"We're Living In A Hotel Room!"

Hey, check out what we did over the past week!



Yup, that's our new bedroom.

So long, 70's nicotine-infused carpet. Goodbye, builder's primer walls. See you later, 12 year old bed that was slowly crippling us both.

Hello Ikea showroom!

We still have a little bit of work left to do, mostly in the old closet area, but otherwise things are tidied up and cleaned out and looking quite nice. I'm looking forward to sleeping in the new bed tonight on my new pillow (and hopefully not waking up with what feels like a broken back) and I'm looking forward even more to being able to just relax for the rest of the week that I'm on vacation. It has been a wee bit hectic over the past week and a bit, but it is so nice to be done the work so that whatever other shenanigans we get up to, we can feel good about accomplishing something productive.

The other upside of the new room is that Kara can't quite climb up to the top of the bed. Mwahaha...

Dream Weaver aka Renovations Suck

This morning I awoke after having a very vivid and disturbing dream. I was at someone's wedding and the dream basically had me helping set up the hall and enjoy myself at the reception. It got dark and disturbing at the end as I was walking out to our car with Julie and as I gazed out across the parking lot towards the city skyline on the horizon, I saw an airliner with one wing on fire. Within seconds, it had crashed somewhere behind the towers and everyone at the wedding was looking on in horror. The rest of the dream basically revolved around everyong trying to figure out what they'd just seen and watching the news for information.

So that's how I woke up this morning. Happy times...

Today was the final day of 'prep' work to be done on our bedroom. Ever since I got back from the cottage, I've been working on renovating our bedroom. Wednesday was basically an 'empty the room' day where most of the stuff was either tossed or shoved in Kara's room for the time being.

Thursday was all about painting the ceiling and the walls. Today was a pretty quick day, at least in the morning. I just slapped a second coat of paint on the walls and was done. We went out to Mexicali Rosa's for lunch and then saw Inception (which was awesome) so you could almost say it was a date, as the kids were nowhere to be seen :)

Alas, everything seemed to go pear-shaped this evening. Shortly after returning home from a trip to the comic shop, I decided to get to work pulling up the carpet in our bedroom which should have been a quick half hour job, tops. Not only was it a zillion degrees in the room while I was pulling up the carpet, I had to deal with a bunch of kids lighting fire to the playground slide in the complex, a propane tank that ran dry just as we were about to throw the pork chops on the BBQ, my own kids who wouldn't listen to anybody and a litany of other crises, real or imagined.

And the carpet... yuck. I think it was 30 year old carpet with an underpadding at least that old which had essentially disintegrated over the years. It was also smoke-stained and disgusting and crumbled as I tried to pull it up. Of course, the one thing in the whole house that seemed to have been put in with some kind of competency was the batch of carpet runners which had me pounding on them with a pry bar for almost 4 hours before I got the last of the buggers up. Sigh.

Suffice it to say, I'm pooped. I should have known my dream had some kind of significance this morning when I woke up. The day started off rather nicely but ended up in chaos. Thankfully, much like the news reports in my dream (which I recall showing that the plane had landed in the lake and spared the city massive damage), things didn't turn out as bad as they could have and it looks like tomorrow should be a good day after all.

I mean, I'm taking Garrett to go see Star Wars In Concert! WOO!

Operation: The Untragically Hip

My grandpa had his hip replaced today. I'm assuming it was with a new hip. I guess that means he's a cyborg!

We were worried that he might not pull through given his less than ideal health of late, but the latest report was that, while groggy and incoherent, he was asking when supper was, which means that he's going to be just fine.

Hopefully the new hip will reduce the pain he has been experiencing and result in an overall increase in his quality of life. Thanks for all of the prayers and happy thoughts sent his way over the past day or so.

The Man Your Man Could Smell Like Reads Your Blog

Remember the Old Spice commercial with the man your man could smell like? Well, he's back.

And now he's reading facebook, twitter and youtube comments and it's hilarious!



More companies need to embrace this kind of awesome. Follow his Twitter feed for more hilarity.

Performing A Gazebectomy

About 10 minutes before my shift ended today, I got a call informing me that my gazebo had blown into the neighbour's yard.

"But I had it tied down to the fence!"

"Yeah, well, it's on top of the neighbour's gazebo. Are you coming home soon?"

I didn't realize how enmeshed the two gazebos (gazebi?) had become until I snuck into the neighbour's yard to try to get ours back. Suffice it to say, our gazebo had seen better days after its ride over the fence. At least 2-3 of the poles were bent at right angles and the plastic on the fittings was toast.

Here's all that's left of our once mighty and proud structure.



Thankfully there wasn't really any damage to the neighbour's gazebo and you wouldn't know that there was another gazebo on top of their's now that the sun has come out. Looks like it's time to get ourselves a proper grown-up gazebo instead of the flimsy tentpoles the old one had.

The Epic Lost Cat E-mail

I wish I'd read this AFTER having to deal with a bunch of work shenanigans this evening instead of beforehand. It had tears flowing down my face it was so funny.

Long story short, don't assume that your crisis is going to make it to the top of your co-worker's to-do list...

It's Supposed To Be Gatorade

After soccer tonight, Garrett decided that the thing to do was to douse himself in the contents of our water bottle. No harm, no foul, as it was full of cool, delicious water.

Then we turned around to see him raising a squeeze bottle of Sunny Delight over his head, which then went all over his head, much to our chagrin.

Sigh. Kids are so sticky...

Happy Die Day, Redcoats!

For all of my American friends, enjoy celebrating your liberation from the lobsterbacks at the hands of Book Cop.

At least everyone will now know why you shoot off fireworks every 4th of July!

The Longest Trip To The Farmers' Market Ever

This morning we headed down to Milton to see what the Farmers' Market was like. About halfway to Milton, I got it into my head that we should go to Niagara Falls.

So we went!

The kids had a blast. Garrett & I went under the falls and saw some really neat rainbows perfectly framing the Maid Of The Mist as she went about her voyage. Kara and Julie got to hang out and soak in the scenery while we got literally soaked.



Surprisingly, both of the kids were extremely well behaved. We even managed to get a trip into Ikea on the way home with minimal fuss and bother. Speaking of which, it was an absolute ghost town at the Burlington Ikea today. I've never seen it so empty!

So all hail the delightful spark of spontaneity and unplanned trips. It sure beat sitting around at home sweating buckets and cleaning the basement!