People still love Rick Astley

What's up with that? The latest internet meme to make me laugh out loud:


I haven't heard from him since he released "Free," his first album after getting out of that horrendous record contract he had.

The internet is funny that way. You can write a blog post, then a year or two later, it can wind up on the front page of Digg. (Just ask Meg!)

Okay, yeah, I own more than one Rick Astley CD. And I'm going to rotate it right in there with Ween, Spoon, Billie, and Johnny Cash. Just try to stop me.

Our new neighbourhood

I found the cable, and I'm good to go with photos. Now I'm thinking that I need a new camera... that Nikon DX looks nice. (Ahem. See that PayPal "donate" button there? Hint hint... :D)

First of all, Milo loved his Valentine's Day card from Grammy and Grampy. It had pirates on it! Now he wants "his" letter every time we go check our mail.


On our first walk to the beach at the end of our street (we ARE on Oceanview Drive, after all), we just made it for sunset. It was cold, damp, and windy, but what do you expect from the beach in February?


And the sunset was quite pretty too...


I suppose we made the mistake of luring Milo out of the house with the promise of a lollipop when we got there. So he gets one every trip to the beach now. That's not bad parenting, is it?


It's only about 15 minutes to the water, through a lovely path in the woods. And if we don't feel like the beach, there are lots of parks nearby, including one called Cliff Gilker Park that's a network of trails running between two little rivers.

Full of small waterfalls, benches, potential wading pools (when it's warmer), and amazingly green forest, it's a bit of a change from Commercial Drive.


We've got houseguests coming today -- our first since the grandparents -- so it'll be nice to have some company. I guess I better go buy some beer too.

And today is Tim and Ilka's wedding in Winnipeg! Congratulations and sorry I can't be there!

Three weeks and it feels like home

We've slept in our new house for 20 nights now and it feels great. (Actually, I missed a night there because of Tim's stag party, but I'll make it up somehow.)

Our list of things to do is getting smaller and more long-term: replace the kitchen faucet, insulate the garage, fix the leaky bathroom faucet, figure out why some of the electrical outlets just don't work, get a new dishwasher... I guess it's not getting shorter after all.

But the living room in cozy, our bedroom is almost organized, and there aren't as many boxes kicking around as there used to be. And we've got houseguests this weekend, so they'll give us some perspective on it.

Milo loves it. He sleeps later, comes to snuggle in bed with us for fifteen minutes or so, then demands that we get up and feed him breakfast. Right now he's demanding that we take him to daycare, so I guess we will, and then it's down to work for us.

Sadly, we both need to work on our Dell laptops, because they're set up for remote access to the network drives at work, and we just have to look at our shiny new Macs.

Work, and all our friends in Vancouver, is now long distance via the phone lines so we've set up Skype accounts and I absolutely love it.

Not only can I call anyone in Vancouver for free, we can call the grandparents at Miracle Beach and in Chilliwack, the cousins in Indiana, and our friends in Toronto, Poland, Japan, Australia... My parents went and bought a little $40 video camera and made the mistake of making monster faces at Milo on our first video chat. Now he demands it every time. Fortunately, it's free, and we can do it every day. Better than TV.

Now if I could only find the little cable that connects my camera to my computer, I could get some pics up here. Must be in one of those boxes somewhere...

The move so far

1. The movers (5 experienced, powerful young men) tried and tried to get our Queen sized box spring up the stairs. They gave up and said it was impossible without cutting out a large chunk of the bannister. We slept on the floor.

The next day, my parents, senior citizens on a mission, arrived. We slept on our very own bed in our new bedroom that night for the very first time. I'm glad I have their genes and muscles.

2. Hooray! Our house has a dishwasher! Let's run it...

We ran next door to get a plunger after it backed up and overflowed our kitchen sinks -- apparently it hadn't been run in several years and the pipes were FILLED with yucky black gunk. It also doesn't turn off and kept the dish dryer on for three hours until the plastics were almost melted.

It needs to be replaced ASAP.

3. After phoning Star Choice twice, and confirming (twice!) that my satellite dish would be hooked up and installed at our new house on Saturday, February 2, we received a phone call from the installer at 4:30 p.m. saying he was at the house and ready to install it. In Vancouver. At the house we just moved out of.

Even worse, they wouldn't be able to install the dish at the CORRECT address here in Gibsons until Tuesday.

Hey, can you think of any reason why I might have called to confirm explicitly that the dish would be up and running by Sunday? Super Bowl Sunday? Hmm? >_<



I can't type any more. I have too many boxes to open, and I'm trying to actually work from home today. I encourage your sympathetic comments.