Apprehensive Manner

fill those holes!

Soon I will be leaving work. My destination? Silver City.

Our office has been given the afternoon off, and a few of us are going to see the Matrix Revolutions.

I am a little excited, and a little apprehensive. You see, I didn’t enjoy the second one as much as I was anticipating I would. I was actually a little let down by it, and was dissapointed with it. The second one left me a little confused (yes I have seen it twice, and that didn’t help), and I absolutely hated the ending.

I have tried not to hype myself too much for this one, nor have I set my sights too high. I just want the story to be completed in a rational manner. I will report back later my thoughs.

Amusing Crispness

leaves of a color

Stoopid Oak trees. Last night there was a huge wind storm. My backyard needs to be raked again, and there are way more leaves in the front yard too.

I find it somewhat amusing though. At least I didn’t dispose of the already collected leaves, and hopefully I can stuff the rest of them into my truck so I can get them all in one load. :cross:

I love fall though. I love walking throught the leaves (in parks, not in my yard). I love the crispness in the morning air. I like the change brought on. Like many people I think fall is my favorite time of year. It is usually quite dry out, the rain isn’t too bad, and the temperature is agreeable to many outdoor activities (if you dress appropriately).

On a side note, I have not been sleeping well lately. I keep waking up earlier than I really want to. If I go to bed early, I don’t end up getting to sleep until sometime after 10:30. That is one thing about myself I would definitely change if I could.

Dumbfounded Aggregator

warm fuzzies!

Now for some good news today.

I found my missing vest today. Last night I was laying on the couch watching tv, and I got cold. I grabbed the blanket from the chair in the corner. This morning I was packing my stuff for work, and lo, on the chair in front of me was my vest. I was dumbfounded. How had I missed this in my search of the house. Then I remembered grabbing the blanket. My vest must have been under the blanket. 😎 Yay!

The other news is I found an RSS aggregator that I actually like! :shocked: Every single one I had tried up until today was pretty crappy (in my mind). Somehow I stumbled onto SharpReader. It is fast, stable, and has a good interface (good to me isn’t necessarily good to you). It has a couple quirks, and has crashed on me once, but so far it is light years above what I was using. Using SharpReaders export/import functionality I will be able to sync my feeds between the two computers I use the most. Trés cool!

warm fuzzies!

Biodegradable Leeches

rotting corpses

Leeches! They are all leeches!

Yesterday, after riding, I worked in the yard raking leaves. I only got the backyard done, but my truck was stuffed. I still have the front yard to do, but there are a lot less leaves there.

I decided that I would get rid of these leaves before raking the rest of them, so today at lunch I headed over to the recycling yard nearby.

What a pain in the ass it is to get rid of a compostable material. Budget Steele wanted something like $50 a tonne, with a $10 minimum. :wtf:

I have a load of leaves that would cost me $10 to get rid of. Plus I have more leaves at home, which would also cost $10 to get rid of. Uhh, no thanks. I will wait. When I got back to work I started calling around. To use the Saanich yard, you must live in Saanich (makes sense). Hartland landfill has a $5 min, but they are a ways away. A friend offered to let me dump them in his yard where a Saanich truck will come and suck them up.

Why is it so difficult to get rid of leaves? I would have thought that since they are biodegradable they would be extremely easy to get rid of. Makes me want to doa run to Oak Bay in the middle of the night and dump them on a side street.

Energy Spotting

it is all in the details

This morning myself. Sue, Yoshi and Mark all met at the dump for a ride. Another awesome fall day. The sun was out, the temp was perfect, and lots of fun was had.

Yoshi was so full of energy. I am not sure what was up with him, but he was totally “into” sticks today. Not for retrieving either. He just wanted to carry them around, and chew on them! He is weird sometimes.

Back to the ride. It was a fun, relaxed ride for me. I think Mark and Sue pushed themselves a bit. Sue rode a couple rock faces that she was a little nervous of at first. She hesitated a little, but with me spotting, she gave them a go. In the end there was nothing for her to worry about. She did great!

For the last trail that took us back to the vehicles, Sue wanted to try my bike, so we swapped. Sue on my bike with the seat waaay down, and me on Sue’s bike, with the seat too far down. 🙂 It was comical for me. Her bike needs a little work. There is something loose that makes a scary noise. It make the rider feel as if something is about to fall apart.

When I caught back up, Sue had a huge grin. She had a blast on my bike, and felt really comfortable on it, even if it was a little big on her. She thought my bike was really comfortable, and confidence inspiring. Something about not getting the feeling like the bike was about to fall apart! I think the setup also put her centre of gravity higher, so she didn’t feel like she was going to crash. For her it was a great test ride.

Composite Moon

composite moons

Saturday night there was a lunar eclipse. Ann called me and reminded me about it so I wouldn’t miss the opportunity. I had already been out shooting pictures for an hour or so with the photo club, then I went out for another couple hours later in the afternoon. I was pretty tired, and really wasn’t into going outside again. Plus I didn’t think my camera would take a very good picture of the moon. It is so small in comparison to the rest of the scene.

I went anyway (with some encouragement from Ann), and now I am glad I did. I made a little composite picture of 4 shots I took. Thanks Ann! 🙂

Breezy Film

can't keep me here

Willows beach was my photo clubs latest shoot. It was a crisp cool breezy fall day, but the sun was out. There were kids and parents all over the place, and lots of people walking dogs too! Perfect picture taking environment.

I had both my cameras Saturday, but most of my shooting was done on my Yashica.

After everyone met up, we ended up walking towards the Oak Bay marina. This was a direction I had never headed while at Willows, so it was very interesting. I found lots of neat things to shoot, and now I must get some film developed, something I haven’t done in over a year I think.

Here are my digital pics.

Pedestrian Creaming

coulda been pushin up daisies

Today on my way back to the office, I very closely avoided a horrific accident. I was sitting at the traffic lights on the corner of Oak and Cloverdale. I was facing north, but the cross traffic had the green, so I was sitting at the stop line. On Cloverdale, waiting to turn South onto Oak St, was a large truck with a big trailer.

My light went green, and I scanned the intersection. Noone was trying to beat the yellow so I started to go. On my side of the road, heading south a pedestrian started crossing the road.

As I started to pass the truck with the big trailer, I see the streak of a new silver bug come flying towards the intersection. I see her narrowly miss the pedestrian, and then proceeded into the intersection AGAINST THE RED! I slammed on the brakes as hard as I could, hit the horn (which only beeped a little), and avoided creaming the bug. I looked up and sure enough the chick in the bug had a red. She plowed through a full red (and it had been red for quite a long time), missed a pedestrian, and missed me.

Luckily for bug lady my oncoming traffic that was turning left hadn’t pulled out into the intersection.

It was a very close call for many parties. The scary part is I don’t think bug lady knew what she did. She gets her licence revoked!

Empty Stench

slimyness

A couple days ago the kitchen sink started draining really, really slowly. Then when the dishwasher was running, and the empty cycle was going on, the disgusting water was backflowing into the sinks. It was just nasty, nasty.

Yesterday our landlord came over to see if he could fix the problem. Between the two of us, with him doing most of the work, we got everything unclogged and emptying smoothly again. It was pretty disgusting seeing the crud and gunk that settles into the pipes over time. We could definitely tell when we cleared the clog too. The stench of sewer wafted through the crawl space. :yuck:

Today we are getting the chimneys cleaned. This will be a much cleaner job since we have hired people to do it. 🙂