Hey you Wheelers!!!
I love you guys!!! Thanks so much for sending flowers to the Boo for her ballet recital - she was super excited and I think that was just the most awsomest thing to do ever.
Sorry it’s been so long since we talked in person - I shall endeavo(u)r to give y’all a ringy-dingy this weekend to say howdy. And talk about interesting topics. Like soup.
best wishes from toronto folks… sorry we couldn’t be there… looking forward to a debrief of the day once folks have recovered…
best wishes from toronto folks… sorry we couldn’t be there… looking forward to a debrief of the day once folks have recovered…
best wishes from toronto folks… sorry we couldn’t be there… looking forward to a debrief of the day once folks have recovered…
so yesterday we had a lil’ halloween get together at our house… we were joined by four or five families that we’ve met either through work colleagues or through the kiddos…
lotsa fun was had… love-of-my life karen talked about it and posted some pics here… my favo(u)rite picture is yours truly fisting a wee little pumpkin with glee…
after recovering from the revelries on saturday we headed out to the fish sto’ to try to make sense of the fish situation… i mentioned our first wave of troubles here… unfortunately that wasn’t the end of it… we had (err… they had) the ick (ich) (f*cking ich as i like to call it)… and we experienced a near total wipeout of our tank… when all was said and done we had the two plecos (which is kinda cool because they’re my faves) and a black loach left…
so we took a water sample to our pals at big al’s… i was pretty tickled when my new best fish pal steve told me that our tank water was the best he’d seen in ages and ages… so the light was green… opportunity knocked… and k and i decided to answer and head to africa… our tank is now devoted to the african cichlids… which is kind of a big move… these fishies are kinda the link between fresh and saltwater… they’re a bit finicky… sometimes agressive… and don’t get along with the regular run-of-the-mill community-type fish… the cool thing is that they’re often pretty colo(u)rful and groovy lookin’ compared to the regular community folk… so i sorta feel like we’ve taken the step from aquarium neophytes to semi-experienced aquarist folk… apart from the fact that we just wiped out virtually our whole tank i guess…
anyway… we got some new dudes and dudettes to the aquarium today and we’ll add to them over the next couple of weeks… in a month we should have a pretty stylin’ and colo(u)rful tank… and as soon as i can figure out how to take some pictures of our new pals that are in focus and look good i’ll post ‘em…
you know… not in a paris hilton way… more in a heat and humidity sorta way… something the seattle to toronto move has kinda brought to the forefront of my mind…
so after yet another long-ass break in posting here i find myself and the tugboat sitting downstairs at 4:00 in the morning watching, for about the millionth time, thomas the tank engine’s spectacular adventures of some sort or another… and i figured maybe it’s time to write a little something…
so in my blog-type absence we’ve for the most part just been chillin’ and have had a fine summer thus far… besides a multitude of bbqs and time playing in the park with the kiddos we managed to take our first full-family shot at camping… which i’d have to call a qualified success… apart from the kiddos’ lack of desire/ability to go to sleep at night and love-of-my-life karen’s coming down with some wicked flu-like symptoms on the last day it was quite grand… such a success that methinks we’re gonna give it another shot in a couple of weeks… which makes me happy because i’ve always dug the outdoors and the woods and i’m glad that the chilluns seem to like that kinda stuff as well…
another heavenly fishing trip with the boys has come and gone… my personal most-magical-place-ever montana is doing well… i really get a lot out of going there each year… fish were caught, adventures were had, and the mighty austin came along for the first time this year which was pretty darn cool… i’d like to say the biggest thank you to k for holding down the fort while i was gone… due to some unfortunate scheduling she ended up being a fuul time single parent with no backup for the whole week that i was gone… while attempting to study for a hugely important professional certification test… you rock honey…
… and i’m proud of you for kicking ass on said test the day after i got back…
and one of my favorite summertime things… the tour de france… is going on… what a friggin’ debacle… i’ll save some extra thoughts on that for another post… two quick thoughts though… go leipheimer (and please don’t slap me around by getting caught doping)… and i hope that after this year this is still one of my fave summer things…
and on that note… i shall negotiate w/ seb for some napping…
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so the holidays are upon us again… groovy to be sure…
the only downside is that the whole family is under the weather… hopefully we get better soon… uh… very soon…
love-of-my-life karen is off for 6 days starting tomorrow… this is good… very good… we’re gonna drug the kids so we can sleep in together…
we’ve got a pretty full social calendar o’ christmas events… hanging out with friends… k’s dad is in town with his trusty sidekick madison…
tomorrow i’m going to get an xbox 360… yeah right…
spank… the band… shall be having a little practice session this eve which i’m quite looking forward to… ’s been a couple of weeks… some loud rock and roll is in order…
i shall be putting my at-times-pretty-kickin’, at-times-pretty-suspect, usually-somewhat-adequate poker skills to the test friday eve… i like poker…
and to top it off the chilluns and i dropped karen off this morning so we get to go pick her up this afternoon… and hopefully she can boogie a tad early so we can get this holiday-type festival/party started… i really like it when we go pick up mum from work… the kids are always overjoyed to see her and that makes me happy…
rock on…
ps- just kidding about drugging the kids…
wow… what a weekend…
so there were a couple of big things going on this weekend… a birthday party for my pal gabby… she’s two… and cj’s big ol’ first attempt at a race…
on friday morning i took the boy in for his one year doctor’s appointment… he passed… and when we got home i started to feel myself getting sick… bummer indeed… there i was minding my own business and bam… i could just feel the waves o’ cold-virus-type-baddies rushing through my body… bollocks…
i regretfully bowed out of attending gabby’s party on saturday morning… which i hated to do ‘cuz i really wanted to be there… the ladies went to represent the family whilst tugboat and i stayed home… from what i can tell fun was had and it was a ragin’ success… karen wrote about everyone’s adventures here… and the place where it was held looks pretty cool… the chilluns and i will be going back to check that out…
so after some hanging out and playing with the offspring in the afternoon/evening love-of-my-life karen was kind enough to let me go to bed early… after a crap night’s sleep but feeling marginally better i decided i was going to do the race… a) i’ve been all excited to do it for a couple of weeks now, b) it’s the first time i’ve been in one, and c) i’d already paid the $25 and got the t-shirt…
so we bundled up the kids and headed out in the hot-rod minivan to the race venue… and i’ve gotta say that it was one of the coolest things i’ve done… everyone was friendly and in great spirits and had a sort of standing-in-the-freezing-cold-on-sunday-morning sense of shared purpose that was kinda groovy…
i tottered off to get my official number thingy and karen and the chilluns went to george’s place for breakfast… i didn’t see anyone i knew as i was waiting around for the start so i just listened to some tunes and got into the standing-in-the-freezing-cold-on-sunday-morning shared purpose mindset… and sniffled and snorted and blew my nose about 25 times… and then it was time to go…
and it was a hoot… took off with the pack and saw the family at one of the first turns cheering me on… that was sweet… karen took a couple of pictures and blogged about their adventures here… i was expecting to do somewhere between 8 1/2 and 9 minutes per mile but i think adrenaline and being in the moment kicked in and i ran faster than i expected… my official time according to the race website was 24:42 which is under 8 minutes a mile… that makes me happy… not so sure why this “official time” using the high tech ankleband chip deal was 45 seconds slower than what my whiz-bang timex ironman triathalon stopwatch said but hell… i’ll take it… a success i’d say…
at any rate i think i’ve been bitten by the running/race bug… there’s a 5 mile trail run in january that i reckon i’ll take a shot at next…
as a bonus i felt significantly better cold-wise after the race than i did before… our pals andrew and christy and their little feller jackson came over and we watched the seahawks beat the titans… had a swell time indeed…
and to cap off the weekend i went over to spank drummer ebo’s place to do a little work on our little bob dylan cover tune side project… had a great time doing that too… even though we somehow managed to hose up the recording aspect of the evening… upon review when i got home i found that we managed to record 20 takes of silence for some reason… ah well…
many sympathies and general get-well-soon thoughts to amigo steve who broke his toe on friday…
as a chronic toe stubber i sympathize… and as one with some experience using frozen vegetables as anti-swelling agents might i recommend c&w early harvest (r) petite peas (no salt added)… a superlative product imho… and extremely low sodium to boot… and we all know how important that can be…
hope you feel better soon buddy…
wow… what a sweet weekend… flew by as usual but we got to do some cool stuff…
on saturday k and i went to have dinner with my former colleagues from r.s. hughes… ’twas my amigo bob’s 50th birthday… fun was had and i can’t say thanks enough to my old work pals for inviting us along… i’ve been out of the official workforce for ten months now and have done an admittedly crap job of staying in touch… so it was awesome to see everyone and get to catch up a little… happy birthday bobby!!!…
and sunday afternoon our friend deb had a friggin’ insane blowout holiday open house thingie… kinda funny - five years ago that woulda meant all our circle o’ friends got together and had a liquor-fueled odyssey… nowadays it means there was a very high chillun percentage and all the craziness that comes along with that… was lotsa fun… santa made an appearance… many kids had fun… many kids freaked out… i was amused by pretty much everything… especially the fact that santa had a pretty wicked scottish accent… not that i’m saying he doesn’t or anything… ’s just he reminded me of a friend of ours… a lot… an american friend… who doesn’t have a scottish accent… weird…
