The Confirmation Candidate

See Ryan's face, he couldn't believe how lucky he was. How many guitars could he buy?

Then he realized who this gift was coming from. That's what you get for writing a "dear sponsor" letter.

He was PUNK'd




Kieran thought he was a waiter at the Dim Sum restaurant we were eating at.

Hey waiter, our tea is empty. See lid is off the teapot. Fill it, or no tip for you.

Actually we did leave a tip, a dirty diaper. There were no trash bins anywhere.

You weren't allowed to take any photos in the church. Not sure why. But they said anyone who did, would not be allowed past the pearly gates.

So to add some filler content I included photos from the previous weeks event: Raylan's christening. But Kieran and I were both not feeling well, so there's no photos at the church, just at the house. And kids making bubbles and Bob, looking like he needed to take a nap. Too much Orange-gina and Lemon-gina and Elvie-gina.

And there was some drunk white lady with a heavy southern drawl there too.
Click for a few more photos.

Bus Fare

TTC is ON STRIKE! AGAAAAAAAIIIINNNN!

And they just raised fare prices?
Why? To improve service.
Yeah, more frequent up the behind service to all the folks that use the Toronto public transit.


So at 6:15AM we're on our way to dropping mamma off at work. On our way to the hospital we saw that people were standing on the corners wondering

"Wok da eck? No bus?"

We live in an ethnically diverse city, so the accent was thick when Torontonians were thinking this. Did you that in Toronto, Asians are now the majority population.

People were flagging down taxis, just to get to work. Look on the bright side, today is supposed to be a scorcher and with the TTC strike you won't have to sit beside some big smelly oaf or oaf-ette.

As I walked into the hospital to get a Tims medium coffee and a butter croissant, people were gathering and talking about it. Mostly the women, to gripe and complain about having to cab it to work. It was focused bitterness.

Guess it gave them something new to chit chat about at the watercooler, instead of complaining about work or their husbands, boyfriends or lesbian lovers, or their dog chewing on the latest designer find at Winners.


People were biking, walking and on cellphones to let their employers know that they would be late. Or to find out if buses and trains were running or not.









Kieran was going to make sure that Daycare knew he would be a little late coming in today because of the strike.
He didn't want them to worry.

Sing Sing

Our friends Jin and Jonathan came all the way from Singapore for a visit. This will be the first time they've seen Kieran, in person.

And for some reason they keep bringing rain.

They had to come a couple of times cuz the first time, Kieran was really tired and cranky. Not his normal self. No real photo opportunities.

The second time they came it was much better.

I've learned that if you offer Kieran food, he will come to you. We'll have to train him to be a bit more selective on who's offering food. You never know it could be a psycho.

But while he's under our supervision, just offer him a slice of apple or banana and he'll let you read him a book.



Jonathan's never seen a camera before and that's why he's pointing. "What is that?"


Click here for more photos

Hello, crackle, pop, crackle, hello?

Hissssss, crackle, pop, crackle. I can't hear you. Hisss, crackle.

Ever since Kieran's birthday, our phone line has been staticy and our internet has been up and down ever since.



Q: How many Bell service repair calls does it take to resolve static on the line?
A: It takes three Bell service guys to come by the house. The first two are jokers.

Repair guy #1 was the phantom dude that came to the house 1 day late and left a note on our door indicating that the problem was fixed.
This is what the note said: "Problem is fixed"
hmm... I found it very informative and to the point.
I'm gonna find the yellow slip of paper with this guys name and badge number that he left on our door and have Bell feed it to him up the poop shute and see how he likes it. No lube.

I picked up the line and what did I hear: Crackle, pop, hiss, crackle. Sounds like someone was eating rice crispies with bits of snake.

So I call bell again and got someone to come back and check our line. This time inside the house. I was persuaded to buy into the maintenance fee / month in case there was a problem with the wiring inside the house.

So the second guy came on the Friday and he shows up at end of the day when I'm out. They must wait around the corner, until they see me leave and then show up.

So he comes in the house, points out to Tresa that the wires outside are really old, but doesn't bother to do anything about it and then comes in the house and says the ground on the inside wires is a problem, so he rewires things and then checks our phone and there's still static and says that it's our phones. But just before he showed up, Tresa had checked our phone at our next door neighbours house and it was crystal clear. But his big clunky orange battle ready phone was clear.

And to top it off, the guy doesn't even bother to put the demarc back the way he found it. What the f@($!
So I call Bell again. And complain, every time there's static, I call. I tell them that I've ruled out the phones and don't want the phone care insurance and the steps I've done to arrive at that conclusion.
Then a filipino brother in the form of a Bell repair guy comes to save the day. As soon as he sees our overhead wires he points out the problem. There were splices in our line and after he cut the wires to replace them he came to me to show me where the wires had been comprimised. So every time it got windy and rainy and cold. It was getting into our phone line.

Then he came into our house and took a look at our demarc, and pointed out that the wires weren't even properly grounded! So the last guy screwed it up even more. So if lightning were to strike the pole outside it would have zapped our phone. Then the phone care insurance would have been handy. Pretty sneaky eh?
He didn't leave a badge number, but you can count on me trying to find out who this joker was to make sure that he gets a big boot to the head.

Bell should be thanking this Flip guy for saving me as a Bell customer. He basically prevented me from cancelling everything with Bell and going somewhere else.

But you know what? All the providers are crap.

Daycare Break

He was trying to escape this morning but the warden got him.

Actually he's been getting better at being dropped off at daycare. He now waves bye-bye to me when I leave, but he's bawling his eyes out.

Before, he would clutch on to anything attached to me. And I'd have to pry his fingers open to hand him over. If I put him on the ground he'd have his head between my knees with both arms wrapped around my leg crying - "I didn't do it, I'm innocent! I've been FRAMED!"
It's all in babyspeak, but that's the jist of it.

There's a little boy Benjamin who's always the first to say 'hi Kieran' when I bring him in.
We like this daycare, cause it's like a second home for him, with lots of other kids, 3 are his age around the 1 year mark, and the rest are various ages.

One girl Hahn is the mother of all the 1 year olds and takes care of them and watches them. She's also the daycare watchdog. Asking "who goes there" at the gate when we pick Kieran up.

Ee-aye-ee-aye Ohhh

Ol' McDonald had a farm...

I wasn't sowing any veggies or anything. The only thing thriving in our lawn were white grubs. And it was like Loblaws for the neighbourhood night critters.


So I was doing the weekend(s) warrior thing and turning over the lawn to lay down some new sod.
And this isn't even my lawn. It's my neighbour's lawn. This guy here. He's a project manager for a big consulting firm.

So you know he is trained for hard physical labour. I can't remember if I saw him on Sunday. But I think I did. Briefly.

But I was pretty beat the next day too.

We had done the hard part about a week and a half earlier. I had rented the tiller from Home Depot and began the process of getting rid of the old grass and clearing the roots from the "tree too close to the house" to prepare the lawn for new sod.

I had hoped the motorized tiller was going to reduce the amount of physical labour. But I was dreaming. It was an assumption that made an 'Ass' out of 'U' my neighbour and 'Me'. We both had no clue.

One thing we did learn was that we were never doing this again.

Now all we had to do was order the sod and the peat loom. There was a whole discussion about peat moss, peat loom and soil. I make no claim to having a green thumb.

Which is the reason I'm putting down a new lawn. We killed the old one.

But peat loom is topsoil and peat mixed together. Peat helps the soil to retain moisture. Our area is sandy, so the water just heads back to lake Ontario.

It was like laying down carpet tiles. I felt like a flooring professional.

Kieran was tired watching me work. This is how I felt on Saturday and Sunday.







But it was all done in time for Mother's day.
Flag pole was gone, now the weeds are gone.

I think most of the grubs are gone.
Cats are still coming around (I'll have to do something about that too).





Tresa wanted something green and weed free for Kieran to walk on. And astro turf wasn't what she had in mind.