Oct 31 Already?

I didn't realize until a few minutes ago that its Halloween tonight.

I loved Halloween growing up, it was by far one of my most favourite times of year. The dressing up in a costume, the candy, the shenanigans with my best friend, great times.

Halloween is one of the few times as an adult I actually miss being a kid.

Fast Food: Without Makeup

If you like fast food, check out this webpage:

Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality
Each item was purchased, taken home, and photographed immediately. Nothing
was tampered with, run over by a car, or anything of the sort. It is an accurate
representation in every case. Shiny, neon-orange, liquefied pump-cheese, and all.

Yummy!

Hat tip: Pharyngula

"Life Changing Experience"

I hear that a lot these days, or variations thereon.

"Your life is gonna change." And then a few seconds too late, they add, "For the better... of course." And then they smirk and walk away.

I know kids will be a life changing experience. I was ten when my sister was born and I remember it well. Boy, did life change! I got moved out one bedroom into the spare room (about the same size but the original bedroom faced the backyard and they thought that it would be quieter for the sleeping baby... of course, except when everyone was playing and swimming in the pool! That summer sucked), weekends and traveling were crazy (Shannon did NOT like the carseat), and in general things were a lot more hectic.

However Kim and I have had quite a few years to get into a comfortable routine, especially in our current home where we have lived together for longer than anywhere else. I know life is going to be radically different but I don't appreciate it fully in my instinctual brain. Kim and I are both in for a culture shock next spring.

Three Rules of Knife Defense

You are faced with someone attacking you with a knife. Here are the three rules of defending yourself.

1. Run.

A study showed that police officers were more likely to get hurt facing an assailant with a knife than with a gun. Why? Because you have to be a certain kind of crazy to threaten someone with a knife. A gun is very impersonal and disconnected; a finger pulls a trigger and then boom! Its a very disconnected process from action to result and as such a lot of people wield guns but don't necessarily mean to use them. But to hurt someone with a knife you've got to put your whole body into it, hand, arm, chest. You just don't accidentally stab someone to death. So when the police face someone with a gun, they might not mean to use it; but someone with a knife is more likely to be thinking "how can I cut you?".

2. If you can't run, get something between you and the knife.

A pillow, garbage can lid, umbrella, another knife. Anything to move your body out of harms way.

3. Expect to get cut.

What happens when you prick yourself? You yell "ow!" and pull your finger back to inspect the damage, maybe squeeze it. If someone slices you with a knife and you have the same reaction, you're going to be in trouble as they wade in for the second, third, and fourth blows. You have to override your instincts and expect that shock of the cut so you can still defend yourself from the next attack.

Raising the Roof

On Saturday my father put out the call for help. Seems he wanted to erect a new car port and he had the eight beams in the ground and lumber and trusses had been delivered. I like to jump at these opportunities because they are so different than my normal job and getting outside and using hand tools and working with muscle power is a nice change. I wouldn't want to do it all the time though!

I got there around 9am and we had to start with the header around the top of the support beams, 28' on the sides and 20 feet along the front and back. There was some confusion about what height to put them at and at one point a chainsaw was involved, but we managed.

Once the header was up, then the task of the 13 trusses to go up began. My uncle Mike and I hammering them onto the header on one side, my father and uncle Steve on the other side. That part went faster then I expected. With the rafters up, we started with the strapping across the top that the metal roofing would be nailed to.

By the end of the day, we had accomplished a lot despite one rain storm and lots of wind.

Funny Comic Book Covers

Check out this website called Superdickery.com. Its quite hilarious to see some of the old covers and just how crazy they were or have become in the intervening years.

Heh. Love it.

Oh BTW

Speaking of Tuesday, the third stripe review for my green belt went fine and now I'm into studying for my belt test, probably next month. It will be tough, not only lots of stuff to remember but also a lot of stuff to practice and get right, and as always my stamina is a concern during the cardio activities. I can go a decent pace for hours and hours with burst of speed, but any "sprinting" for longer than a minute is a struggle.

Being Sick Sucks

Yesterday was a rough day.

I was mildly sick with a sore throat on Sunday but felt better Monday and pretty much normal Tuesday. Of course, I played tennis with Andrew on Tuesday and then had a Jiu Jitsu class that night so I tired myself out. Wednesday morning I awoke an hour early coughing, hacking, and running nose. Great.

I spent the entire day in a nose-blowing sinus-headache fog until I got home and took some cold medicine. I'm feeling better again today, but I better get to 100% before Saturday when I go to Greenbush to help Terry with his new carport.

Gift? Really?

At work sometimes when someone leaves that has been at the company for a decent period of time they like to take up a collection for a gift. I rarely participate in this activity as I find it kind of, well, silly. I mean, someone retiring is one thing, but these people are moving on to a new job, presumably one better than they are leaving. Why do they need a gift from their old coworkers?

A lunch? Sure, I can understand that. A small token of appreciation for hard work? For those employees that bleed work, certainly. But a gift costing 50 or more dollars for some guy going on to a new job? Sorry, I don't think so.

Stripe Test Tonight

I barely remember my first stripe test for the green belt last spring. My second stripe I didn't really study for much with summer heating up and did the test in the middle of my vacation and it wasn't my best showing.

For the first while after that I didn't really concentrate on my third stripe due to IVF appointments and such but now that I've had a good month of regular schedule I've been able to get working and tonight I'm ready for my third stripe test. I'm pretty confident the review will be quick as I definitely have seen and practiced all the items on the list.

What I'm more worried about it what comes next: the red tip review and the subsequent belt test. White belt stuff I remember fine, yellow belt stuff not an issue, but orange belt material? Can't remember what it consists of, and early green belt material seems like a far off dream. Gonna be a long autumn. :)

It Has Begun

On Saturday Kim and I went to Sears to make use of a sale and made our first big purchases: stroller and carseats.

The carseats we bought have a travel system where the carseat has a base that stays in the car and the seat itself can snap to the base or to the stroller, allowing for easy switching from stroller to car and back. Make traveling just a tad easier.

Side Note: I want this for Christmas.

Liberals Win

Unsurprisingly, the Liberals took home a nice majority in the election and the electoral reform measure for MMP failed. I'm more ticked about the latter than the former, but c'est la vie.

I was surprised that the MMP only got 38%, I was hoping for at least closer to 50%. What it tells me is that either the public is afraid of change or is sufficiently happy with the current system, hard to say which is stronger. Voter turnout was around 53% which is rather pathetic but not surprising; for some reason people can be bothered to vote more in a federal election but not in a provincial even though their say has more weight in the smaller numbers of the latter and the laws and rulings from the provincial legislature have far more effect on their day to day lives. Weird.

John Tory didn't even win his seat. Had he won it I might have suspected he would get another chance in 2011 (yay fixed election dates) but now I figure he is a dead man walking in terms of PC leader. More leadership conventions, sigh.

Election/Referendum Day

The provincial government is going to the polls today and I'm still on the fence about who to vote for, either PC or Greens. While the Liberals have not totally screwed up the province like a certain NDP government did way back, I'm still not happy with their "say one thing to get elected, do something else" philosophy. The Conservatives have some good planks, but like a lot of other Ontarians I have trouble getting past Tory's support for more religious school funding as I would rather go the other way.

The Green party is unproven but I do like their focus on Environment and better cities. Enough to vote for them to make a point? Perhaps.

As for the referendum, I'm definitely voting for the change to Multi Member Proportional (MMP) over First Past the Post (FPTP). I believe that there are real advantages to MMP for properly representing the voters of Ontario, and the fear-mongering of supports of FPTP have convinced me that they have no argument beyond "hey, its worked ok so far." Well, read this column by Andrew Coyne to see why that is not good enough.

Double the Trouble, Double the Fun

So last Monday Kim and I found out at our ultrasound that we are parents of twins as it looks like both embryos attached after the transfer. Kim is growing at a surprising rate so we decided that hiding the fact of her pregnancy is next to impossible and we had to tell the family. The circle is not just growing, its busted.

Everyone was quite happy and excited for us. Many words of advice were given, 90% of them were "enjoy sleep now while you still can". Great. Just what I wanted to hear.

Of course, we are ecstatic about having twins but we are also intimidated by it as well. Two of everything looms in our future. Two cribs. Two birthdays. Twice as many diapers to change, twice as many babies to feed, cloth, and sooth to sleep.

They say that a baby changes everything. Does that mean two babies change everything twice as much?

Happy Thanksgiving

As usual when work picks up to craziness factor 8 my rate of blog posts plummets. Alas, I wasn't even in the office on Monday or Thursday, making it hard to get my writing done. I'd say things are returning to normal next week but it seems every time I say that I end up busier than ever.

So this time I'll just say Happy Thanksgiving and see you Tuesday!

Ultrasound Went OK

Monday Kim and I had our first ultrasound and everything went great. There were no problems and we are officially being handed over from the fertility clinic to our family doctor. Now we are waiting for 18 weeks where we can find out what colours and types of clothes to buy.