After a prolonged absence I felt it was time for a quick update. We have been massively busy for the last couple of weeks with some major projects. At first I was anxious to get outside and start work on "The Great Front Yard Restoration", but with blizzards on both weekends I had off at the beginning of May, my hopes were slightly dashed. I was finally able to start some digging last week and got a start on the retaining wall I want to build around our massive fir tree. Then, Dianne announced that she wanted to paint the master bedroom so that I would have a pleasant environment to recoup from surgery in. Just a splash of paint , she said. But I knew better and sure enough the "splash of paint" project turned into the "project from hell". After removing the remaining wallpaper from the walls, we discovered that there was some water damage around the windows, so that had to be repaired. In the process we replaced half a wall of drywall, tore up the carpeting, removed sections of the subfloor, treated the flooring for mold, ripped off all the baseboards and casings and decided that we had to replace every window in the house. So now I am just finishing off the painting and will be screwing down the subfloor in preparation for the installation of a new laminate floor tommorrow. We are putting in all new baseboards and casing which all have to be painted yet. We then have a new closet door and ceiling fan to install and then it will be done. We are also contemplating getting a brand new bed which Dianne has been drooling over for several weeks since Sandi bought one for herself. Here's a couple of pictures of the work in progress:









I'll post a couple of pictures of the finished product.

Please check out this website of the daughter of some friends of ours. She is a young 19 year old woman who is in desparate need of a kidney transplant. Please check out the site and send her a message to encourage her. Her Mom tells me that since the site went live on Tuesday May 20 she has had over 32,000 hits from all over the world.

In about three weeks I will be heading to the hospital for my surgery. As this is going to slow me down considerably I should have lots of time on my hands to ponder the universe and as such I hope to be a little more prolific in my postings. I will be attempting to do some writing at this time also and catching up on some reading. I haven't waded through Lord of the Rings for some time. So look forward to a little more output on this site in the form of choice gems of writing and maybe some inspired photography.

---

Tuesday, May 06, 2003

So what is with this crazy country. It's the 5th of May and we are still up to our buttocks in snow. I don't think even the farmers want this much moisture especially if you can't get the tractor through the snowbank to seed.
Sandi went and saw X-Men 2 today and says that it rocks, I haven't heard any reviews yet so I don't have a judgement. I'm not that big on comic book based movies anyway (I was totally bummed out with Spiderman) so I guess I'll have to wait till the DVD is out to see it or catch it at work. Nice job if you can get it.

Posted 11:19 PM by Jeff

---

Sunday, May 04, 2003

Yikes! I havn't posted anything to the site for almost a month. Bad kitty!! Well I guess an update is in order. We are into our third or fourth winter for this year at the moment. Here it is beginning of May, we're itching to get out and work on the yard, and what's this?!! they've closed highway 2 to Calgary because of a blizzard?! As I speak, the snowflakes are still coming down.
For any of my faithful readers (all two of you) who aren't in the know, it's been a pretty rough last two weeks in the 'ol Hilton house. Two weeks ago I ended up in the hospital for four days as a result of an infection that hit me like a Mac truck. The infection was caused by a biopsy I had on my prostate to check for possible malignancy. As I was recovering from the infection we got word that the tests were positive for cancer of the prostate. So, now I am booked for surgery on June 13 to get that puppy taken out, which means my plans to finish my front yard landscape project have gone up in smoke, unless I can recruit some naive lackies to come and do some grunt labor for me. Having three daughters with lots of friends helps. In the meantime, Dianne has me on all kinds of evil tasting concoctions and vitamins and supplements to try and healthen me up. Have you ever noticed that the things that are good for you taste vile, whereas the stuff that is delicious will kill you? We have been overwhelmed with people calling and approaching us to offer their well wishes and prayers for us for which I am very grateful. We are expecting a miracle! Anyway I have about a month in which to get a major component of my front yard installed so if it would just stop snowing long enough......
A couple of weeks ago we were at a friend's daughter's wedding and I had a chance to field test the new digitial camera. I was quite impressed with the quality of the images and apart from a few problems in getting used to the operation, the unit works very well. Here is a photo of Dianne and I taken at the wedding. The image has beeen resized smaller to accomodate downloading so it looks a little grainy

Posted 8:28 PM by Jeff

---

Home