Ok, so it’s been a few months, and I don’t expect to see many people still reading this site, but here goes.

Since my last post, Jon and Deb got married, we’ve had visitors come and go, the kids keep growing, all sorts of stuff going on in the basement, which now has drywall that’s been taped and mudded a few times. I’ll see what I can do to update you.

We went camping in August - ok, so Erin and the kids went camping with her dad. The kids had a really good time, and want to go back. It rained. And rained. It rained so much that we cut the camping trip a little short. I went out for the weekend, and only wound up staying for one night before we went back home.

The wedding was great - lots of family in for a visit, and I took two weeks off leading up to the wedding. There were some pretty good stories created - side bets, the wedding’s biggest drunk going on the honeymoon (for the first leg of the trip anyway) and other shenanigans. I went to Dave and Katriona’s place to play Warhawk with Dave, Trent and Kevin, which was a really good time.

Erin’s Mom was out for a brief visit recently, and the kids really enjoyed that too.

This past weekend was Grey Cup weekend, and the Saskatchewan Roughriders were not just in it, they won it. I partook of the game in Jason’s garage, on a hastily assembled (and fully awesome) 8 foot screen, being projected on by my projector and HD receiver. It was a truly great time, and I really appreciate the fact that Jason and Amy were willing to host so many unruly people for the game. The game itself seemed to just fly by - it’s all a big blur other than a handful of plays which will probably stick in my memory for a while - Fantuz’ touchdown, Johnson’s touchdown, Armstrong’s touchdown, and the final interception won’t soon leave the memory banks for me.

This paragraph is reserved for sad news. First, my PSP recently suffered a short fall onto a concrete floor, and the headphone jack/speakers don’t work correctly anymore. I can get sound out of one earbud if they’re plugged in all the way, and no sound from the speaker unless I have a headphone jack partially plugged in. I’ll have to open it up and hopefully just repair a broken solder joint. Also, I can no longer dual boot my mac to Windows - not a big deal usually, because I think I only booted to it 3-4 times so far this year, but the Christmas slideshow is coming up, and I need Windows for that. I’ll have to shell out money for the latest and greatest OS X upgrade (which I want anyway for Time Machine’s backup goodness) Anyway, it wasn’t the way I wanted to have to upgrade.

Oh yeah, and somewhere in all that time, I made a couple of business trips to Lima Ohio. On my last visit there, I managed to make a brief stop at the USAF Museum just outside of Dayton - if you ever get a chance to go there, I wholeheartedly recommend it. I only wish I’d had a couple of hours to spend there - as it was, I only got to breeze through one of the three massive hangars before I had to rush off to catch my plane back to Saskatoon.

And for the record, the bathroom stalls in the Minneapolis airport are pretty narrow. I’m just saying…

As I was waiting in line for lunch yesterday, the radio was playing “Blame it on the Rain” by Milli Vanilli. I don’t think I’d heard that song in something like 17 years.

Andy won the playoff pick’em pool this year, which is quite an accomplishment for a Leafs fan. I haven’t gotten around to updating the page just yet - hopefully I’ll have time after I finish up this post. I seem to be missing a few picks from the finals, - it’s probably my fault for not harassing you into getting your picks in.

This weekend is the first one in a couple of months without swimming lessons for the kids. Weather permitting, I guess we’ll be heading over to Dave and Katriona’s to help put up a fence. The drama around our house continues, as the basement still hasn’t dried out completely. I’m optimistic that we’ll get it solved before the end of the Summer though.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I’m old, all I care about is Matlock!.” ~ Grandpa Simpson

Apparently we are getting a new driveway. Holy smokes.

Ball was really good last night - despite the cold. I sat out the first game, and watched the team put together a solid win. I pitched the second game, and only gave up a handful of runs - this despite giving the other team 4 outs in the second last inning and letting them bat the order in the final inning. Meanwhile, I also knocked in 9 (10?) runs in 4 at bats. I was the 10th batter in the first two innings basically hit doubles, which produced a couple of runs each, didn’t bat in the third, then hit a grand slam in the fourth and a double in the fifth. At least I think that’s how it went.

I pitched ok - I experimented with my spins quite a bit, and managed to be in and around the strikezone for most of the game. It even seemed to warm up some as the evening went on - and the sun came out!

I see that a couple of people have gotten their finals pick in - we’ve been doing pretty good as a group, with William’s essentially random picks being the only one of us below .500 at this point. It looks like the winner will have an 11-4 record, though how many winners we have will be determined by the two teams in the finals.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Son, when you participate in sporting events, it’s not whether you win or lose — it’s how drunk you get.” - Homer

Yesterday, someone on a technical mailing list that I subscribe to sent a link to a news story about “Scratch.” I hadn’t heard of it before, so I had a look at it last night. I downloaded the Mac client, and William and I spent a few minutes playing with it. It requires too much reading for William to really use it fully, but he was having a good time as we made a scuba diver swim circles around a spinning baby.

In other news, the cleanup crew took all the carpet out of our basement, and cut the bottom couple of feet off of the walls (yes Trent, we use feet - there’s really no good metric equivalent for the foot - decimeters doesn’t really roll off the tongue.) There’s a concrete specialist coming in Friday to take core samples of the pad in the basement as well as the driveway. We’ve been given a dollar value for the carpet replacement, but at this point the full scope of everything still hasn’t been determined.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Arr, why buy a house, when ye can buy a house boat.” - Captain McAllister

Sometime this past winter, the water line linking our house with the water main sprung a leak. I suspect it was the same day that the driveway slabs suddenly jumped up a couple of inches relative to the garage. Anyway, after fighting a valiant effort to keep spring melt out of the basement (and winning the fight, I might add,) there was water in the basement this past weekend. Very damp, very moldy smelling, terrible news.

The city came out and dug up the street in front of our place, fixed it up, and the water problem should be solved, but now the cleanup begins. The carpet in the basement needs to be ripped up, the walls likely need to be at least partially removed, and a bunch of mold needs to be cleaned up.

Fortunately, insurance will cover it, and the city will likely cover the deductible.

It was a near thing too - I had finally broken down and ordered some Screen Goo, and it arrived last week. I was planning to paint the screen on Saturday, but I decided to hold off when the water was discovered. I don’t know how insurance would have dealt with Goo replacement, and I’m not inclined to find out.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Brace yourselves gentlemen. According to the gas chromatograph, the secret ingredient is… Love!? Who’s been screwing with this thing?” - Professor Frink

Darren and Amy, get your picks in - I think everyone else has.

Last night I was in the back yard playing frisbee with William. At one point, Julia was standing right next to him, and as I released the disc, I thought - I really shouldn’t throw with Julia standing right there…With predictable results. I didn’t throw it hard, so when it bounced off of her forehead I think she was more scared than hurt. William was angry with her because she wrecked his game. She was fine though, and was happily playing shortly afterwards.

So, have you ever had this happen to you? I bought a new electric razor after doing a lot of research. I came up with a Panasonic “Linear” ES8043. It’s a great razor, probably the closest electric razor shave I’ve ever had. Small problem though - the blades are dull. Not normally a big deal, I figured I’d go to London Drugs (where I bought the thing) and pick up some replacement blades…You know where this is going…They still sell the same razor, and one other model of Panasonic razor. They also carry two different types of blades for Panasonic electric razors. Neither of them appear to be for the ES8043 though. It’s possible that one of the ones they have will work - maybe even likely - but nobody there could tell me which one, and neither package wanted to claim the ES8043 as their own.

It’s really odd.

Also odd - on Panasonic’s website, that model doesn’t have the blades listed (while their other models do.) The product code for the replacements that I found on the internet doesn’t match up even remotely with what they have in the store. I think I’m going to have to take the blades down there to compare them in person, because it’s really not fun shaving with a dull electric razor - it takes twice as long as it should, and doesn’t do as good a job.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “A cup-holder! Bart, we’ve got to stop and get a cup!” - Milhouse