05/10/10
Mar 1 (Mon): I still have "The Maple Leaf Forever" stuck in my head (and I'm not even a Bublé fan).
Well, there wasn't much happening around here for the last week aside from Olympics, stress due to hockey games, curling matches, bobsled runs and speed skating, and lots of jubilation at all the medals. Andy did manage to sneak off to a PMI seminar Saturday morning and while she was gone, I beat the rush to the exciting toilet sale at Home Depot. Got another low-flow one, this time for the downstairs washroom. Replacing the one upstairs has saved us a ton on our water bill to the point where we stopped using the downstairs one. After dropping the porcelain god home, I went to Ben's basketball game with Scot and Mom, the first one of a tournament which Ben's team then went on to win. Way to go Benny!!!!
Otherwise it was all Vancouver 2010 and Steven even took the Go Train in from Toronto yesterday to watch the men win the gold with us.
I was so stressed for the last 10 minutes of this game!!! Andy would say it was longer than that. The women's game was just slightly less stressful on Thursday night.
What a phenomenal couple weeks for Canada, not just in our medal count, but in the spirit of the games.
Andy & I had our Canadian flag up a pole attached to the front doorstep, I had a regular flag and a Hockey Canada flag on the SUV and we've acquired a decent amount of Canada Olympic clothing.
Andy liked most of the closing ceremonies, but I LOVED them! When the clown started "fixing" the final arm of the cauldron, I wondered aloud to Andy if Catriona Le May Doan would finally get to light it, and then she popped up through the trap door. I think I grinned ear to ear from that moment till Nickelback got too noisy.
And how can you not love Shatner and Fox?
And I also thought all the hokey Canadian stereotypes were very cool - especially the flying Moose!
One of the reasons I didn't get as stressed about the women's gold medal game as I could have was because this fellow came back for another visit in the afternoon, waiting to cheer the women on in his Hockey Canada colours. Thanks little guy!
And one final note: All of you helped Andy raise the complete (post-deposit) balance of her contribution to the Nepal build. Combined, you contributed $1500. You're all fantastic!!! Thank you so much!
Mar 7 (Sun): Beautiful day! Only up to 7o, but the sunshine made it feel twice that warm. We went for an afternoon walk along the Beach Strip - and so did lots of other people.
I didn't realize we had such nice facilities and snack shack along the path.
In the morning, we met up with Uncle Lanny & Aunt Sharon at Cora's in Ancaster . We got caught up, had a lovely breakfast, and then checked out each other's new(ish) vehicles. Uncle Lanny's little pickup truck "let them down", so he got a 2005 Toyota Highlander back about the same time we got the Tucson. The Highlander is very nice too.
After breakfast, we came home and continued with the project we started yesterday, painting "Ben's room" - our main guest room. Goodbye ugly shade of green!
The supervisor was laying down on the job! (and squiggling too!)
Hello fabulous blue!
It's all done now. Andy peeled the tape and put the switch and jack covers back on before dinner. We'll load the furniture back in tomorrow night.
Andy booked her flights for Nepal this week...8ish hours to Brussels, connecting on another 8 - 9 hour flight to Delhi, sleeping overnight in the airport, then one more quick 90 minute flight to Kathmandu where she'll get picked up. She leaves a month from tomorrow. We are still both very psyched, especially as we found out the hotel she is staying in is very decent - real rooms, real beds, real bathrooms! Hopefully it lives up to its internet site - http://www.hotelpanorama.com.np/index.htm, and yesterday Andy received some pictures of what she will be building.
Mar 14 (Sun): It was craft weekend here with Grace in her glory. Since Ben had a basketball award ceremony & banquet (pizza party), we picked Grace up in the late morning, yesterday, so Scot and Monica could go watch Ben get his gold medal, and Grace would have some special time of her own. Nothing makes Grace happier than doing crafts so we took her to Michael's and the three of us shopped. We then spent the afternoon doing boundless crafts. By far, Grace's favourite seemed to be her wiggling lizard that she painted.
I got a bird house that took me ages to paint.
Andy painted one of the ceramic bobble-heads - the one of Grace. Grace painted the other one of Ben.
Grace also coloured and painted the dolphins and then gifted them to me.
And she coloured her cat puppet.
Then Andy & Grace worked for ages on their wooden model, which they finished this morning.
Grace was also thrilled to get some response from Comet and Casper this visit. Normally, the girls hide the entire time the kids are here, but they are both getting more brave, especially Casper. To our shock, Casper was even agreeable to Grace playing with her.
Grace also got taken to Kelsey's for dinner, where she was very happy to get a funky cup and twisty straw, and she got to choose to have a quesadilla. She usually gets a wrap, but she'd seen Andy have a quesadilla for lunch & was intrigued. Of course we had to order it with no onions or peppers, so she was very pleased with all the chicken and cheese. After dinner, we watched 1.5 movies before the 3 of us had a "camp out" in the basement, in our sleeping bags by the fire.
After returning from delivering Grace home today, Andy got way more ambitious than I felt. I did assist....I was in charge of taping her up with the duct tape.
She got the insulation laid over the living room, dining room, & kitchen. And it seems we had greatly overestimated how much we needed to cover that area, as there are still 4 packages left unopened. She also got pretty bruised from all the manoeuvring she had to do between the beams - thankfully she wore a helmet this time! When she did the other side of the house about a year and a half ago, she whacked her head pretty good a few times. She also wore knee pads, but really could have used some hip and forearm pads!
Our squirrel feeder (yes, it's been renamed) has been the hit of the neighbourhood lately. Two male cardinals:
In looking at those two we wondered if they might be females because they seemed to have lots of grey on their backs, but then we saw this lady below (all grey) and we realized that those two must be males.
And the suet has also finally been discovered.
This is a shot I got accidentally. Pretty cool I thought.
We watched the first Grand Prix race of the season tonight - Bahrain. I don't know about Andy, but I thought it was pretty boring.
Mar 22 (Mon): We've had the pleasure of a bit of frustration lately.
Tuesday, the microwave turntable started grinding and soon had come to a dead stop.
Wednesday, I found out the parts are not available to fix it and then just about had a heart attack when I saw how much a replacement costs...because this is an over-the-range model with the light and the fan. Luckily, Mom can still get appliances directly from the factory through her work, so a new one should be here any day - a GE this time, which will go with the other appliances and is a better brand as far as I'm concerned.
Then the fun will be taking the old one down and mounting the new one, but I keep reminding myself that I always hated the controls on that old one anyway (it came with the house) and when you started it there was a 3 - 4 second lag before it actually started running (very annoying). Plus it had no quick start.
Our next bit of fun has been primarily mine as I drive the Tucson the most. Wednesday, I dropped her off at the dealership to have the radio/GPS system replaced. It kept locking out the touch screen until you turned it off for a few seconds then back on.
I picked her up at lunch time, but before I drove off the lot, the speakers started making a clunking noise. I realized it was close to the same clunk it makes when the GPS voice interrupts the radio, so I flipped over to the GPS and sure enough it was rebooting every 6 seconds with a clunk. I reversed and got my Service Advisor to have a look. He was as shocked as I was. The fellow who fixes these was already gone as he comes from Brampton. As of tonight, I am still waiting to hear from this guy. Needless to say I am now looking for blood. Garrett, my Service Advisor, has called him 3 times. For a while Friday, the problem stopped, but then Sunday it was much worse. It was rebooting every 3 seconds. I had driven to Toronto to pick up a chair that Steven gave us, and had to drive home with no radio at all. It's very odd driving with no radio. Try it for 5 minutes and see what I mean!
Today, the screen had no discernable display. It was either all grey, tiny lines, or red with white squares sporadically placed. Tomorrow I am planning on doing some yelling.
Friday, after work, we finally cut down the plum tree.
We've thought and talked about it since we moved in, and though we felt bad we finally just did it. There were a few reasons. 1 - we don't even particularly like plums. 2 - the plums that fell and rotted made a mess on the lawn and the pits would get fired around by the lawnmower. 3 - in the fall we were stuck with a crop we found hard to get rid of. 4 - it was placed stupidly in the middle of one end of the yard.
Saturday, it was the happy, second anniversary of getting possession of our house. Ironically, this was the day we hung our new house.
Now to see if anyone moves in.
Most of the rest of the weekend was spent painting. We are doing the stairwell and all attached hallways in phases.
The master patchtress:
The master tapetress:
The master trim painttress:
The master rollertress:
Phase 1 complete.
Saturday night, we watched:
I realize it's a year old, but we only really got turned on to the X-Men movies recently, so this was our first time seeing this, and we loved it. It's a great action movie!
On Sunday night, Andy watched:
I saw bits and pieces of it between doing other stuff and it was pretty good. It must have been to keep Andy glued to it for almost 4 hours. But what was really funny was when I heard "You've got to be kiddin' me!" echoing up from the basement. It seems the movie said "To Be Continued" and when Andy looked at the case, she thought she only had Disk 1 of 2, but the crisis was averted when Part 2 started to play a few seconds later. Phew!
A couple of weather notes: It's got cold again, just above 0o, and is rainy. Last Tuesday through Friday it was gorgeous every day - sunny and temperatures between 14o and 16o. That followed the record setting weekend of rain. From noon Friday (the 12th) to noon Monday (the 15th), Burlington averaged 75 - 80 mm. Some areas close to us got up to 103.4 mm. No wonder several people we know got water in their basements!
Mar 28 (Sun): Normally I can get lots of blogging done while we watch a Formula One race, but this Aussie one is jam-packed with great action!
This afternoon, Andy plugged away at taking down the old microwave and then mounting the new one. I pitched in with a bit of muscle when needed - I'm really good at holding things! ;-)
Once the rear mounting bracket was swapped for the old one, Andy taped up this template for the bottom of the cupboard and started drilling in the indicated spots. It's great how they give you this to save time and increase precision. (you might notice a slight glitch in this shot....see the bit stuck through the cupboard bottom on the right side of the template - it's not supposed to come out of the drill while in use!)
Andy happily covered in saw-dust (or drill-dust in this case), but really it's too bad the old and the new holes hadn't lined up.
All finished and ready to go. I'm very happy - it's got "Quick Start" for 1 through 6 minutes, and an 'Add 30 seconds" button. YAY!!!
When not lifting or holding something, I plugged away at my own project. Andy'd helped me earlier with filling the cells with dirt, then I planted my seeds.
Will see what kind of crops we can grow this year.
Yesterday we had a great day. Andy went off to one of her PMI seminars to earn PDUs (Professional Development Units) that she needs to keep up her certification. She had a great speaker talking about social media, so was very happy she dragged herself out of bed. I had a great time meeting up for breakfast at Cora's with Michelle & Trish from Ottawa, and Huguette. There was lots of chin-wagging and laughing.
Afterward, I went out to Mom and Dad's to install the neat, new, little machine I'd picked up for them. Mom had asked for a photocopier and soon thereafter I found this awesome little All-in-One on sale.
It's a copier, fax, scanner and printer (b&w and colour) - and what really impresses me is that it's not just a flatbed scanner - it has a feeder too for up to 15 pages! Pretty darn good for only 60 bucks!
In the afternoon, Andy & I thought we were going to see Young Frankenstein, the Musical, until I looked at my ticket Friday night. Andy'd written it on the wrong date on the calendar - we go next Saturday, which works out way better - but she would have been in sooo much trouble if I had not noticed before we got there!
In the evening, we had a great time at a potluck dinner at Carol's, celebrating birthdays for David and Kathy. Kalpana & Sarodha brought their toddler, Andrew, who, in conjunction with the two small dogs, was great entertainment for the night. As usual the food was fantastic too.