Month: May 2010

Floats Wander

Today was the Victoria Day parade. We actually watched the entire parade which in previous years ran over 4 hours long. This year it was a little over three hours and the kids enjoyed every minute of it.

There were lots of excellent floats, lots of wonderful bands, and some leagues of people I had never heard of before. The weather was spectacular as well. A little breezy, but nice blue sky with white fluffy clouds.

With the kids snacking and taking in the action, I was able to wander a little and take some pictures. All my pics are here, but below are some highlights.




Cement Parade

So far this long weekend has been very busy. We did some running around yesterday which included a trip to Home Depot. There we found a nice patio set that was an excellent deal. I also picked up some quick set cement.

The cement project was for a free standing umbrella style laundry drying rack. We’ve had the rack for close to a year now, but never made the time to get the needed materials.

Today the plan was for us all to head out to the highland games, but Elliot decided he wanted to stay home. I stayed with him and set up the patio furniture, cleaned out the old fridge, then dug the hole for the laundry rack. Elliot helped with the hole construction using his dump truck to cart everything away for me.

I then went for a 2 hour road ride. The ride was pretty fun, but very slow and easy. This suited me just fine.

When I got back I had a snack (a hamburger), then got back to work mixing the cement. Yowch. That was tough on the back. As soon as I started pouring I realized I did not have enough. The guy at Home Depot said two bags was going to be plenty, but he must have been on glue. I made a quick trip to Rona and picked up 3 more bags. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, especially since this is the first cement I have ever made.

Rona’s quick set cement was $3 a bag more than Home Depot. No wonder I hate shopping there.

Good day. Scratch that, great day. Fun with the kids, got lots of yard work done, and I got a ride in. What more is there?

Oh, just a parade tomorrow. 🙂

Merging Moron

Driving a car is not that hard. Merging onto the highway is not that hard either, yet many people have issues with it. I don’t get it.

Highway traffic is driving fast. I don’t want to get hit by

a fast car, so I use the merge lane to closely match the traffic speed, then I can move over onto the highway.

Today I was getting onto the Island highway and there was a yellow sunfire in front of me. They weren’t going all that fast in the merge lane (around 50 KM/H), but then they caught up to someone. The front person was doing about 30 KM/H. Agonizing, and very dangerous.

The lead car did not speed up, and half moved over to the right, but then moved to the middle of the lane again (no signal of course). I checked the highway traffic and thankfully there wasn’t any so I dropped a gear and moved onto the highway passing both the yellow car and the slowpoke.

The yellow car followed me.

Turned out that the slowpoke was wanting to pull over to the side and help someone who was tyeing down some stuff in the back of their truck. Come one. Think a bit. Use your signals, and the the hell out of the way. That moron endangered several of us by being stupid.

Parent Scream

Today was one of those days where I felt ill-equipped to be a parent.

I almost lost my temper many times due to my children’s normal behaviour. Normal, but not desired.

So many times I just wanted to scream.

The kids were not their normal selves and easily lost it at the slightest thing that didn’t go their way. It made for a long tiring day.

This morning I actually expected the day to go well since they both slept in.

Delivery Freeze

Sox and I have wanted a new fridge since we moved into this house. That was over 1.5 years ago. A few weeks ago Elliot and I got a couple quotes from two different places. Sox and I talked it over, the pulled the trigger and bought the first brand new fridge either of us has even owned. Well, this is actually the first fridge I have ever owned period.

Tonight the delivery guys came with it. I am extremely glad that we paid the extra for delivery. The fridge barely fit through the doorway. See, when I measured, I only measured the space the fridge was in, and not the openings it needed to fit through. Whoops. The salesman never asked about that either.

The delivery guys were awesome though. They measured all the doorways, figured out the best way to get the old fridge out, then tried getting the new one in. The fit was so tight that they had to try a few times and eventually moved to another doorway that had enough room to squeeze through. They also mentioned to not plug it in for an hour.

I then took the next hour to unwrap all the shelves and trays. I also had to reverse the door which took the longest amount of time. It wasn’t difficult, but I ran into a couple hitches that I wasn’t prepared for.

Once I got everything together, I saw that the hour was up so I fired everything into the fridge as I plugged it in. Tomorrow Sox and I will organize things, starting with figuring out where we want the shelves and bins to go.

So happy with our purchase so far though.

Zone Twinges

Ulti is such a fun game, and tonight I had a blast. My team played quite well and we had a lot of fun at it. We got to practice a bunch of things, even throwing on the zone as well as being zoned.

I was still a little concerned about my leg so I took it easy the whole night. I only did a couple full sprints and that was enough for me. I felt a couple small twinges, but nothing major. It should be fine for next week’s game.

One of my sprints I was chasing down a disc that had been hucked to the endzone. The disc was hanging in the air against an opponent and I managed to swat the disc without any foul. The other person was standing still in the endzone waiting for the disc and I came flying in from the side. After I hit it, the disc actually made forward progress toward a second opponent. I followed the disc and knocked it down again. I would have rather caught it, but the situation prevented that.

This season I am really enjoying not being typecast into a handling role. I don’t mind doing it once in a while, but I really want to get out and run. Hopefully I can get my cardio level back up to where it needs to be.

Vivid Yoshi

Sometime this morning I had a very vivid dream, and when I woke up I felt the effects for a long time.

The dream was about Yoshi. In the dream I got up one morning in “my” house and went to the kitchen. The house wasn’t the one that I currently live in, but int he dream it was definitely mine.

As I walked to the kitchen Yoshi came trotting by me and brushed up against me.

In the dream I knew that he was dead and for some reason him being there was not abnormal.

Still, I was elated to see him so I grabbed him and gave him a huge hug then lay on the floor with him for a while. From the dream I can remember his smell, hearing him breath, feeling his fur.

I woke up suddenly and felt intensely sad.

I sure miss him a lot.

Later Disappointed

Tonight was the latest Ulti game. In typical Ulti fashion the game started late. I rode to the game which gave my legs a chance to warm up. Throwing with the team, then a little stretching, and I was feeling pretty good.

We started the game off alright. I was a mid in the horizontal stack (which I still don’t totally like) and I was doing pretty good there. I was getting free and making a few good catches.

I was only on for about four point when I started to feel something funny in my right quad. I tried to take it a little easier for the rest of the point, but my guy got a break on me so I pushed a little bit and I felt a small twinge. I backed off right away and when the point was over took a break on the sideline.

I came back for a point later but I could not run fast, and I could not cut. Pretty useless.

Instead I stayed on the sidelines getting to know my team and offering advice to some of the new people.

In all I was very disappointed with tonight’s game.

Waffle Shopping

Today is Mothers day and I didn’t really plan much. I did let Sox sleep in though, and when Amy woke up at 6:30 we got up and I made some waffles for breakfast. Elliot got up around 7, ate breakfast then the three of us played for a bit. Sox got up around 8 so I made her waffle and some tea.

The kids gave her their presents they made at daycare, then ate Sox’s chocolates that came with Amy’s gift 🙂

After this we got packed up and headed to Esquimalt Lagoon for some beach time. It is pretty sunny today, but not exactly warm. It was windy down at the beach, but we had fun anyway playing in the sand and eating snack.

On the way back into town we stopped off at a Park and Ride where a regular group has RC car racing in a parking lot. We watched that for a bit then came home. The racing was a lot of fun to watch and I think the kids and I will go see it again.

This afternoon Sox is out doing a bit of plant shopping then when she gets home will spend some time outside gardening. Wonderful day really.