Blog Thirty-Four: Loooong day

Today Switall! came over and we had sushi. Then we went to Home Depot to look at water heaters. This isn't going to be as boring as you think, so bear with me.

The soon-to-be Joneshouse has an electric water heater, which is A) relatively expensive to run and B) in this particular case, looks as if it was originally installed by Huron tribesmen in the 16th century.

The home inspector suggested that we replace it with a gas-powered heater. He also suggested we go for a tankless heater. A tankless heater is basically like a coffee percolator; it runs the water through copper tubes that are heated by flame, so the water is heated as you use it. We're not getting one. First of all, they're more expensive. A LOT more - like, at least a thousand bux more. So much more that there is no conceivable way they'd save enough money in gas to make it worth your while. Secondly, even whether or not they're more efficient than the tank heaters is open to some question.

What is interesting though is that it's not even worth it, by my calculations, to replace it at all. Replacing the electric heater with a gas tank would save some money - $20 a month, to be generous. Given that the cost of getting a new hot water heater will be at least $1200, we would have to enjoy that $20 savings for five years to get our $1200 back, not including inflation - really, it's more like six years. Assuming my lowball estimate is correct; it could be more. Installing a hot water heater from scratch is a big deal.

Of course it would add value to the house so it might be worth it, but it's an interesting case of the You're Screwed From Saving Situation; we could save $X on heating costs, but there is no way we could ever save enough to make the investment worth it. The inspector also suggested new windows, which would cost five large, easy. We won't spent $5000 on heating the house if we live there for five years, much less $5000 in marginal costs as a result of having lousy windows. So we're kinda stuck; really, the time to realize the benefits of this stuff is when you BUILD the house.

Anyway, after leaving Home Depot, we went to Leon's and found a living room set - sofa, love seat, chair and ottoman - on clearance for $700. I would be insane to turn that down, so we grabbed it, and can now furnish three rooms, as the current sofa will be relegated to the rec room/office while the current recliner goes to the bedroom. A real steal.

Holy crap... I'm old!!!

Blog Thirty-Three: A House, Almost

Hola, amigos! Been awhile since I blogged, but it's been a hell of a week; in addition to holding down a job and helping to raise a baby, we've been on a whirlwind house buying project.

We've been planning to buy a house this year for quite some time, but things moved into overdrive Sunday when we A) discovered a near-ideal starter home and B) simultaneously discovered that we had to put in an offer on it toute de suite. So on Monday we put in, and won, the offer. Tuesday, Snaby started the mortage arrangements. Wednesday, the deposit was submitted. Thursday the mortage was done, more or less, though the mortgage guy kept forgetting to tell us key things. Friday (today) we had the house inspected.

So, assuming the seller fixes a few minor things and the lawyer doesn't find something amiss, we'll have a house by the end of February. We're also doing this on what could generously be described as a shoestring budget, cleaning out our limited savings and still drawing on the generosity of our parents. Thanks to them!

Anyway, the house is way out in Burlington, a 15 minute stroll from where we used to live on Sinclair Circle. Small world.

Blog Thirty-Two: Various Crud

1. Looks like I'm going back to Edmonton for three nights in February. Joyyyyy.

Of course after that it's home for three months (and to be honest, one three-night trip in an entire month is a very light month for me) but the thought of going back to the all-travel diet in late April makes me sick to my stomach. I'll keep doing it because someone has to bring home the bacon, but I will be looking for other sources of bacon, commencing this week, just in case something ideal is out there. I'm tired of not being home and missing the Small Girl.

2. It appears overwhelmingly likely the Conservatives will win a narrow minority government on Monday. (Steve, bless his soul, is convinced they will win a majority. No, they won't.)

I wonder, if the government lasts, what people will say in four years about it. None of the scare stories are going to happen, you realize. The government will not reverse same sex marriage. They will not stop abortion. They will not dismantle the health care system. There is zero chance - zero, zip, nada - that any of those things will happen. It's simply not possible that they could do those things. Do you think in four years people will even remember those claims were made?

3. This weekend the Sens play the Leafs twice, on Saturday and Monday. I'll be in front of the tube with my Sens jersey on.

4. Carly, if your damned character was Alliance I could give you some money, I have like 2.5 gold right now. Why'd you have to be a Tauren?

Blog Thirty-One: More Pictures

Note: She really is hugging Mr. Butterfly here; she's figuring out how to use her hands to hold him.


I'll post a real blog later, but for now, just Small Girl Pix!

Blog Thirty: That's Pearl, But Three Is Leather

As this is Blog #30, I was thinking of marking the occasion by pointing out that "hey, it's the silver blog." But silver is 25. Gold is 50. What the hell is 30?

I looked it up; pearl is 30. There is in fact a traditional gift type for every anniversary up to #15, after which you don't have anything specific except on anniversaries that are evenly divisble by ten. This year my third anniversary with Snaby Girl is the leather anniversary. So I know what to get her... leather... huh huh huh. Ohhhhhh yeah.

A leather jacket. What were you thinking, pervert?

I'm having fun watching the election polls. They bounce up and down depending on who's doing the polling but you can split the difference and you'll usually be right. I'm guessing a popular vote split of 37-30-20, Conservative-Liberal-NDP, Quebec obviously being different. I'll even tell you how the election will turn out in seats:

Conservatives: 132
Liberals: 82
Bloc: 64
NDP: 28

If I read one more moron on a message board say "But they only poll, like, a thousand people. MILLIONS of people are voting man. So they can't be right!" I'll scream. A thousand people is a huge number of people, a huge sample. The only reason it's as jumpy as it is is that different regions vote differently.

To get an idea of what I mean, look at it this way. Grab a coin, any coin near you. Do me a favor; flip it ten times, and do that ten times. Ten series of 10 flips. Shouldn't take you long. I'll wait.

Good. Now, you probably had at least one or two sets of ten where you didn't come up with 5 heads or 5 tails. Sure, 5-5 is the usual split. But in 10 flips, you can get 7 heads 3 tails pretty easy, right? I just did it and got (heads-tails) 4-6, 4-6, 7-3, 7-3, 6-4, 3-7, 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 2-8. I didn't once flip exactly 5 of each, itself kind of flukey; an exact 5-5 split should happen about 23% of the time. But getting 70% heads or tails, or more, should happen 34% of the time.

So let me ask you this; suppose instead of flipping a coin 10 times, you flip it a THOUSAND times. How often would you get 70% heads, or 70% tails. That is, 700 or more heads, or 700 or more tails, out of a thousand flips. Same percentage as before, just a different sample size.

Answer? Never. It would never, ever happen. You could flip coins your whole life. You could hire a million people to flip coins from now until the day the Sun burns out six billion years from now, and it still would not happen. The odds of that happening are 1 in 8,832,839,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That is a number larger than the number of atoms in the Pacific Ocean.

So a thousand people is a BIG sample. You cannot go too far wrong.

But people have time to change their minds, of course.

Blog Twenty-Nine: Beautiful Pictures

Here's some pictures of the two most beautiful humans to ever walk the face of the Earth.

Blog Twenty-Eight: McSherry

Last Saturday we had dinner with Steve McSherry and his wife Krista, and their new baby, Georgia. Two babies at the same dinner table; it simply gets no cuter than that.

Steve was the third in the succession of Rick's Best Friends, following Shawn Tryon and Craig Goodick (huh huh huh) in approximately 1982, and reigned until 1991 when he was succeeded by Scott, who's now in his record fifteenth year in the role despite living in California. (I'm limiting this to male best friends. Actually, my best friend is Snaby Girl.) I knew Steve from school, meeting him in Grade 5 at Ecole Cathedrale, and we were best friends through high school and part of our first year of Queen's, and were both in the Reserves, but eventually that kind of stopped, for whatever reason. He eventually moved out west with Krista, and we hadn't been in touch for years until last year when he moved back into town. Apparently he got his MBA, worked in Spain for awhile, and did a bunch of stuff. His Dad, a doctor who used to head up Queen's student medical servies, died a few years ago, which is sad; he wasn't that old and he was loved by a lot of people. Steve's little sister has a baby too. Life marches right along.

When we were talking on the phone last year he asked me if I was still into baseball, etc. etc., and I interrupted, "Steve, I'm still the same jerk I always was." It's funny, but it's true; Steve is now 34, married, with a kid, working for Amex, and he's the same jerk. Still a dyed-in-the-wool Conservative, still has a goofy sense of humour, and still dresses really weird - Saturday he was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and over it, a suit jacket. He seems, probably like me, happier and more content now that he has a baby. It's funny how you change, but you don't.

Anyway, we're doing dinner again soon.

Blog Twenty-Seven: Carly's In The Barrens

I know this because she's level 15 and killing centaurs.

It's a geek thing.

Blog Twenty-Six: Edmonton, Day Two

The first day of the audit here is done, it went fine, and was followed by another exhausting and boring three hour dinner. I also have to talk to the guy I brought along at some point, and coach him on the fact that he needs to shut his cake hole now and then. The guy can hold up an audit for 10 minutes at a time just babbling.

So the election looks interesting, by I looked up my riding and in 2004 the Liberals got like 75% of the vote. So my vote likely won't count for much. Heck, I didn't even know who my MP was; I thought it was one person but those were the signs across the road, which apparently is the border, and it's really another person named "Navdeep."

I should read my work E-mail but can't bear to.

Blog Twenty-Five: Edmonton, Day One

I never thought I'd hate travelling on business more than I already did, but I do. Geez, I miss the Small Girl and Snaby. It's like a picture of them hovers before my eyes all the time.

Also, my cell phone is beeping. I don't know why; every couple of minutes it lets out a little "bloop." The battery is fully charged. There are no messages. No text messages. Bloop!

I'm going to have to kill it.

Spent the last two hours at a business dinner with an associate and two customers. They're all nice guys, but God damn, I was bored. There's nothing I despise more than business dinners. Everyone else drinks like fish, and they're invariably all older than me and so want to talk about the time they were hunting groundhogs in Upper Assgrab back in 1957. (Bloop!)

Anyway, we're here in Leduc, Alberta, which is just outside the Edmonton airport. That's about all there is to say about Leduc; I will grant the little restaurant we went to was pretty good, though, with great French onion soup. One of the great shames of our time is how all the restaurants now are the big chains, like Montana's and Kelsey's and other mediocre places, and you don't have as many family run places that are usually cheaper and have better food. Of course, out here, the steak and prime rib is all about four dollars cheaper for any given cut than it is in Ontario. Which thrills me. (Bloop!)

Last night was the English language leader's debate. Now, I could see why you might want to vote NDP, or Conservative, or Green, or if you live in Quebec BQ, even though I might not agree with you, but I just cannot fathom how anyone could vote for any party led by Paul Martin. The man, frankly, looks and sounds like an old fool, and even by the abysmal standards of politicians he's unusually dishonest.

I'll hold my nose and vote Conservative, but I wouldn't be upset if a miracle happened and the NDP won the election. Frankly, I'll vote for whomever will beat the Liberals, because if the Liberals win, our country will break up.

There you have it, my prediction; if the Liberals win this election. Quebec will separate from Canada, probably before 2010. I don't think a lot of people outside Quebec realize how much they hate and mistrust the Liberals now; they're simply despised. If we re-elect them, the message Quebec will get from that will be "Screw you. We don't care that they stole money and cheated in the 1995 referendum, we'll elect them anyway." The PQ will win the next provincial election, hold a referendum, and win it. I absolutely guarantee it.

If the Conservatives get elected I think there's a good chance they'll be a pack of total screwups. I guess you never know, but hardly anyone in that party has any experience governing anything bigger than an expense account, so it might be a real screwup. Or maybe not, who knows. But I think it would give the Liberal government in Quebec City a fighting chance in the next election, and would give the "Non" side a huge, huge advantage in any referendum that might be called. Quebecers would be THRILLED if we dumped the Liberals.

So I ask you; look into your local race and find out which candidate has a better chance of beating the Liberals, be it NDP or Conservative. (It'll be Conservative most places, but in southwestern Ontario, or Oshawa, or university towns, it could be NDP.) Vote for them. If the Liberals are running third, well, I guess you have your pick. Don't elect the Liberals again; I don't want my country to break up.

Blog Twenty-Four: Goddamn Edmonton

So tomorrow I have to go to goddamn Edmonton, which sucks as much as it sounds. In January. It's not a bad place in the summer, but in the winter it's hell on earth. Actually, it's not even quite Edmonton, it's Leduc, which is too far from Edmonton to get to the West Edmonton Mall.

Six weeks to paternity leave. Tick, tick, tick.

I'll post from lovely Edmonton.

Blog Twenty-Three: Fourth Resolution

I came up with a fourth resolution.

I got this idea from something I was clued into last year, NaNoWriMo, the "National Novel Writing Month." This is an online competition of sorts whereby you sign up and, beginning on November 1, attempt to write an entire novel by November 30. You have to get to at least 50,000 words (which is a short novel.) I didn't find out about it until November 26 or something like that so I was too late to the party to play the game, but it's intriguing.

The competition's very clear: Quality doesn't matter. Write any crap you want, just get to 50,000 words. In a month. That's quite the output; 1,667 words a day, or the equivalent of a short essay.

The link:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/

I'm too impatient to wait until November, and anyway that's my busiest work month, so I've decided I will embark on PaLeNoWri, "Paternity Leave Novel Writing." From the beginning of my paternity leave (Feb. 20) to the day I leave for Scott's wedding in California (April 18, more or less) I pledge that I will write an entire novel, from the first word to the last. I can't guarantee it's going to be any good, but I'll keep you all updated. And I will not write a single word of this novel prior to February 20; every word will be written in that eight week span.

And tonight, The Cheatin' Bitch is coming to babysit so we can go for steaks. Woo hoo.

Blog Twenty-Two: Resolutions for 2006

I've set three resolutions for 2006:

1. Lose 25 pounds. A modest pound-every-two-weeks goal, but given my proclivity for eating copius amounts of food, aggressive for me.

2. Don't swear in the presence of the Small Girl.

3. Kick Scott's ass in "Civilization 4." Oh no, wait, that's not a resolution. That's a promise.

The Blue Jays traded Corey Koskie to the Brewers yesterday for, basically, nothing; they were just dumping as much of his salary as they could. Koskie is Canadian, which was much trumpeted when they got him last year. Koskie is from a little town in Manitoba called Anola, and whenever the press referred to him, it was as "Anola, Manitoba native Corey Koskie." Never just Corey Koskie; never "Veteran infielder Corey Koskie." Always "Anola, Manitoba native Corey Koskie."

I like it when the press decides that a descriptive gerund or noun is a necessary part of someone's name. Tommy Lee had been a famous rock musician for twenty years before I knew that his first name wasn't "Rocker." He was always, in every reference to him in the mainstream press, "Rocker Tommy Lee." "Pamela Anderson and husband, rocker Tommy Lee" was the usual context.

Sometimes this shows wishful thinking. The Canadian press for a while was trying its best to make film director Atom Egoyan, who makes typical Canadian movies (unpleasant, low-budget films with incest and misery, that nobody watches) famous, and in so doing decided his wife, Arsinee Khanjian, was "Glamorous." So it was always "Atom Egoyan and his wife, glamorous Arsinee Khanjian." Khanjian isn't the slightest bit glamorous; she's not any better looking than a million other actresses and she's almost unknown to the average movie goer.

But it seems to add something to the name, so I've decided that from now on I'm no longer Rick
Jones; I'm "Studly Rick Jones." That's how I want to be referred as.

Just for kicks, a Small Girl pic has been added to this post.

Blog Twenty-One: Syracuse

I'm on Syracuse, for two nights.

WOOOOO HOOOOOOOO

Syracuse, like most little industrial cities, eats it raw. Really, what a dump. I've heard the university is nice, but sadly I'm not here to work with a university. So I get to sit in my hotel room on Carrier Circle and read my depressing and mundane work E-mail.

Getting to Syracuse involving dropping Kate off in B righton and visiting Mom & Dad; this trip is a good two hours longer than getting to Syracuse around the south of the lake, but it was nice to drop in.

I'm kind of getting sick of my job. It's a decent job all things told, and the pay and benefits are good, but the job itself is getting repetitive and dull. Fortunately, I'm not really one to put a lot of my personal importance on what my job is; my life revolves around Snaby and the Small Girl. As long as that's going well all is fine with me.

The Small Girl, somehow, is getting cuter by the day. She's now at the point that she can be made cheerful just by playing with her favourite toys, whereas before the only options for a crying Small Girl were either food or sleep. Soooo cute. I checked out some other babies at the mall and they were all ghastly little monstrosities. My baby is the cutest.

We're attempting a South Beach Diet approach to losing weight in 2006, and of course travelling has already shot my diet all to hell, which it tends to do. Nonetheless, I have high hopes for at least some weight loss in 2006.

Seven weeks to paternal leave. It can't come too soon.