It's beginning to look a lot like Halloween

Yesterday, I decorated the yard for Halloween. I put out the tombstones and spread dirt on the lawn to make a fresh grave with a hand coming out of it.

I put the gargoyle out, and the spider's web.

I completely freaked Wanda out with a hand dangling out of the mailbox.

Last night it snowed.

This is the first year since I've been in Ottawa that I remember having snow for Halloween. It was too wet for me to put my blacklight outside, so I put it in the front hall and kept the inside lights off.

The first kids showed up around 5:30, which earlier than usual. The last ones showed up a little before 8, I think.

There was one incident - one of my Halloween decorations walked off, which I'm not too thrilled about. Other than that, all was well. My (remaining) decorations are inside drying, so tomorrow they should be ready to go away.

Swamp Juice

Sadly, I have no good pictures of the punch I made for Sparks (and the pictures I do have all have kids in them), but here's what I did.

I started with this recipe.

I made the tapioca and coloured half green and half yellow. I couldn't find gummy fish, so I used gummy worms and gummy spiders.

Instead of the seltzer & lemonade, I used white cranberry juice. It was the right colour, it's reasonably healthy, and we only have six girls, so there wouldn't be tons left over.

I brought my punch bowl (which I rarely use) and poured the cranberry juice in. I added the tapioca and a handful of spiders and worms.

We played games and as we did, the spiders expanded. It was interesting to see how much bigger they got.

Over all, it was a hit.

My toe hurts.

It's been a while since I've updated, and that is not the most interesting thing that's happened, but I can't really concentrate on much, because my toe hurts.

No reason, it was fine and then it hurt. Hopefully it will suddenly be better soon.

It's Wednesday night, and I am not at boxing because I didn't sign up until after the Wednesday night class was full. That's right, I am boxing on Saturdays again.

It's kind of nice to have Wednesday night free (even though I'm home by 7 pretty much every other weeknight). I will regret it on Saturday, though.

This past weekend, I finally got around to researching the candidates for mayor and city councilor - just in time, because the election was Monday.

I worked from home Monday (and Tuesday, as it turns out) due to a car saga, and walked over to vote after work.

After I voted, I kept walking to Shoppers (to buy gummy worms and spiders for swamp punch for the Spark Halloween party) - I couldn't drive due to the aforementioned car saga. It took me about an hour and a half to get there and back (including voting time). On the way home, I took the bike path and met a lot of very friendly dogs.

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit it, but my legs were a little sore today, so I went to the gym. My legs are now fine.

But my toe hurts.

Problem solving

When Camille was here for Thanksgiving, I started noticing water problems in the bathroom.

First, I noticed the wall looked like it had been damp. I touched it, and my finger went through the gyprock.

Great.

By the time she left, there was a puddle of water on the floor by the bathtub every morning after I took a shower.

I knew that there was an access panel in the front hall closet, so I removed it.

I couldn't see any water.

I removed the bottom panel on the bathtub.

Again, totally dry.

One of my neighbours has a camera that can detect moisture behind walls, etc. as part of his business. He came over on Friday. He didn't have that camera, but he had a different camera that's on a flexible cord, so that you can run it up a wall through an access panel (for example).

We used that camera and ran the shower.

Nothing.

No water leaking, no puddle on the floor, no sign of trouble at all - except for the hole you see in the above picture. We removed the drywall, and that's the area that was damp. The 2x4 was damp as well - but only on that side, the other side was fine.

By Saturday morning, the 2x4 was damp.

I haven't seen a sign of water since then.

The good news is that it's not as big a problem as I thought it might be. The bad news is that if you can't find it, you can't fix it.

Thanksgiving Weekend

My sister Camille is in town for Thanksgiving. She arrived on Thursday.

It has been a fun weekend - some shopping on Saturday (I bought nothing), Wanda's belly dance show on Saturday night, and Thanksgiving dinner with friends on Sunday.

(When I was a kid, we never had turkey. The first time we had turkey on Thanksgiving was when I was in high school. My grandmother was away - she had gone to Niagara Falls to visit her sister - and my grandfather said, "Well, we can have turkey even if she's not here", and he went and bought a turkey. I remember looking at my mom, both of us thinking, "Um, we never had turkey when she was here", but neither of us said anything. After that, we always had turkey on Thanksgiving.)

I got the critical yard work done - the garden is dug, the patio furniture fit in the shed (to my amazement), and the air conditioner is covered up and off.

I even turned on the heat this weekend (although it hasn't gone on much - it's still too warm).

I took today off - I usually work stat holidays, but I have company - and Camille and I went for a walk in Hog's Back park. It was a beautiful day - sunny, but with a hint of cool weather to come - and the leaves are changing. It was busier than usual, but it wasn't bad.

As you can see, the water was pretty rough. I'm guessing that is due to the record (or near record - I never did hear how that turned out) amount of rain we got in September.

It was a nice day, and a nice weekend. It's going to be hard to go back to work tomorrow.

Taking a walk

This year, Ottawa had one of the rainiest Septembers ever recorded.

(It turns out that wearing shoes that have holes in the soles in the rain? Not such a good idea - unless you like wet socks.)

October has been nicer, though. In fact, as soon as the calendar changed, it got sunnier.

This turned out well, because tonight we took the Sparks on a hike in the greenbelt.

We had done this last year, and the girls who had been in our group last year were excited to do it again.

Taking 5 & 6 year-olds on a hike is pretty entertaining. Everything is new to them - fungus, pine cones, tall trees, fallen leaves.

We have a smaller group this year, and that totally changed the feel of the hike. It was a much better experience for the group.

We ended our hike at dusk, so just before we got out of the woods, it was starting to get dark - and yet some of them would have happy to do the hike again.

Money, money, money

I hear a lot of people complaining about money (specifically, the lack of it), and yet they do things I would never do - like buy lunch every day or trade in a car that is less than 3 years old (and still has a car loan) for a new vehicle. (Admittedly, I used to buy lunch every day, but that was before the layoffs started at the big telecom company in 1998. I didn't get laid off, but I did start bringing my lunch.)

That made me wonder - what financial decisions do I make that seem like poor decisions?

The first big one is that I bought a house, on my own, when I was 28. (Well, actually, I started the process when I was 27.) Don't get me wrong, I love my house, but it would have been a lot cheaper to keep renting. My mortgage is more than my rent was, and that doesn't include property taxes, repairs and upkeep. Buying is a lot more expensive if you're only looking at it from a financial perspective.

Related to the house purchase is snow removal. I pay for a company to plow my driveway every time it snows. Yes, I could do it myself - in theory - but you have to remove snow when it snows (you can't wait until you have time) and doing it myself would have a negative effect on everything from getting to work on time to leisure activities.

Boxing is another one. I love boxing - it's good for me physically and mentally - but boxing for the year costs around the same as my gym membership for the year. The difference is that for that money, I can go to the gym as often as I want, but I can only box once. (For that matter, I don't need to go to the gym - but I do value it, so I'm willing to pay for it.)

There are little things too - I've mentioned my newspaper issues, but I could also save money on my phone bill. I could get rid of cable TV. Theoretically, I could get rid of my internet access (although that is unlikely to make it to the top of the list anytime soon).

Should I change any of those things? Well, I probably could check into making changes to my phone bill (and I should definitely cancel the newspaper), but hopefully I won't be in a financial position where I need to make changes to the others.

A new car every 3 - 5 years isn't my priority - but that doesn't mean that it's the wrong decision for other people. If you drive a lot or really dislike having to get your car repaired, maybe it's the right choice for you. The key is to spend your money on what you value. For me, a new car is lower priority than my other choices.

Road trip

A couple of months ago, Wanda and I started talking about going to Toronto for the weekend. Originally, we were talking about going the weekend after Labour Day, but that turned out to be the community corn roast weekend, so we decided to wait until this weekend.

Last week I started to think that Toronto was too far to go for no particular reason. We talked about Montreal instead (since it's a two-hour drive instead of five), but decided on Kingston (also two hours).

Everything was set until I hurt my ankle on Wednesday.

The annoying part is that I didn't even do anything - I just got up from my desk at work and walked towards the kitchen and thought "gee, my ankle hurts". Since I didn't do anything in particular, I went to boxing that night anyway.

By Thursday morning, it was clear that boxing was a mistake. (I figured that out when I had to hit the brakes and almost screamed from the pain.)

My ankle rapidly recovered, though, and although it's still a bit tender, we decided to go to Kingston yesterday.

It was a beautiful day for it - the sun was shining, but it wasn't super hot. We walked through the farmer's market and around the downtown area. We went down by the water. We wandered in and out of the different shops and stopped at the Mug and Truffle Chocolate Cafe.

And we went to Indigo, where I bought Wanda a Kobo electronic reader as a thank you for trimming the hedges this year.

She was ridiculously excited. When we got home, she plugged it in and immediately downloaded some books. When she came upstairs this morning, she had already finished her first book.

The only problem is that now I want one too.

To the woman behind me

To the woman behind me at Preston and Carling at 4:40,

Look, you're busy.

I understand. We all are. I left the house at 7:30 this morning and won't be home until 9:30 tonight.

And when you passed me immediately after the light turned green and spent the next few blocks weaving in and out of traffic, I'm sure it was just because you were in such a big hurry to get to ... well, where ever you were going.

(It wasn't the Civic Hospital - you drove right past that.)

Don't worry, I wasn't at all laughing at you when you ended up behind me again at the lights in front of Westgate.

But ... I do have to say, if the car in front of you stopping at a red light causes you to wave your arms and beat the steering wheel like a two year old having a tantrum, you need a time out.

A Beautiful Fall Day

Yesterday was the annual community corn roast. It was a beautiful day for it - sunny with no rain. Since it has rained pretty much daily for the past week or two, that was a nice change.

I worked in the kitchen as usual. It was incredibly busy - we had a line from 5:30 - 7:30. The big problem was that we only had one barbecue (instead of the two we normally have). Still, everyone was understanding and eventually we caught up.

Before the corn roast, Wanda and I finished trimming the hedges. (Well, ok, she trimmed the hedges and I moved the ladder / cleaned up / laughed when she fell off the ladder.)

Unfortunately, in order to get the ladder in the right place to get one part of the hedges, I had to stand in an evergreen bush that I'm allergic to. And, of course, instead of coming inside to wash my legs immediately, I waited until we were done.

That's right, I have a rash up to my knees. I really should pull out those bushes. They're pretty, but it's really not worth it.

My Newspaper Problems

I've had the Ottawa Citizen delivered for years.

I've had the odd problem (paper delivered when it shouldn't have been, paper not delivered when it should have been, newspaper carrier walking across the lawn and knocking snow onto the walk) but for the most part, those problems have been easily resolved.

Lately, though, I'm having a different kind of problem.

You see, the paper is being delivered, I'm just not reading it - at least not until I have a formidable stack of 3 or 4 papers to read.

Part of the problem is that I read news online. That is mostly national/international news, though - there's not much specific to Ottawa. If I want to know what's going on in Ottawa, one of my major sources is the Ottawa paper.

Well, it would be, if I read the Ottawa paper.

I'm not sure what the solution is. Do I make more of an effort to seek out Ottawa news online and cancel the newspaper? Do I make more of an effort to read the paper every day?

I'm not sure, but I'd better figure it out, because this is a little ridiculous.

Sparkling clean

When my mom was here, my dishwasher broke.

(There should not be a gap there.)

It still cleaned fine, but the piece that connected the rack to the roller assembly broke.

For a few days, we just manually put the two pieces together to move the rack, but obviously this needed to stop, so we stopped using the dishwasher.

I googled it (is there any other approach?) and found Indestructible Parts. Those were exactly the parts I needed, and I liked the idea of replacing the broken hub with something a little more robust. I placed an order and was notified quickly that the order had shipped.

I waited.

And waited.

After a few days, I e-mailed them and asked about the package - I hadn't expected it to have arrived, but I had expected it to be at the post office, and USPS was still saying that they were expecting the package.

Amy replied to my e-mail. She contacted the postal service and confirmed that the type of shipping they used wasn't trackable, but that my parcel was in the mail. It should arrive in 8 - 10 business days. She asked me to let her know if it hadn't arrived by August 31, which, if I remember correctly, was 12 business days from the order.

Yesterday, I still hadn't received the package. I e-mailed her again, and she made plans to send me a new shipment.

Can anyone guess what was waiting for me when I got home today? Anyone?

That's right, the package with my new hubs.

I checked my e-mail and had a message from Amy saying she was looking into it and she would mail me a new set if she didn't have an answer by Friday. This was a reasonable response - and not just because my package arrived today.


I took the rack out of the dishwasher (after first figuring out how to take the rack out of the dishwasher) and removed the old hubs.

This is a poor picture, but the top hub is the replacement, the bottom hub is the original (unbroken) one - while I was at it, I replaced all four.

The dishwasher is now reassembled and ready for a load of dishes. Total time spent - half an hour, but that included looking for the right bit to remove the old hubs, figuring out how to remove the rack from the dishwasher, and the actual work.

Meet Ralph

I went to the Ex today.

It was a nice day for it - sunny, but not too hot. We got there around 4 and walked around. (OK, mini-donuts came before the walking started.) There were a couple buildings of exhibits (not many, actually). After we had our bearings, we decided to go on a few rides.

The first one was the Tilt-a-Whirl. It lived up to its name. I felt like my face was trying to fly off. I don't recall ever feeling like that before.

Next was the Starship 2000 (which was probably a more impressive name in, say, 1982). I'd never been on that before (I've been very sheltered). I'm glad I did it, but again, it felt like my face was trying to fly off.

The third and final ride was the Polar Express. It has nothing to do with the movie, just with flying around in circles backwards.

(Can you tell I don't like heights?)

The last thing we did was play one game.

Meet Ralph.

He was lonely. Luckily, I won the water gun game, so he got to come home with me. (I assume those extra flaps are to make it look like he has saggy skin, but it's possible he just has two sets of ears.)

I have no idea what I'm going to do with a foot-tall orange dog.

Now for a complete change of subject.

This year has been a good year for cucumbers. The problem is finding them before they're, well, this big:

It is thicker than my arm, and it's almost as long.

I'm lucky Wanda likes cucumbers.

I had a dream

Not the kind of dream where the world lives in peace or everybody has clean water to drink.

No, I had the kind of dream where you wake up and wonder what your subconscious was thinking.

You see, I was at the grocery store. (I like to do that on occasion.) I had just started my shopping when Nathan Fillion came up to me. Now, I wasn't terribly shocked, because we knew each other (um, in the dream world, just to be clear). He was upset with me because I wasn't watching the season premiere of Castle, which was on at that very moment.

(Just for the record, I don't usually do my grocery shopping at 10 p.m. on Monday nights. I also don't watch TV then. I am usually asleep.)

I tried to explain that I had every intention of watching it, but that I was actually busy grocery shopping and thus would watch it later, so he pointed out the large TV in the back of the store that was playing the episode at that very moment.

I didn't want to watch it because I had missed the first ten minutes (also, I was still grocery shopping).

That's all I remember.

So, does this mean:
1) I watch too much TV
2) I spend too much time grocery shopping
3) Wipeout (which is the only show I've watched this summer, and only because Wanda watches it 3 feet from where I'm usually sitting) has broken my brain
4) My grocery store should invest in a big TV in case I realize I'm missing a show while I'm shopping
5) I should spend less time on twitter
6) I should re-watch Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog

Let me know in the comments.

(Oh, and to The Independent on Merivale - if you could tear out the giant TV and put the bakery section back, that would be great. I might need to buy bread one day.)

My problem with e-mail

Lately, I have a problem with e-mail.

Specifically, I'm good at reading e-mail. I'm just really, really bad at replying to e-mail. I'll read an e-mail, hit reply, and let it sit there for five or six days before I actually hit send.

Sometimes, I'll even mark the message unread so that I don't forget to reply to it, which means that I have unread e-mail in my inbox for days on end.

Browser windows are the same way - I'll open up a tab that requires action on my part (for example, a job I want to apply for) and ... it'll sit there for a week.

Maybe I need to start the anti-procrastination project up again.

And THAT's why my garden is full of weeds

I hurt my elbow for the first time a few years ago and it pretty much got better on its own. Back in July (or June, I don't really remember), it started hurting again. For those of you keeping track at home, I have twisted my left ankle, hurt the arch of my right foot, injured both knees in separate incidents, and now it's my right ankle. Also, I broke my left wrist when I was a kid. (Only one of those injuries was because of boxing.)

During the two weeks I boxed this summer, it hurt to throw right hooks.

As anyone who has been around here for a while knows, I'll put up with a lot - until it interferes with boxing.

I started physio yesterday.

Everyone (my doctor, my BodyPump instructor, random passers-by) thought I had tennis elbow.

I don't.

Apparently, I hurt the fatty pad that cushions the arm bones and keeps them from rubbing together. This type of injury takes a long time to heal, and there's nothing I can do to help the process along except avoid things that hurt. Weeding the garden hurts - which breaks my heart, because I so love to pull weeds.

Physio did help - it was an almost immediate improvement - so I have two appointments booked for next week.

I also went to the eye doctor yesterday.

Expect to hear screams of pain from my supplemental health insurance company in about two weeks.

Where did the sun go?

This past week has been busy.

First of all, my guests left early on Wednesday and I went back to work. It was a big adjustment - I'd only been off for 3 days, but it was still hard to get back into the swing of things. Of course, I was tired, which didn't help.

I skipped the gym all week (which I will pay for when I go back to BodyPump tomorrow), but I did start getting back into my normal life.

The big news at work is that our shifts are gone. The late shift has been removed entirely, which leaves the day shift (8-4:30) and the mid-shift (10 - 6:30). Since 3 people prefer the day shift and 2 people prefer the mid-shift, the only time we'll need to change shifts is when someone is on vacation.

I'm one of the day shift people. I like the mid-shift, mostly because I can go to the gym before work instead of after, but when Sparks starts, I won't be able to work the mid-shift on Tuesdays, so I'm taking the day shift. That starts tomorrow.

Yesterday I went to Carlingwood Mall (because I needed cash and that was the closest bank machine). I walked through the entire mall and made an unplanned purchase from a kiosk in the centre of the mall - an $11.95 jar of honey. I have enough honey to last for years ... and years. The woman in the kiosk let me taste the different types, which was great, because I didn't really know what type of honey I preferred. The one I choose was the purple loose strife honey. Those plants may be devastating to wetlands, but they do make good honey.

It has been hot and humid, but not really sunny. Today was the exception - I woke up to thunderstorms. I had to use the dryer when I did my laundry today. I think this is the first time this summer.

The garden has gone crazy - it's really only tomatoes and cucumbers, but they are out of control. I gave some of the excess to friends last night and yet every day I discover more huge cucumbers and ripe tomatoes.

I hope all of you are enjoying your summer.

Hog's Back

Yesterday was the last day my mom & niece were here. It was a hot, humid day.

My niece did not want to go anywhere. It was too hot.

However, I'm not her meanest auntie for nothing. I dragged her off on a picnic at Hog's Back park.

Did you know there are waterfalls there?

Also, if you follow the path and then take another dirt path, you can find a quiet off-shoot of the river.

There are rocks you can walk on. You might fall in, but if you're wearing crocs, it's OK if they get wet.

It's really too bad I made her go on that picnic.

(And it was much cooler by the water.)

Wave Pool

Monday's excursion was one my niece had been looking forward to since before she got here. We went to the playground down the street in the morning, had lunch, and then went to the Kanata Wave Pool.

She loved it.

I had never been there before, but I had to admit that it was fun.

The waves would be on for 7 or 8 minutes, then off for 7 or 8 minutes. When the waves were about to start again, a buzzer would go off and all of the kids would yell and run deeper into the pool.

There is also a waterslide. That's when I discovered that my niece is scared of waterslides.

I was pretty sure that she'd love it once she had been down once, but she wouldn't give it a try. Around 2:30, I had had about enough. I told her that we were going to leave at 3 - but that if she went down the waterslide once, I'd let her stay an extra 15 minutes. (I'm mean like that.)

She was not interested. She played in the wave pool. She moved over to the kiddie pool. At three o'clock, I said, "OK, time to go".

She looked at me and said, "Don't you remember that you said if I went down the slide one time we could stay longer?" Up the stairs to the waterslide she went, Wanda in tow.

She didn't make it down the slide. She got to the front of the line, looked at the slide, and was too scared.

We stayed an extra 15 minutes anyway. (Trying is important, and bravery should be rewarded.)

Now she wants to move to Kanata. (Regina doesn't have a wave pool.)

Parliament Hill & River Cruise

We've been alternating days of activity with days that are a bit more quiet. Saturday was a quieter day.

Sunday, on the other hand, was busy.

We got up and went downtown. We got there around 9:40, which was perfect timing to get a good spot for the changing of the guard at 10. I left the group by the rope barricades and went and got tickets for the 10:30 tour of Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings.



We watched most of the changing of the guard, then left for our tour.




The tour took about an hour. We left and found a boat tour. It didn't start until 12:30, so we had about half an hour to wait down by the river.


The boat cruise took an hour and a half. After that, we walked to a restaurant for lunch. Just as we got there, it started to rain.

We ate our lunch, but it was still raining when we finished.

Wanda and Bella took the bus home (because Bella likes bus rides) and mom & I walked back to the car.

Everyone ended up getting a little wet, but that's how it goes sometimes.