Garrett's Waterslide Adventure

What can I say? Garrett's got the best of all possible worlds now. A pool, a slide and a cushioned bum.

On a technical note, now that I can upload video files to YouTube, I'll try putting a few more on the net. We've been taking videos from day 1 with G-man and just haven't had anywhere to share them.

Pics from the Party

 
We knew it was time to start wrapping up the birthday party when Connor started wearing buckets on his head. He couldn't find a lampshade that fit, obviously. 

 
Who is this child and why does he think I'm his daddy? I didn't raise my boy to wear cake. 

 
I believe that Garrett is part moth as he was transfixed by that flickering candle flame for far too long for the average human. 

 
Here's Garrett's birthday cake. I just want to take the opportunity now to let people know that Julie is now in the bakery business. If anyone needs a specialty cake for any occasion, let us know. We take cash in advance and can't promise that the cakes will be ready on time, if ever.

Thanks for your support. 

 
Pirate Pooh lay in wait for the scurvy knave, Garrett, to wander into his trap. 

 
The look on Garrett's face in this shot is priceless. He sure did enjoy those balloons! 

Not l33t gets the EvAv treatment

In honour of my favourite site on the net, Evil Avatar (and to see if this will finally fix the Firefox issues I've had since FF's inception) I've finally found a good template for ye olde Blog of Brock AND it just happens to have the same basic colour scheme as EvAv!

Let me know if you like it, hate it, could care less about it. I'll probably keep it unless it starts acting up again or I find a better template. Don't worry about the links... I'll fix them soon.

I do like the inclusion of the Latest Posts and a search bar on this template. Way to be dragged kicking and screaming into 2004.

The 20-Minute CSI Workout

Sweet zombie Jesus, this is the strangest bit of YouTube video I've ever seen.

For those of you without the fortitude or willpower to withstand the insanity, here's the skinny.

It's part English instructional video, part aerobic workout and part how-to video about what to do when you're robbed by people speaking English when you only speak Japanese.

Nothing like a trio of fit young ladies doing aerobics while chanting, "Spare me my life please."

They're INSANE over there, I tell ya. INSANE! And I like it!

I hate our neighbours...

Happy Birthday Garrett! Watch out for falling tree limbs!

Our idiotic neighbours, they of the yappy dog and questionable lung capacity, have obviously talked the condo board into cutting down the nice big tree that has provided shade to our back yard since we moved in. We were just sitting down for our birthday breakfast of pancakes and juice this morning when we noticed some branches wobbling around. A quick survey of the yard revealed that the condo board members were outside cutting down the tree. Sadly, it's in the neighbour's yard and merely overhangs our yard, but it is (was) a nice big tree. It could have used a bit of a pruning of the lower branches, no arguement there. Chopping the whole majestic thing down, on the other hand... That's just stupid!

But these are the same people who almost dropped a big tree limb on Garrett's head a few weeks back and had the gall to be snippy about it. Maybe they'll have the trunk fall and land on them later on.

Of all the days to do it though. We've got people coming over in the afternoon and it's going to be a sunny day and we kind of rely on that tree for shade. Grr..

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What I'm Reading: Thinner
What I'm Playing: WoW, Star Ocean 3, various DS games on the Lite
What I'm Watching: That big tree fall down go boom

CANCEL THE ACCOUNT!

Talk about horrible customer service. This guy is trying to cancel his AOL account and gets the run around for about 5 minutes. In-SANE.

I have to say that the guy trying to cancel the account handles himself a lot better than I would. I would have either hung up or tried to talk to a supervisor after about the third question.

Reminds me of the rigamarole I had to put up with when I wanted to activate my credit card after it expired recently. They have you on the line and just happen to have enough time while they wait for the account to activate to give you a 5 minute sales pitch. I didn't lose my cool with the lady at that point, but boy was I close.

UPDATE: Here's an interview with the guy who made the call to AOL. The customer rep got fired :)

Goofy Game Commercials

Oh my, these Japanese game commercials are insane.

Speaking of games, I just picked up a brand new, shiny, Nintendo DS Lite. I've only taken it out to enter my info in and charge it up, but my lord, I think I already got a bit of DS Tan going on.

The best thing was that I got the Lite for free. Well, mostly. After my trials and tribulations around Christmas when I went through 3 DS's to get one with no dead pixel (and ended up settling for one with only a mildly annoying dead pixel) I came to love the EB Extended Service Agreement. I still had one on my fancy red DS (complete with dead pixel) and realized that I could trade it in and get a Lite for free.

So that's what I did. I had them put a Lite aside when they came in and just brought down the old system and the ESA and picked up the Lite. Of course, I did spend another $15 on an ESA to make sure that I could trade it in should anything go wrong down the road, but $15 is a lot nicer to pay than $170+.

Let it not be said that I don't know how to play the system :)
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What I'm Reading: Thinner
What I'm Playing: WoW, Star Ocean 3, some games in the park with a parachute
What I'm Watching: Underworld: Evolution, 16 Blocks

It's like the XaoXao stuff, only cooler!

I apologize for the profusion of funky movies of late, but I've just been stumbling across a lot of really good/funny ones.

This one is a classic tale of flash animated stick guy vs. flash animator. Enjoy!

I Hereby Renounce My Old Coot Status

My lifelong dream of being a cranky old coot has come to a crashing halt. I just had the worst lunch of my life and spent most of it on the receiving end of some old cootery.

The local Early Years Centre has an intergenerational lunch every year where they get together with the local Senior's Centre and everyone has a nice lunch. I figured it would be a nice way to spend the lunch hour with Garrett and maybe we'd meet some neat old people in the process.

Yarg.

First off, the lunch was late. Somehow the people who were making it thought lunch was at 4pm, not noon... oops. Then I was sat between two nice old ladies, or so I thought.

The one lady who sat next to Garrett was as sweet as could be and that was fine. It was the other lady who really ruined things.

As I sat down with Garrett she leaned over to me and said, "What are all these kids doing here? I thought this was just a meal for seniors. I have to put up with my great-grandkids enough as it is. I don't want to have my lunch ruined with these little kids running around and being noisy."

Ooooh boy. It was going to be a long lunch.

Garrett was actually pretty well behaved given that he was tired, hungry and stuck in a church hall with a lot of grumpy old people. Unfortunately, by the time the food arrived he was so tired and cranky (and full of cookies) that he just squirmed in my lap for a while before we left.

Shortly before we went to leave, the dance troupe from the local school showed up to do a performance for everyone. Halfway through the girls' first number, the cranky old bat sitting next to me leaned over and said, "I thought the kids were really loud and annoying, but this is worse!"

That was my cue to say my polite goodbyes and make my way for the door. We didn't even get dessert.

To show you the general old coot index of the room, when the girls started dancing to La Bamba, the gentleman a couple people down was asking why they were playing hard rock music.

Sigh.

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What I'm Reading: Thinner
What I'm Playing: WoW
What I'm Watching: Not a whole lot

La la la la la la bamba!

Happy Father's Day

My beloved old MS Intellimouse Explorer, a gift from Julie's parents lo those many years ago, finally died on Saturday.

The Intellimouse started to show signs of flaking out on Friday when it would inexplicably stop working for periods of time. Saturday evening's surfing was very annoying as it would just shut down every so often. So in honour of Father's Day and with Julie's unwitting blessing, I took a trip down to Staples to find a replacement for ol' Intelly.

The one mouse that I wanted, the Logitech G7 gaming mouse was nowhere to be found. I know the computer shop in Acton has it but it was pretty pricey and I couldn't use the $20 Staples gift card that Santa brought me.

So after some studious research and generous rebates, I decided to go with the Logitech MX 1000 cordless laser mouse. I liked the feel of the mouse in my hand a lot more than the one gaming mouse they had in stock and it also had two buttons on the thumb, a prerequisite. After spending the last 6+ years taking full advantage of the forward and backward surfing abilities on the Intellimouse Explorer, I couldn't do with any less than those two buttons on the replacement.

Now after all is said and done, I'm incredibly happy with this new mouse. It is much more responsive than the Intellimouse ever was and has not 5, but a good 10 buttons (plus the scrolling of the mouse wheel itself). I'm in love with the application switching button. The only downside of this whole endeavour is that my hand has contorted into a strange claw molded in the shape of the Intellimouse after these many years of use. I'm sure I'll get used to the new mouse soon. It's just going to take a while. I feel like a geisha who's just had her feet unbound and is trying out a pair of sneakers.

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What I'm Reading: Thinner
What I'm Playing: Freespace 2, WoW
What I'm Watching: Nothing really... Summer TV sucks.

Some big news...

It's not very often that I get to say this, but I have some great news for everyone out there who knows us.

There's a new Wierd Al song!

WOohoo!

I guess he couldn't get permission from James Blunt to put it on his new album so Wierd Al just put it up on the net. And it reminds me of someone I know, for some reason... :)

I know it's chilly, but come on!

The weather thing I have on Bloglines either has a glitch or we've got one hell of a cold front coming our way.

According to Bloglines, Milton is slated to get hit with snow on Wednesday and Thursday. I have a sneaky suspicion that it won't, but you never know. We just went from having to wear shorts to shivering in the backyard... Maybe I should get my gloves out of the closet again.
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What I'm Reading: Dhampir
What I'm Playing: Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Star Ocean: Till The End Of Time, Big Brain Academy
What I'm Watching: From The Ground Up (Go Leah!)

Teeto teeto lilla sta

Recent Recipe Rite-up

I've invented one recipe and tried out another yummy one in the last week or two.

Here's the one I invented.

Three-Cheese Chicken In A Pan
Take as many boneless chicken breasts as you want, thaw and put in a glass dish.
Cover completely with Kraft 3 Cheese Ranch dressing.
Put in oven for 1 hour at 350F.

Serve with rice or potatoes and enjoy the yummy smell and succulent taste.

I've made that recipe twice in the past week and it's been delicious both times.

Last night we had some friends over and had fun making dessert. I got the recipe from last week's TV Guide, of all places.

We had Chocolate Kiss Wontons.

They were very yummy and since they had a piece of fresh banana in each one they were also very healthy.

Here's the link to the recipe but I'll put it below in case you want to try it yourself. It was a lot of fun to make them as we had one person (myself) manning the boiling oil part of the operation and everyone else did a sort of assembly line of wonton stuffing and folding. Oh, and we used squares of Caramilk bars instead of Hershey Caramel Kisses.

Here ya go:

Ingredients:

8 wonton wrappers (available in the refrigerated or frozen section of most grocery stores)
1/4 cup peanut butter (smooth or chunky)
1 ripe banana, peeled and sliced into 1/4-inch-thick slices
8 Hershey’s caramel kisses, unwrapped
powdered sugar for dusting
vegetable oil for deep frying


Directions:

Place a small bowl of warm water beside wonton wrappers.
Put a single wonton wrapper on a clean, dry surface in front of you.
Schmear 1 teaspoon of peanut butter onto the center.
Set a banana slice on top of peanut butter and top banana with a chocolate kiss.
Dip your finger in water and trace a circle on the wonton wrapper around the stack of ingredients (water is the glue of wonton wrappers).
Pinch and seal wrapper around the ingredients and pinch it at the top so that it resembles a large kiss. (If you are not going to fry the wontons immediately, cover with a damp dishtowel and refrigerate.)

Pour oil into a small, tall pot until it is 3 inches deep.
Heat oil until it reaches 350°F (see oil dissertation below).
When oil is ready, fry 4 wontons at a time.
Fry for approximately 1 minute, or until wonton wrapper is a golden brown.
Remove and place on paper towel to absorb excess oil.
Adjust heat so that it is 350°F again and continue with next batch.

I can't think of a witty title...

So, last week Julie went away to Houston and left Garrett and me all alone.

On Wednesday we went to the DIEPP clinic at the Early Years Centre. It's a developmental assessment clinic that lets you get your kid checked out in a bunch of areas to make sure you're not as horrible a parent as your friends and neighbours accuse you of being :)

Plus it got us out of the house for a few hours.

Anyway, Garrett got his hearing checked (a-ok!), had a general assessment done (he performs tricks for no strangers!) and saw the speech pathologist (Erinoak, here we come!)

Garrett hasn't really been saying two words or more together as much as we thought he should so the speech pathologist was the person we wanted to see the most. She wasn't terribly concerned but she gave us some exercises to work on. We're supposed to work on his speech by saying two words instead of one. For example, when Garrett says, "Car," we're supposed to say, "Blue car", etc.

Of course, this isn't working. If he says, "Car," and we say, "Blue car?" then he just nods and says, "Yeah." Sigh. Granted, he has been starting to say a few more words together just since that day, so maybe it's working. Point in case, yesterday evening he was saying, "Again, Cars, Movie."

Not quite an award winning orator, but it's a start!

Anyway, after that adventure we went to the bank and opened an account for Garrett. Unfortunately he didn't qualify for the iPod giveaway, but it was worth a try.

Dave & Connor came over that afternoon and we went to Springridge Farm near Milton for a while. It's pretty neat. There were a few corn mazes that Garrett and Connor had a blast in. One of them is basically a winding straight line that you can't get lost in and Garrett must have run through it about 8 times before we dragged him off to the petting zoo. It was pretty funny to watch Connor lead Dave through the maze that had dead ends and switchbacks. Connor and Garrett could see the exit of the maze (it basically had chicken-wire fence for walls) but it took a while for them to actually make it out.

A yummy ice cream cone at the local ice cream store (Ice Dream Art in Acton, for those wanting to know the best place for ice cream in town) capped off the afternoon's visit. Then Garrett & I went out to Guelph for a quick trip to the comic shop followed by a date with Garrett's girlfriend and then I had a condo meeting to wrap up the night.

Thursday was nowhere near as crazy. We basically hung out at home aside from a quick trip to EB to trade in some games and then we headed to Cambridge for dinner at the Mongolian Grill with Dan & Faith. We also got to see their new house, which has a crazy hobbit greenhouse and the greenest pool in existence. Fun times.

So there you have it. We were pretty busy those two and a half days that Julie was away. I think I was actually more relaxed on Friday when I was at work than I was at home :P

Again... Cars...

We had our first family movie day yesterday at ye olde Wager homestead. We took Garrett to see Cars down in Georgetown. Since car is one of his favourite words and he loves looking at cars, I figured a Pixar flick about talking cars would be a nice 'first' movie for him to go to. He's been to movies before, but not since he really could appreciate them.

Anyway, long story short, Garrett really seemed to like the movie. It didn't start on time and by the time it did start he'd already eaten all of the popcorn and was starting to get a bit bouncy, but once those cars started zipping around the track he was rather excited.

It was pretty cute too. Whenever there was a song playing, he'd stuck his hand up in the air, index finger pointing at the screen and would wave it back and forth like a conductor.

Given the fact that it was a 2 hour movie, he didn't really get too squirmy to handle until about 10-15 minutes before the end. He did move from lap to lap during the movie, but I was pretty impressed that he stayed still for as long as he did.

And you've gotta love Georgetown Cinemas. Sure, they aren't super fancy but when you can get a family of three in to see a movie and get popcorn, pop and a chocolate bar for a grand total of $13.50, well, that's a deal in my book.

If you do go see Cars, stay till the end of the credits. There are a lot of funny bits during and after the credits.

A Perfect Christmas Gift

We don't play a tonne of board games around the ol' Wager Household since very few of them are really very fun to play with just two people. HOWEVER, this collector's edition of Monopoly would be great to have at Christmas.

Hint Hint.

Juggling!

Julie was in Houston for the last few days and Garrett & I had quite the busy time.

So in honour of how exhausted we are, check out this awesome video of a guy juggling to Fat Boy Slim!

I'll write about what we actually did while Julie was in the land down under (the rest of the U.S.A.) when I get home from work tomorrow and can catch my breath.

Vikings SUCK!

This past week's issue of MacLean's had an unexpected article from Paul Wells. Turns out he's a Northern alumnus and went back to Sarnia a week or two ago for his high school reunion.

It's actually a pretty good little article and it was neat to see Sarnia figure prominently in a national publication!

He really nails Sarnia though.

"They don't do reunions by class year at Northern, perhaps because things change so slowly in Sarnia that the whole school doesn't need to surrender to nostalgia more often than every 25 years."

Hee hee.

I Love Book Sales

I stopped in at the book sale on the way home from work. I picked up 4 Stephen King hardcovers and a Greg Bear edited anthology of hard sci-fi for a whopping $2.50.

I finally have a copy of Skeleton Crew that isn't missing half the pages. I love that book.

Awwww...

Garrett had a perfect "Aw, shucks" moment tonight.

I was sitting in the office, checking my e-mail and Garrett walked in holding his two blankets. I sent him back to his room to sleep on his new bed. A minute or two later, he walked back in and just as I was about to send him packing, he held out a book. What did it say on the book?

"Read Me A Book"

Awwww....

He's such a little schemer :)

Book Sale!

I knew there was something else I wanted to mention in that last post.

The Acton Library is having their annual book sale tomorrow from 9-3 out in front of the library. Of course, I'm working from 7-3 tomorrow, so my bookshelves, wallet and floorboards will not be feeling the strain that such a day usually puts them through. Sigh.

Strange Things In Them Thar Hills

I was driving around yesterday afternoon and spotted something rather wierd on the 25th Sideroad just around the corner from my house.

There was a car pulled over to the side of the road and a guy was standing behind it. I figured he was just watering the bushes or looking in his trunk but nope. He was standing there playing a bagpipe.

Weird...

Speaking of bagpipes, I went digging through my CD's and have been listening to MacKeel's Plaid CD for most of the week. Garrett loves it too. Good ol' Celtic rock. Too bad MacKeel broke up many moons ago. Sigh.
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What I'm Reading: Dhampir
What I'm Playing: Condemned, Valkyrie Profile, Fallout
What I'm Watching: Not much.