Reality vs. Illusion

Random weekend moments

2006-05-15T05:55:00.000-07:00

Apparently it is true, as we grow as parents so do our super-parent powers.  Science may find labels to categorize what they do not understand, they may call it Mother’s Intuition, but I know the truth now.  I have been gifted. It is a gift that has grown in strength. I believe it feeds on the age-energy of my children. As the boys grow older so do my powers.  Inside of me is a growing force, an untapped wellspring of strength.  I a humble human now possess the power of conspiracy.  Let me give you an example.

Liam is across the park playing street hockey with his buddy. There is very little hockey going on, and a whole lot of head to head discussion.  My parent senses tingle and I head across the park to see what they are up to.  As the boys spot me coming they huddle closer, faint muttering drifting across to me in increased in fervor. As I get closer Liam pops up and says

Liam:     “Dad, J invited me over to watch a movie tonight”
Me:     “oh a movie, do his parents know?”
J:     “yeah, they said it was ok”
Liam:     “Can I go?”
Me:     “What movie?” Liam looks a little crestfallen at this. Hmmm a conspiracy to avoid that question?
Liam:     “King Kong”
Me:      “I dunno about tat movie, I am not sure it is appropriate….”
J:     “It’s PG-13 and Liam has seen all the Harry Potter movies”.
Liam:     “Yeah, and they are all PG-13”
J:     “And so was Spiderman, and that was as well”
Liam:      “And Star Wars and…
Me:      “I get the point boys”.

You think they had this all planned out ahead of time?

So I replied in the age old paternal tradition. "Go ask your mother."

Sunday night we are sitting at the table, supper is almost over and the last dredges of dessert are being consumed. Keegan picks up his bowl and moves it to his face trying to lick it clean.  I look over saying, “Keegan please don’t lick your bowl, it’s not nice manners.”.

He looks up at my face; he looks at Yvonne’s face. He looks back down into the bowl, a small puddle of melted ice cream and brownie crumb mush taunt him from the bottom. He looks back at us with a desperate look of consternation flickering across his features.  His eyes widen and his lower lips pouts forward. His gaze drops back to the hallowed ambrosia in the bowl and I hear a small voice. “Me not know how”.

Yvonne bursts out laughing and that particular lesson in manners  fades away.

As If

2006-05-13T17:23:00.000-07:00

It’s game 5. The Sens are behind 3 games to one in the series. It is crunch time; no mistakes or it is elimination. There are 3 minutes left in the first, the game is tied at 1 apiece. The Sens just got a tough penalty for too many men on the ice and are trying to kill it off. Upstairs my wife is respecting the sacred and hallowed institution of hockey play-offs and is watching the boys, letting me watch the game.

The phone rings. Since Liam is over at his friends place I figure maybe it is them calling and pick up the phone. Turns out it is my sister… dammit she should know better.

We have a little idle conversation as the period winds down, plans for traveling next weekend, why she’s not watching the game, how the kids are doing, why she’s not watching the game, what is the weather like, why is she not watching the game.

The period ends and she gets my full concentration. The conversation occurs as follows

Her: “So I have a question for you.”
Me: “What’s up?”
Her: “C (her son) has a really nice jacket that dad bought for him last year. It is in really good shape, but…”
Me: “But what?”
Her: “It’s a Maple Leafs jac..”
Me: “Not a chance.”
Her: “But it’s reversible.”
Me: “No way, thanks anyway. Do you want him to get beat up? Frick I might as well send him to school in a tutu.”

Gotta run the second period is starting.

p.s. Even though you called during the game I forgive you since you made me laugh. Love you sis.

The New Currency

2006-05-12T10:44:00.000-07:00

It seems there must have been a lot of snuggling going on back in the summer of ’97 because all of Liam’s friends have birthdays in the April/May time frame. For my boys; birthday parties seemed to really increase in terms of numbers around age 5. I suspect this is mostly due to kids starting school and having a sizable pool of friends to invite. When I think about this I feel sorry for Keegan who has a September birthday and won’t really know any of the kids in his class well enough to invite.

A couple of years ago the golden gift was BeybBlades, when they went on sale Y and I would buy them by the case and save them for birthday distribution over the year. After Beyblades it was Battle B’damons and so forth and so on.

These days the modern 8-year-old currency is EB Gift Cards. These can be used to purchase a fast variety of used video games. It is nice as a parent because you never have to worry about what you are going to buy. Never trying to guess what a kid would like, or worrying another person bought the same gift. Also there seems to be 4 EB games within a 5km radius of where I work and live. The downside is that they never go on sale so you are kinda stuck at a base present price for every birthday.

I was out driving at lunch to pick up a game card for tonight’s birthday party when I had this absurd image of an entire economy fueled by 8 year olds. Game cards as currency exchanging hands in a frenzy of buying and selling of used games. Central to this is the Bank of EB, setting commodity rates on the prices of games, announcing rate adjustments to help stimulate the economy.

I am officially old

2006-05-11T10:35:00.000-07:00

It’s not like the signs were not on the wall. We have the grey hairs in the goatee, not to mention the chest, the eyebrow and the “nether regions”. My barber now trims my ear hair during a cut. I have the whole nose hair thing to deal with. Add my surly disposition, my need to wear Cardigan’s in the winter and te fact that my age is quickly approaching the big 40.

But to be honest I always felt I was mentally young. I still know all the latest music. I still ca name the Saturday morning cartoons and those little whipper snappers of mine still have not bested me playing video games.

But today my world shattered. As I entered the local recreation center to register the kids for a summer camp there was teenage couple sitting, no sprawled on a bench engaging in some amorous behavior. And my first thought was… bah, get a room, there is no need for ”Outward Signs of Affection” (thanks Mrs. F. that term will never be forgotten). Worse yet I almost said something to them as they pawed and groped there way to new hormonal heights.

Cripes I am old.

If you build it , they will come.

2006-05-11T06:27:00.000-07:00

Boys, boys and more boys, I’ve got lot’s of them. With three very active, very rambunctious boys in my house you can imagine at times things get busy. This is probably not news to anyone that knows my brood or me. Life is busy, it stays busy, there is not an end in sight to this busy-ness, but truth be known that’s ok… both Yvonne and I are well aware of what the next 15-20 years of our life is going to look like. With this foreknowledge and a wife that is a planner, and by virtue of marriage, I a planner’s apprentice, we have made plans.

Notice the theme to this week?

We have a plan on how to deal with raising 3 boys in today’s society. The plan is pretty simple, but mostly deals with handling the teenage years.

Keep the boys busy in organized stuff; sports, science club, music whatever. Keep them busy so they are not wandering the streets of suburbia in a testosterone induced haze of bored group mentality.

Make our house the social center of their life, and the lives of their friends. Allow them to have their friends over. Feed their friends; Give them space to hang in comfort and privacy. Give them entertainment. The idea is, give them a place where they want to hang out and you can keep an eye on them. If they and their friends are in our basement, or swimming in our pool(future plan), I can see what they are up to. If they are somewhere else I can’t.

Yeah so having packs of teenage boys living in my basement is going to be hard on the furniture, the carpet, my nerves and the drywall (yes mom I remember the damage we did).  Yes, feeding the packs of boys may require me to start having groceries delivered in dump trucks… but if that is what it takes to keep the kids out of trouble then that is what it takes… We are planning for this.

Of course these (at least in my procrastinator’s mind) were always future plans. The pool will be installed in a couple of years. I will finish the work in the basement in a couple of years, I will invest in a fruit orchard , vegetable farm, meat packing plant in the future.

But as I have learned this week my plans do not always go as… well planned.

Yvonne took the day of work on Tuesday to help integrate our new nanny. Liam arrived home from school that afternoon, burst in the door, dropped his school bag and headed to the bathroom while yelling  “HiMomGottaPeeGoingBackOutToPlayHockey” all in a single breath. This is pretty standard after school activity.  While Liam was in the bathroom, Yvonne went to the garage to throw out some garbage. Imagine her surprise when she opened the door to find 3 other boys rummaging around in there.  A familiar face pops out of the “hockey gear bin” and she recognizes one of Liam’s friends. Who promptly says in the same one-breath-rush-of-words, “HiYvonneJustGettingTheHockeyGearReady”.
While at the same time running out the door with the other 2 kids hauling a net, a full set of goalie gear, 3 tennis balls, 4 sticks and what appeared to be 3 sets of roller blades (which I did not know we owned damn garage sale junky wife).

Last night Yvonne picked up the boys early for a Doctor’s app’t. She asked me to whip by the house and pick up a health card prior to meeting her.  When I pulled in front of the house there was a full-scale hockey game going on.  At least 5 kids(none ours), all our gear, the nets, bottles of water… etc. As I get out of the car one of the boys runs up and says “LiamSaidWeCouldPlayHereAndUseHisStuffTillHeGetsBack. WhereIsHe?”.

There is nothing that occurred that was not part of the plan; boys hanging at our house, boys eating our food, boys using our stuff. I had just figured I had a couple of more years before it happened.

Pan A, Plan B, Plan C

2006-05-10T10:44:00.000-07:00

This was the plan.

I was going to take the summer off from coaching soccer. I was going to focus this year on getting my certification for coaching hockey and then put on my coaches at next fall. Part of my reasoning was that Liam’s level of soccer was getting higher than any innate skill or knowledge of the game tat I might have. I also wanted to pick up coaching for Aiden, but at his level soccer is still more of a clinic style rather than practices and games.

It was a good plan… I liked it, meant the summer was going to be more relaxed and I would get the opportunity to watch the games rather than running around keeping the kids focused and chasing the ball.

Like I said that was the plan.

Somehow between here and there I got signed up to be a coach. I am not quite sure how it happened. They called me and I said I was not interested in coaching this year… then they informed me that they would be mailing out my team list. I told them again I was not interested and they started to read off the names on the list to see if I recognized any of them.

Even odder in this whole process was the fact that when all the dust settled it turns out that I am coaching Liam’s team, 1 night a week practice, 1 night a week game and I am also coaching Aiden’s team with the Sat morning timeslot.

Like I said, it was a good plan…

Reflections of a Cloud

2006-04-21T05:44:00.000-07:00

I think a good description of my personality can be expressed in a couple of words.   Positive, out-going, upbeat…  mind you there are many who may also throw in terms such as cynical or sarcastic, but today’s comments are more about the positive sides of things.

For those of you who know me in real life, you will understand when I say that March and April have served me up a big ol’ steamin’ bowl of Stress. Stress with a capital “S” I might add.  This has been both in my personal life and my professional life.

For the most part I deal with stress but letting it slide off my back or burying it deep in the recesses of my mind and dealing with it only when I have to. I try not to be a fretter. However, when great gobs of it are slung around your life and you feel like you are walking slumped over all the time there can certainly be visible signs.

2 weeks ago things hit a peak and I was buried at work.  I ended up pulling some 60-hour workweeks while trying to balance everything that was going on at home.  The end result was that my usual jovial work face was replaced with a much more quiet and somber visage.

In hindsight it was interesting to watch the reactions of my co-workers, who for the last 15 months had only dealt with my sunnier disposition.  Last week people tended to tiptoe around me. I had management coming up to me, using their quiet voices, touching my arm or shoulder and asking if everything was ok….  The first couple of times it was kind of amusing, then as the stress built it got annoying. At one point I remember thinking “Yeah, I’m fine, just stressed, but if you keep asking me if I am ok then I will show you what fucking stressed is truly about”.

I found it interesting to watch the reflections of my own personality being mirrored on the faces of those around me.  In the back of my brain the little social scientist that lives there (along with the historian, biologist and author) kept notes.

I have often commented to my spouse that I have little patience for negative people.  It is my personal belief that spending your days wandering around being grumpy and pissy does nothing but sour the air of the people next to you.  I try to wake and face every day in a positive and upbeat manner. The reaction of the people around me confirmed my opinion.

While the stress levels have actually continued to grow, I have become a little more used to them, and like a pack mule, have hunkered down and bent my back to the load I need to carry for the next little bit. In doing so my smile has returned.

A final thought occurred to me as I was writing this.  While the concern that was expressed by management was certainly an annoyance, upon reflection it was certainly nice to be working with a bunch of people that actually seemed to give a damn.

Mind you they were probably concerned about me going postal and the product not being delivered on time.

A Darkness Awoken

2006-03-24T05:59:00.000-08:00

There is a dark secret within my family. The heartwood of our family tree is rotten and corrupted. I know this from personal experience, for I was the victim.  At the heart of my childhood torment was the high-inquisitor herself, the queen witch… my eldest sister.

She had at her fingertips a variety of spells and incantations to drive a young mind into the depths of rage and despair, but her most powerful dark ritual was repeated endlessly until the victim was rendered hopeless.

It goes like this

Little Tommy Tinker
Sat upon a clinker
He began to cry
Mama
Mama
What a poor boy am I

Today even writing that out still makes my teeth clench.

I had hoped that my branch would be pure, that being the victim of years of abuse would have somehow cleaned my genetic lines of whatever chromadial (yes I made up the word, but it does have a nice cadence don’t you think) mutation caused the torment gene to be awaken.

Alas I was a fool to hope for such miracles.

Last night we were heading out to the local Dollar Store to pick up goodies for loot bags. I had loaded and buckled all three boys in the van and then ran back into the house to grab something.  I was a little longer than I had anticipated… but when I got back to the van Liam was in a state of inarticulate rage, tears rolling down his face. I honestly believe that had I been a few seconds later there would have been bloodshed. I knew all this without opening the van doors… I could hear his wails of anguish over the sound of the running engine, and behind the closed doors…. I could also hear the cause of his torment.

Two little voices singing in the night, two little voices whispering a dark incantation over and over, two little voices repeating

I love you
You love me
We’re a happy family.

Or in two-year old speak

Me love you
You love me
We a family.

After the tears had been wiped away and the rage settled I got the full story.  Apparently while waiting in the car Aiden had started to sing the tune…  Liam, (being a big boy and using his words) informed Aiden that the song was annoying him, at which point my youngest (or as I like to call him, the child incarnation of darkness) picked up on this and started belting it out in full voice.  Of course Aiden followed along.

Poor Liam, so much like his father.  Now that the younger boys have smelled weakness they have started to circle like a pack of rabid wolves.

And to you my eldest sister, feel pride and joy, for your genes have run true and the legacy lives on.

A night in Tameril

2006-03-22T09:59:00.000-08:00

Blessed Oblivion how do I love thee.

So the newest and greatest of the video games was release yesterday. I have been waiting for this for some time. Oblivion is the 4th game in the Elder Scrolls series. It is a very wide opened game, you can choose to follow the main story/quest line, but there is a multitude of exploring and secondary quest lines… become the head of the Mage’s Guild. Defeat a thieving ring etc, etc. The world allows you to explore at your own pace. It also allows one of the most flexible class creation systems I have seen. Instead of your standard fighter, mage, thief (which you can choose if you want) you can combine different skill set together into you own class… Currently I am playing a Destruction (combat) based mage, with light armour, a sword and stealth abilities.

Since I have not purchased a new video game in about 18 months I treated myself to both the collector’s edition of the game and the strategy guide. I do not get grief from my wife about spending since I have been a good boy over the last couple of years, however, apparently buying a video game before your birthday is not a good idea. Seriously though, how could she expect me to wait another 3 weeks that would be torture.

I patiently waited for the early evening hours to pass. I was a good father and did not dwell on the package that was waiting for me in the den… I did not make excuses and spent a good quality evening with the boys, not rushing them to bed( as much as I wanted to go and play). I did sneak in to install the game earlier, but that was only 2 minutes of click, click and then walk away and let it install( I love games on DVD, no switching cds anymore) . As part of savoring the experience when I did make it downstairs I did not jump into the game, but made a pot of decaf and sat back and read the manual and the character creation section of the strategy guide.

Then when I had digested the information and the suspense was too much I fired up the game… I watched the opening credits, the introductory cinematic… the main game page and the menu started to load, the immersion was complete and then boom…

Crash to the desktop. The game exploded. Grrr no surprise as this tends to happen with all of the Elder Scrolls games…but it did piss me off.

Over the course of the night I had 2 more crashes, once during character creation and another around midnight, which I figure was a sign that I needed to go to bed….

While Wednesday is usually spousal snuggle time I think I may write a rain check to the wife and once more head into the realms of Oblivion.

One Step at a Time

2006-03-16T07:55:00.000-08:00

Hi all

Sorry I know the wife and I have not been updating our blogs of late… Y has been working a ton of hours to make sure she hits some deliverables for some of the many contracts she has currently open… (Too many if you ask me, but the lure of money is so sweet…)

I on the other hand have been helping cover the slack of said wife, working on my own deliverables and dealing with sick kids. They seemed to have picked up a bug on their last road trip.

The kids are now healthy, my current project is mostly on track and Y is surviving.

To be perfectly honest I have also been avoiding blogging as I have been feeling stretched very thin these days and I wanted to avoid public whining.

Life continues to move forward and you have 2 choices, continue to move with it or get left behind… I am still moving forward; even if it is a stumbling shamble with my head hanging low.

Pass the Lube

2006-03-02T08:47:00.000-08:00

A post leached from here.

The original post is in italics, my comments in regualr type. I know better than to read this crap because it makes me very cranky, raises my blood pressure and makes me want to lash out and break things.

And yes for the record I am bitter.

TORONTO (CP) - Rogers Communications (TSX:RCI.NV.B) expects more moderate growth in its Internet and digital cable TV subscriber base this year but will be able to push through price increases, a senior executive said Tuesday.
"The good news, I think, on both is that there is actually some pricing power," Rogers vice-president finance John Gossling said in a webcast speech at an investor conference in Palm Beach, Fla.
Because in Canada there is no competition, you can choose Rogers or Ma Bell and both of them will equally screw you.
"Unlike the competitive situation down here (in the U.S.), the prices on Internet and TV have been actually moving up quite nicely (for Rogers) in the last little while.
"We don't seem to have the competitive pressure to take these decent-margin products and move their prices down, so we're seeing good lift there," Gossling said.
It’s ok on one side we have no competition, and the other side we have the fully supported RIAA and Motion Picture Industry suing and battering anyone who dares to try to d/l anything of the internet, because god forbid, we have the option of paying for the content we want to watch, rather than the 80% of channels that are either advertising, foreign language or religious”
Rogers Communications, which owns Canada's largest cable company as well as its largest wireless carrier and one of its biggest media businesses, announced several price increases when it released its fourth-quarter and 2005 financial results on Feb. 9. Gossling said at the Bear, Stearns & Co. conference that, after a slow start with the launch of a Rogers Internet phone services in the Toronto area last summer, Rogers Cable is ready to make a big push in that business in 2006.
Yeah we lost money on trying to branch into another market where we can screw Canadians. So in turn we just turned around and increased cable costs to cover that. That way we get to screw people while we plan and implement more ways to screw people.

Rogers has a goal of having 200,000 to 250,000 additions to its home phone product in 2006, he said.
"We had some initial technical bugs we had to work out and didn't have a big push in the latter half of '05 but now we're ready to go hard on that product," Gossling said.
The cable business is having good revenue growth, driven by new products, but needs to work on its profitability, he said.
"We do expect relatively flat margins in the cable business going forward, but I think there's some potential leverage there in terms of pricing increases and driving the penetration of some of our new products," Gossling said.

Enlightening the world one post at a time.

2006-03-02T05:42:00.000-08:00

My good friend and blogging matriach Dani often dabbles and deals in topics that are more geared towards the fairer sex.  In an act of kindness she will mention such at the top of her blog post giving the male readers an opportunity to move on to more neutral topics if they so please.

By nature I am a curious beast so it is rare indeed when I will not take the time to peruse her rumblings in an attempt to increase my understanding of our female friends.  There have been multiple posts in her blog over the last year(s?) regarding bras.

Apparently the purchase of, fitting of and general day-to-day wearing of bras is a large issue amongst our xx chromosome friends.  While I have made an effort to understand the issue, I believe it truly requires walking a mile in her shoes, or in this case her support garments. No I am not coming out of the closet as a transvestite, though, if someone ever really markets a manssiere I may be all over that.

It occurred to me at one point that perhaps the problem is that men are more of a visual beast and that is why I am having some issues understanding the issue at hand.  So with a little google-fu and some luck I went searching for a visual aid.  I figured this was a better idea than suggesting to Dani that pictures may aid her posts.

My google-fu was strong and I found the perfect link… so I sent off an email to her.

I know from time to time you have tried to detail the difficulties that women of your "stature" face when purchasing a bra, leaning over a cold desk, or doing athletics.
I know you have warned the poorer sex away from your blog when those types of discussions are forthcoming.
To be honest I have always felt that perhaps you have taken the wrong approach. Instead of warning the men away perhaps you need to illustrate the problems in a manner in which they can comprehend.
While not a psychologist on any level I have always felt that men are a visual creature, and perhaps with the correct multimedia aids you can get your message across.
Since I am such a great friend and admirer of your blog I give you this gift as a method of illustrating your issues.
Always here to help.

Much to my dismay my idea was not received with the enthusiasm I expected.

Um, no thank you. That was disturbing. Post it yourself, blog boy! After that German sex-ed thing, this is mild...

Sound advice if I have ever heard any.  So here you go. But before you begin I should warn you that it is not pornographic and is a tool used by a commercial website that sells sports bras. That being said it does feature CGI rendered boobies and may be NSFW.
http://www.shockabsorber.co.uk/bounceometer/shock.html

His own Garden

2006-02-28T10:03:00.000-08:00

You know that image you see every spring, the one of the first crocuses of the year budding out of the lawn, the sun filters down on them, they are surrounded with the last remnants of the winter’s snow.

That is the best analogy I can come up with for the blossoming I have witnessed over the last 3 weeks. It is easy to see cognitive development during the first year of a child’s birth. There are so many rapid changes occurring that spotting the first word, the first sentence, watching the first concepts form is easy.

It changes as the children get older, the development still occurs but it is much slower and often lost in the frantic pace of life, even more so when you add in additional children.

Two, maybe three weeks ago someone reached deep inside Aiden’s brain and flicked a switch. He has exploded with intellect, questions flowing from him with incessant rapidity. Complex questions that he thinks about, he strings together from his own experiences. He will ask a question, then several days later expand on it after absorbing the original answer. He is picking up on things that I did not know he knew about. In the last days he has asked me about the pupils in his eyes, what are the main organs in the body, what a parallelogram was (where the hell did that come from).

Each night while reading before bed, we can scarcely get through a paragraph without his questions leading him off in new directions.

I am truly enjoying this phase and even though it is sometimes difficult I am working very hard to not “blow him off” but to answer the questions and encourage the thought process.

Like the first buds of spring I am desperately curious to see what kind of garden will eventually grow from these early days of his spring.

Problems with Peer Pressure

2006-02-21T06:22:00.000-08:00

We are having a problem with peer pressure in the house. It seems like every time we turn around somebody else is doing something cool and we have to follow along.  I am trying to be understanding with this. I am trying to remember my own childhood needs to fit in.  But there comes a time when blindly following your peers and their decisions crosses a line.

Last night that occurred and to be honest I really had hoped that I would see a blossoming level of maturity when it came to making this decision. I mean come on; she’s in her 30’s.

Did I mention I am not talking about my kids, but my wife?

Last night I worked late, when I got home the house was empty.  I started tiding up the kitchen and then heard the garage door open.  Several seconds later my eldest son burst through the door, a smile, stretching from earlobe to earlobe, was plastered across his face.  Racing in his footsteps was boy 2, also wearing a face splitting grin… and both of them were sporting mohawks. Coloured mohawks. Real honest to goodness, hair cut on the sides mohawks.

You see today is crazy hair day at school; traditionally we have used some blue hair gel to accent the boys for the event. Yvonne decided that in preparation it was also a good time to get the boys hair cut.  While she was there she ran into a neighbour that has an older boy.  B is 11 or 12 and plays competitive Atom-A hockey. Liam idolizes him.  Since crazy hair day was coming up, and the hockey playoffs his mother decided to let him get a mohawk.  Well monkey see, monkey do. Since B was getting one obviously so Liam required a mohawk as well, and what Liam gets so does Aiden.

I dunno where my strong willed wife disappeared to. The wife who refused to let her son grow out of his “mushroom cut”. The mother who fiercely guards her children; who enforces dress code and behaviour; who raises little gentlemen. (OK I know what happened to her; she got ground down by three boys).   But still… MOHAW|KS????

To be honest the hair will grow back and the boys are walking on cloud nine.  In the big scheme of things this has really made Liam and Aiden happy and really that is all that counts.

I am just glad that the situation was not reversed and I was not the one sitting in the hair studio, because I am pretty sure had I done this Yvonne’s reaction would not have been the same as mine.

Valentine Day Post Report

2006-02-20T13:54:00.000-08:00

After 13 years of marriage the wife and I are not huge into Valentine’s Day.  I am not saying that a friendly annual corporate reminder of a day of love is not nice, but the focus has become making, getting and distributing valentine’s for/on behalf of the kids.

Of course I would not be foolish enough to completely ignore the day and so I picked up a little something for my wife to remind her I was present in her life amidst the hockey, crazy hair days, and school cake raffles. She also picked me up a little something, a very nice box of premium chocolates hand made at a chocoatier(sp) here in town.  She even got milk chocolate for me because she knows I do not like dark chocolate.

To date I have not opened the chocolates, I was saving them for a special evening, a little romantic time between her and I.  I was figuring we could snuggle together under the sheets, I could slowly open the box and hand feed them to her, perhaps letting the heat of our bodies melt the chocolate, letting it drip down across her…  Well you get the point no need to go further right mom….

Well like I said, that was the plan. Unfortunately when I awoke this morning I noticed that someone had opened my box of chocolates… not only opened, but also consumed them (and yes I did feel like Papa Bear from Goldilocks).  At this point I would like to blame my golden-haired boys so as to not have to face the reality of the betrayal sitting in front of me.  But alas a quick inspection and I knew who our resident Goldilocks was.

“Member how I said that my wife had gotten “milk chocolate for me because she knows I do not like dark chocolate.”  Apparently she really does not like milk chocolate, because she did not really consume them, it was more a sampling of them all, and looking for one that might meet her needs.  So what was left was a box; wrapping shredded; cockroach husk’s of half chewed, slobbered, licked and pre-moistened, remnants of my valentine’s my gift.

Oh yeah I felt the love. (

A weekend in Ottawa

2006-02-20T05:42:00.000-08:00

Saturday

5:00 AM The alarm goes off.  I stumble out of bed, get dressed and go start the SUV.  The temperature reads –26.  I wake up Liam and get him dressed of we go for a 6:00 AM Hockey game.

7:15 AM arrive home, decide to not wake the wife with freezing hands and start making breakfast.

7:45 AM the rest of the house wakes up, we eat.

9:00 AM I am heading out the door to CAN-Skate with Aiden and Keegan, Yvonne is staying home to assemble good bags with Liam.

11:00 AM Arrive home after skating, start assembling lunch, swimsuits, and party stuff.

12:00 AM head out the door to Liam’s Birthday Party.

1:00 PM Birthday Party at Kanata wave pool starts. 10 seven-year-old boys, plus our younger 2.  I set of parents stay and help (thank you C&G ).

2:15 PM The 2 little ones are done. Aiden had just finished vomiting because of swallowing a pool full of water.  We tried to warn him, but he was stubborn about it. Thank-fully we got him out of the pool. I take the 2 younger ones, dress them and entertain them in the pool foyer.

3:15 PM Party room. 10 seven year olds, they have a cd player and dance music. ‘nuff said

4:30 PM we are heading home

5:30 PM I get an IM from a buddy, his wife is sick and he has an extra ticket to the NickelBack Concert, asks me if I want to go. I’m in.

6:15 PM heading to the concert

7:00 PM concert starts

11:15 PM concert over. Car is in the back lot, 15 minute walk, wind howling, -35 I swear.

11:45 PM still trying to get out of the parking lot( who the hell designed these exits) Car is not warmed yet, shivering uncontrollably.

12:00 Midnight  home, in bed, Still freezing, no wife to warm me up, she is sleeping with the eldest. Apparently she had a bad dream after watching a scary movie and moved to his bed. Takes me hours to fall asleep, music thumping in my head, ears ringing.  Maybe I am too old for concerts.

Sunday

6:15 AM stumble downstairs for Advil, apparently I am too old for this shit.  Pounding head-ache borderline migraine. I don’t know if it is from exhaustion or the fumes of the concert’s pyrotechnics display, or the loud music.

6:15- 7:15 AM Waiting for Advil to kick in, or the thing in my head to finish kicking it’s way through my skull.

9:00 AM I wake up. Blessed wife let me sleep in…Head clearer. Shit I nee to leave for Liam’s 10:00 AM hockey game. Get up, grab more Advil, grab kid, grab hockey bag, and stop at Timmy’s make it to game.

11:15 AM heading home from game.

1:45 PM heading out with Liam and Aiden to Ottawa 67’s hockey game. Liam’s entire team is there.  After the 67’s play, Liam’s team has a game, compete with announcer, spotlights and big time show.

2:15 PM Arrive at the game, boys are hungry, claim they need food( they ate at 12:00). Thank-fully Yvonne packed me a bag of snacks.

2:30 Boys are hungry

2:45 boys are hungry

5:00 Leave Aiden with some of the other parents and go get Liam suited up for his game.

5:30-6:30 PM Liam plays; a drunk from the previous game joins us to watch. He is a happy drunk. He spends the first 2 periods singing various Hockey songs and cheering wildly, for both teams.

7:00 PM shower, PJs teeth, bed for the boys.

9:00 PM phone rings, sister in law calling, someone has hit her car (she is ok).

Oh no, Oh no, Oh no

2006-02-17T06:12:00.000-08:00

As I wandered out of the bedroom this morning I heard my littlest calling for me. I went in to get him up and he informed me that he was still tired. I snuggled him under his covers and let him stay in bed. This whole “tired” business is new the last week or so. I think he got it from his brothers but he is milking the 2 year old “I am tired” independence thing for all it is worth.

Later as I was making the lunches for the boys I hear Keegan calling upstatirs. Here is the conversation.

Me: Liam can you help Keegan out of his crib.
Liam: He’s already out.
Me: Thank you for helping him.
Liam: I didn’t.
Me: Thank you for helping your brother Aiden.
Aiden I didn’t help him.
Keegan: (in a loud sing song voice) I do it myself

I know for a fact that when I tucked him back in for that extra 5 minutes of sleep I put the side of the crib up.

Oh no, oh no, oh no…

What were we thinking

2006-02-15T08:05:00.000-08:00

I consider Yvonne and I to be intelligent people.  In a “not trying to sound conceited way” I think we are above the average.  I also believe that we are good parents and while 3 boys are a tad on the rambunctious side, that we have good children.  I believe that as parents we are making good choices for our children’s futures.

Yet there are times when I think to myself… what they hell are we doing.  Well actually there are times when Yvonne and I look at each other with that look in out eyes.

I can remember once walking down the street in Ottawa a big smile plastered on my face and a drum in my hand. Yvonne gave me that look.  (Hey I got it at a garage sale for 5 bucks what a deal)

But in this case we are going down this decision path together hand in hand, blinders on, refusing to acknowledge the future we are creating.

Here is Liam’s birthday gift.

Yeah.. I know, three boys… let’s get them instruments and teach them how to play….  You just know there is a set of drums in Aiden’s future.

So what are we thinking?  Well actually Liam has expressed an interest in learning how to play guitar.  The guitar is listed on eBay for .01 cent US.  (We won’t mention the shipping cost) so the price is right. At this point I am willing to invest in anything that does not revolve around video games or TV.

Besides which I believe that all people should be able to make music, and one of my biggest regrets is never learning to play something.

EDIT: as a funny note, Yvonne and I both bid on guitars on eBay at the same time.  We are now getting 2 of them.  At least one should be large enough for me to fool around on.  Maybe an old dog can learn a new trick.  Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb….

IT'S HERE

2006-02-09T12:17:00.000-08:00

"And I will love him and pet him and love him and squeeze him and call him
George."

Out with the Old, In with the same old crap

2006-02-08T11:54:00.000-08:00

So Stephen Harper appointed his cabinet this week, after running a succesful campaign which was based and won on the premise that there would be no kickbacks, patronage, no scandals and there would be only honesty and fair play.

With week one halfway done I would like to point out the appointment of Michael Fortier to the position of Public Works Minister. I would also like to add that Mr. Fortier has never had any political experience; he has never run for office, his name has never been on a ballot. In fact Mr Fortier was Harper’s campaign co-chairman during the recent election.

And how is he getting the position you ask? With a political appointment to a seat in the Senate. Fortier claims he will run in the next general election.

Nice to see that the “New” Conservative Party stand against patronage and back-scratching almost lasted a full week.

Hey don’t get me wrong I don’t think the Liberals were angels either, but at least you knew what you were getting. Patronage is an established Liberal trait.

Well at least we know that we will be able to get rid of him soon in the first non-confidence vote. Of course that will be another 200+ million out of our taxpayers wallet.

Eighteen Years Ago

2006-02-07T09:48:00.000-08:00

Eighteen years ago today I was faced with a choice.  Little did I know where that path would lead me.

Today is a very special day for me; it is an anniversary of sorts. Not the official anniversary that one shares with family and friends, but a quieter, private, special celebration.

I first met her in high school. I know it was in Grade 9, I am pretty sure it was in English class, though we did have Math together as well.  She sat in front of me.

We also sat close together in Math class.  I sat in front of her this time.  She would sit with her head resting on her hand, her hair cascaded down in front of her, often sleeping.  When the teacher called on her and woke her form her afternoon slumber I would always whisper the answer to her.

Sometime in that first year of high school I asked her to a dance. She said no, I am sure it was done in a kind manner to let me down gently.

I recall showing my cousin her picture from our yearbook. I think it was the grade 10 picture. It had been pouring rain the morning that her picture was taken; she looked like a soggy cocker spaniel. If I close my eyes I can still picture that small black and white photo.

We drifted into the same social circle, I watched her, I made myself into a friend, it was not all I wanted, but it was better than nothing.  We spent time together; we worked on the school paper together.

I watched her date others that I did not approve of; I dated someone she did not approve of. This caused so much friction in our friendship that we parted paths for a while.

Whatever cosmic force controlled out lives at this point, whether it is karma, or fate, or circumstance, we always seemed to move back into the same circle.

For 5 years we circled each other, drifting into and out of each other’s lives. When she needed me I was there for her, sometimes because I wanted to be the person she relied on, at other times because that is the price of friendship.

Eighteen years ago we formalized our relationship, we moved from friends to being a couple; five years later I married her.

As of today I have officially spent more of my life with my wife than without.  We have spent almost two decades together.  They have not always been easy times, but I have never had a regret; and given the chance, with the knowledge of how the path progresses, I would gladly make the same choice.

In the eighteen years we have been together she has taught me so much, she has taught me about commitment, she has taught me about perseverance, she has taught me about friendship, she has taught me self-confidence and how to laugh. Mostly she has taught me about love, love for her, love for our three boys.

I cannot remember, let alone imagine what life would be like without her by my side and for that I am eternally grateful.

Is it over yet?

2006-02-07T05:21:00.000-08:00

Sing with me to the tune of “The Wheels on the Bus”

The colds in the house go ‘round and ‘round
‘round and ‘round
‘round and ‘round
The colds in the house go ‘round and ‘round
All through the winter.

The snot in the nose goes drip, drip, drip
drip, drip, drip
drip, drip, drip
The snot in the nose goes drip, drip, drip
All through the winter.

The phlegm in the chest goes hack, hack, hack
hack, hack, hack
hack, hack, hack
The phlegm in the chest goes hack, hack, hack
All through the winter.

The pharmacist’s account gets bigger each day
bigger each day
bigger each day
The pharmacist’s account gets bigger each day
All through the winter.

Enough with the sick house already.  Every week since Christmas a different member of the family has been sick. I think we are passing the same cold around over and over and over.

Maybe we will get a chance to shake it off when we visit our family in two weeks

The Negotiations Are Over

2006-02-06T06:59:00.000-08:00

Ordered last Friday, to be delivered this Thursday. I am pumped, way pumped...

p.s. My BIL really, really deserves an I-Pod

Big Brother I dub thee George Bush

2006-02-06T06:57:00.000-08:00

George Bush scares the hell out of me, and in our ultimate wisdom the Canadian populace voted to elect his clone as Canadian Prime Minister (all for the price of 30 silvers, ooops I mean $1200.00 a year in day care).

How can we have come so far in the last several decades towards open communication and scientific research only to be stifled by the current political agenda of our southern neighbor.

Here are some quotes taken from an article in the NY Times (registration required).

I will quote some of the good ones.

“In October, for example, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee in NASA headquarters, told a Web designer working for the agency to add the word "theory" after every mention of the Big Bang,”

"That was the time when NASA was reorganizing and all of a sudden earth science disappeared," Mr. Patzert said. "Earth kind of got relegated to just being one of the 9 or 10 planets. It was ludicrous."

“In another incident, on Dec. 2, 2004, the propulsion lab and NASA headquarters issued a news release describing research on links between wind patterns and the recent warming of the Indian Ocean.”

“It included a statement in quotation marks from Tong Lee, a scientist at the laboratory, saying some of the analytical tools used in the study could "advance space exploration" and "may someday prove useful in studying climate systems on other planets." “

“In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word "theory" needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.
The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

Yeah, let’s all see if we can bring back the dark ages…. Come join me tonight in Ottawa. I was thinking about drinking some mulled JD while clustered around a nice bonfire of books.

Don't bother calling. I know I am weird

2006-02-03T07:55:00.000-08:00

Sorry I have not been around for a while, I got involved in a side project writing some fanfic. For the less Internet savvy here is the wikipedia definition of fanfic.
“Fan fiction (also spelled fanfiction and commonly abbreviated to fanfic or fic when used in a singular sense) is fiction written by people who enjoy a film, novel, television show or other media work, using the characters and situations developed in it and developing new plots in which to use these characters. Characters and props from more than one media work may also be incorporated into a single fanfiction (known as crossovers)”

You may also be wondering what the fanfic was about, those that know me could be thinking Harry Potter, Dungeons and Dragons or Star Trek.

Good guesses but wrong, actually we have been carrying on writing fiction involving Dannon Light 'n Fit Smoothie.Yeah you read that right, I am writing fanfic about a yogurt drink.

How did this start? Well sit back and let me weave you a tale.

A while ago a friend introduced me to a virtual community, a website featuring a forum of gamers, mature gamers, who wanted to discuss gaming. I quickly became a part of the community and have spent the last 2 years posting and discussing with a wide range of personalities. The discussions have ranged far from just gaming; we discuss life, marriage, child rearing and a wide aspect of things. Sometimes the discussions are serious and emotional while we help members through relationship issues. Other times they are heated and fiery political debates. We exchange books we love, music we enjoy, recipes, and movies we thought were excellent. More often than not the intelligence and writing skill of the members explodes into a humour that leaves me giggling at my desk.

Last week a fourm member started a discussion about changes in our daily life between his grandfathers generation and his.

“So, every morning for the 60 years they were married, my grandmother made my granddad biscuits, eggs, and side meat for breakfast. This morning, as I was shoehorning Molly into her car seat, my wife sticks a 7 oz bottle of Dannon Light 'n Fit Smoothie into my coat pocket.That seem right to you?“
(he was not complaining about his wife not making him breakfast, but about the fast paced life we live in).

Since the forum has a lot of southern USA members the thread soon developed into a discourse about the virtues of “Biscuit’s and Gravy”, and the best way to prepare it.
Three pages later this post came up.

“Long live biscuits and gravy. Dannon Smoothies could never spawn three pages of posts.”

Quickly followed by

“Careful. Someone around here just might take that as a challenge, you know.”

I chose to be that person and issued the challenge. I started with a simple opening to a story, each addition needed to follow the plot of the previous post and somehow tie in a mention of Dannon Light 'n Fit Smoothie.

Sometimes the whole becomes so much more than the sum of it’s parts.

I will share with you the story to date. Since you do not know the authors, cannot see the comments interspersed around the story posts it may lose something in translation, but what the hell this is my blog.p.s. you can go here to read it from the source.

Fanfic: Dannon Light 'n Fit Smoothies

2006-02-03T07:52:00.000-08:00

We knew it was going to be hard on the relationship when she took the 3-month contract working for an engineering firm in Iraq rebuilding the shattered oil wells. I had supported her and agreed that I would stay home with the baby while she went overseas. Aside from the fact that taking the contract would help her climb the corporate ladder inside the engineering firm, the best reason was that her income from those three months would be enough to move us out of our drab inner city apartment and allow us to buy a home in the ‘burbs to raise our son.
But 6 weeks into the deal I was ready to give up, being a single father was hard enough, but I desperately missed my wife. It was at this point, the hardest part so far, that she surprised me with a trip home.
She had silently come into the apartment; slipping her clothes off as she approached the bed, making just enough noise to wake me up. As I opened my eyes I thought it was just a dream as the moonlight cascaded across her skin, as soft and pale as a Dannon Light 'n Fit Smoothie.

Author: Garrad (me)

But a Dannon Light 'n Fit Smoothie is not dyspeptic, and my wife, her gastrointestinal tract riddled by six weeks of nervous tension, a foreign diet, and an assemblage of microbes hitherto unknown to her pale Canadian sensibility, was. The dream rapidly devolved into a nightmare. A sticky brown triple-orifice-evacuating vomitorium of a nightmare.
"Can I help?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Something for your stomach?"
"Yes. I'd like a Dannon Light 'n Fit Smoothie. Pocket-sized."

Author: Alien13z

"Get real, babe," I replied. "You know I don't roll wit no pocket-sized smoothies. What I gots fo you is man-sized, just the firmness you like, and it ain't fo yo stomach."
A gentleman never kisses and tells (let alone makes yogurt jokes...), but I knew when the sun came up the next morning that I'd be set for the next 6 weeks.
===============================
After I saw her back to the airport, I sat the baby in his high chair and set about finding him breakfast. The only thing I could find in the decidedly anemic fridge was a Dannon Light'n Fit Smoothie.

Author: Chumpy McChumpy

She would later recount to me, via her long and tortured letters, just how she came upon Vance... Vance, the twisted whelp of a man, the miserable hobgoblin, the lying reprobate; Vance, the man who stole my wife away, and whose life I am destined to squeeze from his body with hands bathed in fresh-spilt blood.
Yes, apparently the two traitors became fast friends while awaiting their flight, owing to a glib discussion over that damned drinkable yogurt:
"They got this new yogurt now. It's just like regular yogurt, but you can drink it. It's a yogurt you can drink."
"What?"
"Yeah. It tastes good. It's sweet, and you drink it."
"What's it taste like?"
"Mine tasted like cherries. It's good."
"I have to try some of that then."

Author: Lobo

The rising sun bathed the airport in creamy light as the conversation paused, the silence rich with unspoken possibilities.
She was the one to finally break the silence, ravenous for another taste of human contact.
"I wish I had a smoothie now. I didn't get to eat anything before heading out."
"You should go get some. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, Miss..."
"I'm married."
His smile hardly broke, but she noticed. Their eyes met and in that instant, she knew- they both knew, that what they were craving was far more than a convenient yet nutritious meal to start the day. They were both hungry, but not for food. They were starving... for love.
"I always remember to eat, myself. I usually just grab something after I work out." He said without missing a step. "I like to keep myself Light n' Fit."
"Like a Dannon Smoothie." She said with a smile.
If only she had remembered Breakfast.

Author: Elhatcho

"You know..." He began. "They have a little airport shop over near gate G4. I got a Clif Bar from there just about half an hour ago, before they delayed my flight."
She licked her lips hungrily, gazing deep into his eyes. He felt a stirring in his soul, a desire to take her, to wrap his arms around her waist and walk her to the counter, to hear her say those words that would fire white flame in his very soul.
"Just one Light 'n Fit Smoothie." she would say.
He imagined her bringing it to her lips, tasting the first drips of Strawberry on her tongue. She would consume all of its daily value of Riboflavin, Vitamin C and Potassium, before finally finishing it off, tossing the empty, discarded bottle aside, dabbing a spot of smoothie from the side of her lips.
A man near them coughed, a dry, hacking noise. He looked like he'd been subsisting on Nestle Instant Breakfasts.
"Can... you take me there?" She asked, placing her hand on her hip. "Can you bring me to the smoothies?"
"I think I can remember. What flavor do you like?"
"Peach passion." She smiled, pushing a strand of golden brown hair from her face.

Author: Prederick

"Please do not leave bags unattended." Squawked the nasal, static-riddled voice over the loudspeaker. A voice at once female and sexless. Grating yet reassuring. Loud, yet barely intelligible.
As he took her hand, leading her towards the gleaming oasis of between-flight refreshments, she felt her stomach do a flip. She stopped, gasping. Suddenly unsure of her motives, her desires or her morality. What had she become? Just a few short hours ago she had been reveling in the embrace of her beloved spouse. Drinking in the smell, sight and touch of him like a Cherry Flavored Dannon Light 'n Fit Smoothie. Yet this man, with whom she was about to embark upon an all expenses paid, one-way trip to the land of illicit yogurt-fueled passion was not her husband. She barely even knew who he was.
He sensed her hesitation. Knew instinctively that her desire was slipping away. Fading, like the label on a package of Dannon Light 'n Fit Smoothie left too long in the sun. Not wanting to loose one bit of the succulent fruit hidden at the bottom of her desire, buried beneath layers of devotion and duty, he grabbed her by both arms, pushed himself into her and placed his mouth on her parting, whispering lips.
"Don't ..." she breathed before his questing tongue silenced her.
She sighed and melted into his embrace. The two became one. Like yogurt mixing with milk in a bottle of Dannon Light 'n Fit Smoothie.

Author: Fletcher

It was then that the zombies chose to attack.
Without warning the glorious crystal skylight came crashing down all around them, followed by the bloated corpses of the shambling dead. As their putrid bodies struck the hard tile floor, decayed bones could be heard to snap; but still the undead moved. The crowded terminal filled with screams and turmoil as the grim host set about their task of gnawing the quivering meat from the bodies of the living.
Vance urged her to run, but she was held rapt by the plight of a fat, middle-aged woman wearing a blue dress and pearl necklace, which earlier Vance had pointed out and, with that exotic curl of the lips, said, "Come with me, my love, and I shall shower you with a thousand such pearls!" The woman clutched to her enormous bosom a half-eaten container of Dannon Light 'n Fit Smoothie. A zombie had fixed its viselike hands about her arms, and her screams sounded above the uproar as the chattering teeth ruptured her belly. Amid a spray of blood could be seen thick, yellow sheets of fat, which slopped onto the floor like so many dead fish. The necklace broke, and dozens of of pearls rained down upon the bloodstained tiles. Then came the organs. The zombie decorated the terminal with the fat woman's insides, and her engorged stomach slid to a rest right near Vance's feet.
She looked down at the stomach. Its thick membrane had been punctured by gnashing teeth, allowing the contents to spill out. Oozing out of the bloody sack was a viscous, white sludge, and suspended in it were dainty pieces of delectable fruit; Dannon Light 'n Fit Smoothie, set loose from its digestive confines by the eager maw of a dead man.
She screamed. She ran. And Vance ran with her.

Author: Lobo
They ran past the endless row of ticket counters, each one disgorging a stinking, groaning horde of the undead from the luggage loading bays. All around them, other travelers ran screaming, discarding their carry-on bags and John Grisham novels in the attempt to faster flee the shambling apocalypse that followed.
"There!" Vince shouted, and elbowed his way through the panicking mass toward a door marked "Employees only."
"We can't!" she screamed. "We aren't airport personnel! Those facilities are intended to assist in the smooth functioning of the airport and providing an enjoyable travelling experience for all customers! It would be inappropriate to use them for our personal convenience!"
"Did your brains already get eaten, woman?!" Vince screamed, and kicked the door in. Beyond was darkness and the faintly threatening mechanical drone of luggage conveyors. He went in.
"Oh," she moaned as the gnashing zombie mob slowly closed in on her, "I sure could use the sweet burst of healthy energy that a Dannon Light 'n Fit Smoothie provides right about now."

Author: Brennil

The thread, and the story continues…

To call in sick,or not to call in sick, that is the question

2006-01-26T08:14:00.000-08:00

I rarely call into work sick; since I started with my new company I have had ½ a sick day in the last 13 months.  There are a number of reasons for this. I would like to believe that I am more constitutionally fit than other co-workers, but the reality is as a working parent I am often required to miss work for the kids, whether that be because of Dr appt’s, school functions, or their own illnesses.   Another reason is that with kids that stay home, being sick at home is more work than being sick at work.

So as you might have guessed I am sick this week. Sinus cold, snotty nose, headache etc… For the first half of the week I have been coming into work, even though I wake in the morning feeling like death.  Why you may ask, because modern pharmaceuticals do wonders to mask the symptoms of a head cold.  Pseudo ephedrine hydrochloride is my new most favorite substance in the world; because it makes my icky head-stuffed feelings go away for a couple of hours.  Well that and I really like the buzz it gives me.

So here is the question I have been pondering this morning, mostly because I forgot the meds at home this morning and more poor melon cannot focus on anything work related.

If modern drugs can mask the symptoms of a head cold, at least enough to make you functional, should you take time off work anyways? Are you entitled to take that time off?

There is one argument that suggests staying at home would lessen the chance of you infecting co-workers.

The other is that if I feel good enough not to be laying around in bed I should be at work.

Yet a third is, if staying at home and resting will not improve things then I might as well come in to work.

I dunno what do you think?

Balancing Fun and Parent Time.

2006-01-25T11:24:00.000-08:00

I feel much guilt.

How do you balance fun? Lately I have had the opportunity to spend some time doing fun things with Liam. First the hockey tourney, then the Sen’s game… and now we are having a Company Fun Day at a local ski hill. We are allowed to take our kids. The problem is I don’t think Aiden has the stamina to do a whole day event (I am not sure that Liam does either) including some lessons I was going to put him in.

And this does not even factor in the youngest.

So how do you balance the fact that one is older than the other, and is able to do more, but the younger seems to be getting the short end of the stick?

p.s. Yvonne is going to take Aiden and a friend to the 67’s game this Friday night.

Sex-Ed in Germany

2006-01-25T06:00:00.000-08:00

One of the nice aspects of blogging as a family is that we are able to keep in contact with each other on a daily basis. With my sister and her family living in Germany we only get to spend time together a couple of times a year. Their blogs; sister’s blog or Brother in law’s blog give us glimpses into their daily lives. We also get to see a little bit about the culture and challenges of living in a foreign country.

For example takes this post by my Brother in law about sex-ed in Germany. Well I stumbled across this on the net and felt that maybe he had not captured the whole story.

For those of you at work these cartoon images may be considered Not Safe For Work (NSFW)

And now I present a German book on how babies are made.

Hockey, Hockey, Hockey

2006-01-25T05:20:00.000-08:00

Can there ever be too much hockey? Why wait till mid-February for a 67’s game when we can head back to the ~~Corel Centre~~, uhhm I mean ScotiaBank Place this weekend for the

Insert drum roll….

Senator’s Super Skills competition!!!

With the Winter Olympics this year causing a 2 week NHL suspension ,there will be no All-Star break and hence no All-Star Skills competition. The Senators decided to host their own, and surprisingly to be completely reasonable about the tickets. $7.50 per person. At that price we are hauling out the whole famn damily, and meeting Uncle P and his girls.

Mind you I bet by the time we are done we will be several hundred dollars in the whole. Add $7.00 hot dogs and $5.00 popcorn and three boys and well you get expensive. Oh that and the wife really wants to get the boys Sen’s jerseys, which are probably in the 80.00-100.00 range (we’re still discussing that).

p.s. I also managed to find some shots of how I want to landscape the backyard.

A Girl's Guide to Geek Guys

2006-01-24T07:42:00.000-08:00

This was shamelessly ripped from here. Though it is a guide for the capture of a geek, I think there is some good info on the care of a geek for any of you ladies who might already own one. I also noted that there is no section on the mating habits of the geek. Perhaps I will add that in myself at some later point.

A Girl's Guide to Geek Guys
By Mikki Halpin and Victoria Maat

So, your crush on the bass player from Vibrating Sandbox has finally died a whimpering death and you're wondering where to go from here. All the sinister dudes are either dating a series of interchangeable high-school riot girls in baby doll dresses and an overdose of manic panic, or permanently shacked up with some bitter old lady who pays all the bills. Which will it be, a wifely prison or a humiliating one night stand? Into this void of potential mates comes a man you may not have considered before, a man of substance, quietude and stability, a cerebral creature with a culture all his own. In short, a geek.

Why Geek Dudes Rule
They are generally available. Other women will tend not to steal them. They can fix things. Your parents will love them. They're smart.

Where The Geek Dude Lurks
While they are often into alternative music, geek dudes tend not to go to shows too often. Instead you'll find them hanging out with their friends, discussing the latest hardware revolution or perfecting their Bill Gates impressions. You know how some people wear t-shirts with their favorite bands on them, thus showing that they went to certain shows? Well, geek dudes wear t-shirts with the logos of different software companies on them, thus showing that they are up on the latest, um, releases. A small, though convivial, rivalry may be detected here amongst the geek dudes. Try wearing one yourself and see if he strikes up a conversation. Of course the best way to meet a geek dude is through the Internet. All geeks harbor a secret fantasy about meeting some girl in cyberspace, carrying on an e-mail romance in which he has the chance to combine an activity he is comfortable with, computing, with one he is very uncomfortable with, socializing. To many geek dudes, cyberdating is just an advanced form of some kind of video game, but they are frustrated by a lack of players. Their lack is your strength.

Imprinting
You might notice that these men harbor some strange ideas about how the world works and some particularly strange ideas about women. There is a reason for this. Because they've had limited interpersonal experience, geek dudes must look elsewhere for behavior models. Lacking a real world social milieu, geeks often go through a transference stage withsuch narratives, and try to model their interactions on them. Thus, certain media images and themes come to have an overly cathected, metaphorized reality to them, while the rest of us view such programming as mere entertainment. Case in point, our next topic...

The Trek factor
If you're not up on your Star Trek, you can forget about getting or keeping a geek dude. And I'm not just talking vintage-era Captain Kirk and Spock either. You've got to be up on your The Next Generation, your Deep Space Nine, your Babylon 5. Armed with your own knowledge of Federation policies, you can better gauge when and how to act. The sexual politics of Star Trek are pretty blunt: the men run the technology and the ship, and the women are caretakers (a doctor and a counselor). Note the sexual tensions on the bridge of the Enterprise: the women, in skin tight uniforms, and with luxuriant, flowing hair. The men, often balding, and sporting some sort of permanently attached computer auxiliary.This world metaphorizes the fantasies of the geek dude, who sees himself in the geeky - but - heroic male officers and who secretly desires a sexy, smart, Deanna or Bev to come along and deferentially accept him for who he is. If you are willing to accept that this is his starting point for reality, you are ready for a geek relationship.
(Editors note: Battle Star Galactica and Serenity are the new Star Trek! )

Once You've Nabbed Him
Of course, catching that geek guy is only half the battle. Keeping him by your side is another story altogether. I was privileged to speak with Miss Victoria Maat, who not only got herself a geek guy but was also clever enough to marry him just a few short months ago. She interrupted her newlywed bliss to give us a few tips on the care and feeding of a geek man: Geeks are sensitive and caring lovers and husbands. If you can hang with the techno-lifestyle, they make the best mates. They are the most attractive people, not flashy or hunky, but the kind who get cuter and more alluring over time (I told you she was a newlywed). Definitely give geeks a chance.

Geek Cuisine
Geeks tend towards packaged, junk foods since they prefer to work and think and aren't all that into cooking for themselves. Make sure that your geek understands that you are not merely a replicator, and provide him with home cooked food. A batch of chocolate chip cookies will let him know that you love him. You do have to monitor your geek for weight gain; however, remember that most of their days are spent sitting and staring at a monitor.

Geek Lifestyle
The geek dude has long work habits and tends to bring his work home with him. He seems permanently connected to his hard disk. You must at least appear interested in his work. Generally, a solid understanding of the computer is a must; if you cannot master this, you should at least be able to talk the talk. Remember most geeks are anal and they get stressed about details which appear insignificant. Be understanding, put on your best Deanna Troi face (see above) and empathize. To relax, geeks love to play the latest computer games. Let him play Myst or Chuck Yeager's Air Combat for hours if hewants to. Act concerned if he's stuck or has just been ambushed by three MiGs. My geek loves to try to help people on the Internet who say that they are stuck in Myst. He comes up with clever riddles instead of directing them point blank. Geeks also like to go to sci-fi and Japanese animated movies, again, a basically harmless vent for your man.
(Editors note: Myth and Chuck Yeager... how 90's, try BF2 and WoW right Jon... err random geek guy )

Geek Buddies
Many geeks extend their work friendships into what they jokingly refer to as RL (Real Life, also known as "that big room with the ceiling that is sometimes blue and sometimes black with little lights"). The greatest thing about your geek's buddies is that you can feel secure in setting them up with your girlfriends. They may feel awkward around females at first, so don't overwhelm them. In time they will come out of their shell and realize that you are into the same things they are.

Post-It Note
I thank Victoria for the above advice. I must say that when she read my draft of the piece, before writing her section, she asked her husband which one he thought she was more like, Deanna or Beverly. Howard, the devil, immediately replied that he had always thought Victoria was actually most like Ensign Ro Laren, a cute character with a slight authorityproblem who is always had trouble (this is fairly apt). This exchange is interesting for several reasons: 1.Howard had already thought about who she was most like. 2.He could summon up characters from seasons past with ease. 3.Victoria actually knew who he meant. 4.Folks, I think this marriage will last.

One Last Thing
Because they have been so abused and ignored by society, many geeks have gone underground. You may actually know some and just haven't noticed them. They often feel resentful, and misunderstood, and it is important to realize this as you grow closer to them. Don't ever try to force the issue, or make crazy demands that he choose between his computer and you. Remember, his computer has been there for him his whole life; you are a new interloper he hasn't quite grasped yet Geek dudes thrive on mystery and love challenges and intellectual puzzles. Don't you consider yourself one? Wouldn't youlike a little intellectual stimulation or your own? We thought so.

Big League

2006-01-24T05:24:00.000-08:00

“My boy's gonna play in the Big League
My boy's gonna turn some heads
My boy's gonna play in the Big League
My boy's gonna knock 'em dead
The Big League”

-Tom Cochrane

Well ok he’s not going to play in the big leagues, but he did get to watch. What is the best way for a 7 year old to end an exhausting hockey weekend? With a trip to see the Ottawa Senators play a game of course.

My company was generous enough to give me some awesome 100 level tickets to the Sens vs. the Leafs last night. Liam and I went and had a blast. It was a good solid game, unlike Saturday night’s blowout, last night the Leafs actually showed up and decided to play a hockey game (sorry Grandpapa). I picked up a Senators pennant for Liam and he spent the night screaming and waving it and getting into good-natured “discussions” with the “elderly Grandfather” beside him, who was decked out in full Leaf swag. I taught him that every time the Leaf’s fans started with “Go Leafs Go”, to reply with “Golf, Leafs, Golf”.

By mid-second period the effects of his weekend were starting to show and his head kept leaning up against my arm, however the lights, sounds and screams of the fans kept pumping him up every time he started to loose the fight.

By the time we pulled into the driveway he was sound asleep and I had to wrestle my young bull moose out of the car and up the stair. That boy is starting to get too big to haul around. It is not that I can’t carry the weight, but all those dangling legs and arms get caught on things.

This morning I let him sleep in as long as I could then I had to prod him awake, He was still very tired but managed to be good-natured about it.

Next on the list we have an Ottawa 67’s game coming up. Though Liam will be attending I am focusing this one on Aiden having some “dad time”.

Road Trip-extended report

2006-01-23T06:14:00.000-08:00

In Metropolitan area, like Ottawa, hockey teams are divided into 3 categories. A, B and C.  Generally the A level is the competitive level, B is considered house league and C is a developmental level.  This is easy to accomplish in larger area because they have a population base of players to support the different levels.  In the Nepean Minor Hockey Association there are at least 20 Novice teams. 6 A, 8 B and 6 C.

In smaller communities there is not as a large a base of players so they often only have 1 level.  This was the case at the Petawawa tournament.  The local teams were slotted as B level teams, in reality they were equivalent to the Nepean A level teams, and in some cases an AA level competitive team.  In other words the local rural teams out-classed all the metropolitan teams.  There were some amazingly skilled players out of the Pembroke/Petawawa clubs. Keep the name Turner In the back of your mind for the next 10 years.  I will guarantee that at some point on the future you will see that name at the OHL and maybe the NHL level. This 8-year-old kid was a natural hockey player and showed a level of talent I have never scene before.

Now as to the weekend itself.  Liam and I were originally scheduled to drive up the Saturday morning for the first game, but with the forecast calling for snow the Friday night/Sat morning we went up a night early.  Boy am I ever glad we did because the snow hit hard.  As it turned out many other players and families came up Friday night as well.  They boys all congregated at the hotel pool on Friday night. They went from the pool to the hot tub to the ping-pong table and back.  At one point all 8 of them were crowded into the hot tub playing a symphony using armpits and other bodily parts as musical instruments.  The howls of laughter as each one took turns elevating the skill of armpit farts into a fine art was well worth the price of admission.  It was 10:00 pm before we got the boys rounded up and settled into bed.

Saturday started with an 8:00 am game; we returned back to the hotel for more swimming and some hot Nintendo Game Cube action in the coach’s room.  After our afternoon game we all went over to East Side Mario’s for a team dinner (30 of us) and to watch the Senators pummel the Maple Leafs. One of the dads is a die-hard Leafs fan and was decked out in his full fan outfit.  At one point he went over to the kids table to talk to his son, the boys seeing his outfit started booing and jeering him so loudly that he could not get a word in edgewise, he retreated with his tail between his legs. The restaurant manager actually had to come over and quiet the boys (we later found out he was a Leafs fan as well).  After dinner we went back to the hotel for more swimming.

Sunday we started the day with another 8:00 am game, since we were playing the game at the arena located on CFB Petawawa base, we headed over to the “Army Mess” hall for breakfast. Driving through the base the boys were pumped by the vehicles in the Mechanized Brigade Compound and the “army guys” eating breakfast in the mess hall.

By the time I got Liam home last night, he was about as exhausted as I have ever seen him before, but exhausted in a good way.   And even though I was “well behaved” over the weekend I came home exhausted as well.

Road Trip: End Results

2006-01-22T13:34:00.000-08:00

I will follow this up with a full post later explaning the results and the whys, but for them moment a quick recap.

The boys got pummeled, trounced, pounded, slammed, abused, beaten and stomped. All 3 games were blow outs.

On the plus side, I have never seen a pack of 15 seven year old boys have as much fun or be as exhausted at the end of a weekend.

Maybe there is some truth to the story, Winning isn't everything.

Turned my Back and Walked Out

2006-01-20T11:25:00.000-08:00

You know what, I was finished with you. You had changed, maybe I had changed, I don’t know what it was but the last couple of times it did nothing for me. In fact it was more an annoyance than anything else. After a while I actively started to avoid you.

But Dani had to keep talking about you. She kept reminding me of all the good times we had together. So I got curious about what you were up to. I wanted to see how you were doing.

I looked in on you and in just under 3 minutes you had me again. I still love you Gordie

The New Maybe
The Tragically Hip-Yer Favorites

You could write, you could think, you could have sex
You could leave your jewelry in a bowl beside the bed
Stare out the window, down the lawn, to the lake
For as long as it takes

Maybe it's the things we don't say
Maybe it's the things we don't say
Maybe it's the things we don't say
Maybe, love is the new maybe

I know what winter's about
Too many nights, not enough days
I watched the birds fly south
And no, I don't wait
The last words out of my mouth
Stay out of my way
And I'm in a wrong place

Maybe it's the things we don't say
Maybe it's the things we don't say
Maybe it's the things we don't say
Maybe, love is the new maybe
Maybe, love is the new maybe
Maybe, love is the new maybe

It has been a very long time since I heard a Hip song for the first time and just loved it. There has been nothing from the last 2 albums that I can honestly say that I liked. Even the couple of albums previous had required a little “listening to” before I acquired a taste for it. This new song, include as a bonus track to the Hipeponymous boxed set, is awesome.

And for the record, Dani I blame you fully and completely for this. If you had not gone on and on about it on your blog I could have stayed away from it.

Road Trip!

2006-01-20T07:15:00.000-08:00

The plan was supposed to be that we would get up Saturday morning around 5:30 am and hit the road, but Mother Nature has decided to get pissy and dump 1- 15cm of snow overnight.  Like I am going to try driving in that at 5:30 in the morning.  Instead Liam and I are going to pack out bags and hit the road tonight.

Booyeah we’re heading to Liam’s first out of town Hockey Tourney.  Look out Petawawa here we come, hide your women and X-Box games cause the Robinson men are hitting the town.

The Tournament starts for the Nepean Ice Wolves tomorrow morning at 8:30 am.  We have already arranged for the cd player and a copy of AC/DC Thunderstruck to be in the dressing room.  I have been practicing my wolf howl and cheers.  If I can rummage up a cowbell I will take that along as well.

I am also going to bring a good book for that 9:00 –11:00 pm quiet time while I am sitting in the hotel room watching Liam sleep.

Wish us luck.

If a man protests

2006-01-19T07:23:00.000-08:00

And nobody is around to hear him is it still a protest?

My wife and I have the same discussion about every 4-5 years; funny how it comes up at election time. I am of the opinion that there is no real fundamental difference between the political parties in Canada. Regardless of the election platforms and the political rhetoric they spew, the reality of the situation is that running a country requires some fundamental processes, and these are handled by the bureaucrats. Above and beyond that minority groups, financially powered corporate lobby groups and good old-fashioned patronage rule the day. For the average Joe Shmuck like me, do you really think the liberals are that different from the Conservatives.

Earlier today Y and I were discussing whom we should vote for. I replied that I was going to protest the lack of an honest party and real leadership by spoiling my ballot. Her reply was “Why waste your time by even going?”

I have always felt that if I did spoil my ballot it would be a protest sign that I did not favour the current crop of politicians, Yvonne’s claim is that nobody cares if the ballot was spoiled and it is not a protest of any measure.

I think she may have a point there. Of course I feel that not voting is a worse crime than spoiling a ballot, so how do you not-vote and vote at the same time?

Gifts From the Past

2006-01-19T07:03:00.000-08:00

I had already started the day and left Liam to his own devices in the shower.  One of the perks of having an almost 8 year old, they can sanitize their own crevices.  I went downstairs and started the morning ritual of making coffee, packing lunches and tidying up left over laundry an over-night dishes.

After a while I noticed that the shower had stopped and it was very, very quiet upstairs. In fact it was so quiet that my parental spidey senses started to tingle. I trudged upstairs to find Liam sitting naked on his bed reading; and it was not just any book.

As my wife will attest I am something of a book packrat, and unlike her, routinely re-read my books. Once purchased a book is held on to for all time.  It is my goal in life that at some point I will own a proper den with walls completely covered with shelf upon shelf of books.  I have managed to hold onto a collection of books that I owned and cherished as a child. These books spent a number of years boxed under my mother’s stairs, and then eventually moved into my basement.  It was only about a year ago that I unpacked them and set them up in Liam’s room.

They sat there for almost 18 months.  I have tried several times to try and interest Liam in having me read them to him but he declined. I tried never to push them on him (very much), but have mentioned them on occasion.  To me these books were not just good literature, but the ability to re-live a part of my childhood vicariously through Liam.  The earliest memories of reading start with these books.  My mind awakened to the vast possibilities of reading, to the immense worlds of imagination that would mentally fuel me for decades to come.

As I walked into Liam’s room he looked up from the book and asked if he could bring it to school for reading time. The book he was holding: The Hardy Boys book 1 The Tower Treasure by Franklin W. Dixon.

To my Aunt Sue,
     Though the years have caused us to drift apart and I do not make the effort to keep in touch like I should. I want to thank you for that first book.  I understand that my love of literature began in my mother’s lap, but at some point your gift of that first Hardy Boy book, my first copy of the Hobbit and my initial foray into Dungeons and Dragons was the breath of wind that ignited my literary spark into the passionate flame it is today.

And now your gift of so many years ago has now been handed off to a new generation.

Pavlovian Conditioning Failure

2006-01-16T09:45:00.000-08:00

As a younger man in University I took an introductory psychology course. As part of the lab requirements for the course we did an experiment to prove or disprove Pavlov’s conditioning theory. The experiment consisted in shocking a mealworm to cause it to curl into a fetal-esque position while at the same time turning on a bright light source. The theory was that doing this enough times would cause the mealworm to shrink back in terror when just the light was turned on. As it turned out my lab slot was at the end of the day, and while my mealworm was still alive, having spent a day being exposed to electrical currents and first-year students, he was not prepared to be conditioned into doing anything. Perhaps it was the first case of mealworm electro-shock lobotomy. My final synopsis of the experiment suggested that the mealworm had been over-stimulated. Perhaps I should have examined the possibility of fatigue.

Last Saturday we had a diner party at our house, as a result I did not crawl into bed till midnight. I woke up at 5:15am to take Liam to a hockey game the following morning. To say the least I was a little tired Sunday afternoon. This will be known as The Official Excuse.

It was then, in a sleep-deprived haze that I decided to make some chili for the week. As I was chopping the vegetables with my butcher knife (a knife I have owned for at least 15 years)

I managed to cut myself. It was just a little cut, more of a knick than anything else. It was the manner that I cut myself that is pertinent; see after I scooped the red peppers into the pot I ran my hand down the side of the blade to scrape of the extra clingy bits. No not the knife’s edge, just the sides. Something I might add I do quite often without cutting myself. This time I was not so lucky.

I then moved onto chopping the onions, scoop them up, drop them in the pot, and clean the blade using the technique mentioned above. This time I sliced my finger open, not deep enough for stitches, but deep enough to make me look twice.

Having just cut my fingers twice in a span of 5 minutes my wife very concerned that perhaps I am too tired to wield a knife she should finish making the chili.

HA!!!!, chili is my specialty, so I decline and continue cooking, at this point, informs me that I am an idiot.

I finish bandaging my fingers and back to the pot I go. I look down and see a bit of blood on the knife and so I wipe it off with my hand, by running it down the blade, cut 3. I really tried to keep this one to myself, it’s not like she could see what I had done, but the sharp in-take of breath, and the sudden clasp of the hand was enough to clue her in. Again I decline her stronger suggestions that she take over, to which she replies that my “stupid stubborn attitude is starting to really frustrate her”. I am not being stubborn; I just want to finish my job.

By now, the chili is done and on the stove simmering and I start to clean up. I take up the butcher knife to wash it. No sense in cluttering up the dishwasher since I had a few items I am going to wash by hand. I put the knife in the water and then grab some soap…. (can you guess) , slide my finger down the blade to clean it and… voila, cut number four.

Four cuts to two fingers in the span of 30 minutes. Apparently Pavlovian conditioning does not work for everyone, or perhaps I just needed someone to ring a bell every time I cut myself. Idiot

Reality Shattered

2006-01-13T10:52:00.000-08:00

Just when I was floating on cload nine basking in the glory of the coolness that only Larry( I can call him that because we are so hip) and I can share. I get this email from my wife.

"I cannot believe that you posted that shot. It grosses me right out."

sigh.

I am sooo cool, Morpheus cool

2006-01-13T10:35:00.000-08:00

My good friend Dani mentioned on her blog a site called my Heritage that allows you to upload a picture of yourself. It then matches you against famous celebrities to see who you most look like.

Dani was very pumped to see that her highest match was 54% with Isabella Rossellini.

I decided to take a crack at that and I am proud to announce my first match came back with Laurence Fishburne (65%).

Of course it was followed up with Vladimir Lenin(62%), Chet Baker(58%), Albert Einstein(45%).

Of course I must admit that I did it in Garrad-Stlye.

Here was the pic I used.

Technology part 3

2006-01-10T11:58:00.000-08:00

After I get my new Dell 20.1 inch wide screen LCD, this is next on the list....

Sexy little keyboard

But really is it all that special? Oh yeah, each key can have a programmable image attached to it.

Imagine this tweaked for World of Warcraft. Each button a custom image associated with the attack that I am going to execute.

I think I will go and spend some quiet time alone with these pictures while I ponder the February 1st release date

A Tale of Married Gamers

2006-01-10T10:40:00.000-08:00

Playing video games, especially Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) is a time consuming pastime.  First it takes a certain commitment of time to advance in the game. Secondly having a guild of friends that relies on your presence in game to help them advance also requires time commitments.

When a good friend of mine first convinced me to start playing these games a number of years ago there were some discussions between my wife and I about the amount of time played.

My greatest gaming moment came when I convinced here to join me in the epic battles of Dark Age of Camelot.  From there things only got better as we spent quality time hunting and defeating the forces of evil.

For a while after the birth of child 3, she had backed out of the games, but in the last year she has rejoined me with full enthusiasm.  Things were balanced in the force and we moved forward in the golden state of marital bliss.

Or so I thought.  Sadly in recent months things have not gone as I expected.  Please note, this is her singing to me.

Married Gamers

Battle of the Sexes

2006-01-09T06:10:00.000-08:00

Music.  My wife and I have very different tastes in music.  She calls me a hard rocker and I call her a WUSS.  I like my music to have, at the very least, a guitar, a set of drums and a nice bass. She likes her music developed on a keyboard and performed by gang-criminals with a Dr. Seussian vocabulary.  In all the years that we were together it never really bothered us all that much.  She listened to her stuff; I listened to my stuff and the only cross-over came when some scantily clad female wiggled some skin on MTV.

That was until we had children.

Then a very quiet, very silent began.  I was determined that my big strong strapping boys would not grow up to the sounds of generic boy band x. Blessed with my sense of rhythm I figured there was no future in them listening to dance music.  While my wife was a stay at home mom, she plied them with 80‘s dance music, daily disco parties in the living room.  I tried to balance that was some solid rock.

Early on I lost quite a few battles, the war looked to be a lost cause…  and then some-where along the line St Jimmy stepped in.  I am not sure what prompted it, but I have a vague recollection of Liam having a discussion at school about who was the best guitarist.  Later that day he asked me and I rhymed off a few.  Peter Frampton I told him can make his guitar talk, Eric Clapton can make his cry, but perhaps the best might be Jimmy Hendrix.  And thus the war turned.  A small victory came when a “Best of Jimmy Hendrix” cd was found in the bargain bin and made it’s way into the house, before long Purple Haze was a daily requirement. It moved from there to Nickleback, some Greenday.

While I had some victories, the war was not complete as the Rick Astley still garnered some playtime for dancing.  It was not until the earlier morning of a hockey tournament that my victory was assured.  The boys, who were still trying to sleep in the dressing room as parents struggled to get them dressed, were blasted into wide eyed wonder when a father walked into the room, ghetto blaster on shoulder, Quiet Riot blasting a full volume.

“We’re not going to take it, no we ain’t going to take it”

Soon it moved to Thunfderstruck by AC/DC.  I wept in joy as Liam’s head started to rock back and forth.

Yesterday we went out on a family outing. After loading all the boys into the van, I handed Liam the MP3 fm broadcaster and showed him how to plug it in.  He set it all up, we tuned into the station and he selected a song on his MP3 player.

And the guitar started, Angus Young of AC/DC started his vocals and “Back in Black” started blaring from my suburban mini-van.

I glanced in the rear view window to see the eyes of my 2-year-old glaze up as he started to rock his head back and forth.  The 2 big boys in the rear seats started wail on air guitars, and my wife. Well he just rolled her eyes and started to whimper.

I have won mwaaa haaaa haaaa.

(not that our parenting is a competition or anything… really  it’s not )

20 minute Ice Cream Headache

2006-01-06T11:51:00.000-08:00

In the category of “Things not to try and do in your lifetime”.

At lunch today I was chewing on some ice from my Diet Coke.  I tried talking at the same time and the ice cube slipped down the back of my throat. I figured rather than trying to choke it back up in a public place and possible take the chance of asphyxiating I would swallow it.

However I think it got lodged in my esophagus.

Do you know you can get ice cream headaches from ice cubes lodged in your throat? Do you know that these tend to be even more severe than a traditional ice cream headache?
Do you know it takes between 15-20 minutes for an ice cube lodged in your esophagus to melt?

Ouch

Technology Part 2

2006-01-06T06:06:00.000-08:00

In and around Christmas my sister and I were talking about MP3 players. She had mentioned how she had wanted one, and how she also wanted the FM broadcast attachment. I had never heard of such a beast before so I asked here what is was.
It seems you can buy a doo-hickey that attaches to your MP3 player and broadcasts the music on a low power FM frequency. You can then tune any FM radio into that frequency and hear the music.

I thought that was kinda cool and wanted to see if the MP3 player I had bought for my wife had such an accessory available. A few clicks later and there I am at the web page looking at this.

This version allows you to stream the music to your car radio, which makes sense since in Canada it is illegal to drive with headphones on. I also noted that the website was having a boxing week sale and the accessories were all 60% off making it about $20.00 to buy. What a deal… clickety-click Internet trick and the purchase was on the way. I figured it would make a nice anniversary/valentines day/I love you gift at some time in the future.

What I didn’t count on was for someone to open the package before I got home last Tuesday, even though it was clearly addressed to me :-(

Since it was no longer a surprise gift I decide to test it this morning. It is way cool. It was dirt-simple to use and worked flawlessly out of the box.

I am really impressed. I dial the frequency I want up on the transmitter, match it on the radio, hit play and badda-boom instant streaming audio.

Technology rocks.

Lust, Consumerism and Electronics

2006-01-05T08:14:00.000-08:00

Lately I have become obsessed with acquiring more technology; little home electronic devices to make my life more enjoyable.  Actually I think I am just more interested in spending money.  Maybe spending is an addiction, and having spent before Christmas I am still on a spending high.

The unfortunate part about me spending is that both the wife and I are trying to have 2006 be the year the mortgage disappears.  This is very ambitious for us, while technically possible I am not sure it is feasible, but we are going to make a dedicated effort to beat it to a pulp. We have also talked about having a pool installed in the next year or two; a pool that comes with a landscaped back yard and a lovely interlocked patio. This is something we will not borrow for, but rather save until we can pay cash for it.

So spending money and our goals for the year are contradictory. This does not mean I cannot dream about it.  So here is my list of expenditures I would make in 2006 if I had unlimited money

1) DELL 20.1-inch wide screen LCD
Of all the things I want my new Dell LCD is still on the top of the list. Technically I have a beautiful high quality 19 inch CRT at home. There is nothing wrong with it and replacing it is not required. I do have to say the widescreen LCD is a sexy as hell.  It usually retails in the 750.00 range, but over the Christmas holiday it is around $500 – $550.00. I have even considered just ordering and facing the wrath at home later.  How long can she really stay mad at me?

2) PVR
For some reason I have become obsessed with the Idea of owning a Personal Video Recorder.  The weirdest part, I don’t even watch TV more than and hour or 2 a week. I would not use this and my technology-angsty wife would never use it.

3) Digital Receiver and TV
With Santa bringing the boys an Xbox for Christmas this year, I have officially run out of component inputs on my Digital Receiver. If you can believe this I have to run the Xbox through the component input on the VCR and then pipe it into the receiver. How archaic is that.  Besides our existing digital receiver does not support High Def and the Xbox does.  Of course does one really need to play Lego Star Wars in hi-def?

4) MP3 Player
I blame this on my brother-in-law. In the days before Christmas he became a little obsessed dropping hints about wanting a new I-Pod.  Based on his idea I picked up a low-end mp3 player for my eldest son and a better one for my wife.  Now I don’t have one and I would like one; not just any one but a nice shiny 30gig iPod.  Mind you I sit at my computer desk at work all day. All my music is already in mp3 format on my computer, and I have headphones… so the mp3player is for what?

5) Computer upgrade part 1
My wife’s home PC just does not cut the mustard anymore. It needs to be upgraded. She refuses to accept my old one, so she really needs a new one of her own.

6) Computer upgrade part 2.
All my gaming friends are updating their video cards.  This is making me twitchy.  My system could use another gig of ram; it could also use a new high end AGP video card so that I can run 3 million polygons at 60 frames per second. Really I need that.

7) Satellite or digital TV.
Yeah like I need 182 channels to watch 2 hours of TV a week.

So much lust for things I don’t need.  I think I will just concentrate on the new Dell monitor.  My Birthday is only a couple of months away so any relatives thinking about buying me a gift it sure would be nice if you coordinated it with each other ;-)

To My Wonderful Sister

2005-12-30T13:25:00.000-08:00

Who was sick, and taking care of sick children and still managed to whip me up a batch of the world's best gingersnap cookies in thw world the day before my mother came up to visit me.

Thank you

Is It Still a Victory If It Falls Apart?

2005-12-30T07:52:00.000-08:00

With the holiday season upon us, and a herd of relatives arriving over the week between Christmas and New Years, several days were devoted to the pre-Christmas cleaning frenzy. As a good spouse I lent a hand and together Yvonne and I gave the house a real good cleaning. Then came the odd-jobs. Little fix-em ups and tasks I have been putting off. See I am kinda lazy, and as a past boss once described; I have trouble with minutia.

In other words back a year or so ago I finished our basement. In my humble opinion I think I did a great job on all 95% of it. Yup, 95%, the last 5% of trim work and little jobs here and there I have not quite gotten around to. One of the 5% was putting the vent covers on the duct boots. When I cut the drywall, I kind of cut it a little wide and now need to patch them up. Because of that the vent covers do not stay attached to the ceiling.

This was one of those little things that my wife asked me to do. I tried to inform her that without the patch job they would not stay up. Her reply, made in that don’t-argue-spouse-voice was “Then uses hot glue, but get them up”

I tried to suggest that hot glue was not a manly enough adhesive to be used in construction. That if I were caught hot gluing things together they would come and take away my tool belt. I suggested I run up to Canadian Tire to get some Bull Dog All Purpose Adhesive. It was then I got “the look” followed quickly by me running upstairs to get the hot glue gun.

Today I ventured back down stairs and guess what I found, both duct covers lying on the floor.

Like I said, hot glue is not an appropriate adhesive.

So does this mean I won?

Taking "who's on the phone" to the Next Level

2005-12-27T11:36:00.000-08:00

What have I done!

Like my wife and I don't have enough issues communicating with each other while 3 boys are ryunning around underfoot. Now both Yvonne and Liam have MP3 players. They are both bopping around the kitchen listening to Green Day. I am trying to follow my wife's intructions for making the spinach-water chestnut-pumpernickel bread dish.

I keep asking questions and getting no response.

I have resorted to holding up signs.

1 cup of mayo?

When is your dad getting here?

Mind you I have just confessed all my sins of 2005 to her. Not my problem if she couldn't hear me. :-)

She is making me do this.

2005-12-24T11:56:00.000-08:00

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Well Duh! no kidding on that assessment.

An Update on the Type As

2005-12-23T06:54:00.000-08:00

An email this morning arrived fron the supreme Matriach and founder of the Ladies of Type A Society

Oh NO, I did it again. Only this time I used ribbons. I laughed so hard at Yvonne's blog but today when I went to sort out what goes to which house, I found a couple of parcels with ribbons...no name. Now I have to open and rewrap. When will I accept that my mind is just not there...it is on permanent holidays..

To those with lists and schedules I salute you!

Behold the power of my mind

2005-12-22T07:02:00.000-08:00

Your IQ Is 225

Your Logical Intelligence is Godlike

Your Verbal Intelligence is beyond the capacity of english to describe

Your Mathematical Intelligence dwarfs Einstein

Your General Knowledge exceeds The collected works of mankind

A Quick and Dirty IQ Test

Am I truly that smart? or do I just know html

Your IQ Is 125

Your Logical Intelligence is Below Average

Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius

Your Mathematical Intelligence is Genius

Your General Knowledge is Average

A Quick and Dirty IQ Test

Then again, is this real or do I have strong google-fu.

P.S. I think my logical Intelligence is higher than what this shows... mind you tham may explain some programming bugs I have seen recently

A Question of Taste

2005-12-22T06:04:00.000-08:00

A couple of nights ago we served up some tacos and burritos for supper. While a messy meal, the boys love the do it yourself/self serve assembly of the meal.  A little ground beef, some lettuce, some cheese and a pint or two of guacomole and we have the settings for a gourmet meal.  This is a pretty good meal because nobody really complains about what is served. By nobody I actually mean my eldest as he has the most food aversions.  On the other side of the coin is my middlest that pretty well likes everything set in front of him.

While some say I am a picky eater, I tend to disagree. I am not overly fond of most vegetables and seafood, but throw me some Indian, Thai, or Vietnamese and I am all over that.  A couple of months ago I discovered I also love Mongolian.

I have felt a certain kinship for boy 2 because we have journeyed the same culinary path. We both like spicy foods and curries.

Anyway back to the tacos. Aiden has an affinity for dill pickles, preferably the Tangy Dill Bick Sandwich Stackers.  For some reason pickles are summer foods and we have not eaten them for some time.  While I was cooking up the ground beef and trying to feed the kids some carrots Aiden asked if he could have a pickle. I looked in the fridge, dug out a jar from the back and he sat back happily crunching away. When dinner was served he had not had his fill of pickles yet so he grabbed a taco, loaded on some ground beef and slapped on a pair of pickles. Then he proudly announced  to the table he had made a pickle taco.

The reaction was what you would expect. Liam started to fake gag, Yvonne gave him I-love-you-but-you-are-disgusting-look and Keegan continued to lick Guacamole off his chip and re-dip.  I on the other hand was kind of intrigued.

Think about it, I eat pickled hot peppers and jalapenos on my tacos. It is not just the spice, but I like the tangyness as well.  I figured why not, and besides I felt like supporting my little middle child.

So I whipped up a burrito and slapped on a dill. You know what, it was pretty good.  I think if I pick up a jar of the spicy dill sandwich stackers we might be on to something.

The wisdom of "They"

2005-12-19T07:21:00.000-08:00

We all know “they”. “They” are the ones that hold the nugget of wisdom humanity has learned from generations of experience. Over time I have discovered that “they” have much wisdom and an equal amount of silliness. However recently a personal insight has lead me to believe there may be some truth in a previous “they-ism” I had discarded as nonsense.

“They” say that children will marry their parents. A son will marry his mother, a daughter their father.  I had always considered this hogwash, as the cute little 18 year old that turned my eye way back in Grade 13 was nothing like my mother. Or so I thought.

This year my wife adopted a page from my mother’s book. She has decided to use a different wrapping paper for each child. This way the children will not be able to snoop under the tree pre-Christmas and figure out what present is theirs.  Having grown up in a house where these “organizational type-A” attempts were made on a daily basis I could have warned her what the outcome could have been, but then again I have also learned never to mess with a type a that has a plan. I wonder if I could submit that nugget of wisdom to “they”.

Truth is I have known for years that my wife was cloned from the same genetic type A material that my mother was. So it came as no surprise to me when she un-furled her Christmas wrapping plan. What I did not expect was to have my SIL be responsible for the chaos that erupted in my house last week.

See, my SIL went Christmas shopping for the boys; she also decided to take advantage of our house to wrap the presents. Our house, our wrapping paper, our tape, however, she did not use not “our system”(notice 17 years of marriage I am automatically accept the type a schemes as our). The presents were wrapped in non-conforming wrap.

I am sure the explosion when my wife found out was felt across continental North America. You thought splitting the ordered balance of an atom caused a big boom; you should try breaking the ordered scheme of a type-a. All the explosive power, less radiation, though I expect the half-life is about the same.

For some reason my type-a-less heart take a small amount of comfort in watching the plan of a type-a disintegrate. I don’t mean that in a spiteful way, it just seems to warm a small part of my laid-back, relaxed heart.

On that note, I need to get back to re-wrapping some presents.

A little trouble wih authority

2005-12-16T11:22:00.000-08:00

I have a friend, an associate perhaps. To maintain anonymity we will now refer to this friend as Ivan.  Ivan is a very strong willed person. Emotionally balanced, exceptionally talented, but has on occasion been accused of having trouble with authority.  Now I do not mean that in the “rebellious teen trouble with authority”, nor in the “bohemian stick it to the man trouble with authority”, more in the “I’m a busy person, therefore the rules don’t really always apply to me”.

The trouble with authority moniker first appeared when Ivan made an illegal left turn.  Unfortunately and officer of the law was close at hand and took offense to this violation of posted rules and ticketed Ivan.  Ivan made some remark, which led the officer to reply with the ohhh so famous “you have trouble with authority”.

I have seen this spark rear it’s tiny head many times in the years I have known Ivan, mostly it is tiny little acts of rebellion that never lead to much.  There has been the occasional parking ticket, a speeding ticket here or there. To be honest I kind of find it an endearing trait in Ivan. It reminds me of the strong spirit that lurks inside. The spirit that had guided Ivan to be the successful person they are today.

Mind you sometimes your better qualities come back to bite you on the ass. If you read my previous post you know we are struggling with a bit of snow today. School buses have been cancelled and a normally hectic day is made even more so.  It turns out that Ivan had nipped out to a job interview in between her morning meeting, her afternoon meeting, lunch a bathroom break and picking up the kids at 3:30.  Since Ivan was on such a tight schedule the van was parked in a less than opportune spot. Having finished the meeting Ivan returned to find that van had been towed.

On top of all that to find out where your vehicle has been towed to you require a license plate number, which Ivan could not remember (being a fairly new van and all that). All the documents that had said license number on them were in the van.

So if you happen to see Ivan, or talk to Ivan today, you might want pass out a hug.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

2005-12-16T06:48:00.000-08:00

Good Morning the rest of the world, welcome to winter; at least in my neck of the woods.

This week the temperature in Ottawa dipped into the –20’s overnight, -12 to –18 during the days. Nice and frosty to make sure you are snuggled extra deep in the covers. Last night the other half of winter arrived. I awoke to about 20cm (8 inches my American friends) of snow. With a forecast of another 15-20 cm falling during the day today it was no surprise that the school buses had been cancelled.

So I bundled up my boys this morning, dropped the 2 youngest at the sitters and hauled my fledgling moose boy back to our place to shovel snow, and shovel and shovel and shovel.  He was not terribly impressed after the first three shovels. Way I figure it with the amount he is eating these days it is about time I put him to work. Mind you he is just going to eat more to replace the calories I burned off him this morning.

Of course with the first major snow fall of the season you can imagine what the roads were like this morning. I had no major problems whipping around in my baby SUV, but it sure was fun watching the other drivers on the roads.

And to make this typical Canadian day even more uhhhh Canadian… I have to whip home tonight, grab the eldest and make it to hockey practice at 5:30 pm.  Oh yeah and shovel the driveway again.

Stupid is as Stupid Does

2005-12-14T06:21:00.000-08:00

So the latest and greatest of the next generation of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) was release for public stress test last Monday. My current MOG addiction is World of Warcraft. It was release Novemeber of last year and since I have been happily slaying dragons, hunting orcs and doing good deeds. But when a new one starts to come of age I have to take a little looksy at it. When the new one happens to be Dungeons&Dragons Online that little looksy quickly becomes an obsession to play the game.

Monday night I was accepted into the stress test beta. I downloaded the client, I created my account, and I patched the game and then stared longingly at the login screen. Unfortunately the game was not going live till the following morning.

Last night I managed to beg, cajole, and whimper my way into getting permission (I am sure this will come back to haunt me in the future) to dabble with the game during parenting time. I got about an hour into the game before the demands of the boys and my wife came crashing back in. Once parenting time was over and the boys were in bed I had a previous commitment that did not allow my to try logging back in. At 11:00 pm all was silent in our house. My wife had wandered up to bed, the kids were deep in sleep, and I was staring at my computer. I knew I should go to bed, but I wanted to take another quick look at the new shiny computer game. After all 15 minutes would not hurt me.

Like I was not aware what was going to happen. Self-denial is a wonderful illusion.

I am not sure how late it was when I woke back up. My neck was killing me from having fallen asleep in front of the computer, my back hurt and since we lower the temperature in the house over night a fair number of my extremities had frozen.

This morning at 7:00 am I was in a world of hurt, headache, exhaustion, yucky taste in my mouth from late night snacking and not brushing my teeth. Now as I sit and drool over my keyboard at work, my mind a numb glop of jelly I really, really wish I had gone to bed at a reasonable hour.

Tonight I will have to work through the evening with my high-energy sons, I will get no sympathy from my wife, and I will long for my bed.

And the worst part, betcha I log back into the game for another late night session.

p.s. My Eldest was as excited by the game as I was. Some traits breed true.

Putting Your Only Foot Forward

2005-12-13T05:41:00.000-08:00

Today our new Nanny came to spend a day with my SIL learning the boys schedule and how the day normally goes. This is how the morning was planned.

Between 6:45 and 7:00 my eldest will come in and wake me up. I had also made arrangements for my wife to call at 7:00 am and wake me up.

We had called and reminded my SIL several times to make sure she was there at 7:30 this morning. She had guaranteed me she would be there on time.

It is nice that we can all have these dreams isn’t it….

My eldest slept in this morning; my wife did not call at 7:00 am. I was awoken from a deep sleep by the doorbell at 7:20 am. It was the new Nanny early on her first day.

I stumble from bed and rush to get some clothes on to go and answer the door. As I am letting her in, the phone rings, It is my SIL telling me that the –25 Ottawa weather has frozen her car and it won’t start.

I told her to grab a cab and I would pay for it…. Sigh

Well at least she now knows how a typical morning will go.

Christmas Bling

2005-12-07T05:59:00.000-08:00

I was advised by my SO last weekend that our house was not making the grade and something needed to be done. While we were one of the first in the neighborhood to put up our Christmas lights our neighbors soon followed in an attempt to out do us. Soon our row of sparkling coloured Christmas lights paled in contrast to the magnificent pyrotechnical displays of lights and animated robotronic deer and Santa’s that festooned the lawns of my little community.

I was given no choice; the order came from the highest authority. “Make the house prettier”. So off I went into the festive no-mans land of Barrhaven, Canadian Tire, to acquire more Christmas bling. There were more lights to get (100 ft worth), there was more garland to buy (60 feet worth), red bows and other accessories.

3 hours later and a very large amount of cash I received a positive review from the wife.

This week when she is not looking I am heading back out for an inflatable pooh bear and a collection of mooning Santa’s.

Intellectual Property

2005-12-06T11:08:00.000-08:00

Apparently I broke the spousal non-disclosure agreement. My previous blog was the intellectual property of my SO. During supper last night, which was supposed to be my blog topic today, we had discussed this. I uh, must have been pre-occupied being an excellent father at the time of the discussion. You might notice the post times on the blogs and realize that mine did come first. I think it is closer to who gets to the patent office first J.

As for the supper blog, I will get to it later in the week, but it had to do with my wife cooking an evil, horrid, poisonous supper, including chicken, rice and an orange sauce (looneyspons recipe, it was excellent). The boys ate PB&Js

Negotiating With Santa

2005-12-06T06:01:00.000-08:00

My wife and I were good holiday shoppers this year. She scoured the weekly flyers and I would nip out at lunch and pick up the latest and greatest toys from Toys R Us when they were on sale.  By the time the Christmas spirit wrapped the boys up in the pre-holiday consumerism we were mainly done with the Christmas shopping.

Last weekend my “middlest” wrote his letter to Santa Claus.  A letter I have been dreading seeing him write, because he is asking Santa for something that we did not buy, something we did not want to buy.

Technically I have no problem with the toy, it is not violent, and it does not seem shabby or fragile. The problem lies in the fact that it is an $85.00 remote control vehicle.  Our past history with these toys is that they are played with for a couple of days and then fall into the wayside.  My basement is full of 3 generations of broken forgotten remote control vehicles.

I am at a loss for what to do at this point.  On one side I want my son to believe in the magic of Christmas, the magic of Santa Claus (consumerism and all). On the other hand I do not want to spend the money on the toy.  Parental guilt is closing like a vice around my heart.  Do I just bite the bullet and get the thing, knowing that I will then go and pick up 2 other things for the remaining boys to “balance” the presents? Do I face the potential disappointment of having the one item in his Christmas letter not be there on Christmas morning?  Do I blog about this in the hopes his grandparents read it and come to my rescue (.

The same thing happened with my eldest son, but for some reason I was able to rationalize with him about what types of things Santa does and does not bring.

EDIT: I just had an idea, what if I buy the present, wrap it, then hide it. If christmas morning goes ok we take it back, but if I get the feared sobbing heart shattered tears then presto, Santa left it behind the couch? What do you think?

Christmas Wish List

2005-12-05T12:10:00.001-08:00

My brother-in-law is a pretty clever person. He decided to use his blog to subtly ask for his Christmas gift. What a really great idea.

The War Has Begun!

2005-12-05T11:53:00.000-08:00

Ok so maybe I over-used my firm voice just a little bit on Friday.  Maybe my threat of bright pink Dora the Explorer snow pants was pushing it, but the little bugger retaliated.

Shots have been fired and lines drawn in the snow.  You know what he did? He “accidentally” forgot his snow pants at school on Friday! He “accidentally” forgot his boots at school on Friday and wore his in-door running shoes home.

Sure he has tried all sorts of excuses like, “it was the day of the my first confession”, “I wore my dress clothes home with Mommy”, blah, blah, blah  I know the real truth, he’s pushing me.  Well okkkkkay Mr. Too-Cool-To-Wear-Snow-Pants, guess what it snowed last night, this morning there was 3-4 inches of white fluffy all over the ground.  Think you are getting away with the running shoe and no snow pants.

Nope this morning my strong-willed little fella walked out the door with his mother’s boots on and his mother’s snow-pants.  He’s lucky I did not pull out the duct tape to ensure they did not fall down.  I am sure the wails of anguish were heard in Toronto.

I will win this battle!

And for those keeping score at home, he did have a somewhat legitimate reason for forgetting his stuff, and it was less of a battle of wills than I am making it out to be, I can be guilty of taking creative license on occasion.

Echoes From My Past

2005-12-02T06:08:00.000-08:00

“Once you get to school you can get naked and dance in the snow, but before you leave this house you will be dressed appropriately for the weather”

Words uttered by me this morning as my 7 year old tried to leave the house this morning wearing a t-shirt, his coat hanging open and a ball-cap on his head.  Did I mention it is snowing in Ottawa this morning?

After a brief discussion and the threats of a trip to Wal-Mart to buy bright pink snow pants, my 7 year old decided that maybe a toque, snow pants, a sweater and doing up his coat was a better option.

Dear Mr. All-the-Cool-7-Year-Olds-Don’t-Wear-Snow-Pants
On the off chance that you ever stumbles across this blog and read it I just want to let him know I saw you sneak your ball cap back into your knapsack when you thought my back was turned.

There is a Klingon proverb that says, “Revenge is a dish best served cold”.  Personally I think revenge is a dish best eaten by grandparents watching their children deal with their grandchildren.

Mother, for all my snow pant-arguments I apologize.

The Cat

2005-12-01T05:33:00.000-08:00

A while back we had an unexpected addition to our household (no, not child 3).  While my wife was out hunting for some fish food at the local Pet Store she stumbled across a furry white feline with a most relaxed attitude to life.  In some manner (I am assuming mastery of the dark arts, perhaps a an Imperius curse caused this), this little fur-ball convinced my wife to take him home.

Snowball as he was named, quickly became a permanent member of our household and my wallet.  Within days of coming home he developed a wheeze and a cough.  $185.00 later I was administering anti-biotic cream to his eyes and oral antibiotic pills.

Great, you save a cat from the pound and this is how he rewards you.

Since then Snowball has graced our home with rolling tumbleweeds of white fur, the occasional scratch, bite and midnight attack.  But as a male adult cat he has settled into life with 3 boys.  To be honest he is a pretty good cat and the boys love him.

At some point in his past he had been de-clawed.  One of his rear paws (which come to think of it is not de-clawed) has a bit of an ingrown toe.  My wife has always been concerned with it and so decided to have my SIL take it into the vet clinic where she works part-time.

The good news is the toe is fine, no worries.  The bad news… his ass was infected.

I dunno how a cat goes about getting an infected ass, but there you go (I swear I was not involved).  Apparently the vet was also forced to express his “anal glands”.  Upon return to the home I was greeted with a cat that has a very clean-shaven strip running from the base of his tail all the way past his… stinky bits.  He also came with a tube of anti-biotic cream, which as you can guess, must be applied twice a day to his infected areas.  And guess who gets that job.

At least he isn’t pissing on the furniture.

Crisis Diverted, Marriage saved

2005-11-29T06:42:00.000-08:00

I found it, a way she can have a new computer and still have a balanced marriage.

Barbie PC

My Marriage is doomed to failure

2005-11-29T06:19:00.000-08:00

My wife and I have been together for many, many years.  If I do the math and add in time living together pre-marriage, it is somewhere around the 17-18 year mark.  Last night we had a discussion in the house that caused a shift in the balance of our relationship. 18 years of careful equality and give and take gone in a carelessly spoken comment.  If the discussion comes to pass I do not think I will be able to maintain the marriage. Destined to be another failed marriage statistic.

Today I am going to breach Blog protocol, drop the façade of Garrad/UberGeek and expose my relationship woes to the world.  I am going to bare my soul to you gentle readers and hope that somewhere an answer can be found, some solution to this heart-breaking conundrum.

My wife’s PC is failing.  It had started to exhibit signs of an immanent, catastrophic failure.  It has been patched; upgraded; tweaked and re-built from spare parts, duct tape and the occasional paper clip. It has been used/loved/abused by the 3 boys and is now shuddering on the death-bed.  My wife has suggested that maybe it is time to give it some attention.  Being the excellent geek I am I jumped on that like a kid on a Smartie.  I started discussing upgrades and patches and potential component replacements, but that is not what she wants. She wants to start clean, go new, build it from the ground up, which given the nature of the legacy equipment in it is actually a better idea.  At this point I got really excited as I pondered how to outfit my new gaming rig to replace my system when I handed it down to her.

Then she dropped the ball on me.  She does not want my pc. She wants the new one( it pains me to even type that).  That would mean that her PC would be faster and better and geekier than mine.

How in the name of all that is holy can she expect a relationship to survive that.  I am UberGeek, I am the software developer and I am the gamer, the slayer of demons and gods.  How can I possible live in a relationship so unbalanced. She has emasculated me, she has geek emasculated me.  I have nothing now.

Ok, so this is kinda tongue and cheek, but to be honest deep down inside it really does bother me.  Not relationships bother me, not hold a grudge bother me, just a little selfish whine deep down in the sub-cochlear region of my heart.  That will teach me for getting her involved in WoW. Of course knowing my luck, by the time we get the new PC she will have grown tired of playing WoW and it will be used only for surfing e-bay, yahoo mail and playing Bejeweled.  Oh the humanity!!!.

Hey Baby, why don't you take off those clothes

2005-11-28T09:56:00.000-08:00

It’s ok mom you can keep reading. I am not talking about that kind of “Hey Baby”.

My third child, the 2 year old, is just at the transitional stage where he is outgrowing his afternoon naps. Not everyday mind you but we can keep him up on the occasional Saturdays. The nice part is we are leaving the phase of having to be home for 2+ hours on weekend afternoons. The downside is that the witching hour from 6-8pm can be challenging and our day care provider no longer gets those quiet afternoons while he is sleeping.

Of course on days when he does have a nap, especially if it is a long one, come bedtime he tries to convince us he is not tired, unlike his parents. For the most part this is not a problem as he is a very good kid and content to play in his crib till he falls asleep. But on occasion he can be a bit of a monkey. I think “busy” is the term used to describe him.

A couple of weeks ago after the 2 big boys had fallen asleep we were disturbed by a very loud bumping, thumping and giggling coming from his room. Upon investigation we had found that he had stripped his bed, completely. Pillow removed from pillowcase, both tossed over the side of the crib, soother, blankets, and stuffed animal gone. Crib sheet, crib pad and liner also evicted from the bed. Remake the bed; settle him down, head back downstairs. 15 minutes later he repeat the performance.

Since then there has only been 1 other crib stripping incident.

Last night as I was getting ready to head to bed around 11:30, the youngest started to cry. I hustled upstairs to see what was wrong. He was cold, no blankets and he was lying there shivering. I found it odd that my wife, he is far more concerned with keeping the boys warm in the winter than I tend to be, had put him to bed in just a diaper. Being a good husband I figured she had her reasons and snuggled him up, added another blanket and then went to bed myself.

It was not till this morning when I asked her about it that I understood our littlest has a future career as a Houdini impersonator. As it turns out she had put him to bed in pjs, a full piece pair complete with full toes and a big zipper. She also told me that yesterday morning when she went in to get him he was stark naked, no pjs no diaper nothing. Apparently, as he said, “his bum (diaper) was broken”

This one is going to make 2 a very, very long year.

Hey Pot, You're Paisley

2005-11-25T11:20:00.000-08:00

As parents we strive to educate our children. Some of those skills we teach are academic; some are relationship based, while others are often life’s little lessons. In many cases those lessons are not taught, but picked up in our actions, our re-actions, our day-to-day living. In most cases we hope that our children are learning our better personality traits. If not we can always fall back on “Do as I say, not as I do” Which in my limited parenting experience is a piss-poor way of teaching.

But what happens when those learned lessons backfire. What happens when our children have learned from us, (in this case positive, affirmative lessons) and throw them back in our faces. Regardless of what we as parents want our children to do.

There is one argument that suggests that the children should still respect the wishes of the parent, and no matter what action the child wished to take, be it positive or not, we should respect the request of the parent. While this does have merit it clearly is in opposition to everything the child has been taught.

A second opinion is that the parent should understand that the child is a reflection of a lifetime of lessons, and thus should even if the parent does not want the child to act that way, should warmly embrace the child’s decision as a confirmation of good parenting.

For example, take a typical family, mother, father, (adult) son and (adult) daughter. Let’s place this family in a pre-Christmas discussion regarding gift giving. In this case the mother and father have lived a long life of frequently showing examples of generosity and compassion. In this scenario the children wish to purchase a gift for the parents. The parents reply to this saying that they need/nor want anything. Regardless of this, the children still insist on buying the gift, saying that the joy is in the thought of picking out the gift, the joy of giving. Clearly this goes against what the parents want, but at the same time it is clearly a perfect of example of the children having learned from the parents. How should the parents react? How should the children react?

Can the parents really enforce something that goes against a lifetime of learning? Oppose something that is so strongly ingrained in the children that it is akin to genetic conditioning. No answers from me, I only ask the questions not answer them.

There is an interesting side note to this discussion. Take the above scenario and apply to directly to the siblings. One sibling wants to give a gift, while the other sibling does not wish to receive it. There are no parent/child authority or respect guidelines. There are no clear-cut rules to follow. What happens in this case?

It would be somewhat ironic if this example ever came up in reality, where in one discussion the siblings were united against the parent, but in an identical discussion they were opposed.

In this case it is abundantly clear to me that the giving sibling is acting out of love, acting out of personal necessity. Yet, the receiving sibling, who in discussion with the parent was very outspoken about the joys of giving, struggles when found in the same situation.
It is never “do as I say”. It is do as I have lived my life. Do as I am when watched un-noticed. Do as I am when under stress, when busy, when angered. Do as I am when riding the crest of wave, or buried in the trough.

We are always reflections of those we love and admire, and even more importantly they are reflections of us. No matter how you try, what stances you take, how you swear at the mirror you cannot change the reflection that stands in front of you. It is better to gracefully accept what you are than waste energy trying to change that reflection.

A lesson learned

2005-11-18T09:56:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned earlier I have moved into a different area in my professional career over the last year.  Recently I was asked to do another task that had less to do with Software and more to do with hardware.  Specifically I was asked to make a keyboard (computer keyboard) work with a piece of hardware.  Physically, the hardware had the correct connection points but nobody had hooked up the bits and pieces to make the software talk to it.  In my previous life as an application developer, all these bits and pieces are already provided for you by the Operating System. In the hardware world there is no OS so you have to convert the raw bits read from the hardware back into characters.

So I started this 2 days ago, had the majority of my software written and talking to hardware within a couple of hours.  Then I spent the last 2 days trying to figure out why it was not reading the keyboard.  I peaked into every piece of code there was. I debugged, I searched, I peeked and poked memory structures, I watch variable, I even hooked a de-bugger up to the hardware and walked the code line by line. But there was no joy in Mudville.  2 days I have been chasing this freaking issue, yanking hair by the handful and really stressing out, as this was supposed to go into QA today.

Finally this morning I got desperate enough to swallow my pride and ask on of the old-timers to give me a hand looking through my code. He was gracious enough to agree and we spent 10 minutes looking at my code.  According to him it all looked ok (yeah me!!!) so he decided to walk into the lab and look at the hardware.

This is where the story gets a little embarrassing, as he walks into the lab, opens the lid, and looks at the hardware and starts to chuckle. He looks at me and says, “you are missing the rs_422 to PS2 conversion chip (sic)” then points at the board.  Oh right I say, silly me….

Actually that was not my fault. The board was supposed to have the chip on it.  I should not have to verify that the hardware has all the parts it is supposed to. It was just very frustrating to bust my ass for 2 days, and then have it be something out of my control.

Bleh  stupid hardware, grommet, doo-hickey stuff.

Chicken Soup for the Father's Soul

2005-11-15T08:39:00.000-08:00

I beat my children last night and it felt really, really good.  I even managed to lay down a few on my wife. That felt even better.

I was merciless, they begged me stop, they pleaded with me to stop, but I kept up  my relentless assault. I hit their heads, their chests, their stomachs and legs.  At one point I even knocked the legs out from under my eldest and dropped him to the floor, following with a huge blow to his abdomen.  Age gave no mercy. I attacked the 7 year old as much as the 2 year old.

I am not sure how the pillows made out though.  Man did it feel so good to get into a full-fledged pillow fight with all three boys.  I whacked a lot of pent up aggression out on them.  An hour later the boys were sweaty, mostly naked (apparently pillow fighting must be done in your underwear) and exhausted.  I was feeling pretty good myself.

For future reference if your kids a frustrating you… trust me a good beating is great for your soul.

I am a Hockey Dad

2005-11-14T10:00:00.000-08:00

I am a “Hockey Dad”.  The obscene electronic beeping of my watch has gone off in the pre-dawn hours of cold Canadian Saturday mornings for 6:00 am practices.  I have thrown back the covers and left the warm sanctuary of my bed and wife to stumble around trying to find my jeans and toque.  I have broken the cardinal rule and woken a sleeping child. I have order many a large black coffee and a small hot chocolate (diluted with milk please to cool it).

I do this because I am a hockey dad.  What I hope I never become is a ”hockey parent”.  You know the types, you read about them in the paper. They are the anti-poster children of Minor Hockey.  They are the ones whose children will defy the stats, join the NFL and vicariously fuel parental hockey fantasies.

I first noticed it during the sort-outs for my sons Novice league.  Novice as in 7 year olds who can generally skate, can generally pass the puck and can generally shoot., but not all at the same time.   It is during sort-outs that the kids are assigned to level A, B or C.  Woe is the parent whose child ends in level C (the shame of having a child that cannot skate).  To them the ultimate goal is the coveted A (competitive division).

A conversation I overheard during the sort-outs.

Father 1: “So I told Jimmy to make sure he was never the first in line for a drill.”
Father 2: “Right, so he can see the other kids make mistakes and learn th4e drill better.”

I felt shame, I had not told my son to do the same.

2 weeks ago our team played a game that ended in a close loss 7-6.  There was a very strong player for the other team that scored 6/7 of the goals.  One of the mothers on our team went on a rant about how that child should not be in B, How he had no business in B he should be in the A division.  I do have to admit that the child was a good player, and there is a very distinct possibility he might be A material.  However, I don’t think it donned on her that 4 of our goals were scored by our best player, who is also borderline A material.  Somehow his performance was lost on her.

During the sort-outs there was a B team that was very, very strong.  !0 goal leads were not unheard of.  The idea of the sort-outs is not just to rank the children, but also to balance the teams so that each team is balanced against the other.  After our game with them several of the coaches and parents went to the league coordinator commenting on the strength of the team. The reply they received was that the league was honoring personal request for travel requirements.  What that means is that the parents on that team want to have certain players together to make traveling to practices and games easier (ride-sharing).  This is a noble cause. The interesting part about it as that the coach of this particular hockey team also coached soccer this past summer. I also coached soccer this past summer.  His team also dominated the league last year, and oddity enough the same core 8 kids on his hockey team this year, were also on his soccer team.  A team that has been together and dominating the last 3 years.  So here we have the worst case, a hockey coach, that is also a “hockey parent”.

The funny thing is that this attitude is very contagious. At times I find myself fighting the urges to pressure Liam to perform better. To sign him up for the elite hockey camps.  In reality I know the best thing for him is to ensure that he is having fun so I resist.

I Will Remember

2005-11-11T07:33:00.000-08:00

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow Between the crosses row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies
Today I have an appointment. A most important and special appointment. I have set my watch; I will pause in the middle of a meeting. I will stop everything I am doing.

Today I will remember.

I will remember those that have paid the price physically.
I will remember those that have paid the price mentally.
I will remember those that have paid the price emotionally.

I will remember them for the world that I grew up in, I will remember them for the world that my children are growing up in. I will remember, for in that way I can say thank you for costs paid by my grandfather’s generation and for the cost paid for my generation and for the costs that future generations will have to pay.

To all those that have served and have loved those that have served, I thank you

Today I am a Man!

2005-11-10T10:45:00.000-08:00

Well the definition of “man” in this case may be a tad stretched, but for all the geeks of the world I have become a “MAN”. As I mentioned above I am a software developer, specifically a java application developer.  I write application software, typically in the Java programming language to be run on top of existing computer operating systems. About a year ago I was having lunch with a close friend and part-time mentor of mine. At the time I mentioned how bored I was with my current job.  I was in the grind of the minutia, an area that I routinely struggle with. Let me design the system, I’ll let you take care of the little things. (Actually this can probably explain why my wife and I get along so well, she lives for minutia).   Anyway, my friend mentions that he has an opening at his company that I might be a good fit for.  He proceeded to convince me to stop y his office and see what they did. Then he proceeded to woo me.  As the ancient proverb goes, “be careful what you wish for”.

I decided that change might be exactly what the doctor ordered. I left the comfort of my own space and stepped in the brand new frontier of embedded programming and immediately floundered.  This stuff was way outside of my scope of knowledge.

So how does this in anyway relate to me becoming a man today?  Well today I successfully wrote data to hardware, and the hardware did not burst into flames and self-destruct.  Me… I wrote data. I pushed bits into hardware registers. I forced silicone and metal to do my bidding. I am god blah blah blah.

What does this mean exactly, what is the true scope of my accomplishment? Well here is my first analogy.

Application programming is like baking a cake from a store bought box. Add a few ingredients, mix and bake.  Where as hardware programming is like making a cake from scratch  The problem is the analogy really doesn’t fit well. An application programmer, at least a good one, is not just assembling store bought components( at least sometimes they are not ).

A better analogy is that hardware programming is like baking a cake,  where you first have to grind the wheat to make flour. You need to crush the cocoa beans by hand. Squeeze the vanilla pods yourself.  That is what hardware programming is like.

And today I did that.  I think it is now time for a beer.

.

What is Love

2005-11-09T12:07:00.001-08:00

I met my wife in Grade 9. She sat in front of me during English class. We conversed on occasion, the usual Gr. 9 stuff I am sure, can I borrow a pencil, what was your mark on the last assignment. Blah, blah, blah. Fate ensured that we saw each other on and off over the course of that first year. She sat behind me in math class, I no longer remember if it was Gr. 9 or 10.

Sometime in that first year she reached out and grabbed my heart firmly with her eyes and took possession of it. It would take me 5 more years to convince her that she did indeed have my heart and that it was a worthy object to hold. During the course of 5 years of high school education we moved through many phases in our relationship. I can recall countless episodes of my own puppy love. I can also recollect moments of deep respect, annoyance, anger and lust. Throughout those 5 years, for the most part, we remained good friends.

This February 6th I will have the distinct honour and privilege of having spent more of my life in a relationship with my wife than without. Feb 6th will mark the 18th anniversary of us being together as a couple (not married).

18 years we have been together, ½ of my lifetime. That is a big number. I am not sure if I truly understand the scope of that.

And after 18 years I can tell you that I still love her. I can write those words without flinching or pausing. The real question is what does it really mean to say/write/type those 3 little words.

We live busy lives, we both have professional careers, we are raising 3 sons, the boys are at an age where we are investing serious amounts of time into their activities (swimming, hockey, soccer, play group). We are also trying to balance individual time for each of us, with each of our children. Add on top of that cooking, cleaning, laundry and life maintenance. We each look for our own down time at the end of a given day. At the end of this, there is not much time left at the end of a day\week\month for “us”.

How does love survive these busy years, where the royal “us” is given the very lowest priority?

As part of trying to find time with each other we have cross-over interests. I am not much of a TV guy, and when I do watch TV, it is generally the “egg-head” channels watching specials on the Rise and Fall of the Byzantium Empire. My wife’s choices are either focused around the Home and Garden shows or some sitcoms. But to spend time with her last season I booked one night a week to watch the Amazing Race. She, on the other hand, has stepped into my world and will play World of Warcraft with me.

Last night was gaming night, we hook up with another married couple and a work friend to roam the Azeroth landscape righting wrongs and defeating evils. I do not recall hat lead to it, or what it was that we said, but at one point in the evening a comment was made. My wife and I both responded at the exact same time, with the exact same words in the exact same cadence. This was no monosyllabic grunt, but a full response to something that had been said. After we said it there was a brief pause and then laughter. The other married guy (only 2 years or so married) responded in a joking manner something to the effect “that was really weird, you guys have been around each other way to long”. My gut response to his comment; “no that wasn’t weird, that was love”.

So what is love? Sitting in a silent room together in perfect comfort without the need to force a conversation. Watching the patterns of ups and downs in your life perfectly mirrored to your spouse. To being able to respond in unison with the same answer, the same cadence and knowing that answer is right.

To be a Gamer

2005-11-08T12:22:00.000-08:00

I mentioned in the “all about me part of this blog” that I am a gamer. To those who “game”, or to those who are “gamers”, they already know what I mean. However, there is a large portion of the population that does not recognize the term or recognize it in a negative light. What does it mean to be a “gamer”.

Well in a nutshell it means that I am a 35+ year-old married man and parent of 3 that plays video games. Not just plays them, but also has video games as a hobby.

There has been a lot of press over the last couple of years about the evils of video games. Video games are violent, video games are lulling the minds of our youth, and video games are police killer/psycho training simulators. If you believe the likes of Miami lawyer Jack Thompson, video games are the root of all evil in North America today. And at the root of that evil are the gamers.

Well you know what, I don’t buy it. In fact the same type of people who oppressed rock music in the 50’s or the literary works of Judy Bloom and JD Salinger are the ones fighting against today’s video games. I agree, there are some games that are exceptions. The Postal series, Grand Theft Auto and Vietnam all take violence over the edge. I have issues with these games, just like I have issues with extremely violent movies that show violence for no other reason than glorification of it.

But enough about that, I am going to be revisiting this topic a lot. The real reason of today’s post was to introduce Penny Arcade. Penny Arcade (PA) is a tri-weekly web comic that talks about gaming and other popular culture. This comic is not for everyone, the humour can often be juvenile and crass, and the site often has sexual innuendo and profanity. Not the type of site for every person out there. Me, I think they are quiet often very, very funny. At the bottom of the PA are the 2 founders and creators of the site, Gabe and Tycho. These guys are gamers; they also vocally defend the gaming pop-culture. Back a couple of years ago they were getting very tired of the negative press floating around about gamers and decided to do something about it. Living in Seattle they decided to raise some money and toys for the local Children’s Hospital. Items that the kids could use to help make the time spent in the hospital more enjoyable. Books, videos crayons, colouring books, and yes video games.

I remember back in 2003 when they started, a couple of posts about it on the website, the occasional plea to ask for a donation. I also remember when the first donations started to arrive from Amazon. What was expected to be several parcels turned out to be several truck loads. What was intended to be stored in a garage turned out to fill that garage floor to ceiling and top to bottom. Gabe and Tycho took photographs, and those pictures were amazing top me. I watched the progress day to day, and every day I was proud to be a part of this grass roots charity. Over all that first year, which was supposed to raise enough money for a couple of consoles and games raised over 250,000 in donations and toys.

Last year Gabe and Tycho expanded to 4 hospitals and tried again. Last year they anticipated a better response and acquired warehouse space for storage. Last year the ran out of space 3 times and had to move to a larger location for storage. Last year they raised close to1,000,000 dollars in toys and donations.

This year they are going worldwide. Children’s hospitals in Canada and Great Britain are now sponsored.

Do me a favour and check out the site, take 5 minutes to read the page and see what they are doing. http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

The Price of Marriage

2005-11-07T07:21:00.000-08:00

“They” say that everything has a price. To be honest I believe that. At the very bottom level you pay a price for everything you want to do in life. You want that donut; pay the price on weight gain, or exercise. You want that new book from Chapters; something else does not get bought. Some things have very small prices; prices so trivial that the cost is negligible, others have such enormous costs associated with them that the straddle our backs for a great portion of our lives.

Marriage has a price. It is perhaps the penultimate example of give and take, or paying the price for what you want. Last Friday night my wife paid a terrible price for 17 years of commitment to our relationship. I vaguely recall somewhere in the back of my mind a couple of things we may have agreed to on our wedding day: through thick and thin, in good times and in bad. As I alluded to earlier, there is always a cost.

Friday night my wife booked a pedicure with a neighborhood friend. For over 3 hours the sipped wine, nibbled crackers and chatted, while having their feet washed, oiled, groomed and pampered. Being the most excellent husband I am I took the 3 boys out for the evening. I got lucky and my eldest was invited to a friend’s house. The younger 2 and myself hit the local mall to browse through the selection of Thomas the Tank Engine tracks.

Over the course of the night as we were wandering the boys mentioned they were thirsty. Since it was dad night I decided to treat them to one of those yogurty, fruit smoothie type drinks. We were close to Jooster Buice(name changed to protect the company), a store that specializes in nutritional drinks and the like. I picked up 2 small berry concoctions.

As we lounged around on some chairs in the mall having our drinks I sampled from each of the boys cups. Sip here, sip there… All in all I probably drank at least 1 full cup of berry smoothie stuff.

After we finished the drinks we packed up and headed home. Within 15 minutes my stomach was bothering me. I have had the feeling before, same sort of feeling if I drink apple juice first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. I got home and did the bedtime routine, got all three boys teeth brushed, pj’d, pee’d, storied and tucked in. All while the foot worship continued down stairs.

By now my stomach was continuing to bother me, It had moved past pain to an almost nauseas state. This was a good hour after I had consumed the drink, so any acid like effects should have passed. I grabbed a glass of milk and some tums and went to chat with the ladies.

Originally it had been my intent to trade the foot worship Friday time for a bit of husband snuggle time(like I said, everything has a price), but by 9:30/10:00 things were not getting any better so I decided to leave the feet queens alone and head upstairs to bed. I was too uncomfortable to sleep, so I flicked on the TV and lay suffering.

Then the gurgling started. Bubbling, churning, boiling sounds coming from my nether regions. The discomfort increased proportionality to the sounds my digestive track was making. The pressure increased as the time passed. Now for the benefit of any readers with a delicate constitution I am now going to paraphrase what happened next.

The first few decompressions were immense, Mount St Helens volume eruptions. I was hoping that they were going to provide relief, but they were only foreshadowing.

By 11:00 the situation was dire and I had moved from the comfort of the bed, into the bathroom, traces of my presence still lingering in the air of the bedroom.

11:30 and the company had left and my wife wandered upstairs. I was trying to find a fetal position that I could maintain while perched on the toilet. A thin sheen of sweat covering all my skin. She walked into the bedroom and I think she may have retched a little.

She opened the window, offered me comfort through the closed door and bless her soul, actually crawled into bed.

12:00 pm. I have worn a trail in the carpet moving from the bed to the bathroom every 2-3 minutes. My beloved spouse having giggled her way through my discomfort finally bails on me, as I am making too much noise and keeping her awake. Too much noise; put the pieces together on that one.

Somewhere between 12:00 and 1:00 am the demons leave and I stumble into sleep.

Interesting point… Neither of the 2 younger boys showed the slightest reaction to the drinks at all… nothing, nada, zip.

Prices, everything has a price and I imagine my spouse having lived through a portion of that night some days wonders if the price may be too high.

The First Dance

2005-11-04T12:43:00.000-08:00

The introductory post: I think every blog I have been to has one of these. What is it about blogs that makes a person feel the need to stand up here and justify who they are and why they are writing to an anonymous audience.

So here I am starting what I swore I would never do. Not that I recall actually swearing off doing this, but my constant mocking of my blogging friends is close enough to a line drawn in the sand that I feel like I should have sworn off it.

For now this blog will remain anonymous, by that I mean I am not going to tell any of my friends or colleagues or family about it. This is an experiment, a collection of my thoughts, both dealing with my life as a husband (12+ years married, 18+ years together), my life as a father (3 boys aged 7, 4 and 2 ), a software developer, an avid gamer and on occasion an attempt at some creative writing.

Who knows how long this is going to go on for.