We went to Pike Lake for lunch on Saturday - roasted hot dogs and assorted fruit. Julia and William had a great time playing around, though I think they both would have liked to stay longer. After we were done at the beach, we played at the playground for a bit, then stopped in at the Pike Lake convenience store for popsicles. I was pleasantly surprised that the popsicles are priced reasonably - I half expected them to be $1.50+ but they were like $0.35 or something. Both kids fell asleep on the drive home.

Then yesterday, we went to the new Zellers to pick up some socks and stuff. William got to give Dora and Diego five each (he was incredibly shy about it, but thought it was pretty cool.) When we got home, we went to Mom & Dad’s for supper and a visit. Apparently Darren managed to scavenge the barbershop chairs from the UltraCuts (or whatever hair place used to be in the old Zellers) and has them set up in his backyard - just in time for the BBQ they’re having at their place next weekend. I’m a bit surprised they just gave them away - surely they’re worth something on the second hand market.

After Erin got Julia to sleep, I watched the Riders game on 24h tape delay while she put William down. Interesting game - it’s tough to figure that team out this year. Years past they’ve had troubles beating the bad teams in the league (that’s why the Tabbies went 1-17 a few years back instead of 0-18…) so it’s good to see them kick that habit hard. The next game won’t go quite so easily though I suspect.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I can be a jerk and no one can stop me!” - Homer

We met up with Jason, Amy and the kids for supper last night at the Forestry Farm. There were a few scuffles between William and Mya, but overall they played pretty well together. I’d never been out there for a picnic before - it’s a pretty nice little area. I think that when William is older, I’ll have to take him fishing there. The kids had a lot of fun playing in the sand - Julia even pulled out her “mad scientist” laugh she was having so much fun. The tub was pretty full of sand when they were done their baths last night.

It was a pretty nice night for it, without doubt. Hopefully tomorrow will be as nice - we’re planning on going out to Pike Lake for lunch and a day at the beach. I don’t know if anyone is going to meet us there or not, but it should be fun either way.

We’re doing this walking challenge at work starting Monday, so we were given pedometers to track our walking with. The instruction booklet was hilarious, with such choice quotes as:

Operational Manual
1) The stepping meter can only count correctly under the flat plant
2) Under the following condition, the stepping meter can’t count correctly:
(i) Moon Walking, Wearing Sandal
(ii) When walking in the tricky condition
(iii) Vibration without walking

Awesome.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Come on! He likes sunsets, what more do you want?” - Krusty the Clown

The Zellers by our place is moving from one side of the mall to the other. They are/were selling off everything in the store at big discounts - most things are 80-90% off right now. Anyway, I popped in last night to see what we could see, and on the way out the door, I decided to pick up a $0.35 stuffed toy for Julia. William wanted a toy too, so I let him have his pick. He chose a pair of Ro-Boots ($3.40) and seemed to quite enjoy them, even if they don’t fit too well. There were a whole bunch of them left for some reason - I guess they were too expensive at their regular price.

The funny thing is that last fall, I saw Superstore clearing out a bunch of RoBoots at $10, and almost picked up a pair before rethinking the thing. They had a big stack of them left over there too. Thankfully the batteries are charged - each boot takes 3 watch batteries, so there’s no way I’m replacing them when they die. I did have to wait in line for a really long time though - the person in front of me bought $25 worth of stuff ranging in price from $0.20 to $0.80 - mostly underwear - and each piece needed to be calculated by the cashier individually. The stack didn’t look that big, but I guess that’s cause they were thongs.

There wasn’t much left there last night. Supposedly they’ll be open on Friday as their last day, but I really doubt that there will be anything left but broken toys, ripped clothing, and Y2K celebration kits (I kid you not) by then.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Oh Bart, you can’t trust your perception at this altitude.”- Jessica

Saturday, we all started feeling a little sick. It got worse on Sunday, and by Monday morning, I was in no shape for work. Yesterday I was still sick, and stayed home as well. Today I’m still sick, but I’m better, and I’m at work. Erin and the kids are still sick too. Bah. Monday night, William even puked around 10:00. He’d been really quiet and lethargic all night, then after he puked, he perked right up and was super energetic.

No fun anyway.

One thing about being sick though, Erin and I sat down and watched a bunch of Battlestar Galactica. It’s a decent show - I still think the first season was much better than the second season though. The one thing that kept coming to mind while watching it was that there’s some guy out there who’s job is to cut the corners off of all paper products used in the show. Continuity is there to keep you immersed, but taking design continuity to this extreme just takes me out of the show (especially when they have the occasional piece of stationary that isn’t octagonal, like envelopes and file folders.) Every time I see it, I think, “yeah, but there’s a reason that paper is rectangular - it’s more functional, and it’s cheaper to produce.” I mean, if they had the octoganal design on 50% of paper products, and normal rectangular stuff the rest of the way, I wouldn’t think twice about it…

So here it is Wednesday, and I haven’t done much all week. At least we got to visit with Uncle Robert and Auntie Marilyn when they were in town - before we got sick.

Simpson’s quote of the day:
Marge: “Bart, how many hours a day do you watch TV?”
Bart: “Six. Seven if there’s something good on.”

Last night was poker night, and as usual, I wound up close to even (up $1) and had fun. I played like crap at the start, and fixed things up some later in the night to get back to even. I lost two monster pots with really bad hands, both to Rob, but he was the only one to go broke for the evening.

Then Erin brought my attention to the fact that I broke the TV - I actually broke it on the weekend, but she didn’t notice until yesterday because the brokenness didn’t show up until the football game recorded on the primary tuner, causing the secondary tuner to be used for the first time since Sunday - the secondary tuner is the one that I broke. I’m kind of in the middle of doing a biggish upgrade to the operating system and all the software on it, so things aren’t 100% stable right now. For the linux geeks out there, I’m going to modular Xorg and a 2.6.17 kernel - I’ve done the Xorg upgrade, but haven’t rebuilt all the Xorg reliant software yet, and I haven’t built the new kernel yet - I’m just making sure that I don’t miss any features that I need - to minimize the potential problems. I make it sound like it’s a lot of work, but in reality I haven’t done anything with it since the weekend, and even at that, I only spent a few minutes working on it last weekend.

We were going to go to the lake tomorrow, but the weather doesn’t look like it’s cooperating with us. We had a big storm last night (the rain was coming down so hard that it woke me up) complete with a lightshow. I was too tired to get up and truly appreciate it though. I bet David and Katriona had a good view of the lightning.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “It’s those TV networks, Marge. They won’t let me. One quality show after another, each one fresher and more brilliant than the last.” - Homer

Last night we wound up going to the Ex after a rather short notice plan was developed to do just that. We caught the Ex shuttle at 6:05 (by the skin of a chicken’s teeth) and due to the rush out of the house, we quickly realized that the camera had dead batteries, and we didn’t have enough cash.

Macs to the rescue - I popped into the Macs that’s across the street from the Ex bus stop, and got cash and batteries. I should have gotten slurpees too, but I didn’t think of it until it was too late to head back. Anyway, we had the traditional Ex supper of corn dogs and fresh cut fries with lemonade, then hit the “Kidway” - they don’t call it that, but I think they should (sounds better than Kidsville.) William picked out which rides he wanted to go on, and after twisting the operators’ arms we found out how many tickets it would take for him to ride them. Erin waited in line to get tickets, and William and I hit a couple of the kids carnival games - specifically he wanted to pick a duck out of a pool to win a stuffed animal. After winning a toy for himself and a toy for Julia, Erin was back with the tickets. William really enjoyed the rides this year, contrasting starkly with the abject terror he displayed last year. He seemed a little unsure on the last ride of the night — a tame looking fish thing that actually went a lot faster than the other rides in Kidsville — but he claims to have had fun on it anyway. By this point, it was getting late, so we headed home after a stop at Macs to pick up slurpees for the bus ride.

Julia didn’t know what to make of the whole thing, and between supper and Kidsville, she fell asleep on Erin’s back for a while. William was sad that he didn’t get to go on the rides with her, so I think they’ll both have a lot of fun next year (Julia is definitely more of a thrill seeker than William was at her age.) I’m glad we went on a weeknight. It was crowded because it was Kids’ day, but at least we only spent a couple of hours there instead of an entire day.

Simpson’s quote of the day:”Run along peewee. Baby gets nothing.” - Mr. Burns

Erin went to a meeting last night, so the kids and I hung out for the evening. Julia was strangely distraught over Erin’s disappearance, so we didn’t do much besides watch TV and play “tent” under a blanket. “Tent” is a peek-a-boo variant that Julia loves. We were playing with a crocheted blanket, so often she’d leave the blanket on her head for a while, watching TV through the holes in the blanket, giggling.

I think we’re planning on going out to Pike Lake on Saturday for a picnic lunch/afternoon at the beach. It’s still up in the air a bit, because I think we’re also planning on doing the Exhibition/midway at some point, but we haven’t hammered out any details on when we’ll do that either.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Haha! Smithers, this reminds me of that fat man I used to ride to work…” - Mr. Burns