Arrrr!

Yesterday Garrett & I went to see Peter Pan at the Stratford Festival to celebrate Connor's birthday. The kids seemed to really enjoy the show and dinner afterwards was great.



The highlight of the day seemed to be when they got to walk the plank.

I Hope You Don't Have A Fear Of Heights

I know a lot of you don't watch the videos I link or post on the site, but you really owe it to yourself to watch this video about a guy climbing a 1786 foot high transmission tower.

It's shot via helmet-cam and I think the fact that it's essentially done in first-person view had my body a-shudder with adrenaline as my fear of heights kicked in. Yeah, I don't like heights. At least, I don't like THOSE kind of heights!

I See It, But I Don't Believe It...

I've watched this a few times and I'm still amazed that they are able to do this kind of art in under a minute.

The Circle Of Life (Down The Toilet Bowl)

As I was getting ready to help Garrett get changed for bed tonight, I casually asked him how Gilbert was doing. Gilbert is the goldfish he got as a... prize? Parting gift? Loot bag thing? I'm not sure, because he supposedly got this fish from a friend who was supposed to invite him to a party but didn't and then they got it at the fair or something... I honestly have no idea how this whole thing worked out, but suffice it to say, Garrett got a goldfish and named it Gilbert.

So I go over to look at Gilbert and see that he's just kind of sitting there. Not belly-up, mind you, but looking rather... sedentary. I thought I saw a bit of movement, so I decided to try to drain out the water and replace it with fresh, oxygenated water. Alas, all this did was clean off poor Gilbert so that he had a less deathy corpse. Garrett must have known that things weren't looking good for his fishy friend and was sobbing for a good 20 minutes while I did my best to revive Gilbert.

I did have Garrett pour Gilbert into the toilet once he got to a point that he had accepted his demise. And Garrett was able to do the deed and pull the lever that sent little Gilbert to fishie heaven.

Of course, Kara was just sitting there, narrating the entire ordeal like the little sociopath that she is :)

Garrett eventually regained his composure and I think he'll be ok, but man, that was rough to watch, esp. after having been away for most of the week. On the upside, later on tonight Garrett was able to yank out his second front bottom tooth and should have a visit from the Tooth Fairy shortly, so hopefully that will help offset the trauma of losing Gilbert.

A 3 Hour Tour

If you've been following my tweets lately, you've noticed a particularly nautical bent to them. I spent the last 4 days (Mon-Thurs) on the Trent-Severn waterway on a houseboat trip with a few of the guys from work. It was a blast, esp. when we got stuck tied onto a remote island during that crazy thunderstorm the other day.

We went through two propellers (not cheap, by the way) due to crazy wave and currents on Tuesday which almost saw us leaving on of our staff members behind on a remote island (prop #1) and because of a few stray submerged logs that drifted in sometime overnight into the otherwise 12 foot deep water we docked in last night (prop #2). The first prop was so badly damaged by the rocks that we were got to take it home with us. I'm going to find some way to mount it to a plaque or something like that so that we can hang it up in the group home as a trophy of our trip on the water.

We went from Happy Days Houseboats south of Bobcaygeon out to the Flat Islands for the first night, then made our way through Buckhorn and the lock there (a delightful small town with a great lockmaster) and then ran into trouble when trying to tie into Dinnertime Island. We decided that a) the lockmaster is in cahoots with the propeller replacement industry for sending us that way and b) that the island is called Dinnertime Island because of its tendency to gobble up propellers.

We lurched our way back to one of the Three Islands and waited for the replacement propeller to be delivered (which took an astoundingly quick 40 minutes!) and then we hunkered down for the night for that nasty storm that blew through on Tuesday. We also had a racoon eat all of our worms for fishing, so we were jinxed.

Wednesday was a very pleasant trip back to Buckhorn for a bit of shopping and then we pushed through for three hours all the way up to Big Island back at the top of Pigeon Lake, where we tucked into an amazing secluded cove on the back channel side of the island. Today we puttered back to the marina (after inadvertantly grinding the the prop against those stupid logs) and then made our way back home by about supper time.

It was a great trip but I now have a real appreciation of how much work it is to pilot a ship, esp. when the water is choppy and the wind is blowing and the sun is glaring off the water and you can't see where the next marker bouy is. Those three hours of driving the boat yesterday absolutely exhausted me. I am still feeling a little wobbly even though I haven't been on the boat since about noon. I think it'll take me another day to get my sea legs back.

But it's great to be home, even if we had quite the emotional roller coaster tonight when I got home!

Udder Chaos

So today I sacrificed what would have been a delightful day of staying home doing sweet bupkiss and instead volunteered to corral chaperone a gaggle of kids from Garrett's Grade 1 class over to the Acton Fall Fair for 2-3 hours.

I had 5 boys with me for the day (Garrett was one of them) and truth be told, we had a good time. They were surprisingly compliant and not TOO rowdy and were pretty happy to pet a pig, watch a cow get milked and play Zombie Tag in the indoor soccer arena.

I think I had them all convinced by the end of the day that if they kept fiddling with the stuff on the midway games, the carnies would come along, hang them off of the back wall of the booth and they'd have to wait for their parents to come and win them if they ever wanted to go home again. That seemed to get the little blighters to keep their hands where they belonged :)

Tomorrow's Corporate Leaders, TODAY!

So I was doing my fatherly duty and signing off on Garrett's take-home book from school today when I noticed this:

"Tell how Polly was on task (emphasis their's) in the story."

I know it's just a matter of semantics, but I really can't stand anything that smacks of corporate jargon, esp. not when it's being spoon-fed down my kid's throats. Grr.

No Full Moon For You

I had to ground Garrett today. I found him playing on the hill next to the townhouses, which would be fine, except he was also playing the 'Pull Down Your Pants And Show Your Bum To Everyone' game, which is NOT fine. He's not terribly happy being grounded for the night, but them's the breaks.

And I'm also making the kids watch Fantasia. They will be cultured!

First Day Jitters

Garrett went to school for the first day of Grade 1 yesterday. Julie didn't even cry when he got on the bus, despite my gentle whispers of how big her little boy had gotten and how, next year, Kara will be getting on that very same bus too... Yeah, I'm mean :)

He was wiped out tonight though. I forgot how much energy school sucks out of Garrett, but he was an absolute wreck around suppertime. Hopefully he had a good sleep tonight and will be a little more level-headed tomorrow.

I'm Afraid Of The Red Ones

Check out this video. It may not look like much, but it's pretty amazing.



What you're looking at is a model showing all of the asteroids discovered from 1980-2010 as they're discovered. The red ones are 'Earth-crossers'. They're the ones to be scared of. But take heart: We don't live on a 2D plane, so they can always go above or below us :)

Speaking of Final Fantasy...

For the record, I finished Final Fantasy 13 yesterday and it was every so satisfying. I liked the game a lot more than FF12 but that was more due to the story than anything. The ending of the game was pretty good. It wasn't as good as Final Fantasy 10's ending, which rests pretty much at the top of my list of all time best endings to a game, EVER, but it was hitting a lot of the right notes and was one of the happier endings to a Final Fantasy game, all things concidered.

I've got to try to resist the urge to go back and grind through the post-game content. I have other games that I can put that time and energy into! Or, you know, I could read a book or something.

Kefka: A Tribute

Ah, late night insomnia. At least I can attempt to sleep in tomorrow.

Whilst perusing the internet and catching up on a week's worth of comics, I came across this on Real Life Comics. Greg Dean, the artist (and fellow fan of all things Final Fantasy), is explaining why Kefka is the greatest Final Fantasy villain of all time. And without further ado, I ask your forgiveness for posting what may be one of the nerdier quotes I've posted in quite some time. Oh, and I apologize for the slightly salty language.

"Some might wonder why Kefka, and not Sephiroth. Here's the main thing with Sephiroth. Was he an awesome villian? Undoubtedly. But despite the fact that he was willing to sacrifice the planet for his own goals, he had a pretty good reason for doing so: He found out that he was an abomination, and the entire world was pretty much his enemy. You could SORT of identify with him "F**k me? No, F**k YOU." A badass, to be certain, but part of me felt that he was more or less just misunderstood. You kinda liked the guy... even though he killed Aeris.

Kefka, though? Kefka was f***ing INSANE. Bat-shit crazy. "I'ma wear clown makeup out in public, and poison an entire city's water supply just so we can overtake the castle! BWAAAA-HAHAHAHA!" And then, when you're up in the floating continent, he boots the emperor off of it, and starts pushing the mystic statues around willy-nilly, RESHAPING THE ENTIRE WORLD, killing perhaps millions of people and making himself a god in the process. Does he stop there? Sh*t no! Every now and again he sends down a beam of light to smite any who don't do as he pleases!

Does he do all this because of some percieved injustice? Does he do this because he has some sort of emo mommy issues? No, he does it because he's a f**king LUNATIC, and that, right there, is why Kefka is the GREATEST FINAL FANTASY VILLAIN OF ALL TIME."