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November 3, 2007 - 11:02 PM  Have you seen Blair's beard lately? His goal was to grow it out so that it would match the hat he's wearing in the picture and boy - does it suit him well! Too funny. Strange also how his hair is brown but his beard (not sure if it's clearly defined in the image from my camera phone) is orange! Genetics I guess. With me putting in a full day of overtime tomorrow, this became a one-day weekend. I dropped my bike off at the shop to begin the repair process from those kids who tipped it over, and spent the afternoon at my parents' house. We vacuumed out the furnace ducts, did the fall startup of their furnace (they shut it right down in the summer) and this evening Blair came over to catch up on all the episodes of Heroes he's missed. (Actually, I had missed the last four as well, so it was just as new to me as it was to him.)  The first fire in the furnace of '07. Always loved fire. Sometimes I would take the cover off the furnace in my house and sit by it, pretending I was warming my hands on a gigantic bonfire instead of a natural gas induced indoor flame... sigh    Some pictures of yours' truly... why not? It's my web site after all... :P hehe So in case you noticed the new countdown at the top right-hand corner and were mislead by it's obvious double-meaning... No, I am not going on a Mission Trip as such, but rather a Trip to Mission in however number of days it shows up there. Today it reads 20, but that will likely change as the days go on. Tickets are bought, plans have been put into motion, now it's just a big game of wait and want. To help alleviate the longing however, Kristi and I have spent countless hours on the phone. Such activity is in fact calling out to me right now, and as much fun as it is writing on my web site, it is much more enjoyable talking to her. I'm sure you will understand... November 7, 2007 - 10:05 PM  I was working in Cochrane today, so naturally on my way home I popped by Aunty Becky's house to see if I could pick up her pictures for Grandma's 90th birthday party coming up very soon. She had a plethora of printed pictures to paruse, and so we picked out many memory-filled glimpses of the past, with some pictures even going back to an era where Grandma might have been celebrating her 5th birthday instead of her 90th. In one of the pictures my aunt was a mere teenager, and upon discovering this image she casually remarked "This was before we'd met you." Very true, obviously. I hadn't met any of my family yet! There seems to be a common topic of conversation that is constantly being brought up — particularly by members of my immediate and extended families. Can you guess what that might be? Of course it is the matter of my love life. What can I say about this? Every night we talk on the phone for hours on end and the more I hear her voice the more I long for the same. Kristi has always had a beautiful voice. When I first called her in BC to firm up the plans of our reunion at Jacquie's wedding, I was blown away by how much [the same] she sounded as I remembered her sounding. Had she simply called me out of the blue one day ap re poe of nothing, I would have recognized her voice immediately without hesitation. It is sweet and expressive and it is to the ears what delicious is to the tongue. So what is the plan from here? Well, I'm flying out to visit her and the kids in a few weeks and we're giong to go see Disney's Princesses on Ice. After that, the next trip will likely be me heading west again at Christmas. More news as it happens...  November 11, 2007 - 10:21 AM  Yesterday was a huge yard cleanup day for me. Not only did I get all the leaves raked and burned, but I also got a lot of the sod moved to one big pile and even finished the trench under the poured slab that makes up our back sidewalk. It was quite a task, especially the leaf-raking, and during that process something happened to me that I would have never expected: I was raking the leaves in the front yard into piles to be picked up. I brought the wheelbarrow over and would pull it up beside a leaf pile so it would be easy to load the leaves into it. I grabbed a big pile of leaves and about half way between the pile and the 'barrow, something in the leaf pile stung my pinky finger! And how! I couldn't believe how much that hurt! Of course, it's right on the fingerprint pad where all the nerve endings are, so that couldn't have helped with the 'sensation', but at one point I could almost swear I could feel something crawling around in my finger! Very painful. I did see a very groggy hornet in the pile earlier, but I'd removed him with the rake and forced an early hibernation on him if you know what I mean. But I'm guessing if there was one, there may have been more and it just so happened that one of the others got me. Still - last thing I would have expected picking up a pile of leaves!    Today is the inside cleanup day, and I'm preparing to take a load of stuff to the recyclers and to the dump. There is just so much stuff around here that I never use and will probably never be able to, which just takes up space and makes it that much harder to clean. So I'm taking the plunge and decided to just get rid of everything I don't use regularly. This includes the matress Maddy's playing on below, some couches and chairs, lots of electronic *junk*, some computers and other miscelaneous accumulations. Got to start thinking about the future, and all that it entails.     November 14, 2007 - 9:01 PM  This weekend is my grandma's 90th birthday, and to celebrate it our entire extended family is getting together for a big birthday party. For my part, I am putting together a DVD of pictures from her life. Early childhood pictures through to present day with all the grandchildren and inlaws. Needless to say, I don't have time for much else of anything these days! (So don't expect any updates on this page until at least Sunday. Sorry.) November 17, 2007 - 9:10 AM  9:00 AM on the day it's due, Velma: The First 90 Years DVD is finally finished. The first disc was completed last night but after watching it on a TV screen I decided to make a few last minute changes to fix some minor issues. I set the computer a'processing about 3:30 this morning and went to bed while it rendered. After burning a second copy this morning, I am satisfied with the result this time. Now it's breakfast, shower, pack up some equipment to bring and head out for the birthday party. For the curious, you can download the original file here although I will warn you - it's 683 Megs! I should have enough copies burned to bring with me for all the families. If not, it's easy to fire off some more. All the hard stuff is done. On another note, today puts us inside the one week mark for my visit to Mission, for those who are curious. I have to say, this countdown has seemed longer than any other I've endured, even the countdown to Christmas when I was a little kid! I almost bought one of those advent calendars where you get a chocolate every day of the countdown to commemorate the traditional fattening that occurs during the holiday. Hard to believe we're half-way through November already! Actually this Christmas is lining up to be better than any others in that I'll be able to spend part of it with my family here and then a good long stretch of it with Kristi! One of these days I'm going to have to get a hold of Marshall and thank him for giving her my email address. Ultimately, if it hadn't been for Marshall, none of this would have happened. Another interesting little tid-bit of information, last night I noticed it was exceedingly dry in here so I filled up my humidifier and set it to work. This would have been around 11:00 or so. By the time I woke up this morning, it had emptied it's entire tank into the air! SOOO dry here today. Someday I'd like to upgrade the furnace in this house and at the same time, have a whole-house humidifier installed. It really makes a huge difference! Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails. - Proverbs 19:21 November 17, 2007 - 11:18 PM Happy 90th Birthday, Grandma  I will sleep excellently tonight. Grandma's birthday celebration was a total success, everything came together and everyone had a truly memorable time. The video I've spent every spare moment over the last week on was very well received, and Grandma was positively glowing the entire evening. I can only hope that if I live to 90, my 90th birthday will be as joyous an occasion as tonight's.  November 23, 2007 - 5:56 PM The countdown has finally reached 0. Tonight I fly out to Mission to spend a weekend with the wife and kids. I picked up three presents for the birthday girl tonight on my way home from work, and my excitement for the weekend continues to build even though I know it will be a pretty short stay. I've got some packing to do, as well as a bit of side-job stuff to take care of before I take off, but I had a whole schwack of pictures to post and haven't yet had the time for it so here they are, in (almost) no particular order.  This was the fortune in today's Jones' Cream Soda bottle. Rather appropriate, if I do say so myself.  Yesterday's sunset was gorgeous, but also quite interesting was the presence and brightness of the moon fairly high in the sky during the drive home. I whipped out my camera and snapped off a couple of pictures. Why not?  Yours truly in front of some circuit boards. Can we say geek?  This is a cross view of a switch bank I'm building at the shop for a training board project. The board is set up with all the components you'd find in a typical access control environment, and by turning these switches on, the trainer can induce various faults into the system. Students then have to try to troubleshoot and find out what the problem is.  The other day I was downtown in an office building and noticed there was a turtle in the building's entrance pool. Picture-worthy, I thought.  My Doe Doe. Taken at Grandma's 90th Birthday last weekend. I love my dad.  Laughing Mark. Not at all unusual, as I've pointed out before it's hard to take a picture of Mark when he isn't smiling or laughing...  Blair getting some much-needed sugar at the birthday party. It WAS good icing though...  At Grandma's 90th birthday there were 90 cupcakes adorned with candles atop each which we lit simultaneously to commemorate the 90 years she has been alive.  Taken on the way out to Three Hills last weekend, a prairie sky with some dark clouds on the horizon.  The first copy of my DVD of pictures for the birthday, the product of nearly 30 hours of work.  Me and Blair while he still had his beard  Red Beard  Farmer Blair  Mr. Scruff  "Over My Dead Body!"  Standing Guard November 26, 2007 - 9:54 PM Must ... Get ... Sleep ... But first, some pictures from my weekend. It went by fast, but we still seemed to fit a lot in.                           In other news, Custom Linen / G&K Services burned down today. It was no surprise that it happened, but what was surprising was where the fire seemed to have started. I figured it would have been in the back where the boilers and dryers are, but from where the firemen knocked the roof and walls down to get at some hot spots, it was literally on the other side of the building. It will be interesting to see what is determined to be the cause of the fire that started this morning at about 3:30 and was still smouldering at 10:00.       November 28, 2007 - 10:28 PM On my way home from work this afternoon I popped into Safeway to pick up a few things I knew I was either out of or nearly. My list was pretty short, and I had quickly rounded up most of the items I required when I arrived at Toilet Bowl Cleaner. In the household cleaners' section at Safeway there is a modest variety of toilet bowl cleaning products available for you to purchase. This did not surprise me. What was surprising was not that there was variety, brand selection, etc. - but that there were choices among 'scents' for your toilet bowl cleanser! I thought, huh??? I cannot recall ever going to someone's house and commenting on how fragrant their toilet bowl is. (They may have commented on it's aroma after my visit...) And never have I thought to myself, Boy, I sure wish my toilet smelled like spring waterfalls... Have we come to the point where there is simply too much choice in the market? Are there not enough different product offerings that we have to give the consumer choice of scent in a product that under no circumstances should be inhaled? I was astonished and amused by this thought. What a world we live in indeed. Incidently, the next time you're over, be sure to comment on the aroma of spring waterfalls wafting out my bowl... BACK to Journal Index |