Simian Farmer

It's something elsewhere... elusive

I think if my work had bootheels right now, they would be three-inch thick hardened leather, shod with rough, rusty steel, and sporting a few errant nails at odd and uncomfortable angles.

I worked a 13-hour day today and felt myself sort of start to wobble a bit as I stood in front of the sink, hands encased in sexy blue rubber, scrubbing the tomato sauce from yesterday's dinner pan.  Two by two, hands of blue; two by two, hands of blue.

Between getting up at 5.30 in the morning and not really sitting down to rest until after 10 PM for the past while, I don't have much in me.

I'm going to a stag party this weekend though, and those are always fun.  Aside from that time at my own when I dislocated my kneecap.  A fact I always feel pressed to mention when the word 'stag' enters into conversation.

So, here's to June and the official arrival of summer, and a week of vacation very nearly within my grasp...

Hey, you could have broken this

Where learning what not to touch is just about the funnest game ever for a wee boy, and an exercise in patience for the parent.

Your Tauntaun will freeze before you reach the first marker!

Ever since we went public on the two major North American stock exchanges last year, my company has been growing faster than anybody predicted, and faster than most would like.  (At least those without stocks.)  It used to be that a new hire was cause for wonder, an excuse to take them out for lunch on the company dime, and to marvel at the growth that necessitated such an addition.

Our HR department sends out new hire announcements on a weekly basis now.  Most folks read the name, the position, the enthusiastic note of greeting provided by the supervisor, and then delete and forget.

My own department has more than doubled in size in the last year.  Most of our new talent has to come from out of province, and we've also extended the search beyond the borders of Canada and the Atlantic.  Jorge joined the team a couple weeks ago.  (When hired, he immediately resigned himself to being burdened with "George", rather than the proper Hispanic pronunciation of his name.)  His wife and kids are still over in Portugal -- he expects to be able to bring them over before the end of the year.

We had a department meeting this morning in our main boardroom, focused on a new bit of software.  Before we started, Jorge and Kevin (a new-ish Newfie) were talking about today's weather and Jorge commented on how chilly it was this morning.  It was about five degrees above freezing after the sun rose.  Kevin chuckled and admonished Jorge to wait until winter, at which time (he said) you have to be careful when you go to work some mornings because the rubber of your car tires gets so cold that they retain the flat spots from being parked.  You have to drive for a couple minutes until the friction warms them up enough so they don't go roll-thump-roll-thump-roll-thump-roll-thump...

Jorge burst out laughing.

It took Kevin a couple minutes, with backing from some of the rest of us, to convince Jorge that he wasn't joking.  I don't think a man in his mid-forties gets that look in his eyes very often, so when it happens, it's even more disconcerting for those of us who see it.  We should warn people or something before we hire them from out of the country.

What an incredible smell you've discovered!

It is really hard to write a highlight post on a Sunday night about the garage sale that started Thursday evening.  Sort of like trying to write about waiting an extra half hour at the bus stop in the drizzling rain and how that one car drove too close to the curb, rolled through the puddle of water, and very nearly got your pant cuffs wet.

Hoo boy.

I did find out, unsurprisingly, that I shouldn't be in charge of pricing books if our intent was for them to sell.

Our first two customers Thursday night were two middle-aged ladies who pulled up in a minivan a few minutes after we opened.  They had been garage-saling since nine that morning, itself an admission worthy of a single arched eyebrow, if only I were capable of such a feat.  But the elder woman also boasted that she was showing her younger cohort the ropes.  Like there's a trick to it or something.  I don't know.  Maybe there is.

The trainee flipped through a number of the books at the back of our garage and made half-hearted disparaging looks, like she was psyching herself up to talk me down from a dollar.  (They really HAD been at it since nine that morning.  I braced myself.)  She showed genuine interest in my spare copy of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, and asked my opinion of it, which I expressed as high.  I wanted a dollar for it.  She thumbed to the copyright page and gave a snort when she read the original publication date of 1928.  She offered me 50 cents -- half the asking price, because it was so old.  I stuck to my price of a WHOLE DOLLAR and just barely restrained myself from going on a rant about how a book's age does not automatically cause it to depreciate, and that some actually increase quite a bit in value as they get older.  Shall I show you my 120 year-old copy of Last of the Mohicans?

She left the book, and sauntered out.  I allowed myself my own snort as they drove off.  We didn't sell many books this weekend.

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We were all glad to be done on Sunday night.  Tavish wrapped up the event in fine Fraser form.

Amy put Tav in the bath after we finished our pizza, Dex and I went downstairs for some time on the computer.  When we came back up a while later, Amy recounted the particulars:

"Hey Si, guess what.  You know how I just had Tav in the bath?  Well, I let him run around the living room naked afterwards to air out, and he started farting.  He was like a little machine gun!  And then he was over by the chair and bent over to pick up his soother, and he farted again.  And then he followed through with just a single kernel of corn.  And Jango ate it."

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I have no more words.

This will be a day long remembered

I'm really quite surprised how easily I decided to let go of so many of my books.

Our May Long Weekend Garage Sale From Hell starts today at 6 PM and doesn't wrap up until Sunday at the same time.  I don't have much right to call it that though -- it will be my wife bearing the brunt of the frontal assault of the vanguard of garage-salers. They will assess our impromptu fortifications, espy the alleged items of highest value, and wait until Amy is distracted by her 14 month-old baby before they thrust with a low-ball offer and make off with the goods.  I'm pretty sure we won't sell anything for five bucks that will find its way onto eBay to sell for 50 grand next month, but I hope there's enough of relative value to make this worth our while.

Word on the street is that Thursday and Friday G-Salers are the hawks.  Or, more precisely, the vultures that descend on a meaty carcass to rend the choicest bits of meat from the spare frame.  It's the Saturday and Sunday ne'er-do-wells that have to content themselves with the gristle and ligaments left over.

My dad's coming over for a few hours this afternoon to give Amy a hand setting up, and a couple of the neighbours may be able to spare some time.  Other than that, it'll pretty much be my wife with two kids underfoot doing most of the leg-work.

My contribution so far has been the retrieval of three boxes of books from my mom's basement, as well as those that didn't survive the culling of the bookshelves in our own basement.  As I mentioned above, I'm surprised at how many I let go with hardly a qualm.

I couldn't let them go without capturing their last moments.  Here are two pictures of the tables as they're currently set up in the back of our garage.  (Well, they're two doors resting on saw-horses, but you get the idea.)  Glancing through all those titles last night, I believe I've read all but about a half dozen of the books shown.  Many of them multiple times.  These two photos comprise about a third of Amy's and my combined connubial collection.

(click for larger versions if you want to read the titles)

You will note in the second picture that I'm selling my first 10 books from Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.  I hope somebody comes along early in the weekend and takes the whole series early in the weekend.  I'll be glad to be rid of them, but then feel sort of guilty for creating the situation where somebody else will read them.  Caveat emptor.

I don't expect all (or even most) of these to sell, but it would sure be nice to clear up the shelf space.

I heartily agree, sir

I took both boys to the park Sunday evening after Amy and her girlfriend finished with the cleaning they had planned to do.  The boys have a greater tendency to get whiny in the house these days, but lobbing them outside works as a wonderful panacea for that annoying affliction.

Dex has gotten brave enough that he's willing to wander around most of the playground equipment as long as he has me within eyesight.  This allows me to follow behind Tavish's perambulations and dissuade him from eating sand or the occasionally unearthed bit of last autumn's garbage.

As we neared the time that I'd have to plop both boys back in the stroller and head home for bath time, Dex was climbing across the wooden bridge ("Daddy!  Lookit me!") and I was sitting with Tav in the middle of everything, just playing with the sand and not eating it.  There was a small group of teens playing at getting from one side of the playground to the other without allowing their feet to touch the ground.  That is until Leader Teen fell off the monkey bars and decided the gig was up, so went to swing on the swings.

There, he pumped himself up to a good height and bellowed to his friends the most perfectly logical statement I've heard all week:

"You know guys, whoever invented the swings should be awarded every single Nobel Prize... including the one for chemistry!"

Short help is better than no help at all

In celebration of the fact that I didn't have to go into work today like I expected, here are some fun pics and a video for random enjoyment.

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Here's Tavish sporting Mr. Potato Head's specs.

Who's the more foolish...

...the fool, or the fool who follows him?

I swear, people, you can't make up stuff this good!  For my Star Wars anniversary month of posts, this is quite near to perfection:

Skywalkers in Korea cross Han Solo

Always two there are: a master and an apprentice

Monday, Amy had a lady over to help with a bit of spring cleaning.  Dear God but our kitchen needed it.  I got home from work to find every room but the nursery holding court with impromptu gatherings of erstwhile kitchen cupboard denizens.  The squatting was only  temporary, but it made meal preparation a little challenging.

So we went to Taco Time.

I ordered, Amy sat the boys.  Tavish flirted with an entire family a couple tables over.  I brought our meal back to the table and Dex randomly handed out food in a surprisingly accurate manner.  I opened my paper wrapper to find that Declan had given me Amy's burrito. 

"I think I have yours here, Hon."

"Oh?  This one isn't mine?  But I already opened it."

"No, this one has veggies -- it's yours.  Mine just has meat and cheese."

"Oh really?  You trying to tell me you have cheese on your taco?"

"Well, I hope there's not too much cheese on my taco.  That could be unpleasant."

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Later, at home, it was my job to keep the boys occupied in the backyard while Amy continued the reassembly of our kitchen.  Dex likes to play with the sidewalk chalk; Tavish likes to gnaw on it.

"Hey Daddy!  Lookit me!"

"Whatcha doin', Dex?"

"Wanna help me draw?  Onna patio?"

"Sure thing.  [...]  Do you know what this spells?"

"What?"

"It spells 'Declan'."

"No, Daddy.  It spells 'ME'!"

It appears you are to be the main course at a banquet in my honour

The birthday weekend has come and gone.  I commented to Amy on Sunday night that I was amazed at how much garbage a three year old's birthday generates.  I feel kinda guilty.

At least the weather cooperated.  Forecast for the weekend did not look good at all.  But even though Saturday dawned cool and gloomy, the sun broke through the clouds a half hour before launch and that made all the difference in how everybody enjoyed the day.

To tell the tale, here's a video clip, and then a whole whack of pictures after the jump.  Fun time had by all.