Simian Farmer

Christmas 2007 in Lethbridge

Here's a brief review... well, not so brief pictorial review of the 2007 Fraser/Farley Christmas in Lethbridge.  The drive down was an uneventful 6(ish) hours, with only one rest stop at the halfway point.  I was very happy that I bought Amy that portable DVD player for a non-birthday present in November because what could have been a rather unhappily raucous second half of the trip was, instead, a pleasantly glassy-eyed and quite serene cruise into the sunset on Friday afternoon.

I took over 200 pics over the week, just got 69 of them developed on real, live paper, and here are 29 of those.  I sure hope you don't have a dialup connection, because you should totally go hand-grind some coffee beans for espresso if you do.  It'll take a while for them all to load.

For the rest of you... enjoy.  We did.  Mostly.

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"All the better to see you with, my dear."

Career endangerment, basement & Christmas hiatus

When my wife calls me at work, the first thing out of her lips (usually) is, "What are you doing?"

I like to follow this up whenever I can with a snappy reply that somehow encapsulates a concise summary of my current goings-on as well as making me sound very important.  Sometimes I succeed at that and sometimes I fail.  That's OK.  Last week when this happened, my reply to Amy's standard query was, "I'm working on something to prove somebody else wrong."

To which she said, "Oh, well then, you must really be enjoying yourself."

"Oh I am, indeed," I assured her.

Unfortunately, this week, my efforts unveiled that I was wrong and the man I had it in for was correct.  Being me, this rubbed me the wrong way (since I'm exceedingly fond of being right).  But, also being me, I felt obliged to fess up.  Since my perceived opposition in this endeavour was Muffy, the VP to whom I used to report, I was especially aggrieved because of the size of ego to which my contrite admission would be addressed.

So I had to temper my conciliatory email with the appropriate sentiment:

Muffy,

After much hand-wringing and general gnashing of teeth, I have decided to send you an early Christmas present and tell you those three little words that every wife (and executive-type) loves to hear:

"You were right."

[followed by some details as to why, exactly, he was right]

At this point I was scheduled for a late-morning meeting and was away from my desk for an hour.  I came back to his reply, and a phone message from him chastising me for not replying to his reply.  Which was:

Ha - I hope now you do not expect any other wifely things from me.  I do have a gag reflex you know.

So, when I did get back to my desk and read that, and listened to his message, and thought about how I was going to be away from the office for a week and a half anyway, I decided to rebut with:

Sorry for not replying sooner, Muffy.  I was in a meeting and could not cater to your reflex immediately.

If there are any other wifely things I'd expect from you, it was the emotional insecurity exhibited by your phone message when I didn't reply via email quickly enough.

Now, the next day, I have not received any other reply nor been issued a pink slip.  So I think I'm OK.

*****

In other news, my darling wife has posted pictures of our fully armed and operational battle station.  I mean, fully finished basement.  We're rather pleased.  Still some stuff to move back in and sort and throw out and rearrange and fight over.  But we're happy. 

First, remind yourself how it used to look by reviewing my Before Pics.  It's amazing what two months can do!  Then, go over to Amy's site and check it out.

*****

Finally, we're leaving this afternoon to spend nearly a week with my in-laws in Lethbridge, about five hours south of us -- depending on the road conditions and who's driving.  Thus, there will be no posting for a week or so.  We're back home on Thursday, probably.

Until then, have yourselves a Merry Little Christmas.  Hugs and kisses from the Fraser Clan.

Gotta lotta ground to cover, try to keep up

The last three days have been abnormally busy, even for us.  (All couples with young kids like to think that there couldn't possibly be anyone else out there busier than they are, and we are no exception to that gross misconception.  We live deeply inside of it, in fact, and sometimes slather ourselves in the smug sense of superiority it engenders.)

Rather than try to recount the details that are already starting to elude me, I thought it best to provide pictorial summaries.  I also (very briefly) thought it might make more sense to those reading here to break it up into a number of posts.  Like, one for each event.  And then I thought, the hell with that!  This weekend didn't slow down for us to pause for a breather, so you don't get one either.

There are no gentle segues here between days and/or events, but I have been good enough to post the pictures chronologically.  Other than that, I'll let them speak (mostly) for themselves.  (Click for bigger ones.)

And.... go.

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SATURDAY

Mere hours before the Saturday adults' Christmas party.  I like the unintentional blue theme going on here.  That's my wife's only tattoo, in case you haven't seen it before.

More pending...

Wow... that was a busy weekend.

A testament to how busy it was came from my having to do a small load of laundry Saturday afternoon because I was fresh out of clean underpants, and I didn't feel inclined to go commando to my company's Christmas party.  Since, you know, I wasn't wearing my kilt because it wouldn't have gone with Amy's new dress.

The party, Saturday night, was great.  Drinks, dinner, entertainment, subdued lighting, unrestrained air-guitar.  It all rocked.

The post-prandial performer was this chick who got dressed up as eight different divas and sung her barely contained heart out in striking renditions of well-known songs.  I may have gotten yanked onto stage and had an inflatable guitar thrust at me.  And an ill-fitting mullet wig plonked onto my head.  And I may have taken that inflatable guitar and gone all Jimi Hendrix with it and shown up the actual diva.  (Amy got pictures, don't worry.)

And then at the close of the show I may have volunteered to go on stage for the obligatory playing of YMCA.  I got to be the cop.  Again, more pictures.

Amy became BFF (best friends forever) with one of the office gals I work with, and we'll see how that goes now that the wine has worn off.  I was the DD Saturday night, so my wife had herself a REALLY good time.  Woo-hoo!!

We didn't slow down Sunday.  I set my alarm for a quarter past seven and by eight o'clock we were moving stuff from the garage into our TOTALLY FINISHED BASEMENT!!  (The only thing missing is the counter top for Amy's scrapbooking room, but that's coming Wednesday.)  So now we have double the living space and LOVE IT!  As above, more pictures coming.  Maybe a virtual video tour!

Then we got the boys ready and headed off to the kids' Christmas party.  Santa, presents, pizza pops and a couple of wind sprints to the boys' room for a pee.  Good times.  Should I mention we got pictures, or do you want to take it as given by this point?

Got the boys home, bathed, bedded, and one of Amy's girlfriends came by to watch them while my dear lady-wife took me out for a slightly early birthday date.  We stopped for hot chocolate at Starbucks and then spent an hour walking up and down Candy Cane Lane, a street in Edmonton well known for having nearly ALL the houses decked out with fairly impressive Christmas light displays.  By the end of our return walk, my chin was numb, Amy had lost most of the sensation in her thighs, and we'd had a great time.

Wonderful end to the weekend.

I'll try to get the pics up within the next day or so.  We have to do more laundry so there's clean underpants again, the dishes by the sink are threatening to topple onto unsuspecting youth passing underneath, and the knick-knacks from the garage still need to be brought in to the basement.  Soon...

Colder than a warm Virginia

I was speaking with a friend in Virginia yesterday morning, and she regaled taunted me with tales of how everyone down there was wearing T-shirts and, wow, holy geez it's hot, eh?  Like about 25 Celcius or so!  Unseasonable, can you believe it?!

So I thought I'd take a few pictures out our front step yesterday evening after dinner.  You know... for a bit of a comparison.

(click on pics for larger versions)

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I decided to haul both boys outside with me after supper to frolic in the snow while I shovelled the day's dump.  At least, that was my intent.  I had images of innocent youth traipsing and kicking their way through virgin blankets of monochromatic fluff, giggling and chortling with glee.

Yeah, that bit of optimistic idyll lasted for as long as it took the first of them to get snow up his wrists or down his neck, and it sort of spiralled into chaos from there.  I did all the shovelling after they both were in bed.

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Tea for two, anyone?

No?!

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Don't worry, his thumbs don't really bend like that.  It's just frikkin' impossible to get his thumbs in the thumb holes of his mitts, so I don't even try.

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He insisted on the toque (hat) before he left the house, so Amy jammed it on over top of his snow suit's hood.

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This stalwart fella has been guarding our front door for several years now.  We never let the poor guy in.  There used to be a "Welcome" sign that hung from his bone, but the chains broke, so now, covered in snow, he looks even more forlorn.

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Are you sure I can't convince you to take a relaxing mug of tea on the front bistro set?

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Proof to myself that I really need a tripod if I want to take any cool night time shots.  And that I need to fill the bird-feeder.

The neat thing is that there's still more than a week of Autumn left.  Winter doesn't officially start until the 21st or 22nd this year!  Cool, huh?!

Trippy!!

I check out my Google homepage a few times a day since it's my preferred way to keep up with my RSS feeds.  One of the title bars I have selected as a theme reflects the local weather based on the location I claim to be at.  Today's is absolutely uncanny in the the snow is blowing at precisely the direction and angle that's portrayed in the screenshot I snapped below.  The only thing missing is the actual volume of snow on the ground.

If there were a bus stop right outside my window, I'd totally expect to see these same people there.

Mmm... winter...

Wastebook

I signed up for a Facebook account a short while after my wife did, for no other reason, really, than it would be one more method to keep in touch with her during the day.  I thought (and still think) that it's a mostly silly social networking site, and is inundated with juvenile applications you can add to your own home page to personalise it.

The only benefit I've realised from it is getting in touch with a high school buddy who, since then, joined the army and has served two tours in Afghanistan.  I'm glad to have reconnected with him, but the rest of the 'old friends' who have found me I never kept in touch with for a reason, you know?  Not that I mean to come across as pretentious (which I know is hard when using that word, ha!), but I keep a small circle of friends and don't work hard at clinging to loose threads.

So far, the only thing I really do on Facebook is update my profile status on a nearly daily basis because, like blogging, it allows me to talk about myself without worrying about having to listen to feedback if I don't want to.  That's when it struck me that I could combine the two and I could blog about updating my Facebook status.  (Sweet Narcissus!)

For those not hip to the Facebook jive, each user has a 'status' field that always starts with "Firstname is..." and then you get to fill in the rest to be displayed at the top of your profile for your friends to read.  Here, then, are most of my "Simon is..." status updates since I thought to keep track.

Yay me!

Simon is...

pining for the fjords, and the chjevrolets, too.

an infathomable mystery seeking evidence to solve himself.

dueling rainbow faeries in a sleep-deprived  state of hallucination -- and he's winning!

a lech.  Which is better than a lich, unless you're into that whole 'undead' thing.

keeping most of his naughty thoughts to himself.

very skinny when viewed solely in the X-ray spectrum.

the very model of a modern major... something or other.

not nearly as excited about carpet as his wife is, unless it is his wife's.

mostly water, but you'd need a really good filter to drink it.

annoyed by the grammatical inconsistencies he finds in so many other Facebook status updates.  Third person, people!

approaching somnolence like the first time Adam approached Eve.

London, Simon is France, Simon is wearing blue underpants.

awash with the afterglow of ice cream after taking Amy out for her birthday lunch.

asserting that Han shot first, in case you were undecided and needed to be swayed.

10% narcoleptic and 90% hot-blooded stud.

suffused with a sense of disimpressedness at the state of television.

John Malkovich's stunt double.

thinking of good intentions, so the way to hell is nicely paved for his crazy train.

really Abe Froman, the sausage king of Chicago.

trying to think of appropriate haikus to write about winter.

perpendicular.

resigned to cold fingertips until May(ish).

pretty, oh so pretty.  He is pretty, and witty, and gay!

fairly certain that word you keep saying does not mean what you think it means.

annoyed by malapropisms.

a neologistical purveyor of pomp and pretention.

"He'd sooner live in Hell."

Quoth Moksha:

"Today, the sun will set on your fair city at 4:20pm and will not rise again until 8:25am. What effect could THAT be having on your doldrums and are you really never tempted to run screaming southward?"

Really, I've never been tempted to run screaming southward.  The huge variations in the seasons in my "fair city" are part of the appeal of living here.  For as little sun as we get right now (and it's going to keep dwindling for the next two and a half weeks until the solstice), I couldn't imagine my summers without the nearly omnipresent light.  We have dinner at 5 PM in the dark these days, but in the middle of July I can mow my lawn at 10 PM and then grab a beer to watch the sun set from my front step before I have a shower.

I don't discount the emotional effect that winter has on most, including me.  I think I'd be in worse shape, though, if I lived too far south.  Costa Rica comes to mind.  That's where Amy and I spent our honeymoon, and we were amazed at the speed of the sun set every evening.  And it only varies by about 15 minutes throughout the year - 12 hours of sun, 12 of dark.  That near the equator it drops like a lead weight past the horizon, but from this far north it skids in kind of sideways, taking its sweet time, like a slider coming off a pitcher's fingers, and it kindles the late afternoon sky with the teasing hope that it'll bounce back up like a rock off pond water.  (It has yet to do that, and I'd be stupefied if it ever did.)  But it does get kind of annoying when you're driving south at high noon and the sun is shining right in your eyes at that perfectly annoying angle.

Winter, much more than summer for me, is a season of ritual, and it helps to solidify the year for me.  I wake up each morning and peek out the living room curtains to see if I have to shovel any snow that may have fallen the night before.  I'm always relieved when I don't have to, but it's also invigorating when I do.  I layer my clothing, grab my shovel, and clear the driveway and front walk in a pattern that's been honed over nearly five years.

As soporific as winter is, it stirs the blood in a way that summer never can.  If I walked outside onto my front porch at midnight in the middle of January, dressed as if for a July long weekend barbeque, I'd be nothing but a frozen corpse by morning.  When simply the temperature of the air can kill a sedentary, unprotected man, does that not just rouse the basest of survival instincts?  I love it!

(Also, if I were to run screaming southward, I think it might be partly out of fear for what I'd see when I got there.  My pampered, preserved-by-cold Canadian ass wouldn't know what to do without universal health care.  I read a guy's post recently where his wife quit her job and they - family of five - were left looking for new health coverage.  They got a "deal" through an insurance company that will cover them for a mere $900 a month - including meds for depression, which is what made them high-risk in the first place.  And I'm all, like, WTF?!  That's a mortgage payment!  That's a mortgage payment on the off chance that you might get sick.  Two years ago, when my wife checked into the hospital, checked out of the hospital, had a baby at home, took an ambulance ride back to the hospital, and spent the next day and a half in her own private room with our new baby... that entire ordeal cost us a grand total of zero dollars and zero cents.)

Well, OK, the part where all the snow melts in the spring and I'm left to marvel at the feculent miasma of dog poo swimming in our backyard gets me kind of depressed.  But I can totally ignore that until April!

Holla-deck boy

Quoth Alec:

You've been given a week-end on the Holodeck (or the random plot generator as my father-in-law likes to call it); what do you do?

This one's easy.  I finally get to live out my most frequently recurring day dream.  Which I've written about before, thus making for a mostly-easy cut-n-paste post for a Monday morning.

In my dream I am the leader of a group of five vigilante Jedi knights.  Or, at least, we have Jedi-like powers.  And lightsabres.  The other four members frequently rotate between various people I know, and never stay constant.  I am the only constant.  We don't go by our real names but have call signs to preserve our secret identities.  I'm not sure what mine is yet; that detail hasn't worked itself out.  So far I think it's "Primus".  And even though we're vigilantes, we work for the cause of Good and are generally altruistic, though we do dish out the occasional well-deserved smackdown.

In order to promote global do-goodery, we have to go places.  You'd think, being Jedi and all, we'd fly around the world in X-Wing fighters or Jedi Starfighters.  That's simply not the case.  No, we get around by zooming thither and yon in pimped out Avro Arrows.  The Arrow, in its day, would have been the world's premiere air superiority fighter.  And it was Canadian.  It would still do a good job of holding its own today.  And there was a whole lot of political intrigue behind the then-Conservative government's quashing of the program before the jets went into production.  (Most of the popular blame rests on pressure from the USA, who allegedly didn't want competition, even from an ally.  Bitches.)  Being so very nearly great and slowly fading into history has made it incredibly iconic.  I think that's why it intruded into my daydream.  So I went with it.

In my dream, we sometimes fly into the tail end of International Air Shows and surprise the crowd.  They always go nuts.

These aren't ordinary Arrows, oh no.  They're also Transformers.  Each one of the five morphs from its standard fighter configuration into that of a monstrous mechanized mandroid, sort of like that really cool Citroen car commercial.  (Or those fighter jets from Robotech, if you're familiar with the cartoon series.)  Imagine the fear born in the hearts of our foes when a 10-storey iron giant comes a-stompin'!

We have to have some place to hide our headquarters lest evil-doers seek us out, so we have a secret base nestled in a crater on the dark side of the moon.  (Thus free from prying telescopes too; I've actually thought about that.  We listen to lots of Pink Floyd.)  Our Arrows are space-worthy, of course.  We haven't, to date, encountered any aliens, nor ventured further into the solar system, not wanting to leave Earth undefended and all.

*****

So that's my wish for a weekend on the holodeck.  That would sooooo rock.