Packing It In

Sorry for the lack of updates of late.  Not that I've been lighting the blog-o-sphere on fire this past year, but at least this month I've got a good excuse.

My new manager job is keeping me insanely busy. I wrapped up working 12 days straight as of Thursday and even then I had to run into work yesterday morning at 5am to take care of a minor emergency.  Sigh. 

A couple of weeks ago, I took Garrett to go see some wrestling action in Hamilton. He had a blast seeing the WWE crew do their thing live, even though it wasn't quite as fancy as on TV (no pyro).

And moving day is fast approaching.  I alternate between thinking that we've got everything that we can possibly pack already packed and then fearing that there's never going to be enough time to finish boxing up all of the detritus that is in this house of ours.  ARG!  3 more weeks and we'll be in our new place!

Julie's away next week on a business trip, so we'll see what kind of smoking crater is left upon her return.  I can give kids PB&J sandwiches, right?

More to come, but I'm going to go play more videogames.  Despite appearances, I barely get a chance to play these days and I need to go shoot some bad guys!

It's Your Birthday (Dave Edition)

Happy birthday Dave!  I can't believe I've got a little brother in the mid-30s.  That's just nuts (and now I feel even older.

Sigh.

Quickest Move Ever

So I helped Mr. Tim move tonight. That has got to be the quickest move I've ever done.  Thank you for not being a pack-rat, Mr. Tim. Thank you!

WWE, Come Get Your New Artist!

Garrett & I are going to see Smackdown in September when it comes to Hamilton. Garrett is understandably excited (WWE is pretty much all he talks about) and so he's busy making himself some signs to take to the show.

Here's his rough draft worksheet of some signs that he wants to make for his favourite rassler, Sheamus. I thought he did a pretty good job!

Here's what he's working from as reference:

What A Busy Month

When last we saw our hero, he was busy getting ready for some interviews and looking forward to vacation with the family!

What a difference a month makes. Let me break it down for you:

1) I got a promotion. I'm now a program manager at a new house which means that I've got a lot more work to do but a lot more flexibility to my schedule.  I'm still in the adjustment phase where I am getting used to coming and going at times that aren't 7-3pm or 3-11pm. I miss my days off during the week though, but Julie's happy to have me around on the weekends.

2) We had a crazy busy (but fun) week off at the beginning of the month.  We hit Canada's Wonderland, Marineland, Niagara Falls, a trampoline gym in Mississauga and even got a chance to sit down once or twice.  Phew. I'm pretty sure we have some pictures of our adventures so I'll get them posted toot sweet.

3) The kids are busy with summer camps. They keep saying that they hate it there in the afternoon but the next morning they're chomping at the bit to get there and have fun.  At least they get a break next week at Grandma & Grandpa's place (and we get a break from them!)

4) Speaking of which, MY grandpa has been in the hospital for the month. It's kind of frustrating because we don't seem to be able to get a clear answer on what exactly is wrong with him.  All I know is that he's in rough shape and very frail.  We keep dreading that the phone will ring and it will be bad news...  Please say a little prayer for him and my grandma if you're so inclined.

5) And last, but not least, we're moving.  Well, we're planning to move. Where? Probably just somewhere else in Acton.  We actually found a house we like but it doesn't have forced air heating or A/C, which, after this summer, is something we really don't want to have to do without.  That being said, we've emptied most of the clutter and books and such into a storage unit for the time being and it's kind of scary to see just how much space we have in here when all of the junk is gone.  Maybe we can keep it like this for a while! 

6) Garrett went to his first Jays game on the weekend. I was depressed because my beloved Tigers lost, but he was pretty happy.  It's just a shame it was so hot up in the 500 level nosebleed seats.  We could only sit there for a bit before we had to get up and walk around the interior of the SkyDome to cool off.  At least the tickets were cheap.

7) We also went to Fort George in Niagara On The Lake for the 1812 reenactments, which was pretty cool.  I even got a General Brock action figure which is displayed prominently in my office at work :)

So that's about it for what we've been up to for the month July.  It's been work, camp, packing, lather, rinse, repeat.  Heck, I've barely had a chance to play any videogames. That's just not right, I tell ya!

Happy 8th Birthday, Little Dude!

And you guys thought I would forget it!
This was the cake that we had made for Garrett's birthday party.  It captures his love for all things pro-wrestling, pretty well, I'd say.  Alas, the ropes started to give way before we could get a really great shot of it, but it's still pretty awesome.  And it tasted delicious too!

Garrett had a pretty sweet weekend for his birthday (he'll be 8 the instant this posts!)

Lazer tag with his friends, Brave with his family (yesterday) and then today he took his sparring gear for a spin at his friend's place, followed by an all-you-can-eat buffet of pizza and pasta at the local Boston Pizza for a fundraiser dinner.  Woo!

Of course, he wants to use his new metal detector to search for treasure, but I am going to try to hold that off until at least next weekend. 

A Blast Of A Party

What a busy day we had today.  It was Garrett's birthday party and he went to the Lazer Tag place in Milton. It was great fun, but tiring.

Later in the day, we went to see Brave.  What a great movie.  I recall seeing some rumblings on Twitter that it was just ok (or worse, it was a Pixar movie that felt like a Dreamworks movie!) but I thought it was phenomenal.  It's one of those movies that I think being a parent puts a different spin on the impact it has compared to if I was just some schmoe watching it and then going back to my empty basement.  I won't lie. There was a little bit of moisture accumulating near my eyes by the end.

Tomorrow is Garrett's actual birthday and I think he's going to be pleasantly surprised by the presents he's getting from us.  They're nothing that I can picture him actually expecting, but I think he'll love them both.

I'll post pictures of his awesome birthday cake and the presents sometime tomorrow.  I promise!

Back To The Ol' Stomping Grounds

So today marked my glorious return to the house I work at near Acton.  I've missed that place so much.

I'm not sure whether it was having less pressure due to the role, a shorter drive or just being able to see the crew I've worked with and supported for the past 6-7 years again that made me giddy, but I had a great time working a 12 hour shift!

There's just a special energy at that house that I haven't been able to get anywhere else in the organization. It's not perfect and it's not easy, but man, I love it.  Plus I'm not the manager anymore, so I think part of me is just happy to have some of that burden lifted off my shoulders, at least for now!

Of course, I got bit by a dog on the way to the car this morning, which I thought was an inauspicious omen to the day, but it seems like that must have just gotten the bad luck out of the way instead :)

Retreat? More Like A Rout...

So I went up to Paisley last week.  I have to say, it was an interesting experience being back in my old stomping grounds.  There were a lot of good sessions to learn things at, funny stories to be told and many, many boardgames to be played.


And then the bedbugs showed up.


Thankfully they seemed to be limited to one bed in one room, but they had to cut the week short and send us home.  Ah well. 

I also had some of the saltiest whipped cream ever.  The cook mixed up her sugar and salt containers and, unfortunately, I was the first person to try a big mouthful of the apple crisp with whipped cream on top.  Blah!

On another odd note, on the way home, I stopped to help a guy who lost his entire toolchest from his truck when the tailgate fell down while he was driving.  There were tools and screws and wrenches everywhere.  Yikes!

Back To The Beginning

If you haven't followed my Twitter feed, you may have missed the news that I'm going back to my old role at my old job at my old house in a week or two. I've been doing a manager job for the last 3 months. It was a temporary gig and I was only there to keep the seat warm until they picked a new, permanent person for the position and, alas (or not), that person was not me. It's ok though. I loved the experience of being a manager and being able to pick my own hours, but I also missed the house that I've been working at the past 7 years and really am looking forward to heading back to that merry band of misfits. I mean, I went paintballing with them last week. I can't do that anywhere else!

In another kind of funny note, I'm going to be heading up to Paisley for the next 3 days for a work retreat. Yep, I'm heading back to where this whole crazy career of mine began: THE CONFERENCE CENTER. I'm sure they'll have lots of silly icebreakers for us to do and things to lecture us about, but I'm really just looking forward to letting the waves of nostalgia wash over me.

Oh, and I have a trunk literally stuffed to the brim with boardgames to play. I've got obscure German games and Apples To Apples and everything in between. If I can spend a majority of my free time playing games with random people and reading my book, I'll be happy. The only piece of electronics I'm taking up is my phone, so this will be almost like a videogame detox clinic!

Glad I'm Not The Only One...

I present the following image without comment or critique.

Who's A Big Girl?

Well, it's that time again. Kara is FIVE YEARS OLD!!!

 Where did the time go? It's like it was only 5 years ago that she was born. Wowza.

Suffice it to say, she's pretty excited for her party today!

Sniff.  What ever happened to my baby girl? 

Ready To Rumble!

In case you haven't heard, Garrett & I are on something of a Wrestlemania kick. I tend to watch on occasion at work and I've been going to a few pay per view events with work over the last year or so. Sometime late last year, I stumble across the recap shows for the Raw & Smackdown shows and every few weekends, Garrett & I (and sometimes Kara) would watch the sweaty dudes in tights throw each other around the ring.

Well, Garrett is a full blown addict now. I took him to a pay-per-view back around Family Day and he has been hooked since. He now has wrestler toys, signed posters and we DVR the show every week. This has all been in anticipation of tomorrow night, Wrestlemania 28, and all of the fun that entails. He's got his picks of each of the main matches already locked in and has been debating the merits of the wrestlers for weeks.

I'm looking forward to it because, well, it's always a good show. But even moreso this year because half of the fun is going to be watching Garrett's reaction to things. We'll be watching it at the movie theatre which is always fun because of all of the crowd reaction. I may not be big into sports, but FAKE sports is my cup of tea.


John Cena


Garrett Wager

Can you tell the difference?

Just Like New!

So today was a busy day. I was supposed to be spending at least a portion of this weekend tromping around in the woods with my former manager and a few coworkers doing some LARPing (Live Action Role Playing, for those scratching their heads).

Instead I spent the day hunched over my tub, inhaling fumes and fighting a horrific slime monster known as 9 year old mildewed caulking. Blech.

I think I'm more tired than if I spent the weekend in the woods.

The upside is that I've not only sealed the horror that is my bathtub and made it look like something you can comfortably invite strangers over to use, but I've also overcome my fear of caulk. I was responsible for the atrocity that was our bathtub because everything just glooped up when I tried to put it on and I had no idea what to do. This time, I got advice, spent time cleaning the area properly and had the right tools.

I'm not saying I'm going to quit my day job and spend the next 30 years going to sealant conventions, but it was nice to see that I could actually do this incredibly simple task and not mess it all up :)

Please Post Above All Computers

I saw this and couldn't help but share.

What Is That Smell!?

We went to look at a house that's for sale right next to our friends. I was kind of intrigued as the owners had built in two massive fish tanks into a wall in the basement and while that seems to be a turn-off to a lot of prospective buyers, I was in love with it.

Unfortunately, the first thing the realtor said when we walked in was, "The place needs a bit of work." I'll say this. It made us feel a LOT better about the state of disarray our house was in. If this is what people who are trying to sell a house are willing to leave their house like, we're golden when it comes to selling ours.

And it stunk. Oh, lord, did it stink. It was like a wet dog rolled around in cat piss and was hiding in every room of the house. They have a cat but I've never smelled a house reek that badly and I've grown up with cats. I think the fact that they didn't even bother to light a smelly candle or febreeze the place made it worse. It's like they weren't even trying.

The fishtanks were filthy too. Lovely big fish and the tanks were pretty cool, but they were also coated in algae and slime. You'd think they'd maintain them better.

We're not planning to move anytime soon, so this was more of an excursion to see what houses were like and also to get an idea about how much work we'll need to put into ours to get it showroom ready. Of course, now Julie has the home shopping bug, so we'll see how soon I'll need to recruit some friends to help us move :)

G'Day, Officer

That being said, Garrett almost didn't survive this next bit of drama.

So this afternoon, Garrett was supposed to be out playing in the front yard with his friend. After a half an hour, I go to check on him. I see his friend playing in the front yard. No sign of him anywhere.

"Where is he?" I ask.

"I dunno," is the reply.

He isn't at the park. He isn't hiding in the bushes where the kids usually play. He's not behind the houses by the park. He hasn't come home a different way while I was out looking for him. He's not anywhere that I can see where he would normally play. I'm starting to get a little panicked at this point, esp. since his other friend isn't answering the door.

Just as I'm about to get REALLY worried, he comes sauntering across the parking lot from parts unknown, looking all innocent and saying, "Hi daddy!"

"GET HOME... NOW!" is my only response. As we're just about to round the side of the house into our front parking lot, I point at the three cop cars parked in front of our house and say, "We were so worried about you that we had the police here to help us find you."

He scurried into the house, hanging his head in shame, knowing that he was in big trouble. I, on the other hand, nodded to the officers, who were actually just parking in the empty spots in front of my house while they took care of something a few houses down. They smiled back because they knew I'd just pulled one over on him.

Suffice it to say, Garrett now knows that it is VERY important to let us know where he is at all times OR ELSE THE AUTHORITIES WILL BE CONTACTED!

Oh, and I also found a toy that he really wanted on sale in a clearance bin this evening while I was out. I have stashed it in his room in such a place that he'll only find it if he actually does a proper job of cleaning his room. I'm not going to say anything about it except to remind him that his room is pretty messy.

Now to wait while the Parent Of The Year awards roll in.

Busy March Break (So Far)

We're two days done of March Break and I'm pooped. At least I don't have anything too crazy planned for the rest of the week.

Yesterday the whole family went down to Toronto to visit the CN Tower and wander aimlessly for a while. Kara was super excited as it was her first subway ride and first time up the tower, while Garrett was the grizzled veteran who compared everything to the good ol' days of last year when he got to go with his cousin instead of his stinky sister.

But a good time was had by all and we managed not to plunge to our deaths when we stepped out onto the glass floor a few times.

We also visited the Eaton's Center which has both changed completely and stayed almost exactly the same since I was there last. All I can say about TEC and Yorkdale Mall is that there are FAAAAR too many clothing stores and not nearly enough toy and game stores. Sigh.

I had my 3DS with me for the day and I clocked in almost 13000 steps for the day (which is a fair sight more than my usual 3-4000 per day).

Today was a bit more relaxed, though not without some drama. After walking up to the garage to get my car (it was getting tested for Drive Clean), we drove down to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton. Of course, we had to stop at Pickard's Peanuts on the way (yum) and then we wandered around the hanger for a couple of hours before heading home.

The kids were hurting themselves a bunch today though. Garrett managed to slice his finger on one of the cockpits and also whacked himself in the mouth with a flight control stick in the simulator (don't ask me how he managed to do that). Kara somehow got bashed in the face when they were outside playing 'Fighter Planes' on the runway in front of the museum. Sigh. But both survived.

Tomorrow we're going to build Lego for the library Lego contest and maybe go watch a movie in the afternoon. I'm going to try to rest my aching ankles for a bit!

Movin' On Up

Who's got two thumbs and a new manager position?

THIS GUY!

I had the second interview for the temporary program manager postion today and it went rather well. Before I'd gone in, I'd basically decided that whatever happened, it was a win/win situation. I'd either get the job and open up opportunities and new challenges for at least the next few months OR I wouldn't get it and would be able to go back to my old program and get back to work doing the things I've had on hold since last year.

Well, seems that it's opportunity time! I got the call less than an hour after the interview and am starting in the new role ASAP.

The strange little twist is that in order to keep my hours up, I'm also going to be doing my current job (though only for a fraction of the hours per week) in addition to the manager job. This should keep things quite interesting. In effect, I'm running one house and am second in command in another house. Hopefully my brain won't fracture from the cognitive dissonance and recreate the scene from Scanners!

Thanks for all of the prayers and well wishing from people over the last little bit. This has been an absolutely surreal experience for me as I went from almost not bothering to apply to landing the job in the space of a week. Just imagine how I'll do if I apply for a job I actually want :)

No Fail State

So I'm experiencing something of an existential quandary at the moment. People at work have been bugging me to apply for manager positions when they come up, so I finally pulled the trigger recently when a temporary one was posted in the area.

Today I had the first interview for the position. Now, keep in mind that I don't really want to get the job, though I also think that there are several reasons why it would be a good move for me. If nothing else, the timing stinks as I'm just about to return to 'my' program after being off at another location for the past 7 months.

Plus the number of hours for the position aren't really going to work as far as my income situation goes. I'd basically be taking a pay cut of half my pay, which would be a REALLY bad idea right now.

I did have a great interview today though. It has been about 7 years or so since I last interviewed for the manager position and I think that because I went into the interview today not caring about the results, I was much more relaxed and natural during the process.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, I guess), I just got a call back for a second interview next week. ARG! I mean, I thought I threw up enough red flags during the interview that they'd go with someone else. I think I actually said, "If you've got someone else coming who really wants the job, give it to them!"

So much for subtlety. I need a new strategy for Monday so that they'll have no option but to hire a different candidate :)

All of that aside, if they can fix the hours so I don't lose pay (or at least, only lose a little bit), I kind of DO want to get the job so that I can get the managerial experience... ARG!

Don't Call Us

Seriously, don't call us. Our incoming calls aren't working for some reason. We can call out and the internet is working, but any incoming calls just cause the line to blip once and then that's it. Static.

Odd...

Anyway, Bell will be coming to fix them... on Monday... if we're lucky. Sigh.

Getting My Name In A Game

If you have been following game news this week, you'll be familiar with the Double Fine Kickstarter project. It basically boils down to one mad genius (Tim Schaefer) who wants to make an old-school point & click adventure game. The thing is, nobody makes these kinds of games anymore, at least not here in North America, so despite being one of the best adventure game designers alive, Schaefer just can't find a publisher to back him.

So he put out the call on Kickstarter to raise money from fans to the tune of $400000 by mid March. After 24 hours they've already raised over a million dollars and with 32 days to go, they're closing in on $1.5 million!

Given my love of the genre and the guys making it, I tossed a few bucks their way. Whenever it comes out, I'll be reading the credits since my name's going to be in there as a patron of the arts :)

Plague House

It has been a delightful time here over the past week. A norovirus was making the rounds at the kids' school and while Garrett was spared most of the brunt of the germ, Kara was down for the count for almost a week.

Thankfully they're both more or less back to fighting trim, but it wasn't a terribly fun week for kids or parents in Acton (and we seemed to get off easy compared to some of the families around here!)

SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!

Garrett & I spent the day in downtown Toronto at Monster Jam. We got to the Skydome at around 10:30am and the line was already around the building. After a relatively short wait in the cold, we went in to look at the trucks and get a picture taken with the driver of Grave Digger.



We had an absolute blast today. There were crashes, there was at least one truck that fell apart while jumping over cars and to top things off, the Canadians won the Quad race against the Americans! Woo!

The only thing missing was Truckasaurus. Maybe next time...

Ninja, Clean You Room!

I think that this will be my new parenting strategy. Garrett is actually getting much better at cleaning his room and this should put him over the top.



Now to see if I can convince Kara about how awesome (and tidy) female ninjas are.

Happy Birthday Julie!

Well, it's that time again. Julie just got another year older! Woo!

Alas, between our work schedules and Garrett having an art class tonight, we didn't get up to anything more rousing than watching an incredibly funny episode of Modern Family. Ah well. The kids made lots of... interesting... gifts for her and I've got a present coming in one of these days, if the shop ever gets it in stock.

Hey, snake-skin knitting bags are hard to come by! It's not my fault she's picky!

I did manage to get most of the big websites on the net to go dark in honour of her birthday though. At least, that's what I'm telling her. Shhhh!

Ski Camp Crystal Lake

Happy Friday the 13th, everybody!

I'm going to stay inside and play The Old Republic all day while everyone else dodges falling space debris and snowflakes. Blech.

Lucky 13!

Well what do you know? It's our 13th anniversary! Woo!

We went out for an early anniversary dinner last week while in Sarnia, but we're going to have a yummy steak dinner here at Casa Del Wager after the kids go to bed.

I also had some flowers ordered for delivery today, but thanks to Sobeys being a bunch of idiots, they spilled the beans. Stupid Sobeys. But it's our 13th anniversary, so we had to have some bad luck creep in there!

At least I'm not this guy :)

So Long, 2011. Good Morning, 2012!

So here we are at the end of an incredibly odd year. I won't say it's been a bad year for us, but I wouldn't say it has been a great year either. It has also not been a status quo kind of year. It has been incredibly odd.

I started off the year with far too many trips to the funeral home for someone who isn't in their 70s. Things got weirder on the work front as just when we were thinking things were going smoothly, multiple challenges reared their heads, not least of which was my transfer to a different home (thankfully one I'm familiar with and roughly the same distance to travel to). This has led to a rather challenging, though not altogether unpleasant, fall and I think I'll be going back to my old house ready to kick butt and take names come April.

Julie's been losing weight like nothing else, which makes me feel like I'm going to have to actually get off my butt come the new year so I can catch up... but that might involve eating a vegetable or two, so I'm not quite sold on the idea yet.

And then we've got the kids. Garrett is turning into a jock for some unknown reason (skateboards? hockey? soccer?) and Kara is reading and writing already, almost better than Garrett! They've also become local celebrities, with Kara making the front page of the local paper and both of them singing with our church choir on TV at the end of the year.

I'm sorry that the blog didn't get updated NEARLY enough this year compared to years past. I could admit that I'm just lazy, but I think the blame is mostly on Twitter's tiny shoulders. It's just a lot easier to update it periodically and by the time I sit down to do something on the blog, well, I've already dumped the contents of my brain!

Anyway, I'll try to update the blog more next year. I've got a few writing projects that have been left to rot on the vine over the past year that I need to get back to and keeping the blog going helps keep the writing bug alive!

So with all of that, we're all going to wish you a



I'm off to finish off the year by working an overnight shift. Yippee for me!

The Prince Of Peace... LIVE!

So on Monday of this week, Garrett & Kara went down to Burlington to perform with the church children's choir on 100 Huntley Street. They sang three songs and, according to Garrett, got really nasty headaches from the lights :)

They aired the first of the songs on the broadcast this morning. The kids were pretty pumped to see themselves on TV when they got home from school today!

Garrett was reduced to a floating pair of eyes and some hair for most of this song, but they fixed that by the time they taped the second song (airing later in the week/next week) so that he could actually be seen on camera. Kara, on the other hand, was front and center for all three. Too bad she looks like she's watching a cat get strangled for most of this song :)

Only 2 Weeks To Go!

This is nuts. It's only 2 weeks until Christmas. What happened to the month/year?!?

We've had a few busy weekends with family Christmas parties and shopping. Thankfully we're pretty much finished with the shopping part of things (and to be honest, I haven't noticed maddening crowds compared to the last few years). Garrett has an art show to put on in a week & a half and Kara has her final dance recital next weekend.

Oh, and tomorrow they'll both be performing on 100 Huntley Street with the church children's choir. They're pretty stoked for their chance at fame and glory :)

Staycations Are Nice

Yesterday was my first day back to work after a lovely week long staycation. I watched a lot of TV, played a lot of Skyrim and Zelda and also spent a lot of money getting the cars repaired and ready for winter. It was nice though. I needed a good chunk of time off to just chill after the pretty breakneck pace of the summer and loved having the time to just veg!

Trick Or Treat Complete!

We had one of the best Hallowe'ens in recent memory tonight. The kids got piles of candy (yum) and Garrett met up with a few of his friends and they ended up going down some streets we've never managed to go down while trick-or-treating.

It was helpful that, unlike the last few years, it wasn't raining and the temperature was cool but not freezing. There were an awful lot of people who had put bowls of candy on their porch this year though. I'm shocked that they hadn't been emptied by punk teenagers by the time we went there!

Garrett's Tron costume held up pretty well tonight and Kara got a lot of compliments on her Little Red Riding Hood outfit. Good times!

Costume: Complete!

I've had to spend a lot of time over the past few weeks trying to figure out how to make Garrett's costume for Hallowe'en this year. He's going as Sam from Tron: Legacy (see below) and this was not something I could easily pick up off the shelf. I also had to try to figure out how to make something somewhat shiny so that it would look like he had light shining out of him.



So firstly, I ordered a shirt from the Real Life Comics store that takes care of a lot of the detail on the torso and also glows blue in the dark. For the pants, I took a pair of black windbreaker pants and put strips of blue duct tape and reflective tape on them.



We'll be taking the costume out for a test run on Saturday afternoon for the town Trick Or Treat on Main Street. Hopefully the tape sticks to the pants and doesn't disintegrate!

And A Few More Pictures For Good Measure

Ah, what the heck. Here are a few other pictures from the summer.


Feeding the duckies at the park


Garrett & I found this hockey equipment outside and it fits (mostly).


We went to the Royal Botanical Gardens and Garrett sat on a tuffet...


The Rock Garden at the RBG is awesome. This waterfall was rather pretty.


Can YOU find Kara in this picture?


Soccer season ended with a great day of fun and trophies and pizza.

And last but not least, a few pictures from the first week or school.

From 2011-09-12

Belated Vacation Photo Time!

It has been a little while since I last posted pictures of the kids, so get ready for a deluge o' pics!

We went to Niagara Falls this summer and the kids got up to some trouble. They're making a run for the border on their purloined wheels...



Unfortunately, they ate a bit too much on the way and got stuck in Canada.





They went on a radical diet and now Garrett works for the law, not against it. Kara has gone vegetarian and just eats bark and leaves now.



And lastly, here's a picture of Kara from atop the Tower Of Terror (as I call it) aka The Pink Panther Lazy Balloon Ride (as everyone else calls it).

'Twas The Last Day Of Vacation...

Well, today was an interesting end to the kids' summer vacation. It was kind of nice for Julie & I. Both of the kids spent almost the entire day (9-5ish) outside playing with their friends in this insanely chilly weather and that gave us an chance to just relax inside and veg for the day.

How lazy was it? Well, I beat a game during the afternoon and then sat down to watch the extended cut of The Blues Brothers. And to top it all off, we were able to watch the first chunk of Empire Strikes Back (woo Hoth!) before the kids went to bed. Heck, Garrett was so tired that he didn't even want a story or anything. He just got up, shuffled over to his room at 7:30 and climbed up into his bed on his own volition.

Tomorrow is his first day of school and he's pretty excited. He had a bit of an emotional breakdown after supper when I tried to convince him to let his caterpillar, Sunshine, go free. We reached a compromise where we'd leave the container open on the backyard table and it would be up to Sunshine to stay or go. But other than that, Garrett's pretty excited to have a new class and make new friends.

Kara doesn't start school offically until next week, so that gives me a chance to see her off on the bus for her first day of school proper. She is going for an orientation day this week though but Julie's got that covered.

And now I'm off to get in my last burst of gaming for a bit before I'm off to the cottage to fish, read and play lots of board games for the next few days.

I Eats Me Spinach!

Stay off the lakes, because I just passed my boating safety certification test!

I'm heading up north tomorrow for a 4 day cottage trip for work and part of the preparation for that trip was to try to get my boating license. I still haven't received the e-mail with the copy of the license yet, but hopefully I'll have it in the morning so I can take it up with me.

On the one hand, I'm happy to have the license now as it means I can actually take boats out on the water and not have to worry about a piece of paper.

The downside is that one of the guys I'm taking up on this trip will probably shanghai me and I'll be forced to spend a day or two in a boat while he fishes. I won't lie and say that the idea of failing the test right now didn't cross my mind...

But at least now the option of taking a boat out for a day is there and that's cool.

Happy Belated Birthday Everybody!

While I didn't forget his birthday the other day, I DID forget to put my usual post about his birthday on the site. So happy belated birthday, Dave.

It seems that everyone else around me has had a birthday recently too. So happy birthday to all y'all.

Now go get old somewhere else and leave me alone!

The Star Wars Savings Plan

Well, thanks, Mr. Lucas, for costing your empire $100 from my pocket. I've been cautiously optimistic about the upcoming Blu-Ray release of the Star Wars saga but knew it was too much to hope that Lucas wouldn't mess things up in the original trilogy, AGAIN. A few of the effect tweaks aren't horrendous but he's gone in and changed some of the audio in ways that are just dumb.

How dumb? Let's just say that this clip:


is actually preferable to the changes he made to the film. If nothing else, it's funny! I can only assume that Lucas is the ultimate troll with the way he refuses to release a proper, untampered version of the original 3 movies. That, or he requires internet rage and nerd tears to sustain him.

But yeah, that's $100 I won't be spending this fall. The better to buy more videogames, er, save for the future...

Brock: Destroyer Of Propellers

Next week I'll be heading up to Trout Lake for our annual vacation with work. It's going to be a small crew this year but it'll be fun. I'm in the midst of getting my boating safety license and if I can sink the required time into it today to finish it, I might be able to take a boat out on the lake this year for some fishing.

My only worry is that I'll end up breaking things like I did the two propellers that I smashed last year on our houseboat trip. Sigh. But an outboard motor on a little fishing boat is a little easier to maneuver than a giant houseboat, so I should manage to avoid destroying any boats this year. I hope.

If nothing else, it looks like it'll be a nice week next week and I'm also planning to take up my boardgames, so much Talisman and Ticket To Ride will be played, I'm sure.

Settling In

So today marks the end of my first week working at the new house. It has been a pretty seamless transition, though I'm still experiencing some cognitive dissonance when I go to look for something and it's not where I would normally find it or when I run into a slightly different method of doing things than what I'm used to at the house I've worked at for the past 6 years.

That being said, I think that now that I've had a week to acclimate to the pace and the people at the new house, I'll probably enjoy my stay here much more than I expected to. The people here are much older than the crew I usually support so the energy level is a lot more subdued. I can actually get some work done during the day now instead of being interrupted every 5 minutes with a new question! Yay! The upside of that is that if I can actually get my work done when I have a chance to, I can spend more time out with the guys doing things instead of being cooped up in the office on a never-ending treadmill of paperwork. Huzzah!

So things are going to be ok, I think. I wasn't a huge fan of this transition when it was asked of me a month ago but I know the people here and I know I'm going back to 'my house' early next year, so I think things are going to be pretty swell in the interim. And the change of pace is nice. I get to look out over the escarpment every morning on my way down here which is a little nicer view than downtown Acton :)
---  
What I'm Reading: Ready Player One
What I'm Playing: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Deathspank: Thongs Of Virtue 
What I'm Watching: Community: Season 1

It's Been A Slice... But I'll Be Back

So as I hinted at ages ago and have discussed a bit on Twitter, things are changing for me on the work front. Today is my final day working at the program I've been at for the past 6+ years and as of next Monday, I'll be continuing my Program Coordinator duties at a house a little further away. The upside is that I'll still be working with a lot of the same people I do now and the commute is a whopping 10 minutes instead of 5, but I'll manage.

It's weird though. I'd rather stay where I am but I think the change of scenery and new people to support/work alongside will be for the best. I'll hopefully pick up a few new tricks and it will make me appreciate what I've got at my "home" program even more when I come back early next year. And it has been almost embarrassing to see how much people (staff & the guys) have made me feel wanted and/or needed where I am now. They've really come out to back me up and I'll miss my crew while I'm gone.

That said, my schedule at the new place looks almost normal and I think I'll be much more relaxed at the end of each week, of only because I won't have to put in a million extra hours (I hope!).

Now to sit back and enjoy the upcoming weekend(s) and get ready for the new house on Monday.

At Least It's Not Friday...

This song has been stuck in my head all day and I think I'm in a better mood for it. It's really, really silly but man, it makes me chuckle just thinking about it.

As a spoof of the horrifically autotuned Friday, this is awesome. I'm just glad it's a joke song.

"And hide them all in a shed..."

You Want Me To Do What?

Did I forget to mention that this was also a very odd, busy and surreal week at work? After an already busy day, I received a phone call that will make my next 6-9 months very interesting... if I say yes.

And no, we didn't go to the baby store (as Kara insists we should). This is totally a work thing. I'm pretty much going to do it but I'll sleep on it before I committ. Should be an interesting fall/winter though!

Where Am I?

Oh my. I didn't expect that I'd miss updating for an entire month! Yeesh.

Suffice it to say, ever since about mid-July, I've been utterly run off of my feet. I just finished a 17+ hour shift today and probably put in about 50 hours in the last 4 days at work. Yeesh. And one of them was a short day!

The nice thing is that I am officially ON VACATION! We're heading to Sarnia tomorrow (today?) to attend Julie's uncle's wedding and next week we're going to be hitting a hotel in Niagara Falls for a couple of days and doing a few other fun vacation thingies around the GTA and GSA (Greater Sarnia Area).

Woo!

Guess Who's 7 Today!

So today is Garrett's 7th birthday. We made a pretty good day of it and the big party is tomorrow afternoon. He's pretty excited about the Adventurer Training Party (as we've dubbed it) where they'll learn to climb some pretty impressive rock walls at the local climbing gym.

Today was pretty packed too. He got a TRON light-cycle and a Recognizer carrying case for the little die-cast light-cycles and the DS version of Plants Vs. Zombies. We went out for a gourmet breakfast of Egg McMuffins at McDonalds, where the receipt machine went insane and spat out a huge pile of receipts all over the counter that almost buried the poor girl working the cash. You couldn't pay for entertainment like that!

Of course, we did pay for Cars 2 tonight and supper at Boston Pizza. Good times.

Now to get some sleep myself so that I'm a functional human being whilst the festivities are on tomorrow.

Mmm... Mongolian Grill...

It's scary sometimes when a webcomic pegs my personality just right. I think Julie will get a chuckle out of this one.

"That Was The Best Movie Ever, Daddy!"

We all went out to see Kung Fu Panda 2 this afternoon while the storms raged around us. Kara must have really liked it because she told me that it was the best movie ever at least 3-4 times during the course of the movie.

Much like the first one, KFP2 is a really solid kung-fu movie that just happens to have a cast of animated animals instead of humans. And it's pretty funny, though not quite as funny as the original. Great flick though and the animation itself is astoundingly gorgeous.

Quite A Conversation Starter!

I found this book at a rummage sale at one of the local churches today.



I couldn't stop laughing when I saw it. I was telling someone on Twitter that I should have bought it so I could sneak it to peoples' houses when I visit and leave it on their coffee table. Then I could just sit back and watch the show :)

Biohazard!

Soo... I have somehow been given the dubious honour of being one of a handful of people in Ontario to use a very expensive prototype machine at work for the next month.

And I get to expose myself to e.Coli on a regular basis too. Huzzah!

Seriously though, I'm responsible for the water testing at work and we've been chosen as a location to field test a new water quality monitoring system. It's actually very cool tech (I spent a few hours being trained on it today) and I am looking forward to fiddling around with it over the next month.

I just need to be VERY careful about washing my hands when I'm done using it!

Heading To The Zoo, Zoo, Zoo...

I'm heading to the zoo on Thursday with Garrett's class. I'm afraid... very afraid...

At least we'll be able to say hi to Kara's Monkey Mom and Monkey Dad. We're trying to convince her that we picked her up at the monkey cage the last time we visited :)

Inside Garrett's Mouth

This comic over at Penny Arcade is likely what's going on in Garrett's mouth. Why will he never brush his teeth? Sigh.

Ghibli Minecraft

As a huge fan of Miyazaki's body of work and all of the excellent films that Studio Ghibli has put out over the years AND as someone who has spent a fair amount of time tinkering around in Minecraft, this just blows me away.



The sheer amount of time needed to make all of that architecture blows me away, not to mention the attention to detail for most of those sets. Lovely stuff.

Good Thing This Couch Is Comfy

Sooooo.... I picked up an iPad 2 today. I was heading home from a day of writing protocols in Kitchener and had seen that the Guelph Future Shop had them in stock. I figured I'd pop in just on the off chance that they had some and lo and behold, there were 3 left.

Now, I've been having my eye on an iPad 2 for some time. It basically did everything that I'd hoped the first iPad would do but didn't, plus I'd heard a lot of good things about the improved battery, faster processors, etc. Of course, finding one in stock was pretty much impossible and I was broke, so it was a moot point.

But we just got our tax returns back and it was a pretty hefty one this year, so I put aside enough to cover the cost of the iPad should I ever find one and put the rest towards paying off the basement and a few other bills. I just anticipated having a few more months of idly checking Best Buy and Future Shop stockrooms before I'd luck across one of the units!

Suffice it to say, I'm really enjoying the thing so far. Granted, I spent most of tonight setting it up and futzing about with the app layout and synching it with my phone data and such, but it is a very nice piece of tech. I've only just started to plumb the depths of the thing, but I'm shocked by how much content even something as simple as the Weather Network app has packed into it.

But Julie, on the other hand, is none too pleased with me (hence the lovely couch I may be sleeping on for the next while). Granted, I think she'll change her tune once she starts fiddling around with it and watching TV on it, etc. Right Julie? RIGHT?!

Garrett: Roughneck

After a few years of having minimal communication from Garrett's teacher, we were greated with a novella in his planner today. Unfortunately, it seems that Garrett's been a little rowdy on the playground.

He insists that he accidentally pushed a kid down who was walking backwards, blindfolded, while on roller skates, in a snowstorm... I'm trying to say that I'm not sure whether to believe it was an accident when the details shift around more than a stack of bowling balls in an earthquake.

Hopefully it's just your typical playground shenanigans and Garrett will keep his nose clean. He does tend to hang out with a lot of the meaner kids though, so I'm hoping they're not rubbing off on him. He's such a sweet lad :)

A Spoonful Of Yogurt

Kara came down with an ear infection last week and is now on some antibiotics to help get her back to her usual spunky self.

Unfortunately, the medicine tastes like liquid death with a pinch of distilled horror to spice it up. I thought Kara was exaggerating about it being disgusting until I tried a little drop that was on the counter and had to scrub my tongue down to the bone* with a chunk of pumice to get rid of the taste.

After almost having to do a restraint to force the medicine down her throat on Sunday, we've decided to take a different tack: bribery and disguise. The bribery thing is easy: she'll get a little Polly Pocket doll and/or outfit each day that she takes the medicine. She's also able to have one or two chocolate eggs from Easter, which is fine as we have tonnes of those lying around.

We're also mixing the medicine in with apple sauce or yogurt. It still tastes nasty, but it's somewhat diluted by the taste of the snack that it's mixed in and she is able to take a lot of swigs on her juice/water glass to help wash down the vile poison.

So far it's working, though Kara is still not a huge fan of medicine time. And I don't blame her!


* I know that tongues don't have bones :)

BLARF!

Kara is sick... again. She was sick on Thursday and now she's sick again. She hasn't had to throw up since about 4:30 or so, but man, the poor little thing!

Hopefully it's yet another 24-hour bug. At least she has a doctor's appointment tomorrow so we'll see what's going on one way or another.

VGL Wrap-Up

Well, Garrett was very impressed by Videogames Live the other night. The seats were awesome (front row, middle of the balcony) and there were a lot of great performances through the night. I was very impressed by Martin Leung (the videogame pianist) and blown away by the flute skills of Laura Intravia (aka Flute Link).

I'd love it if the show came back to the area again next year. There is a lot of stuff that is the same but they do have enough new content to warrant repeated viewings. And it's just a great concert regardless.

Also, the winner of the costume contest was a guy dressed up as a Lego minifig. The costume was amazing.

Happy (Belated) Birthday, Grant!

I did send the guy a message but was out most of Friday, so in case he happens to stumble by here, happy birthday, little brother!

Now if only we could figure out why he keeps moving further and further away from the rest of his loving, caring family :)

VGL

This should be interesting.

I'm taking Garrett with me to see Videogames Live tonight (Wed) in Kitchener. I'm very excited as it's a fantastic concert and I think he'll have a blast. I need to make sure he wears something videogamey!

I'm also interested to see how many tags I can get with my 3DS. So far I've found ONE person in the wild and that was at the Sarnia easter egg hunt. If I don't find very many other people with a 3DS tomorrow night, I won't find them anywhere!

Happy 4th Birthday Kara

Kara turned 4 last week and I was so busy I forgot to post! I'll have to dig up some pictures from last week's string of birthday parties, but suffice it to say, she's very happy to be four now!

Happy Birthday Mom!

My mom is [REDACTED] years old today! Congratulations for making it through another trip around the sun, mom!

Fun Is Work!

Speaking of work that is fun, I've been totally engrossed in this Portal 2 ARG (Alternate Reality Game) that has been going on since the beginning of the month. The reason it is so neat is because there's a chance that, due to a lot of geeks playing a lot of indie games, Portal 2 will be available at least a day earlier than planned! It is supposed to launch on Tuesday but because everyone has been playing a bunch of neat little games on Steam, we'll be able to play it by Monday night if all of the calculations are correct.

I'm sure that's gibberish for most of you, but it's really cool and one of the great things about being a gamer. What other medium will give you a chance to partake of their content early by watching/reading/listening to other movies/books/songs?

Work Is Hard

If you see a few more gray hairs on my head, I think it's because work is out to age me 20 years over the past few weeks. The last couple of days have been the first where I feel like I've got my feet back under me and it's so nice to have a day where I can just cook food and hang out with the guys instead of being buried in paperwork up to my eyeballs.

Not that I don't have paperwork, but the high priority stuff is definately wrangled for the moment. Phew!

It's Still Easier Than Explaining It To My Grandparents

Please check out this epic flowchart detailing how to explain the internet to a 19th century street urchin. It is about 8 kinds of awesome.

And it's pretty funny too.

The Best Worst Thing You'll Hear All Day

If you've been exposed to the virulent strain of earworm that is Rebecca Black's 'Friday', do yourself a favour and watch this video.

At the very least, Colbert & Fallon have managed to wash the sound of the original version out of my brain.

Edit: I give up. Just go on Youtube and search for Friday and Colbert.

Chicks Dig Scars

Garrett & I got to spend about 6 hours or so in the local ER waiting to see if he had any kind of internal damage after he had an unexpected meeting of his stomach and the bare metal end of his handlebars while riding around outside today.



We were a little concerned that the force of the blow and the fact that it took the skin off his stomach (and left it imprinted on the inside of the shirt!) so I drove him over to the hospital after work to have a professional give him a once-over. While we did have an almost 6 hour wait there, they took it seriously enough to do a urine test and ultrasound to ensure that there wasn't any internal injury. Thankfully, it looks like he'll just be tender on his tummy for a bit and have a very odd scar to show to his friends when he's older.

And I have to say, for a kid in some amount of pain and with not a lot to do, Garrett handled the long wait at the hospital like a trooper. He played his DS, my 3DS, my iPhone, read some magazines, flounced about a bit and ate a bunch of junk food from the vending machine with nary a complaint. I think he was more interested in all of the stuff going on through the glass doors into the ward and with all of the people around to realize how dull it was!

To add insult to injury to this whole evening, we got trapped in the parking lot for about 10 minutes when we were trying to leave. On the upside, we didn't have to pay the obscenely high cost for parking ($16 to park for 2 hours? SERIOUSLY?!?) but it was kind of annoying nonetheless.

On A Happier Note...

This has been a bear of a week for me, but tomorrow (today?) is my day off (yay) so I'm finally getting a bit of time to decompress. Despite the insanity of the previous post, the absolute emotional wringer of a day I had on Wednesday at work and the fact that it was year end at work on Thursday and the paperwork was flying furiously, there is a glimmer in the darkness!

Our church had a spectacular opening Sunday on the 27th. Our first service was about 75% capacity in the sanctuary, which holds about 700 people. For the second service, it was standing room only, not to mention all of the people spilling out into the foyer and the coffee shop. Altogether, we had something like 1200 people come to the church on Sunday with 200 kids in the children's area. Woo!

And in a fit of insanity, I had volunteered to help with parking. Here's a still shot of the parking lot from the far edge of the lot to show how many cars there were...



It was a bit packed. We had cars lined up all the way from the cul-de-sac at the end of 10th Line to the lights at Argentia at one point, but we managed to squeeze about 400 or so cars into a lot designed to hold about 300. It was nuts. 3.5 hours of nuts, to be precise, because that's how long I spent outside directing traffic that day! At least the weather was beautiful, though I got a pretty nasty sunburn for my troubles.



Hopefully the coming Sundays will be a little more... sane. We had a lot of visitors, special guests and curious people who likely won't be around on a regular basis, though it would be awesome to have this kind of turn out every week.

I'm just happy that we have a building to call home for the church now. It has been a long time coming and it's like the church is coming into its adolescence now (almost literally, what with the congregation being about 10 years old this coming September) so we have all sorts of new challenges and opportunities to look forward in this new phase of the church's life. Time to sit back and buckle in and enjoy the ride.

Take That, Good Deed Doer!

How I wish this was an April Fool's joke. There is a very surreal thing going down around our neighbourhood and it just goes to show how small a town Acton is.

A week ago or so (during that crazy freak blizzard) one of the people living near us had their dog either stolen or lost from their yard. I'm not sure whether they're exaggerating or not and I honestly don't know why anyone would wait until the nastiest day of the year so far to bother to try to steal their puppy, but that's their story and they're sticking to it.

So they went to the cops, it didn't seem like much would happen but a few days later, it appears that they've retrieved their dog from a supposed breeder or some such. Hooray! Happy end of story.

Except now it seems that one of our friends that lives across town has learned that no good deed goes unpunished. They found a dog on one of the sideroads near Acton and called the local humane society and someone came to take the dog to the shelter. And yes, it was that missing puppy. So the cops have been paying a visit to our good friends and they're worried that they're going to be under the spotlight as suspected dognappers when they were just trying to do the right thing.

And to make things even more crazy, it turns out that the person who came from the shelter to take the dog away is a fake. The shelter has nobody like this on staff. So that's a whole other layer of insanity on this surreal pancake.

Hopefully everything will be fine for our friends and the real dognappers in this case will be caught and/or never stalk the Hills of Halton again, but it sucks that our friends are stuck in the middle for having tried to do the right thing.

Draaaama!

One More Sleep!

Tomorrow is the launch date for the new Nintendo 3DS! I can't wait. I've had mine paid off for at least a month or two and am really excited to see this thing in action.

I'm only getting one game at launch (Pilotwings) but I'm really excited to play around with the Augmented Reality stuff. It looks really slick. And given that nary a day goes by where I don't play my DS, an enhanced version of my favourite game system of the past 5 years is more than welcome!

Garrett's pretty excited to see it too. We love 3D movies and such and it will be neat to see how this works without glasses.

Buggered For Choice: Spring Election Edition

Well, it's election season and I don't think I've felt more blasé about picking a leader for our glorious country. I have been thinking about how none of the candidates inspire me in the least, except to perhaps retch into a corner.

I think that it is a necessary election to have because the Conservatives have basically been flounting the laws of the land AND the niceties of Parliament in such a blatant manner that they need to be held accountable. Even if the outcome of the election is identical to what it is now, at least the Opposition showed that it could actually get its head out of its butt long enough to do its job.

Locally, I like the guy who is running for the Conservative seat and he at least brought some decent bills to the table over the last while, but I don't really want to vote for the Conservatives. The Liberals... the less said about them the better and the NDP have done so many backflips on principle and policy issues that they should be in Cirque De Soleil. As for the Greens, well, I haven't heard a peep out of them in any capacity since the last election so I'd rather not toss my vote into that black hole.

So there's my quandary. Do I vote for the guy who I actually like who is in our local riding despite not wanting to vote for the party he is a member of OR do I play a game of political spin-the-bottle and essentially waste my vote? Not voting is out of the question, but it feels like I'm being forced to make a kind of bizzaro political version of Sophie's Choice.

If I Win The Lottery...

I'll have to build this room for Garrett. Talk about an awesome room!

Home. Sick.

Garrett woke up today with a fever of 102. Degrees. Celcius. Then he exploded.

Actually, it was Farenheit and he did puke a few times while at the sitter's. I was able to get home early (yay) and his fever seems to have broken, but he's now passed out on the couch after watching a bit of Pokémon. Hopefully the worst is over and he'll be all ready for an exciting week of March Break Fun[tm]!

This was kind of nice for me because I got a head start on my vacation. I don't go back until the 23rd!

Time to Share at the Timeshare!

Kara and I went up to Thornbury last week to hang out with my parents and just get away from the hustle and bustle of life in Acton. Seriously though, we had a great time up north, even with Kara being sick one of the days. We went swimming and snowshoeing and drank lots of delicious Ashanti coffee.

There's a great cheese shoppe in Thornbury that had a variety of amazing cheeses I've never tried before. Before I get to my top two, let me just say that they had a cheese that was the unholy, yet very tasty, offspring of a piece of gouda and parmesan. That being said, the best of the cheeses were a couple of cheddars. One was a Guinness cheddar that looks like something you scrape off of the bar at an Irish pub, yet tastes surprisingly mild. My personal favourite was an Irish Whiskey cheddar that was not sharp in the least and had a distinctly whiskey tang to it. Yum!

Anyway, here are a few pictures we took while we were up there. Enjoy!

Local Wildman Spotted At Mall

Check out my dad! He's on the intarwebs!

Now if only I could get the crappy video codec to play in Firefox...

It Speaks For Itself...

Let's see if this makes anyone lose their noodle...

Ribs...

We went out for all-you-can-eat ribs at Montana's yesterday as the capper on our Family Day activities. I think I'm now 90% pork-back ribs and 10% human. Urg...

Canadian Temperature Conversion Chart

Saw this over on Dubious Quality and had to share it.

Official Canadian Temperature Conversion Chart
50 F/10 C Californians shiver uncontrollably; Canadians plant gardens
35 F/2 C Italian cars will not start; Canadians drive with windows down
32 F/0 C American water freezes; Canadian water melts
0 F/ -18 C New York City landlords finally turn on the heat; Canadians have the last cookout
-60 F/-51 C Santa Claus abandons the North Pole; Canadian Girl Guides sell cookies door to door
-109 F/-78 C Carbon dioxide freezes into dry ice; Canadians pull down their earflaps
-173 F/-114 C Ethyl alcohol freezes; Canadians get frustrated when they cannot thaw the keg
-459.67 F/-273 C absolute zero; all atomic motion stops; Canadians say “cold enough for ya, eh?”
-500 F/-295 C Hell freezes over; Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup

The BOOth Fairy

Garrett lost another tooth tonight.

From Kids

When Garrett wouldn't get out of Kara's room at bedtime, I told him to get to bed or the evil tooth fairy would show up. Of course, then he had to know everything there is to know about the evil tooth fairy...

So I showed him a clip from Darkness Falls.

Suffice it to say, both kids ran screaming to their rooms before the clip was over and on the upside, it was one of the easiest bedtimes ever. But I did have to tell Garrett that the evil tooth fairy wasn't real and show him a bunch of clips of car chases from The Blues Brothers to get him calmed down :)

#1 Parent Award, I await thee!

THREE DEE ESSSSSSS!

On a happier note, the 3DS has been official priced and dated. I had hoped it would be out on March 20, but I'll wait an extra week from my birthday if I have to. I've already got the money saved up for it and I put $5 down on it last week but today I'll brave the snow to slap more money down and get the thing paid off.

Woot. The DS has been the 'console' that I've played almost every single day for the past 5 years and I'm stoked for the new hardware with the potential for some cool 3D trickery.

What A Week

Things are finally starting to get back to normal.

One of my coworkers was struck and killed by a GO train last Friday afternoon and I found out about it on Saturday morning (if you've been following my tweets, you've probably noticed that last week was kind of wonky).

It has been a rough week at work but all of the staff and the guys attended the memorial service for Elliott on Wednesday and it was a beautiful service that celebrated his far too short life. He was only about 5-6 months younger than me, so it struck home how fast things can change.

But life goes on and we'll remember all of the good thing about the last few years he spent working at CH before the accident. I've been wiped since I'm essentially running the show this week too, which has been a real treat. That said, work is starting to fall back into its old routine and while things aren't really back to normal, per se, it's a lot closer to normal than it has been for the past few days.

I just wish I had the weekend off to relax!

Happy Birthday Julie!

With all of the stuff going on at work this week, I almost forgot to put the birthday announcement up today!

Happy birthday, Julie! Sorry I've been stuck at work all day and didn't get to see you :(

Chili Four Loko - Epic Meal Time

I thought I ate a lot of meat yesterday. I didn't eat nearly enough by these guys' standards.

A Day Of Meatings

What a busy, busy day today was. I had a meeting at work in the morning and then a meeting at night for the condo board. That wouldn't be so bad but this was basically the seventh day that I've worked in the past 8 days (I had Friday off) and I was really hoping that my work meeting was going to be short.

It wasn't.

I was really hoping my condo board meeting was going to be short.

It wasn't either.

That said, unlike many, MANY of the meetings I've sat through in the past, both of the meetings today were quite productive and worth the length of time I sat in them, so it wasn't a waste of a day.

Today was also a day full of meat.

I picked up some WagJag coupons back in November or so for the Hungry Hollow Smokehouse & Grille in Georgetown and was able to use one of them today. Man, oh man, is that place ever great. If you like meat at all, get ye there. I had the Dream Burger, which was a 1/4 pound burger topped with bacon, cheese and a big pile of pulled pork. I had it at around 3 this afternoon and I was still stuffed when I headed over to my evening meeting at 7. The prices are also incredibly cheap. Most of the sandwiches were in the $6-7 range (with sides) and that burger was only about $10. Delicious, delicious stuff.

And the last pile of meat for today came in the form of my dinner which I had when I got home around 10pm or so. We had some leftover pot roast from M&M's this evening and I finished off my day scarfing down that yummy hunk of cow.

Suffice it to say, I've spent most of the afternoon/evening/night in a bit of a meat hangover, but man, it was worth it :)

Now to eat healthly food for the rest of the week. Mmm... triscuits...

Happy Anniversary!

So today was our 12th anniversary. I think that means I was supposed to give Julie silk and pearls. I got her an iPod instead. Does that count?

We didn't do anything terribly special. Garrett was still kind of wiped and pale from whatever bug hit him on New Year's Eve and so we stayed home from church and basically just vegged all day. Julie thought I was sick too, but I was just hanging out with Garrett and watching movies and playing games :)

Not the most romantic anniverary but we did have a nice dinner here at the house and we went out for steak last week in Sarnia, so it'll do. I'll just make sure I take her out somewhere really nice for her birthday :)

Now to get to bed. I just found out tonight that I have work first thing in the morning instead of later in the day. Sigh.

All Good Things...

And as the year grows to a close, so too does our vacation here in the Greater Sarnia Area. We had a pretty great time this year, with lots of visits with family, some fun toboggan runs and lots of yummy food.

I was also happy to be able to actually see a couple of friends who I have missed the last few times we've come down here. I had a coffee at the old New Trish In location where I spent a few years bussing tables, washing dishes and serving yummy food. It was interesting to see how much the building had changed since it turned into a Coffee Culture shop and how much it stayed the same.

Last night, my buddy Tony & I went out to the local all-you-can-eat Chinese/Japanese place (it was surprisingly good for mediocre western-style Chinese food) and then saw the truly excellent True Grit in the truly uncomfortable Lambton 9 theatres.

As a final adieu to 2010, I'll leave you with this comic, which strikes far too close to home :)



Let's hope that 2011 treats us all even better than 2010 did and be safe out there!

Tron

Go see TRON: Legacy if you can. Preferably on an IMAX screen in 3D, but just go see it. It was awesome and it blew Garrett's mind.

It's Almost Christmas Time!

I've got 2 days of work left and then I'm ON VACATION!

Unfortunately, I might not survive these next two days. Between fighting off this cold/flu thing that has been dogging me since Sunday and some last minute year-end crunches coming down from on high, I'm going to earn that vacation!

At least all of the shopping is done and we just need to wrap the last few presents and pack. Woo!

Tron: Snoozacy

So on a happier note, tomorrow (today?) I'll be taking Garrett to go see Tron: Legacy in 3D on the IMAX screen. I'm stoked, since I've been a Tron fan since waaaay back in the day and from all accounts, the movie is a visual delight. I've been listening to Daft Punk's awesome soundtrack for most of this week and love it to death.

Heck, I even watched the original with the guys from work last week. It has been a couple of years since I last watched it and I have to admit that it hasn't aged as well as I wish it could have, but the fundamentals are still there. If you can cast your mind back far enough to appreciate just how groundbreaking the visuals were for their time (and how prescient a lot of the ideas introduced in it were), it's still amazingly impressive for what it did almost 30 years ago.

My only grumble is that I got called in to do the overnight shift and here I sit, trying to stay awake, knowing that I have tickets bought for the movie tomorrow morning and that I'll be running on very, VERY minimal sleep. Sigh.

Anonymous Cowards

I kind of miss the old Haloscan comment system for der olde blog. Ever since I had to drop it and go with the built-in Blogger system, not only does nobody leave me notes (sniff), the only comments I get are from this Anonymous guy who seems to have a wide ranging interest in blog posts from years past and who wants to sell me lots of mail-order goods.

And to the latest Anonymous poster who decided to leave a rather vitriolic screed (that has since been pulped into the spam filter), get bent. Man up and deal with your problems directly instead of trying to strike out through intermediaries. I've got better things to waste my time with! (You know who you are.)

If you're going to leave something like that, at least put your name on the comment so I know who to take off my Christmas list.

Prayers: Answered

I just want to give a big THANK YOU to everyone who prayed for safety for my brother while he was overseas. I just got the news today that he is now in Cyprus, which means he should be home sometime next week, if all goes well.

I've tried not to worry about how my little brother is doing while in Afghanistan, but every so often you get that worried feeling and I tell ya, it's a huge relief to know that he's out of the sand and on his way back.

Happy Birthday Dad!

My dad became a member of the Over-60 club yesterday. I think he celebrated by having a nap, yelling at some passing kids and eating mushy peas :)

He's going to kill me now...

My Toof: Revolutions

So I was munching on a candy cane the other night when I noticed something missing in my life. More specifically, something missing in my mouth... namely, the filling I just paid good money to have installed when my molar shattered while I was eating popcorn!

Thankfully my tooth had a warranty on it and my dentist didn't charge me anything since he had just put it in 2 weeks ago.

I had to chuckle a bit as he and the dental hygenist debated prostitution and bondage laws while he had his fingers in my mouth and I was choking on drool. They didn't seem to get the irony of debating the moral boundaries of inflicting pain on someone for money.

Sigh.

Doin' The WagJag

No, the WagJag isn't a new dance my family invented. Julie & I have been getting some awesome deals via the WagJag service and I feel compelled to spread the word. It's a neat system.

Every day or two a new deal is posted. If enough people buy into it, it is activated (and most of the time the deal only needs 5 people to activate it). Then you get a coupon or code e-mailed or mailed to you and off you go!

I jumped on the one the other day that was $25 for $50 worth of artisianal cheese. Julie grabbed a few spa deals and also snapped up some that gave us $40 worth of Home Hardware bucks for $20. The deals are really good and they've spread out pretty widely across Ontario, so I'd check out the site. If you sign up,tell them I referred you!

My Toof: Reloaded

I was able to get my tooth repaired last week. Stupid popcorn!

My Toof!

I was eating some popcorn tonight and when I spat out what I thought was a kernel, it turned out to be chunks of tooth and silver filling!

Thankfully it was the tooth I had a root canal done on years ago, so it doesn't hurt or anything, but it's really annoying to have half of a tooth (my back molar, at that) in my head and half of it in my hand. Now I have to try to schedule a repair job tomorrow (hopefully) before this gets worse.

I think the gaming gods are punishing me for actually exhibiting some willpower and not buying the collector's edition of a game I really wanted to buy today. Things were going just dandy until then :P

This Strikes FAR Too Close To Home

Penny Arcade put up a comic the other day that really struck home. Take a gander.



I've caught myself doing the same thing a few times :)

Keep These In The Eisner File

Garrett has been working hard at making comics and drawing things for the last few days. He's been a busy beaver and made a giant mural poster and then started filling one of the characters with another comic that he made. It seems that the comic workshops at The Dragon are rubbing off on him.

Pay special attention to all of the veins on... everything. He learned that at last month's workshop.



I think Garrett uses Kara as a model...

This is Hallowe'en... doo doo doo...

We braved the cold on Sunday night to go Trick-Or-Treating. We were actually out there for a good hour and a half to two hours, which was much better than last year. There were lots of kids out but we noticed that more houses than usual weren't handing out candy.

That said, the kids each got at least two bags full of candy, so they're happy. I'm conditioning them to pay the daddy tax of one piece of candy whenever they go spelunking for treats. Mmmm...

Here are a few pics from that night. I'd put something witty under them but I'm too pooped to think of anything.