SOLD OUT

So all cities for the Serenity advanced screening next week are sold out. Makes my decision about whether or not to try and go to the one in Austin a lot easier to make.

What an incredible way to show studio execs the Browncoat support that is out there for Firefly and Joss Whedon and our BDH (Big Damn Hero) cast.

BTW, the official Serenity website just updated with eCards, AIM icons, and a gallery.

Enjoy!

serenity advanced screening

CAN'T STOP THE SIGNAL

NEMUI

Walked into work and into a meeting. Then I had a meeting. And when I got out of that, there was this meeting I had to go to ...

But it's a good thing, having lots of work at work, as it still pays the mortgage. And the electricity (gotta have electricity). And the gas bill (can't have hot water without gas). And the water bill (can't have water without a water bill).

Home a little early due to impending thunderstorms and a tornado watch. Dark and rainy all day at work and clear and beautiful at the house. Went on a long walk w/Tonbo when he came home. Then putzed until dinner and Alias: Season 3. Less angst and more action and ... Rambaldi bits. 0_0;

Talked a bit w/Dad and ordered more LifeStream strips for him. Canadian pharmacies are big on diabeties detection, not so much on cholesterol detection.

Also, apparantly the weather cleared up and raised itself by about 20 degrees after I left. So now I'm not invited back. :P

Tonbo went to bed and I went on the computer. Read the DXPT forums and decided it was too late to do any Admin this time around. Slowly filling in the blog re: Summerland vacation. Slow going due to linkage and pics. Not nearly as many pics as I actually took (1 gig memory chip is my friend :), but pics nonetheless.

Drawing near midnight and time for bed.

Not bad for a 17 hour day.

THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF MY LIFE

Was actually awake (5:17 am) before Tonbo came by (5:29 am) and did get up a few minutes after he left (5:33 am). Which meant I had a few hours to be productive before I went to work:
- going through the DXPT Console eBook
- start to update the KFF Blog from vacation. Will take several sessions to get all the links and pics in there
- call HP re: power cord for adapter. Am told it will cost $12.99. Not much choice since the battery only has 17 minutes left on it. Hope it arrives as quickly as the first order. At least I didn't have to pay for shipping.

So far, so good. ^_^

TEXAS OR BUST

Up at 7 am to see Dad & sibling off. Then back to bed. Get ride to airport with Jeff who is also flying out to Peru.
3:20 pm flight home

Picked up at airport by Tonbo
Pizza guy and BG for dinner
Very happy to be home

SHOPPING & HIKING & SPATZEL, OH MY!

In Calgary
Big city shopping at Best Buy and a real mall. Got second Sarah Hartman album. Like better than first, still a little too folk for regular listening. Thought about picking up a Chris DeBurgh but am running out of money. Also saw new Sarah McLachlan album as a possibility.
Michael’s stop for Karen to get DMC floss for friends in Mongolia. Didn’t find the cloth they were looking for, or the books (flowers and wolves), so she’ll try again in Seattle or TX before she leaves in May. Will also give her all the floss I inherited from Omi. I do enjoy cross-stitch a lot, I just don’t see me doing a whole lot of it in the near future. Little farther future (like 4 years), yes, absolutely, when I get my 40-50 hours back. :)
Hiking at Ann & Sandy Cross Conservation area. Windy and cold (no surprise). Lots of shanook pics and artsy pics. Gopher holes and snow. Family pics.
Home for a tea cake and nap. Cold in the basement, but the monster static covers are effective in trapping my warmth around me.
Dinner at the Austrian Club. Omi dumplings and spatzle. Royal Pancakes with compote. Mmmmmm.
Pick up Marina at the airport
Back home to tea and talking
Greg called (currently in Victoria but flying back to SF that evening) and talked with him a bit.
Get to sleep in tomorrow (woohoo!)

SNOW

Dad’s shoes as the limiting factor
Closed road hike in K Country at Elbow Falls
Snow
Apparently Calgary gets snow at some point every month of the year. I will not be living in Calgary any time soon, if ever.
Low 70s in DFW and Tonbo says he keeps the windows open. Ii na.
Online stuff
Big turkey dinner and googlehoof (sp?). gardening plaque as parents’ retirement gift
Watched Cellular. Very good – suspenseful, well paced, well written. Jason Statham is a fav from Snatch, Lock Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels and the Transporter. Did recognize Kim Basinger at all, but she did well. Dad was Richard Burgi from The Sentinel and also played the bad cop in the Firefly ep “The Message”.
Recommendation for Cider House Rules
Tonbo saw Sin City and I’ll try and catch that with him sometime before I have to go back to work next week. Am also interested in seeing Sahara. My high school biology teacher introduced me to Clive Cussler’s work and I’ve read all of them.

CALGARY OR BUST

Leave house at 5:30 am
Go north through Kelwona, Vernon
Banff – Banff Springs Hotel, shopping at Sgt. Preston’s Outpost, will be back to stay and to shop again, caffeine at Starbucks
Lake Louis – Poppy room, awesome tea
Calgary
Strict instructions for dinner – sandwich spread and a bisque that was too spicy for me.

LOCAL ART

Errands in Pendicton
Bald eagle flying along the beach front of Skaha lake with a fish in its grip
CD store still didn’t have 2nd Sarah Harmer CD, will try in Calgary
Pick up 3 art card of Canadian artists
Love “Learning” and “Wolf Spirit”. Look closely at eyes of wolfs howling at moon and don’t like the desperation there. Give card to sibling. Of the 3, she picked out which one I didn’t like anymore. Lucky guess. :P
Start and finish 3rd No.1 Ladies Detective Agency book, The Kalahari Typing School for Men
Summerland Main Street Cake Box Bakery for apple square and dessert after dinner
Eat in lunch
2nd errand run to Pendicton
Deep, long nap
Sibling get computer fixed up (Ethernet card and external DVD player/CDROM burner)
USB 2.0 card reader doesn’t work on her machine but does on my work laptop, so I finally have a copy of the pictures she took as the parents pulled out of their Duncanville driveway for the last time. Very cool. Will be beginning of scrapbook
Drive up to help parents unload and meet them on the way back.
Come home
Catch-up on line
Dinner
Back-up digipics & make copy for parents
Pack
Bed

FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY

Container
Pallets
Cold
Warm
Cold
Clouds move in
Lasagna
Hot bath
Extra 4” with plunger to cover overflow
Sleep well
Paypal security lock-down which screws with order for DXPT eBook.
Resolution which leads to access code which is happiness

DXPT ADMIN

Online access is a good thing
Payment for March clean-up ideas on DXPT forum
Become Admin
Spend time learning admin features and testing on old posts
Do some of the easier recommendations
Earning money for something I like to do and that benefits people.
What a concept
Watched Avanti! With young Jack Lemmon and Jennifer Mills. Best of the bargain movies so far.

CONTAINER #2

“20 minutes”

2.5 hours later …

RED ROOSTER

Vacation is not waking up to an alarm.

Clean-sweep upstairs to get ready for spackling on Monday.

Moving river rocks. Found my rock to take home. Have started rock collection to stay and set them up in a window frame in the carport. Hopefully sibling won’t clean them up in her vacuuming frenzy that started with the TRs and extended to the entire carport.

Lunch in Pendicton (excellent pumpkin and apple pie). Up to Natamara to visit the Red Rooster winery where the parents have row #57, of course. New place, very nice, art gallery upstairs. Mom & Dad were generous enough to sample a few wines for me and then select the one I can give as a gift.

Up to scenic point. Sunny and warm in the morning and now cloudy and windy as hell. Just like on Giant Head. I think we should re-consider our scheduling …

Dogs on the leashes until it was time for “Truck!”. Shep beat Sweetie to the truck because she got distracted by the trash can at the foot of the hill.

Sibling still cooking up a storm, although tonight will be leftovers.

Potential viewing of A Love Story if everyone isn’t too tired. Fresh air makes you tired, you know?

SUMMERLAND DAYS

Tim Horton morning in Pendicton pre-running errands. In search of an HP printer cable, but after several attempts it is unlikely it will be found in this general area. Their version of a large electronics store is Radio Shack or Staples. Fry’s ja nai. Comforter shopping at the Bay. Saw spherical puzzles and resisted the urge to buy, having spent money the previous evening on Peter S. Beagle’s 7 hour reading of the un-abridged The Last Unicorn, an autographed copy of The Last Unicorn. Purchase of the CD will also get me a copy of The Two Hearts, the long awaited sequel to The Last Unicorn.

And not vacation-related at all, I also went in for the Stargate Atlantis Premiere on DVD. Hope I get a cool autograph (Sheppard cool, that is :).

Prius to town in the warm, sunny afternoon. Walk down Main to the photo guy to get 2 rainbow prints: 1 for Mary and one for the parents. Ready in 1.5 hours. Home Hardware for a rain gauge for Mom, although as much as it rained a few days ago, they probably got all they were going to get for the year (not really, but it seemed like it the way water fell from the sky all day and part of the night).

Back to car wash. Home with sibling. Me drive truck, she drive green TR. Wash truck. Dry truck. Walk down Main to the photo guy to pick up prints. Bear pics.

Drive truck home. See sibling on highway in red TR. Move river rocks from back to front. Mom moving rose bushes. Check email and learn about new DXPT. Looks like it’s really going to be something. Not really interested in the affiliate aspect right now, but the main DXG site has changed their home page so it looks like consoles are around the corner. Like a really close corner, too.

Another home-cooked meal by the sibling followed by fruit smoothies. Really like the one made with a coconut milk base. Will have to try that at home. Would be a nice treat in the summer.

Think have gained a bit of weight, given the raspberry torte cookies, the variety schnitten from Tom’s, the Glossette chocolate-covered raisins, and the Smarties. Have not yet had the fondly-remembered Tim Horton’s donut, but there is still time.

Watched Harlem Nights, another specially-priced DVD Dad picked up. I left it around 9:35 pm to take a bath since it was obvious they were going to get away with their scheme in the end. The plunger-assisted extra 4 inches of hot water really makes a difference.

I WISH I MAY ...

Many contractors: musical dry-walling, front gate lights and can’t find the door-bell electrical, front stairway bush removal, and dozer bay dredging

Wanted to get online but having issues with the phone. Eventually tracked it down to needed a phone filter on the phone in the apartment. All set now.

3 drivers, 4 cars. Taking the TRs down from the shop so there is more room for stuff to be unloaded from the container.

Finished second book by Alexander McCall Smith in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series, Tears of the Giraffe. First recreational reading I’ve done (not on airplanes) in a few years (Harry Potter books being the exception, of course :). Enjoy them very much because it is a story with a mystery, compared to the traditional mystery which is the story. Not a big mystery fan at all, but there is so much more to these books than the mystery. Of which there is usually more than one anyway.

AMV going well. About half way done.

Saw a shooting star. Yes, I made a wish. I’ll let you know when it comes true. ^_-

kitchen in progress

original


yes, all that fine wallpaper was BEHIND the upper cabinets


linoleum had fused to the floor and took an hour a square with a chisel or 3 hours total with an automated scraper-thingy


done (for now ... )

POCKET DOOR ARIMASEN

Somehow it’s just really not vacation when you have to wake up to an alarm clock.

More nail hammering and staple pulling. Plans of lunch at the Vanilla Pod vapored when Serling said someone had to be here in the afternoon to show the guys where to put the wood. He doesn’t work Mondays or Wednesday afternoons because those are the times when he golfs. So we had lunch in and then the fam went to town for errands and for sibling to take the 1 hour I booked at the library for her yesterday.

More contractors showed up and they are here to scrape the ceiling. Wow. Didn’t think they were coming until Friday, but hey, the sooner the better.

He came to look at the fence ….

Hardware delivery. “Do you know when the pocket door will be delivered?” “What pocket door? Oh. I guess I’ll be right back.”

Vanilla Pod dinner. Painting of Spanish Rat Pack. Brush painting of black stallion. Sarah Harmon album – best Canadian female vocal. Need CD.

AGAIN WITH THE NOISE MAKING

Today is just like yesterday

Nail hammering and staple pulling

To town with Dad to check out the library. He signed up for an account and I reserved an hour at 4 pm. 1 hr per day per person max. While on Main street, also picked up 2 of the spinach quiches that Mom & sibling liked so much from yesterday’s lunch at the Country Café to take home. Showed Dad the bookstore and picked up a Birds of BC book for Mom. He got a book on bush pilots and also grabbed the 2 British editions of Harry Potter books that I found on the back shelf.

Back at the library at 4 pm. VERY restricted set-up, not even a DOS prompt. Can download stuff and take it with you if you a 3.5” floppy. Which I don’t. And it really wouldn’t help anyways. Can’t hit work email. Took a while but I finally got the Sempai web mail URL by checking out the install docs for the suggested path. Thankfully Count Zero set it up to match that, so I was able to start going through my 200+ emails, the majority of which were spam.

Ran out of time to get through all of it before Dad came by to pick me up. Someone did email me that my Ms. Parker cel is from Virtual Fighter, so that was very cool.

I never want to say “I was too busy being a [fill in occupation” after thinking “Why didn’t I [insert verb phrase]”.

Walked out to check the mail. The muppet was hanging out on his front porch, just watching the world go by. Doesn’t look near as big when he’s lying down, partially hidden by a potted plant.

Piano bolts arrived in the evening. Guy also held piano in place while Dad fitted in the 3rd leg. Big, strong guy.

Watched Mixed Nuts which is one of the $6.88 CDN movies Dad picked up at Wal-mart the other day. Okay stuff, think it was based on a French play or movie.

RAINBOW

6:43 am – woodpecker
6:17 am – sibling in shower
6:29 am – sibling drops soap

Might as well get up.

Serling shows up. He’ll go golfing this afternoon but came by to work until around 12:30 pm. Boy shows up, probably putting in a full day’s work. Says he might be able to give us electricity downstairs today – woohoo! Swimsuit shows up. Does a lot of wood working before he’s actually able to get down to the plumbing aspect of it all.

Afternoon trip to down with Mom & sibling. Try Bean Coffee place, but no internet. Try public library but no open on Mondays. Get access through the great JM’s office. Sibling *needed* access to email while I need to wait until after EOS tonight. Need to do an OutX to get some more money in my DDB so I can pay the OA fee on one of the portfolios by next EOS. This will be the first time I cycle money through the process to pay a fee. It’s a good thing to learn and it’s easier that working long distance with Tonbo to take in through eBullion like I have done up to this point.

Lots of places closed on Mondays. Had lunch at the Country Café, which also seems to be the local hand-out, as we were surrounded by teens just before we left. Quick stop at the IGA Dollar Store for postcards and bank visit.

Finished cleaning up after Serling and then caught up on the blog. Clouding over and getting cooler.

Brief rain shower in the late afternoon that created the most brilliant rainbow I’ve ever seen. Bright colors and each was very distinct. You could seen and to end, with only a little bit fading out near the top of the arch. The most pics I’ve used in one shot, and the majority of them turned out great. Will probably get a print made for the parents since it is a view out their backyard.


Stayed up late and started cutting clips for the AG amv. Extra work now, but it will make the actual fun part, the editing, go faster since each clip is now a single scene.

NOT MY DALLAS BACKYARD

No contractors so was able to sleep in. Like 9 am.

Warm in early afternoon, cooler and sporadic rain in the late afternoon. Cold evenings.

Talked with the neighbors with the Shar Pei and bull mastiff which nipped at Dad. Learned about coots and pelicans and beavers (very dangerous, can’t be re-located) and endangered turtles that like floating tires to sun themselves on. The mom gave us another not-a-pussy-willow and let me borrow her bird book. I think it was a flicker that comes in the morning, but an not sure. If so, that’s a lot of noise from a very small bird.

Was walking through the main room and looking out the back window/door at the lake. Saw a bald eagle banking upward, a freshly caught fish wriggling in its talons. Not something I’ll ever see in my current backyard, that’s for sure.

Got call from Tonbo. Back home with car, everything good. Said he didn’t feel like writing so I said he could put his ladder up in the garage and apparently that was exciting.

Took pictures off camera. Very happy with 1 gig memory stick purchase. Have yet to use over 300 pictures, but I can if I want to, which is a nice feeling.

Day of rest. Kinda sorta. Stayed in car and read No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith and zapped the dogs while Dad ran errands.

Would have liked to take a nap, but he wanted to push through the afternoon so we “easily assembled” the BBQ and the TV w/DVD and VCR. Hamburgers for dinner. Didn’t have any DVDs to test the system. Dad eventually found a VHS tape of some UFO special he taped a few weeks ago (why?!) and they started to watch that. I was tired and headed off for bed only to realized that the walls in this place are rather thin and there’s no way I’d be able to sleep with the TV on. So I re-arranged the misc. furniture room to free up a desk and chair and set up the computer. I was about to turn it on when I became aware that it was quiet. I went out to see if they had gone off to bed and found them watching a Wendy’s commercial. When I pointed this out, they decided they were tired enough to go to sleep, since it obviously didn’t really matter what was going on in front of them any more.

hole

Found this under the kitchen cabinets. Goes straight down to the landry/utility room below, but it doesn't seem that intentional since there's a beam right through the middle of it ...

NEVER MEANT TO BE

Up early as sibling and Tonbo’s wake-up call. Saw him off around 7:30 am.

Visited various towns in search of tiles and wooden floors and carpets and counter tops. Places let you take the sample with you – very cool. Good tile and counter top choices. Everyone liked the carpet sample until we got it home and put it in the master bedroom where it turned very dirty-looking. Need new samples.

Phone call from Tonbo in the afternoon that he had missed his place. 97C was shut down because of an accident so he had to come back down through Summerland to Pendicton to catch the 303 which cost him over an hour. Apparently you have to be at Vancouver airport at least 2 hours before your flight to go through customs. I made the assumption he would do customs on the receiving country, since that’s the way it’s been on any of my other foreign travels, but eh, this is Canada. He’s booked for the 7 am Sat flight no problem. Just stuck in a hotel hitori bochi. And short on cash. Used the USD for the hotel which means now there wasn’t enough to get my car out of the Park n’ Fly when he got back to DFW.

My dad is awesome.

We drove to Vancouver (via J’s Café at the Husky truck stop in Hope) to have dinner with Tonbo and give him extra USD to get the car out. Then back home (via J’s). Rolled in around 2 am, which was really 3 am due to daylight savings time. Had worries of another missed plane due to time change, but we’d talked about it at dinner and he’s a big boy that can take care of himself. If not, it might mean another trip to Vancouver. :P

MAYFLOWER

Mayflower came so I checked off items as they were taken off the truck and directed them into:
- the main room
- the misc. furniture room
- the computer room
- the rolltop desk room
- Mom’s office
- The outside of the apartment, because as soon as anyone got close, Shep went nuts

Met Mary, the mom from next door. Nice, older lady who understands everything you say, although she can really only respond with “yes, yes, yes” or “no, no, no”. Not sure what happened, but I like her a lot. She brought flowers over the other day and Mom really appreciated it.

Cold day, intermittent rain. Will likely visit in May next year.

Pizza for dinner in front of the fire while sitting on the furniture from Duncanville. Well-earned rest taken at 9 pm.