Donation Boxes

Tonight was blood donation time again. It is funny that every once in a while I notice slight changes in their procedures. This time it was the request to fill in the answer boxes and not just check or x them. Weird. Takes a lot longer to answer the questions that way.

Beyond that everything was as smooth as normal. I stuck with my left arm again more for superstition than anything else. I’ve never had an issue donating with the left so why mess with success. I got the donation bag filled in 5 minutes too.

Consumer Empties

Consumer Alert: Stay away from Canadian Springs. They can’t seem to figure out how to properly deliver water, nor how to stop delivering water.

Sox and I signed up a while ago for this 2 bottle a month plan. It was fine until we got backed up on bottles and realized we never drank that much. Also, their delivery schedule was pretty erratic, and they never seemed to show when they were supposed to. We decided to go back to buying it at Thrifty’s. Same water, just no delivery schedule.

I called up Canadian Springs in late November, or early December and told them we wanted to cancel. After asking their questions as to why, I arranged for the date they would come pick up the bottles. They said Dec 29. On that date I put all the bottles outside, and nothing. I called again in Mid January and they had no record of me calling and cancelling.

This time I really got it cancelled, and they said they would be by on Jan 29 to get the bottles. On the day we made sure they were all there still. When the driver came he grabbed all the empties, but not the remaining full bottle. Aaargh.

Another phone call, and hopefully we can get our deposit cheque back. This kind of service does not make me want to ever use them again. Post purchase support is of the same importance as per purchase. Why don’t companies get that?

Materials Staining

Time for a deck update. Not much has changed. The materials are in place, but there has been no progress on the decking at all. No change in the stairs off the deck. The only thing that has changed since my last post is two stair risers have been attached, and some sort of staining has been applied. That took 2.5 months. Hopefully nicer weather will allow some more (and quicker) progress soon.

Purposely Opening

I had read a while ago (before becoming a dad) that one of the best things about being a dad is getting to play like a kid again.

I must admit (as I am sure a lot of dad will admit) that this is very true. Sprout is getting to a very fun age where he is purposely playing with toys. This of course means I get to play with him. Crawling around on the floor, playing with cars and trains, building forts out of blocks, making funny noises with the mouth, and making funny faces are all things that I get to do while playing with Sprout. Some days it feels very therapeutic to be so silly. You can’t be stressed out or thinking about something serious when you are blowing raspberries or having a tickle fight. It just isn’t possible.

Having Sprout around is also really helping me relive my childhood. Every day I am remembering something I did as a kid, or something I didn’t do. It is pretty eye opening to me. I keep thinking about things I want Sprout to experience as he grows up. Camping, riding bikes, swimming, playing sports, family vacations, Christmas time. The list goes on. I want the world for him. Some things I just can’t wait for. Helping Sprout with homework, taking him to practice (for whatever sport he wants), going to ride bikes together. Dad things. I love spending time with him now, and can’t wait to spend more time with him in the future. I think that means I like being a dad.

Sox and Sprout have both been such amazing life changing events. Every day I feel lucky to have them, and to be around them. Thanks you two.

Hardware Template

Last weekend I tried my hand at being a handyman. This weekend I took another stab at it.

Yesterday, in the span of an hour, I fixed and hung our bedroom mirror, hung a child gate, and fixed the front door.

To fix the mirror, I needed to reattach the anchor in the mirror, and restring the hanging line. To hang off the mirror on wall I tapped in two drywall anchors, and two screws. All that remained was hanging the mirror and levelling it. That was easy.

Next up was the child gate at the top of the stairs. Sox and I had ordered new mounting hardware and I followed their instructions using the provided template. It was pretty easy. Find a stud behind the wall, tape the stencil to the wall, drill with a 1/8″ bit to depth of two inches through the 4 x marks. With that done I screwed the brackets on and slide the gate in to those.

The gate didn’t fit. The template was the wrong size. One of the bate hinges fit into the bracket fine, but the other one was barely connected. Grrr. I drilled another hole in the wall and fixed the problem, but now we have a visible hole. Lame.

The other side of the gate required some bracket so the gate can secure itself into the wall. I had to trim the baseboard a little to make the bottom one fit. Phew. More work than I wanted, but at least that was done. I went to mount the second one, and realized it will not fit where we want it to at the bottom of the stairs due to some ornamental plaster work. I gave up on the second one and waited for Sox’s input.

Finally I decided to tackle the door again. I wanted to fix how it was hanging, and put in some weather stripping. I pulled out the old weather stripping, and put in some new stuff I had. No go. It was worse than when I started. I pulled off my new stuff, threw that away, and replaced the old stuff. I learned that the gap I was seeing was due to how the door was hanging.

So I tried to fix the door again. This time I managed to get the door back to the way it was before I started fiddling with it. It still catches a little, but not like it did the day before.

All in all I would count that as a success. Hanging the mirror was easy since I have done that many times before. The gate wasn’t too bad, just a little extra fiddling to make it all work nicely. The door was my big victory.

Illumination Shots

The above is my photoblog post for today. I was shooting again in my lightbox after making a couple cutouts to recess the lights a little. This works well, and allows me to get much closer to my subject. I think this also helps the illumination.

FYI, this is my todo list notebook. I am about halfway through the book.

Some other shots from this session:

All the shots.

Overhead Beans

Highlights from a photo shoot I did at home today in my light box. I made some mods to the box to make it easier to work with. Today all I did was cut down the depth, so it was more square. This works much better now. Next time I will make some cutouts to recess the lights a little. I think I will also cut a top flap so I can take overhead shots too.

All pics are here. These are some coffee beans that I am sure to enjoy another day.