Godspeed, Soldier Brother

Well, Grant headed back to Afghanistan on Friday. I meant to get these pictures up Friday but got a little too busy over the past few days!



My personal favourites are the "Giant Grant Smash Puny Kids" and his lovely new headgear pictures.

Good luck and god speed, Grant!

Summer's (almost) Over!

Well, we're heading into the penultimate days of the penultimate week of the summer, so why not do a little recap and show everyone what we were up to over the past few months? We went to the Science Center, hit Storybook Gardens, swam in Lake Huron, got up to some shenanigans at the Early Years Center and moonlit as a firefighter or two.



Yeah, it was a busy summer but the kids sure seemed to have a blast and it was nice that they made some friends in the complex and have been able to hang out with them on the days when we have nothing else going on.

I've got a bunch of pictures of our visit with Grant from last week but I'm going to save them for tomorrow. He's going back to Afghanistan tomorrow and I'll give him a proper send off this way.

It's Over?

I made it through my day from hell... by going to a meeting instead :)

It's actually pretty sad that I stressed out as much as I did for today because it ended up going just swimmingly and I'm not sure if that's because of or in spite of all of the long shifts, cold sweats and gray hairs I've accrued over the past couple months prepping for it.

At least I get to take tomorrow off and sleep in a bit.

Gots Me Some Chedda

I've got a serious cheddar cheese bagel addiction going on right now. I hate it because bagels at Tim Horton's are insanely expensive and I'd basically broken my habit of grabbing them if I was running late for work and needed a quick breakfast snack. But man, the cheddar bagels are soooooo yummy.

I need to go back to my no Tim's rule...

Rob Liefeld, Look Out!

Garrett had a chance to participate in a comic-making workshop today at The Dragon in Guelph and had a blast. His teacher, Brian McLachlin, was able to somehow keep a group of 5 boys ages 6-9 focused for two hours and explain the intricacies of drawing a cup of coffee, a house and stink lines.

It was a hoot to listen to the kids brainstorm ideas for the comic. They ended up doing a comic about Sheriff Souvlaki (yes, an anthropomorphic delicacy if ever there was one) who had an apple for a body and was in some kind of strange duel with not only a hot dog and hamburger bandito duo, but an evil chicken. It ended with them catching the chicken (after Deputy Pita saved the day) and throwing the chicken in jail... ending with a final panel of the chicken serving as a head pin on a bowling lane.

And those were the more rational ideas that were picked to make the comic. The stuff being spouted at that table had the needle on the Surrealometer buried firmly past the Dali mark.

Garrett had a good time though and they're hoping to bring in more artists to do this with the kids again, so I'm going to do my best to get him in to as many of these workshops as possible.

On The Mouth Of Madness

I feel kind of dumb whining about my travails at work when my brother just came back from an actual warzone, but my lord, I'm going to have a whole head full of gray hairs by the end of this month, if not this week. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not bad-mouthing my job. Heck, the big reason why I was so excited for this promotion last year was to have more responsibility but the last little bit has been insane!

I'm in one of those lovely positions where I've got about 300 plates spinning in the air and almost every day someone is throwing 5 more plates onto my stacks and wondering why I've got a thousand-yard stare every minute as I try to keep them from landing in a messy heap. This week will see many of those plates finally come down, gently or otherwise, so I guess I'll breathe a little easier after Thursday's shenanigans are over, but I need to get things to a place where I'm only dealing with 4-5 crises as opposed to 400!

Today was my first day back to work since Thursday and I already feel like I just worked an entire week. How I'll get through the next 2 weeks or so without cracking is beyond me. At least I didn't have to go back in tonight to do an unexpected overnight shift. I get to do that on the weekend instead :P

He's Back!

My widdle brudder is home from Afghanistan... or at the very least, on his way home. I think he was supposed to have arrived back here yesterday but I'm not 100% sure. I do know that he was in Dubai over the weekend, so at the very least he's not on the base in Kandahar and that's a huge relief!

I'm hoping to get together with him next week so it'll be nice to see how he's doing!

Thanks for all of the prayers, happy thoughts and sacrificed chickens for his safety. It's much appreciated!

Free Game!

If you have an iPod Touch or iPhone, go here and get Civilzation Revolution for free for the next 24 hours. It's an awesome take on the Civilization franchise and it's usually $7, so why not get it free!

Hmm. Two posts in two days. I need to get back in the habit of this!

Er... Wrong Stormtroopers...

Someone sent Chewie against the wrong enemies..

"We're Living In A Hotel Room!"

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



Yup, that's our new bedroom.

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

Hello Ikea showroom!

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

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

Dream Weaver aka Renovations Suck

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Operation: The Untragically Hip

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

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

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

The Man Your Man Could Smell Like Reads Your Blog

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

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



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

Performing A Gazebectomy

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

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

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

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

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



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

The Epic Lost Cat E-mail

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

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

It's Supposed To Be Gatorade

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

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

Sigh. Kids are so sticky...

Happy Die Day, Redcoats!

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

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

The Longest Trip To The Farmers' Market Ever

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

So we went!

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



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

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

What's The Cost Of A Tooth These Days?

Garrett lost his very first tooth today! And no, it wasn't due to a crash on his bike or because Kara finally had enough of his malarky and popped him in the mouth. Nope, he was just wiggling it at bedtime and poink! Out it came.



Not the greatest (or least gory) picture we have, but it's the best one I have on the computer right now :)

We had Garrett put the tooth in an envelope that he marked for the Tooth Fairy. I told him that she would only come after everyone was asleep. He asked if she'd come after midnight and I assured him that she probably would. Then he wouldn't go to sleep, so I told him that I was going to stay up late tonight and swipe the Tooth Fairy's purse if he didn't go to bed. He was under the covers and squinching his eyes closed faster than you could say, 'bicuspid'.

If I recall my Tooth to Cash conversion chart, the going rate is about $1 per tooth. Man, inflation really stings. I remember getting about $0.25-0.50 per tooth back in my day!

Back To Life... Back To Reality

Well, the meds I got on Sunday seem to be doing the trick. I took most of Monday off work and all of Tuesday but managed to work full shifts the past two days. My back is still twingy and sore but the crippling agony that I was experiencing over the weekend is essentially gone. I should be back to normal by the weekend (just in time for more work!) which is about when my pills run out.

I need to get to work doing crunches and other muscle strengthening exercises to get my core muscles in shape so I don't do anything crazy to my back again!