The Terror Zone

Laura and I both love to watch scary movies. On my last day off, we did something that we wanted to do for a couple of years now, which was to visit the Terror Zone in Trounce Alley. It is a nightmare tour, bent on trying to scare it’s patrons.

We started the tour in pitch black, which was very cool, trying to find where we were to go next. Laura grabbed my hand right away and held on through the whole thing. I will give nothing away in case someone who reads this wants to go through, but I will say that I was very impressed. There were many surprises and a lot of scary scenes and models. There were things jumping out at us and many creepy images. At the end, there were full sized models of Leatherface, Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers.

We now have plans to go during the Halloween season when they have live actors to add to the mood.

Work, Holidays and The Prodigy

It was so easy to post on my blog while I was on holidays for two weeks. I find, now that I am back to work, I am having problems with prioritizing my time. It's not really that I have that much less time, it's just a matter of doing what is important to me. Work really only takes up 50 hours per week if I include travel time.

While I was on vacation, I re-discovered a music group which I thought were not together. They are a UK band called The Prodigy and I can't stop listening to it. Back around 1997 I saw a performance by them on TV and was thoroughly impressed. I remember the camera panning the crowd which was a massive sea of arms being thrown up in unison, to the beat of the music -- it gave me goose-bumps, so I went out and bought their then current CD. Shortly after that, they broke up and I never heard anything about them again until a couple of weeks ago.

I had decided to look up The Prodigy on the internet and found that they were still together and had done quite a few new albums since their apparent break up. I went and got their latest CD called Invaders Must Die and was very impressed. They have put out some very good music, the kind that I really enjoy and now I am hooked. The reason that I didn't know they were back together and still producing music is because they are a UK group and get no press in North America. I'm glad I did a search on them.

Camping Trip

Well, I won’t be posting for a couple of days because the kids and I will be camping at Goldstream Park. I am so happy that all of them are coming this year. Last year Kyle was in Summer school and Eric was busy with his friends; Laura was the only one who came with me. It was a good trip and we had a lot of fun, but this year I have them all once more, just like when they were younger.

Happy Anniversary

Happy Anniversary, Blog. We’ve hit a bit of a landmark.
Three years today, I made my first post on this blog. I can hardly believe that it’s been that long already. I never imagined that I would find so much to write about. It’s been a wonderful journey so far and I don’t intend to quit anytime soon. I’ve written about my family, my animals, work, writing, my garden -- well, you can see for yourself in the list at the side. Each post has been a little peek into my life. I was a bit afraid to begin with, making all my life events public like this, but it’s not really as bad as I thought -- if people don’t know me, they are not going to care about things in my life and won’t bother with it.

I have thoroughly enjoyed blogging, it’s actually just a public journal of my life. I have tried journalling before but it never lasts very long, I get bored with it and find a hard time seeing what the point of it is. Not so with my blog -- sure I’ve had some dry spells and maybe haven’t written for a month or two, but I always come back to it. It’s one of the things that I can find comfort in doing, just for the sake of doing it.

3D Movie

Yesterday Susan wanted to get some cleaning done, so she sent me and Laura out of the house for a while. We decided to go and see a movie. Laura decided on Ice Age 3D. I have always wanted to see a 3D movie so I was quite excited. It ended up being pretty good for a kids movie, even though it had that annoying Ray Romano as the main character.
((NOT everybody loves Raymond, in my opinion it’s right up there with Friends, King of Queens, Seinfeld and all the rest of them for that matter)--(end of sit-com rant))
Laura and I ate a bag and a half of popcorn -- something about popcorn at the theatre, I just can’t stop eating it. We also had an ice tea and peanut butter and jam M&M’s (only in theatres), which were pretty good. After the movie was over went to Starbucks for a treat and had a nice visit. Lastly we went shopping in a book store at the mall, where Laura bought herself a book.

The new Harry Potter movie will be out soon and Kyle asked if we were going as a family, because we have all seen the earlier ones at the theatre -- as a family. That made Susan and me feel very good, that our seventeen year old still wants to see a movie with us. Hopefully Eric will go as well. It's good to know that our kids are not to embarrassed to be seen with us, some of the time anyway.

Please, Sign My Guestbook

I’m coming up on three years of blogging and I don’t really know who I’m writing for except myself, my wife and a couple people who’ve told me. What I am asking is that you take a moment and sign my guest book, I would really love to hear from you. There is a link above my profile at the side, which will take you to a site that holds my guest book. If you are shy about writing something on a public site like mine, there is a private option so that I am the only one who can see it. I would also love to hear comments on what you like and dislike about my blog and maybe some suggestions of what you would like me to write about. This would be a great service to me and it may be just the type of motivation I need to stay consistent with my posting. Thank you for stopping in and taking a look at my blog.

Olfactory Memory

When I was two years old, I lived in an apartment in Prince George with my parents. I have some strangely vivid memories of that time, even though I was very young. In one of these memories, I was playing at Janet and Doug’s apartment (my parent’s friends who lived down the hall) with a boy named Duane. The two of us were running around the coffee table in their living room when Duane fell and broke his forehead open on the table. Some time after this I was driving my Tonka Mighty Dump truck up and down the hallway. Some people came into the hall and one of them was carrying Duane. I remember that he had a bandage on his forehead and they were saying that he was going to be fine. I don’t recall if he got stitches or not -- I’m sure I wouldn’t have known what stitches were anyway. What I do remember very clearly was an odour. There was a smell in the hallway that was very strong to me and very distinct. I couldn’t tell you what it was, or even describe what it smelled like as I know of no similar aroma.

I was out for my walk the other night and I ran into exactly the same odour as I detected in that apartment hallway in Prince George almost thirty-eight years earlier. What it did was trigger all the memories I had of that time. I stood there on the quiet street, walking in circles, trying to get a better whiff and pondering the fantastic systems we incorporate in our bodies. It occurred to me that the aroma could be a combination of different odours, which is why I have only run into it once or twice in my life. Maybe it is a combination of some spices cooking in someone’s meal, mixed with the scent of a candle, or the smell of a flower -- it’s impossible to say. The only way I’d be able to tell what the odour was, is if it were in the air and someone recognized the aroma and could identify it. Short of that, I’d say it will remain a mystery to me for the rest of my life.

Garage Sale

It’s been a busy day! We had a garage sale from nine until three today. It was a perfect day for it, weather wise. We spent half the night and getting all the stuff ready for sale, sorting and pricing. Laura made signs which I put out early this morning. Lots of work, but it was fun. We had missed the newspaper to put in an advertisement, so we went online and put ads on UsedVictoria and Craigslist -- lots of people use those sites so we figured we’d be safe.

I’m now going to offer some friendly advise: Always put an ad in the newspaper for a garage sale! We ended up with four customers and one very sad little girl who was counting on selling a lot of her stuff to make some spending money. Lesson learned.

We are going to have another garage sale in a week or two, but this time we are definitely going to put an ad in the paper!

Week One

I’m so glad that football has started for another season. I watched three of the games this week and was thrilled. The best one was yesterday, BC at Saskatchewan, even though BC lost. I have to hand it to the Roughriders crowd, they really came through for their team in the end. Kyle watched the game with me which was so nice. I really miss him playing, he was so good at it.

It always seems like such a long stretch from the end of the Superbowl until the CFL season starts again because football is the only sport I watch. To me it is the ultimate game. Every other team sport seems to be chasing something around the playing area, man on man in a team effort, trying to get a score. Football is different, more like a war. There are two teams trying to gain ground. Each play is a battle in which teams are trying to strategically outwit the opposition, to gain the most ground possible. I love it! It also seems that with every game I watch, I learn something new. There’s nothing else like it.

Now that the CFL has started, it won’t be long until the NFL has their first game. Each league has their good and bad points, but football is football, and I love watching my teams (BC and New England) no matter how they are doing. I would love to make it to a live game, that would be so much fun! One day.

Deuce's Progress

We have had Deuce now for almost seven months and we have noticed a few things. Remember, he is a rescue dog and was around two years old when he came into our lives. He had and still has issues. He accepted us right away but whenever we tried to leave the house it was a fight to keep him from bolting out the door. Now when we have to leave, we just tell him to stay and protect the house and he doesn’t try to escape.

Feeding time routine he learned right away, after all, he has to do what he’s told to get his food. I make him sit and wait for his food until I say “okay”. Then, and only then is he allowed to approach his dish to start eating. If he gets impatient and tries to get his food before I say the word, I take the dish away and we try again in a few minutes. That doesn’t happen very often anymore. One other benefit of the feeding routine was establishing hierarchy. Deuce was “herding” Laura because he figured he was above her in the family chain. I got her to feed him and then take his food away, play with it and then give it back to him. Guess what? No more herding issue.

Walking him has always been a challenge; he’s a puller. We tried a regular collar but he’s very strong, so we moved up to a choke chain. What he did then was just choke himself for the whole walk, stopping to cough and sometimes barf much too often. Next I considered getting a pinch collar but when I went to buy one, they wouldn’t sell it to me -- they only sell to trainers. They did however suggest a harness where the lead attaches to where the breastbone is. This seemed to work for a while but I noticed that Deuce was getting sores under his front legs because he was still always pulling. I tried a few different arrangements of wrapping the leash around his torso and legs and finally found something that works. I use the harness, wrap the leash behind his front legs, up across his chest and around the side of his neck. This way it does not restrict his movement unless he pulls and then it squeezes his front legs together, stopping him. Now he is to the point where I sometimes can walk him without wrapping the leash around and he stays right beside me. Once he pulls a couple of times though and tries to get ahead of me, I wrap it around once more. He’s getting better all the time.

He has a few toys which he loves to play with but his favourite is a squeaky bone. I’ve found that it’s better than treats for training him. He loves us to throw it for him, either down the hall or up in the air where he catches it almost every time. I started telling him to lie down before I would throw it and now I just have to snap my fingers and he drops to the ground, waiting for the release. When I throw it down the hall from the living room, I put my legs out between the couch and the love-seat so that he has to jump over them. So much fun! There is a down side to this game though that I have to break him of: he gets pushy if he wants to play at an inappropriate time. He squeaks his bone repeatedly in our faces, dropping it in our lap, trying to make us play. I’ve started taking the toy away to let him know that he’s not in charge and that it’s time to play only when I say it’s time. He’ll learn.

One thing we’ve really noticed in the last week or so is that he’s wagging his tail a lot more, noted by objects being knocked over much more often. That is a very good sign I think. It means that he is really getting comfortable with us and that he’s accepted us as his family, knowing that we’re not going anywhere. It’s a great feeling!

We’ll never know what he went through before he came into our lives but it’s a gift to know that we are making a difference in one dog’s life who didn’t have a very good start. He still has issues with strangers in our house and usually has to go to the balcony when we have company. He is almost over his fear of cars and motorcycles when we are walking. He’s almost used to the idea that he’s not allowed to chase cats, squirrels, bunnies and deer. One day he may be able to ride in the car without panicking the whole time. He’ll always have the scars and the broken tooth, but those physical wounds are just reminders to us of where he came from and that he’s happy now. He is such a blessed addition to our lives and I’m happy that we found each other.

Sunset, Pylon & Deuce

Last night when we were walking, there was not a cloud in the sky and it was so warm. Usually when I see a sunset, there are at least a few light clouds to make the whole sky light up with colours, but not so last. As we walked down one of the streets along our current walking route, I had to stop and take a few pictures with my phone, although they didn’t turn out as I’d liked. It's too bad that I didn't have my digital camera with me! The sun had set and the skyline was a beautiful magenta, the likes of which I’d never seen. It made me wonder at the beauty and the majesty of our earth and how we take so much for granted. Of the pictures below, the first one is untouched and the second was my attempt to try and duplicate the colours of the scene. It didn't work, though I did my best, so you'll have to use your mind's eye. Imagine the colour along the tree line as a deep magenta and the sky above purple, turning into a deep blue. I really should start taking my camera on our nightly walks.




While I’m on the subject of my nightly walk with Deuce, I’ll describe a something that happened a couple of nights ago which made me laugh. When we started our walk, we passed a large orange pylon on the side of the road. Deuce looked at it curiously as we walked by the first time. On the way back, I stopped beside it to let him investigate but he wouldn’t go near it. I coaxed him but he still refused to approach the pylon and when I touched it and made it move a bit, he jumped back as if it was going to attack him. I stood it upright and he seemed less apprehensive of it and approached with caution. He kept jumping back as he was sniffing it, which was funny because there isn’t anything else that I can think of that he’ll back down from. I decided not to push the issue and we walked away; he has enough issues without me helping him to create another.

Moleskine X Three

I recently wrote a blog about my Pocket Mod notebook. That idea has since gone by the wayside, as I received for Father’s Day a new Moleskine notebook. It is a very small, 6½ by 10½ cm that fits perfectly in my pocket. Now I have three Moleskines: a large one for a journal or hand written stories which I will later transcribe into my blog; a medium sized one for hashing out thoughts and ideas or personal discoveries; and now the small one for story ideas, websites, schedules and little bits I want to remember. Now I always have a Moleskine with me and sometimes all three. There is something about writing in a quality notebook, with a quality pen which makes what I write a bit more important, not like when I write with a cheap pencil on a scrap piece of foolscap that I will only do in an emergency.

Pumpkin Flower

I was in luck today when I looked in my garden and saw one of the pumpkin vines flowering. I grabbed my camera right away so I could get a picture before it wilted. The flower is not as big as the first one, but at least you can see it in its open state.

Happy Canada Day!

Yesterday, Laura and her cousin Samantha had plans to go to the movies but changed their minds to instead work on a Canada Day project. They went to the mall and bought a couple of white t-shirts for a deal at $2.00 each. They also bought two red Sharpie felt pens and spent the evening decorating their shirts for Canada Day. They each drew and coloured a red maple leaf on the front. On the back they wrote a bunch of things that are uniquely Canadian or invented by Canadians. The end result was something which cost around five dollars total and better than anything they could have bought.