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 :)