Surfergeeks

If you’ve sent me email recently I may not have seen it. Sunday night/Monday morning around 2am I ended up having to do a nuke and pave on Psyduck which, of course, deleted my Outlook. I’m just now getting to the point of re-installing Office so I have email back. I’ve been checking my primary accounts via webmail thought for anything important but if it went to a secondary email address it may take a while for me to get to it

That’s right, today is my last shift. Well, my last shift before Tracy comes back from holidays. WOOT! WOOT!

Getting tired of working with a bunch of boys all the time.

Make sure you wash your hands immediately after cutting up jalepeno peppers. Especially, if you have an unconscious habit of touching your face.

My god, did my face burn for a while after cutting up the jalepenos for dinner today! Even after washing my face with soap and water, it burned for another 20 minutes!

This post is inspired by two recent things. First was the season premiere of Survivor. Second was an article I read in the London Free Press today about satellite signal piracy.

Part of the CRTC’s beef with American satellite systems is that they can’t control the Canadian content – which erodes our culture.

While watching Survivor on Thursday night I mentioned to Nikki that we have no culture. This was prompted by the rite of passage ritual that natives on the island performed to allow the visiting contestants access to the island.

Think about it – what truly is our culture? Hockey games and beer??? Hell, hockey isn’t even our official national sport – lacrosse is. We’ve got no culture. Any culture we had went away a LOONNGGGG time ago…our culture now-a-days is television and fast-food.

I know some of you out there are going to have strong feelings on this topic. That’s what the comments field is for.

Okay class – discuss.

My taxes are finally done!!!!! They got mailed off on Wednesday. Unfortunately, my former co-workers at Domino’s seemed to apparently been mis-informed regarding total deductions. Either that or they lied through their teeth on their taxes. Between my one year’s refund and the 4 years GST credit it basically equals what I had to pay the other three years.

So no big refund for me. Which sucks. Ah well, the most important part is that the taxes are now done so we can go get pre-approved for a mortgage! Our original goal was to be in the house this month. Now our new goal is to be in the house by Christmas.

Of course the first step is the mortgage. We haven’t talked to the guy we’re probably gonna use for our mortgage. He’s a former manager of ours from McDonald’s. To the best of our knowledge he liked both of us a lot so we should get a good deal. The online calculators are all telling us that with our income and debt load we should be pre-approved for around $160K. We figure probably closer to $140K (since online calculators lie). Ideally I’d like to find a house in the $100-120K range that may need a bit of work. I’m not talking anything major like a new roof or foundation repairs or anything like that. I mean more along the lines of re-painting, maybe some minor plumbing, electrical, etc. – stuff that we can do while we live in it.

Whew it’s been a long week. Each day prior to today (not counting Sunday) was at least 11 hour days. Today, thankfully, is only a standard 9 hour day. Then I’m off for 3 days straight!!!! Woohoo!!!!

God, I hate headaches. Came home early today because of a headache. Damn stupid thing started yesterday morning, too!!

I’m going to bed now. Wake me up in two days, maybe it will be gone by then.

So, my parents will have the internet soon. Helped them hook it up and sign them up on Sunday. It’s not activated yet, but will be soon. It’s Sympatico dial-up. Although, not a fast connection, it will be best for my parents and brother. This will be their first real experience using the computer. I’m sure they have never turned it on, since I’ve given it to them.

So, I excpect to be over there a lot showing them how to use it. I have to be anyway. I have set them up with Zone Alarm, Adaware is already on the computer. Plus, they will need to set their email. So, lots of work for me. But it will be cool to email my parents and chat with them on Messenger. Of course, I will have to teach them to use that too.

I just love this city…

But, you’re not gonna believe this…for once the city is doing the right thing. (well, at least I think so).

For those that know London you know that we just spent millions and millions of dollars on our downtown core. We’ve got the JLC – a premiere arena that is selling more tickets than many larger arenas around North America and the World. We’ve also just relocated the central library from its asbestos filled, antiquated old building to its completely renovated and re-designed home it what was once the only shopping mall in the downtown core. One of the local real-estate developers is in the process of building two residential towers that will bring more people living downtown. This is the key. For a downtown (or at least OUR downtown) to be successful it has to have people living there. We’ve built the amenities, now we just have to wait for the people to come.

To further this, the city is encouraging development of new places to live in the downtown area. Well, obviously, there really isn’t much open space left downtown. Yes, there are some parking lots – but people do need to park too…

In yesterday’s Free Press a story ran about how there’s going to be a new apartment built downtown. To do this will require the demolition of 3 buildings. This building will overlook Eldon House – a historically significant part of London’s heritage, as well as the mighty (*pfft, snicker*) Thames. It’s not going to be a cheap place to live. The article made mention of $1200/month for a two-bedroom. I haven’t seen any drawings or plans, but you can bet your ass that it’s going to be nice.

Anyhoo…today’s Free Press has a story about how the “London Advisory Committee on Heritage”, a bunch of architects with seemingly far too much time on their hands, is opposed to the demolition of these three houses. These buildings do not have heritage status but are listed as “priority two” on the city’s inventory of heritage resources – whatever the hell that means. George Goodlet, the committee chair, says that while he supports downtown renewal he believes that there is vacant land to do it in. Hmm…let’s think about this a minute or so here Georgie-boy: If you were thinking of plopping down 1200 smack-a-roos a month where would rather live – a kickass, modern, luxourious apartment overlooking a beautifully landscaped mansion, a park, and our namesake river; or a kickass, modern, luxourious apartment that overlooks the rooftops of some beatup, ancient business in the core area because the only vacant land IS the parking lots around the older core buildings? (whew-talk about run-on sentences) Oh yeah – sorry people on the first three floors – you just get to look into the windows of the people already living downtown above the mainfloor businesses.

George, and the rest of the LACH – give your collective head a shake. You, as architects, should understand location.

As I mentioned above, for once I’m siding with the city here. Coun. Cheryl Miller seems to have summed up the situation beautifully. From the Free Press:

Well said Cheryl! Good God, next I’ll be agreeing with Coun. Susan Eagle…nah…