Happy Birthday to Me

Ok so my birthday was actually more than a month ago, but I like to stretch it out as long as I can. For me, my birthday really started about 2 months ago (a month or so before the actual date), when I started dropping hints about what I was hoping to get. Cory and Tina got together and they came up with the idea of getting me a new digital camera. A great idea, only they wanted me to pick out my own because they know that I am fussy when it comes to electronics. I don't want junk that I am going to have to replace in a few months, and I don't want to spend a fortune just to get a bunch of bells and whistles I will never use.

I spent the next couple of weeks looking at fliers, trying to get a feel for what was available and at what price. A couple of weeks before my birthday I ended up going to Future Shop and picked up a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ4. It is a nice little camera for the money, it is a 4mega-pixal camera with 12x Optical Zoom. The one option that I went for that was probably over-kill was the 2 gig memory card.

It has all of the same features that most other cameras have. You can set it for mountains, for close ups, for parties, for portraits, etc, etc. Then there is the "Simple Mode" or "automatic" setting. If you don't know what you are doing set the camera to this setting and it will figure it out for you. Now I am not a photographer by any stretch of the imagination, but I am not an idiot either, I can figure out if I am shooting a portrait, or a landscape, I can tell if it is light or dark. However when I try to set the camera manually to the way I think it should be for the picture, my pictures always turn out lousy. Whenever I set it to "Simple Mode" the camera takes a descent picture. It’s almost like the camera is mocking me.

Anyway, the whole reason I started talking about this camera was to state how much I enjoy digital photography. It is a cheap way to experiment with photography. I have just finished downloading over 130 pictures that I have taken so far this weekend. I couldn't imagine what the cost of getting all of those pictures developed would have been if I was using film. That is the first message I wanted to get across, Digital Cameras are good. Below is a sample picture, it shows my kids splashing and playing around in some very cold water on a cold day. You will notice my niece on the dock is actually wearing a winter coat under her lifejacket.

The second point I wanted to get across was, Stretch Your Birthdays. It is not often that you get a chance when everybody is focusing their attention on you, so when it happens enjoy it and make it last. Here are a few pointers to help you get started.

1. Start Early - Get people thinking about you early by dropping hints about what you would like to receive as a gift, or the type of cake and meal you would like.
2. Celebrate Late - If you are having a celebration with extended family and friends always try to put this off as late as possible, I try to aim for two weeks later. Your immediate family will always celebrate with you near the actual date anyway, so when your party does comes around it will be like having a second birthday.
3. Avoid Competition - This is the hardest one of all, but it is the one with the biggest payoff. Everyone in my family has their birthdays between August and December, except me, mine is in April. So after Christmas the next thing people have to worry about is my birthday, and I can stretch it out without it running into anybody else’s. My brother was born a few days before Christmas that was poor planning on his part. My daughter and my niece were both born on the same day 2 years apart. There again that is another case of bad planning.
4. Keep Mentioning It - Always try to find a reason to mention your birthday. Try starting a conversation by saying "remember at my birthday, when so and so did...". Or find a reason to mention it in a Blog.

Someone's in the Kitchen with Daddy

Someones in the Kitchen I knoooow...

I hope that anybody who reads this blog gets that silly tune stuck in their head and they spend the rest of the day humming it, and cursing me for putting it there.

Well it's Mother's Day weekend, so I voulenteered that the girls and I would help in the Kitchen. Our task is not all that mounumental, just make a simple pasta salad but we will make a production out of it none the less.

Step 1. Make a list of required ingredients. "Tina, what goes into a Pasta salad? Okay, great would you mind writing that down for me, Thanks.".

Step 2. Go to the store to get the ingredients. "Tina, would you mind running down to Sobey's to pick up a couple of things for me? Great, on your way home would you mind stopping at Timmy's and grab me a coffee?" Boy I sure hope Tina appreciates all of the work that I am putting into this.

Step 3. Boil the water. Okay this doesn't sound so hard, I thank we can handle it. All we need to do is put water in a pot, put the pot on the stove and turn it on. "Tina, what pot should I use, oh the big one with the handles on the side, great, where do we keep that? Thanks, now when you make yours how much water do you put in?" Okay now all I have to do is put that pot on the stove and turn it on. Back burner, power 4. "What do you mean it should be on the front burner power 6? Who's making this anyway, me or you?" Okay move the pot from the back to the front, adjust the temperature.

Step 4. Add the noodles. "Tina, how many noodles should I put in? 3 Cups okay great, now where is the measuring cup?" I got the noodles in, that wasn't so hard. "What do you mean I should turn the temperature baxk to 4, that's where I was going to set it in the first place, make up your mind!"

Step 5. Drain the noodles. "Tina, where do you keep the cullender? Oh, its right where you got the pot from." I probably would have seen it if I had got the pot myself. Now grab the pot, shit that's hot. "Tina, where do you keep the pot holders?"

Step 6. Let the noodles cool. Great finally a chance to relax. "Tina, can you please watch the kids for a bit? I am going for a nap, all this work has tired me out."

This goes on for another 7 or 8 steps, but you get the point so there is no need to go through them in detail. The above story is an exagerated version of the truth. The net result was a Pasta Salad was made, Tina ended up doing allot of the background work, I did the upfront work and then took all the credit.

I don't think I am alone in this, I think this is how it goes pretty near anytime a guy tries to get close to a woman's domain, and I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing either. I got to show Tina that I am willing to make an effort, even if it was a lame one, and it gave Tina another oppertunity to feel superior and to feel needed.

I hope she enjoys the supper I am going to make for her tomorrow night.

Note: The Salad shown is not the actual salad, it is just a picture I grabbed from the internet.

Lions and Tigers and Bears … Oh My!

Ok, so it’s not really about Lions, Tigers and Bears, it’s more about Crickets, Bunnies, and Mice, but using a line from the Wizard of OZ should get me a couple of bonus points with my wife, and who couldn’t use the extra points? Besides that, Crickets and Bunnies doesn't sound near as exciting as Lions and Tigers.

Let’s start with the cricket. Cory owns a couple of Bearded Lizards which he keeps in his room, once a week he will go out and purchase a few dozen crickets to feed to them. This week he let one get away from him, and the little bugger has made its way to the basement, which just happens to be where I sleep. I sleep in the basement because I have a hard time falling asleep, and little noises like kids coughing (or crickets chirping) tend to keep me awake. So needless to say there have been a couple of nights where my sleep has been limited. I would love to catch him and tie his legs together so that he can’t keep making that awful chirping noise, but alas he has outsmarted me on every attempt I have made so far.


This weekend I went to the cottage with my father. We normally use the long weekend as the opening weekend but Dad was concerned that there would be plumbing problems due to pipes freezing through the winter. He wanted to make sure that if there were any problems we got the fixed before everyone got there on the long weekend. Once again he was right; there were a couple of places in which the pipes did in fact split. After a couple hours of looking for and patching leaks we finally got the water on.

Later that evening as we are drinking a couple of beers and barbequing some steaks to celebrate a job well done, nature calls. Since we are at the cottage and it was nature that was calling I decided to go visit my favorite tree to answer her. As I am doing my thing, I start to hear this squealing coming from a pile of downed branches, not too far away. At first I thought maybe it was a baby bird that had fallen out of its’ nest. I looked up but I didn’t see any nests for a bird to fall from. It’s probably too early in the season for baby birds anyway, but I was too intent on listening to the squeals to think logically. I finished what I was doing and went off to investigate; I was shocked by what I had found.


There was a baby rabbit; he was just a tiny fellow, probably only 4 or 5 inches long. That in itself is not so shocking, what I couldn’t believe was what he was screaming about. Attached to his hind leg was a mouse. Now as small as the rabbit was, the mouse was still a lot smaller, it was only about the size of the rabbit’s foot. I have no idea why a mouse would pick a fight with something so much larger than itself but there he was, and believe it or not he was winning. My first thought is where’s my camera, oh yeah its out front by the barbeque. Who would have thought I would need it to answer a call from nature? I have seen my share of nature shows, and I know they all say the same thing, observe nature, but don’t interfere. So the first thing I do is get a stick and interfere. A quick tap on the mouse with the stick and he let go. I then went back out front to get my camera and came back to see if there was any evidence of the fierce battle I had just witnessed. The mouse had disappeared but the Rabbit was still there. I figure he hadn’t had quite enough trauma for one day so I got right down on the ground there with him and started taking his picture. Doesn't he look happy about recieving all this attention?

What’s that strange odor?

Could that actually be the smell of success? I think it is.

A couple of days ago Cory took the pieces from some broken bikes that we had lying around and made one bike that actually worked. Now Jessica has her old bike with the training wheels as well as this new bike without training wheels. Last night when I got home from work the girls got their bikes and we went out front to ride up and down the sidewalk. A couple of tries later and Jessica was actually doing it, riding without the training wheels. After that it was not safe to be anywhere near her as she zigzagged all over the place.



Watching her ride, I thought we could all learn a lesson in determination from watching kids. She would not quit, if she only traveled a couple of feet that did not matter, she kept persisting. How many things have I started and quit because they did not progress as quickly as I first thought they would? I also heard myself saying things to her that I could just as easily be saying to myself. Things like, the hardest part is getting started, keep going you can do it, if you fall you have to get back up and try again. Which leads to one of my favorite expressions; “Take my advice, I’m not using it”.

I hope that didn’t sound too preachy, the last thing I want this Blog to become is a soapbox.

Look Out World Here I Come

I am trying this BLOG thing for the first time, who knows where it will go or what it will become.

I may use it as a forum to ramble on, or maybe I will use it to post random pictures, or maybe I will use it to share intelligent thoughts. Ok, so that last one is not too likely. It is most likely that I will use it once or twice, get bored with it and leave it.

Let's hope that doesn't happen.