Melissa turns 5

It was Melissa's birthday on Friday, but we celebrated yesterday... all day. No longer can I say that my brother has five kids under five, but the information still blows people away:

"Your brother has five kids under six??? That's crazy!" -- the reaction won't change.

Crazy, indeed! Anyway, Melissa is the Queen Bee, and exercises her self-entitlement at any opportunity. The younger kidlets -- Michael, 3, and Maddy, 2 -- receive orders regularly from Miss Melissa, and won't find reprieve once Melissa goes to school. The kidlettes -- the twins -- might have to band together if they find themselves oppressed.

Meanwhile, Melissa enjoyed celebrating all day yesterday, with lots of ice cream and cake at Granny's yesterday, then another round a couple of hours later with Gumpa and Grandma. Even Uncle Alvin is in town for the weekend, which, to a five-year old, translates into: MORE PRESENTS!

Uncle Alvin with Megan (L) and Maribeth (R).

Megan

Maribeth

Zoo Animals Escape!

I'm still working away, here. I've got so many windows open I think a crash is imminent... or, at least a warning.

I'm also still endeavouring to catch up on the past week or so, but for now I will post pics from last Sunday. The kidlets went to the waterpark near their house, and upon their return to the backyard, informed me that they were all jaguars. Then elephants. Then tigers. My brother was working, so I took the three older Ms to Ambleside Beach in West Vancouver. The animals made a temporary escape from the zoo!

There's a videoclip, too, but I'm going to have to edit it as it's long... later, alligator.


The Lion and the Elephant? The Tiger and the Lion and the Elephant? 


The zoo animals doth protest! Or sing! Or sing in protest! 


Ambleside Beach construction site. Are those workers unionised? 


I'm taking the photo and bouncing the kids at the same time! And trying not to fall off! 


Mr. Michael at the helm of the SS Edwin. 


It's a toothy grin contest! 


The twinnies! That's Megan on the left, and Maribeth on the right. 

Stella, the Giant Gambian Pouched Rat

I felt compelled to post this photo I took last night of Stella, Socar's beloved pet and the reigning star of her online journal, a fantasmic mix of tall tales, stark reality, and unabashed poppycock.

Stella's looking very cute in this photo, probably because she's preoccupied with drinking rather than escaping from her cage and mayhem-ming. (No, it's not a word, I just made it up.) I don't see her much as she's usually buried deep in her nest of papers and fast asleep; I've only seen her eat a couple of times. By all accounts (especially Socar's journal entries), Stella is ornery, which is something to be expected of exotic pets, I suppose. She doesn't really look anything like a domesticated rat -- not only is she much larger, but with those large ears and furry body, she's less rat and more... jeez, like a gopher or something. Then there's her squealing! In this entry there's an MP3 of her protestations. She sounds like a herd of squeaky toys!

I shot a video back in April of Stella shuffling off with some food, and I'll include it here so you can get an idea of her size:

Stella.avi (6.9MB, 47 secs)

Ramon the Author!

The cover of Ramon's book.

Ramon's book is finished, and it is due to be released in September, but it's all in Dutch... my Dutch is so rusty... Truthfully, I don't speak Dutch at all! So, I'm hoping some English publishers will take notice, so I can eventually read what Ramon's been working on since he finished his travel-the-world trip late last year. I can't imagine the tedium of trying to translate an entire book from Dutch to English, by any means. Yeah, I think I'll wait.

Audience Participation

I will eventually get the blog caught up this week, but in the meantime, could you people do me a favour and visit my guestmap and tell me where you are? I can see it in the stats, but I like this so much better.

The guestmap has been feeling lonely, so I added some questions. Which, of course, you may opt out of, but they aren't fillers -- I really do want to know the answers!

According to NedStats, here is the visitor country breakdown:

Canada - 56.6 %
United States - 25.3 %
United Kingdom - 3.7 %
Switzerland - 1.9 %
The Netherlands - 1.8 %
Denmark - 1.4 %
Germany - 1.0 %
France - 0.9 %
Australia - 0.7 %
Singapore - 0.6 %
Unknown - 0.8 %
The rest - 5.3 %

It would be interesting to know what the Canada figure was EXCLUDING my publishing previews, because those bump up this number tremendously.

Back from the Sunshine Coast

I just returned from two days in the office, which is still a construction site because the house side isn't finished yet. I took some pics today, while the work is still in progress. It's really shaping up, though -- the woodworker is doing a fantastic job, and the tile and hardwood flooring was laid yesterday. The views from the office/house are magnificent! But, I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

On the ferry deck after leaving Horseshoe Bay, facing the Garibaldi mountain range, I think???

I can see the driveway all the way from here! If you click to enlarge the pic, then look left of centre to a rectangular patch of wooded area. Immediately to the left of that is what looks a huge driveway. It's actually two driveways that appear to be connected, but they meet in the middle, at St. Andrew's Road. The office/Mason house is at the bottom of the driveway. As you can see, it's quite close to the ferry terminal.

A closer view of the office from the ferry. You can make out more detail in the house -- even the clocktower is visible. The house is on three levels (on this side), and the office has a triangular roof.

Allison and Kevin in the area between the office and the house. Kevin is thinking about eventually building a deck for it, and connecting it to the house deck (the edge of which is in front of Allison).

The swanky kitchen.

The view from the second floor, out onto the front deck.

The view from a huge window in one of the bedrooms upstairs -- you can just watch ferries come and go all day long!

Facing the back door.

Damned Telus

Because they accidentally shut down my internet account last Wednesday, I've lost all the contents of my webspace, which was almost entirely filled with photos for my blog. I moved over the template JPGs and GIFs over to my SFU webspace, but I am still faced with the monumental task of re-uploading the photos for entries going back for more than a YEAR.... grrrr. So bear with me as I slog through the uploading and updating.

More Canada Day

Kermit showing his true colours.

I did an inordinate amount of sleeping in on Canada Day. Shocking.

My SFU Geography classmate, Alina, rang me up in the afternoon and asked me if I wanted to meet them downtown. It has been nearly two years since I'd seen her, so I jumped at the chance! My little local eatery where we had pizza last time was closed at 6pm, so we went up to Davie and Thurlow and had – in honour of Greece's victory – a big Greek meal. Wow, was I ever stuffed... I only ever eat lamb on rare occasion, so when I do, my stomach gets a little shocked.

Kevin, Alina and Dan's son, had a Canadian flag painted on his cheek, as they'd just come from the Canada Day festivities. It was great to catch up, and we talked about travel and all that good stuff. They're from Romania, so it seemed very fitting that on Canada Day, we'd be celebrating multiculturalism with food!

One Irate Telus Customer

I can't believe it! I just phoned Telus technical support to find out why I haven't been getting any e-mail, and the technician told me that my internet account has been closed as of June 30 because I'm moving!

Hello?!?

That's news to me! Argh! Customer Service doesn't open until 7am, so I'm going to have to phone them before my internet connection gets shut down... I'm also going to transfer the blog template photos over to my SFU webspace in the meantime so I don't have all these blank spots.

Canada Day!!!

Courtesy of the Royal Canadian Mint.

I've been MIA for the past few days, and I'm on my way out the door, but I thought I'd post a Canada Day pic before I put up some more updates!

By the way, Telus has gone wonky for the past day or so -- my ADSL connection is fine, but I can't pick up any of my Telus e-mail... so apologies in advance to anyone who's sent an e-mail to any of my Telus accounts and is wondering if I'm dead!!