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Monday, September 29, 2003
Autumn Leaves
So the Conservative and Alliance party have put on hold their discussions on their plans to talk about the possibility of merging the two parties in order to form stiff opposition to the Liberals in the upcoming election. I guess they can't come up with a plan on how to choose a leader for the new party as each present leader does not want to "give away" their party. So the Paul Martin machine will probably rumble right over them unless they can get their act together, which in Canadian political terms is pretty much an impossibility.
The leaves are all starting to turn now and I want to try and get down to the river valley one of these days and take some fall photographs of the colors before the leaves all fall off. It's been getting colder lately and we've had a bit of frost but I'm holding out for a decent Indian summer. Nonetheless, winter is on it's way and I guess we should start getting prepared for that. Saturday, September 20, 2003
Isabelle Blows In! 
Here is a rather cool but ominous picture of hurricane Isabelle off the coast of somewhere as it heads towards the eastern states last week. My first question was "Why is the ship still going forward?" Watching the news we saw quite the storm but I'll bet there was someone somewhere waxing the surf board with visions of "narly" waves floating through their minds. Our weather has vastly improved and is more like the seasonal norm with sunny skies and milder temps, but still not warm enough to eat out on the patio. Well, due to a lack of participation the other night, we had to postpone our crab feast and make the little critters climb back, grumbling, into the freezer. I guess we better hurry up and eat them before they get freezer burnt. This weekend Dianne is making a turkey dinner for no particular reason. Her folks are here for a visit so it'll be nice to have something special. I am in the process of breaking one of the cardinal rules of blogging by jumping around from topic to topic. I guess I am suppose to focus on one thing and wax eloquently on that. That, however, is not what life is like. There's always more than one thing going on. As well, I would hope my readers would appreciate that I do not drone on and on about one meaningless item but get right to the meat of the matter on several issues that are on my mind. Kind of like a plate of hors d'oeuvres instead of a whole roast. That being said, I shall now jump guiltlessly to another topic and say that we are really enjoying the new windows, especially Dianne who can now see out to the back yard from the kitchen as the new window is about six inches lower than the old one. I am doing some remodelling around the basement windows because the new windows fit in a little differently and the old window wells had to be demolished. So I have drywalled new wells and am attempting to tape and plaster them, not one of my more accomplished skills. At least we can hang some nice curtains over them if I do a lousy job. As I have always said, the mark of a good carpenter is not how well he builds something but how well he can cover up his mistakes. Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Winter Already??!
The temperature has been hovering just above freezing for the last couple of days and it just looks dreadfully bleak out there. Thank goodness we got the windows done last week. I pity the poor souls who are getting theirs done today, could be mighty chilly in the house. With the cold weather I have been a little hesitant to water the lawn, although it doesn't look too bad, just a couple of spots that have turned a little brown. I don't want to freeze it just yet, though.
Tonight we are boiling some crabs that Chris brought back from his trip to Kitimat in August. Him and his friend got to go out on the boat and lay the traps and were able to bring us back some to try. Chris is coming over to help us devour them. Mmmmmm.... Friday, September 12, 2003
New Title Funtion Arrives
I have just discovered this nifty title function that Blogger has convenently provided so that I can title my posts with witty headlines. They have also incorporated a spellchecker (finally) so that there should no longer be any spleling misteaks. Cool!
The new windows and doors are finally in after three days work, for which I had to stay up for and then work all night, so sleep has been a luxury this week. The windows look great and we expect great things out of them not the least of which is the end of puddles of water from condensation forming on the glass. We have been assured that they will also make the house a lot cozier warm in the winter and cooler in the summer. A feature we got which we didn't have before is openers on the living room window. This should allow for nice cross ventilation through the living room which will be nice on those hot summer days. We had the living room and kitchen windows cut down a few inches each to afford a better view and what a difference it makes. Now we have to start looking at new drapes, blinds, etc............
Nice rainy day today which ordinarily would not be acceptable but on this occasion I didn't mind as I was asleep for all of it and I didn't have to worry about watering the lawn. Wednesday, September 10, 2003
For the first time in weeks we had a grey day with a light rain all day, which actually wasn't a bad thing as it eliminated the need to run the sprinkler on the new lawn. Most of the upstairs windows have been replaced and the kitchen and living room will be done tomorrow as well as the three basement windows, the doors and the trim. I was surprised this morning when the doorbell rang and one guy was standing there. I was expecting a large crew. Nonetheless, I had to stay up all day after working all night and only got to bed about 7:30 tonight. It'll be much the same tomorrow as the fellow will need a hand hauling in the large living room window so I'll have to put the coffee on early. The new windows look great and we are excited about the increased efficiency they will provide. We went out tonight and picked up hardware for the new front door. It's going to look quite posh.
So I guess the RIAA is going ahead with its law suits against those dastardly file sharers and it will be interesting to see how that plays out. They have implemented an amnesty program for people with guilty consciences to fess up, delete all their ill gotten files in front of a notary public and then mail in an affidavit complete with photo ID, everything short of handing over your first born. Don't hold your breath on that one, RIAA. Also in the news today was the voluntary surrender to the FBI of self proclaimed hacker/crusader Adrian Lamo who is wanted for breaking into the computer systems of some fairly large organizations to, as he put it, "expose their vunerabilities". Sorry Adrian, I don't care how well intentioned and public service minded you are, trespassing is still trespassing especially when you break into a system uninvited. This guy is turning into somewhat of a folk hero along the likes of Kevin Mitnik and others and it always amuses me how these rougues are put on a pedestal just because they "did it to the man". I like to see big business put in it's place as much as the next guy, but you have to be a bit more legit than this. Don't be surprised if they throw the book at you Adrian. Just my opinion. Sunday, September 07, 2003
I have finally gotten around to building a page of pictures of the yard renovations which you can access by clicking here or going to the link at the left called September 2003 under the Picture Gallery heading. There you will see some shots of the yard along with a few pictures of interest. We are very pleased with how the yard turned out, much the way we had imagined it. We are now busily watering the new grass in hopes that the sod will take and it won't burn as we have had a few rather hot days recently. We now await the arrival of the crew to replace the windows and are expecting them this Tuesday. I am about to start a midnight shift tonight, so this should prove to be interesting. I'm wondering if I will get any sleep at all this week. Stay tuned for updates on this next project.
 Thursday, September 04, 2003
This is just a quick post to say that the front yard is this close to being finished. The guys were here bright and early this morning after spending yesterday elsewhere and by 11:30 they had just about completed everything before running out of sod. They will be back this afternoon with more sod and a few more rocks for under the tree. At that point I will take some "after" pictures and post them on this very site. But for now I have to go scrounge up some supper for work tonight. Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Things are going pretty well on the yard work. Here are some shots of the yard before they started and at the present time:
 
 
We had a chance to visit Fort Edmonton Park on Sunday, a place we have not frequented in the last ten years. Not much has changed but it was still neat to go through and check it out. Again, it was a case of seeing the tourist attractions of your own city because someone is visiting from out of town. We had an ex-Edmontonian visiting from Vancouver and she wanted to do the touristy thing. The girls took her to West Edmonmton Mall while I was at work, thank goodness.
I am about to go outside and take a few photos of the work in progress on the front yard so expect to see a couple of pictures in the next day or so. The job should be finished tomorrow so there should be a little show-and-tell with before and after pictures. I am hoping it's been worth the wait. The kiddlings are all back to school today so there is a relieved calm over the land. We are now back up to three full time students here as Sandi starts at the U of A today. Speaking of arachnophobia (sp?), anyone with the aformentioned affliction may want to steer clear of Nikki's room if you plan to visit as she has added to the menagerial population with the aquisition of a full fledged tarantula spider. It's so cool and if I wasn't having to be so parentally stern about her getting this thing without permission, I would be pretty excited too. I will get some pictures of it, probably sitting on my keyboard with some equally cute comment about computer bugs or something.
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