water flower

One of the plants in our aquarium has been blooming lately.....neat!

Just some old pics that I love

A Cerambycid (Longhorned beetle) from a vacation we took with my parents and my brother a while back...

















A teeeeeeeny little bee. It was really only about 6 or 7 mm long.




















Yes. I love coffee. Especially while on vacation as we were here.

















Just a pic from our old garden on a nice sunny day. 

The Museum!

A while back, Brian and I took the kids out to the Museum...they had been working on a lot of changes and WOW was it nice. The kids had a great time.

Korean delegation and our family/friends weekend brunch

Last week I gave a presentation to a visiting delegation from Korea (South) on the work we do in plant quarantine. They were quite happy with the content and also asked many many many questions. It was somewhat akin to a horrible interview held in a language other than one of your choosing.

I guess they were pleased since they offered (and I took it!) a present. It is a really nice travel manicure and hygeine set. Nice case! I'm pretty pleased.

We went to brunch at a new restaraunt near home on the weekend. It has great food, a nice atmosphere and friends of ours know the owners! They even has story reading that the kids tried (relatively successfully) to listen to. Check out The Branch!

WORK! and crime in the country

ARRRRGH! Work is silly busy. We've got all these short term, emergency projects, plus we are hiring students, plus the normal madness that is our everyday jobs... I'm feeling a little stressed today. I had a little over a hundred messages in my email today. CRAZY.

On my way home a couple of days ago, I passed a police cruiser and the two (!) officers looked me over pretty completely. When they passed, I noticed that they were putting on the brakes every 100 feet or so. I didn't think much of it until I crested the next hill and got on the brakes to avoid two police cruisers. There was a van off the road that looked like it had 'mis-negotiated' a T-junction (i.e. didn't see the stop sign while going extremely fast). It was up to the axles in mud. The two police cruisers near it didn't look too impressed with the situation.

Then, when I get home, H tells me that she saw another officer standing at a corner of two roads looking up and down them with binoculars. Not a good sign.

So, after dinner, H went to work and I took the kids with me in the car to see if we could talk to some police. Of course, you can't get a number to call a REAL person. So, I ended up finding an officer. He was quite nice and gave me a full run down of the situation.

So, the provincial police chased him up one of the major highways, he escaped onto the road where he crashed and the airbag nailed him in the face. So, he has a cut below one of his eyes. He gets out and runs about 2 kms through a muddy field and tries to steal a truck. It stalls and the woman that lives there runs out and asks what the crap he's doing. Well, he offers her a hundred bucks to drive him across the city and she, of course, declines. She calls the city police and they are STILL looking for him.

The good (?) news is that the police did not have any reason to think he was dangerous. Anyhow, I told a bunch of neighbours and then paced around nervously all night long and didn't sleep that well either.

H said there is a message from the police on our voicemail. I hope they know some good news...

Woodstoves are the best, well the most fun anyway

So we have been using our woodstove a lot recently...the nights are getting quite a bit cooler. They have been hovering around 2-3 degrees at night time, so the house goes down to about 18 degrees by morning.

Just stick a few logs in the woodstove and let the place warm up!!! One evening last week, the family room was a sweltering 26.5 degrees...you should have seen how warm the basement family room was... yeek. It was hot.

Brian and I calculated that we likely have just less than two whole cords of firewood. A whole cord is defined as 8 feet x 4 feet x 4 feet = 128 cubic feet. We have a stack of about 15 feet long, 3 feet wide and 4.5 feet high...

Luckily oil has not been too expensive, although, fuel oil costs significantly less than gasoline. It was about 69.9 cents/L.




It's been gorgeous here lately... notice the maple is turning colours now. Most of the oak leaves have fallen from the fencerow at the back.

More farms!

I decided to use the picture collage part of Picasa...so far I love using this program. Make things much easier to post onto the blog.

So this was another farm we went to with our newly returned friends...it is a sheep and llama farm primarily. In fact, the woman of the farm is a weaver too! How exciting for H.

The llamas are 'guard llamas'...they seemed pretty tame to me, but weren't that fond of any sort of attention... The sheep at the upper right are 'wool sheep' and the lower left is a 'meat sheep'. Mmmm....lamb. Apparently they start to 'harvest' them at 6 months...poor little lambies.

 

This here is a recurring little visitor...a member of the Reduvidae order of insects. AKA the 'Assasin bug'.



















These are some red deer/elk crosses at a local farm. The deer are from New Zealand stock and then crossed with elk...not really sure why. Our friends bought some of the sausage from these deer and mmmm...delish.


This is the door of the new store and winery. I love the hardware!


They were displaying this clock inside (it was for sale)...mom and dad, I thought you would appreciate this! 

Our new killing, fungal friend

So we have been finding loads of these mushrooms on our property. I have been removing about 3-10 every other day. My mom identified them as Amanita virosa, the 'Destroying Angel' which is only the most poisonous mushroom in the world. These pcitures are of an older specimen and the younger ones are exactly as they appear on the Wikipedia site and many others. We were not too happy. Oh well, I guess we are happy that we have so much natural diversity that we can have such abberant mushrooms as this. It's just a big concern to watch the kids closely so that we know they aren't going anywhere near them.

A isn't afraid of much right now, so this is a difficult thing to convince her not to touch them, especially since all she knows are edible mushrooms, which she has decided that she loves.


 

OK, so this picture was from a while ago, but it was extremely hot that day...

A mushroom forest made of cups and bowls...

Our huge squash plant growing on the compost heap!!! This is near the back of the yard...but still lots more behind me!

A leopard frog...one of the many of the summer.

Nature and stuff

Apparently we have treefrogs out where we live! I talked to our neighbour yesterday about it and he confirmed it (he is an arbourist by the way!). This one was apparently quite big.

Yesterday, E and I went fishing down at the lake. The arbourist neighbour caught a bullfrog and his daughter came over to show us...I had NO idea they were so big. It was about 15 inches long with the legs outstretched, 8 inches with them tight to its body. It was about the size of a HUGE grapefruit and a LOT heavier.







This treefrog had amazing colouring...hard to describe...kindof a silvery-green colour. I was wondering how the heck it got way up on the deck railing...










Just a sunset!

Good mileage is awesome...

My latest mileage!!!
Assuming US gallon = 3.79L
Imperial gallon = 4.55L

31.4L - 560km = 6.907ImpGal/8.285USGal & 350 miles = 50.67 imperial MPG or 42.25 US MPG or 5.61 L/100km

34.8L - 608km = 7.655gal/9.18USGal & 380 miles = 49.64 imperial MPG or 41.39 US MPG or 5.72 L/100km

I am on MEGA-sticky street tires (Kumho Ecsta MX 205/40/17). I acheived this by filling the tank all the way up to the top of the neck and then refilling to the top again to determine volume burned. I accelerate very gently and shift at no higher than 2500 rpm. Each tank had two full throttle accelerations (For each tank: one was from a stop all the way through 1st and 2nd gear and then jumped to 5th to cruise, the second was only 3rd gear to pass a vehicle). I coast to a stop, no engine braking.

The first tank was on my drive to work which is 85% highway on which I usually maintain a speed of 82-87 kph. The second tank was a long drive to the Bruce Penninsula and I maintained the same speed and very few stops. So far I have ~1900 kms on the car! I am very impressed.

Cheers
T

Why I have not posted in a while...

So, we do not have the camera cable to download the pictures from the camera, so I have not been able to get anything from the memory card! Doh!

I have pics of the new house and yard as well as the new car with the rims on it...

Anyhoo...sometime...when/if we find it...you will see some more pics up here.

Cheers

The weekend with T, H, E, A, G, A, C, S, N, and Y

H's mom and stepdad came down for the weekend and parked their trailer on our driveway (with lots of room to spare). We had many-a-BBQ and many great chats. We spent all weekend outside and I used the riding mower for the first time. It is an 18 hp 42" Toro...the grass was pretty long, so it took a bit over two hours to cut. Ended up using about 6 litres of gas. There's still a lot of raking to do to get the clippings up. We met our next door neighbours on the east side. He is a building inspector and she is a teacher, they have a 3 year old and 2 Siberian huskies too! Nice people. We probably chatted with them for about 15 minutes.

H and I (by ourselves!) went to the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young concert. It was AWESOME. Those guys are so talented. The first set that they played was mostly new stuff from Neil Young's new album. They got cheered back on after the intermission and played some wicked awesome acoustic songs. Most of the second set were their older, classic ones — their harmonizes are amazing. They are great all together and also individually. Graham Nash and Steven Stills sang Guinevere and it was earth-moving. There were also several anti-dubyah/anti-war songs which received a lot of audience support. Steven Stills did a great blues song with lots of feeling in it too. It was pretty funny, but H and I were tired at about 9:15...shortly after the concert started...and it went until 11:15...it was a late night for us.

When they finished up they got cheered back on by standing ovation and screams/whistles and cheers. It was downright deafening! My ears were ringing from it! The place was pretty much packed.

H's mom and stepdad looked after the kids for us and then we came home and basically said goodnight!

House and car!

So we moved!

We are tired, filthy, the house is full of boxes, the recycling bins are stuffed, there were 8 bags of garbage out at the end of the driveway this morning, and we are HAPPY.

We are just taking our time to get everything into the right places. We are just finding things as we need them and then putting them away. It's amazing how much stuff that little rowhouse held. We we first moved to this city, we came up in a little cubevan stuffed to the hilt. When we moved this time, we did 3 much larger truckloads stuffed to the hilt and then another half of a load on the 2nd day to clear out some straggling belongings.

We are absolutely in love with our house. It is so great to have so much space everywhere both inside and out! We basically spent all weekend outside. The kids played in the 8'x8' (!!!) sandbox, went on the swings, picked strawberries and raspberries in the garden, or simply ran like maniacs all over the place.

On our latest national holiday, we shot off a load of fireworks in our backyard in an effort to blow out our eardrums, burn off our fingers and get eaten alive by mosquitos. The kids had sparklers and they thought those were great. 'A' burned her thumb and finger when it went out and she touched it...poor girl. She ended up with two huge blisters.

So, we picked up the car last night too! It is so great. It handles almost gokart-like. Good power, comfortable, lots of room inside too!

Cheers!

Chuck Norris is hairy

Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.

MacGyver can build an airplane out of gum and paper clips, but Chuck Norris can kill him and take it.

Chuck Norris once roundhouse kicked someone so hard that his foot broke the speed of light, went back in time, and killed Amelia Earhart while she was flying over the Pacific Ocean.

Chuck Norris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

If you ask Chuck Norris what time it is, he always says, "Two seconds till." After you ask, "Two seconds to what?" he roundhouse kicks you in the face.

Rather than being birthed like a normal child, Chuck Norris instead decided to punch his way out of his mother's womb. Shortly thereafter he grew a beard.

Chuck Norris appeared in the "Street Fighter II" video game, but was removed by Beta Testers because every button caused him to do a roundhouse kick. When asked bout this "glitch," Norris replied, "That's no glitch."

Since 1940, the year Chuck Norris was born, roundhouse kick related deaths have increased 13,000 percent.

Chuck Norris sold his soul to the devil for his rugged good looks and unparalleled martial arts ability. Shortly after the transaction was finalized, Chuck roundhouse kicked the devil in the face and took his soul back. The devil, who appreciates irony, couldn't stay mad and admitted he should have seen it coming. They now play poker every second Wednesday of the month.

Filming on location for Walker: Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris brought a stillborn baby lamb back to life by giving it a prolonged beard rub. Shortly after the farm animal sprang back to life and a crowd had gathered, Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked the animal, breaking its neck, to remind the crew once more that Chuck giveth, and the good Chuck, he taketh away.

Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.

Chuck Norris built a time machine and went back in time to stop the JFK assassination. As Oswald shot, Chuck met all three bullets with his beard, deflecting them. JFK's head exploded out of sheer amazement.

Chuck Norris was the fourth Wiseman. He brought baby Jesus the gift of "beard". Jesus wore it proudly to his dying day. The other Wisemen, jealous of Jesus' obvious gift favoritism, used their combined influence to have Chuck omitted from the Bible. Shortly after all three died of roundhouse kick related deaths.

To prove it isn't that big of a deal to beat cancer, Chuck Norris smoked 15 cartons of cigarettes a day for 2 years and acquired 7 different kinds of cancer only to rid them from his body by flexing for 30 minutes. Beat that, Lance Armstrong.

There is no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard. There is only another fist.

The original theme song to the Transformers was actually "Chuck Norris--more than meets the eye, Chuck Norris--robot in disguise," and starred Chuck Norris as a Texas Ranger who defended the earth from drug-dealing Decepticons and could turn into a pick-up. This was far too much awesome for a single show, however, so it was divided.

The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain.

Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.

When Chuck Norris plays Oregon Trail his family does not die from cholera or dysentery, but rather roundhouse kicks to the face. He also requires no wagon, since he carries the oxen, axles, and buffalo meat on his back. He always makes it to Oregon before you.

It was once believed that Chuck Norris actually lost a fight to a pirate, but that is a lie, created by Chuck Norris himself to lure more pirates to him. Pirates never were very smart.

Chuck Norris recently had the idea to sell his urine as a canned beverage. We know this beverage as Red Bull.

If you can see Chuck Norris, he can see you. If you can't see Chuck Norris you may be only seconds away from death.

Chuck Norris can mathematically make two wrongs equal a right.

When Chuck Norris's wife burned the turkey one Thanksgiving, Chuck said, "Don't worry about it honey," and went into his backyard. He came back five minutes later with a live turkey, ate it whole, and when he threw it up a few seconds later it was fully cooked and came with cranberry sauce. When his wife asked him how he had done it, he gave her a roundhouse kick to the face and said, "Never question Chuck Norris."

The quickest way to a man's heart is with Chuck Norris's fist.

Chuck Norris died ten years ago, but the Grim Reaper can't get up the courage to tell him.

Chuck Norris won 'Jumanji' without ever saying the word. He simply beat the living **** out of everything that was thrown at him, and the game forfeited.

Jesus' Birthday isn't December 25 but Chuck Norris once sent him a birthday card for that day, Jesus was too scared to tell Chuck the truth. That's why we celebrate Christmas.

After much debate, President Truman decided to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima rather than the alternative of sending Chuck Norris. His reasoning? It was more "humane".

Similar to a Russian Nesting Doll, if you were to break Chuck Norris open you would find another Chuck Norris inside, only smaller and angrier.

Went for les vacances...

So we had a great time of vacation!

We stayed at a place that H grew up in. Her parents built the place once upon a time. It was great. It was HUGE (likely about 4000 sq.ft.), with a grand foyer, a sitting room, a living room, formal dining room and an enormous kitchen that looked out on a river valley, forests and many many hills in the distance.

There were 4 large bedrooms upstairs with a formidable view from the master bedroom. The entire house was done in gorgeous red-brown hardwood and red-brown stained trim. It is surrounded by 140 acres of forest and farmland. The backyard had wonderfully done landscaping and a pool (that was there before). We had great weather for the most part and enjoyed the pool numerous times. E learned how to doggy-paddle and how to do a backfloat on his own. He has had some challenges with swimming, but conquered them in a few short days in the pool. A loved getting into the pool too and wanted to go in at every spare moment when she wasn't cuddling with her babies or having a bottle.




H was so excited to be there and loved the rush of memories that came back with every little detail. I had a wonderful time too since I had always heard of this wonderous place and all the fun that they had, but thought I would never have the chance to see it. I thoroughly enjoyed it.










We were staying with H's mom and stepdad, H's bro and his wife, and had visits from H's nana and also from H's uncle and cousin who drove up from not too far away.

It was exciting that there are many windmills (~25+) for generating power nearby. On the way home, we saw about 40+ additional mills. It's great!

A great time was had by all. It was a nice introduction to 'country life' for later this week.

Some pictures so that I can have an image for my profile!

And these are my dad's!

 

These are also my mom's paintings!