Monthly Archives: May 2008

Corolla-rolla-olla

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We have a second car in the fambly. It’s the maroon 1996 Toyota Corolla that faithfully carted Kimberly and Christof around for several years and later replaced Katherine’s burglarized, burnt-out car.

Now that Kat and Gary (married! congrats!) are going to Indiana and then Japan, the car has fallen to the Geehans. It will be Cos Louise’s car when she comes to try and charm Blobby away from us for a few weeks later in the fall.

Dadawa will practice driving stick, and maybe, if it lasts another 15 years, it will be Blobby’s. :p

Bloggy all patched up…

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After over two days of downtime, we are back up and running. The hosting company upgraded the Coldfusion server to version 8. That caused one issue. After a day of faffing and playing, they fixed that, only to have another database issue occur. After upgrading the driver to the latest MySQL driver it seems that the DB issue has also been resolved!

YAY… back to something closer to normalacy!

Fox does it again…

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Ok, so yes, we watched American Idol this year.

We had recorded it, but after missing the actual announcement of the winner last year cause the DVR cut out before the end (show overran) I set the DVR to record the news after. That being said we were still cut off. I started the recording of the news but there was a 5 second or so gap in the recording where they announced the winner. So it took a while before we figured out who had won

The news has been harping on that the ratings have been dropping this year from week to week, but that is a little hard to buy, what with the 97 odd million votes submitted for the finale. (Spoiler on who won… if you have recorded it but not watched STOP HERE!!)

Silly Ozzles, Crappy PC… and a long week

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Mum Mum had a conference up in Vancouver for the past several days. All very exciting stuff around statistics, trending, image manipulation, polar bear issues and other such exciting Scientific Editor stuff. Needless to say any session (apart from the polar bear keynote session) would put me to sleep in 5 minutes flat, so kudos to anyone who could stay awake… and even better understand what was being said.

Anyhoo… we both flew up to Vancouver on Friday evening (photos will be posted soon). Mum Mum started the conference on Saturday morning and I took myself out for a long walk around Vancouver. While on my walk in Stanley Park I saw a couple looking intently in a shadowy area. Being curious I approached. They asked me a question but with my iPhone on I heard nada. Anyway, there was a Racoon (photo below) hanging out with his buddy the white chested squirrel. The Australian couple asked me what it was… and my answer was ‘uh, a Racoon?!’ They then proceeded to ask if the squirrel was a baby racoon. It took a lot of self control not to laugh at them, but my answer was ‘nope, that would be a SQUIRREL!’

Silly Ozzies.

Trip was fun, although having to get up at 5:30 in the morning on Monday (Pacific Time) to start the work day was not fun. Vancouver is a nice town, and we had fantastic weather for the weekend which worked out really well for me.

On the flight back I went to boot my PC up to download some photos and to maybe do some work. When I tried to take it out of hibernation I got the following error message, which freaked me out as I had not backed my PC up, in uhh… never!!! Finally, after pleading, begging and threats of violence, the PC booted up, and as soon as I got home I backed up my critical files. Sigh… What a pain.

Anyway, to wrap up this brain dump, it has been a long week and is only Wednesday. I finally got home at around 9pm with Cammie with me (picked her up from my parents). She was screaming the whole way home, but after a good brushing, she settled down and was very cuddly Monday and Tuesday night. Tuesday morning I was up at 4:30am to fly up to Dallas for a meeting, and I got back from that at 6:30pm, only to have to get on another call at 8pm. Sigh… I will be glad when this week, and with it the engagement dominating mylife, will be over.

How to amuse a cat… for free!

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As usual, the morning has been spent on endless conference calls dealing with the latest issues and crisis at work… nothing new there… although having had a late night last night (due to Anne’s fun housewarming party, watching the latest set of Idol performances and results, and having to to more work at 11:30 at night) both Mum Mum and I are tired today.

Anyway, while I was on one of my calls the cat came in wanting a brush. I of course had to oblige her (I now keep a brush in the office for these moments). With the amount of fur that I took off her I was able to create a little fur ball which, when rolled up tightly, bounces and rolls really well. The next 10 minutes were then spent with Wazzles running around and batting her own fur ball around the floor.

Several hours later and the fur ball (one that was doing the batting) is now asleep on the lower level of her climbing frame, and the other fur ball (the one that was battered around the floor) is still in one piece and still bounces when dropped on the desk or floor!

Why spend $5-$10 on a ball at the pet store when you can simply use the aminals fur as a toy!

Mothers Day Madness!

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All in a good way of course!!!

My brother flew in to surprise my mum for mothers day. I picked him up at the airport and he hung out at our place until my parents came over for dinner.

While he was here he wanted to get a card… and the selection at the local CVs was the rack below.

Also, Mum Mum’s mum joined us later in the evening after flying in from New Jersey and the grandmum’s to be were trying to feel the bladder boxer practice, but she got all shy and did not poke out at anyone while they were there.

While Angel was napping…

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I was out trying to play golf. Course was nice (Cypress Lakes). Day was overcast and windy so the 90 degree heat did not feel that bad at all. Golf was not so good! Started with a par on the first. Had another par on the front nine but managed to hit a 19 over par on the first nine holes. At the turn I got a hotdog and BAAM… 3 straight pars! Ok, I followed that up with being 10 over through the next 4 holes, then par, then another triple… for a horrible score (if you are curious I am sure you can figure it out!!!)

While we were on the course I had assistance from the local riff raff… who were trying to either steal my iPhone (or any food they could get) or trying to give me constructive criticism on my swing (and I needed it).

After the round finished, we got back to my car to see that the car beside had been victim of a slight mishap…

Good news is that they did not touch my car… That is a lesson not to leave valuables in plain sight ANYWHERE in Houston!

I am not alone.

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“… Then there’s what’s known as posterior pelvic pain, which you may feel in the back of your pelvis or deep inside your buttocks. This pain may be triggered by activities such as walking, climbing stairs, getting in and out of a low chair, twisting, and lifting. Positions in which your hips are bent \’97 such as sitting in a chair and leaning forward \’97 may make posterior pelvic pain worse.”

Got this in an emailed pregnancy update. And this is exactly what has been bothering me. Really, though, it’s my only complaint.

Had a nice lunch at Raven Grill with Scrappy today (Mama is visitng Ayi Rosie in New Jersey), came home, and passed out for a 3-hour nap. Then, once Dadawa returned, we rearranged the “nursery.” I am now waiting for hubster to get back with East Wall takeout, which we will enjoy with DVR’d back episodes of America’s Next Top Model. Yay for date night! :)

‘Ohhhhh, Meeester Miiiii-Iiiiike! I haff surprise fur yooooo!’

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We went out to meet a group for Kirsten’s 30th bday dinner. We get home, and I am fetching clothes for Dadawa to change into. I turn on the lights to his closet…Thank goodness I turned on the lights!

Because the housecat, she, errrr…well, Dadawa has to post the pics.

UPDATE: Here is the photo of one of the presents… we found another by her scratch pad!