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Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Maritime Trip - Day 1, Ottawa to Saint John

We packed last night and set the alarm clock for 2:00am. For some reason, it didn't work. Luckily, Sandra woke up at around 2:30am.

We loaded the truck and woke the kids and managed to leave by 4:00am.

The scenery along the way is awesome. It really makes you appreciate living here in Canada. I'll summarize our day in point form:
  • Quebec has the most awesome rest stops. They're large, clean, well-kept, and the buildings that house the washrooms are huge and clean.
  • Our auto GPS sucks because it clearly has old maps. The new Trans Canada highway from around Edmonston to the Fredericton offramp doesn't exist on its map. So what it showed us, between its attempts to reroute, was that we were driving across fields, through forests, and over mountains. It's a good thing that we didn't have to make and route changes in that large stretch of highway.
  • It's the first time I've seen fences that follow a highway to keep deer and moose off the highway! They even have one-way gates every 1/2 kilometre that stop them from leaving the forest, but allow them back in if they should manage to find their way onto the highway side. Every so often, they have tunnels that pass under the highway to allow them to cross safely. Very cool idea!
  • They sure have a lot of "Watch for moose" warning signs along the highway to Saint John.
  • I love the 110km/h speed limit on the Trans Canada highway in New Brunswick! Driving 120kmh sure cuts down the travel time. :)
  • There are endless Tim Hortons along the highway. That is, until you really want one.
  • Downtown Saint John reminds me of Montreal... but a lot smaller, and with steeper streets.
  • The people here are super friendly.
  • The inside the Lafontaine Tunnel in Quebec needs some serious repairs.
  • Driving 14-15 hours is tiring, but not as brutal as I thought it would be.
  • It's more difficult to sleep in a moving vehicle than it used to be when I was a kid. (No, I wasn't driving at the time... Sandra was) :)
  • Driving across the Hartman bridge (world's longest covered bright) that crosses the Saint John river was pretty cool.
When we arrived at the Delta Brunswick in Saint John, it was around 7:00pm. There's a shopping mall under the hotel and it closes up at around 8:00pm. By the time we got down there to look for a place to eat, it was 7:50pm and too late. :( We went back to the restaurant in the hotel and ate there. It was fairly inexpensive and the food was good.

Shortly after 9:00pm we were done and decided to come back to our room and call it a night. We've got a big day tomorrow, going to do the touristy thing. I'm not entirely sure where we'll go and what we'll see. I know I want to see the Reversing Falls for sure. The kids seem more exciting about swimming in the hotel's indoor swimming pool. We have to find a Zellers or some store so Sandra can buy a new bathing suit -- she forgot to pack her's.

That's about it for today. Need sleep. I'll write again tomorrow and will post lots of pics on Flickr when we get home on August 9th, unless I manage to find time before then.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Just winging it

We're about three days away from our trip down to the Maritimes, and it feels like we're still not ready for it.

I suspect it'll be a mad packing rush at the last minute, which means not getting much sleep before our departure time of 3:00am in Thursday.

Despite the impending madness, I'm really looking forward to it, and I think my family is as well. This will be the longest drive we've ever done. The last long drive was from Ottawa to Niagara Falls, which went surprisingly well and didn't really feel like a long drive.

This time around we're looking at 12-13 hours, at least, to Saint John, New Brunswick. We'll spend two nights there before grabbing the ferry across to Digby, Nova Scotia, on our way to Mount Uniacke where we'll be staying with some friends.

We have a short list of places and things to see in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, but haven't really decided when we'll go see them all. We're pretty much just winging it.

There's a possibility that we may cut our stay in Nova Scotia short a day early and drive across to PEI for a night of camping, so we can visit Charlottetown.

We're so disorganized. :)

The cool thing is that I'll have internet access at the hotel we stay at in New Brunswick, as well as my friend's place, and the hotel on the way home. I can write a daily update about our trip. I'm sure it'll be worth reading. ;)

Zemanta Pixie

Monday, April 2, 2007

Sports players

Someone who plays Hockey is a "Hockey player". Someone who plays Football is a "Football player". Basketball players play Basketball. Baseball players play... what else... Baseball.

Why is a Golfer not called a Golf player?

Monday, March 26, 2007

Mouse catching

We arrived home from work this evening, hoping that the little mouse was in the live trap.

I carefully untaped the cupboard doors and removed the trap.

Nope. No mouse.

I shone a light beside the basket and there he was. Still sitting in the corner of the cupboard.

We decided to try and catch him with a glass. A friend at work said he had done that twice and it was pretty easy. He said the mice never even tried to run away. Our plan was to get him under a glass, and then slide it along the shelf to the front, and slide him into a small cardboard box.

So I blocked off the other half of the cupboard to minimize the area he could run in, and started to pull the basket away.

He didn't like that, and quickly scurried in behind it.

By now, my sister inlaw and her daughter dropped by to watch.

My wife placed a large plastic recycling bin on the kitchen counter, beneath the cupboard, just in case he hopped out of the cardboard. He would then land inside the plastic bin.

I was standing on a step stool, and I was nervous as hell that this little critter would get away. So my hand was shaking. That was kinda funny.

I removed the basket. The mouse didn't like that, and ran back and forth at the back of the cupboard. He stopped in his corner. I reached in slowly with the glass... he scurried around again. At one point he even ran toward me. He settled down again in the corner and I tried again. After three or four more attempts, I had mouse under glass.

Sliding the glass wasn't as easy because his little tail kept getting caught. He even squeaked at one point. Eventually I got it at the edge of the shelf.

My sister inlaw decided to help out. She was going to help close one flap on the box, while I closed the other, and my wife held the box up for us.

On a count of three, I pulled the glass off the edge and into the box he dropped.

We closed it up and I went out for a much needed smoke. :)

My kids and I walked up to the woods up near the school to release him.

Could that mouse ever move! AND jump! A second or two after the box was tipped over, he bolted out, hopped into the woods and continued hopping a foot at a time, and I swear he jumped about a foot in the air for a distance of two feet just before he was out of sight.

THAT'S what I was afraid he'd do from the cupboard.

By the time we got back, my wife had cleaned and disinfected the cupboard. I had a can of expanding spray foam, and I sprayed it into the small hole that we suspect was the route to the top of the cupboards.

Hopefully he was the one and only mouse we had. And hopefully we don't see anymore.

"Phys Ed"

I must be getting old.

While my kids were getting ready for school, my wife reminded them to not forget their gym clothes for school. My 11 year-old son replied, "I don't need them. I have Health, remember?" Then he went downstairs.

I walked into the bedroom and looked at my wife.

"Health?", I asked.

"Yeh," she replied, "Phys Ed."

Now, when I was in school, Phys Ed was "gym". Running around. Sports. Stuff like that.

So I said, "Hmm.. wouldn't it make more sense to teach them about Phys Ed before they the physical part?"

She smiled at me and said, "No... 'PHYS ED'."

Then it hit me.

Sex Ed.

Why the hell do they call it HEALTH or PHYS ED? We called that SEX ED when I was in school. because that's what it was about. Sex.

Then it hit me again.

He's only 11 years-old!

Good god. Is it THAT time already?

I'm not ready for this shit.

Tiny visitor

The first thing this morning, after I got dressed and came downstairs, my wife said to me, "Can you look in the cupboard on the top shelf? I found mouse droppings."

So I got the step stool, opened the cupboard and looked on the top shelf.

Sure enough, there were mouse droppings. Five or six of them, from what I could see.

No mouse in the trap though.

So I took out the trap and there were more droppings behind it. I decided to re-bait the trap with some fresh peanut butter and some crumbled nut bar, and I put it back on the shelf.

Then my wife asked me if I could take everything else off the shelf.

Okee dokee. I started removing things, one by one, handing them to her. More droppings.

And more droppings.

And even more droppings.

"This was one busy little mouse", I thought.

The last thing on the shelf was a plastic basket. In the basket, my wife keeps a bag of chocolate chips, bag of coconut, and other assorted stuff like that.

I grabbed the basket and pulled it out.

Ever have that weird feeling when you're doing something, where you know that there's a chance something else will happen, but in the back of your mind you're telling yourself that it won't happen, and then it does?

That's what it was like with the basket. I was fairly sure that I wouldn't find anything, other than more mouse poop, but when I got that basket out... there he was. Sitting in the corner of the cupboard, looking back at me.

What else could I do? I put the basket back in the cupboard and closed the door.

My wife freaked out. Which is strange, because she loves domestic rats. My sister in-law has two and she has no problem holding them.

My wife said that we have to get the mouse out. I asked her what I was supposed to do? Reach in and pick it up? What if it ran out and fell to the floor, then took off?

I told her it was best to keep it in the cupboard and hope that it goes into the live trap sometime today.

I took a picture of him before we taped the cupboard doors closed, and taped over the openings. Yeh, he could chew through the tape, but I'm hoping he'll get into the trap so we can release him outside in the forest somewhere.

I don't know what we'll do of he doesn't.

Or worse, if we get home and find that he did chew through the tape.

Or even worse... DIDN'T chew through the tape covering the small opening on top of the cupboards that he used to get into the house. That would mean he'd still be somewhere else in the house. :)

We have a cat, but she doesn't seem to be aware of the mouse's existence. If she is aware of it, she's not showing it by hanging around in the kitchen.

At the last place we lived, we caught a few mice. We had another cat then, and he would walk on the counters and stare up at the cupboards.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Quincy Video

It took YouTube a while to publish it, but it is now up. Here's the video I made. Despite the corny sound track, I still love watching it. :)

Monday, March 19, 2007

Quincy

I'm feeling a little freaked out right now.

I was messing around with YouTube, uploading a small video of our cat, Sam, meowing. (Yeh, I was bored) Since I was digging around in my videos folder, I decided to play a video I made in 2003 as a tribute to our other cat, Quincy, who passed away that year.

Then it dawned on me that it was March of that year that he passed away.

It gets even freakier.

I checked my calendar and it was actually March 19th -- THIS VERY DAY -- back in 2003.

Spooky.

Quincy, also known as "Buddy", "Rug", and "Quin" was a Maine Coone variety of cat. When we got him 1993, along with his "sister" Sam. He was so tiny. He could sleep in my hand.

Sam was the same age, but about twice his size. Quincy grew up fast, outgrowing Sam and became the dominant one. He grew into a BIG cat. And he had a temper, when he didn't get his way.

Yet, he never attempted to hurt our kids. He would hiss occasionally, but that was it. He was so tolerant of them picking him up like a rag doll later in life.

I remember when our son was about a year old. He was lying on the carpet, on a blanket playing with his toys. I was typing away at the computer. I leaned over to check on him.

I nearly freaked.

There he was, on his stomach, face-to-face with Quincy. He had both fists firmly grasping the fur on each side of Quincy's face, pulling Quincy's face close to his own.

Quincy had a look of panic on his face, but didn't even try to pull away or defend himself. Poor cat. I rescued him and off he went.

It was pretty funny after the fact.

Quincy had two incidents of FUS (Feline Urinary Syndrome) in his life. The first time was caught early when he was around 4 years old, purely by chance while I was in the basement at the same time he was using the litter box. I noticed that he seemed to be having some discomfort as he went about his business. I checked the litter when he was done and found a small pool of bloody urine. That cost us a couple of hundred dollars in Vet bills, but he recovered fairly quickly.

The second incident was a couple of years later. Again, we caught it early, but not early enough. $600 later, he was home. We changed cat food this time, switching to Science Diet.

Years passed without any further incidents. Both Sam and Quincy appeared to be aging well.

In March of 2003, I noticed that Quincy was looking a little scruffy. Not his usual self. Not as active. I feared that it was FUS again.

I checked the litter box. I dabbed some paper towel on any wet spots on the litter and it left a pinkish wet mark on the paper towel. Must have been blood.

After some initial tests at the Animal Hospital, we had a brief moment of hope that it wasn't FUS, but quite possibly something else and easily treatable. An hour or so later, our hopes were gone. They confirmed that it was FUS. And fairly advanced. He was completely blocked.

We made a difficult decision that day, and chose to put an end to the misery that kept coming back.

I have to admit that I whimped out. My wife took Quincy to the Animal Hospital that night. I pretty much knew what was coming and couldn't go through that. About 7 years earlier, I brought my family's dog, Peanut, there for the same thing. She was very old and sick. But I stayed right to the end.

I couldn't bear the thought of going through that again with Quincy. When I think back on it now, that's something I regret. I should have been there. I owed that to him.

Anyway, that's the story of Quincy. Once the video gets published on YouTube, I'll post a link.

RIP Buddy. We still miss you.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Meow?

Our cat, Sam, was acting really strange last night.

She usually keeps to herself, unless I'm sitting on the couch watching TV. Then she'll hop onto the arm of the couch and lie down. Last night I was at the computer and she wouldn't stop coming into the den and meowing. Or standing on her hind legs and rubbing her face against the arm of my chair.

I checked to see if she had food. She did. I emptied the bowl and gave her some fresh food and water. That occupied her for about 5 minutes before she returned.

I went looking for her toys in the living room, found 3 of them, and tossed them out into the middle of the room for her to play with. She walked over to them, batted one around for a few seconds and then followed me back into the den.

She eventually hopped onto my lap and draped herself over one of my arms and purred away contentedly. After 10 minutes of that, she hopped down and left.

I'm guessing that she just wanted some attention, but it's not very often that she acts that way. It was rather strange.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

No Mouse

We checked the trap this morning and it was empty, except for the small piece of paper with the peanut butter on it. I'm not sure what I would have done if we had found a mouse in it. It's damn cold outside today. I would have felt guilty releasing it.

Monday, March 5, 2007

There's a mouse in the house!

Maybe.

My wife found a plastic basket had been chewed on. The small chewed pieces of plastic were inside the basket. Nothing else in that cupboard was chewed though. We don't know how long it's been like that either. No signs of mouse droppings.

At the last house we lived in, we had two mice over the years that we were there. We caught them both. Unfortunately, one of them died in the trap. We use live traps, but I had baited the trap for weeks, and checked it daily with no sign. I forgot about it for a few days and when I went back, it had a dead mouse in it.

The first one we caught about a year before was still alive. It was a much larger trap too. Click on the picture to see the little trapped critter.

I baited the trap with peanut butter and left it in the cupboard where the plastic basket was. These little critters amaze me how they manage to climb up into the cupboards, and navigate from one to another without any obvious access.

If there is in fact a mouse in the house, I hope we catch it soon.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Lights out

Just as we were all getting ready this morning, the power went out. Not just a brief flicker. Completely off.

No more clock radio news. No more bedroom light helping me to find a matching pair of socks.

The phone rang. My wife answered and spoke with her Mother, who lives a few doors away, confirming that they too had no power.

Thankfully, the coffee was already made and still hot. I'd have to grab something to eat later from TimmyHo's when we made our morning Timmy's coffee stop while driving my wife to work.

My PC and my server box were still running. Both are on a UPS, but shutdown down about 20 minutes later, after the electricity gods decided not to fix what was broken.

I sure hope we have power when I get home later this evening. I'm not really keen freezing my ass off at home.

Btw, in case you're wondering, I did manage to find a matching pair of socks.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Credit Card Fraud

At the end of December, while I was taking some Christmas vacation time, I received a call from Visa regarding some suspect activity on my card. The end result is that there were three charges totaling almost $400 from two different gambling web sites. Needless to say, I was rather shocked. Particularly because I rarely use my Visa card for anything -- maybe once or twice a year, tops. How they got my number, I'll never know.

Anyway, the card was canceled and they were sending me a new card, along with an affidavit to sign stating that the charges were not mine. I received the affidavit, signed it and faxed it back to them. Last week I received a statement for the new card. I'm still waiting for the new card. A 4-week wait isn't normal, I'm sure.

I called the number for the Fraud Claims that was on the letter I received and spoke with a rep who took down my info. She said she would transfer me to someone in their Fraud Claims dept (I think). After a rather lengthy wait on hold (but she did come back twice to see if I still wanted to hold), I was put through to the other rep. She told me that the new card was sent on January 17th. To be safe, they were going to cancel it and send me another. Jan 17th doesn't really seem that long ago. I thought the first replacement would have been sent earlier than that, which is why I called today. Maybe I should have waited a little longer. I guess if it was still too early to hit the panic button, she would have said something.

So, I now await my second replacement. In retrospect, I probably should have just cancelled it since I don't use it often.