We made it back from our trip to Canada in one piece and had a fantastic time while we were there. The whole point of the trip was to go back for Deanna and Doug’s wedding which was amazing and a lots of fun and at the same time we managed to fit some typical tourist type things.

I know Alex really enjoyed himself. We managed to get in and swim everyday except for one day. We visited the Guelph Children’s Museum, Old Quebec Street in downtown Guelph, and Alex and I went for our very first canoe ride together on the Speed River. Of course there was the main event of the wedding which was lots of fun and especially entertaining when the groom passed out. (The moment he actually passed out wasn’t entertaining but in it is pretty amusing to tell the story after the fact, sorry Doug. It all turned out ok in the end and he recovered and the ceremony went on and the “I do’s” were exchanged.) After the wedding we spent two days in Niagara Falls and visited MarineLand, took a ride on the Maid of the Mist, and one of Alex and I went up the Skylon Tower which was one of Alex’s favourite things. (He keeps calling the “Skylaunch” tower.) Once I get a little more time I’ll pull the pictures together and post them.

Two days before we were due to return to Dallas hurricane Katrina was heading for New Orleans. Jen’s family thankfully evacuated before the storm hit and arrived at our house the day before we did. In addition to Jen’s family we have also had some other friends with us but they are planning on going to Baton Rouge tomorrow as they have been told they will potentially be allowed to return to their house early next week. Needless to say it’s been pretty chaotic around here and our phone has been ringing constantly with people calling. We are still not sure the extent of the damage to the house but the satellite pictures we have seen of the neighbourhood look promising and the water only looks to be about a foot or so. One side of the neighbourhood has water and the other is dry and their house is somewhere in the middle so we are hoping for the best.

Each year the English Department at San Jose State University holds the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest where contestents submit a horrible opening sentence to a fictional novel. The contest is done in honour of Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton whos infamous beginning to his novel Paul Clifford began “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Every year I seem to come across the results and thought I would post a couple of the ones I liked best.

Overall Winner:

As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.
Dan McKay
Fargo, ND

Winner in the Spy Novel Catagory

The double agent looked up from his lunch of Mahi-Mahi and couscous and realized that he must escape from Walla Walla to Bora Bora to come face-to-face with his arch enemy by taking out his 30-30 and shooting off his nemesis’ ear-to-ear grin so he could wave bye-bye to this duplicitous life, but the chances of him pulling this off were only so-so, much less than 50-50.
Charles Jaworski
North Pole, AK

Winner Romance Catagory:

Billy Bob gushed like a broken water main about his new love: “She’s got long, beautiful, drain-clogging hair, more curves than an under-the-sink water trap, and she moves with the ease of a motorized toilet snake through a four-inch sewer line, but what she sees in me, a simple plumber, I’ll never know.”
Glenn Lawrie
Chung-buk, South Korea

You can read all of the best, or worst depending on how you view it at: http://www2.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2005.htm

Yesterday evening Alex was trying our patience and wasn’t listening to anything we asked him to do.  We were finally at our wits end and were frustrated enough that we sent him to his room for a little quiet time.  We figured some alone time would do him, and us, some good.

After a couple of minutes in his room things got pretty quiet which should have set off the alarm bells that something was amiss.  I was laying on our bed and could see Alex’s bedroom door from my position and he would open it, stick his head out, then when I looked over he would quickly close the door again.  He did this a couple of times so I gave him my full attention and low and behold was I in for a surprise.  At first I thought he just looked a little funny because of the shadows in the hall but then I realized it wasn’t shadows, he really did look a little funny.  He had taken a brown marker and drawn all over his face and legs.  Forehead, cheeks, chin, lips, nose, legs, knees, shins, feet, you name it, he had colored it with marker.

I though I was going to explode.  I promptly put him in the shower and started scrubbing desperately hoping that it was going to come off.  Today Alex was going to the library for a reading group and I could just see him sitting there at story time with marker all over his face.  Luckily it came off his face pretty easily and the legs cleaned up alright.  You can still see a bit of a shadow mustache but it’s not too serious.

When he was in the shower I asked him what the heck was he thinking.

“Dad, I didn’t have a goalie mask or pads, I had to draw them on.”  Oh, well now it makes perfect sense now, you needed a goalie mask and pads, what was I thinking.

I continued scrubbing in silence for a while and he said,

“Dad, you know this kind of stuff just happens sometimes.”

Yes your right son, stuff like this just happens sometimes.

It’s just obscenely hot here. The last four days have been 97, 100, 98, 97, and today it’s going to be at least 97. To top it off we have had at least 75% humidity every one of those days so the happy weather man gets to say things like ‘Well, hey it’s 97 degrees out but it feels likea nice and steamy 104″ all the time with a big smile on their face.

This morning I went for a run that started at 5:45am and it was already about 85. I finished the run, took a shower, got in for an easy 500 swim in the pool to cool down, had my regular shower, and by the time I got to my desk I was still sweating. I had someone stop me and the
conversion went something like this.

“Hey Derek, you feeling ok?”

“Ya ya, I’m just a little hot right now.”

“Oh, ’cause you look like you could have malaria or something.”

So there you have it. It officially doesn’t matter how hot it is in your part of the world because it’s hotter here.

We all took a trip to Plano Fire Station Number One last week and I posted the pictures from our trip here. We had loads of fun even though the trip had to be cut a little short since the firemen got called out for an emergency.

The rabbits are still at it. They’ve already cleaned out the flowers and just about everything last living piece of green flower but they just won’t give up. This time I caught them in the act.

I hope everyone had a good Canada Day and July 4th weekend. We a had a good time but somehow I managed to eat way too many hot dogs. It seemed like every meal I sat down to I was eating another hot dog. On the weekend we Bar-B-Q’ed hamburgers, hot dogs, and chicken so I had to sample at least one of each. Then the next day for lunch we still had hot dogs left over so of course I had a couple more. Then on July 4th we went out to the Ballpark to watch the Rangers play and I had way too many hot dogs there. By the end of the weekend I was feeling pretty sick, no more hot dogs for a while.

Alex had fun over the weekend. Jen’s family came into town so he always had someone to play with and he managed to get to the pool a couple of times for some swimming. He’s really doing pretty good in the pool and his swimming is starting to come along and the last couple of times he’s even gone off the diving board. That’s a pretty big step because we aren’t allowed to help him swim to the edge of the pool after he goes off the diving board. He has to jump off and then swim to the edge of the pool by himself.

Well first it’s a miracle that I’ve managed to actually sit down and find the time to update this but what I really wanted to say was that we are now officially living with one of the biggest three year old hockey fans I have ever seen.

We got the movie Miracle (here and here) a couple of weeks back for him and now that’s about the only thing he wants to watch. Sometimes once a day isn’t enough, I think the record is about three times a day. Now you would think we would not have the biggest hockey fan but instead the biggest couch potato but no, he doesn’t just sit there watching the movie he acts it out. He’s really not interested in any of the scenes where there isn’t any hockey being played so we have to fast forward through those. (I’ve seen the ending about five times but still haven’t seen a good portion of the movie.) What he does is stand in front the TV pretending to skate back and forth and whenever he sees the goalie make a save he does the exact same thing the goalie does. He’s droping down to the carpet, twisting around on the floor, and then hoping back up for the next save. He even pretends he is wearing his goalie mask and has his pads on. We have our own Jim Craig (movie picture) right here in the living room. By the time the movie is over the poor kid is just covered in sweat from all the work.

The problem I have to work on now is the fact that everytime we play hockey now he tells me, “We are the U-S-A!” I keep asking what happened to Canada, and I continue to remind him Canada did win the last Olympic gold but it doesn’t matter. A gold medal without a fantastic movie to go along with it doesn’t mean squat.

So my friends the time has come for me to ask for your help, I need suggestions for more hockey movies. Off the top of my head I can only think of two, Slapshot and Mystery Alaska, both “R” rated so it’s much harder to just skip over the naughty bits.

Updated: Jen was looking up more information online and she found that Jim Craig has his own website

This year I decided to make an effort to really fix up the yard. In the front we didn’t have any real grass it was all clover that has taken over the whole area. I got some weed killer to kill all the clover, lots of dirt to lay a new foundation, and then planted some grass. The only real problem that I’ve had to deal with is the fact that we have two massive maple trees in the front yard so the grass doesn’t get any sun. I’m pretty sure that’s why the original grass lost the battle to the clover in the first place but I found some shade resistant grass and that has done really well.

The grass when in a couple of months back so it’s starting to look pretty good after a couple of mowing so I figured why not go all out and get some plants to put in the front to go along with the grass. I only got about six plants to put in the front around one of the trees.

So the other day I look out there to see how they are growing and what do I see, none of the plants have any flowers. Others don’t have any leaves, and some are just green stalks coming out of the ground. Hmm…. Turns out the neighbourhood rabbits have discovered my little flower collection and have decided to use it as the mid-afternoon snack.

The last month has gone by so quickly. Actually it’s been five weeks since Andrew was born, I can hardly believe it. I haven’t had much time to update the web site in that time but I promised that this weekend I would sit down and at least do something.

So today I added three more pages to the site. The first was Alex’s three year pictures. Each year we put him in the same white shirt and a tie and then take the pictures in our backyard. It’s been a neat way to watch him grow and get older. One of the last pictures on the site I turned into an animated picture that cycles through one picture from each year so it’s easy to see how he’s getting older.

The second page is a bunch of pictures from the sand table. A couple of months back we bought Alex a sand and water table that he could use to play outside. A couple of weeks ago we finally had nice enough weather that we could fill up the water half and Jen and Alex had lots of fun getting each other wet. I did my best to stay out of the way and just take some pictures.

The final page is just some random pictures that really don’t need to have their own page but show some of the stuff we’ve been up to in the last month. Enjoy.