Driving Miss Daisy...

We headed for Teen and Chris' place yesterday. I spent the night before printing out maps and studying the route on the way to Tresa's Promised Land, ie. Woodbury Common Mall. From the Streets & Trips application it said it would take us 9.5 hours to get there. Well I made it there in under 8 hours. And we got lost for about 15 minutes after taking the wrong exit, but we quickly got back on track.

So we got there at 6pm. And spent next three hours trying to see all the stores. Tresa managed to get a whole wack of stuff cheap at Williams-Sonoma, I think she went to Tumi, Kate Spade, Kenneth Cole. And I got to go to Addidas, Puma, and Nike. Oh and Diesel. I managed to buy some stuff at Nike town real cheap for some kids' up-coming birthdays. That's the key for handling all these birthdays for the nieces and nephews. Get something cheap. But something they like. Give them a toy every now and then. Not something noisy otherwise the parents will get that for your kid. As payback!

Hey did you know you don't pump your own gas in a lot of US states? One gas station we went to I automatically went out and pumped gas into the car. The old lady in front I guess was waiting a while and said "Are we supposed to pump our own gas?" I said SURE. Then the gas attendant came and said "Are you crazy?" Whoops.

I was up til 2am the night before getting ready for the trip down. So I was a little tired on the drive, but when I get drowsy, I munch on something. Keeps me awake. So I ate like a whole bag of carrots, cucumbers, grapes, some pepperettes we bought at the Home Show on the weekend. Only problem was I had to go to the can more often. And I could smell the pepperettes every time I burped. Well it didn't bother me, but Tresa made me pop up the sunroof every time I did it. And it was like -24 deg Celsius outside and with the windchill it was probably like -40. For you american folk -24 is like -11 (tempC*9/5 + 32).

I had planned to take a break every 2-3 hours for Tresa to move around. I just got to say Gas Bar washrooms are gross. The rest areas on the US highways are awesome! Nice and clean. Just watch out for the truckers, remember the movie "Something about Mary."

So we did pretty good at Woodbury. With so little time, I took a walk about while Tresa was in W-S. Just to see what's around. Then I saw the information building and got a map and directory of the outlet. I started to think, hey this is like the Amazing Race: Woodbury Common Edition. So I scanned it for the stores I wanted to see. So that's what we did, cool beans eh?

The outlet is just about 2 hours north east of Teen and Chris. Pretty easy to get to. All by highway. I'm just so glad there was no traffic. Thank God.
Funny thing when we were leaving the outlet at 9pm, the announcement came on saying that the mall is closing and will reopen in the morning at 10am, well the announced it in English, and I think in Japanese. There were asians there. Man can't get away from them. Like a virus.

I noticed that there were a lot of state troopers out. One Qweee-Becker got caught just over the Cornwall border crossing. Heh. But at night I didn't see any. There must have been a sale on donuts APB.

Wipe on...wipe off

Anyone know that Huggies wet wipes aren't as good as Pampers wet wipes?
Well this is something you learn as you become a father or mother. Me being the father. Well father-to-be. I went to buy the wipes as an inventory strategy for when the baby arrives in April. The Just In Time stuff strategy just doesn't work in this scenario.

Apparently 10 out of 10 mothers agree, that Huggies falls apart when you're wiping your kids crack. Falling apart is not a good thing, when that little wet piece of paper is all that separates you and the fecal matter, ie. crap!
In any event, I've commissioned Tresa to start stocking up on latext gloves or non-latext gloves. Whatever. I've still got my heavy duty orange ones just in case we run out. You know the ones with the ridges in the fingers for grip.
So I return the Huggies wipes a week later. I went during a weekday, cause you don't want to go to Wal-Mart to return something to customer service on a weekend. Otherwise you'll be there till the following monday. The line is full of people with shopping cart full of stuff. And some of the stuff is open. Like a can of beans. Customer Service person asks "why are you returning this? Is it bad? Did you find a finger in it?" Shopper replies "No, cause my husband ate some and he's generating enough gas to power our outdoor bbq."

So I returned the Huggies wipes. The lady didn't even ask me why. Guess she's a mother. She just gave me the money and off I went. I went to the baby section to check if the pampers wipes, by CHANCE, were in. I found them, packed in some corner, not even on display. I picked up one 400pk box and scanned it under one of those scanners in the isles, and yup they were on sale for $13.87. Woo hoo, my lucky day. Don't have to wait for another flyer.

Did you hear that Dave, they're on sale. Go empty out your truck. And there's no limit.
ATTENTION ALL SHOPPERS out there! Dave's heading to a Wal-Mart near you.

As I was walking around a mother asked me where I got them. See...no one asked me where I got the Huggies. Pampers wet wipes have got to be better. But I forgot to use my COUPON! Dam it! See I'm still learning how to be a dad. I'll need a thicker wallet for the coupons and that stretched back pocket in my jeans for the wallet.

Plus timing is also important. When that Wal-Mart flyer comes out and it announces sales on baby items. You'd better go get them. Otherwise mothers with two carts (4 kids in one and the other filled with pizza pockets) will beat you to it. That's another thing I noticed when I was at No-Frills. Some mothers would bring these suitcase style backpacks, walk straight to the pre-packaged deli isle and you know those lunch packs with hot dogs and pizza crap. It has a star trek best before date, star date Oct 1, 3051. The stuff that if you feed it to your kids for 5 straight years, the kid will grow either hair where there shouldn't, like a Hobbit, or another head coming out of the side of their head, and then you have another mouth to feed. They'll start packing that stuff into that backpack like they're getting ready to head to a bombshelter and not see the sky for 20 years. You now who these mothers are. You see em. I'm not going to say who. Buy you people know. You watch. Just stand by that isle or that section and see who comes.

Next time I'm bringing my digital camera. For proof. Like those UFO sightings in the tabloids.

Say my name, say my name....

All night long...All night. That's what our kid's kicking is like. All night. But we could actually see Tresa's belly moving. It was freaking me out.

All I could think of was that we were screwed for sleep when this kid is born. Our OB told us that kids are born like they were just living in a timezone that's 12hrs ahead. Meaning. They're awake at night. Their sleeping habits are totally the reverse when they come out. Why? No one knows. But that's priority on our list.

#1) Fix the kid's sleeping habit ASAP!

So the kid was kicking. Like it wanted out or it wanted us to keep it quiet and turn down volume on the TV cause it was sleeping.

But I then remembered what our OB told us. If you don't feel any kicking for a while drink some juice. Sure enough, on the table was a glass of juice and right away the baby was kicking.

So we've been thinking of names. Both boy and girls names. Can't take all the credit for this one. Hats off to Chris R. He started it. Asked me if we were gonna name our baby "Kid" cause that's how I always referred to it. I remember when I first called the baby IT. The OB looked at us and said "IT?" with a puzzled look. I didn't want to refer to it as girl or boy since no one knows. So out came "IT". So now I just say "kid", cause it's not an "IT" but a living thing.

Anyways what do you people think of the following names? We've thought long and hard on these ones. We wanted something Asian, and European, so the kid would know that it was both.

Hej Yu - could be both boy or girl
Yo Yue
Cam Eer

Com Naw
Ashk Mah - this is if it's a boy
Noah Wei
Goh Awei

and my favourite

Stahp Eet

Pretty good, eh?

New Year, more SukaBoy

Read my lips: "Happy New Year!"
Actually it was more like "....earrrrrrr...", that's what I was saying when I put the camera on timer and pressed the button and my first generation digital camera finally took the picture.
At least my nose was clean when I took the picture. No boogers here man! I'm no barbarian. I'm a clean immigrant. See ma, no coke!



Anyways we spent our new year with our friends.
See all of our friends?


Actually these are our friends. That's FEZ on the left. Anyone watch "That 70's Show". Ya man that's him. He also played Juan Valdez's kid on those coffee commercials. Ask him to say "Boss! Boss! Da plane, da plane!" Now he's all grown up and over 5ft tall. Just don't touch the hair.

Let's start at the beginning of the evening. We left as usual about 30 minutes after we were supposed to arrive at our friend's place. And as usual we forgot something. So we headed back as usual and left again, now we were 40 minutes late. On schedule as always.
I was starving, I had saved my appetite for Anne's dinner. Good thing too. I was stuffed. But very satisfied. Between the food and the wine I needed a nap. And nap I did. I couldn't keep my eyes open. Then Antonio wanted to head to Nathan Phillips for first night. But I think they moved it to the Distillery District and charged 15.00 for entrance, for what? I don't know.

We left with about 15 minutes to go till midnight from Antonio and Anne's condo. Good thing they woke me up. We'd had a great dinner prepared by Anne. All we needed was a waiter. Oh ya that was Antonio. No wonder we didn't leave a tip!
We made it to Nathan Phillips but didn't make it near the stage. We basically got to the corner of Bay and Queen but that was it. It was packed full of people. We got there with less than 2 minutes till midnight. We could barely see the stage and the big screen. But from our position the screen was about the size of the LCD screen on a camera.
We counted down, 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1...Yea! Happy New Year. Thank God it's not minus 20 below. Woo HOO!


Then with about a 10 second delay about 4 fireworks lit up the sky about the port-o-lets. Well spent Toronto Tax Dollars at work.
I was proud and you could see it on my face. Can you see it?


Looks like a lot of red lights on the Yonge St parking lot. Lots of smart people out tonight. At least they won't be drinking and driving.


Hey I didn't know EraserHead was in town?