She's too much like her parents...

For the last week or so, Maya has not been tired enough to go to bed until after midnight. She hasn't been having extra naps or getting up particualrly late or anything, but she just doesn't seem tired late at night.
When you try and put her to bed she just sits up and wants to play and is very happy. Its not really that big of a deal but it means that Anne and I really get no alone time which can be rather frustating and makes us snarky.

Hopefully she can get back on track this weekend?

Seriously, it was THAT bad.

So I was working on a problem at someone's desk today and they were away today. This particular person has chronic bad breath. REALLY bad breath.
I had to use their phone and the smell of on the phone was so bad that I could barely hold it close enough to my mouth to use it. I am dead serious too.

Day off

Since the month I took off was parental leave and not vacation, I actually still have 2 and a half weeks I need to take off before the end of the year. I took today off but it doesn't count either as I am just using extra time I have built up with after-hours work. I am very glad to have it off as work has been crazy lately and its nice to be able to be at home and hang out with Maya.
I also have been doing a ton of computer work for people at home. I have had 2 new computers to build and install as well as 3 or 4 one to repair on the go.
Add that up with my purchase of the Half-life 2: Silver package with has got me Counter Strike: Source until HL2 is released and I haven't had a lot of time for stuff.

Heh, right now Maya is dancing to the music I am listening to, its really cute.

The end of an era...

So this week Anne and I got rid of our TV.
We used to have a crappy one but when my brother went into the army we borrowed his and gave away our old one (which we got for free). But since my brother quit the army he wanted his back, so now we don't have a TV anymore.
We are perfectly okay with this as we don't really watch any TV anyway and all the shows we do follow we download and watch on the computer anyway. So here is the plan.
When Anne goes back to work we are going to get a new 22" monitor (from here) to facilitate the computer watching (this will have a nice side affect on my gaming). And in a few years, we are going to get one of the HDTV's that you can hang on the wall.
We are both pleased with this arrangement and it does tidy up the living room a bit. One side affect may be that I will have to build a second computer for Anne so she can watch her shows while I do something else. But we will see I guess.

Julie is Cool

This is my friend Julies blog. She is really cool and practices attachment parenting and has four kids and two of those are twins and she is really thrifty and has a hairless cat that I covet and cloth diapers and is half way crunchy like me and I really like her and wished she lived in Hanover. Sometimes I stalk her to see what she says on MDC but that's ok cause she isn't supposed to know about that but I let it slip all the time- opps.

Computer Upgrade

One thing is new that I forgot. On friday I upgraded by system to an Asus K8N-E Deluxe Motherboard and an Athlon64 3000+ chip. Its not really a great speed upgrade to what I had but it will overclock well. To assist with that I have this Thermalright XP-120 heatsink coming this week and I need new RAM. The heatsink is my price for a computer I am building someone and the RAM I will have to swing a deal somehow with Nathan or something.
I am pretty pleased with the new hardware but I did have to reinstall Windows from scratch to get it to work. Its going to take a bit of work as well to figure out how well its going to OC too. But thats more than half the fun to me :) (yes I am a huge nerd thank you)
The upgrades I have planned (depending on how much comptuer work I do for people) are a new 22" monitor, 2 SATA HD's (in RAID 0), and a new Videocard (ATI Radeon whatever-is-the-newest).
Our current system specs are:

• Athlon64 3000+ (2.0 Ghz)
• Asus k8N-E Deluxe
• Radeon 9700 Pro
• 240 GB Total Hard drive space (80% full, its the Anime and 6 Feet Under downloads!)
• 1 GB Ram
• Audigy 2
  

Nothing really new going on right now. It looks like the fall has arrived.
I played hockey last night again and it was fun. Some cousins and may sister were playing too, and surprisingly well.
I picked up Anne at the airport Wednesday night last week which was uneventful. I did miss them both a lot while they were gone, Maya took a couple of minutes to relize who I was I think.
Other than that there really is nothing really fun or interesting to report...

When the cat's away....

So Anne isn't back until Wednesday and I have been home alone all week. I think I have been pretty productive and I am pretty much accomplishing what I wanted to. It is a lot easier to do stuff when Maya isn't crawling around trying to put everything in her mouth...
The Xbox playing has been quite productive as well. Ninja Gaiden is being quite stubborn and isn't letting me past chapter five (the damn brown ninjas!!) but Rallisport 2 and Burnout 3 just can't contain my driving talent. I think I like Rallisport more as Burnout just seems to get boring too quickly.
Anne in the meantime is looking forward to the remains of Hurricane Jeanne to go through where she is at in North Carolina. IT probably won't be much more than a big storm by that point, but Anne is all about the natural destruction and mayhem. I don't think that girl will be truly happy in life until we have a home destroyed by a tornado. :)

He shoots, he scores!

I played my first hockey game of the season last night, which was a blast. I wasn't sure how I would do as it was the first real test of my knee that I twisted earlier this summer but my knee felt good and strong and is just a little more sore than usual today so I think its pretty much recovered.
The game was just Sunday night pick-up in paisley but the turnout was good and the pace was fast. I scored a couple of goals and felt like I was playing pretty well.
Hurray for hockey season!
Church league starts in a couple of weeks as well and I am really looking forward to that as its a little more competitive and a little rougher. I think the team we have will do well too, we didn't fare so well last year.

Gypsy Dad!

Today my Dad is heading with a group from our church on a missions trip to Romania. They are helping build a commnunity center in some remote town. This should be quite the experience for him as he hasn't done anything like this before. My mom went last year I think, but she was doing more mission type stuff and not construction. It should be interesting to see what my Dad think of the whole thing as its quite outside of stuff he has done before!
So pray for safty and that everything goes well!

So very clean..

Today we had some local carpet cleaners in to do are main living carpet and stairs. They both look so white now! You really have no idea how much mashed food, poop, pee, drinks, and dirt is ground into carpets on a daily basis until you see how clean they could be if you didn't use them!

Airport

I drove Anne to the airport last night to catch a flight to Raleigh, North Carolina to visit her sister for a week.The drive was pretty uneventful.
We met her friend Rebekah there who had arrived on a flight from Winnipeg and whom I was giving a ride home.
Maya really like the airport and apparently really liked the airplane ride as well. She crawled all over the place and was a very happy little girl.

the drive home was just as uneventful, Rebekah and I just chatted about life and got home in a couple of hours. I did stop at my friend Ian's to say hi and grab a recording of last weekends rally in Great Britain. He hadn't acually record (no tape) but he wasn't out of the way anyway.

I did manage to snag Burnout 3, Ninja Gaiden, and Rallisport 2 at the local Jumbo video in town on the way through so that was good. Those are pretty much all I plan on playing while Anne is gone.

So pretty much a very boring post.

Happy belated Birthday!

So yesterday was my 27th birthday. It was fairly uneventful and also my first as a father.
The day started off me calling in sick to work, this was becasue I was actually sick and stayed in bed until about noon. I read a good book for a good majority of the afternoon and played Richard Burns Rally for a while as well. it was fairly quiet aroun the house as Maya was over at Kim's while Anne spend most of the day working on making Salsa.
My parents came over for dinner and we went to Frankies for supper.We plesantly supprised at how good the meal was and how filling. Kim also brought me a homemade cheese cake which is very delicious.
My Dad got me a new helmet for hockey which will be great as mine was getting to be very irritating. And its good as hockey may start as soon as this weekend for me. I just hope my knee can start to handle sports. We will see I guess.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who dropped by and for the cards and everything!

Present #1

Looks like, as far as presents go, this is shaping up to be the best birthday ever! Earlier this week Anne gave me the choice between a new pair of skates, a new audio deck for the Rav, or tickets to a Leaf game. I choose the the audio deck. Here is what I bought myself :

I got the Alpine CDA-9826, which is the model right below this one and differs by not having a remote and only one pre-out, but feature and quality-wise is exactly the same. It soooo much better than the one that came with our RAV; even Anne noticed an immediate difference in the quality of the sound. An added bonus is that we get in way more radio stations too, I had no idea so many were available in this area. It's XM ready as well which is something that I would like to get at some point in the future as well. It also has a feature called MediaXpander which cleans up Radio and MP3s and fills in missing sound to bring it up to CD-like quality. So I am VERY pleased with this purchase. Did I mention how much I love my wife :)
Also, this afternoon I managed to install it all by myself which I didn't know I could do. It really is amazing how my computer skills, in this case all the wiring stuff I do, run into so many other areas of life.

Toronto and back again

So last night, for my birthday, my friend Nathan and I went to Toronto for an evening out. It was his treat for me as a present.We had 3 main things planned, and none of them ended up working out.
We first headed to Markham to visit Canada Computers and buy me a new Athlon 64 3000+ and an Asus A8N-E Deluxe motherboard combo, as it was payment for some computer work I had done for his business. They were sold out. No biggie, as we will order them online instead.
So after getting some noodles and other asian food in the area we headed over to play some laser tag. Unfortunately there was no one else playing, at all, and one-on-one is zero fun. So we played some arcade games and foosball and air hockey while waiting for some more people to show up. No one did so we left and decided to go the movies.
It's only 11:30 by this point so we figure Colossus at Hwy 400 and 7 will have lots of late shows. Nope, the don't have any movies playing on a Friday night after 10:30, which totally blows me away. So we drove home.
Granted I did enjoy talking with one of my best friends during the drive a great deal and we did have some fun but man 0 for 3 is pretty bad for a night out. Oh well, next time I guess.

Slow Down!! *bling-bling*

So yesterday I am driving home from work; one of the streets I often take one the way home goes between the Community Centre and the Casino. The speed limit on the street is 50km which is generally what I go at as there are usually a lot of people around. This is what I as doing as I was going past the casino and up ahead I see an old man (75ish maybe) screaming (spittle and everything), "SLOW DOWN SLOW DOWN" and waving his arms up an down at me. Because I was doing nothing wrong and was kind of amused I stopped sudden in front up him and rolled down the passenger window to talk to him. I think this really surprised him.
Before I can even get a word out he's saying "you are going WAY to fast, this is a casino, blah blah blah." I said calmly with a smirk, "Sir, the posting speed limit on this street is 50km/h which is how fast I was going". While we are talking there cars going around me that are clearly going fast than I was and I can see the old man irritably watching them.
Basically he thought I should be going 5-10km/h and I was rude. I told him perhaps he was overreacting and maybe should concentrate his efforts in getting a crosswalk put in if he was that concerned. He didn't really listen though and lost his patience with me and walked away.
I felt bad for feeling so amused by the situation but I clearly didn't do anything wrong and other casino goers walking by were clearly amused by the goings on as well.

My mouth is bigger then yours, SEE

Rebekah-29 weeks into motherhood

These are the fruit of my four potato plants.

I LOVE PICKLES