Journal Entries for September 2006 September 3, 2006 - 12:34 AM 12:34. What a coincidence. It seems there have been a lot of coincidences in my life lately. Things that have happened, the odds of which are virtually impossible. This being the last official weekend of summer, my parents and brother and puppy went out to Kananaskis to camp for the long weekend. Dan, my supervisor, called me a few days ago to ask if I could work some extra days this week, and not having any other plans (sadly) - I accepted, taking day shifts on both Friday and Saturday. Not 10 minutes after he called back to confirm I'd been put into the schedule, I learned that my parents were planning their trip to Kananaskis this weekend. Now unable to go with them, my saving hope was in the fact that since I'd requested day shifts, I might be able to get out in the evening one night to say hi. Now I love Shaw and I really enjoy working there, but when they interfere with what little bit of a personal life I have, I get very irritated. With the long weekend, I recieved in my bin this morning my work for today, for tomorrow, and for Monday. Today was supposed to be a day shift, and tomorrow I resume my usual days and evenings shift. Holding both side by side, it was easy to see that I had been given the exact same amount of work for both days - except today they'd crammed that extra install into my afternoon. Same with yesterday. It's like whoever does the routing says, So you want a day shift, huh? Well, we'll just put all your calls into the morning and afternoon then! Shifting paper around doesn't make the jobs take any less time, and on one of my installs this morning I had to do the work of two installations because of the way it worked out, half of which I probably won't get paid for! So I was quickly falling behind today, and I realized that I'd left my tone generator at a customer's house last night on my last call. I knew exactly where I'd forgotten it, in one of the upstairs bedrooms attached to the cable outlet. But when I tried to phone them, the number Dispatch gave me said it was not in service. Having a "Nobody Home" in the morning I zipped back across the city (from Martindale to Signal Hill) to see if I could pick it up. There's nobody home but a note in the window indicating they'd gone away for the long weekend. Great. So I went to Home Depot to see if they had any tone generators in stock. I'd seen them before and knew they sold them seperately but couldn't find any at this particular store so I asked a guy who worked there. We looked it up in the computer and found that they had three in stock, but they were out of season. I didn't know data products had a season, but whatever. He searched high and low but couldn't find even one. So by now I've got to get to my next call so I traversed the distance across the city a second time and began my afternoons. Even though I got there at one, it took till almost 3:30 to complete and I still had two more (quite probably two hour jobs) to get done before 5:00. Long story short, I was able to get one of the afternoon calls picked up in time. I raced home after finishing the other call, hopped on the bike and flew out to Kananaskis. Now as you might have read in a previous entry, my dad and I went out to K country a few weekends ago and had a picnic in Elkwood. While we were sitting there sipping our tea and absorbing the tranquility of the campground, we noticed that the site we were in seemed very familiar. Upon further inspection we also discovered marks on certain trees where our hammock ropes had scored the bark some 10-15 years ago. It had all grown back, but you could see a distinct change in color where the new bark had grown in. We laughed as we thought of the irony at coming back, picking a site at random and realizing we'd camped there before. So now, fast forward to this weekend. The Labour Day weekend, the last long weekend of summer. Beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky, gas prices have just dropped some 10 cents a litre. Every campground in the province is going to be FULL this weekend! My parents got a site in Elkwood, and (tying in that bit about coincidences mentioned above) - wouldn't you know it, but it was that same site. It was the ONLY one that was available in all four loops when my dad arrived early on Thursday morning, and to top off the nostalgic significance, he'd brought the very same hammocks we'd used some 10 - 15 years ago and tied them in the exact spots where they'd hung before. Mom and Dad rode in the truck while Blair, BJ and I rode in the back all the way down to the amphatheatre. It's funny, that theatre hasn't changed one bit since I last attended a show at it some 10 to 15 years ago. Nature based characters, enthusiastic actors, subtle humor embedded here and there to keep the adult population entertained. There was a full house tonight, virtually standing room only! And although tomorrow night will be the finale for the year, I have to work tomorrow evening and highly doubt I'll be able to make it out there in time. I miss those shows though. It really was fun. September 5, 2006 - 12:03 AM The music you hear playing is a clip from a song on a CD that has not yet come out in stores. Has anyone else noticed the irony in the fact that depsite all the thug speak prominant in many rap songs these days, with the artists themselves sometimes having a criminal record longer than their own albums. Yet download one of their songs off the Internet and they whine like spoiled children because you're stealing from them? Touche. Beautiful day today, but the leaves are starting to depart. Blah blah, fall is coming. Sadly, the weather tends to dominate many of my journal entries. You don't come here for the day's weather in review or to hear how shocked I am at how fast the summer has come and gone... We had a good summer this year. Big news today though, the crocidile hunter died after being impaled by a stingray. Kind of puts a gloomy stigma upon one of the characters in Finding Nemo... And that, boys and girls, is what killed the crocidile hunter... Talk about an ironic way to go... I think everyone always figured one of his grin-teeth'd friends would eventually do the deed. Still sad to see him go... I always enjoyed watching his crazy adventures. Nobody lives forever. Speaking of ironic deaths, I was reading in the paper today about this young guy who bought a crotch rocket and killed himself on it after colliding with a decorative rock. Again, I'm sure it was not what he had in mind when he went out for a noon-time jaunt. "I just finished my lunch. I think I'll go end my life by running into a pretty stone." It's guys like him doing stunts like that who give the rest of us a bad name. She's got me love stoned... I think she knows September 6, 2006 - 8:48 PM I went shopping tonight and bought some much-needed household goods. One of the things I bought was one of those thingies that you put in the toilet bowl to clean it as you flush (which has the pleasant side effect of turning your bowl water blue and therefore green when you pee in it! hehehe) I was looking over the instructions on the back of the product and noticed one point of direction that amused me. It says, and I quote: Product is for use in toilets that are used regurlarly - at least once a month. I don't know if I'm doing it wrong, but I use my toilet WAY more than once a month... Squirrels - The arch-nemesis' of aerial telephone and cable lines! I was working on this one tap a way up on a pole when this squirrel came hopping along the wire to within 8 feet of me where he curiously peered and pondered my work. He wasn't scolding but rather sitting there, observing and chittering. Eventually after I snapped a few pictures with my handy dandy camera phone he scampered off again, but there's something you don't see every day. Actually, squirrels cause a lot of damage to the cable and telephone lines strung from the telephone poles to people's houses. They chew at the insulation on the wire, making holes and exposing the innards of the cable to the elements. Eventually water gets in and corrodes the cable, causing anything from a fuzziness on certain channels to a complete loss of picture. But those squirrels sure are cute! Cheers, mate! To the Crocadile Hunter September 8, 2006 - 11:58 PM This evening Bo and I went swimming with Maddy at the Family Leisure Center. I've never been there before, but although it has by far the smallest of the three leisure center pools - it's waterslide is definitely the coolest. You slide around a couple of mild corners for the first few seconds of the slide, and then - up ahead you can see a dark tunnel. It is very ominous. As soon as you enter the darkness you can feel the descent begin to accelerate you into a centrifical spin around the outside of a spiral section of slide before you come barrelling out into the splash down section. It's pretty fun. We went to Family tonight because Village Square is closed for seasonal mainetnance and Southland has begun their weekly Teen Night that runs from 7:30 - 9:00 or so every Friday night. At the end of the night we were sitting in the hot tub waiting for the final call to exit the pool when one of the life guards came over to the hot tub, leaned in and in a low voice said to Bo and I, "We've had a contamination in the main pool so if you've been in there within the last 15 - 20 minutes you may want to shower extra well on your way out." I asked him what exactly he meant by contamination but he would not give any specifics. We looked out over the water and saw another staff member scooping something off the botton of the pool with one of those long net poles and then tapping it out into a garbage can. Can anyone say feces? September 9, 2006 - 11:06 PM I was starting to teach Maddy some basic drumming this evening. She's actually got a bit of rhythm. It was quite funny. She has to stand up to play the kick drum, but she'd stand there and go tap tap thump ... tap tap thump... tap tap thump... while I played some little diddy on the keyboard. Perhaps the last nice weekend of 2006? September 12, 2006 - 11:57 PM Who is but the form, following the function of what and WHAT I am is a man in a mask. Every day I meet anywhere from a half-dozen people to some days a count of 30 or 40. There is never a shortage of diversity amongst those I service, and while the job itself is simple enough on paper, in practice every install is a unique experience. Still, with the pace at which the work is slung towards me and the quest to be home in time to watch the sun set, I tend to forget far more people than I remember. But the odd time you meet a person (or a family) who stands out in the memory: Sometimes it's because of their generosity, sometimes it's because of a comment they make, or perhaps it's just because the customer is really hot. (And that can often be the best part of my day! Nudge Nudge Wink Wink Say no MORE!) Whatever the reason a family stands out, good or bad, they are the ones that make the best stories and sometimes even find themselves sketched out in my journal. I experienced one such family this afternoon. Read on. When I first entered the house, it seemed normal enough. No furniture inside to speak of, just clothes and some make-shift beds on the floors. Not terribly uncommon as a good lot of the time I'm connecting an essential service that usually preceeds the process of unpacking or sometimes even MOVING one's personal belongings to the new residence. It didn't really stand out to me, but of course the lady offered her appologizes over the state of the house. If I had a dollar for every time I heard that... But instead of simply leaving off after pardon the mess, she goes on to tell me that her daughter had suddenly died and it had left her family in shock. Through a series of legal struggles somehow related to her death, they had also lost their house and were living in a place between places temporarily although how the death of her daughter had so incredibly affected her financial situation never did become revealed. In any event, I felt compassion for this woman, obviously trying to give directions as to where she wanted what hooked up but clearly distracted all the while too. Completely understandable for a woman who had apparantly just lost her daughter. I began to go about my work and as I was carring out my duties in one of the rooms I couldn't help but overhear the conversation she was having with a young lady at the Calgary Humane Society. Through the course of conversation and from what I was overhearing, this lady had lost her 20 year old cat a couple of weeks ago. (The cat would have been 21 this fall.) Several weeks later, a cat matching the description had been brought in to the SPCA after apparantly being struck by a motor vehicle. Although the cat had been alive when it arrived at the vet, it was determined that the wounds were too severe and the cat was too aged to be mended and thus was euthanized. Tough break I was thinking. First she loses her daughter, then her cat? Wow. The ear tattoo also matched so there was but for the lady to go and visually confirm the body of her deceased 20-year-old cat left to do. That was when I started to lose some sympathy for this lady and begin to see signs of a larger picture appearing. She asked the girl from the Humane Society if an autopsy had been performed to determine the cause of death and to find out if any drugs had been administered to her cat. (Didn't she just hear that the vet had put her cat down? It had been struck by a vehicle. It was 20 years old. I think we have a cause of death!) She was insistant (and even brought up the death of her daughter in a bid to buy some sympathy and compliance from this increasingly irritated phone operator) that someone had "stolen" her cat, abused it and injected it with drugs. This had happened before, apparantly, and there was some stalker out there with a death wish for her feline. The girl on the phone explained that at the Humane Society they do not perform autopsies, but that she could come down, claim the body of her cat and bring it (herself) to the vet to have them run the tests there. "Well I was wondering if you could give me some more information about (the tests)" she asks. The girl, now getting tired of repeating herself, explained a second time that they do not do those tests at the Humans Society, therefore she does not have any information on them. Well then this lady asks the girl if she would document their conversation! "I have filed a report of animal cruelty to the police and it would really mean a lot to me if you would document our conversation today so that it would be on record." Needless to say, the girl would much rather forget the conversation than try to write it down and you could hear her stress level increase as the conversation progressed (Oh - the lady had the phone on speaker in case you were wondering how I was hearing both sides of the phone call.) I eventually got her TV's hooked up and she looked very relieved to see cable instead of snow again. It was then that she dropped the bomb on me. "Oh I'm so glad to have TV again. It's the only thing that's been able to keep us distracted from the death of my daughter over these past few years." Say what?! I thought this was an extremely recent thing! Now you're telling me, not only that it happened several years ago but that you haven't even come to grips with it yet, diverting your grief with soap operas and Seinfeld??? I couldn't believe it. If I had been there on any other occasion but to install her cable services I'd have told her, "Ma'am, I'm very sorry your daughter has died. But you need to deal with that death and you need to deal with it now. Watching TV isn't going to bring her back, nor is it going to make the pain of losing her go away." I couldn't help but also wonder, noticing the way she brought up the subject with complete strangers of whom she required services from - if she hadn't simply found a convenient way to manipulate people into giving in to her whims more effectively - and just decided to keep using that approach. Everything she asked for was somehow related to her dead daughter. The TV was there to distract them from the pain. The death of the cat was intentional and caused by some stalker out to make her life miserable following the death of her daughter. It's like the child who asks his parents for a toy, reasoning that it will help his education. "If you do this for me, it will help alleviate the pain of losing my daughter." Do you see the similarity? And she kept asking for more and more free stuff from me. Normally I don't mind but the more I felt like she was milking this for all it was worth, the less I felt inclined to succumb to her whims. Heck, I installed three outlets for her (which I REALLY hope Shaw charges her for) although she was not being billed for any of them. Then she asked for an extra remote for her TV. Then she asked for more outlets! I have never seen the like. It was very irritating by the end. And now that I've written all about it, I can forget it and go to bed. Man time flies. This week is almost over. One more busy day. Doesn't look like we're going to the warm lake this weekend... September 16, 2006 - 12:00 AM Nevermind the leaves falling off trees - the real mark of fall is the lighting of the furnace! Tonight I write in my journal from the house of my parents where I am housesitting and puppysitting while they are away at Colin Peterson's wedding in the Crowsnest Pass. Puppy was, needless to say, very happy to see me when I arrived, and we've had a lovely evening of eating, playing, and going for a walk. This afternoon I lit both the furnaces in my garage and in the house to commemorate the end of summer (and to warm up the house). Now for years my brother has been a very hard-liner when it came to heat and gas consumption, often restricting the thermostat at my parents' house to 15 degrees and mandating the use of sweaters, toques and long-legged underwear. I've remarked in the past that I need to go outside to warm up when I'm there. So needless to say, when I arrived at the empty house this afternoon, the thermostat was turned right off (and the furnace wasn't even powered on.) Knowing they would all be away, I decided if I was going to live here for the weekend, I was certainly not going to do so cold and prompty lit the furnace. I then went and sat on the register in the kitchen, something I've done since I was a little boy. Having me sitting on the floor, the puppy used this situation to his advantage and extracted petting, scratching, rubbing, and combing - promptly nudging me every time I stopped to continue. Pet a dog and you're busy all afternoon. It has occured to me, this will be the first time I've slept in this house since the night before I moved out. How much has changed since then. Thought for the day: What you love you can lose September 16, 2006 - 4:30 PM Last night, shortly after finishing my journal entry, I went downstairs and crawled into Blair's bed. First off, I have to say that he has more pillows in his bed than most family-of-four households have in total! Puppy wasn't quite ready to settle down for the night and I could hear him snooting around upstairs and occasionally bringing something down into the room to eat before jogging back up the stairs. I looked around what used to be my old room and although I half-expected to have all sorts of familiar flashbacks - there was nothing. I recognized the room but it did not feel familiar. After some time had passed, the puppy came and hopped up on the bed, digging with his nose through some covers to create for himself a comfy place to lay down. He curled himself up against my legs and went to sleep. For some reason though, I couldn't sleep. It just wouldn't come. I don't know if I'd just had too much Pepsi through the evening or if it was the 4 hour nap I'd had that afternoon, but sleep eluded me for quite some time so I lay in the bed, listening to BJ breathe. The next thing I knew, he was rummaging around, very restless and I looked at the clock: 4:30 am. I think that's the time Blair gets up every morning so he's probably picked up the habit as well. I wasn't about to get up. But then, after he settled down again I was teetering on the precipice of sleepy land when I felt the delicate and dainty footsteps of another creature, picking their path along my back. Having reached my shoulderblades, they began to pluff and their owner began to purr as Spot the Fourth found herself a comfy place to lay as well - on top of me!!! The three of us dozed into dreams and weren't aroused again until nearly 11:00. We got up, I let the dog out to pee and started cooking up some bacon for breakfast. After preparing a tasty hot breakfast for myself - something I haven't had for many weeks - I began tackling the daunting task of the day - hooking up the rear heater in my white van. After the success and pleasure of having a rear heater in Rusty, I decided it would be necessary before winter to install a rear heater in my work truck, especially since I can't even turn the main heater on at full fan speed without melting down several wires in the dash! (Still haven't figured that one out. I need an amp clamp to see what the draw is and hopefully isolate it. We've replaced the fan, most of the wiring, the switch - all with the same result: Burning wires. I think there is some kind of power feeding back through the heater motor and it's overloading the wiring. That van has always had a few ghosts in it's electrical system though.) This spring, before we got rid of one of the blue vans, I salvaged almost every useful part out of it, including it's rear heater which had served us very well for years as I was growing up. I won't even pretend there isn't a lot of nostalgia attached to that van (which is now gone) and the parts that have survived and been incorporated into my other two vans. Several hours later, Puppy and I took the van for a test drive to force out any air in the coolant lines and try out the new heater. It was, for all intents and purposes, a complete success. It blasts hot air out into the back of the van which will undoubtably make an incredible difference when the weather is below pleasant. In fact, with the average temperature outside hovering around 4 degrees today I found the van had become too hot within a matter of minutes. That's exactly what I wanted, because it's a lot easier to turn the heater off when it's too hot than to sit and be cold because you can't get the vehicle to warm up. Now it will be interesting to see how it performs in -30 weather! I was careful throughout the test drive to monitor the wiring to the second heater. What would you know, but it doesn't even feel warm. The switch is fine, the wires are cool, the connectors are the same - it's operating perfectly, despite the fact that it has a bigger motor than the front heater. Again, I have NO idea why that front heater overheats the wiring. As a test, I turned the fan to hi and grabbed the bunch of wires that come from the switch. I had to let go immediately because they were hot! Switching it down one notch to 3/4 seems to cool them substantially but it also means that less heat comes from the front. Oh well. In all liklihood, this new heater will more than make up for it. Tonight Bo and Maddy and I are going bowling. Peggy took her in Lethbridge and she loves it, so we're going to go tonight. It will be sad if she gets a higher score than Bo and I... It wouldn't surprise me though. I've noticed signs that she is a girl after my own heart - She LOVES scaring people! Last night I was sitting in my room listening to music. The song ended and I heard a creak from the door. I looked behind me and there was this four-year-old, arms poised, with a look of sneakiness on her face, trying to make her way into my room to scare me!! Had the song not ended when it did, she probably would have succeeded. A couple of days ago, she got me REALLY good. I mean, I didn't just jump, I screamed! I woke up one morning and sauntered, sleepy-eyed, into the bathroom. When I finished up and opened the door to walk out, Maddy jumped out and yelled BOOOOO!!! It caught me completely off guard and even Bo heard me yell from upstairs! She then laughed her head off at her success. I have to say though, I've certainly had my fun doing the exact same thing to others, so perhaps this is my comeuppance. And you just can't get mad when she does it either... It is cute... September 21, 2006 - 11:40 AM Allright, I've been making a list of things to write about over the past couple of days as there have been quite a number of noteworthy things going on in the past couple of days. To act as a kind of index for this days' entry, the following stories will be elaborated upon: The two horn blasts in the distance tonight as I walkd to my van in my underwear The story about the little boy from the Good Morning News that brought me to tears in Pizza Hut Random toilet bowl water levels Getting ripped off at Burger King (and several other eating establishments) Finding the Lost Sprinkler A few weeks ago I bought one of those 2000 Flushes tablets you put in the tank to make the water blue (I think it also cleans the bowl or something silly like that as well...) But ever since that time, I've noticed a very strange side effect to it's presence in my toilet: Every time I flush the toilet now, the water in the bowl comes to rest at a different level! Sometimes it's quite high, other times it's barely got any water in it at all! So far, there doesn't seem to be any discernable pattern to this phenominon, other than it is consistantly strange. I ran into Al from Sylvania yesterday and had a chat with him at Esso as he filled up his truck with Diesel. We had a few laughs about the good times of life as a lightbulb changer... In a way, I kind of miss it. He was looking very well which was encouraging to see, and seemed a lot less stressed than I remember him being the last time we ran into each other. A couple of days ago, I was cleaning in the garage and getting the furnace fired up again in preparation for the fall and inevitably colder weather that is to be expected with the departure of the sun from the majority of our days when I solved a mystery that had befuddled me for several months. Remember how I wrote in my journal some time ago that I suspected someone might have stolen my bup bup sprinkler? Well, that turned out to be not the case, as I found that sprinkler in the garage! (But we do know Paul stole pop cans from the back yard and even caught him rummaging through our garbage in the alley last week! Creepy. Now here's something I had to chuckle about as the weight of it's implication dawned on me. I was at Burger King last night killing some time by having supper while waiting for my last customer of the night to get home. They sell pop with your meal in one of three sizes; small, medium, and large - each bearing a different and proportionally increasing price tag. But what the average, dim-witted consumer may fail to realize when making their cup size selection - is that the pop dispenser at this particular location is in customerland, and you can get as many refills as you want! So buy the small cup and fill it up a few more times! There is no benefit to ordering a large Coke as long as you plan on eating in the restaurant... Last night when I got home I had to make several trips from the van to the house to bring in all the stuff I wanted to have at home over my weekend. After I'd completed the trek, I took off my work coveralls and had started creating the list you see above when I realized one of the items I was going to write about, the story from the Good Morning News, was still in the van. Being that it was dark out and surprisingly warm for the time of year, I decided to make that last trip in my underwear. I got out to the van, grabbed the edition I was looking for and started walking back in when I heard a most unusual sound. You know in Lord of the Rings where they blow that horn and it's heard thousands of miles away, summoning help? I heard two distinct horn blasts very similar to that in the movie. Each blast was about 5 seconds in length, with a pause of three seconds between them. It sounded like it was coming from the south. I half expected, as I stood there half-robed, to see charriots and horsemen and blazing torches come galloping down the street! It seemed very out of place. So what was this story in the Good Morning News? Well, the other day I was sitting in the waiting area of the Sarcee Pizza Hut, absorbing the jokes and articles of that day's edition of the one-page paper. As I began reading one story, it seemed intriguing at first, but when I got to the end of it, I have to admit - I was choked up! I had tears in my eyes, my nose had begun to get sniffly, and I was praying nobody else in the waiting room would turn and see this coverall clad, rugged and manly tradseman in tears, touched by a tale of two tots. I just wasn't expecting it. Here is that story, as found in Issue 12 - 122, West Edition dated September 11, 2006: Many years ago, a little girl named Liz was suffering from a rare and serious disease. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year-old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. He hesitated for only a moment before taking in a deep breath and saying, "Yes, I'll do it if it will save Liz." As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheeks. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, "Will I start to die right away?" Being young, the boy had misunderstood the doctor; He thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood. Attitude, after all, is everything. September 30, 2006 - 8:18 PM Where once there were two, now there are three! Meet the newest member of my bird family! Thursday morning I got up early and drove to Lethbridge where I met up with her previous owner. Originally Lena had an older male bird, but when he got lonely she bought him a girl bird, this bird, to keep him company. As he got on in years, eventually as all living things do - he passed away leaving her with just the one, lonely girl bird. She offered to give me the cage, all her food, toys, everything bird she had, all I had to do was drive down there and pick it all up. So I did. And Thursday afternoon my new girl-bird and I made the trek back from Lethbridge in Rusty. When I got home, there was much bird-excitement as my two boy-birds went googlie-eyed over this pretty Polly who just arrived in town. I put her cage nearby theirs so the three could get used to seeing each other before they were officially introduced, sans cages. You should have seen it! My guys were fluttering all around the cage, clinging to the wall on the side closest to her just to get a better look. After a couple of hours, I let them out of the cage and the blue one flew over to the new cage almost immediately and began chatting it up with her. She was hesitant at first, and even pecked at his feet a couple of times as he clung to the outside of her cage. But he wasn't disuaded. After some time I put them back in their cage but left her door open in case she felt like going on a tour of her new surroundings. She didn't budge for the rest of the afternoon, but a bit later on I looked in on them and thought that somehow MY green one had got out of their cage and was now perched atop it's wire frame. Closer inspection revealed that the cage-top observer was NOT my green bird, but a now-curious newcomer who had flown over to check out the boys! Things were off to a wonderful start. By the evening the three of them officially met and flew around the house for a while. Eventually she even invited herself into their cage and spent the night there with them! The blue one and her have hit it off and are now almost inseperable. My green one tends to do his own thing more often than not, but I've noticed even he is preening himself a lot more than usual, and neither of them are quite as anxious to go hang out on the drum set while she is around. Yesterday I got to get re-aquainted with an old friend of mine. For many years growing up we lived next door to each other and spent countless summer days making adventures in our neighbourhood. Whether we were riding my old Kawasaki around the dirt hills or playing football with my brother and I in our back yard, it seems like Lorena and I have been friends forever. I ran into her the other day while she was walking home from work and we decided to get together and go for supper to catch up on old times. I think it had been at least a year since I'd even seen her last, but we picked up from where we left off. She's been working at Rona for almost a year now and is considering taking some more courses on computers and art. We took the bike along the scenic route to Boston Pizza where we had supper. That stupid battery died again, forcing me to push-start the bike in the parking lot again... That's getting embarassing. At least it wasn't a date date... Luckily she's pretty forgiving of those kinds of things. haha Here's a ladybug on a leaf, and speaking of bugs I had a bit of a bug in one of my computers today... Actually - it crashed, biting an enormous chunk out of my otherwise booked day. As a result, I had to spend most of it converting one of my other computers into a gateway. That old box served me well for many years. May it rest in pieces. BACK to Journal Index