The Fury is going to hit the Fan

The kids, particularly Melissa and John, are tired of Steve’s “art” in the front yard, as am I but I have given up doing anything about them.

One of the pieces is a head that was supposed to be an Aztec type head. It stands about 3 feet high and about 2 ½ to 3 feet wide. He didn’t finish it the summer he was working on it so he had it brought home to complete. At some point, the nose got knocked off so he started to recarve the face but that never got finished. The other two smaller pieces are, if I remember correctly, trilobytes.

Anyway, Mel decided to do something about it so she called the City art department and asked them if they were missing any pieces. To make a long story short, apparently the City is coming on Monday with a crane to pick up their missing pieces.

Mel is planning to take Steve for lunch tomorrow to break the news to him – I do not want to be anywhere nearby when she tells him.

Mel is not having a good day!

She got into the doctor today for a follow-up concerning her wrist. The last ex-rays she had showed her wrist was doing well – unfortunately this set said something quite different. Apparently her wrist has not healed at all and so she is essentially where she was back in June when she fell.

She needs to have surgery in October and they will screw her wrist in place then she will have to wear a cast then graduate into a removable cast. She will likely be off work for 3-4 weeks.

She recently found out that she needs to do 3 courses to graduate in February with the rest of her class – she had forgotten about one she didn’t pass early on that needs to be completed.

So, between her wrist, full time work (or not!), 3 courses and planning for a May wedding, she is a bit stressed out and I don’t blame her a bit.

Steve took my mom’s car in for an out-of-province inspection so we could give it to Mel. He found out it needs about $1,600 of work – new rotors, brakes, gas tank (there is a leak from rust in the current one!) and I don’t know what else. Mel had planned to pay for whatever it needed but I don’t think that will happen now. I guess this might be our wedding present to her now – just a bit early but there you go.

Welcome to the newest Member of our Family:

Do you remember Kojak with Telly Savalas. Well, the newest addition to this family is called Tele Scope!


Steve has always been interested in astronomy – he likes reading about them and we have been to the Planetarium a few times but not all that often. A few years ago I brought home a UK magazine called Sky & Telescope that he read every time.

About 2 weeks ago, he went up to Didsbury, a small town about 45 minutes north of Calgary, to look at some telescopes. He came home with a little one for $75 and I thought that was that. WRONG! BIG TIME WRONG! He got bitten by the telescope bug.

Apparently he came home and ordered a telescope from the States. It arrived a few days later – the case itself is about 3 feet by 1 ½ feet by 1 ½ feet. It looks like a small steamer trunk. On Friday, he and his friend Bert drove to Didsbury again and brought home the mount. I don’t yet know how much the scope itself cost but apparently the mount cost about $1,600 so I guess the scope itself was at least the much if not more. And this is from the man who can’t stand the cold – it is supposed to snow this weekend so I don’t think he will get much use out of it in the near future.

I wanted it out of the living room so I could vacuum so it got moved to the guest room. We now have to keep the blind in the guest room closed so it doesn’t harm the scope! I hope none of our guests suffer from being in the dark.

The entire thing now needs a power source so the GPS can follow the stars or some such thing – I am afraid that my mind glazes over after I hear the words “and now I need”.

Because it weights quite a bit (the mount is about 40-50 pounds without the scope), Steve can’t move it himself so he has to rely on James to help. I asked what will happen with James moves out – apparently by then he will have a small observatory in the backyard – does it never end.

The pink stick in the photos if my yard/meter stick so you can see just how big this silly thing is.

Oh, apparently one of the greatest thing about this scope is that you can attach a camera directly to it!

Vanity Plates

While I have a cat and at our most catful (is so a word!) house, we had 3 but I still found this license plate holder to be amusing. In case you can’t read it easily, it says “Cats Flattened While You Wait”.

The second plate was on a nice black Corvette in front of me being driven by a middle-aged blonde woman. Steve says he thinks she chose that plate to let people know she paid for the car herself. I think she got it in a divorce settlement and is quite proud to have acquired it.

Pizza???!!!

The doorbell rang at 2:00 this morning - needless to say Willow was not impressed and ran around madly barking.

I went to the door and asked who was there. It was a pizza delivery but not for us, just a house with a similar address.

I ask you - who orders Pizza at 2 am?

I have to think about this one

Got word that John has been accepted into the Army and will start Basic Training on November 2 in Quebec. Apparently the only area that they had room was in the armoured vehicle unit - whatever that means - I guess we will find out.

I want to be in hot water!

Back in July we had purchased a new washer, dryer and fridge and we thought we were done for a while – it turned out to be a short while! About 10 days ago, the dishwasher died – needless to say with a full load of dirty dishes and dirty water. We ended up taking out the dishes and washing them by hand then I started to bail out the water. With only about 5 containers of water left, it occurred to me to get Steve to get out the wet-dry shop vac to suck out the rest of the water. As a heads-up, the shop vac works really well and much faster than margarine containers!



Last weekend we went to Home Depot and bought a new dishwasher that was delivered on Thursday. It is quite pretty but not yet installed. The guys who delivered it first unpacked the wrong unit – I almost got a stainless steel and black model but I think the people who ordered it might have noticed a problem when they received my white unit. Fortunately Steve caught it before they brought it up the stairs so we did end up with the right unit.

Steve unhooked the old unit so it could be taken away when they delivered the new dishwasher. He had had to turn off the water to the dishwasher while it was out. We seemed to be missing a part that was needed to install the new dishwasher so he thought he would get it on Friday while he was out and about.

On Friday morning he realized that there was a bit of water leaking so he decided to turn off the water to the hot water tank. When he got downstairs he realized that the tank was bulging and has rusted down the seam and around the bottom. He tried to turn off the shut-off valve but it didn’t close completely so he decided to turn off the water to the entire house. This was fine in theory but…. He called Home Depot and ordered a new hot water tank and they said it would be delivered on Saturday.

On Saturday, when the hot water tank had not arrived by 3:00 we called Home Depot again. We were then told that the plumbers DON’T do hot water tanks on Saturdays! I told them that I am tired to getting buckets of water from the neighbours outside tap in order to flush the toilet. The girl agreed that was not reasonable so she called a manager and they managed to contact the plumbers who are willing to do this as a emergency call. The plumber called about 5:30 and said he could be here about 10 tonight or early tomorrow morning. We have decided that we can wait until tomorrow morning.

While I won’t kiss the plumber when he arrives, I will be anxiously waiting for a shower and running water to brush my teeth. It can be done with bottled water (while Calgary has good water, I am not willing to use the outside water after it has run through the hose) but it is a slow process. We also have a load of dishes that need washing that I can’t do until I have running water or the dishwasher. James suggested that we use the hose water then boil it and add cold hose water and wash the dishes that way. Quite frankly, I am not that averse to eating out for a few more meals (I think I will pass up McDonald’s Sausage & Egg McMuffin tomorrow though) until we get real water. You really don’t realize how much you take things like running water for granted until you are without. I have been to camps without running water but that was a planned adventure, not trying to live in the regular world.

I don’t dare say “what else can go wrong” because I know that is simply tempting the gods. I am thankful for a credit card with a good limit as well as a great job so I can pay it off. G-d is definitely looking after me and my family.

Speaking about family, my Mom phones on Friday evenings but we weren’t home last night and it was too late when we got in for me to phone her. She called again this morning all worried because she was afraid that I might have been at the hospital with Steve but he was able to reassure he that he is as fine as he is likely to be right now. I did call her this afternoon after I got back from a presentation I gave this morning and reassured her again that we are all fine.

My dinner on Saturday night:

Steve

A friend was asking how Steve is. My normal answer is “alive”.

Back in April, when he ended up in hospital, they decided after his angiogram and umpteen other tests, that he had had 11 heart attacks. His diabetes was out of control and there really wasn’t much good news except that he was treatable.

Except for the night where we had a false alarm and he apparently had chest wall pain, his heart has not been causing any problems that he has told me about.

Months ago, I told him I was worried because his breathing while he is sleeping was not regular. He ended up wearing a monitor for a night. He finally got to see the sleep specialist last week. That doctor said that while Steve is not suffering from typical sleep apnea, his sleep patterns are not normal so they will be booking him into the hospital for a one night stay to do further research. The doctor is hoping he will get in sometime this month or at least by early October. He may end up needing oxygen at night or to wear a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine at night. His lack of quality sleep is impacting his getting better. He is tired most of the day so he has catnaps then he is not really tired at night so he has very restless sleep so he is tired most of the day and so on and so on.

Since he has been on insulin for his diabetes, our doctor is pleased with his blood sugar levels. He is still not testing as often as suggested but the testing that is done every few months and that shows the average sugar levels over the previous three months has been good.

He is still doing his art work. This is one of his acrylic sculptures that is currently in our living room. It stands about 2 ½ feet high and about 18 inches across the bottom.


He was talking to owner of the foundry that is producing the next piece and apparently they are quite excited about the new piece. I know he is rather anxious to see the finished piece too.

A Different Kind of Homecoming

I had to go out on Thursday evening after supper. On my return home, just before turning into my cul-de-sac, there were several police cruisers and a few cops with their bullet-proof vests on looking into the townhouses that back onto my yard. I thought it looked interesting (what can I say, I was tired!) and briefly contemplated taking Willow out for a walk to see what the excitement was about. I immediately rethought that and decided to stay in.

When I pulled into the driveway, I realized that Steve had gone to pickup James from soccer tryouts because the van wasn’t home. When I opened the front door, it seemed strange that Willow didn’t come barreling out but I realized that Steve had put her in her kennel which we aren’t doing these days usually but I thought, Oh Well.

Then I saw this note:

Sure enough, I went and had a look through our bedroom window and could just barely make out the sniper, hiding under/next to the tree. Our backyard is a 2 level yard – we call the area that is lower and next to the fence “the moat”.

Steve found out about him because he let Willow out into the yard and she went running to the edge of the moat and started to bark and wouldn’t quit. Steve thought that maybe a dog or cat got into our yard so he went over to grab her and found the sniper in the yard. The sniper said he had a clear shot to the house they were watching and he was able to stay moderately hidden.

Apparently a gun had been shot and the bullet had entered the next townhouse unit. It was reported to the police so they turned up. About 9:30 at night, they had managed to get their robot into the unit and realized that whoever had shot the gun was no longer in the unit. For quite a while, we had a "Hawks" police helicopter cruising overhead. At one point, Steve called me and suggested I turn off our security motion-sensors so the cop would not set them off.

According to the radio report the next day the individuals who lived in the unit where the shot originated “were known to the police”.

Men!

Earlier this week, my co-worker, Bart, who took us to the Extractor Plant a few weeks ago, was in with his daughter, Torie, who is about 8. He looked rather disheveled and was wearing a baseball cap. This is not his normal attire and Torie should have been in school.

When I asked what was happening, he said he had been up since 1 am. I asked why and he said that his wife, Sue, had been out on their deck trying to make noise to scare some coyotes who were bothering the horses. She made a misstep and fell off the deck about 10 feet, landing on gravel. Emergency Services were there in less than 10 minutes and took her to the hospital.

I talked to Torie for a few minutes and she said she is trying to convince her parents to get her a dog like Willow. They already have a Great Pyrenees named Gwen. We briefly discussed bringing Willow to meet Gwen and Torie and they could play together.

I asked Bart on Friday how Sue was doing and apparently she has a fractured wrist.

Steve and I were talking yesterday about what we wanted to do today. We had already arranged to meet some friends for breakfast and we needed to go out and buy a new dishwasher – my appliances must be in cahoots – the dishwasher was missing the old fridge so it decided to die! Steve said he also wanted to go for a drive to nowhere in particular, taking some back roads and maybe taking his camera.

I thought we could kill two birds (or maybe even more) with one stone. I called Bart and sort of invited ourselves over to their place for Monday dinner. I figured we could bring the food (and save Sue making one meal) and the dog. They could supply the child, the other dog, a trip down back roads (to get to their place) and a place to take pictures – from their deck that overlooks the Rockies.

Bart said that should work and he would be seeing Sue in the afternoon and would tell her then. I asked where she was and apparently she is still in the hospital and would be discharged today! I immediately rescinded our self-invitation and said we would consider it next weekend. The fact that Bart was even willing to consider it is mind-boggling! As I said - Men!