Weekend epilogue

I had to look that up… epilogue vs. prologue.  And for your information, I was wrong… good thing I have google.

So, just to let everybody know.  The flu bug seems to have left this household, and left me untouched (of course, by now saying it, I will be struck down tomorrow at the most inopportune time).

Anyways, a funny addition to this whole story is the fact that I am still easily wiled by sales.  I ordered pizza yesterday (I told you that much already), but what I didn’t tell you was that I saw the flyer and thought that the meal deal was probably best, and that I should get it in the LARGE size.  It was a lot of food.  Then, to just turn the dagger in my humility was the fact that Mandy and Dean could not eat (i.e. keep anything down), so I had all this food, for myself.  Well, made breakfast, lunch and dinner easy for me.

But firsts beget more firsts, and we pulled the sofa bed out of the couch for the first time since we’ve moved here.  That way Mandy and Dean can hang out in front of the TV (he wanted to hang out on the bed but it’s so high up, we didn’t trust it).  Plus, it makes a pretty cool fort/tunnel for when Dean didn’t want to sit still.

Pretty cool times… minus all the gross stuff of course.

More (unfortunate) firsts

So, after having an extraordinary long week, I looked more and more towards the weekend.  And it got progressively worse as we neared Friday at 430pm.

Then it was that I remembered that this weekend was going to be a full weekend.  Well, full as in, I never get true weekends really since becoming an ‘adult’.  Add in Mandy’s odd work schedule, and it’s another work day, just at a different ‘office’.

But what made this weekend more ‘full’ was the fact that I’d have to jet right after work to go and play for the Cavendish cup, and then the Dodgeball tournament early the next morning… yeesh.

I’ve had more going on in other weekends, but the combined whole picture just was really depressing/frustrating.

So, here’s where you’d say in the typical story that something would come up and start to shine etc…, but not in my stories.  The weather went to real snow, and got cold… and then Mandy wasn’t feeling well.  Turns out that Lindsay had to take Be

n to the hospital with a fever… so it looks like she caught it and then got so bad had to leave work early.  So she was ‘messy’ and I went and got medicine for her.

Dealing with Dean was not so bad, but with the length of the week, the house looked ‘no hell’ so I figured to save time we’d order pizza.  The guy had just came and left with dinner when Dean hops down from the couch to make one mess on the floor, take another step and make 2 more… at that point I picked him up to take him to the tub and he gets his 4th.

This is where the idea of ‘firsts’ comes in the header.  This was Dean’s real first time getting ‘sick’.  He had vomited when he was an infant previously, but nothing like this, nor in a LONG time. Dean was really freaked out by it and took him a long time to get over it (heck, it’s taken me this long and I’m not sure I’m over it… I can still smell it…).

The funny/ironic portion of the whole story is the fact that just the other day I was reading somebody’s facebook status about being home with pukey kids etc… and I remarked to myself that we’ve been lucky that we haven’t had to deal with that at all… I wasn’t naive, I figured we would eventually, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like it when it did happen.  Just didn’t expect it this soon, or have the double billing with Mandy on the same day.

A world of knowledge and many are still stupid

Okay, maybe stupid's too strong a word.

 

But I've seen my fair share of forwarded emails on this or that, or groups on facebook claiming something outlandish is happening.  And I wonder to myself, how can the 1,000,000 people in that group not see that it's a total scam.

 

We live in a world today where we have access to just about anything we want.  Google (or Bing) "it", and you can find your answers.  But often people will just click the easiest thing closest to them (forward, or "join") and become part of the mindless masses.

 

When it comes across my desktop, just do a bit of digging - who knows what information you're spreading!  Which is why I love SNOPES.COM

 

For example, the "facebook is charging a fee".  This one has come up SEVERAL times in the past while.  This group(s) on facebook have been shown as scams to steal your contact information.  The CEO has had to say publicly "we will never charge".

 

I also like the ones that go along the lines of "join this group and we'll show you the answer".  A simple one line search will produce those answers and put your information at risk.

 

The one that got me most upset lately was the "cellphones can pop popcorn".  I mean really... think about it?  Would we be allowed to actually put microwave strength radios to our heads?

 

I always wondered how that douche who said vaccines are bad for you got away with it for so long...

 

Maybe it's because recently I had received some 'hack' in my hotmail account, and I lost emails and all my contacts.  And an email went out to EVERYBODY telling them to check out a cool price on an iPhone.  Some quick proofing of the email made it obvious that it wasn't me, yet several people reported they clicked that link I sent and it didn't work.

 

*Sigh*

 

All this technology to help us, and we're still pretty dumb.

 

Oh, and if anything that you click in your futures leads you to something you can't get rid of, check this out:

http://smarterware.org/5530/how-to-uninstall-xp-antispyware

Lucky number Seven

Several years ago, I wrote a letter to my bosses at the time about our selection of items on a shelf.

At the time we either had only 1 (or none), or we had a plethora of useless options.  Often having only 1 choice was unavoidable, and I didn't have a problem with that (tho' I wrote to them about it to hopefully try to get our distributors off their butts to get more selection).  However, having 20+ of another item was just inane.

I argued that we needed no more than 7 on a shelf of any item.  Why have the several versions of the same ("...and this one's exactly the same except it has just one more feature, and then the same thing with this one, it has 2 more...")?  You could have one item out symbolically to represent that series, especially as they are so close in features, there'd be no need to duplicate.  I believe I even used the phrase "studies have shown that 7 is the optimal number for choice".

It's funny because as listening to the radio that I heard them say that 6 seemed to be a breaking point in making selections.  Pretty darn close!

Did I actually look that kinda studies up back then?  Probably not as that was a time when I had more rants than the normal person.  More likely I pulled that number out based on the spacing on the shelves we had.  Still, cool to be vindicated these many years later.  I should dig out that letter and find somebody to wave it in their face.

Android getting better

Paid apps in the marketplace

Rogers "my account" app

2.1 "Coming Soon" to my Magic...

awesome!

My old friend

Today was a good day.  Mandy again volunteered our 'babysitting services' to a friend so I got woken up by Dean and Kayla smackin' away on the drums.  When i eventually was up, we had a rousing jam session.  Kinda fun.  (Except 2 seconds ago when I looked over and Kayla had red all over her face -- turns out she was just eating marker... *phew*)

Then we decided to play outside.  Despite the usual fighting about who gets to be in the car at what time, it was fun out there.  I got to turn over the top bits of the garden (still a little frozen if you go more than 3-4") and I got re-introduced to an old friend.

It was so gorgeous outside I had to invite him out.

My throne (I also had my hammock, which is my ‘old friend’ , but anytime I got off it to take  a picture – they’d jump in)

I'm not crazy

Just a short note today... shoulda done it the other day when it was more relevant.

So I got some sort of nasty stomach thing the other day, as such I stayed home and slept (...and visited the facilities a lot).

Then I realized I left the garbage cans out and I should go get them.  I was already in my, as I call it, loungewear, I went out in just a tee, pyjama bottoms and boots to grab the cans.  I figured I was a site already as I would have bed head on top of my "i just got out of bed at 6pm" look.  But to make it worse a gang of kids on bikes was going by...

Oddly enough I wasn't the main 'crazy-attraction' that moment.  Some lady was screaming down some side street.  At first it looked like she was looking for a lost dog.  Her get up was worse than mine, which falls in line with a "my dog just jumped past the door and ran down the street, so i need to go grab him" look, but you quickly realized she was just crazy and screaming.  Kinda entertaining.

Despite it causing the bike gang of kids to stop right in front of my house, giving them more time to pause and reflect on my outfit choice, they stayed transfixed on her and the car that was then turning down that street and forced to talk to her.

Have I told you that Westfort is always entertaining?

Great weekend

It wasn't a long weekend, or anything spectacular... just a vision of weekends should be like:

Friday night - had Cayleigh come and babysit Dean while Mandy and I went out to a movie (Alice in Wonderland 3D) with some friends and had a great time.

Saturday - attended dad's ACME group's fun-spiel.  I love curling... just never get time to do it.  We lost the first 2 games, won the 3rd (thanks to yours truly) and lost in the finals for the C round.  Follow it up with some Chinese buffet, and it's golden!  Dean was going to come to the 3rd game, however on the way there he was side-tracked by a big puddle and landed face first.  He enjoyed it... I didn't.

Sunday - we watched Dean's friend (and our friends' son) Ben as she went to deal with some hospital issues.  It was +10 outside so we got our splash stuff on and tshirts and ran around in the backyard for a couple of hours.  They had a ball running around and jumping and stuff.  Definitely kids love hanging out with other kids.  Getting them to bed was going to be difficult, however I stold Mandy's idea of crashing on the futon with low lights and a calm show and wrapped up in a snuggly blanket.  Wasn't long before they both were down.

I'm exhausted and my arms are sore, and legs are bruised and aching still.. it feels great!

 

Doug experimenting with flavour sensations and timbits

My curling prep

Dean tuckered out after his sleep over party.