Geeks 'R' Us

I was thinking of getting this for GB, but then I saw the price tag....

The joy that is home ownership

Why is it with house maintenance it just seems to keep going and going and going?

We actually have two different contractors working on the house right now. There is progress being made, but it sure is painful at times. Of the work started in May (I think), we still have the doors to replace, the windows to cap, and a floor vent to be installed in the kitchen. As long as it's done before winter I'm cool with that.

The second contractor (much more timely) created a vent for us from the basement so we can install our new dryer (more on that in a moment). He also replaced the trim around our basement back door as it was rotting, repointed the brick around our outside faucet and replaced the circa 1920 faucet (pretty cool mechanism to deal with the winter actually). Of course, when he did that I noticed that there is quite a bit of repointing necessary on that wall so now he'll be coming back before November to do that.

I probably should have blogged this earlier, but we had a bit of a situation with our clothes washer. It was a pretty cool device, if a little cranky. I however, managed to break it (sort of). We were planning to move it downstairs as we now have stairs (woo hoo, I might add) and so I was doing a little plumbing. Now, the plumbing went fine except that when I turned off the main, I did not turn off the taps into the washer (I still don't think that should strictly be required). In any case there was a bit of a shock when we first turned it on (physical shock, not electrical). This caused leak due to a pipe coming undone inside. We had that maintenanced and about three days later the thing starts smoking. Not just "oh, I smell something weird" or "is someone smoking rubber in the back yard", but rather billowy "oh, shit" smoke. Short story is it would be $500 bucks to fix and the maintenance guy said we'd probably just have more problems. So we are now the proud owners of a new washer and dryer set.

Well, after all this, what could possibly go wrong?

Like the Wind

Inspired by my sister, I've decided give biking to work a go. Lets hope this goes better than the running! I recently found out that I probably have the easiest bike to work in the city. I get on a bike path at the end of my street and get off at the end of the street I work on. It's about 10 K and mostly flat. Who can complain?

So on Saturday, GB and I went to a local bike shop and picked up a couple of new city bikes - 30% off no less. I didn't have one to begin with and GB's current one is 15 years old and weighs a tonne. So him getting one was a little treat to himself :) Plus we now have a spare for when people come to visit.

I was a little wobbly getting on the bike for test drive but after a couple of minutes, it felt great. I had forgotten how wonderful it feels! I'm looking forward to going on weekend bike rides with GB just like my family used to do when I was a kid. No pop-a-wheelies gone bad this time though - I know better!

Today I took it out to check out my route and I did what I think is about 2/3rds of the way in about 20 minutes. Looks like my bike ride to work will be a lot faster than TTC, and I'll be getting in shape to boot!

Wish me luck!

Weakness

The heat has damn near killed us this week. We finally caved on Thursday night and put the window air conditioner in. It was my first good sleep in a few days.

I've got to believe the AC's that we have are very inefficient, though. They are about 20 years old. We are going to see if we can find something more reasonable (and lighter) to replace them with.

GB's alter ego

GB is also attempting the occasional post at my personal blog. It'll probably be as rare as posts here, however. :(

Dusk Dances

We just got back from a very cool evening at Withrow Park, just up the street. Dusk Dances presented us with jazz dance, a native grass dance, a bizarre tent (as in camping) ballet performance, some interpretive abstract guitar accompanied fusion something-or-other, and a park bench children-harass-the-man-with-the-hat–becomes-love-story set to the musical stylings of an eight year old accordionist (I always love that old number).

I would highly recommend you partake if it comes your way.

Happy Birthday Sis

Hey everyone, it's my sisters birthday today. Here is a picture of her (just imagine the chain saw is actually an air hammer).

Garden Pics

So, the flickr people haven't gotten back to me yet and I found picasa much easier to use. Here is a link to the garden pics

CB's Garden

what's so great about flickr?

k, as far as I can tell, flickr sucks. I can't even create an account - just keeps erroring out and then telling me to enable cookies.
whatever.

Anyone one know the google equivalent? Probably works better.

Yay for spring!

Yes, spring has arrived chez CBGB and it's all about the garden. I've been inspecting my plants every day and there seems to have been an explosion of growth!

Crocuses have come and gone, tulips and hyacinths are in full bloom and just today I saw a fern 1.5 feet high that I swear was not there 2 days ago. Lilies, geraniums and violets are going nuts, the irises I split last year seem to be doing well, and hydrangeas, hostas and globe thistle are coming along nicely. (wow, look at all the flowers I can name!)

The icicle pansies I planted last year survived the winter and are now thriving (thanks mom!) Today they seem twice as thick as this picture below, which was taken on Monday. My neighbors must think I'm nuts because I'm always out there with my camera trying to get the artsy shot.

You can see too in the shot that the grass needs a cut, and so today I put together my handy dandy Lee Valley push mower and mowed it. Wow, that was so easy! 3 screws and we're off. It's so easy to mow with. Thanks again mom, I love it!

I'll try and figure out this "flicker" thing so I can post more garden pictures (ok, I'm slightly obsessed -but hey...)

That's why you keep your dog on a leash

So, this morning was day 5 of running. Looks like were averaging about twice a week. Slightly lower than I wanted, but we've managed to come up with a variety of colourful excuses not to run - A sore groin muscle, a chest infection paired with freezing rain, and staying up just too darn late entertaining house guests. But hey, twice a week, plus karate three times ain't half bad.

We've started running around Withrow Park instead of along the Don Valley, because we figure a residential one way street is better for our lungs than running beside a highway. Each time, as I'm running up the hill, still trying to get my second wind, I think to myself "why am I doing this?" and the answer invariables comes to me "oh ya, because all my pants are shrinking".

It is definitely hard to get out of bed in the morning to do it, but at least GB and I have each other to kick our butts into gear when the other isn't feeling quite up to it. And the truth is, I really enjoy spending that half hour in the morning with my hubby. We actually get a chance to talk and connect and feel good about ourselves together.

We stopped in the park for a three minute "Kata" break (an excellent chance to practice our karate) when a near by dog (off his leash!) decide to grab GB's glove and go for a tour with it. I'm sure he thought it was a great game, but GB was none too pleased.

No running tomorrow because it's a Karate night tonight. Yippee! or should I say "aw nuts!"

Running? Me?

So, GB and I have made a resolution of sorts. We are going to start running in the mornings. (except mornings after karate nights because we can't go to bed early - as JenZ points out, it's good incentive to go to Karate!) Crazy? Yes - but I'm advertizing this so all you can kick my butt if I quit.

This morning we got up before the crack of dawn, which wasn't too hard since we were jetlagged anyway (GB was up at 4:30 and I was up at 6:00). Got dressed, and after a quick glass of orange juice we were out the door with our pampered chef all purpose timer set to 15 minutes (one way of course). Started with a brisk walk to the ravine, then a light (very light!) jog over the bridge, down the stairs and to the next bridge. That took 15 minutes, so we turned around, 3 minutes of walking back to the stairs, running up the stairs, over the bridge, up the hill (which GB said we would walk up, but them made me jog up!) and back down the street. Followed by 3 more minutes walking to cool down.

It actually wasn't so bad! We'll see how hard it is next time though. Apparently the goal is to do 25 of the 30 minutes at a running speed. But really, it's the 6:15 wakup call that I'm most worried about.

Dobri Den from Praha

Hi all,
this is my third attempt to post - hopefully I won't run out of time this time.

We are having a great time in Prague. We have been walking walking walking and enjoying the beautiful weather and architecture of the city. We spent an amaziing 2 days touring Prague castle, and have spend the rest of the time on various walking tours throughout the city, with pleanty of time to stop for a bear or wine on an outdoor patio or two.

Our un-vetted, un-edited pictures are here if you want a look.

oh, where were these 4 years ago?

Perfect.


http://www.diamondvues.com/2007/02/binary_wedding_bands_geeks_nee_1.html

Hey Sis-

Just heard about my sister's new blog. Man, she just keeps getting cooler! It's mainly about her experiences as one of only three women in her sheet metal union. Pretty interesting read.

Speaking of Big Sis, she and her daughter (aka my niece) came to visit last November to see us (of course) and also check out the Pow Wow at the Toronto Aboriginal festival.


Not only was the pow wow a very interesting cultural event, but even better was having the opportunity to really get re-acquainted with my sister. Although we have kept in touch over the years, we really haven't been close since we were teenagers and both left home on our individual life adventures. We seem to finally be getting to know each other again and I hope it continues.

Also, my niece and GB's niece had a chance to meet again. They hadn't seen each other since our wedding three years ago when they were both junior bride's maids and were fast friends.

So here's to old friends, grass dances, Greek food and powerful women! See you in June, sis!

Dishes

Something that has bothered me the last few times we've had dinner parties is not having enough dishes to serve our guests with. Twice we've run out of plates and had to improvise. I decided after Christmas that I wanted to start looking for a replacement set from our current dishes, that come from GB's single life, and, although nice, are not quite as sophisticated as I would like. I've been looking for something that's nice enough for dinner parties but durable enough to use everyday, oh, and not ridiculously expensive. I've had a lot of fun these past few weeks surfing many dinnerware web sites.

I was finally able to drag GB out to William Ashley, who are having an amazing sale right now (with a warning of course that his patience would be limited - I think he'd rather have a root canal than go shopping - I, on the other hand could spend hours in that store just browsing!).

During our 1.5 hour endeavor (which far surpassed GB's new measure of shopping patience - the time it took for our coffees that we had to leave at the door to get cold), we managed to talk our selves into considering a ridiculously expensive set of formal dinnerware on top of the casual set we also planned to purchase. Luckily, we had the sensibility to "take some time to think about it", and when walking out the door we passed a quite nice set that was, I kid you not - one eighth the price! Granted, it wasn't quite as nice as the other set, but to GB's point, we'd like to have dishes that we would feel sick if someone accidentally broke one.

So, we were able to bring our casual set, Pfaltzgraff Sphere in green, home with us today, while our formal set (Mikasa Cameo Platinum) is on order. After unpacking, washing, and rearranging the cupboards (what fun!), taking a good look at our dishes, I'm tempted to say, they are actually good enough for entertaining, and maybe we should forgo the formal set altogether. I'll need to think on it, but we do have a few weeks. It just seems silly to have an extra set of dishes that you bring out only once or twice a year. We'll see...

The Honeymoon is Officially Over

No, not CB and I, but rather Apple and I.

In early 2006, work kindly furnished me with a high end Macbook Pro laptop. Our relationship was rosy from the beginning. Ah, we were young and optimistic. No wrong could be done. But I knew. I knew in the back of my mind that all things end.

The fan has been, oh, what's the word?... 'grinding'. 'Can't hear someone in the room speak' grinding. It has so far taken 32 days, 2 visits (leaving the laptop both times), 1 system planar (wtf!?) for Apple to NOT YET fix it.

I like OS X, I like the hardware (when it works), but man these folks are difficult to deal with. They make Dell look responsive. Add to this the fact that the new system planar is flaky and I'm seriously reconsidering advocating Macs.

On a related note, I read the other day in the National Post that, according to a recent study, the reason for nostalgia is that your brain gets a happy on when it remembers something. Anything. Our consciousness interprets this by associating the positive feeling with the memory itself, not the act of recall and presto: nostalgia. Hence I fully expect the love affair to begin again as soon as I get a new fan.