Category Archives: Narrative

Lyn took the kids to the inlaws this weekend, they left today. I’m staying here to do a bunch of work over the weekend (at the day job) as well as ’round the house.

On the way home from work today I stopped at the local home improvement enormo-plex and got a few things I needed to put in the gates on the garden as well as the little stone walkway I’m planning.

Got home with full intentions of getting started. Alas, ’twas raining buckets. Went inside to asses my options. Lyn left a list of chores – some of which could be done inside. Was a pretty f’ing long list considering I was supposed to work the DAY gig all weekend. Umph.

Since I could, I popped my ‘Rush in Rio’ dvd into the tv for some background while I made a plan. Figured I’d make some dinner and see what develops. The clouds might blow over. Was pacing around the house, stealing glances at the video as I fermented. Sat down for a sec on the coffee table, to catch some action. I’d forgotten how badass those guys are…

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Well, about 2 hours and a shitload of air drumming later, here I am. It’s dark outside now and today’s Tour stage has started on OLN. Somehow, I’ve managed to have a few very cold, VERY TASTY beers and I’m a bit hungry having not had dinner. There’s nary a sound in the house with the exception of Al and Bob on the tv and North snoring. Did I mention these beers were REALLY tasty, and for that matter, really cold?

Sigh.

Looks like tomorrow’s going to be a big day.

So we’ve got unwanted houseguests now. We’ve got mieces. Mice. Yeah, eating up the snackables in the cupboards and the birdseed in the garage. So this weekend job one was to get to the store (Walmart, for cryin’ out loud, I feel shame) and load up on Tupperwares and plastic bins to keep all our food in. I’ve enlisted some ‘special food’ (that’s what I tell the kids) that the mice eat and it ‘makes them go outside’. I didn’t tell the kids that they go outside to kick the bucket. After all, they’ve named the mouse ‘Angelina Ballerina’ after the mouse-based cartoon and once you name something…it’s all over.

So up here in Canada the 1st of July is ‘Canada Day’ which equates to the Fourth of July in the US. We took the kids into town to see the fireworks. In good Canadian tradition, I bought ’em each a two-four and sent ’em down by the river to check ’em out – ‘cept for Bubba of course – he’s too young for that yet. They showed up fine the next morning, no worse for wear and said they’d made alot of new Canadian friends. Mission, accomplished. Happy 4th to all my Stateside readers.

The garden is in now. everything planted. Should be ready to harvest mid November. Whoops. Our fence finally showed up from the ‘Good Ole Boy Depot’ and now I have to put that up lickity split before the critters eat what little veggies we managed to get in the ground. I’m pretty much screwed though, at this rate, if they don’t eat it in the garden, it appears they’re gonna get it once it’s in the house (see the entry on mice, above).

A note about web browsers…
…and how much they suck. I’ve spent alot of time tweaking this thing (as my frequent visitors can attest, probably with much frustration) and had made all efforts to make it ‘look pretty’ in both Safari(mac) and Exploder(PC) even though I loathe PCs. Well the other day, I downloaded Firefox on my Mac to check a freelance project and thought, “Hey, I’ll check out how the blog looks on it.” Much to my distress, it was totally hosed, with content bleeding into the sidebar and text overlapping – just a total f’ing mess. Seems that my wigetized sidebar in WordPress wasn’t playing nice with Firefox. That will only make sense to like 3 of you, if that, but it pissed me off, none-the-less. I’ve fixed it for now and I think I’m just going to go backwards and attempt to make things ridiculously simple so this thing plays nice on whatever you’re viewing it with. Feedback is always welcome if things look screwy on your end – let me know. I live in a vacuum here people – throw me a bone.

Rode the fixie into work today. Nice. I’d forgotten what that was like. Funny, it was around 9 (48F) degrees this morning, but it was getting sunny and I knew from the weatherchannel that it was going to warm up today so I didn’t hesitate to wear shorts on the bike and just throw on a long sleeve wooly. I had to laugh cause coming out of winter (when it’s still dark at departure and you know it’s going to be cold all day) my steadfast rule was no shorts under 10 (50F) degrees, so I’d probably have worn tights. All a matter of perspective I guess. Weather and seasons sure can mess with your head though.

I’m gonna try and update this thing more often, even when I’m beat, so you get what you get.

it’s Sunday night and I’ve spent the whole weekend in the backyard (good) up until when I came in a few hours ago to do some freelance (work on some lame-o website – bad). So, ‘can I kick it? Yes I can.

I’ve spent the whole weekend on ‘projects’. Those of you who own a home will know what I speak of. The endless list of shit that needs to get done. It’s an ongoing, ever growing list that is constantly in a state of upheaval due to the shuffling of the order of the items on it.

It’s a juggling act really. The items are continuously sorted and resorted due to any of a number of variables that may include, but are not limited to, finances available, severity of need (i.e. is there eminent danger if the item is not done in the next 2 hours), weather conditions, availability of materials and/or manual labourers for assistance, the mood of the list sorter, etc. etc.

This weekend we got our garden planted (and only a month late!) though we are still waiting (over a month now!) for the fence to surround it to come in from the local farm supply/good ole boy/horse-stuff store. Figures. Right now there’s a bunch of rabbits and forest critters out there looking at it and although the little labels say things like ‘peas’ and ‘carrots’, all they see are a bunch of signs that say ‘BUFFET OPENING SOON, ALL YOU CAN EAT’. Where’s my damn fence?

Other weekend things. When we moved in here there was a dog kennel with a dog house that was absurdly big for any dog – it even had a porch. The kids could stand up in it. We decided it was a better playhouse for them. It was moved to the back yard and today I leveled it, built a front step, added another window and performed various other reinforcing/restoring type measures. Now all it needs is a coat of paint and a new floor (more shuffling of the list). Nothing is more frustrating than working half a day on something and STILL not being able to cross it off the f’ing list. It just hangs on. And laughs at you.

What else? Um. Cleaned the pool. Dumped chemicals in it. Tried to set up an irrigation system for the newly completed garden only to come to the conclusion that we don’t really have the water pressure here to power the two sprinklers I set up. Anyone got a jet pump and a storage tank they aren’t using? I have it set up so nice too, with those pro farm-type sprinklers – you know the ones – they go ‘csh csh csh’ and have the little arm that hits the water and spins around. I think the technical term is an ‘impulse sprinkler’. My agriculturally inclined family members should chime in here. I don’t have enough psi to get full ‘csh’ out of mine….I get more of a ‘psqt’ and they don’t really rotate….just stay in the same spot. It’s humiliating. It would appear I have SD – sprinkler dysfunction.

I need help getting my sprinklers up. Is there a drug for that?

Oh – and for the love of Pete, I’ve got more baby pictures coming – keep your shirts on…I hear you. I just can upload ’em from home.