride and to see the mummies and dinosaurs at the museum.

Other than the trip to Toronto and a condo board meeting tomorrow, I'm essentially committment free. I plan to beat Uncharted 2 and sink some time into a few other games and read a bunch of comics and novels and maybe, just maybe, catch up on my Maclean's backissues. I'm still reading issues from June!

The only thing I'm NOT looking forward to is putting up the shed, but it has to get done or else I'll be building it in the snow!

I just have to hope that the aches and snurfles I've had off and on today aren't an indication that I'm coming down with the flu that Garrett, Kara and Julie have had over the last week or so. I did manage to dodge Kara's puke at the park yesterday when she threw up while I was under the playground (that was fun), so maybe I'll get lucky and not manifest THE SICKNESS...

N.I.T.

Today marks the day Garrett finally became a N.I.T. aka Nerd In Training. He's done well over the past week despite fighting a cold and I gave him the choice of Monsters or Space for his reward for getting enough tokens on his responsibility chart.

He chose Monsters (duh) and so he got this book:

It's essentially a Monster Manual for kids and it's actually quite well made. We went through it tonight at bedtime and he was able to figure out which monsters eat people and which are harmless. This is the kind of info that will serve him well later in life, when the Purple Worms attack!

That's One Incredible Costume!

We went out to get things for Halloe'en costumes today and found a great one for a pittance. I was going to make some kind of costume for Garrett and Kara (I was thinking of dressing one as a zombie and one as a flower and going for a Plants Vs. Zombies theme) but I stumbled across this find at the Value Village in Guelph.

Total cost: $7. The costume was tucked into a bookshelf but fit Garrett perfectly. The gloves were only a couple dollars too and now I'm just going to make him a little eye mask and we'll have our own little Mr. Incredible :)