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March 1, 2005 4:54 PM Waiting for mortgage approval... The first day of March and does it ever feel like spring! Some quick news: Bo and I have decided to buy a house, and are *at this very moment* awaiting the phone call to find out if we were approved for our mortgage or not. Excitement. Nervousness. Anticipation. Enthusiasm. Tension. This is what I am experiencing right now! Haha But it will be awesome. One way or another, we're getting a house. BUYING a house. No more paying other people's mortgages, it's time to start investing in (our) own futures! March 2, 2005 - 1:58 PM Three Weeks... Bo and I have (about) three weeks to come up with a downpayment. Henceforth, all frivilous, un-necessary expenditures shall be ceased and all non-essential currency is being put into "the fund". We looked into the possibility of going with a 0 down mortgage, but if you can get together even a 5% downpayment you save a lot of money in the end on insurance and interest. I might even have to pull the bike out early this year to start saving some gas money! Darn, eh? hahaha It's strange though, I *STILL* feel sick from time to time. Last night I worked on George's home computers for a few hours, didn't notice any stomicular trouble until the drive home, and then this morning I woke up with some E.D. Now at 2 in the afternoon I really don't feel well. This has been pushing a week and a half now. Mind you, it IS getting better, but it's definitely hanging on... The record has been broken I am glad but also a bit sad today to announce that my long-standing record for number of days without a reboot on my web server stands at 369. About 10:00 am this morning my entire neighbourhood suffered a power failure, and even the UPS couldn't outlast the two hour outage. Plus, with a move pending as well, I probably won't be able to even START working on a new record for at least another month or so, and with the record at just over a year, it could be some time before it gets broken. But that just goes to show you how reliable Linux is. The only times I have ever had to reboot any of my servers has been for hardware trouble / upgrades / replacements, or kernel updates. Otherwise, they just run forever. Try doing that with a Windows based computer! It was kind of strange though, walking into my house this afternoon and finding it almost 100% quiet. The only sounds were from cars driving by on the street, but otherwise it was errily quiet. Going downstairs into the basement I couldn't even see anything in my room because of the lack of electric lights... It's shocking how much we take electricity for granted. March 3, 2005 - 10:10 AM  Bo's Chameleon. Man I feel sick as a dog today. I actually stayed home from work which just goes to show exactly HOW sick I am... Usually I don't miss work for much at all! But this stomach bug just won't let go and although I thought it was on it's way out earlier in the week, it has since re-attacked with a vengence. I think I am going to go lie down for a bit. I can't even sit here and type. March 5, 2005 - 11:49 PM Looked at 10 houses today...  This morning Bo and I met with our realtor to look at prospective properties, and although he showed us 10 houses, really there was only one that really caught our eye. I don't want to say too much at this point because doing so might reveal just how excited I am, but let's just say that this [one house] is exactly what we are looking for. After viewing it (which was only the third listing of the 10) the rest of the houses just seemed to really pale in comparison. It's got a good sized yard (50x100), a double, heated garage, and the house itself is just FULL of potential! Bo and I agreed that if we did buy a house that we'd draw the territorial lines by floor - and not that we're going to be locking each other out or anything, but just that the downstairs would primarily be my domain and the upstairs would primarily be his domain. This house is presently laid out a lot like Grandma's old house (and how Myra's house) in Three Hills. The room sizes of what would be Aunty Susan's room and Grandma's room are a little different (Susan's room would be bigger, Grandma's room would be smaller) but the living / dining room layout are the same, as is the kitchen. One other little difference is that behind the upstairs bathroom there is a little two-piece bathroom off the master bedroom (Grandpa's  room) As for the basement, I would pretty much have to tear out all most or all of the existing walls, but it is a HUGE space. AND, there is a corner, stone fireplace in the basement - which would help cut our winter gas bills down while providing me with much enjoyment... It has a newer hot water heater and the furnace "looks" to be in decent shape but we will have a house inspection done before any purchase would take place to verify all these things. The double garage is just that, a large, double garage with a furnace. Bo and I would both be able to park our vehicles there and there is actually a PERFECT spot in the back yard to store my Seadoo! It's out of the way and not really good for much else, so keeping a personal watercraft there is an ideal use of the space. The house and the garage are both fixerruppers, but again that is EXACTLY what we were looking for. I am excited about this, Bo is excited, and I think we are going to start the ball rolling towards purchasing this property. There's no way I'm sleeping tonight, I am just far too excited! March 9, 2005 - 10:16 AM When one door closes, another one opens... It turns out that the first house we were very interested in had actually *just* been sold before we had a chance to walk through it. Even if we had wanted to place an offer on the house there and then, it was already too late. Last night, however, we found another house that holds quite a bit of interest for both of us, and today we'll find out more about it and hopefully go back and have a look at it. It has a few fixxerupper qualities to it, but it's definitely livable upon possession and there are really only a few significant things Bo and I would have to do in order to make it work for us - mainly move the washer and dryer to a better location so that both of us can have access to them without disturbing the other. But otherwise it's got quite a bit of room, upstairs and down - new carpet upstairs, new linoleum downstairs, and I've got a few creative ideas for the basement... 
hehehe I hope we get it. The back yard has a very cozy feel to it, there's a secluded, pine tree'd corner with a fire pit and wooden benches, and the
garage, althoug a bit lacking with it's gravel floor and cinder-block walls, will easily house two vehicles and still have room for a workbench or
two. And another interesting feature of the garage is that it has a flat roof, onto which we could put a railing of some sort and reclaim the space
that would otherwise be lost. The back alley is paved which is also quite nice, and overall the place is very well kept. So, like I said, we will see
what happens on this one now. March 10, 2005 - 9:22 AM Cold Pepsi and Spitz If that's not a taste of summer, I don't know what is. For some reason, Sunflower Seeds always remind me of Kendra. (Hey Kendra, don't wix up your mords!) hehehe Speaking of whom, tomorrow is her birthday. I'll have to go find her and say hi. Every night for the past couple of weeks when I get home I always go to the kitchen window upstairs and look out into the back yard. Normally around that time of night there is not much to see except the light of a streetlight peering over the rear fence, but lately I've been interested soley in one small detail: The steady flash of red ... yellow ... green ... red ... yellow ... green. Anyone who's camped out at the lake and seen my campsite at night probably already knows what I am talking about - my solar powered camping light! Every winter before the ground gets too hard I stick it in the back yard so that it can keep it's charge, and then in the spring I turn it back on, providing that friendly flashing reminder that summer is near whenever I glance out the window. Yesterday I noticed it was not on, but I think it was just because the sky was more overcast and it probably didn't get a good charge. I was going to see if at noon today I could go and get my bike - I've got to go all the way to 130th Ave tonight to work on George's computers - but I was told that today we're having a noontime meeting which will involve me... So I'm not too sure what to make of that. I guess we'll see. March 12, 2005 - 10:51 PM So what did you do today? Oh, I spent the night at Bo's, went to Market Mall for breakfast, bought a house, attended Madisson's third birthday party and spent the afternoon at my parents place. Pretty standard Saturday really...  Madisson actually turned three on Wednesday, but the birthday party was pushed back to the weekend when more people could attend. The house was pretty full, and I met some people from Bo's family that I've never met before today. I didn't even KNOW Mike had a brother (besides Bo, Clayton and Dexton) and I think this was the first time I've ever met Mike's mom. I know I met at least one of his sisters before, but this may have been the first time I met the other one. It was interesting, I got to see some new family dynamics today. It's amazing how much people will say when they think no one can hear them... hehehe Ashley came over and was on her best behaviour, neither of which were big surprises... I'm pretty
sure Dexton was stoned because he had that look... Madisson got LOTS of presents and I think just about everyone
had a good time. I'm going to have to find a *nice* way to get video onto this web site. I know I've been saying that for
years but now that I actually have a real camcorder, there's a lot of stuff I could put up here. I shot some
hilarious footage of Mike and Tom today, and finally heard the WHOLE furnace calibration story! It's even better
than the parts that I had heard!Oh ya, and we bought a house too.  March 15, 2005 2:49 PM Imagine the day when ALL the work is done... Say what? What do you mean, "all the work?" As I have been busying myself with various tasks lately, this thought occured to me. In our finite world, everything that is had a beginning, and therefore must also have an end. When time began, there was work to be done, and Adam started doing it. From that point till now, there has always been 'something to do.' Some field to plant or harvest, goods to be made and sold, services to be performed, buildings and structures to be built, buildings and structures to be demolished - inventions to be invented, theories to be tested, diseases to be cured, discoveries to be made, places to explore, records to be set, records to be broken books to be written, books to be read - There has always been something to do. Imagine then, if you can stretch your mind to do so - imagine a time when everything will be completed. Everything will be done, discovered, explored, learned, invented, achieved, and recorded. Is that not almost unimaginable? Just a thought... March 19, 2005 - 1:03 AM After months of searching, tonight we finally found him.  For months now, Bo and I have been trying to get a hold of David Gavin. Since his stay in the hospital last summer, none of us had heard from him. Bo would sometimes call his dad but David never spent any time at home, and most often his dad could only tell us that David was staying at the Drop In Centre and frequenting Internet Cafe's. So finally, Bo and I decided that Friday (last night) we would go out and find David Gavin, wherever he might be. His dad told Bo one of the Cafe's he spent the majority of his online time at, so we thought we would start there and even work our way down to the Drop In Centre if necessary. We found the cafe, just behind the Brick on 16th ave, and inquired of the Oriental owner if he knew David. Although the fellow didn't seem to speak English very well, when we began to describe him, he motioned with his hand to indicate a beard, so it sounded like we were at least on the right track. He said he was expecting Gavin to show up sometime that night but didn't know when because he had only left earlier that morning. We thanked him and got back into Bo's van, deciding to drive downtown next and see if we couldn't find him at the Drop In Centre. (I don't know if it's re or er on Center/re. Probably re) As we were heading down Center Street, I spotted Gavin standing in the entrance to a Chinatown mall, talking to another street person. Although I excitedly pointed him out to Bo, Bo didn't see who it was I was referring to but we pulled in anyways and I jumped out of the van while Bo went to park. There was 6 or 8 people standing in the heated mall entrance, probably waiting for a bus so I stepped inside as well and stood beside David who was engaged in conversation with this other fellow who was showing David all his stab holes in his jacket from fights he had been in. David turned around momentarily and looked at me, then he got that David Gavin smirk on his face and said, "Oh. Uh, you guys can stop stalking me now..." I told him we had been trying to get a hold of him for quite some time and was glad to finally have caught him. A few seconds later Bo walked up to the shelter as well and we had our little reunion. David introduced us to his friend "Mouse", and as the bus was pulling up, everyone began to vacate the vestibule. When we invited Dave out for some drinks and a meal, he did not hesitate very long and we drove him up to Juliet's Castle on 16th Ave there and sat down with him. Over the next hour or two, we learned a lot about our friend, what he's been up to, where he spends his time, where he gets his food from. He looked considerably better than the last time we had seen him, his hair was cut and his beard was trimmed. We shared quite a few laughs and stories, and Bo and I mused afterwards that neither of us could survive the life David lives... Although his dad and step-mom have left their house open to him, he refuses the invite and continues to live on the streets. Some of his hair close to his ears has already began to turn grey, and you could tell that he was not coping well with the cold. But he seems to have his 'spots' that keep him out of the winter elements for the most part. He mentioned doing a couple of short term jobs through a temp agency, but it sounds like most of his income comes from busking. Still though, he looked like he had a good winter jacket, new looking gloves and a toque. About 11:00 he asked if we would drop him off at his Cafe, so we paid our bill and left the restaurant. We dropped him off at the Internet Cafe and said goodnight. Later on that evening we added him to our MSN lists and chatted with him some more. Good ol' Gav Man loves his computers... And now you know, the rest of the story. March 20, 2005 - 11:20 PM I've got candy in my heels tonight! Allright, has anyone out there NOT seen Napoleon Dynamite yet??? I have found that people either love the movie or they hate it - there's no inbetween on this one. Actually I was quite surprised the other night, I was at George's house (my boss at work) running some network cable through his house, repairing his furnace, and replacing a cracked drain valve in one of his hot water tanks, and as I was working away HE asked me if I had seen Napoleon Dynamite. It totally caught me off guard but he loved the movie, and so of course we began reminiscing our favorite parts and laughing heartily as I was cutting holes in his drywall... I must have seen it close to ten times already, and certain parts of it many more times than that... *sigh* Good times So Bo and I made a few bucks today to put towards our downpayment... We upgraded the electrical panel in this guy's garage and installed some new recepticles for him as well. Every bit will help and we've got a long way to go. But it is exciting none the less, and I think we can do it. Don't be surprised if you see me out pedalling to work for the next few weeks and eating KD though... hahaha It's a lot of fun though, and it will be TOTALLY worth it. I sat down with my mom tonight and we did up some of the finances, and would you know it, when you factor in the cost of the mortgage payments, utilities and property taxes, (and also considering my motorcycle will be fully paid for the month after we move in) in the end it will only cost me $50 more / month than what my bills are right now to live in my OWN HOUSE! Is that not wild? Really, I should have done this years ago but of course, the timing of everything would not have been right. I had a blond moment today too... After our lunch at Pizza Hut, I had at least half a large order of Pizza Bread left over which I had asked the waitress to box up for me. She brought it back in a box and gave us our bill. We paid the bill, stacked our plates for her and left the restaurant. Did you catch my blond moment? I left my pizza bread on the table! Of course, I didn't realize until we were already quite a ways away... *sigh* March 23, 2005 - 11:42 PM I've got sunshine on a snowy day  You don't see that too often, it was sunny this afternoon on my way home, and yet light snow was steadily falling. Probably half of the sky was clear, but a light sprinkling of snowflakes steadily fell during my entire drive home. (Of course, that what - a whopping 10 minutes? hahaha) Talk about annoying situation, this afternoon when I got home I was going to visit some friends but I couldn't get a hold of them. When I got home, I realized I was just exhausted and so I decided to lie down. I fell into a deep sleep and probably could have slept the whole night. But here if someone hadn't left a text message on my phone and it was doing that continual, once-a-minute beep that for unknown reasons can pull me out of a coma, despite the fact that I can sleep through pretty much anything else. So after being awakened by this, I got up, put all my electronics on their chargers and crawled into bed. (I had been sleeping on the couch before.) So I'm lying there, comfortable, all snuggled in and anticipating sleep when much to my horror I'm starting to realize that instead of falling back asleep I'm actually becomming more and more awake. Pretty soon I can't even lie still, so I reluctantly got out of bed, went upstairs and made myself some hot chocolate and Bacon Bits. (I don't mix them together, don't worry.) And here I sit, laptop on lap, wishing I could fall back asleep but knowing it is not going to happen. So instead my mind does ponder many unanswerable questions, wondering about things which shall only be revealed with time. I fixed a washing machine today... Well actually I fixed it almost two weeks ago, but the maintenance staff just didn't have a chance to put it back together until today. It worked though, and by replacing a (cremated) opto-coupler on it's main circuit board, I saved our company somewhere in the range of a thousand dollars by not having to replace the whole board... I have to say and I have said it before elsewhere, that there is no greater satisfaction than that which comes from fixing things. To take (a device) that does not function correctly - or at all - and make it work again... that is sweet. So now I'm trying to figure out what I should do with the rest of this evening. It's only midnight now, and I am WIDE awake... Nobody is online to talk to. I suppose I could do some cleaning but I don't want to make any noise else I wake the people upstairs... Do you ever get yourself in one of those moods where you neither want to do anything nor wish to do nothing at the same time? I just got an email from Raedene... Those are always nice. She is getting ready to go to India for two months on a mission trip there. Kind of puts every trip I've been on into perspective and I'm sure they'll look like a vacation by comparison. My family has been rallying together to come up with furniture for my new place. I've had offers of everything from toasters to pull-out couches, dining room table sets to captain's beds so I think I should be allright in the furniture department, at least to get started. I've been looking at the financial situation however, and this next couple of weeks are going to be hard. I should set up a graph to indicate my progress on the downpayment fund. Maybe that would be a good project for tonight! I may just do that. Sweet. Dear Kama at work saw me putting strawberry jam (the kind you get from fast food restaurants 
in those little packets) on soda crackers one evening and since then she's been bringing me lunches. I hate to
accept them but with the kind of money I need to save up in the next 50 some odd days, I can't afford to eat out
anywhere either and I've all but exhausted my food stash at work. While at one time I used to feed several people
with leftovers, now I'm having to raid other people's stashes... Fortunately there is a light at the end of this
tunnel, and it will be worth it once I get moved into my own house. So is anyone looking to rent part of a basement?
haha I could use a roommate... March 26, 2005 - 1:54 AM Happy Easter I just got out of the shower. Prior to that, I just got home. You know, I strongly dislike fiberglass insulation. Tonight I had to go up into an attic to run some CAT5 cabling into a couple of bedrooms. Most of the insulation in this particular attic is the blown-in type, so for anyone not familiar with it, they basically take your normal pink batts of insulation, put them in a blender and then attach a leaf blower to it, spreading the resulting bits of chopped up insulation throughout the attic. The result is that it insulates very well, because the fiberglass traps a lot of air, which is used to retain heat. However when you have to saunter about through the stuff and dig down into it to drill holes and such, it can become quite itchy. See at least with normal batts, you're pretty much ok unless you touch the stuff. So you wear gloves and a pair of coveralls, maybe even a dust mask and you likely won't even notice the insulation. But even now, several hours after exiting the attic, my throat is still burning and I actually had a dust mask on! But anyways, I got the cabling run, it's hooked up and working so everyone was happy. There's just one more room to run CAT5 to which could yet prove to be quite a challenge. See, the house I'm working in is all finished. If it were in the framing stage, I could wire up every room in the house, bathrooms and closets included, in a couple of hours. But because every wall is closed in, drywalled, painted and finished - getting cables in behind it becomes a little more tricky. We've been pretty creative though, and used some techniques that were certainly unconventional... One such unconventional technique involved a ping pong ball, a fishing rod, and a vaccuum cleaner. It did the trick though, and that's what counts. Easter certainly did a fine job of sneaking in this year... I wouldn't have even known that we had today off had Diana not mentioned it to me last night... I'd would have just showed up at work, same as ever oblivious, to the fact that doing so was actually not required... I actually did go in to work today anyways, there was a few things I needed to do. One of which was retrofitting my office! I had a couple of ballasts in the crawlspace - I believe they came out of a Safeway meat cooler. Anyways, I had kept them for some reason and apparently they work, so I converted my 4 lamp F40 fixtures to 3 lamp FO32 fixtures and wow is it ever brighter! Those FO32's really light things up. And the color is so much nicer too, haha I was basking in nostalgia up on the ladder this afternoon wiring those things in, let me tell you! There have been a few times I've missed working at Sylvania. I never really minded the work at all, and I definitely miss the people I worked with. I've been meaning to give Pat and Al a call one of these days but you know how it goes... One distraction after another. As of last night, however - I am a few distractions shorter. Well, it's quarter after two. I celebrated my success and dryness of throat tonight with a slurpee on my way home, so now I'm wide awake of course, though feeling physically exhausted. Having consumed the wonderous delight that is a frozen carbonated beverage, my stomach too, seems to have been awakened and I believe it is requesting sustinance. See how late nights and caffine bring out the verbosity in me accompanied by my reserve of larger words? If I were on the phone right now, no doubt I'd be speaking with all sorts of strange voices and making cheeks point. Man, I showed up at work today wearing the maintenance staff standard issue coveralls, and boy did that ever cause a stir! It was kind of funny. I think I prefer wearing the coveralls instead of dressing up all fancy-like. Variety is the key, I suppose. Ok. Well I've summized my day fairly completely and now I'm either going to find something to eat or go to bed. Which shall it be? March 28, 2005 - 9:56 PM Monday...  Definitely a hot chocolate night. Ever had one of those days where you thought you'd get a whole lot done, you had a LOT of plans for the night and were full of gung-ho-ness but by the end of the night you looked back on the evening and realized you've accomplished nothing? That was pretty much my evening. But I got a few interesting images tonight... Have a look. See if you can guess what this is:  It seems pretty easy to me, but then again I know what it is. hehehe Other than that I really only took one other
interesting photo tonight... Interesting more because of what it signifies than because of the image itself, but I'll
let you be the judge. Pretty soon it will be camping season again, which is why I brought out my camping mug. You gotta have a camping mug when you go camping. This particular one works pretty well too because you can put it on the campfire and boil water in the cup itself, perfect for making soup, hot chocolate, etc. Actually, speaking of camping, it would seem that my family vacationing spot, namely the Salvation Army Campground at Pine Lake, Alberta, has closed down it's cabins for public rentals. You can still tent or RV in their field, but without those cabins there isn't much appeal now to go back there, especially since their waterfront is quite awful. It's only saving graces from our perspective are it's pool and ... well, ok - it's pool. But for all the other summer activities there are out there, facilities that can better accomodate our group and our needs must be out there - and I've volunteered to go on a campground survey- type "mission" this summer, to seek out a new family gathering spot. Pine Lake will be missed, but our reasons for returning there year after year have been largely sentimental. Now that those cabins at the SA campground are no longer available, what bit of sentimental cling we had is fast fading. So several cousins any myself shall set out once the weather becomes seasonable and 'test-camp' at various other places weekend after weekend, to see if we can't find a good spot to relocate our yearly family reunions to. March 30, 2005 - 10:04 PM It starts with a smile... He looks at her. She looks at him. They both smile sheepishly and look away, taking their smiles with them. |