Back in Office

November 22 I went back in to work.  My wife has been going in to the office two days a week for quite some time but, this was the first time back for me since we became isolates.  I was lucky enough to be in a job where I could work from home but they feel that they miss us enough to bring us back.

 

I carried all my equipment back and was able to get everything set up and working at the new desk within an hour.  Someone had moved all of the rest of my stuff that I had left back from the before times to my new desk.  If you know anything about me, you can picture how much stuff that was. 

 

The big difference is that I’m now working on a left hand desk.  I was on a right hand desk for over ten years before we went out and on a straight desk for the last two and a half years.  I’m trying to see if I can get it to work of if it’s going to be too much of a struggle.  The last time I had a left hand desk, I had a bad kink in my shoulder within two days.  I’m working slightly differently now, but we will see how it goes.

 

On the up side, now that I am back in the office, as of Dec 7, I now have my weekends back, as my department only works from Monday through Friday.

 

Holidays, hobby, health, and happiness

 I just finished two weeks of holidays from work.  More and more, I am liking taking the two weeks containing Halloween and Remembrance Day.   Since we aren’t doing costuming as much or conventions really, I usually take Christmas to New Years, and then these two weeks.  I try to spread my remaining holidays around the year but these two picks mean I usually don’t get anything in the July to August part of summer.

I had hoped to get a lot more hobbying done – both painting and playing some games.  Neither happened.  Well, no figure painting.

I did end up finishing painting the living room and front hall.  We finally assembled the replacement wall unit.  We went with a Besta from Ikea.  The wall it goes on isn’t quite long enough for both cabinets but we replaced the other with a Billy bookcase.  This gives plenty of space for the dvds and knick knacks.

We hadn’t really decorated much inside for Halloween, but we did decorate the yard.  The weather held this year, giving a lovely night for Trick or Treating and we had 36 kids visit.  Not a ton compared to some, but a solid number for our area.

We found time to make it to the local ComicCon, which was the first time since the new owners came in just before the lockdowns.  We didn’t go last year, but since Bruce Campbell was the guest, we were pretty much swayed.  Lea Thompson, who is filming a series locally, also ended up attending as a replacement guest at the last minute for Lou Ferrigno.  She was lovely. 

After Halloween, we transitioned right into Christmas.  We got the tree up and house redecorated.  We managed to get the winter tires on ahead of the snow fall.

My wife had taken the second week off as well and we spend the week catching up on the new season of TV.  Thursday through Sunday though, the household came down with some malaise, likely flu, and we were all just sleeping and coughing, and huddled on the couches in blankets watching TV. 

Even still, it was a pretty relaxing time off.

 

Shan 7 - Trees 1

 When we first moved to our current house I was very impressed that we had nine trees of various types and sizes on it.  My wife, it seems, is not as big a fan of trees as I am.

Shortly after moving in, I almost pulled down a tree in the back yard on top of her.  We hadn’t realized that it was dead.  Since then, the rest of the trees have been numbered.

The one at the very back of the yard was brought down as it gave too much shade to the pool.  The pine in front died out due to the trees on either side choking it out.  We had the one on the side taken down as it was growing way over our neighbor’s house and power line. 

I brought the last one in the back down myself and was very happy that I was able to drop it without hitting the house, fence, or deck. When one of the crab apples in the front broke in the heavy snow a few years back, I also safely dropped that one as well.  The last one on the side of the house was a different story though.

She has been wanting it down for the last few years as it gives too much shade between the houses, scratches on the roof, and drops a lot of seeds every year in May through the whole back yard, especially into the pool.  I’ve been meaning to trim back some of the branches for the last two years but could never get the kids to hold the ladder for me in spring or fall.

When we finally decided to cut it down, my folks and son were going to help.  On the day, they showed up later in the afternoon.  The tree had one branch extending backwards that we cut off.  It had another paid of branches that extended out over the roof.  I had originally planned to trim them back as well but, due to the time, decided we could probably leave them with the tree.

We notched the trunk, and were worked at opening up the notch when the tree tipped slightly and pinned the chainsaw blade.  It had leaned over onto the house.  I said I could go up on the roof and trim back some of the branches but my folks wanted to go to the store and get another blade for the chainsaw.

While they left, I went up on the roof and cut back a lot of the branches using a hand tree saw.  I cut back enough that I was able to move the tree off of the roof. 

Now, this would have been a great time to wait for my folks to come back and help guild the tree to the ground.  But I thought that if I pushed it off of the roof, with my son pushing from below, it should have enough of an angle to carry it down to the driveway. 

I was wrong. 

The tree cleared the roof, but caught the overhang over the front door on the way down, and pulled it off the front of the house.  So, my son, folks and I spent the rest of the week that I had off taking apart the old overhang, and rebuilding it back on to the front of the house.  We were able to get it reshingled, tarred and caulked, and even had time to touch up the paint before we got snow.

 

 

Buy Snow Tires

 We live in a region that has snow for four to six months of the year.  Growing up, we used to have ‘all-season’ tires on our vehicles and thought that was fine.  Since then, they had come up with specially formatted ‘winter’ tires but we never really thought much of them, until we tried them.

Up here, the temperature can drop to as low as -40 degrees Celsius (234 Kelvin), and regular tires, even all-season tires, get solid and lose a lot of their grip.  Fishtails and sliding on ice are sort of a rite of passage for young drivers.  It’s like drifting, but with actual snow drifts.

When we inherited the van from Shan’s dad, it also came with snow tires.  When we had them installed, we noticed a major difference in the stopping ability.  Instead of that slow sliding which normally accompanied stopping with all-season tires in deep winter, braking occurred at a much shorter distance.  It is a total game changer, and one that I highly recommend for those people who experience actual winter.

It is a major expense, both for the tires themselves, and for the extra rims and possibly sensors needed.  Plus add the cost of having them changed, or having to change them yourselves twice a year.  But it is easily worth it, both in the better traction and safety as well as not having to deal with cracked bumpers, or the hassle of getting stuck.  Plus, your tires will last longer as they are only being driven on half as much.  You can’t use snow tires all year as they as softer than regular tires and wear out much quicker on the summer roads.

The only thing to watch out for is that people behind you may not be able to stop as short as you are if they are still trying to get by on all-seasons.

 

Canada Day double double

 What did you do on Canada Day?  We went in and got our second doses of the Pfizer vaccine.  Still had no major reactions but the arm was a bit more sore this time around. 

Our kids had gotten Pfizer for the first round but they were not scheduling any on the second rounds so they went and got Moderna.  This made them a bit tired, but no major reactions. 

With our 14 days coming up on the 15^th, we can now apply for our vaccine cards.  They seem to have underestimated the demand for these and there may be a bit of a delay.  This should be fine as we’re not going anywhere anytime soon.

There is currently some talk from Europe about the mixing of vaccines though, so we will have to see how that affects the kids.  Plus Pfizer is now talking about the possibility of needing a booster to counter the variants.  This is not much different than the seasonal flu cocktail though.

 

 

Covid - commences in Canada

Unlike HINI, which never did seem to get the traction to become a big thing, this Covid 19 seems to be reaching the next level.
They figure it started in Wuhan in China. It’s not the most deadly virus but it does seem to have a high transmission rate. With things being what they are right now, slow government responses have allowed it to bloom in various areas.

Italy seems to be devastated as well. So far, cases are trickling in to Canada. A lot of the sporting events for NBA, and NHL, as well as concerts have all been postponed. Schools are being closed. People are being encouraged to work from home if they can and practice “social distancing” where you try to remain 6 feet apart from someone else. They recommend frequent hand washing and not touching your face.

My daughter had a few school trips planned that have been cancelled. Her trip to Brandon for the Jazz concert was cancelled by Brandon. Her trip to Japan at the end of March was cancelled as well. Further, her school is taking the next two weeks off leading into spring break. Her Chicago trip at the end of May is looking unlikely.

My wife is now working from home. She has brought her laptop home and has set up in the living room.

I am still going in to work so far.

Goonies birthday

For my wife’s fiftieth birthday a few year ago, we did a Goonies-themed party. She was a big Goonies fan, so we made invitations based on the map, had a table piled up with treasure, and I gave her a replica metal coin like the one used in the movie as well as some newspapers from the Goonies reunions in Aurora, and I have since gotten her a replica metal skull key.

Using pictures of the map, I did the Mad-magazine fold first and drew the two sides of the coin.

Then I opened the paper and drew the rest of the map. I modified the wording with our address and date of the party. I weathered it using some tea. This I sent out as the invitations.

On the back of the map, I replaced the musical notes with the notes for Happy Birthday. I’m not sure anyone noticed, but I thought it was a nice touch.

For One-Eyed Willy’s treasure pile, we bought a bunch of plastic coins, as well as some actual Chinese coins for the stacks. We bought a bunch of gems from Dollarama, and used some pirate weapons from the kid’s Tickle Trunk.

Low High-Density Lipoproteins

Back in October, I had gone to the doctor for my annual tune-up. My blood pressure was fine, and my LDL cholesterol levels were fine, but my HDL cholesterol levels were low. As this seems to be a major precursor to heart issues, she was concerned.

So she scheduled me back for 6 months to check again. I've been a bit more active but haven't made drastic changes in my diet. My weight doesn't really seem to change. I still seem to be in the 170 to 175 range with occasional spikes up near 180 for holidays.

After 6 months of this, my HDLs haven't really increased. In fact, they have actually deceased slightly. This concerns my doctor even more. It seems that I will need to take this a lot more seriously. Now that the snow has melted, I'm going to need to get out there and move a lot more, and reach for apples instead of chips more often.

Wife, unretired

The wife has got another job at about the same as she was getting paid when she was ‘retired’. Since she is also getting a pension from her old job, we should be a bit better off than we were and able to do a bit more upkeep. This should take a bit of the pressure off the cost of maintaining a storage locker for the overflow items. I still need to go through it and streamline, but this should give me a bit more time.

While she was home she managed to go through the kitchen cupboards, her books and clothes, and the file cabinets in the office. I helped where I could and mostly stayed out of her way. The weather hasn’t been nice enough yet to start yardwork so she was running out of stuff to do inside before starting in on my stuff.

With her going back to work, I am less worried about coming home and finding out that everything I have has been moved while I was away. This should allow a bit more time to get things cleaned up. It should also allow some money for a new car. We may be able to rethink taking some trips although she will not have the free time that she used to have.

The Grim Cheapness

I don’t have the same internet access that I used to. I work on a bit of a rolling shift, so I can start anywhere from 8 am to 10:15 am. My wife starts work at 8 am. With dropping my wife off in the mornings, I often used to have a couple hours on most days, plus my lunch and breaks, when I could watch videos and surf the net.
They had tightened up on internet access earlier this year. We are no longer able to browse while on breaks. This means that I am now way behind on the youtube videos that I was following, the online comics, as well as the sites that I was watching.

That’s how I came to miss that one of my favorite blogs has stopped updating since January. TheGrimCheapness is a good site for ‘paperhammer’ – or papercraft templates that you can build for stand-ins for Warhammer 40K vehicles, especially the titans. He also had a good writing style, which is well as it turns out that he is a now-published author. He’s taking an extended break from updating but will leave the site up.

If you haven’t been in before, it’s still worth a look.

A bit of a shakeup

My wife has had a bit of a shakeup at work. She will be ‘retiring’ at the end of October as they are closing her department. She was thinking about retiring in a few years but that would have been on her timeline. Any changes to her plans always throws her a bit off, but she is coming to terms with it. We should end up being okay.

This will have two direct gaming-related impacts on me. First, she will be home and prone to cleaning through my stuff. I keep putting off doing a good sift and will need to make that a higher priority. Secondly, the storage locker becomes even more of a hot button than it currently is. We are hanging on to a lot of stuff. Some of it was stored in haste and we really need time to go through it properly again and repackage it and decide if really does need to be kept. I had done a bit of a sift a while ago, and we repackaged the 11 bins of models model kits into 6 boxes.

I have been meaning to go through a bunch of the games and maybe passing them along. Especially with the games that I had picked up when it seemed like we were getting an expansion on the house. A lot of those I am not particularly attached to and could let go. It’s also time to take another look at the books and comics. This was all stuff that we were going to do anyways.

This just puts more of an impetus on this.

Not a creature was stirring

We had mice again this year. We haven’t heard anything or seen any sign for over two weeks now, so we are calling this year’s invasion done. The end count was another six, with three being really small ones.

We didn’t catch any using the regular spring traps. All were caught using the sticky traps. They didn't get into as much as they did last year. But they did get into the end of a box of After Eight mints.

We’re going to have to spend some time this summer checking the foundation carefully to see where they are getting in. I thought I had blocked everything last year, but there must be more places that I have missed.

Mice are like cancer

After living in our house for 15 years, we can no longer say that we haven’t had mice. The boy had heard noise in his ceiling so we bought some poison pellets for them and put them out in little trays that I made out of tinfoil. I also bought 4 tubes of caulking and sealed up whatever gaps I could find in the foundation, including putting almost two tubes into D3’s window sill.

I also made extra poison trays out of the old Cheer detergent scoops that we had stacked up when we were still able to get powdered Cheer. I cut the bottom centimeter off the scoops and cleaned them. The down side about poison is you can tell it is being eaten but don’t often see the results.

I picked up six of the spring traps. Not the cheapie wooden ones but some upgraded plastic ones. I also picked up a bottle of scent bait to use in the traps.
These proved pretty good. Mice tend to leave a trail of feces on their paths so we placed the traps along these.
We caught two greys one night, and then another grey as well as a larger brown one a couple of nights later.

They had been into a small bag of nachos. We packed the chips in the laundry room into a storage tub. In the pantry, they got into some pop tarts and a bag of vegi sticks so all the non canned food there went into more bins.

The next week we picked up two more spring traps as well as some of the electronic noise night lights to use in the bedrooms and the kitchen. Then we found some rice around by the bin. Somehow they had gotten in the bin so we tossed the rice, and stacked boxes on the bin.

We caught another small brown one night, and another small brown on another night. Then one of the spring traps was triggered but did not catch anything. After a few more days, still none caught, but finding sign, and D3 was still hearing noises. We have not caught another mouse in the spring traps.

We picked up another four pack of the electronic noise makers to cover most of the other rooms. We also bought some of the glue traps to try those. Over the next two weeks we caught three more brown mice in the sticky traps. They are a bit more freaky to find still twitching compared to the dead ones in the spring traps.

It's been a week since the last one was caught. We haven't seen any more signs, and D3 hasn't heard them anymore. I don't know if we are again mouse free, or only in remission.

involuntary new laptop

We were broken into early in January. As these things go, it could have been a lot worse. There wasn’t a lot of damage and the only things taken were some American money and our laptops. All of my wife’s jewelry was spread across the bed but they don’t seem to have taken any of it. I guess I don’t buy my wife nice enough things.

With the laptops gone, it made connecting to the internet harder. We still had the old desktop but that is a pretty rough connection for facebook games. It also helps point out how much we are connected – when watching tv we usually have at least one laptop on – which allows us to pop into imdb.com as needed to find out why we know the guest stars as well as to check Wikipedia for information as needed.

We’ve added an alarm system and have worked through with the insurance people to replace the laptops. We didn’t have the boxes anymore but we were able to get copies of the receipts from Best Buy. As long as you have the card on which you bought them and know the date range, they can find it in their system and reprint it for you.

After much going back and forth about my requirements we agreed on an HP NO20CA laptop. The requirements for the laptop had been – DVD superdrive, keypad, at least 500 GB hard drive, 2 USB connections, SD slot, HDMI connection, and a Radeon HD6310 or higher (the old one was HD 7520). The keyboard, superdrive, and video card seemed to be a tricky combination to fulfill.


Which basically means that I am now working through getting used to Windows 8.

been busy - part 3 - moved storage

On Saturday morning, we got the kids up and moved everything out of our old 10’ x 10’ storage locker into a new 10’ x 15’ storage locker. With everyone’s help it only took about 3 hours and, in the resifting, we were able to stack a lot better. 

I will still need to spend some time moving around what’s left in there to better stack the rest of it, and the wife wants to move more out of the basement storage and hallway to free up some extra space so that we can move more off of my desk to be able to use it again. 

Been busy - part 2 - daughter's room

At the beginning of July we took everything out of my daughter’s room.  We took the bunk beds apart and took them over to my folks.  We removed the carpeting, curtains, and baseboards.  I washed the walls and filled a bunch of the holes with drywall putty.  

My dad came over and helped again as we put in laminate flooring.  We painted the long walls a lighter blue and the short walls a dark blue.  Both short walls have the windows so it helps with the darkness.

We also popped into IKEA and picked up a pull-out daybed for her that we assembled.  We added back the baseboards and new curtains – having to putty and paint to repair the new holes as we repositioned them.  She has almost finished putting all her stuff back.

I am painting a board to hang her coat hooks back on and need to repair the window crank on one of her windows plus any painting touchups need from that.  She has to decide where she wants all her wall hangers and where her new bed netting will be.  Then we will be done for now – except for having to keep fixing her dresser drawers – as she has a tendency to keep pulling off the faces and pushing out the bottoms.

Been busy - part 1 - new shed

It’s been a flurry of activity this summer. My dad came over and we built a new shed. Well, more accurately, we assembled a new shed. Our old one has been getting progressively worse – with the roof becoming more leaky as the shingles warp, the door sticking as it settles into the ground, and becoming a winter home for the squirrel. The wife didn’t want to spend any more money on it however, so it has been deteriorating over the last few years.


It was also only 6’ x8’ and the new one is 8’x9’. The old one was wood though and the new one a resin. This makes it a bit more tricky to hang things on the walls like we did in the old shed. I started to make a wooden table and shelves with the extra wood I used from the base but haven’t finished yet.

A couch too far?

We recently picked out new furniture for the living room to replace the old couch, loveseat, and chair that we had. The chair had to be removed to make room for the kennel and the couch had bad springs and had been clawed by the cats. The loveseat had been a replacement from Shan’s folks when they had upgraded their set and replaced the old loveseat that went with the set.


It was the first major piece of furniture that we bought since getting married and it turns out that we have vastly different preferences in styles. Shan likes her couches deep and overstuffed – with lots of comfy pillows. I prefer my couches with clean lines, low arms, and attached back cushions. We were at such an impasse that we had to go back with the kids to see if they had a preference but they were no help in deciding.

We ended up picking neither set that we like but instead compromised on a set that we both disliked a bit. When we had it delivered though they could not get the couch in to the living room. It seems Shan’s old set had a smaller than normal couch – and that took a bit of maneuvering to get in originally. We had to go back and reselect.

After much consideration and measuring we decided to get a second loveseat instead of a couch. The new loveseats are only a few inches shorter than the old couch. We also added an ottoman to the order – but the delivery would have to wait another week. Since we had already taken the old sofa to Value Village we were a bit cozy for that week with just the old loveseat.

Snow delay

With the dump of snow, certain renovations need to be put on hold until the spring. The back roof being the main one. In the meantime, if we thaw a bit for the weekend, I may pick up a can of that spray rubber to try until then.

The wood from the deck, and the broken sofa chair from the living room also need to go to the dump. We also have some piping from the old pool that needs to be cut down for the garbage. While we can still take a load during the winter, it gets a lot messier with all the snow. 

I have cleaned down my corner of the kitchen and we took down the garland and lights in the kitchen in preparation for the door to the deck going in. Since that had to go somewhere, it ended up downstairs which puts a bit more pressure on cleaning up the downstairs again to make that desk a viable surface on which to work.

Passport to adventure?

Since we don’t really travel beyond our borders except for the occasional trip down to Fargo, I never needed a passport. The one time I flew, to Vegas for the GAMA Trade Show, was back in 2000 so we didn’t need passports yet.


When the requirements came around for greater security when crossing the border by car, instead of getting a passport, I opted for an Enhanced ID card. Besides being cheaper, it was much more convenient to get. With the RFID chip and the sleeve to block the RFID signal, I don’t usually keep the card with me – and opted not to change my Driver’s License over to one that included the Enhanced ID.

I only use the Enhanced ID when I cross into the States and don’t use it the rest of the year. I had neglected to check last year after we got back and didn’t notice that it had expired.

When I went to renew it, I was told that it was too late to renew it and that I would have to go down and re-apply again – meaning that I wouldn’t get my card back in time to go to the states last weekend. Frustrating – but totally my fault.

So I had to rush to apply for a passport and then rush downtown to drop it off and pay extra for the faster service to ensure it was here it time. I had to pop down last Thursday to get it.

So, what do I get in the mail last week Tuesday? An Enhanced ID. The renewed one that they said they couldn’t do in time and without me having to go down and re-interview.