Don’t be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends. - Richard Bach

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens. - J R R Tolkien

FYI: I have decided to discontinue our blog. After three years of semi-regular blogging I have decided that even though the expense is minimal, it does not really serve a purpose. The amount of visitors to the site are very small and lately I really don’t have anything to say.

Originally, the blog was started as a way to keep friends and family updated as to what was going on in our lives. Lucille has family in the States and my parents leave to run a campground every summer, so we had thought that this was something we could do to keep everyone in the loop. For the last little while, Lou’s postings are very far and few in-between (which is fine) and mine are fairly uninspiring. I don’t have a lot to talk about. With the advent of Facebook (where everyone goes) and instant messaging applications (which everyone uses), our website has very little to no traffic. I am, essentially, the web site’s most frequent visitor.

Having the blog has been quite an educational experience for me. I learned how to start and maintain a site, blog ettiquette, and taught myself some basis HTML. Overall, it was a great opportunity to learn about something that I previously knew nothing about. In the future, I may decide to have one again, but for now there are bigger and better things for me to turn my attention too.

Having said that, it will be shutting down shortly. Thanks to to all who came to visit.

“If I owned a company, my employees would love me. They’d have huge pictures of me up the walls and in their home, like Lenin.” - George Costanza (Seinfeld episode, “The Trip”)

I was on vacation for all of last week. Time moved so slow it felt like every day was Sunday. Even though I was on vacation I couldn’t sleep in. I really wanted too, but the cat still wanted to go outside every morning at 5 AM. It also felt like monsoon season. It rained everyday.  In fact it rained so much I was able to catalogue the different types of rain. My favorite rain-type is the drizzle. Just enough water falling out of the sky to get you all damp, just enough to keep you inside while the clouds come and go. Should we try to plan an outing or should we stay home? Is this a good time to mow the lawn? With the drizzle, you’ll never know.

Anyways, the vacation is now over and I’m back at work, but I’ll tell you some of the wonderful things I got to do:

• I replaced the toilet in our bathroom. Our toilet had been leaking around the base for quite awhile and I knew the reason was because the wax donut had probably disintegrated into nothingness. After all, the toilet itself has been in its place for over 30 plus years and I knew when I started that it would not be easily removed. And I was right.  In the morning, before I started the extraction of the porcelain throne, I ran to Kents and bought a donut to replace the old one. In the afternoon, I ran to Kents and purchased a new toilet. Tonight, after I got home from work, I removed the toilet AGAIN because it was STILL leaking around the base and my brother Gord came over to help me install yet another donut. This time I think we’re good. Only a brother will come other and help you with a shitty (no pun intended) job like this. Thanks bro.
• My van had this grinding sound on the front passenger side everytime I applied the brakes. Closer inspection revealed that the calibur had seized and ground the brake pad into, well, bare metal.  This also meant my rotor was shot. Have purchased the parts, still trying to get time to install them.
• Also found out that my van inspection ran out last month.  Turns out that I was thinking about the sticker on the license plates, which are good until September.

There were some good things about my days off, even though we didn’t get to do some of the things we wanted to because of the rain.  I was able to:

• Spent much needed quality time with Lou and the kids.
• Made the flower bed by our backdoor.  Brandon and I  borrowed my brother’s ATV and dragged over some rail road ties to frame it up. All we need now is the soil/mulch and some shrubbery. Yes, I said shrubbery, Alex. (Shades of Monty Python!)
• Took some much needed quality time for Lou and I without the kids.
• Invited some people to come over to hang out on our back deck and they actually showed up. Had a good time and might try it again. Lou got drunk and went on the trampoline. Priceless.

There’s more I could probably write but my eyes are heavy.  First day back to work and I remember why I’m looking for another job, lol. Later - Ken

Advertising: The tool of the devil. - Urban Dictionary

After watching the Burger King shorts on TV, I was finally intrigued enough to go to whopperfreakout.com and was mildly surprised to be treated to a very humorous mockumentry a la Michael Moore. Note that the manager of the store is portrayed by comedian  Regan Burns. Also kudos to the staff, who managed to play it straight through the whole thing as they told each and every customer that the Whopper had been discontinued. This a truly a great bit of advertising. 

Had it been the BK Stacker, I would jumped right over the counter and created some mayhem…