St John's 100th Reunion

The St. John’s Reunion was good. It was great to walk around the school again. A bit has changed but the hallways still seemed familiar. The library has been gutted – less books but more computers. We went to the Decade rooms – the fifties was too packed to even enter. No one was in the nineties and only two people were in the 2000s. The eighties had a few – but no one from my year. My sister came in as well for the weekend.


The North-End social on the Saturday was good – it was at the Tijuana Yacht Club so the set up wasn’t as conducive as a regular social but they did bring out the KUB bread, cold cuts, and cheese. Burton Cummings was there near us - people kept swarming up to him for pictures. We didn't want to bother him though.



I didn’t make it to the Gala Dinner – I couldn’t justify the cost not knowing how many of us would be there. My sister went – she got a nice picture with Monty Hall. She said that Burton Cummings played a nice long set.


We went to the Sunday events. I took Shan and G to the pancake breakfast and then they left my sister and I there for the rest of the day. We watched the show on the North End memories by Russ Gourluck based on his book - The Mosaic Village: A History of Winnipeg's North End. I caught the slide show – an hour long and the three minutes dedicated to the eighties only had pictures from the 75th reunion that occurred in 1985.
The photo sessions were a bit of a bust. Only seven of us from our year showed up and two didn’t stay around for the picture. I did get to see my president, Catherine Anderson, but she was one of those who didn’t hang around so I don’t have a picture of us – president and vice-president.
The teachers-in-the-tent was neat. I ran into a few teachers – some of whom even pretended to remember us after a quarter-century. I got to talk with a few teachers and even got some pictures with a few.





All-in-all, not as much fun as I had hoped. I was certainly expecting a few more familiar faces. I’m looking forward to the 125th in 2035 though. Since the turn out to this was so apathetic, we probably won’t have our 25th next year.

Malathion!

Maybe because I’m reading through the 40K Cityfight rules right now, but when a deep rumbling woke me from my sleep the first thought that flashed through my kickstarting-from-sleep brain was ‘tanks’. The next instant awareness fully synched up and I realized it was one of the happy sounds of summer – the mosquito fogging truck. Gleefully, I went around closing the bedroom windows.

Most places get mosquitoes to some degree but we often get them bad. It may have to do with the clay/mud soil or the wet springs but often they can swarm in larger size and numbers than I have seen in other areas. My sister was in for the reunion last weekend from BC – she confirms this.

We do use larvacide and they have introduced dragonflies to help cut down on the populations but neither seem to work as well as a good dousing of malathion. There is a bit of controversy about the buffer zones people are allowed to request around their houses but when it becomes bad, or the threat of west nile virus increases, these are overridden.

Tears for Toys?

We took the kids to see Toy Story 3. It was worth seeing. The Toy Story franchise has been very good – the first movie was great, the second movie added nicely to the story, and now the third movie has furthered the story even more and provided a nice final ending. It was fairly predictable but there were still a few moments near the end where we were all choked up.

If you have seen any of the others, I recommend this as well. If you haven’t seen them yet, then watch them and then go see this one. And take your kids with you. Now they are asking us to dig out their old Buzz and Woody toys so they can play again.

Movies: Prince of Persia / A-Team

We have been able to take the kids to some more movies lately.

Prince of Persia. I had played this a bit when it first came out as a side scroller – but never managed to get very far at all. The movie was fun – like a medieval parkour fest. I seem to remember there being more cleavage in the trailer though. It’s predictable – being that it’s based on time travel to a degree but still a fun bit of summer fluff.

A-Team. I have to admit that I didn’t really watch the show when it was on. Mark used to watch it so I did catch a few and Shannon used to watch it. That said, the movie was fun enough. It shows how they get together and works with the current war. I was good with the characters (I thought Liam would bother me but he didn’t) and the story held together enough for what it was.
The cameos with the old actors was a nice touch - stay until the end of the credits!

D3 - Life Lesson averted

On Saturday, I took another try at getting the Bionicle piece out from under the stairs. I took one of the bamboo poles from the old tiki torches and drilled two holes in one end. I took some of the fencing wire I have for making mail and fed some through the end to make a scoop. After a few adjustments to make the scoop smaller in order to be able to turn it and covered it in green painters tape to make the scoop. After a few tries, I was able to recover the part.



So, once again I make it harder for my kids to believe me when I tell them I can’t fix everything for them.

D3 - Life lesson

We’ve told the kids not to take legos out to play in the car – there are so many tiny pieces that are so easy to get lost. Like most of the advice we tell them, they don’t always listen to it.

So it finally happened.

On Monday, he was carrying a Bionicle (Brutaka) from the car to the house in his hat (for some reason) and one of the gold leg covers bounced out and fell behind the stairs to the side door. Shan tried to get it out but couldn’t. When I came home I tried but couldn’t even see it. I was hampered by the fact that none of the drawer full of flashlights currently give off more than a faint yellow glow.
Shan told him it should be a ‘life lesson’ and that he shouldn’t buy a replacement. He naturally thought otherwise.

Checking online, bricklink doesn’t have any Brutaka parts at all. Ebay does have two sets – one at $56 and one at $226 – both currently a bit high to replace one missing piece.
I have a few more ideas to try – the concrete stairs seem to be undercut on the side against the house and it must have bounced under or been knocked under in subsequent rescue attempts. If I still can’t get it, I have a few other options I will try. Otherwise, he has a reminder on his wall to look for it when renovations happen and the stairs are removed.

St John's High School 100th

My alma mater, St John’s High School, is celebrating their 100th anniversary this weekend. I was there from grade 7 through grade 12 and even went back for more courses the year after I graduated. They had celebrated their 75th anniversary while we were in school but this looks like it’s going to be quite the event.

I have a lot of fond memories from those times. I wasn’t one of the popular crowd but was well known. I wasn’t a jock but was on many teams in junior high. I would say I was more in the Geeks than the Freaks – especially in senior high.
I don’t keep in touch with many people that I went to school with. I have a few in fandom but even those I don’t see so often.

I am looking forward to this weekend. Hopefully I’ll run into some familiar faces and find out how people are doing.


Go Tigers!

stompa bits

I’ve been picking a Ork Stompa in bits and pieces. A boxed set from Games Workshop is about $120. From GC-Minis it would be about $85 – much better, but still a bit out of my range.

From Horde of Bits, I’ve managed to collect most of the main pieces and it has only run me about $50. The last batch finally came in – the weapon arms. I’m really looking forward to putting this together. Plus when I have it finished and have the sizes, I can scratchbuild another one.

Figure BUYING total? - May

In May I only bought one complete figure - a 40K Rhino in bits.
I still failed to finish the bases needed to finish some of the cowboys for Rules With No Name so my painting total remains at zero.

May figures bought – 1, figures painted – 0

Running total 2010 – figures bought 82, figures painted 0

This could have been my big month to get ahead but I did not. Since I have already bought a few figures that have come in June I really need to work away at finishing some figures. June is turning out to be super-busy but I'm hoping to get a good bit done on Friday and Saturday.

Welcome to my Nightmare

Finished! I finally got the last regular figure to complete my Horrorclix sets. I won a Zombie Dorothy from the Nightmares set and it finally came in the mail yesterday.

I do still need a Billy Stank LE from Freakshow and I still want to pick up another Starter set but aside from that, I am done!



Unless they make more.

funny thing - memory

Two weeks ago, when we were doing the stones and dirt D3 was a great help on the Friday. We moved about half of the dirt and a bit of the stones using shovels and a bucket.

On the Saturday, we had borrowed my dad’s wheelbarrow but he didn’t want to help as much so I let him mow the lawn instead. When he tired of that I put him back to work on the piles while I mowed the front lawn. He was sullen but I told that him that “when I think back on this day, I’ll remember us all as being happy and singing.” He wasn’t impressed with that. When Shan repeated it to him he threw his hat down and said, “I don’t want you to remember me as being happy” to which Shan replied, “but you were, you were so happy that you threw your hat up in the air.”

He was not impressed. But at least he did keep helping.

New pump

Yep. Had to swap pumps. It was a bit of an odd conversion as the hoses on the new pump are much smaller than the old one. That said, we were able to get 2 solid hours of salt to chlorine flow out of it with no flow problems. So that should take care of that - for now.

None of this stops the kids from going in the pool already. Even the 289 degree K water temperature (16 C) doesn't faze them.

low flow woes

I’ve been having trouble with the salt chlorinator for the pool. Or to be more precise, with the filter pump having too low a flow for the salt chlorinator. I’ve cleaned it out a few times and it works fine for a bit but ultimately it starts beeping at me. When it does work I get a nice stream of bubbles coming from it.

I might just end up having to change it out for a new pump to see if that helps. I'm working on it again tonight so we'll see.