Some pictures from the yard recently. Victoria had its annual flower count recently. None of these were counted. 🙁 Spring is a wonderful time of year in this part of the country.

Uhh, what kind of sale is Move Gallery having? I caught this one on the way to work this morning.

Sunday I got out to see the WWE when it was in town. Jim’s friend got the seats, and I was stoked since they were first row. First row yes, ringside, no. Hard to explain, but our row of seat started off at ringside, but extended out away from the ring. Bit of a bummer since mine and Jim’s seats were essentially what we had last time. Still great seats, but not ringside like I was expecting.

The show was as fun as always. I brought the small camera this time, but very few of my shots turned out. I hate using the highest ISO setting, but that is what was needed to capture anything remotely interesting.

The matches were fun to see, and some of the wrestlers are extraordinary acrobats.

Then there are the WWE Divas. There was a Diva contest while we were there. Essentially a bikini contest. If you can call those strips of fabric bikini’s that is 😉

The Undertaker was fun to watch, and so was Benoit. Most of the matches had their good points. All except the first one. The first one was lame. It was over very quickly (too quickly).

The headlining match was Batista against Mr Kennedy. I saw Batista last time. Behemoth, but good wrestler to watch.

All in all it was a fun day.

In the last couple weeks I have been seeing more of the 2007 Honda CRV’s on the road. I gotta say that I am not a fan of the new styling. I don’t like their changes to the front bumper nor the changes to the rear hatch. I really like the look of our CRV and I hope that by the time we need to replace it that Honda has fixed up this blunder.

Spotted in Oak Bay today: a solar powered garbage can. Hmm.

Across the street from where I work there is a large garbage can, and the lid is covered in solar panels. I’d like to know what they do.

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?

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.

How come it seems like every time I fill up my truck’s tank, gas prices drop?  The last time I filled up, gas had just dropped to $104.9 from $105.9

Over the next few days prices dropped slowly.

Today gas is $95.9  That is quite a difference.  How long should I wait before filling up again?  Sheesh.

Yesterday, in a bout of do-it-yourselfness I decided to put on the weather stripping I bought a while ago for the front door. Easy job. Cut to size, screw in place. Hmm, no hacksaw. I borrowed one from Jim, then I was all set. Measure, cut. Crap, too long still. How did that happen? Measure again, and cut another quarter inch off.

I then screwed the strip down, and voila! Less of a hole around the front door. I just need to buy some stick on foam stripping and I will be done.

Feeling a little confident, I decided to see what I could do about how the front door hangs. Whenever we close the door, it hits the door jam on the top right corner. Should be easy. The hinge bracket screws were not visible, but I tightened some of the available loose screws at the top of the door. The theory was that the top of the door would get sucked left and out of the way.

I learned something: A handyman I am not.

Somehow I made it worse. Much worse, and I can’t get it back to the original bad state. There went the confidence. Some things should just be left alone. Doors are one of them.