Valentine's Party - Follow up

Someone took a grapefruit

Wore it like a hat

I saw someone under my kitchen table

Talking to my old tom cat

They were talking about hockey

The cat was talking back

Long about then every-thing went black

Wasn't that a party

That is what I was expecting. And I'm pretty sure I'm thankful that none of that took place. The only activity under the kitchen table was retrieving dropped candies from the ice-cream sundae making.

We shipped Mitch off to Doug and Lor's place. That was a very good idea. He would have gone nuts. After an hour or so, I was kinda wishing I had gone with him. Not that the party wasn't fun, but it was a GIRL party. I felt rather out of place.

Supper was fun. We made pizza dough and had a ham pizza and a cheese pizza. Tannis and I made a more deluxe artichoke, ham, feta, mushroom pizza. That was tasty.

I can't say much more about the party goings-on. I did the 23 skidoo up to my bedroom after supper to watch a movie - Mirrors. Kiefer Sutherland rocks. I have really got to catch up on my "24" episodes.

Brooke's "friend who was almost not invited" showed up. Along with a bunch of medications one of which is to "help with the night terrors". Um...what? 8 girls sleeping on the floor of the family room in sleeping bags one of which is prone to something called "night terrors"?

Turns out she is a very sweet girl. I'm sure she has her issues. Hence the meds. But from where I sat, everything looked peachy. She was certainly more well adjusted than the twins. Holy mackerel! These girls, or at least one of them, are Brooke's best friends at school. And they are complete maniacs. They seem to have developed a desire to stand and scream right in your face. They also have this maniacal laugh that chills me even now.

Quite to my surprise everyone was asleep by about midnight, despite the accellerated sugar intake. And there appeared to be no issues through the night. At least none that I am aware of. If someone crapped in the corner beacause they couldn't find the bathroom in the middle of the night, the dog must have found it.

The next morning was pancakes and bacon. It was a big hit with everyone. Shortly thereafter appreciative parents started picking up their kids and before long, life was back to normal.

This could be an annual thing for the next two or three years. I think it would be fun for the kids and rewarding for Brooke socially.

Brooke's Valentine's Day Party

My daughter is having a valentines day High School Musical sleepover party this Saturday. She is inviting a bunch (read: all) of her female classmates over on Saturday for pizza and...well, as little girls do...screaming.
Until last night, not every one of Brooke's female classmates was on the invite list. I found out that one of the girls in the class was not invited. Hmmmm.....Now I'm not a proponent of the "blanket invitation" method of inviting your entire class to each one of your birthday parties. I think that's ridiculous. But to have a girl party, and to invite ALL but ONE girl in the class....well, that's just gonna give someone a complex.
So I decided I needed to get to the bottom of this. So I sat down with Brooke to help her do her Valentine's cards and ask some leading questions.

"Why did you decide to not invite her to your party?"
"Because she's mean to me"

"What, does she say mean things to you?"
"Yeah. LOTS."

"Are you mean to her? Do you say things back?"
"No. I tell her to stop."

"Is she mean to the other kids in the class."
"Sort of, but mostly to me."

"Do the other kids join in, you know, back her up?"
"No. I like them, and they like me. It's just her."

Turns out that this little kid is quite a bitch to my darling girl. After further probing, I have found out that she has also kicked Brooke in the stomach on a couple of occasions. This simply will not do. After making sure that she understanded that she needs to involve a teacher when this happens, I talked to Brooke about how, although fighting is wrong, defending herself is completely necessary. At that point I remembered that Brooke is taking Tae Kwon Do. So I elaborated on what I meant by "defending yourself". I don't need to come home one day to find out Brooke has ripped out some kid's jugular. Move out of the way, use your low blocks, whatever. She'll probably take one shot, and then after she sees that you can handle yourself, she'll back down. If she doesn't, well, she was asking for whatever she gets.

After much consternation, she decided to invite her to the party. Brooke decided it would be the right thing to do. I told her I was proud of her. I also told her that if this girl gets out of hand at the party, she would be escorted home. That seemed to appease her.

Tannis promptly called the mom, and left an awkward message in Yoda-speak. When the mom called back, she confided in Tannis that she was surprised that her daughter didn't get invited to more parties. Go figure. Tannis told the mom what Brooke had said. So I guess we will see if things get better. Sure hope so. In any event, the kid is coming to the party, so I guess we'll see.

Recipe - Molten Chocolate Cake

I have stolen this somewhat from Michael Smith. But, I'm pretty sure he doesn't read my blog, along with the rest of the world. So I should be safe posting it here.

4 oz Chocolate (Whatever your taste. I like 70% myself)
1/2 stick of butter
2 tsp Vanilla extract
1 tbsp Maple Syrup
2 tsp sugar (white or brown)
1/4 cup of flour
2 eggs

Oven to 350.
Melt chocolate and butter in double boiler or microwave. Be careful if you use the microwave. Don't overheat it. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs with the Vanilla, maple syrup, and sugar.
fold in the chocolate and flour. Don't worry about using all of the flour. The mixture should remain pudding-like.
If you have ramekins, great. Otherwise, you can use coffee mugs. To prep these, coat them with some melted butter. I use a pastry brush. Then sprinkle in some white sugar and shake it around to coat the butter. Divide mixture into your prepped vessels. You can get 2 tall cakes or three squat ones.
Place ramekins (or mugs) on a baking sheet and place on a middle rack. After 15 mins, they should be done. A toothpick inserted to the CENTRE of the cake will come out gooey. but what you want to do is pit a tooth pic into the top 3rd of the cake. It should be clean.
Turn out cakes onto serving plates. Add some ice cream and renew your gym membership.

Vacation!

Well, here it is. I am taking my first 2 week vacation ever. I have never been in a position to take 2 consecutive weeks off of work. When I was younger, it never occurred to me and I took my holidays whenever I could. A day here and a day there. Then I started working in computer sales. Then I was terrified to take even a single day off. You're so worried that the second you spent any time off the sales floor, one of the customers you had spoken to previously would come in and be "scooped" by another salesperson. I remember Boxing Days where I considered wearing a catheter to prevent having a return customer (we called them "be backs", as in "I'll be back after I talk to my wife") stolen by another salesperson. Now that I think back, I remember how much of my fantasy time was spent thinking about the busload of "be backs" that I was waiting for.

I was particularly worried about 2 other salespeople; Terry and a girl we called "B.R.".

Terry was an exceptional salesman. Extremely aggressive and very smooth. A formidable combination. On a slow day with no customers, we would all hang out together and wait for the next customer. As we watch the next few people come into the department, I would often be shocked by Terry's choice of "prospect". He would often pick the most unlikely of candidates. Like guys carrying motorcycle helmets. Now I'm not saying that a guy who rides a motorcycle is not likely to own a computer. I'm just saying that the likelihood of him taking one home on the back of a motorcycle is fairly remote.

But Terry had vision. See, these biker types are a loyal demographic. Not only would he have harvested a good client and likely made the sale eventually, bikers tend to be a tight knit group. Once you have a trust with one biker, you have an assumed trust with ALL bikers. And as far as carrying the computer home? Well guess what a biker drives in the winter? That's right...a half ton. You can fit a LOT of computers in a half ton.

Terry was often fond of Hutterites. If you think bikers are loyal, try Hutterites. I bet you there are STILL Waldners and Geisbrechts pulling up to Future Shop looking for Terry. And one more thing; Hutterites drive 5-Tons. You can get a poop load of computers in a 5-Ton!

B.R. on the other hand had a different advantage. Tits. Now before you get all "high and mighty" let me say that she was also a good salesperson. But not great. Just good. But combine that with the other...fugeddaboutit. Don't forget, this was computer sales...in the early 90's. The typical client was, shall we say, not likely to avoid the salesperson with tits. So this worked for her. And I'm fine with that.

After that, I went to my current position where I was, and still am, the only on-site IT support in the province. It was simply impossible to expect to relax on holidays. Something was always broken. Always something to fix. Eventually over the past 10 years I have gone from taking NO time off (the first 5 years), to taking a day or two (the next 3 years), and then finally taking as much as 4 days at a time(the past year and a half).

I'm looking forward to the next couple of weeks. Even though I can't go away anywhere, I hope I am able to get some R&R. It is getting overwhelming at work. I am constantly thinking of tasks that need to be done and priorizing helpdesk tickets. It will be nice to finally take a break from that. Today I went Geocaching for a couple of hours and then I went to Clay's office and set up RAS for them. That was fun.

Then I came home and made glazed salmon and shrimp canneloni with salad for the family. It was good. Tomorrow I will be heading to Home Depot to price out light fixture parts for the kitchen. Maybe more Geocaching....we'll see.

Nano-insanity

October the 28th in the Year of our Lord 2008 is officially recorded as the day I went a little bit insane. Or a little bit more insane.

It was on this day I decided to tackle all of the available ICU traditional nano-caches put out by "Eye of Sauron" (probably not his/her real name). Some 30 caches were placed at the base of the lights for the red light cameras all across the city. There was one disabled one, and one that hadn't been found for a while (even ertyu dnf'd a couple of times, and THAT's saying something). I ignored the disabled one, and gave a good effort at the other. Although I feel no guilt for not finding it, as EoS disabled it as well shortly after my efforts.

To make up for the 2 missed caches, I found 2 other ICU caches that were unpublishable due to proximity issues. So, I feel I'm ahead of the game. Mostly because it's MY game, and I tend to make up rules as I need to so I stay ahead of it.

I surprised myself by having a pretty good time doing these caches. I usually don't like nano hides because they often require alot of conspicuous searching. This tends to arouse the attention of people who may become motivated enough to look for whatever it was I may have been looking for and therefore compromizing the hiding spot, or the cache itself. Except for a few exceptions, the caches were is the same basic locations for all of the hides. There were a few that had lost their magnet and as a result had been relegated to cave-dweller status in a nook in the shroud. But for the most part, all caches could be found by a blind person provided his hand were to be guided to the correct pole. (There is a hilarious off-colour joke lurking in that last sentence, but it is to far in the shadows for me to extract).

It took me till nearly midnight to complete all of the caches, but I was only grabbing them quickly between work episodes during the day. And then I went home to make supper, and hit the road with the kids to grab a couple, then went out again later to grab the rest.

My original intent was to cookie-cut my logs. I felt this was the same spirit in which the caches were placed. But as with all things caching-wise, I ended up enjoying myself and wanted to tell my story at a couple of the ides anyhow. So I devised this hybrid log where I stated my mission for the day at the top, and then each cache got a personal note below.

So, thanks for the nano-adventure, EoS. I had more fun on this journey than I thought. One word of advice...silicone the magnet into the container. You'd have less lost magnets.

Test Video

This is from about 5 years ago. Brooke singing the ABC's and eating toast. She is truly multi-talented. I just wanted to try posting video to see how it looks. Verdict: Looks Good!

1000 Geocaches....now what?

So I went out and found my 1000th geocache with my family in Stony Mountain a few weeks ago. I thought for a while about what cache should carry the honor of being my 1000th find. Initially I thought I would re-visit the first cache I had ever attempted, Reynold's Ponds. But due to the weather, and other factors, I chose to take the family with me to this comparatively easy location.

It is also a cache owned by one of my friends, Jacques. I have always wanted to go out caching with him, only my spider...er...lizard-sense tingles like crazy every time I consider it. You see, when the folks at the Energizer battery company were trying to come up with a theme to their new advertising campaign back in the early 80's it was Jacques' unending enthusiasm and unstoppable contant motion that they based their bunny character on.

So, I must say, I am a little scared to venture into the wilds with this guy. I am not sure exactly why...I just am.