I'm sick of waiting.

Carrie, Logan and I moved to Belleville in October of 2001 because I got a better paying job at a company that is managed by assclowns. We were still tight for money and applied for low income housing. When we signed up we were told it was a 12 to 18 month wait. So we waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
When we would call to find out how much longer it would be, we would get told various time frames, 2 to 6 months, 6 to 8 months, 2 months to a year. And we'd wait again.
We went to where we applied for non profit housing to see what the hell was going on. The lady we spoke with didn't really have anything to do with the placement process, she just took the information and passed it on, but was extremely helpful. She gave us a couple of names and phone numbers to contact to get this straightened out. Now with it being a long weekend we'll have to wait until Tuesday to try to get some answers. October will be the start of year 4 for us to be on the waiting list.

I'm still waiting to hear from the army. I did, however call them on Thursday. I did it for two reasons: 1) I wanted to confirm that they received my medical files from my family doctor, and 2) to find out what was going on with my processing.
My answers were: 1) "Yes we did get your files.", and 2)"The review board has all your information. Your first and third choice of trades begin in September, your second choice starts in January. You should hear from us in the next 2 to 6 weeks."
For those of you that don't know, my choices are: 1) Vehicle Tech 411 (mechanic), 2)Material Tech 441(welder/fabricator), 3)Mobile Support Equipment Opperator 935(drive EVERYTHING the army has).
That's a modified list. Item 1 was actually item 3. Number 2 was 1, and 3 was 2. When I went in to drop off my application information, I had JUST missed the cut off date for Mat Tech and MCSE. So we fudged things around a bit.

So while I wait for the army, I'm still unemployed. I did apply online to Future Shop. I have to wait until the finish building it I guess.

The PATIO IS DONE!!

Well, It's done. It took over a month for it to get completed, but it's finally done!

I didn't get started on the patio itself when I thought I would. I was told be ready for 1400hrs, but didn't start until 1800hrs. It was raining too. But it took the three of us 3 hours to lay the brick work. When I left at 2100hrs, all that was left was to sand, tamp, and re-sand it. Having only two brooms I decided to leave. That and I was cold, wet, tired and hungry.
What do you think?


Sunday, before we started on the patio. 


the patio and stairs. 


the stairs that took 7 hours to build. 


To celebrate the completion of the project I went for a swim today. DAMN that water was cold! It was free at the public pool so I didn't mind too much. On the plus side I got to embarrass a female life guard. There was a day camp there today. When I left a few of the boys from the camp were goofing around in the shower area. I was in the change area drying off when I heard a whistle blow. I turn around to see what's up and I can see the lifeguard standing there, and she can see me in all my butt nekkidness. No swimsuit on, no towel. Nothing. Funny thing is, I wasn't embarrassed at all, even when she walked through the change room.

Not a typical Monday

I know, I know. Today is Tuesday.

Yesterday was so insane, I haven't been able to breathe until now.

Logan had a dentist appointment at 0810 hrs. I wasn't looking forward to it, seeing as his last 2 tries at getting his cavity filled failed miserably. Then again, it wasn't our regular dentist that saw him the last two times. Dr Verpoorte seems to be able to deal with kids better than his associate.
The nurse came in and explained to Logan what was going to happen, starting with the gas, then about the different drills they use and finally the filling. Logan was given a choice of purple, blue, green or white for filling color.
Everything was going fine upto the filling going in. Logan had enough of the gas and having things in his mouth. As Dr. Verpoorte said, it's not the best filling he's done, but it's in.

I was expecting Logan to not want to go to school afterwards, but he did. So I took him in.
On my way home, I looked out the bus window in time to see an older lady wipeout on her bike. She went down hard.
Nancy, the bus driver, and I hopped off the bus to see if she was okay. She was rolling around in pain, scrapes on her right shin, but nothing that looked too bad. A passerby stopped to lend a bit of a hand, and called 911, left a pillow and took off. Nancy had to go, so I waited for the ambulance to arrive, just in case she went into shock and passed out.
The EMTs checked her over, nothing broken, just some scrapes, and pulled tendons in her leg. She's probably got some nasty looking bruises today.

When I got home, our friends Andrew and Jenn called. They had scavenged an old Compaq Deskpro computer form his dad's place and wanted some help to get it up and running. Sounded easy enough, so I foolishly agreed.
Did you know that Copmaq didn't have a BIOS on the motherboard for the system they had found? It's supposed to be in a hidden partition on the hard drive. The hard drive was missing, by the way.
It took us two hours to find the right file to add the BIOS to the hard drive Andrew had. But it does work.

As Andrew was checking things out (the drive had Win98 on it), I was getting ready to go to the YMCA for a workout, and Andrew was thinking about going with me. I had just started to pack my bag when the phone rang. It was my mom. Her ex-step-son-in-law,Mike, finally showed up to start work on the stone patio she wanted. But they needed an extra set of hands.
First we had to build the steps to get out the patio door. From the ground to the door it's 4 steps. The top step is a landing that's level with the living room floor, so it's about 4.5 feet above the ground. The landing is approx. 5-6 feet long and 4-5 feet wide. It took 3 guys 7 hours to build it. I was on shovel/wheelbarrow duty. We used close to 40 wheelbarrows full of limestone, close to 300lbs/load. Once that was done, we moved the rest of the limestone to the pit where the main deck is going to be, that was another 20 barrows full.  That was all packed down last night.

All this on the tails of a busy, but enjoyable Sunday. Mom called me at 0900 hrs and asked if we wanted to go over for brunch seeing as my step sister was visiting with her kids. We had HUGE omelets. All three of the kids played in the backyard together. We all had water gun fights, and the  three boys wrestled with me and grandpa Jim.
The day went fast and it was supper time really soon. 1800hrs and people were still full from brunch, but I still managed to eat 2.5 bbqed hamburgers! Man did I feel sick when I got home.


Grandpa is down! Victory is ours! 


Getting ready tor the water gun fight. 



The boys. Nolan, Logan, Kadin. 

I got a call just a few minutes ago. Mike got the afternoon off. Looks like I'm going back to help lay the patio brick today. At least there's no more shoveling or wheelbarrows.
Damn my arms are tired!

Hooray for Phones!

On Thursday of last week I asked Kris, via ICQ, if he had Marks phone number. He said no. I wasn't overly surprised, seeing as he and Mark weren't buddy-buddy.
Kris did suggest I ask Shaun. Just as I finished reading it, Shaun pops up on MSN. When asked if they planned it they both said no. I have my doubts about that. But Shaun gave me Marks phone number.
 
Here it is Sunday, and I finally gave Mark a call. I haven't spoken to him in a few years, at least 2, but probably closer to 4.
It was a little awkward, and we never really fell into that old "good friends" type of banter. I guess it's just too many years of news have passed and not knowing what to ask.
 
SO. Mark and his long time girlfriend (Bonnie), got married last August. They've moved into a house, have no kids, but have at least 2 cats. I'm guessing there's more, but Mark only confessed to two. He's been working at the same place now for, as far as I can figure, 6 years. I know Bonnie was working when I left Nova Scotia after high school, but didn't think to ask if she was still pulling her weight. (I'm going to get slapped for that one)
 
We made the typical small talk about how no-one can afford to go more than 100 meters from one for a vacation, which means we won't see each other unless someone wins the 6/49. I asked about some other common friends we had, and was told that he didn't see them very often.
 
The one person I was hoping for news about was Julie. Unfortunately Mark hasn't heard from her since the wedding. Maybe she'll contact him soon and he can pass my info on to her.
 
Other than that, not much has been happening. I'm still waiting to hear form the army. I haven't been to a movie in a dogs age. I'm waiting for the Olympics to start. I had a job interview at Staples last week, but didn't get the job.
 
OH! I went to my FIRST Mechwarrior: Dark Ages tournament at the Fable Shop. I didn't play, I don't have enough figure to make a decent army. I went mainly to see the game mechanics. Just like back in high school in Kris and Johns basement, it took forever for things to start. It was scheduled to start at noon, but everyone kept trying to tweak their armies. There was no money involved, but there was a prize. A pair of hard to get figures. If you haven't seen the game yet, check it out  http://www.wizkidsgames.com/mwdarkage/ 

A little wet and soggy

It's now Wednesday. Waterfornt weekend is done for another year, and rumor has it, again, this will be the last one.

I'm not going to lose sleep over it if it is. Waterfront isn't the best thing I've been to. Hell I've been to kids birthday parties that offered as much entertainment. After all Waterfront is really only a flea market. This year there were supposed to be more craft stalls than ever before. It didn't look like it to me.
Aside from the crap, I mean crafts, that I wouldn't buy because I'm not over 70, there's the "Ethnic village". The village is a food court. That's it. No there isn't a McDonald's or a Pizza Hut. The food is supposed to be from various countries around the world. This is a good thing. I like to eat. I like to try new things. Unfortunately everything is way over priced. A polish sausage cost $3.00, and a can of Coke was $1.75. And it's a small sausage.

I'm still unemployed, but that will hopefully change by the end of this week. I had an interview at Staples yesterday. The guy I was supposed to be interviewed by was out assisting a customer in home, so I was seen by someone that wasn't prepared to see me.
She told me that it's normally a 3 interview process, and she was usually the second interview. Aside form the "what can you bring to the company" question it went well. I never know how to answer that.

I woke up this morning to a "sever thunderstorm warning". That's a nice way to start the day. Shortly after that I got a call from my mom telling me that if it gets really bad, hide the family in the bathroom. The storm lasted MAYBE 20 minutes. Hell, it didn't even rain that hard. No lightning, no hail, no dark foreboding skies. sigh. Maybe next time we'll get a tornado, now that would be cool!

Waterfront and Ethnic Festival

Yep. It's that time of year again here in Belleville, Ontario.

Depending on who you ask it's either a 3 day or 5 day event. Sticklers say it's only three because the craft shows and concerts don't open until Friday. Others say it starts on Wednesday with the closing of "the Village" downtown, for the all week sidewalk sale.

No matter how you choose to look at it, it still needs better organization.

The events are reasonably well planned. It's the travel that needs the help. Because most of downtown is closed to street traffic half the city busses are re-routed. This year its complicated due to a bridge being refurbished. Next is the "free shuttle" service.

To allow everyone to get to all the events at Meyers Pier or at Zwicks Park the city has commandeered a few city buses that run from the bus terminal to Zwicks and Meyers, or from the mall to Zwicks.

The biggest problem is the times these shuttles run. Events start at 1100 hrs. Shuttle starts at 1200 hrs. For people with a car it's not that big of a deal. Those, like myself, without have a problem with it.

How can I take Logan to see Spongbob Squarepants and get to other more "grown up" things on time? Spongebob was to be there at 1215 hrs. I was expecting monster line-ups like we had for Dora, so I wanted to get there around 1130 hrs. I figured that would give us lots of time to wait and we could take the shuttle from Zwicks to Meyers to catch the bellyflop competition. Since we couldn't get there at 1130 hrs, I figured we were screwed. Walking was not an option with a 4 year old, especially since we walked home Friday night after the fireworks.


Spongebob, Logan and Mommy 


Daddy, Logan and Spongebob. 

We finally found our sponge buddy and he did have a line up. We waited form 1230 to 1245 to get our pics taken with him. After that we looked around the "kids village", Logan helped Carrie build a wooden tool box at the Home Depot tent, and then Logan saw the Lego tent and palyed in there for a bit.

We never made it to the bellyflop competition. Logan was starting to get cranky and Carrie and I were sweating buckets. We got home around 1430 hrs, and laid down.

Yesterday was a little more fun.

At 1830 hrs the parade started. Logan had a blast waving at EVERY person on EVERY float. Most waved back.

At 2000 we wandered down to Meyers Pier to wait for fireworks. We saw a couple of tallships and listend to some live music.

A great Canadian band Krome was on stage. Logan though they were awesomeand was dancing to all their tunes.

Fireworks were supposted to start at 2145 hrs, but were delayed until 2200hrs. They lasted for nearly 30 minutes, 22 minutes LONGER than our Canada Day display. That's kind of sad.

When we left, the Tea Party was just taking the stage. I've seen them before and would have liked to see them again, but all votes are vetoed by a tired 4 yearold.

Stressed

I'm pissed off. Not in general, but at something specific. Or, I should say someones specific.

Now, I know I haven't had this blog up and running very long, and those few of you that read it don't know a hell of a lot about me or my family.

Carrie has a brother who is badly schizophrenic. He's been in care for sometime, but as of a week and a half ago he had walked off on his own. Without his medication. So the provincial and local law have been trying to find him.

We got a call from Carrie's parents to let us know he was on the loose and that we were to call them if we saw her brother. We saw him tonight and had him in our home.

It was the most nerve racking hour and a half I've spent in a long time. Carrie tried her parents several times, but the line was busy. So I told her to call 9-1-1.

It wasn't until after the cops had left that we got through to Carrie's dad. Her mom was off at BINGO, and her sister was with her dad getting drunk. Both of them started bitching at Carrie for calling the cops. I can guarantee her mom will call later to do the most bitching and complaining. Mind you, I'll have a few choice words for them!

After the police left, Carrie told me that while her brother was on the run, he was extremely violent at one place he stayed. I was glad he left without force.

Knowing that a person is mentally ill is bad enough. Watching them try to avoid the help they KNOW and admit they need is even worse. Having other family members berate and belittle you for doing the right thing? I can't imagine how Carrie feels.

I can only hope that the Army gets a hold of me soon. I pray that we get posted anywhere but here. I can't stand seeing Carrie so torn up over this and it always seems to fall in her lap.

Carrie's sister is also schizophrenic. Last month she was the one we had to deal with. She had decided that she couldn't deal with her two daughters anymore. So she called the Children's Aid Society. They apparently have a “weekend off” program where they take custody of the kids for 2 days. A week later, she still hadn't picked them up.

She did call us to see if we would take the girls. Finances and lack of space forced us to say no. It hurt Carrie a lot, but she knew C.A.S was the best place for them. Her sister should have known that too, but still told Carrie that she didn't love her nieces. A few weeks later C.A.S called because sister told them we wanted the girls. Again Carrie had to tell them no. Again the family said she was a bad person.

Even though my side of the family can be nuts and angry with each other, I can still see and feel the love. Carrie's family rarely says or does anything nice for her or about her, yet I can feel her love for them. I just don't understand why.

Why? How? What?

I was sitting here watching the Discovery Channel. It was a show about amusement park rides. Cool stuff.
When they went to commercial it was an ad for HP computers. You've probably seen it, the one where Donkey from Shrek complains about a receding hairline?
At the end HP takes credit for helping create the graphics for Shrek. That's a kind of arrogant don't you think? Yes, the animation company needs computers, and probably got the best deal from HP, but HP just puts components together. I don't see Intel or AMD taking credit for helping make the movie. There's no ads from ATI or nVidia doing it. Hell HP doesn't even make their own monitors.
It's kind of like the caterer taking credit for the space shuttle launch. "Buy Maxwell House Coffee. We kept ground control awake for the launch!"

Now, what's up with these blogs? When I log into my blogger dashboard there's 2 lists of blogs. The bottom one for recently updated blogs, and Blogs of Note. Who decides what's "of note"?

Let's take a look at Spindrift surfboard.
Spindrift started the blog in May of 2004. All of the entries are pictures of surfboards. I don't surf, but can see the beauty in just about anything.
I don't see how it's a "blog of note". Especially when there is no text content. Are these Spindrift's personal boards? Does Spindrift own a pro shop and these are for sale? Are these hand made by Spindrift?

Terminal Island is another one I don't get. I like the look and like the interface idea, but he states it's a TEST. He's got two or three posts and that's it.
Again, no real content.

Kuwait Diary was one I had hopes for, just based on the title. I thought it would be blogs form someone stationed in Kuwait letting us see how things are. Again it's just pics.

Caliblog actually has some content. It's not earth shattering, but it's intelligent.

I'm not ragging on Blogger.com to see if I can get into the "of note" category. It'd be cool and all, but I'm not concerned. All I want to know is what they base the choice on. Maybe I can change my writing style or pick a direction for this to go.

I can't imagine too many people want to read about my mundane life.

Canada day

Well, Canada just had it's 137 birthday.
Here in Belleville, we had thunder storms all day. It cleared up enough to have a fireworks display. Because the ground was wet I din't go, but I've heard peolple complaining that it only lasted 8 minutes.

Other than that all I did for Canada Day was argue online with a 16 year old kid. Why? Not really sure. It started with a post on a paintball forum about a Canadian jackass Toobis. Someone came across this idiots website and a rant he posted on how Hitler was demonized, and was actually a decent person. You can read the thread here as well as my comments to the 16 year old kid. I refuse to post a link to Toobis' web site, but there is one in the thread.

I woke up this morning with sore shoulders and chest. I was at the gym yesterday. Usually I focus on biceps and legs, but yesterday I did some bench presses. Man I need to do more work!

Later today I'm taking Logan to the kiddie pool to slapsh around in. Now I'll be able to complain about a sun burn too!