Iron Willed!

Just got back from the grand opening of a new Best Buy near us. I came THIS close to picking up what would be a pretty decent gaming laptop but it was $800 and Julie had only really approved me for $500, so I relented. It wasn't easy, I tell ya!

We did get to meet Iron Man though!



And I picked up the blu-ray of 3:10 To Yuma to get me in the mood for RDR. I've never seen it, but I hear it's very good. I also ponied up a few bucks for The Good, The Bad & The Ugly's soundtrack yesterday, so I'm obviously being brainwashed in some unseemly manner.

Tonight shall see the finale of Trauma Team if I have anything to say about it. But first, I go now to throw a pork tenderloin that has been marinading in lemon and herbs for a few days on the grill. Mmm...

SOCCER MONSTER!

It was Garrett's first day of soccer for the summer and he got off to a running start. Not to cleat around the bush, but he was having a real ball. His only goal this season is to have fun and learn how to elbow girls who get in his way :)



Seriously though, he is still head and shoulders above everyone else on his team, literally. At the very least, it makes it easy to spot him in the scrum. He was even starting to get a hang of the concept of passing to other people so that the team could score instead of treating soccer like an individual sport. If he comes away with nothing else for the summer, I'll be happy with that.



At least he has the Wager "I'm concentrating" tongue!





He just has to watch out for the other team. They play dirty!

You Put What Where?

Julie is heading out of town tomorrow for a business trip and it seems that the kids are bound and determined to make her glad she's gone :)

Just before supper tonight, Kara turned to us and said, "I've got a shoe up my nose."

It turns out she had shoved a tiny little shoe from her Cinderella doll right up her nostril. I tried to get it out by massaging the nasal passage and shining a flashlight up there, but to no avail.

So off to the hospital we went. Amazingly, there were no patients in the waiting room in Georgetown tonight and we were whisked right in. The doctor had a look inside and then had me perform the procedure to help extricate the nasal footwear.

For those at home who want to know what to do if your kid shoves something up their nose, it's quite easy to fix (most of the time).

Step 1: Plug the other nostril.
Step 2: Put your mouth over their mouth a la performing mouth-to-mouth respiration.
Step 3: Blow into your beloved child's mouth in short, strong breaths to force the offending blockage out.
Step 4: Stand back or you will have the side of your face coated in mucus.

While we didn't actually get the shoe out by doing this, we did get it close enough to the edge of her nostril that we could see it and pull it out with tweezers. We were in and out of the hospital in about 15 minutes, which was awesome.

So now Julie has a fun little story to tell over dinner tomorrow or Wednesday while she is in sunny Calgary :)

As You Wish

At bedtime tonight, I fired up ye olde TV to put some cartoons on for the kiddies. What to my wondering eyes should appear but The Princess Bride on YTV. Since my kids didn't immediately scream for something different, I left it on and had the sheer pleasure of watching my kids experience my favourite movie in the whole wide world for the first time.

We came in just as Buttercup was pushing Westley down the hill so there is a significant part of the movie that the kids haven't seen yet. Kara was all over Princess Buttercup (ah, girls and their princess phases) while Garrett was shouting for Westly to kill the R.O.U.S. in the Fire Swamp... and seems inordinately interested in how one would design a machine to suck the life out of people.

I've wanted to show the kids The Princess Bride for a few years but always thought it was a bit too heavy on the witty dialogue for them to get into and enjoy. Thankfully those fears have been put to rest and I will rotate one of my multiple copies of the DVD into service in the near future.

Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle

Garrett came to me this afternoon after I got home from work to inform me that his tooth is loose. Man, now I'm REALLY starting to feel old. My kid can't be old enough to lose a tooth yet!

If he had his druthers, he'd be chomping on bricks to get it out of his mouth. I told him to just keep eating his apples and it would come out sooner than later.

Now to get on the phone with the Tooth Fairy and see what the going rate for a gently used chomper is these days.

Zoom! And Then I'm Gone Again!

Hey! I got new glasses. As you can see, I'm very excited and happy about this.



Of course, I took that picture after donating blood after putting in a 9.5 hour day (including staff meeting!) and having a whirlwind visit with the family between 6:45 and 7:15. Sigh. If I survive this week, I'll be happy.

I'm going to be in London on Thursday and Friday for a conference for work. Yay? It should be nice though and I get to stay in a hotel with my boss, so that should be interesting... right? At least I have to work this weekend too. Wait... That's not good...

If anyone has any spare hours to donate to me so I can not feel as run off my feet as I am this week, I'll be more than happy to take them off of you!

She Ate Candy And Babies...

This is, by far, the best Mother's Day comic ever made.

I'm Certifiable... Potentially

Well today marked the day that I finally finished my exam to be a Small Water Systems Operator. That basically means that I can monitor a well on a residence or small business. Yay?

For an open book, multiple choice final exam that I could do at my leisure, there were a few real stumpers that took me much longer than it should have to figure out. That said, I think I did pretty well all things concidered. Now to get this puppy off to the post office and out to Walkerton. The wait begins.

Birthdays In Afghanistan Don't Count!

It's my little brother's birthday today. He has been in-country in Kandahar for... 2 days now and is doing fine (I hope!).

Here's a picture of him before he left:



And here's an artist's rendering of what he'll look like when he returns:

Whatcha Readin'?

I've been reading some really good books lately. On the comic/graphic novel front, Invincible is awesome. As most of the forewards to the books say, it's a superhero comic that isn't ashamed of being a superhero comic. I've only got the first 4 books but they're great.

On a more productive note, I've also been reading "Working With You Is Killing Me", which is full of both pure common sense AND practical tips for working with people who drive you nuts. I'm finding it so useful that I'm buying a copy to share with Julie and my coworkers.

And to top things off, I got the newest Dresden book from the library and if Jim Butcher's Twitter feed is any indication, it has a humdinger of an ending. I've got some ideas about where it may go but I hope that none of them pan out because they would be very, very bad things.

Another One?!

So Garrett mentions, out of the blue, that he would really like another baby sister... or brother, it doesn't matter. This after we had one of the worst days out with Kara ever. I mean, we had to haul her out of at least two different stores and plonk her in the car until her meltdown subsided. Sheesh.

That said, if we did have another one, I could do this:




Apologies for linking to two SMBC comics in one week, but when they go for the nerdy, I love it.

Mind, Prepare To Be Blown

Check out this story about a time traveller caught on film in the 1940s. It might be a hoax but it's pretty crazy if the actual photo is legit and this isn't just a strange fashion statement of the times.

Sounds Familiar...

I swear I've had this conversation with Julie, only with a little less fire...

Guess Who's 3!

Hey! It's Kara's 3rd birthday today! Alas, she's a bit sick, but she's a trooper and was able to have a little party at the babysitter's place regardless of the sniffles.

Dawn Of 'Internet'

This is an awesome news report (starring a much hairier Peter Mansbridge) breaking news of 'Internet' back in the day. Not THE Internet. Just Internet.

And I have to agree that the part where the guy says there isn't a lot of swearing or put-downs is probably the funniest (and sadly, most untrue) part of the whole piece. Ah, remember the good ol' days?

First Report On The Internet - CBC Prime Time News - A funny movie is a click away

Happy Birthday Mom!

So today was my mom's big birthday. I won't spill the beans on which one, but it did have a 6 and a 0 in it :)

I'm still digesting the food from Saturday's big dinner...

Delightfully Odd

We went out for dinner for my mom's birthday today at a nice steak & seafood place that was like stepping back in time about 50 years. It was staffed by a crew of incredibly classy older Italian gentlemen who were very nice and friendly. We were all kind of thrown by this as we're used to having the bubbly blonde server when we go out to restaurants and we weren't quite sure how to handle these guys. That said, they were great servers, the food was amazing and I think one of them was trying to hit on Julie because he brought her a prime rib that was about the size of a small moose.

I mean, we've cooked roasts for our family that were smaller than the slab of meat that she was brought. The leftovers alone from her meal will feed our family for 2-3 days. Of course, this meant I get to give Julie the gears about her Latin lover for the next few days :)

It was an odd meal, but a thoroughly charming kind of odd that was the perfect way to step out of our comfort zone. I'd do it more often if it was as enjoyable as this :)

We were also able to get my mom's good friend Philip to join us (hint: his birthday is the same day as my mom's, so this was a great 2-fer) and he proved that ALL men need a crazy hobby as he had his set of fancy fountain pens in tow. It turns out that he repairs fountain pens in his spare time. Now I feel like busting out my calligraphy set and seeing what it's all about.

Good Morning!

Well, I sure feel a lot better tonight.

I crashed at around 8pm last night and was dead to the world until around 2am... Unfortunately, I couldn't go back to sleep so I just crashed on the couch for a few hours watching TV and feeling like crap.

I took today off as a sick day and it's a good thing I did. I ended up sleeping from about 8:30-9am until 3pm today. My body obviously needed to catch up on sleep and while I'm still kind of achey, I feel a lot better than I did over the weekend. Whatever has been dogging me for the past week seems to have been exorcised after my day of snoozing.

I just hope I can sleep tonight!

Fun In The Sun!

So today was "Act Like A Jerk" day around these parts. I was probably one of the worst perpetrators, but it wasn't helped by everyone else being idiots.

I had to help ask a few people to move their cars out of the fire routes here at the house and while one person was perfectly understanding about parking on the road, the other morons acted as though we told them they had to move out and then burned their house down behind them.

And they are well aware that they aren't supposed to park in the middle of the parking lot! Well, they had their one courtesy reminder to move the car. Next time I'm just calling a tow truck and they can pay the bill.

Morons.

I was in a pretty grumpy mood most of today too. I think I'm coming down with something and everyone else was just getting on my nerves. And we bought a new BBQ today and I spent the last part of the afternoon putting it together, which didn't help my mood much.

And add in some cranky kids and, well... recipe for disaster. I think we all need to go to different rooms of the house and chill out! I just want to get the kids to bed and then I'm going to just flake out on our bed and snooze for the rest of the night.

Anyway, enough moaning and groaning. Here's the new BBQ, by the way...

Behold The New Furniture!

So this is a little bit late in coming but here are some pictures of our new couch and chair!

Beware The Lake Of Firey Tokens

A Mouse's Life For Me!

We popped into the pet store today after our trip to EB & Play N Trade and saw these cute little mice on their wheel. I could have spent the better part of an hour just watching them spin around and around. I was sure they'd get their tails wound around the axle of the wheel but amazingly, that never happened.

Zoom!

April Fools!

I'm too tired to think of a great April Fools joke this year. I should just skip work on a lark :) Nah.

Did anyone out there pull off (or plan to pull off) a great prank this year? I still have fond memories of the one I pulled, what, 6 years ago or so when I convinced one of the people at the district office that all of the furniture we had stored at work was stolen. Ah, good times.

Now I must focus my energies into teaching Garrett the art of the prank.

All Hail The New King Of Chairs!

Well, our furniture was delivered yesterday. As with most things, there were a few hiccups. First off, they called at 7am to let us know that they would be coming between 9 and 12... which was a little earlier than the after 4pm timeframe we had arranged and were working around. Thankfully I was able to pop home to let them in when they came.

I also had to screw the legs on the bottom of the couch, which was no big deal but kind of annoying. We also had a big rip in the lining on the bottom of the couch but I was able to parlay that into a $50 discount on the couch since it's not visible and doesn't do anything structural to the couch. I just didn't want to have them deliver another couch :)

The kids are still trying to come to terms with the fact that the old chair and couch are gone. I, on the other hand, fell asleep in the recliner and snoozed there all night long until just now. That's a good thing :)

There's A Couch Sized Hole In My Soul

Well, today was the end of an era. We no longer have our lovely green leather couch. We went out to The Brick on the weekend and bought a new couch and recliner (sadly, not a reclining couch) and since they're delivering the furniture tomorrow, I needed to find a home for the furniture stat.

Dave got the first dibs and tonight he came down and put his fancy new truck to good use and hauled away Ol' Greeny. It's kind of sad to see that couch go. We've had it since we got married 11+ years ago and it was at my parents' place a good 7-8 years prior to that. That couch has seen many a friend snooze on it, many a kid jump on it and many a game played on it. Hopefully the new couch will live up to its legacy.

It was tough to find a couch that had the right feel to it but I think we picked a winner on the weekend. Of course, what I'm REALLY looking forward to is the recliner. I've wanted a recliner for as long as I can remember and we never had one growing up, so I've had to live vicariously through grandparents and in-laws. Now I shall recline all on my own!

'Stachetastic

So yesterday saw Freeappaday.com unleashing a truly awesome productivity killer upon the world: 'Stachetastic.

From The Kids

Behold pirate Garrett.

I think it's a $0.99 app normally but I've been having fun putting beards and mustaches on everyone I can get a picture of at work and home :)

Super Soup Tuesday!

Man, the soup I made is probably the tastiest soup I've ever made. I was worried that it wasn't going to turn out right but mmmm... it's delicious. It took two days of simmering but it'll be worth it for supper tonight.

Bean & Ham Soup

We basically just saved the water we used to boil the ham on Sunday, added a lot more water and the ham bone and simmered it all night on Sunday. Before going to bed, remove all the bones and gristle and nasty bits and cool it in the fridge overnight. Remove the fat the next day, add 2 cups of beans and let simmer again all day. Cool again in the fridge overnight, let it simmer all day, add ham chunks, serve and enjoy.

I was mostly worried that it would be too salty, but nope. It's delicious... on par with my mom's Bean & Bacon soup if I do say so myself!

Freeze Or I'll Chop Off Your Head!

I forget if I've linked there before or not, but if you want to read something truly amazing, check out Axe Cop. It's a comic written by a 5-year old boy and drawn by his 29 year old brother. This is the kind of thing I want to do with Garrett. It's astoundingly awesome in its absurdity but as the father of an almost 6 year old boy, it's scarily familiar.

I mean, it has a vampire baby man, shark ninjas, unicorn babies and a guy with socks for arms. How can you not love that?

That Was Strange...

I just had a call from Bell's loyalty center. They wanted to know why I was cancelling my internet after being with them for 10 years. I was like, "What? I just upgraded to your fibre optic lines last week!"

The guy was falling over himself to apologize for the cancellation order. It was kind of sad. I should have held out for some free internet though. I even asked him, "Is there any kind of great deal you were going to throw my way to woo me back?"

Alas, I'd already tipped my hand. Sigh.

TRU? More Like TRFU!

Well, I just sent Toys R Us an angry e-mail. Why?

Remember how I picked up the DSi last week for $179? Shopper's Drug Mart has DSi's on now for $159. So I figured I'd just go back to TrU and get my $20 back. Well, that was a lost cause.

They called the local Shopper's and they had DSi's in stock but not in White, so he wouldn't give me my money back. I was livid to say the least. If I was more of a person inclined to make a scene, I would have, but I restrained myself. It's not like I shop at TrU very often, but I definately won't now.

I would have been fine with them turning me down because none of the local stores had DSi units in stock but to turn me down because they didn't have the exact colour? Bugger that!

We'll see if anything comes of my grumpy e-mail.

My Gift To You

We survived the trip to the Children's Museum in Kitchener today and took in the Our Body exhibit (which was like a slightly cheaper, less impressive version of Bodyworlds) and Kara got over her fear of elevators... at least for today.

We had a delicious steak dinner for supper but that was marred somewhat by Kara's bedtime meltdown. Sigh. She's had a very packed week and I think we've overloaded her brain. Hopefully a couple of quiet days will help get her back into a regular bedtime routine.

Anyway, here's a really cool tilt-shift video of New York City. I just love the way that tilt-shift video really bends your perception.

The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.

Thanks Mom & Dad!

I'd just like to say a big, "Thank You!" to my parents for giving the world the opportunity to meet me 34 years ago today.

Now to go play some Infinite Space and see if they'll give me a nice shiny spaceship for my birthday :)

It's NO Day!

Kara was in a fine mood today. The first half of the day was great. We all went out to Terra Cotta for the maple syrup fest and I even had a chickadee come and eat seeds out of my hand. St. Francis, eat your heart out :)

But man, this afternoon it was like a switch flipped. Kara had a major freak-out when Julie put her blankets in the laundry and that lasted a good 20 minutes or so. She eventually settled down but was pretty cranky for the rest of the day. This evening didn't go much better as she was just yelling "NO" to EVERYTHING for what felt like an hour but was probably 15 minutes or so.

We're just pooped. I think I got a bit of a sunburn from the morning tromp in the woods and from spending a couple of hours outside with Garrett as he played with our sitter's kid on the scooter she gave him yesterday. He'll sleep well if nothing else. Hopefully Kara gets whatever bug crawled up her butt out of her system so that we can have fun at the Children's Museum in Kitchener tomorrow.

I mean, it's not like she can be much grouchier!

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

So last week we got a call from Bell offering to upgrade us to the new Fibre Optic network that they've rolled out. We decided to bite because it will cost us about $3 more than what we're paying for our DSL connection with a huge boost to the speed we can pull in off of the net.

Today's the day they're flipping the switch so hopefully we'll notice a huge surge in speed later today. If I never update again, well, you'll know why :)

Listen To The Leprechaun!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! We're celebrating by getting a babysitter and going out for wings and (for me) a pint o' Guinness :)

Why Am *I* The Tired One?

We didn't do anything incredibly groundbreaking yesterday. The kids went to the Alliance church in Georgetown for a Music Maker activity morning and had a lot of fun making music videos, crafts and other goofy things. After that was done, we toodled over to EB to pick up God Of War 3 (woo) and then it was off to Dash Sports for Garrett for a couple hours.

Once that was finished, we hit the park and the kids ran around for a good hour or so, then came home and ran around with one of the local kids for another hour.

Yet Kara STILL stayed up until almost 9pm and I'm the one who feels like I was chasing everyone around. Sigh.

I had to chuckle in the afternoon though. I sent Kara out into the backyard to get fresh air and sunshine while I fired up God Of War. She kept coming in, complaining about bugs (there were a lot of flies). So I handed her the flyswatter and sent her back out. She had a lot more fun slaying the wee beasties once she was armed :)

We're not 100% sure what we're going to do today. I'm probably taking the kids out to the glow-in-the-dark mini-putt in Guelph in a little while. They're busy building Lego structures for the contest at the library as we speak.

Holding Mass For The Fallen Games

And Mass Effect 2 is finished. I think I did a very bad thing at the end of the game with one of the choices I made, but I think it was one of those decisions which will come back to haunt me in Mass Effect 3 regardless of which way I went with it. It's a definate damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't scenario.

I lost two squadmates during the final mission which made me a little disappointed. I'd really thought I had a plan which would have resulted in everyone surviving... oh well. The sad thing is that I was more concerned with the fate a few of the NPCs on my ship than about the squaddies that took one for the team.

Talk about good timing though. I've got God Of War 3 arriving tomorrow and Final Fantasy 13 still puttering away in the background. The nice thing is that GoW3 is the last game I'll be getting for some time. Heck, I went and bought a DSi yesterday so there went any inkling of extraneous gaming for some time.

A Fitting Birthday Present!

In case you haven't picked up my birthday present yet, feel free to order me an XL of this shirt!



I think it fits, literally and figuratively.

A Busy Do-Nothing Day

This morning I woke up on the first day of March Break and had no clue what we were going to do. By 5pm, we'd done a lot more than I expected.

We started the day by going to the Guelph Children's Museum (which I was unware of even existing until this morning!) and had an hour or two of fun there.



Afterwards, we went to St. Jacobs and had lunch at the Stone Crock before heading over to the outlet mall.

We went to the Lego store/fun-land at the end of the day and saw some really cool things, like, say, LEGO BATMAN!




If you click on that, you can see some of the giant Lego mechs and such too. It was daunting... esp. when you go into the store and see how much they're charging for Lego!

More Like Tweedledum and Tweedledumber

I took Garrett to see Alice In Wonderland today and we both loved it. I was worried it would be too dry for him but my fears were allayed as soon as Alice fell down the rabbit hole. And I LOVE the design of the card soldiers. Great flick.

Alas, I ruined my good mood by swinging by my usual EB to see if I could gripe to the manager about the fiasco that was my Yakuza 3 pick-up the other day. She was there but on the phone and she vanished into the back room. When I gave up waiting and queried to the clerk about the possibility of there having been a pre-order bonus for Yakuza 3, I had to endure the same blank stares and incessant repetition of the name of the bloody game that I endured the other day, only this time I wasn't even going to be getting anything in return. I had to bite my tongue when the clerk told me that the girls working the counter on Wednesday night were pretty knowledgable because my experience was that both girls would have been hard pressed to be aware of the act of breathing, let alone esoteric Japanese brawler/RPG pre-order bonuses.

It's a shame, because that store has usually been the bastion of sanity that I use to counter most gripes about EB that I read on the interwebs. Alas, most of the old staff and managers have been sent to the 4 winds (some of them still work at some of the other local stores, but they're shuffled around like a deck of cards) and the new crew they have a) doesn't know me from a hole in the ground (my doing because I took a few months off of patronizing their store) and b) seems to consist entirely of teen girls who are more interested in caking on make-up than knowing ANYTHING about their products. I feel sad because I probably know more about the way their policies and procedures work than they do and I have never worked for EB for a day in my life! Sigh.

After GoW3 hits, I have nothing else on order at that store and I think I'll just patronize the other non-GS/EB store where I know the owner and don't want to strangle the staff. That, and Amazon. I'm only going to bother with EB if there's a good pre-order goodie that is worth the hassle... or if they rotate out the dead weight and get some people in there with a brain in their noggin. Sadly, the manager is good people, but her staff, aside from one person, is dumber than a sack of rocks.

Is This You?

I had a couple of calls tonight, both on my cell and land-line, from a 416-645... number. I figured that they must have been trying to find me because they called both the house and my cell, but the number is unlisted and in Toronto. Strange...

I wonder if it's YOU!

Finally...

Achievement Unlocked: Find a store willing to sell me a copy of FFXIII the day before it hits store shelves.

Now I have to wait until tomorrow to get it. Grr... But I can't wait! I've been chomping at the bit to get this game for months!

Bask in the Japanesey goodness!

That's Now How You Make A Drive-Through!

After finishing up a coffee run during the day today, we saw on of Halton Hills' finest taking pictures in the parking lot of the convenience store next door. We couldn't figure out what was going on until we pulled out around the cruiser and saw that a car had driven into the front of the convenience store.

I guess Rallis' Burger really wanted a drive-through :)

It didn't look like anyone was hurt, thankfully. But man, what a mess.

The Best Fairy Ever

If Kara ever got her wish and became a fairy (instead of her other wish, which would to become a princess), I have a sneaky suspicion she'd be this kind of fairy.

Sharing Time With The Kids

The kids and I are up here in Thornbury with my parents, giving Julie a well deserved break. We're staying at the timeshare until tomorrow. Today was a very busy day indeed. We went snowshoeing over near Blue Mountain and the kids loved it. It was a little dicey when we went over the suspension bridge and it started to sway but the kids were troopers and didn't chicken out.

We had wings at Blue Mountain afterwards and went swimming this afternoon. Unfortunately, Garrett seems to have managed to get some water in his ear and has succumbed to the travails of the day and swimmer's ear and has been snoozing since 6ish. Hopefully a good night's sleep (and a dose of Tylenol) will make everything better by the morning.

Check my Twitter feed for some pictures from our day (including the museum pieces in the arcade here at the timeshare). I'll put more pictures and some videos tomorrow when we get home.

What A Wonderful World

I love the fact that we live on a planet that hosts as cute a lifeform as this guy.



Check out the link for a very cool page all about the Mariana Trench. Or is it the Marianas Trench? At least I know it's not called the Marinara Trench, which is what I called it for about, oh, 26 years :)

Dance-A-Thon!

Garrett's school is putting on a dance-a-thon in March and he needs sponsors! If you'd like to help his school raise a bit of money (and remember, they're still in recovery mode after that vandalism incident a few weeks back and could use all the help they can), feel free to click here and pledge away.

He's dancing on March 4th at Robert Little, he's in Senior Kindergarten and his name is Garrett Wager. Feel free to pledge whatever you'd like. We're trying to get at least $25 for the kid and the school is hoping to hit $6000 from the entire event.

Thanks!

Mind, Prepare To Be Blown

I present to you: Rock Sugar aka Journitallica aka Mettourney. This thing shouldn't work, but it does!

Yeah, About Those Updates

Go figure. I make a post about keeping my blog updated regularly and then I don't post anything for 8 days. Work has been insane and what little time I have had hasn't been spent on blogging. Tweety type things, sure, but not full thoughts.

I will fix that! I'm also looking forward to some time off soon and March will see me with a lot of free time (I hope!) At the very least, I'm going to take the kids to the time share and I'm also going to have March Break off... I wonder where we'll end up this year!

Curling! It's Popular!

Misery Loves Sherman is doing a story arc all about curling. I got a chuckle from the recruiting poster :)

Comments? Questions? Updates?

So Haloscan is going the way of the dodo bird shortly and I'm likely going to just switch over to the bog-standard Google/Blogger comment system. I just have to figure out how to do that :)

I'd like to stay with whatever Haloscan is turning into but I refuse to pay for something as basic as comments on my blog. Thanks to everyone who has followed along over the years and I do truly value your input.

Speaking of the blog, I'm also hoping to get back in the habit of updating this bloody page a little more regularly. Work has been insanely busy over the past, what, 8 months or so and when I come home I would rather just play a game than write about my day. I've also been doing a lot more writing for other sites when I do get a chance to write, so that has kind of lowered the number of posts here on Not L33T. Well, things seem to be finally settling down enough at work that I'll be a little less womped when I get home. Plus my family is finally becoming interesting again :)

If nothing else, keep an eye on my twitter feed. Now that I have twitter on my phone, I can at least post a quick update wherever I am.

More Stuff On The NEt

I found a few things whilst poking about on the internet this morning while waiting for Garrett to finish writing out his last 2 Valentine's cards. First a little something for the ladies.



And then there's Rainy Mood, which will be the perfect counterpoint for all the guys who get bottles of Old Spice from their ladies :)

Speaking of precipitation, boy, that Snowmageddon '010 sure didn't materialize, at least not out our way. I think we got all of a centimeter of snow. Zzzz...

Less Singing, More Burning

Poor Beaker...

Miracle On Ice

Garrett went to his friend's birthday party which just so happened to be a skating party at the local arena. We were able to borrow some skates from a friend of his but we had to buy a helmet, which isn't cheap, esp. if we only use it once!

That said, he had a blast and was definately improving his skills over the course of the afternoon. Just take a look at the videos!

From 2010-02-06 February 2010

From 2010-02-06 February 2010

Dawn Of A Glorious New Era

At the ripe old age of 33, I have finally signed up for my very first cellular phone. And to mark this momentous occasion, I didn't get just any phone. No no no... that would be too easy.

I gots me one of THESE!

It's so beautiful...

Less Than A Week To Go!

See more funny videos and Entertainment Videos at Today's Big Thing.

It's Like A Snow Day - With Grafitti

Well this sucks. Garrett's school was broken into last night and according to the school website and news blurb, 11 out of 19 classrooms AND the library were vandalized. Grr.

Garrett gets the day off school, which he's happy about, but now I've got to rejig our plans for the day and try to figure out what to do. Hopefully they get the mess cleaned up and the investigation completed before Thursday.

Who breaks into an elementary school anyway? Stupid kids...

[UPDATE] Looks like they caught the punks who did the dirty deed. They should be forced to clean up the mess and THEN go to jail for a while.

Get Her A Bucket!

Go over to Cryingwife.com and at the very least watch the Star Wars video. It totally brightened my day.

I'd hate to see that lady at the end of a movie that is actually sad!

First You Get The Sugar...

I've been able to stick to my one major New Year's Resolution (it's so important it's capitalized) and have not bought a Tim Horton's coffee, donut or anything else at 'the chapel' since Dec. 31st of 2009.

I've been tempted, to be sure, but so far I've resisted the many urges to go there and have enjoyed making my own coffee, though my attempt to clear out the remaining stock of instant coffee yesterday wasn't a good idea. I mean, I have a full jar of the stuff. What was I thinking?

Anyway, last night at work one of the guys was heading out to Tim's for the nightly coffee run and he mentioned that he owed me a coffee from before the new year. Since I technically wasn't buying it, I said it was fine if he picked up a cup o' joe for me. The thrust of the resolution wasn't to cut back on my caffeine intake as much as it was to help limit the stupid amount of money I was spending there.

I have to say, after being without the wonder drug for 3 weeks, I'm not sure I'm going to be in such a rush to go back. The first sip was wonderful, to be sure, but either their two scoops of sugar are much bigger than they used to be or I've gotten used to the lesser amount that I use at home in my own coffee. The stuff tasted like syrup last night and I could barely choke it down after the initial euphoria subsided.

So I'm back to drinking my own coffee again and I think I'll be happier this way. It was nice to kind of give in (without really giving in) last night because it made me appreciate my new take on the roasted bean brew.

Now let's see if my rice cracker and tuna lunch diet sticks. Someone at work did ask if I've been 'getting trim', if I recall their words correctly. Maybe I have...

Know Thine Universe

This is really impressive. Enjoy the tour of the known universe!

Hot Fries Are Hot

So some girl had a seizure at the local KFC and did a face plant in her bowl of poutine. Now her dad is speaking out about the company to try to get them to say, "Sorry our hot fries, cheese and gravy are hot."

I'm not entirely sure what he wants from them. He went on record saying that he didn't want 10 million dollars (insert Dr. Evil picture here) and even felt sort of responsible for allowing his daughter to go there alone. Plus it sounds like everyone responded fast to help her. It's like he's sad they didn't set up a memorial to her burnt chin when he went back there in the afternoon. Heaven forbid a business goes back to normal a few hours after a relatively minor injury happens that they had nothing to do with.

Would he sue the makers of a bike if she had a seizure and fell off and hurt herself? Bah. Idiots and whiners. Feh. Let's just all eat a bunch of room temperature food with spoons so we don't hurt ourselves.

I'm just grumpy because I worked the overnight last night and haven't eaten all day and all this talk of poutine is making me hungry. Plus I'm not in the mood for whiners who want to legislate or sue common sense and the smidgen of personal responsibility that we have left to us out of existence.

What A Relaxing Birthday

It's a good thing Julie's birthday only happens once a year. Forget about relaxing... it was fix/clean the house day today! At least we made it to Tucker's Marketplace for lunch.

Garrett and Kara both spent the afternoons cleaning their rooms (woo!) and Kara's room was emptied of all of the cartons of old clothes and actually looks like a real room instead of a warehouse. Garrett did a pretty good job of cleaning, though I now realize what a pain in the arse I was when my mom would send me to my room to clean. He spent more time playing with the long forgotten toys he'd unearth than actually cleaning.

Dear Ikea, please include screws for your wall-mounted items. Thanks!

I spent most of today either running back and forth to Home Hardware for screws for the leaf we bought for Kara to hang over her bed. The screws I found at first seemed to fit until I mounted it on the wall, at which point the thing slipped off. Then I bought the wrong type of screw (machined screws do not work well with drywall plugs) and then I had all sorts of problems with the drywall plugs afterwards. Right now, two of the four plugs are holding fast, one is completely loose in the wall and another is hanging on halfway. Of course, both of the loose plugs are at the top of the holder and the leaf is canted at a really odd angle. Ah well. Kara's happy and it doesn't look like it'll land on her head right away, so I'll fix it later this week.

And then we rearranged our kitchen this evening. It was nice to finally clear up a lot of the crap that has accumulated over the last several years and the new occasional table/counter thingy has probably increased our usable counter space by a good 150%! I look forward to being able to use it as a sideboard or prep counter.

Next year I'm going to do something simple, like installing a computer in the wall of the kitchen or the like.

Happy Birthday, Snugglebumpkinsmoochiepoo!

For the record, I've never called Julie a Snugglebumpkinsmoochiepoo and never will again. But it IS her birthday today. Woo! Hopefully we'll have a yummy lunch out with the kids and not have to deal with a sick Garrett (he was having either an earache or fever or both off and on during most of Sunday) or any more erroneous 5am wake-up calls...

A Sign Of Things To Come

I have a sneaky suspicion that I had a glimpse of Kara in about 20 years.



"OY! BARKEEP! MORE LAGER!"




"Yessh... That'sh more like it..."

ZOMBOWLING!

Ah, youth, and their precocious need to kill zombies with oversized walnuts.

Stats R Fun!

Source: Online Education

8 More Weeks!

Only 8 weeks left! I can't wait. The timing is awesome too, as it's a mere 10 days before my birthday.

Good Timing, Puke Fairy!

Well, in case you haven't followed my Twitter feed (I don't blame you), I was striken yesterday with whatever Julie and the kids had last week. I felt fine until about midday when I went out for lunch with one of the guys from work. After eating my delicious ravioli at Boston Pizza, I started to feel off, but chalked it up to the sauce. Sadly, it didn't go away and I spent the last 6 hours of my shift feeling like I was being stabbed in the guy with a sword.

I was able to hold it together until about 8pm last night when my body decided that it needed to reenact the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Thankfully that was the only bout that I had to suffer, though my dinner of saltine crackers and water probably helped calm the roiling seas.

I did watch all of Season 2 of the I.T. Crowd last night, which isn't good to do when your stomach is killing you. I couldn't stop laughing and it hurt so much...

Anyway, I'm home today. I'm exhausted and have a nasty headache, but otherwise feeling pretty good. I'm going to try to eat something now. We'll see how that goes. Then I'll probably spend the afternoon watching History Channel documentaries or something equally fun.

At least I managed to get sick BEFORE Julie's birthday this year.

Blarf - The Sequel

In a very strange turn of events, everyone else in the house has been sick with the same bug BEFORE me.

We went out to Indigo this afternoon after I got home from work to pick up some books for the kids (thanks for the gift card, Grant & Suzie!) and after we got home, Julie started feeling sick. Well, shortly thereafter, she started BEING sick, which is a rarity for my special lady.

So she's upstairs now, resting and recuperating and quite amazingly, both Garrett AND Kara have gone to bed with minimal fighting and shenanigans. Now that three of the four of us have had this bug, I'm expecting a visit from the puke fairy sometime in the next few days. Who wants to take bets on when I'll catch the bug?

The worst part is that Julie spent the day making a really yummy pork roast and applesauce and had just finished the final preperations when she made a run for the nearest receptacle. And it was a VERY yummy pork roast.

This About Sums Up The Week...

Sadly, I can relate to this far too well.

It's been a bit of a crazy week around these parts. We're getting back in the swing of things with going to work (not to mention that I had an insane schedule this past week) and to top things off, both Garrett and Kara have had 24-hour gastro-bugs that have left puke dripping off of things best left unpuked-upon.

Thankfully they both seem to be over the vomiting and are just a little sluggish. Julie and I have dodged whatever they've got (famous last words) and now our biggest problem is getting Kara to go to bed.

She was sleeping fine before we went to Corunna at Christmas and then her sleep schedule just went to pot. She's not napping, she is exhausted and not eating her supper but try to get her to go to sleep and you may as well be pulling down the sun. The worst part is that she'll have these feints where she goes to bed, says goodnight and seems to be heading off to dreamland, only to be destroying her room 10 minutes later. We don't want 10pm to be the new bedtime for her!

Hopefully she'll start to settle down soon. I even tried driving her around the last couple of nights and she does snooze but once we're home, she's right back in the swing of things. We don't want to be doing that every night either because it's just not feasible. Sigh.

Garrett is cooperating at least. We've been on a Lego kick of late and I just signed him up for the Lego Club magazine and we've built a few neat contraptions over the few afternoons I've been home. If nothing else, I've shown him how to build things that aren't in the instructions, which is where you have the most fun with Lego anyway. And we're trying to work more on Garrett's literacy skills. He's just being lazy and wants us to do the work of reading. I need to find a good carrot to dangle in front of him to help kick-start the reading bug.

Anyway, enjoy the comic from Wondermark. It made me smile.

One New Year's Resolution I Can Keep!

I was thinking about my resolutions for 2010 a day or two ago for some odd reason and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that one of the biggest drains on my wallet over the past year or so isn't videogames, movies or shiny knick-nacks. Nope, I think that the recipient of most of my hard-earned cash was Tim Hortons.

I have a Tim's card that automatically refills itself to $20 when it drops below $5 and I could do this at least once a week if I wasn't careful. In order to shut off the flow of money directly into Timmies, I have resolved to make coffee at home (or at work) whenever possible and only buy coffee out if I am on the road away from town.

My usual excuse not to make coffee at home is that I'm the only coffee drinker in the house and I don't like drinking (or wasting) an entire pot, hence my runs to Timmies. Well, no more! To aid me in this venture, I picked up a new coffee maker today. It can make one or two travel mugs worth of coffee or an entire pot. Woo! And it was only $60!

11 Wonderful Years!

It's that time of year again!



Happy anniversary, Jules! Have a safe drive home with the kids. I'm getting lonely here!

Hark! A New Decade Is Upon Us... I Think...

Happy new year everyone! I hope everyone had a good 2009 and will have an even better 2010. I've already managed to screw up writing the new date a few times this morning and it will be a while before I stop trying to put a zero in front of the year. I still haven't managed to wrap my head around the idea that the 'aughts' are over. I guess I'm one of those who didn't consider the millennium to have started until 2001, so I'm waiting until 2011 to declare the end of the first decade of the millennium.

ANYWAY, I rang in the new year a bit early with a visit from a few friends prior to heading out to work the overnight shift. We watched Star Trek on Blu-Ray and ate some yummy munchies until I had to head off to work.

At work we watched the ball drop in Times Square but it just made me sad (and kind of ill) to watch JLo prance around in that... thing... that she was wearing. Oh, and while I commend Dick Clark for hauling himself out for yet another rockin' eve, it seemed almost cruel to have him garble his way through the countdown this year.

Now to try to stay awake for the next, oh, 4 hours. I've got some more paperwork to catch up on and I might pop my head out in a bit to see if I can see that full moon we were supposed to have overnight. It was too cloudy around 1am to see anything.

Up In The Air... With Some Baggage

Julie & I went to see Up In The Air tonight and it was a very nice movie. Well worth the $4.75 per person we spent :)

The crowd at the theatre, on the other hand... ye gods. I've been spoiled by the nice theatres around Acton and the crowds therein.

We had a couple of people a few rows behind us who were incredulous that, yes, that IS George Clooney up there on the screen and amazingly, he's still George Clooney when he comes back on screen 4-5 minutes later. It's like they couldn't comprehend that the lead actor in a film didn't change spontaneously or something.

And then there were the rubes who read out ever location placard when it appeared on screen (which happens a LOT in this movie), much to the delight of the illiterate in the audience, but man, it just got on my nerves.

Thankfully all of these annoyances (and the awful sound, crappy seats and the booms coming from the showing of Avatar next door through 3/4s of the movie) didn't negate the fact that the movie is whip-smart, funny and endearing. I highly recommend it... just don't see it in Sarnia on cheap Tuesday.

Un-Boxing Day

So, did you get anything exciting on Boxing Day? I didn't. I wouldn't necessarily mind seeing how much a pair of nice noise-cancelling headphones would cost but I don't really need them, so I'll stay home today. Looking at the deals, there's nothing that we need and unless I was in the market for a new TV, which I'm not right now, there isn't anything that tempting.

Ode To Minions

This song needs to be sung a lot over this vacation. The kids and I are slaughtering far too many goombas and koopa troopas...

Merry Christmas!

I think Kara is finally asleep, which means that Santa can finally stop circling around the house and make his deliveries. I hope everyone has a great Christmas! We'll be spending Christmas with the Grace/Jameson and then having the Wager Christmas on Sunday when my brother makes it down to my parents' place.

Hopefully we'll get a chance to play some Pictionary Man with the folks tomorrow and finally take a break from the usual Skip-bo/Phase 10 fests that tend to erupt.

Far Too Cold, Far Too Early

Hey, it's the Olympic torch! Grab it!



Yoink! Take that, eternal flame of peace and hope!



We were up and out of the house shortly after 7am today to see the Olympic torch as it went through Acton. We had a pretty good spot near the end of the run through town but it was sooooo cold!



At least Garrett and Kara had fun and will probably be in a few of the local papers.

He's Like An Onion

Garrett has been obsessed with layering on his clothes of late. I think he wore 3 t-shirts and a sweat-shirt to school this morning.

If I'm not mistaken, he's trying to become this guy.

Gingerbread Wishes and Gummie Bear Dreams

Since the kids were (relatively) well behaved today, we spent a chunk of the afternoon building a gingerbread house. Kara didn't really want much to do with the actual construction/decoration phase of the house building... she just wanted a bowl full of candy toppings. Garrett really got into it... Maybe a bit too much...



Here's the house.

Sunday Best?

Before:



After:

Winter In Canada

It's December 1st. Let it snow!

Oh, and happy 60th birthday, Dad!

Never Too Old For Santa!

We were at Yorkdale Mall tonight to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday and while we were waiting for our reservation to come up at Casey's, we decided to put the kids in line for Santa.

Garrett & Mason were spooling each other up the whole time we were at the mall and waiting in line for Santa didn't help matters. They actually had Santa's "elves" come over and tell them to stop being so disruptive because they were going to end up destroying one of the decorations if they didn't stop.

Then something truly odd happened.

An older woman outside of the cordoned-off line started yelling, "Sam! You're too old! You're too old to see Santa. Come back!"

We didn't pay much attention but she kept saying this over and over. Then we looked back and saw the line starting to part. A HUGE guy was basically pushing his way through the line of parents and kids while lugging this oversized piece of luggage behind him. He kept saying, "No! I'm going to see Santa! I'm going to see Santa!"

I moved the kids out of his path so they wouldn't get squished (seriously, this guy was BIG) and couldn't help but shake my head and smile as the lady continued to try to get his attention and stop his trip to Santa's lap.

The family in front of me let him past (like they were going to stop him) but the dad started to grumble. I just shot him a look and shook my head and watched to see what would happen when the guy got to Santa. I have to say that I was impressed by how well Santa and his 'elves' handled the situation. Santa said a few things to the dude, shook his hand and gave him a candy cane and sent him on his way with a wink and a nod and never broke character.

Crisis averted. That said, the lady (who might have been his mother or a support staff) should have probably tried to do something a little more effective than stand outside the rope and shout at the guy. While he wasn't doing anything that bad (at least from where I was standing) he was a HUGE guy and all it would have taken was one overly offended parent to pop his top and things could have gotten ugly.

Ah well.

Why We Play

This is an interesting article about why people play certain types of games.

It turns out there are two different ways people respond to challenges. Some people see them as opportunities to perform - to demonstrate their talent or intellect. Others see them as opportunities to master - to improve their skill or knowledge.

Say you take a person with a performance orientation ("Paul") and a person with a mastery orientation ("Matt"). Give them each an easy puzzle, and they will both do well. Paul will complete it quickly and smile proudly at how well he performed. Matt will complete it quickly and be satisfied that he has mastered the skill involved.

Now give them each a difficult puzzle. Paul will jump in gamely, but it will soon become clear he cannot overcome it as impressively as he did the last one. The opportunity to show off has disappeared, and Paul will lose interest and give up. Matt, on the other hand, when stymied, will push harder. His early failure means there's still something to be learned here, and he will persevere until he does so and solves the puzzle.

I'm definately squarely in the mastery challenge camp, though I do like to dabble with the performance oriented stuff every so often.

Where's Daniel When You Need Him?

We've been working through the book of Daniel at church over the past few weeks and I had a dream the other night that I'd like him to interpret.

We were in the maternity ward at the hospital and Julie just finished giving birth to twins. Only they were part Roadrunner (from the cartoon). I mean, they looked like human babies but they had blue feathers on them and for whatever reason, I KNEW they were part Roadrunner. I don't think they said, "Beep beep" or anything, but dads can tell these kind of things.




What on earth does that dream mean? I think it means that I'm working too much and not getting enough sleep. Or that Julie is having an affair with a cartoon character.

Bad Idea?

They might ban cell phones when driving, but they can't ban this... can they?

Check out the customer review images :)

Thanks For The Heads-Up

That's what we got from our sitter in Georgetown tonight. As of today, she can't look after our kids anymore. Sigh.

Thankfully we have a sitter who looks after Garrett on school days and she's been angling to look after Kara for some time now, so it was mainly just a matter of time before we switched. It seems that the other kids who were being looked after by our Georgetown sitter aren't being looked after by her any more and with only Garret & Kara as sources of income, well, it's not what one would call a steady income.

Oh well. As Julie said, this basically forced the decision for us. Garrett wasn't enjoying going to her house anymore as he was the only kid his age there and was bored stiff. And this means we don't have to drive 20 minutes out of the way to pick up the kids anymore. Woo!

Better Late Than Never!

Here are a few of the pictures I promised from the past few weeks. Enjoy!



Garrett is Dash Incredible and Kara is Agent D, the secret agent dolphin.



Boogity Boogity BOO!



She's up to mischief. I know she is...



We got Kara to sleep in her big girl bed last Saturday and she's been crib-free ever since. Woo!

This Pisseth Me Off

I don't know what else to say. And people say I waste my time and energy blathering on about videogames...

It's The Army Life For Me

Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks

Had to share that. I actually HAVEN'T picked Modern Warfare 2 up and will probably just rent the PS3 version and play the single-player mode. I have no urge to play the Multiplayer component...

Auntie Faith To The Rescue!

I just wanted to say



to Faith for coming to my rescue today. I was informed late last night that my presence was more or less expected at a meeting this morning and that if I didn't make it, well, let's just say it was better that I attended :)

Faith came through and was able to keep the kids from destroying her house for a couple of hours this morning. You rock!

Very Tech Supportive!

Sorry for the lack of updates this week. I've been absolutely swamped at work and when I've had some free time, I've been glued to my new computer. It's sooooo nice :)

I was able to fix the issues with my audio jacks. All it took was uninstalling the Realtek audio drivers and reinstalling everything and lo and behold, I have audio jacks that don't kill the computer when I plug things into them!

Huzzah!

Now that I know I'll be able to use my computer without dragging it back to the store, I'll start pulling pictures off the camera and sharing them with the world.

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.