Category: my ramblings

I’ve gotten over 50 comment spams in the last two hours. Therefore I’ve intentionally broken comment posting for now.

Yay me! I’m 24 today.

Yesterday my parents and Sandy and I went out for dinner. Unfortunately last night Sandy woke up with food poisoning 🙁 I wasn’t feeling too hot either, plus I’ve gotten only 4 hours of sleep the last few nights because of Oliver hogging my side of the bed. So today I was forced to work from home! On my birthday! I hope they didn’t get a cake 🙁

Besides caring for Oliver, we did do some other stuff this weekend:

• On Friday we went to the last Erin Smith Band show for… a long time! Mike, their drummer, is off to BC for a while, so the band is going on an official hiatus. Nia at C’est What was packed and most of the people were friends of the band it seemed. They had tons of special guests on stage and the show was amazing, just awesome. It was also sad as everyone’s going to miss the band’s amazing energy and talent.
• On Sunday Sandy’s folks delivered the rest of our wedding presents – specifically, the ones that wouldn’t fit in our car:
  • A backyard bench swing
  • A wooden bench
  • A fountain for the backyard

  They also delivered my birthday present, a few days early, but I don’t mind. I knew what it was going to be anyways: a brand spankin’ new ViewSonic Pro Series P95f+ monitor! Mmmm…. screen real estate. Thanks to Sandy, Brian, Jane, Mike, Nicole, and Raven!

We survived two weeks in the Dominican, and we got back yesterday afternoon. There’s lots to do and today we’re opening wedding presents and stuff… more later and photos soon.

Boy, time flies and I don’t write anything here!

We painted another room, the downstairs bathroom. It took many coats of paint for some reason. I am not painting this room again.

Our front lawn is all done and sodded! The sod is doing good in most places and a few spots have been filled in with grass seed. I’ll have to cut it this weekend finally, it should be alright.

We have TV! Yipee! Thank you satellite guy! Turns out he would have put it on the roof anyways, so all that time spent up there by Mike and I was not a lost cause after all. And our dish wasn’t faulty either.

Sandy’s eyes are doing great! The first few days were a bit rough, wearing those wrap-around sunglasses and putting drops in every hour. She’s recovering great now and loves her eyes.

               [Homer searches under the couch for a peanut]
        Homer: Hmm...ow, pointy!
               Eww, slimy.
               Oh, moving!
               Ah-ha!  [looks, then says remorsefully] Oh, twenty
               dollars...I wanted a peanut!
Homer's brain: Twenty dollars can buy many peanuts!
        Homer: Explain how.
Homer's brain: Money can be exchanged for good and services.
-- The voice of reason, "Boy Scoutz 'N the Hood", The Simpsons

We have moved. It was much more difficult than the last time. For one, our house’s former inhabitants were extremely high-strung crazy people who seem to have gotten coffee stains… everywhere. Second of all they weren’t our of the house in time and threatened us with lawsuits because they blamed us. But they were only two hours late, luckily.

So after over 96 hours of moving and unpacking we are mostly unpacked. It looks a bit bare because we’re not putting anything up on the walls until we patch and paint them.

I’ve also had a fun (hah!) time installing our StarChoice system. First of all let me say that StarChoice are bastards when it comes to providing help for self-installers. There is none. I hate them. Also I don’t have a handheld signal finder which apparently makes it much easier to do. Today I’ll be picking one up and making another trip to the dish……. fun.

Our neighbourhood is really nice! Most of our neighbours are under-30ish couples starting families. We’re already planning a new front garden design with our neighbour to replace the ugly stuff the previous owner did. All in all I don’t think I will ever be bored again.

Today we sign the papers for our new house.

Tomorrow we take posession and start moving. I am so damn stoked. I know Sandy is too but she’s too tired from packing to show it 🙂

What else has been happening?

• We are entering box hell – that time before we move when we try to do as much pre-packing as possible. You can tell it’s getting time to move because photos and pictures start to come off the walls, and then when we talk it sounds like we’re living in a barrel. It’s only three weeks until we take possession of our house.
• Maptuit (where I work) is plugging along. Check out our new corporate website with lots of juicy press releases and technology demos.
• Sandy got into York University for teacher’s college, as you may have noticed. This is the news we’ve been waiting for for months now. It’s a huge relief to know that she’s going to school in Ontario.
• As a result, we’re seriously looking at buying Sandy a notebook computer. Her requirements are “as light as possible and good battery life” for normal Office / Web browsing use. My requirements are “must last at least three years without failing” as I’ve seen so, so many notebooks become doorstops over the years. Also it must be under $2000. So far I’ve looked at the Sony VAIO 505 series, Apple iBooks, and some IBMs that were in their clearance center. Mmmm… IBMs are looking good actually.

For those of you who are keeping track, yesterday Mike’s girlfriend gave birth to a healthy baby girl. Raven Rochelle Kamenka came into this world weighing 9 pounds and 15 ounces. We went to see them yesterday evening at the hospital: everyone was doing A-OK.

Some otherworldly force doesn’t want us to see the movie Hidalgo. Thrice we have planned to see it and thrice we have been denied by ourselves or others.

Last night was a prime example, as our delivery from Grocery Gateway was over an hour late. For no real good reason from what I can tell… the first CSR on the phone said that the driver was “held up” by someone on his route. Also, they had no idea that the driver was late until I called, which was right at the end of the delivery window (8pm). So, he wasn’t going to let them know he was late? It would have been a good thing to do.

Finally the driver showed up an hour and a half after the end of the window. He said he was ‘busy’. They credited us for a free delivery next time… but in the meantime I spend a lot of time waiting for someone who wasn’t going to show up. I had to go to the post office (didn’t happen) and we were going to go to the movies, and both of those got screwed up.