Tag Archive for 'News'

MIA for a month

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.

Dogs and Beds, but no dogs on beds

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.

Supermoon! Cannot be seen.

I love astronomical events that get picked up on and reported by the media more than an air-supremacy take over in Libya, and then it’s cloudy all evening because there’s about 15mm of rain on the way.

In other world changing news: my apartment is finally cold. Wait, that’s not it. Let me try again: We’re moving out of the crappy apartment and into a town house where there’s such amenities as; doorways on the ground level, back yards, washers and driers, basements. Also we get like 1,000 sqft extra.

Is this really news?

Charlie Sheen got fired. Is it really news? Apparently, it’s currently hitting up on google trends, so I guess it is news worthy.

Other things that happened on March 7th that were actually note worthy: Marcus Aurelius gained the throne, becoming official (co-)emperor of Rome on the 8th. Napoleon Bonaparte won a battle and captured a city on this day, although they were separated by 15 years and an Emperorship. Also in 1994 the US Supreme Court ruled that parody was a protected free speech.

Imitation is the sincerest form of… Son of a…!

So with my wife napping and a free minute I decided to fill Kelly’s recently bought Kong with peanut butter so that it’ll be frozen by morning. Of course I got to imitate how my wife does it. Fill a ziplock bag with peanut butter and pipe it in like an idiot-proof (AKA Nik-proof) icing job. I mean it doesn’t even have to look nice, just pipe it in until you can’t get anymore in. What could go wrong? Well the ziplock can just ker-plow and bust a side open, coating your hand in peanut butter. Then you have to use a teaspoon to fill the Kong and make a huge mess anyway, plus your hand is coating in peanut butter.

As per usual, the wife knows best.

Library of Congress: All Your Tweets Are Belong To Us

The US Library of Congress appears to have declared ‘all your tweets are belong to us’. I’m not sure what they want to do with the tweets, perhaps they’re just big fans of Charlie Sheen and don’t want to see his public implosion lost to the background noise of the interwebs.

I truly don’t get the usefulness of storing every public tweet, beyond making it uber-easy for lazy editors to cobble together books of tweets. Do we really need to save every thought some people have?

Writing, Total War and Chili

I was up late last night writing, and up early this morning writing so it’s still progressing well.

Especially considering I’ve been playing Napoleon Total War (I dare not test my computer with a more recent Total War game as it may commit suicide) as the Brits and have Napoleon on the run. I conquered Paris (with about 10 mortars and hiding below a hill-line so they couldn’t slaughter me with their 12lb cannon) and have Napoleon pushed into Eastern Europe. Austria fell to him and he’s decimating Prussia, however Russia has been expanding well, decimating the Ottoman Empire and I’d already wiped out the Spanish during my first cessation with France. Now we’re in the second cessation I took a foothold in Greece.

Now we’re making my wife’s Chilli for dinner. I think we’ll be needing bigger bowls soon because I’m always going back for seconds on it.

Also in braking news: The dog is lazy. Apparently the Dachshund is coming into full blow whenever she’s calm because she just loves to sleep.

Turmoil and Trouble

With all the turmoil going on in Libya, it’s always fantastic to see that the mass media completely drops the ball failing to mention the revolution in Tunisia (I guess the revolution in Egypt was more interesting or news friendly) or the major protests across much of the Middle East and Northern Africa, or the fact that the demonstrations were sparked by the self-immolation of a street vendor, which has been taken on as a bizarre call to arms receiving dozens (if not into the hundreds by now) copycat self-immolations (for those not in the know, self-immolation is the act of setting oneself on fire).

Instead, we’re getting regular news of Charlie Sheen’s latest mentally defective acts. Such as his targeting Chuck Lorre (the show creator and producer) in a fashion that basically amounts to anti-Semitism (not in his wording, but in the fact he decided to target it at him as Levine his Jewish birth surname) and likely the reason his show just got cancelled (at least for the rest of this season).

It’s stupid to insult your boss. It’s moronic to insult your boss after he’s the sole person seemingly keeping you in your job as the highest paid TV actor, especially considering your mounting legal debts and cocaine and alcohol addictions will likely bankrupt you the second you stop getting paid. Furthermore you’re truly mentally defective when you accuse your boss of stealing from you, after accusing virtually everyone you’ve spent 5-minutes with of the same.

Also in the news, Kelsey Grammer is getting married, which I like because he’s not a drug addled moron that gets more publicity for threatening women than doing a good job.

The Wasda Posts

This post is basically a list of things I was planning on posting about this morning, but now that’s basically been shot to shit.

Originally I was going to do a mini-review of RED, which was awesome and hilarious. I’m loving Bruce Willis in his new comedy slant, it lends itself well to him.

Then I was going to post on the preliminarily fantastic news for John Scalzi, the sale of Old Man’s War as a movie. This is one movie I know I will be watching (if it ever makes it to release) in theatres with a big tub of buttery popcorn.

Then I was going to post about the ultimate douchery of our rental company who just strung us through almost a month of their piss-about-crap and they’ll now be losing us as perfect tenants (that’s not even ironic in intent, no complaints, perfect rent), which there’ll be more on that next. All this over them refusing to replace a grotty 30-year old carpet with massive tears and zero padding left (if it ever had padding).

So now we’re onto the current news of the day, we’re moving into a town house. No more trips down an elevator to let the dog pee, no more trips to the laundry room to see that the machines are all in use and 2 are out of order and one eats loonies.

Will this news last through the night? We think so.

Moving Again… Maybe, and The Clarithromycin Drama

We’re moving, on one solitary condition that they replace the piece of shit carpet in the place. It’s torn, it’s old, it has zero padding left and most of all it’s grimy to the point of no redemption.

As we’re moving within building it’s policy that they don’t fix a lot of problems and let them get resolved through work orders, but the place seems to have little to do beyond getting rid of that piece of shit carpet.

We also took a nice trip to the Emergency Room as my wife checked off about four of the common side-effects to clarithromycin, which was supposed to be to treat her ‘strep throat’. The ER doc was the one to actually swab her throat (you know the 48-hour test over the differential diagnosis that involves multiple drugs and oh look adverse reactions). He said that it could well be Mono, which would explain why the antibiotics have done diddly squat and possibly why I only have a mild sore throat (I have lethargy but that’s a mix of working construction, staying up late – now with the excuse of caring for a sicky – and the inability to nap).




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