I am sitting at my computer listening to iTunes and working on my blog. The house is clean, Cinn and I have been outside to pass the old volleyball around and my evening is mine to do with as I please. Life is Good.
I am trying to rebuild my blog so that I can make better use of my space. I don’t know how frequently I will be blogging but I am going to make an effort to update it on a more frequent basis.
Here is another interesting article that came across my virtual desk today. Trees with some basic kind of communication.
Check it out here.
A co-worker of mine sent me an interesting article today on some research that is being done that allows scientists to send information (not matter yet) across a great distance almost instantly. This is really cool. Check out the article.
I wish I had the gift for writing that my wife has. She is an amazing blogger. She is witty, intelligent and I love reading her posts. I seem to constantly struggle with what to post. I guess maybe I just need to be more open to things I see in my daily life that are blogworthy (whatever that means). I am going to continue to try to post and post more often. I guess I just need to keep at it.
Big Damn Hero
Well the May 24 is almost over (12 minutes by my clocks) and I have to say I was glad to have a long weekend. I needed the break.
May 24 in Ontario usually involves fireworks. Even in our small neighborhood, there are usually at least two or three places that are setting off fireworks. They kids love it. A couple of years ago, I picked up some fireworks for a niece that was sick for July 1st (Canada Day), also a big fireworks day, and set them off for her when she was feeling better on July 2nd. There were a couple of unexciting ones so I didn’t bother to set them off. Well, that was almost three years ago and they have been sitting in the garage ever since. I decided that it was probably best if I used this fireworks holiday to set them off so that we could get them out of the house.
Cinn was not at all keen on me setting these off. I think she had thoughts of me losing a finger or something. Ok, yes, my dad did lose a finger to a dynamite cap when he was a teen, but I wasn’t planning on doing it to as some sort of act of solidarity. I love my dad, but you gotta draw the line somewhere. I tried to assure her that I would be careful but I think that she was afraid that because these were a bit old that they might not work well and something bad would happen.
Well, I assured Cinn that everything would be fine and that she should just stay inside and that I would take care of it. I went to the garage, got the fireworks and proceeded to our backyard. I had found an old plant tray holder made of plastic that had many square holes that were the perfect size for these fireworks so I took it out with me to set on the lawn and would put the fireworks in the holes light them and back away coolly watching the fireworks do their thing from a ‘reasonable distance’. OK at this point in the story, it is probably worth mentioning that when I originally set off the fireworks, I backed away coolly at full steam, not watching where I was going, ran into the garden, and did a half gainer over the fence holding up Cinn’s peas. To much laughter as you can imagine.
Ok, so I have the fireworks, something to hold them safely so they don’t fall over and of course, my barbeque lighter. One of the ones with the 6 inch barrel so you don’t have to be too close to the fuse. What else could I need? Hmmm. Fire and explosives…You know I think I will get the hose. So I got the garden hose, you know, not that I was worried but better safe than sorry.
Ok. I am all set to go. First firework safely in the holder…Ok, good, this is going well. Fuse lit. Back away, back away, back away…and in a burst of light the first firework goes off in a rather unexciting way, as was my memory of why I didn’t light them 3 years ago. They don’t shoot anything into the air. They just kind shoot a flame out the side that changes color. I think that you are probably just supposed to throw them on the ground and they spin or something but that doesn’t sound very safe to me.
I light the next one without incident. This continues for the next 5 or so, and then my neighbor (who is great) suggests that one at a time is not really that much of a challenge, and that I should light a couple. Hmmm… That might be fun… no… the fuses aren’t that long and he is just messing with me anyway. So I carry on and when no one is looking I set two down with the fuses touching each other. Two can’t be bad, can it? Nah! I light the fuses and again I am bored. I am down to the last few and I continue my solo routine. Light one, stand back, watch it burn and repeat. Then it happens. Light one, stand back, watch it….FIZZLE? Hmmm… now what? Ok probably best if I wait a second. Tick, tick, tick… Nothing. Ok, maybe I will just put a little water on that just to make sure. Yep, that solved it.
I carry on and finally I am done. Well except that one… I find it among the spend fireworks and notice that there still seems to be a bit of the fuse there. I clear away the spent cartridges and put the difficult one in the center. I fix the fuse, light it and start to step away and… fizzle. Hmm, strange… Ok, light back… fizzle… light… fizzle… light… fizzle. Now it’s important to mention that the fuse when you start is only about an inch long. I have had a bunch of false starts now…I turn to see my neighbors standing on their deck watching with a combination of anticipation and concern. “Isn’t this the sort of thing that ends up on America’s Funniest home videos or You Tube?”, I say with a smile. “Let me go get the camera,” says my neighbor. “I’ll split the winnings with you”. I chuckle and then turn my attention back to this indignant little firework.
OK! I light a piece of paper and set it under what little remains of the fuse… That worked as well as could be expected. I picked up the ‘bomb’ and looked at the fuse. I tugged at the fuse hoping for a little more slack and the whole fuse came out… “Doh!” OK, hang on. This might be a good thing.
I stuck the fuse back in the hole leaving myself a little more fuse to work with. I set the Little Firework That Wouldn’t back in the tray and went to light the fuse. The lighter wouldn’t work… No. I’m serious. I looked at the lighter, being sure to give it a stern stare, and tried again. MAGIC! The lighter worked, the fuse lit and with a sputter, the firework went off as it was supposed to. A job well done!
It wasn’t much of a display, but at least I got to set off some fireworks for the holiday.
Hope everyone had a great long weekend.
BigDamnHero
Well today was our second trip to Japan…ok well not exactly. Cinn and I need to get an international police check from Japan for the tme that she lived there. This is required to help us move our adoption process forward. We have to provide police checks for all places that we have lived for longer than six months since the age of 18.
On Friday we made our first attempt. After calling the Japanese Consulate two times, Cinn knew what we needed, a passport and a letter indicating why we needed the police check. I took the day off work and we headed to Japan. Ok ok it was the consulate in Toronto, but it sounds more exotic my way. We made our way directly to the building that the consulate is located in if you use the word ‘directly’ in that same way as this sentence: “I drunkenly made my way directly from the living room sofa to the bathroom via the park, grocery store, airport and the neighbors pool.” You need to cut us some slack, we don’t do Toronto very well.
We located the building which is cleverly named the Royal Trust Tower, which of course is in the TD Centre. Now this probably obvious to Torontonians but completely threw us for a loop. We still think the building may have been hiding from us. Anyway, we finally found the right building and made it to the correct floor (not on the first try mind you), and immediately went into the wrong door. We were quickly directed to another door. We went to the second door, got out our information and approached the wicket and told them why we were there. “No, sorry, we need a letter from a social worker.” Ok this sucks. I took a day off of work, we came all the way to Toronto and they can’t help us. *sigh* Despite our protests and explaining that we called them twice they were unable to help us.
We made two calls one to Kids-Link (our adoption agency) and one to our social worker who is handling our home study. We told them what we needed and they both were very accomodating. They could both have letters ready for us, Kids-Link on Friday and our social worker by Sunday night. Both in time for our next try on Monday. We stopped in to Kids-Link to get the letter and they were SO amazing. What a wonderful group of people. It wasn’t long and we had our agency letter. Our social worker had the letter ready for us right on time and we now had our second letter. We then wrote our own letter and were armed with three letters. As long as they took one of them, we would be happy, we weren’t fussy which.
This morning we started out to Japan again (just go with it will you). We made it from the GO Train (our local public transit) at Union Station to the consulate in about 5 minutes. We entered the right door (literally, it is the right door, the left door is the wrong door) and approached the wicket again with 3 letters in hand: one from Kids-Link, one from our social worker and one from us (I’ll fix their little red wagon 
). I got Cinn’s passport out and after filling out two forms and Cinn doing her own finger prints we were done. Much smoother this time now that we had the right information.
We should hear from them in about 6 weeks at which point we will return to Japan again. 
Have a great night everyone!
BDH
Just waiting on hold with Dell support. Have you ever noticed how hold music for many companies is horrible? As far as I can tell hold music comes in two forms; boring or porn. No, seriously, these seem to be the predominant options. It’s either music to lull you to sleep so that you are more docile when you actually get to talk to a technician or it is some kind of ‘porn’ music…I am not sure why the would want that kind of emotion evoked but hey there it is.
Have a great day!
Big Damn Hero
Well here we are on day 4 of the Ikea assemble-a-thon. CinnamonOpus (my wife’s nom de plume) and I have been getting ready to adopt from Ethiopia (more on this another time). In doing this we have been to Ikea no less than three times in 10 days to purchase various things that we have needed to make our house more of a home.
These trips have resulted in many, many, many hours of assembly. Wooden pegs, screws, fasteners, nobs, a few pieces of pressboard and presto! kitchen table and chairs! Ikea is fascinating to me. Furniture in a box. It really is amazing what they can do with press board these days. Now if we could only do something with their colour choices.
On our most recent trip, we purchased a day-bed that Cinn (the short version of CinnamonOpus my wife’s nom de plume) has wanted for ages and has pointed out on almost every trip that we have ever made to Ikea. It is really quite nice. It is a twin bed but it has two mattresses and allows you to pull out an extension that allows you to basicaly have a king size bed (*sweet!*). In addition to that, it has storage in the bottom. Those Ikea people are so smart. There is a downside though, I swear this thing has no less than 250 individual parts *sigh*. There is nothing for it though but to open the instructions and have at it!
As the sun rises here and the frost and dew starts to evaporate, I prepare myself for another day of assembling furniture. I am not complaining mind you, it allows you to get the feeling of accomplishment without having to be particularly handy with tools.
So off I go, hammer, screwdriver and drill. Some assembly required? No kidding!
Have a great day everyone!
BDH
Recently one of my co-workers celebrated his 30th birthday by taking the leap. No, he didn’t get married, he went skydiving. For a little over $350, you get to go on a tandem skydive and a video tape to remember it. This makes jumping from a perfectly good plane look fun. Watch as his birthday jump unfolds. Happy Birthday Nick!
Nick goes Skydiving
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