Erin did a lot of great work on William’s costume over the weekend - it’s going to look fantastic when it’s all finished up (hopefully tonight!) We also carved up a pumpkin - I think it turned out pretty well. One thing that became apparent was that using a tool designed for carving pumpkins makes the job way easier. We got a battery operated pumpkin carving thing - it works ok, but using it manually (ie without the battery power) worked really well. It’s like a tiny saw, and it just cuts through the pumpkin like the secret service through a crowd of protesters.

In other news, Julia has become enamoured of Rolie Polie Olie - to the point where she’ll walk to the TV, say “Pease. [pause] Pease. [pause] Olieolieolieolie” (Note for my family, Olieolieolie sounds a lot like Gullyullyully) Then if we put it on for her, she puts her arms up in the air and cheers, then sits down to watch.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Is this cartoon going on the air live?” ~ Homer

Here it is, Friday already. Spooky candy day is just around the corner, and William’s costume isn’t done. The pumpkins haven’t been carved. The leaves haven’t been raked. 10 months of the year down, and two to go - it’s zipped by in a hurry.

William has become hooked on The Airplane Game (as he calls it) so we’ve been playing that a fair amount - like once a night every night this week. I think we need to break out snakes and ladders with him at some point - he’s probably at the right age for it to be fun.

Meanwhile, I hear a rumour that the PST will be dropped effective tomorrow, and there’s a new stat coming next year.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Woohoo! Four day weekend!” - Homer

Tuesday night, William, Julia and I went to Ruckers for a little bit of arcade fun. The kids had a good time running around and playing the games. Julia wanted to help out the guy on the DDR game, and she was very interested in the guy on the Drum Mania game. When we were done, William didn’t want to leave, though Julia was more than glad to go - she was getting tired.

Last night, we pretty much just stuck around home and didn’t do much. William and I spent a few minutes in the basement breaking down cardboard boxes, and some time playing Pikmin.

Last weekend, Erin’s dad was in town. This weekend, her grandparents are in for a visit. The kids really loved spending time with Grandpa John, and I’m sure the same will be true of Grandpa and Grandma B. As an added bonus, the weather has decided to cooperate, and it’s really nice out. Hopefully the rest of the leaves will fall off the trees, and we can get the raking done before the white stuff comes to stay.

Simpson’s quote of the day:”Don’t mind me, boys, just scrubbing my undies.” - Homer

I keep a bottle of Tiger Sauce in my desk at work, for adding some zip to my lunches. It’s got such a great flavour, and as soon as I see the bottle, my mouth starts to water. Literally. There is a tinge of sadness to it all though, because the restaurant that introduced me to Tiger Sauce, Crawdaddies, is no more. I really miss that place. Their lunch special of gumbo and jambalaya was the best lunch in town, and downtown is much poorer for the loss. Even though it’s been gone for quite a while, I still think of it occasionally, and wish it were back.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “A large bear-like animal, most likely a bear…” - Kent Brockman

I was watching the football games this weekend, when Chris Cuthbert casually mentions that the league statisticians had another look at one of the borderline plays that cost me a shot at the CFFL title this year. The change he mentioned would have put me into the finals. Sadly, no evidence of this change exists on the CFL website - or anywhere else in the world as far as I can see.

A city councillor candidate came to the door yesterday while I was at home with the kids. William came tearing up and proceeded to tell her all about Pikmin. It was pretty funny. We’re having fun with Pikmin - it’s a good game. The Challenge Mode is truly a challenge if played 2 player with William at the controls - it’s like having a built in handicapping system, because he’ll take some pikmin and then not do anything with them. I’m not sure what attracts him to the game, but he loves playing it.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Simpson, you idiot. You spent your entire years budget in a month. Your department’s broke.” - Mayor Quimby

Poker was good to me last night (actually pretty good the week before too.) We had some crazy hands go down (2s vs 3s in Little Chicago 3 handed, quads vs. top full house in Omaha) and I walked away up $5. One of the guys brought out his new toy - an iRex Illiad. The screen is gorgeous, certainly much nicer than the eBookwise reader I’ve got. Still, you can buy 5 eBookwise devices for the price of one Illiad, so I will definitely be waiting some time before purchasing a new reader. I’m just glad that they’re starting to come out with new hardware for reading ebooks. When I started reading ebooks, there was no dedicated devices available at all. I know that lots of people say they’d rather have a PDA that can do other things too - and that’s fine - it’s just that a dedicated reading device will sacrifice flexibility for the reading experience - size of screen being the big one.

Erin’s dad is in town this weekend, so the kids were pretty excited last night - literally bouncing off of the walls, running around yelling, jumping up and down, never stopping for a second. They eventually did settle down and go to sleep though. John took William to school today for a special field trip to the library (William slept through his field trip to the library on Tuesday, so he went with the MWF kids.) Sounds like they both had fun.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Arr, squiddy, I got nothin’ against ya. I just heard there was gold in yer belly. Ha ha Harr, Harr Harr.” - Captain McAllister

William and I have been playing a fair amount of Pikmin 2 over the past week. He really enjoys running around with his pikmin in tow. I don’t save his progress though, because he’d be out of pikmin within a few turns. I share his frustration at how easy it is to accidentally walk your pikmin into the deadly water, and how hard it is to get them to come back out. I don’t tend to lose any pikmin that way, but he typically kills off 25-50% of his pikmin army on every expedition that way.

Not much else new around our place. I’ve been working on learning Ruby on Rails - technically I probably should have learned Ruby first before jumping into Rails, but it’s more fun this way. I’ve started working on a schema for the data structures, I’ve got a little more work to do before I can even generate the scaffold though. It does look like a promising little platform for my purposes though.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Miss Hoover, my parents won’t let me use scissors.” - Ralph Wiggum