Archive for the 'Personal' Category

End of December

Published on December 28, 2011 in Personal. Closed Tags: Christmas, Personal.

Okay, so obligatory blog post here. Christmas has just passed, we’ve all got a new set of junk (thankfully a trimmed budget has left us(me) with things we(I) want.

Kim Jong-il is dead, surprise surprise replaced by his son Kim Jong-un. He won out that succession line when his eldest half-brother Kim Jong-nam was caught trying to enter Japan on a false passport to visit Tokyo Disneyland. Is there any life Disney will not ruin? The even further shame is that nam’s son was Kim Han-sol, which is damn close to having a King Han Solo.

Beyond this I don’t think there’s anything newsworthy, or even noteworthy. Hence I’m not noting anything. We’ll see what two-weeks of vacation will produce… except maybe cabin fever – in a house.

Hey look two posts in a month…

Published on November 18, 2011 in Personal. Closed Tags: iPhone, Movie.

Hey look two posts in a month, who would have thought it. We just went to see Immortals, which had a surprisingly decent story for an action movie, a few cliche scenes but it worked. I’ll avoid spoilers outside of a review.

Oh well looks like the iPhone strikes again.

Nik has an iPhone

Published on November 17, 2011 in Personal. Closed Tags: apps, iPhone, posting.

I now have an iPhone, which will allow me to blog from anywhere. Now if only there was an app to make me blog or to blog for me and then there wouldn’t be a problem with me posting.

Oh well, one less excuse at least.

An overdue announcement, AKA Winston

Published on October 16, 2011 in News, Personal and Pets. Closed Tags: Kelly, Pets, Picture, Winston.

Our new arrival is the quiet and collected Winston, a true old gentlemen. The only problem being he’s 3 years old and is acting more like 13, but that’s what happens when you live your life with an old lady.

He’s been with us only a few short weeks and settled in very nicely, in fact so nicely that he seems to be keeping Kelly out of mischief, which is an endearing quality all of its own.

It’s certainly nice having the additional company in the house. Kelly having a playmate means there’s less of her demanding to play with us, which with her generally means jumping up and pawing your leg. That means first thing in the morning you’re generally getting nails dragged on your bare skin, but now she just antagonises Winston.

Absenteeism

Published on September 1, 2011 in Personal. Closed Tags: Personal.

It’s been an appallingly long time since my last post. Life just has that habit of getting extremely busy on you.

The house has finally accumulated its decorations; those curious things that make a house look like a home. Like it’s actually being lived in.

I built two bed platforms, so we’re no longer sleeping on a bed with a broken leg. I must say, eBooks will never be capable of propping up a bed like a stack of hardbacks do. Paper 1, electronic 0. My wife upholstered two headboards, which are now on my to-do list to hang (pictures should follow when they’re up).

We’ve also seen a few good movies. Notably Captain America, which being great in and of itself, it also managed to kick Harry Potter’s ass out of the top spot, which makes me even more fond of it. Yet, the excellent setup for The Avengers was perhaps what I liked the most. The other notable was Thor, which was excellent in and of itself. The pacing wasn’t excellent, but then it’s got a lot more plot depth than the latter superhero movie and it covered it all elegantly.

I can’t particularly think of anything beyond this right now. Oh, the Foo Fighters new album Wasting Light rocks the shit. I think that’s everything worth expressing immediately. Hopefully I make a return appearance within the next few days.

MIA for a month

Published on July 12, 2011 in Personal. Closed Tags: Apartment, Dog, News, Personal, Pets, Writing.

Okay, so I’ve been missing from my blog for over a month now. I’d send myself to bed without supper for being a bad blogger, but that really wouldn’t help the situation. Plus I’m really hungry so it’s absolutely out of the question.

So why have I been so busy? The big move, and a lot of other shit tacked on for good measure, because you know moving isn’t a big enough time sink that we just had to add in frequent socializing too.

We got out around mid-month. Spent the next weekend up in Bobcaygeon for The Tragically Hip concert, the highlight of that poorly arranged concert was actually Bobcaygeon, thankfully the sound lasted throughout and it didn’t turn into a riot. The 2 hours people had to wait for a beer on a Saturday afternoon really didn’t help matters.

Anyway, we returned to the apartment that week to do our vacate clean, to find our landlords had absolutely trashed the place, and conducted illegal entries to allow their contractors in. They then had the gall to tell us we could be back charged for them ruining our carpet with paint and solvent.

That month essentially ended with my wife terrorizing their legal department and myself terrorizing their office staff when they decided it was acceptable for them to refuse to do their jobs and hang up the phone on us. I still don’t grasp why people in this century, over 130 years since the telephone was invented, haven’t figured out that there’s a feature called redial.

We’re now into the new place, with nice and pleasant management. No more elevators, no more frequent police visits to our building. Heck I haven’t seen the police here and we’ve lived here a month, it’s a goddamn miracle! We have a pool that actually has decent times and a dedicated adult swim, plus it’s supervised with life guards so they can have more than 8 kids in the pool at once.

We also went to one of Brad Pattisons classes, which was great fun. It was a brutal onslaught on the humans, the dogs seemed quite pleased. I’m honestly not sure it even phased Kelly, but that’s the Jack Russell monster in her genes. More on that in another post, maybe. No promises. I’ve got writing to catch up on too.

Day One, all over again

Published on June 1, 2011 in Personal. Closed Tags: Moving, Personal, Pets, Weather.

Today was our first day in the new place. Given the overlap we have in our tenancies we presently have two addresses. I guess we technically live at our new place as our mailing address has been switched over with Canada Post, but our asses are still residing in the old non-air-conditioned, non-mail-deliverable apartment.

After nearly all morning screwing around, signing the lease, picking up painting supplies, taking the dog to get groomed (which unknowingly became a necessity as she slept under the bed Monday and Tuesday night as it was the only cold area in the bedroom thanks to Mr Heatwave: May 1st started near freezing, literally lows of 4 and ended with a heat warning on the 31st of a humidex of 42), etc. We finally got to paint, not nearly as much as we wanted, this afternoon with the accent wall in our master bedroom. In the quasi-bastardised-Imperial measurement system used in Canada we ended up roughly the true difference between a genuine “litre” of paint and the quart they sell you as a so called “litre” of paint. Alas the wall will now get a full second coat as a 6″ section of dappled wall won’t be over-looked.

Saturday is looking to be a tackle-the-bull-by-the-horns day to get the bathroom and second bedroom painted and the second coat on the master bedrooms accent wall and we’ll be sleeping in the hopefully (if we paint it in the morning) paint fume free master bedroom on the luxury of an air mattress in the genuine luxury of an air conditioned bedroom.

The basement needs a fair amount of work, but is generally quite good considering it counts as ‘unfinished’.

Kelly seems to like the place. There was no movie-moment of her running through the paint tray and all over the house. In fact she fell asleep whilst watching us and staying out of our way, which is actually atypical of her. Although we will have to doggy-proof the back patio as she can get under the gate without effort right now.

All in all, it means busy busy Nik. ‘Official’ move in is the 18th when our apartment loses our cable and internet and the new place gets it. So it’s not likely I’m going to be getting any writing done before that date.

The Apartment: A Residential Torture Story

Published on May 13, 2011 in Personal. Closed Tags: Apartment, Funny, Personal.

This story starts out with a sheet of paper. A notice to show our apartment.

On Wednesday night said slip of paper had been shoved under our doorway. Now as our apartment was torn apart for that process known as “sorting”, which is a big part of that process known as “moving”. The biggest problem of all is that Kelly’s obedience class is every Wednesday and Saturday. On Wednesday it’s from 7 to 8:30 and just so happened to be on the far side of Hamilton, so with getting dinner we weren’t home until 9:30.

We were quintessentially fucked. Suffice it to say, to have a nice tidy apartment by 8:30AM on Thursday morning, we were cleaning until 2:30AM. We spent every second working at it, and basically just threw a lot of stuff into storage totes at random. At least the job got done. Although 4 hours of sleep doesn’t make for a very happy Englishman. I think by the afternoon I’d entered a mild state of delirium as I actually ceased being tired and went into that manic frame of mind, which lasted until I forced myself to go to bed at 10:30PM.

All of which was for 5-minutes of them being in our apartment.

Although the utter nuisance of apartment living is only illustrated by the fact that at 9:40PM last night someone decided to pull the fire alarm. I think we’re currently at 5 pulls in 10 and 1/2 months. I’m glad it happened at 9:40PM when I’m wide awake and don’t feel like a complete irresponsible ass by waiting it out. If it had happened at 1AM like usual, I would have ended up outside because I’m not going to be able to react at the first sign of smoke when I have my head under a pillow shouting ‘laa-laa-laa’.

So that’s just another story of why you don’t move into an apartment.

Dare to be bad

Published on May 10, 2011 in Personal and Writing. Closed Tags: Personal, Writing.

In between writing I’ve been reading Dean Wesley Smith’s essays on writing. You’d probably expect to hear something at least a little more inspirational, but ‘inspiration’ is probably a myth he should tackle in his New World of Publishing essays.

Suffice it to say, it had one great piece of advice I haven’t fallen on nearly enough when I’ve been struggling: Dare to be bad. The irony here is that I started writing because I bought one too many books that I found wholly substandard and spent $5 or more on. I always found myself thinking “I could do better than this shit”. So I try and when I get stumped, I’ve often failed to think “shit, well they’re selling that crap and making a living, why shouldn’t I?”

Aside from a great voice, I don’t get why the Harry Potter franchise even managed to appear given the limited initial print run. The opening of the book relied entirely on Rowling’s voice to carry it through until it eventually hit intrigue. As a child I lost interest, it took being in my 20′s and thinking “maybe I should actually read the damn book now” to actually read the damn book. It still has massive pacing issues to say it’s allegedly a kids book (note: a book featuring a child as a protagonist doesn’t make it a children’s book).

Now, again, I’ve got to dare to be bad if I want to get anything sold. Nothing is ever forgotten on the internet, but you have to be (in)famous for a search engine to find it.

Dogs and Beds, but no dogs on beds

Published on May 9, 2011 in News, Personal and Pets. Closed Tags: Dog, Kelly, News, Personal, Pets, Sleep.

It’s almost been a month since I posted, and then I barely posted in April so I don’t think that counts either. So Nik’s putting himself back into writer mode, and apparently into the third person too.

We’re busy in the midst of putting Kelly through obedience classes, which are going amazingly. I can’t give higher praise for Brad Pattison’s program. I find it rather hilarious that people criticise him and his program, despite it getting results and dealing with the dogs rejected from the commercial dog training programs like pet smart.

The other time sap right now is the apartment and moving. We have a lot to pack and get ready, but thankfully we have a whole month to do the move. So I don’t think we’re overly concerned. If we had to be out on the 31st, this would presently be those few slow-motion seconds as you see the dog turd drifting towards unprotected fan blades.

Along with the plans of moving, I’m planning on constructing a wooden bed, which is going to be an exceptionally fun project. I’m going for maximum sturdiness as I only plan on building it once and for it to survive not only me and my wife, but the future possibility of kids jumping on it. I have memories of my brother throwing me through my bed, quite literally I ended up ass on floor with the mattress pinning me in place against the side rail. Thankfully we had a second set of slats in the garage so I still had a bed to sleep on that night.

That childhood incident is partially the inspiration for why I want to construct my own bed. Basically because all the ones in stores today are shoddy as all hell. As we’ve currently got our bed frame propped up on books, it certainly tells me that steel bed frames aren’t any stronger.