Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 



Sometimes this poor blog does get neglected. Sometimes it does feel like this blog has suffered the fate of the ark at the end of the Raiders movie, where it's gotten boxed up and hidden away with hundreds of other such boxes in a secret, dusty warehouse whose identity is only revealed later on in a slightly underwhelming sequel that features sad-looking CG groundhogs. That's what this blog might feel like. Only without the CG groundhogs.

But I could post a picture of a CG groundhog if that helps!


...or not. Mel's threatened me with a sharp elbowing to one of my favourite kidneys should I attempt that. Part of the reason for that grossly long-winded analogy is due to the ridiculously busy week preceding the happy reprieve that always is and has been Anime North...followed swiftly by going right back to work as usual. (Which sadly tends to end with me passing out on the couch by 11:30pm.)

There were interesting points of reference across the board, of course, so here we go!


LONG-WEEKEND SATURDAY (BEFORE THE CON)

Mel decided to surprise me by redoing the tiling in our main hall and front entry. And our apartment managers decided to surprise her by painting the doors and replacing the locks for every apartment on our floor. Now I'll admit that while I liked the old floor tiles, the new ones look spectacular and really brighten up an otherwise darker spot in the place.

On the other hand, neither of us were pleased by the fact that we were forced to leave the door to our apartment open for 8 hours that day. Sure, the supers said they had someone on the floor to keep things "secure" but with an L-shaped hallway and 12 apartments to deal with, I know I held little faith in them keeping some random bastard from waltzing on in to our place and sashaying out with some DVDs, a Wii and the dog. Blind luck that Mel happened to have the day off, so she was able to putter around the apartment and keep any prying eyes moving right along.

The pets weren't too pleased, though; our front door had to stay open while it was being painted and then while said paint dried. Shady's not too bad with staying away from the door, but Chance being a cat...well, he's got an unhealthy obsession with the hallway as it is. Both of them had to spend a greater chunk of the day in the bedroom, which normally they don't mind...but in a case like this, if we're around they think being sent to the bedroom is punishment for something bad they did (ie, peeing on the carpet). So the poor twosome ended up thinking that we were angry with them all day when that wasn't even remotely the case.

Grr. Argh. And all that aggravated jazz. (Which would make for a great band name. Tonight's performance will be Aggravated Jazz, featuring hits from their smash breakout album, "Dance Robot Dance!")



LONG-WEEKEND SUNDAY

Work, work and more work. But I volunteered for the shift to help max out my hours for the week, so it was passable. And Mel opted to work at her store too, since I wouldn't be around. So happiness is extra cash in the next paycheck. Then once we got home, I made dinner and washed dishes, while Mel worked on more of the floor retiling. (Subsequently whereafter her kneecaps and back had serious points of contention with her.)

It was then that we discovered we were going to be kidnapped by some friends, Caitlin & Mike, and taken out for a picnic barbecue. I like these sorts of kidnappings. Yet little did we know the horror that would befall us....


Mel: "Why are you being overdramatic?"

Me: "It's a blog, I have to be. Besides, remember what happened that holiday Monday?"

Mel: "Refresh my repressed memory, and you lose a testicle."

Me: "...do I at least get to choose which one I can keep?"




VICTORIA DAY MONDAY

Hooray for a day off! Now we can sit back and relax and...what was that, Mr. Building Super? You need to change out the locks on our door? TODAY?

At the very least, once again the timing ensured we were around and not letting our door be thrown open to chance and random strangers walking off with my Backstreet Boys CD collecti--er, I mean, all our console games. Mel tried to sleep in, and I kept guard as the Super attempted to remove our old deadbolt and install a new one. Theory goes it should take no more than a half hour at most, yes?

Cut to nearly 2 hours later, when our new deadbolt is finally installed and door can be closed. Apparently, our old deadbolt (which preceded our arrival into the apartment) wasn't inside the door but mounted on the back. Great for having it auto-lock behind you so you don't always have to doublecheck and make sure you locked it upon leaving...but not so good if it auto-locks and you forgot your keys inside. (Don't worry, it only happened to Mel once...well, maybe twice.) The back-mounted deadbolt was easy for them to remove, but it also meant they had to drill a hole through the door and the doorframe to get the new locking system in.

Still, you say, shouldn't that be easy with the right drill?

Good news: they had the right drill. Bad news: our door frame had a giant metal plate right overtop where they needed to drill. Even more bad news: this metal plate was fused into the base building structure, and wasn't coming off, period. They had to carefully bore a hole through the metal, slowly enlargening it as they went.

This would be where I facepalmed myself.

And to think, originally they had been planning on finishing up their painting job on some of the other apartment doors, eventually getting to our locks later on in the afternoon. I happened to mention them in passing that morning that we were going to be gone by early afternoon. Guess who didn't have a key for our deadbolt lock, and needed us to be physically present to let them in? Sometimes it pays to see if you can get shuffled up to the top of the priority list. ^-^

Anyhoo, once they left us in peace, we got hastily showered & dressed, and were whisked away to one of the city parks. The weather was beautiful: sunny without being humid. Naturally this meant everyone was at the park. Blind luck we found a spot on a quiet sideroad nearby. We didn't have to walk very far at all.

Mike brought his portable charcoal BBQ and some hotdogs, we brought some drinks & snacks, and everyone spend the entire afternoon and a good chunk of the evening just relaxing. Shady came along, as well as their dog Montie (who adorably resembles a Wookie crossed with a poodle), and they spent most of their time lounging...or in Shady's case, asserting her seniority over another dog three times her size. That's our little diva.

Our picnic ended up being established right next to part of a large figure-8 pond in the park. This was deliberate since we could use the shade from the surrounding trees, and also so Mel could get her fill of sheer cuteness in watching all the ducklings swimming in the pond. And there was cuteness. And she squeed a whole lot that day.

Shady, on the other hand, discovered something new to chase. As some of you may recall, years back she'd taken up a hobby of chasing small birds. That came to an end when she finally caught one. In spite of me & Mel actively allowing her to chase them, she never went all-out the way she used to. This does seem to match Shady's overall personality: it's never the prize she's interested in, it's the chase. And since she caught one bird, all the others no longer seemed interesting to chase.

Then she discovered geese.

Now Shady's pretty well-behaved. As a result, she's off the leash a fair bit, even outside, and she still sticks close to us. We let her off the leash for a bit in the park, assuming she'd be okay. Then the following conversation ensued:

Mel: "Well, I'm not exactly sure why you'd even want to do something like that. It just irritates the--SHADY, NO!!!"

The sudden look of horror on her face was priceless. I spun around just in time to see a little white blur shooting out across the grass, followed quickly by a large flock of geese flinging themselves into the water. Yep, Shady has decided to hunt more exotic quarry. Quarry that's her size if not larger. Needless to say, she went back on the leash for the rest of the day, which she mostly didn't mind, though whenever some large clusters of geese were nearby she strained herself trying to get at them. I did run with her a few times to let her chase a few, but she was leash-locked the whole time. In fact, the only geese that didn't trip over each other trying to escape her were the nannies looking over the goslings. Yeah...we didn't let Shady get anywhere near those ones.

I should also mention the heron we saw in the pond. Beautiful bird, but I'm pretty sure he was stalking us. He was already perched in the water near where we set up our picnic, but after we arrived he kept getting closer and closer, always tipping his head to the side or looking straight at us. I'd be turning around every now and again, only to discover he hadn't left.

Then he tried impress us with his fish-catching skills. Seriously, he nabbed between 5-7 fish while we were there. A lightning jab into the water, and he was pulling out all sorts of fish, usually the latest one being bigger than all of its doomed predecessors. The allure of nature at work quickly ended when he swallowed a particularly large fish, and Mel squeaked about how his neck was wriggling as the fish slid down to his gullet.

Mmmmm, tasty. So, who wants hotdogs?

Anyhoo, the day sailed on by with alarming speed despite us doing very little. Even then, it was a fantastic day off; I need more of these, especially ones where I get paid not to have anyone at the store. Canadian government, take note of this.



TUESDAY - THURSDAY (BEFORE THE CON)

Lots of work, and lots of hours of it. Mel & I both worked full days for Tues/Wed, those being opposite shifts to boot. Not entirely fun, especially when we had to pack and get all of our final bits of prep work done for the impending Con. Mel at least had Thursday off, and was able to relax as she finished off her hitlist.

And me...well, I ate some bread that had gone a few days past its 'best before' date, so I got to spend the evening before the Con throwing up. Yay! But at the end of the night, we were still able to get most everything packed, the dishes washed and the apartment cleaned.

We'll leave the report here for the time being, if anything to leave you foolishly loyal readers with the mental image of me yarfing in the bathroom.

With any luck, you'll be able to sample the concluding bits later today or tomorrow.

Labels: AN10 Pre-Con Report, apartment door fails, don't look but I think that heron is following us, Shady vs geese

posted by Phillip at 4:33 AM