2011 was a good year for me in many ways!
First off, my family. Gabi and I continued to settle into and adjust to the lifestyle changes that came with the new house in 2010, and I've got a little story to reflect how that's going.
When we first started dating, I had a window in my classroom slip open over the Christmas break, the same year Mel Lastman called in the army. I returned to school to find a snow bank in the middle of my classroom, and all my carefully nurtured plants frozen like bricks.
So, to help me recover my plants, Gabi sent me a ficus, which I thought was the sweetest thing any girl had ever done for me. I never took it to school, because it quickly graced our apartment, then our first house. It did well, stayed healthy, and we named it the love tree, cheesy but highly accurate.
However, in the new house, this tree has doubled in size, an unbelievable growth spurt for a tree that had been slowly growing with us for a decade. An apt metaphor, I think! We love life in this new neighborhood!
The girls are doing good, as well, Maya thriving in Grade three, and Chloe thriving at being three. Maya's doing well in school and with her friends, and makes us very proud. Chloe, while a more challenging, stubborn child than Maya ever was by far, is showing some encouraging signs lately. Watching a Dolphins Tale with her this week was a revelation, she got so upset by Winter being hurt. Chloe is a very smart, chatty, confident child, and seems very popular at her daycare, with both students and teachers, which I'll take as a good sign.
Our trip to Orlando was a definite highlight, as well as our WDW moments, repeated Small World rides and heat related meltdowns notwithstanding. Hollywood Studios at night without the kids was fun, and the Aerosmith themed Rock and Rollercoaster was just as fun as Everest in Animal Kingdom. The absolute highlight of the trip for me was, surprisingly enough, our Princess lunch in Cinderella's castle. The girls and Gabi were enthralled, and I absolutely loved the pic of the four of us with Cinderella, sweaty though we were. I loved being down there with my parents and Ter and Jen and the boys, and all ten of us had a great time in our fantastic rental house, especially the pool.
The first part of July at the cottage was awesome - beautiful weather, and good times with family and friends. We're probably going to have to track down a new bunk bed for the 4 kids soon...
I took my first school trip as teacher in charge, and we had a fantastic time in Ottawa and Montreal, so good I'm repeating the experience. The ski trips were good too, although my first attempt at getting Maya on skis didnt work out so well. Hopefully this year will be better - we start lessons on the 16th!
Otherwise work was a mixed bag - I've had two fantastic groups of kids to work with, but admin changes are always interesting. I've wound up the year as co-chair, so we'll see how that goes.
Squash and baseball were good - another year with lots of minor injuries, including hamstrings, groin pulls and a mildly sprained ankle, as well as my current knee injury. I need to change something in my physical routine - to that end, I've joined both squash leagues to help me build up some strength Jan-April. That plus skiing on Sundays should really help...I hope. I struggled big time moving a pin into the house yesterday, and I'm a bit afraid of trying to get it into the basement. Haven't felt this weak in some time.
Cora's health finally improved, although she seems to have some kind of stomach bug right now, poor thing. 2011 was also the year we lost Jake, sadly. Probably the greatest catch and fetch dog ever, in his prime he probably could have played a mean centerfield, if you didn't mind a slobbery ball when he was done. He always loved to jump up on me and give me a big wet face wash. I'm going to miss those, but I sure love Lily, too, Ter and Jen's new pup.
I would be remiss without mentioning my new and rather obsessive hobby, pinball. However, I won't talk too much about it here, other than to say its something I enjoy very much, and have made some new friends through an awesome online community I've been made to feel at home in.
We're planning to possibly make 2012 the year of planning the kitchen, and hopefully make it a reality in 2013, although I think a vehicle purchase will probably be an inevitable budget line item in the next 2-3 years, and hopefully not sooner. I'm trying out Vera's Yaris now - we'll see what comes.
So, without any further rumblings, I'll sign off, hoping that everyone who takes the time to read this will have a good or better 2012!
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Saturday, December 03, 2011
Fwd: Roberto Alomar (@Robbiealomar) replied to one of your Tweets!
From: Twitter <mention-jzbebfr=ebtref.pbz-691b7@postmaster.twitter.com>
Date: 3 December, 2011 12:49:39 AM EST
Subject: Roberto Alomar (@Robbiealomar) replied to one of your Tweets
Roberto Alomar @Robbiealomar replied to you:
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Friday, December 02, 2011
Welcome to the Jungle!
Well, writing blogs is rapidly becoming a rarity in my life. At first I thought that Twitter was useless - who can express themselves in 140 character hits?
You know what? I can...I even like it. Twitter has also become a place where I've discovered a vast amount of information in things I'm interested in...mostly news, and of course, baseball. Doesn't seem to be much of a pinball presence out there, however. Maybe I should copy my tweets in here from time to time...
I've still been writing here occasionally, but really, it's been slipping for a number of years with the advance of Facebook and more recently, for me at least, Twitter.
Maya has been in Chile for just over a week now - missing her a lot, but her temporary absence has allowed us to really focus attention on Chloe in a way she's not used to. With two of us on her like Donkey Kong, we're definitely seeing an improvement in behaviour. She's not terrible or anything - just really stubborn and whiny...but what do we expect? She is still 3....
So I bought another pinball machine last weekend. Went to Chris Benn's and his friend Doug's place on a Saturday night a few weeks ago, and got to play 37 machines between the two houses. Some I liked, some I loathed, and one was so quirky and entertaining to play that it stuck in my head, so much so that I asked Doug if he ever sold his to let me know. He didn't want to currently, so I moved on...kind of. When Chris asked me which machines I liked, I told him, but mentioned how much I had liked this one really weird one. He mentioned to me that Sparky had one.
So I emailed Sparky to find out if he was planning to sell it at some point, and if so, to let me know. I got back a never say never, but probably not kind of email, forgot about it, and moved on.
About a week later, Sparky comes back to me, and has decided to sell. Now, a couple of things about this particular machine. 1. Very rare - Stern went bankrupt with it on the production line - only 889 were ever made, and it's very safe to say that fewer than that have survived. Some blame it for killing Stern, but to be honest, my research into the history indicates that Stern was on shaky ground anyways, and they had a lot more orders for it that they never fulfilled. 2. Sparky is the kind of guy where other people selling their machines use him as a selling point - this was once Sparky's game, so you know it's great. 3. I started the whole process, although I was thinking next year some time, maybe by summer. Sparky, however, was all about now, and I was thinking that if I really wanted to own this machine, and a great condition one at that, that I'd better pounce on this.
So I agreed to the deal, conditional on me selling Triple Strike first. I listed Triple Strike, and we waited a week, before Sparky agreed to do a trade&cash for the new one, which of course is worth way more than my relatively crappy Triple Strike, although it was completely working and looked worlds better than it did when I bought it. Of course, as soon as that happened all kind of potential buyers came out of the woodwork, all regretting not contacting me earlier when I told them it was sold. Never fails...
So last Sunday came, with my place being the hub of Wayne coming from Waterdown, and Sparky and Rob coming from Montreal. We moved machines around between the minivans in my driveway, played some pinball, had a good time chatting and in the end I had Orbitor 1 sitting in my basement beside what remains my pride and joy, my High Speed, which of course proved to have a weak upper flipper when they arrived. All 3 of them being pinball repair experts, they quickly showed me what needed to be fixed...and when they left after an excellent afternoon, I went to The Source and picked up my first soldering iron and some lead-based solder, watched a couple of youtube videos, and surprised myself mightily by repairing the flipper successfully - and a week later the repair is still holding.
Of course, that night Orbitor went all wonky...odds are I caused a short, which took four hours and many emails (and a phone call) to Sparky to diagnose. I felt bad - there's no warranty on 30 year old machines, for obvious reasons - caveat emptor clearly applies - but he was awesome - really helpful, even though I'm sure he had better things to do that listen to me (or read me) rambling endlessly without much clue what I'm doing.
By the end of the night, I'd learned a boatload about pinball machines. It took four hours to find the short, and by it's location made me realize that it'd probably been me that caused it in the first place, making me feel even worse about bugging Sparky.
In the process I'd made a few changes to the machine, some on purpose, some by accident (somehow I set it to 5 ball - something I'm going to be changing next time I'm in there - because it seemed to have changed the 60 second ruleset that is driving me nuts too with the machine.)
Slowly rewatching Star Trek:Voyager. In Season 5 now - you know, it really is too bad they're not making anymore Star Trek tv. Maybe if the next movie is as good as the last one...maybe.
Going to resume squash tomorrow after two weeks off with a really sore knee. It's only a slightly sore knee now - but the only way to heal it is probably to take some weight off, which I really can't do without playing squash. Irony sucks, doesn't it?
So - the title of this entry - I was driving to work this morning, and a GNR song came on with the iPhone on shuffle. My commute is such that I get two, and if I hit a couple of red lights, maybe three songs (I know I'm really lucky on that score) so I'd better pick some good ones. Despite Axl being a racist cracker, the band really kicked some ass - You Could Be Mine was blasting when I pulled into school, and I was having a grand old time. So I started writing this to Appetite for Destruction...didn't last long, some of it hasn't held up well...but c'mon - we've got fun and games.
You know what? I can...I even like it. Twitter has also become a place where I've discovered a vast amount of information in things I'm interested in...mostly news, and of course, baseball. Doesn't seem to be much of a pinball presence out there, however. Maybe I should copy my tweets in here from time to time...
I've still been writing here occasionally, but really, it's been slipping for a number of years with the advance of Facebook and more recently, for me at least, Twitter.
Maya has been in Chile for just over a week now - missing her a lot, but her temporary absence has allowed us to really focus attention on Chloe in a way she's not used to. With two of us on her like Donkey Kong, we're definitely seeing an improvement in behaviour. She's not terrible or anything - just really stubborn and whiny...but what do we expect? She is still 3....
So I bought another pinball machine last weekend. Went to Chris Benn's and his friend Doug's place on a Saturday night a few weeks ago, and got to play 37 machines between the two houses. Some I liked, some I loathed, and one was so quirky and entertaining to play that it stuck in my head, so much so that I asked Doug if he ever sold his to let me know. He didn't want to currently, so I moved on...kind of. When Chris asked me which machines I liked, I told him, but mentioned how much I had liked this one really weird one. He mentioned to me that Sparky had one.
So I emailed Sparky to find out if he was planning to sell it at some point, and if so, to let me know. I got back a never say never, but probably not kind of email, forgot about it, and moved on.
About a week later, Sparky comes back to me, and has decided to sell. Now, a couple of things about this particular machine. 1. Very rare - Stern went bankrupt with it on the production line - only 889 were ever made, and it's very safe to say that fewer than that have survived. Some blame it for killing Stern, but to be honest, my research into the history indicates that Stern was on shaky ground anyways, and they had a lot more orders for it that they never fulfilled. 2. Sparky is the kind of guy where other people selling their machines use him as a selling point - this was once Sparky's game, so you know it's great. 3. I started the whole process, although I was thinking next year some time, maybe by summer. Sparky, however, was all about now, and I was thinking that if I really wanted to own this machine, and a great condition one at that, that I'd better pounce on this.
So I agreed to the deal, conditional on me selling Triple Strike first. I listed Triple Strike, and we waited a week, before Sparky agreed to do a trade&cash for the new one, which of course is worth way more than my relatively crappy Triple Strike, although it was completely working and looked worlds better than it did when I bought it. Of course, as soon as that happened all kind of potential buyers came out of the woodwork, all regretting not contacting me earlier when I told them it was sold. Never fails...
So last Sunday came, with my place being the hub of Wayne coming from Waterdown, and Sparky and Rob coming from Montreal. We moved machines around between the minivans in my driveway, played some pinball, had a good time chatting and in the end I had Orbitor 1 sitting in my basement beside what remains my pride and joy, my High Speed, which of course proved to have a weak upper flipper when they arrived. All 3 of them being pinball repair experts, they quickly showed me what needed to be fixed...and when they left after an excellent afternoon, I went to The Source and picked up my first soldering iron and some lead-based solder, watched a couple of youtube videos, and surprised myself mightily by repairing the flipper successfully - and a week later the repair is still holding.
Of course, that night Orbitor went all wonky...odds are I caused a short, which took four hours and many emails (and a phone call) to Sparky to diagnose. I felt bad - there's no warranty on 30 year old machines, for obvious reasons - caveat emptor clearly applies - but he was awesome - really helpful, even though I'm sure he had better things to do that listen to me (or read me) rambling endlessly without much clue what I'm doing.
By the end of the night, I'd learned a boatload about pinball machines. It took four hours to find the short, and by it's location made me realize that it'd probably been me that caused it in the first place, making me feel even worse about bugging Sparky.
In the process I'd made a few changes to the machine, some on purpose, some by accident (somehow I set it to 5 ball - something I'm going to be changing next time I'm in there - because it seemed to have changed the 60 second ruleset that is driving me nuts too with the machine.)
Slowly rewatching Star Trek:Voyager. In Season 5 now - you know, it really is too bad they're not making anymore Star Trek tv. Maybe if the next movie is as good as the last one...maybe.
Going to resume squash tomorrow after two weeks off with a really sore knee. It's only a slightly sore knee now - but the only way to heal it is probably to take some weight off, which I really can't do without playing squash. Irony sucks, doesn't it?
So - the title of this entry - I was driving to work this morning, and a GNR song came on with the iPhone on shuffle. My commute is such that I get two, and if I hit a couple of red lights, maybe three songs (I know I'm really lucky on that score) so I'd better pick some good ones. Despite Axl being a racist cracker, the band really kicked some ass - You Could Be Mine was blasting when I pulled into school, and I was having a grand old time. So I started writing this to Appetite for Destruction...didn't last long, some of it hasn't held up well...but c'mon - we've got fun and games.
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