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I am moving

I have been complaining for some while now about the limitations of the Microsoft Live blogs. I was especially annoyed by the fact that I couldn’t even access the site using Firefox on my Linux desktop — which is has had zero problems thus far, and has taken over as my primary computer at home.

Through a series of hyperlinks, I found myself on the blogger website. It appears that google owns blogger, and since I have a gmail account, I was halfway setup for having a blogger account. So I went the whole nine yards, and set up a blog to replace this one. I expect this will be my last post on this blog. Future updates will be found on my new and improved blog page, http://lesbonneschoses.blogspot.com/ now with gender agreement between subject and adjective!

Indoctrination

Rebecca sent me a picture of a stranger’s baby. She most likely found it on one of her knitting blogs, who is in all likelihood married to a nerd. Or is a nerd herself. Clearly, there is some kind of correlation going on here. Well, anyways, here is the shirt:

I needs me one of those for Pokey. Not that I’m a nerd. Nor is Pokey. It’s just too funny to not want.

Developmental trajectory

Today, Pokey and I are wearing the same outfit: an orange waffle-weave crewneck pullover and navy blue pants (his are fleece; mine are denim). You will submit to the cuteness.

 

I also wanted to post an update that I think is kind of interesting from a concept-development sort of perspective (which is what I do for a living). I noticed yesterday (or maybe it was the day before) that Pokey, who is turning 1 on Sunday, has learned that keys are things that are somehow used in locks, which are in turn found on doors. Carrying him past our keyholder, he points at the keys to tell me he wants to go over there. There, he grabs a key. He then points to the door and does the same thing. Standing at lock level beside the door, he touches the key to the deadbolt. One of the things that we never know in concept development is the trajectory for learning about things in the world. This anecdote will probably find its way into a talk sometime.

Baby’s first steps

Today Pokey made his (alleged) first steps. I say alleged because there’s no telling what he does when we’re not around. Like those fanciful stories of toys that come alive or animals that act like people when nobody is watching. He’s a little daredevil, that Pokey. He’s been running and jumping for awhile, I’m sure of it.

 

Speaking of running for awhile, I went in for the 3rd time to try and make the cut for an athsma study at the Robarts center. They were testing a medication and an MRI imaging technique on people with exercise induced athsma, with which I was first diagnosed in June ’06. I’ll skip the back story, and get right to the part where I showed up two Mondays ago to see if I was a candidate for the study. I followed the instructions they sent the previous Friday. I kept them, so I was able to refer back to it and confirm my non-idiocy when they had to halt the test because I had taken Benadryl 9 hours prior. According to their procedure (but not their email), I was not allowed to take Benadryl for 48 hours. So I had to rebook the test for Wednesday. It also meant that I had to play soccer that night without taking my puffer. I have moved to defense, so that was much easier than it would have been had I remained in midfield (sorry, defense players, I don’t mean to insinuate that your position is easy).

 

I went in last Wednesday, and they put me on the treadmill. They had a heart monitor, and kept talking about staying in the target rate so I followed along with their speed suggestions. Turned out they were just being cautious with the speed suggestion because some people tend to exaggerate when describing their fitness levels. Well, I was unable to induce an athsma attack that day, nor again yesterday because I only reliably get them when I sprint (though I did run through an attack at the 5K Run for the Cure 2 years ago). I am not aware of a treadmill on which one can safely sprint. And as the treadmill challenge requires 4-6 minutes of exertion, it’s also hard to cover 5K in that time without sprinting either. Stupid limbo lungs. Too crappy for sports, too healthy for their damn study. It’s like the opposite of goldilocks. 

Pocoyo 2 is almost here

There is a cartoon called Pocoyo that Rebecca and I like to watch with Pokey. Okay, I admit it — Pokey sometimes watches it with us. I don’t know why I find it so amusing, but there you go. Anyways, Season 2 should be airing soon, if it hasn’t started already. I learned this from the official Pocoyo blog, which features behind the scene details on the Spanish children’s cartoon. From that site is a preview clip, which you have to admit, is pretty slick, and I think rather humourous.

So there you go. That’s Pocoyo, just so you know what I’m on about. We’re looking into making Pokey a Pocoyo costume for Hallowe’en this year. They sort of look alike. I think it’s the cheeks. Oh, and hey, wasn’t Ellie’s model strut great? Right out of ANTM. I couldn’t have done better myself – just ask the girls in the Jared lab.

Edit: Also worth mentioning is that ANTM started up again. And there’s a girl on there with a name like "Ridiculeuse". No, seriously.

Layabout

It’s been awhile, I know. Again, I blame my computer situation: can’t edit these pages from my only functioning desktop computer at home because this website uses broken HTML that Firefox 2 on Linux won’t tolerate. Still considering retiring this blog and moving over to blogspot.

 

So this weekend we jointly celebrated Erin’s birthday (which was Saturday the 15th) and mine (which is tomorrow, the 18th). Rebecca’s parents gave my a gift bag brimming with chocolates, most of them decadent. My sister- and brother-in-law also gave me the traditional 1lb fancy chocolate bar (and RONA gift certificate, to be spent on a stand for my compunt miter saw). So all this means is that it’s a damn good thing that I am playing soccer and ultimate frisbee this fall, or else I would be extremely fat. It also means that I will be asking for liposuction and a new insulin-producing pancreas for Christmas.

 

The other thing is that when we came back from dinner to pick up Pokey, there was a box of junk that Rebecca’s dad brought up for her to go through. In this box was a shoebox filled with academic award plaques, of which I don’t recall ever having any. So that lead me to wonder: how is it that I got to finish 3 university degrees, and am working on a PhD in the area of cognitive neuroscience, but never received, oh I don’t know, maybe a science award or something?

Working under the hard sun

Today was the last day of summer. Labour day. Funny how the day end up being used by many to do work around the house. I used it to finish my second utility shelf for the garage. I finished half the job by noon, when Alan came over and we went and rented a nice bloody movie called Pathfinder, featuring barbarians. Miranda and Alex came by to borrow a drill partway through the movie, so it seems they were getting things done today as well. By the time Alex had returned with the drill, I was just finishing up the shelf, so I got my summer shelving project in just under the wire.

 

After I cleaned myself up, I resumed my search for a song. The other day on the radio, I heard an Eddie Vedder cover of a song I remembered hearing long ago. I looked it up. The song is called Hard Sun, from the album Big Harvest buy a guy working under the name Indio. Anyways, it was a good song at the time. I don’t blindly support the argument that remakes are never as good as the original. I think when a remake comes out, and a younger generation flocks to it, people who remember the original play the "remakes suck" card as a way of reclaiming the song. Basically the music world’s equivalent of "what evr u n00b… u r teh suxx0r". It’s just elitism, in my opinion. However, in this particular case, I quite prefer the original, mostly because I don’t care much for Eddie Vedder’s singing. I shall have to come up with a witty characterization of it sometime for a future blog. Anyways, the original CD by Gordon Peterson, working under the band name Indio, is out of print. Can’t find it for sale online through any online stores, except used for a great sum of cash. Nor is it available electronically, except through a dodgy russian mp3 site. Guess I’ll have to keep my eye out at used CD stores, or else on ebay.

 

And now, off to bed. Tomorrow is the first day of school, after all (well, sort of. It’s buddy day).

Good with the ladies

Tonight I’m hanging with my main man John at his house, playing board games. I lost all 3 times, so I decided to go upstairs and sulk. Okay, not really. We’re finished for the night, which is good because it’s almost 2am. But before I went to bed, I wanted to write about one of the stories I had forgotten. It’s a quickie, so it should be okay to blog about it this time of day.

 

When we were in Texas, on the 2nd last night there, Jude was with Rebecca in our guest room. I think Rebecca was knitting, with Jude on the floor beside her, sort of keeping her eye on him out of the corner of her eye, I suppose, because she hadn’t noticed what he was playing with. When I came into the room, I found him with my cellphone in hand. Not only was it turned on, but he was 45 seconds into a phone call with Allison. That call was on hold. He was in the middle of dialing Miranda when I got the phone from him. Long distance. From Texas. On a cellphone. I’m going to have to teach that boy about roaming charges. He’s going to have to tell me how he got to be such a playa. And also, how to put someone on hold with my phone.

Your tax dollars at work

In the last week, more than one potential blog topic occurred to me. Unfortunately, I didn’t act on any of them as they entered my mind, and as a result, I forgot all but one, which perhaps doesn’t even merit its own entry, but I’ll mention it anyways, for lack of anything better to talk about. I received in the mail one of those Government of Canada envelopes that gets under my skin precisely because it originated from the Canadian Revenue Agency. I wouldn’t mind gathering some statistics about the number of Canadians that receive notices of reassessment, etc. from them so I can determine for myself whether my belief that they have it in for me is baseless or not. Anyways, I opened up the envelope to find that they sent me a notice for my quarterly tax installment. How much did they say I owed? $0.00, which is less than the value of the paper and postage used in their notification that told me something I already knew.