Flecks of… Gray?

A video of an airport radar showing planes coming as a thunderstorm approaches, funny and… mostly just funny.

I was actually laughing out loud when I saw this one of a waitress who is absolutely terrified of pickles trying to confront her fear on Maury. If you have a fear of heights, small spaces, doctors or whatever, you’re bound to feel pretty validated after seeing this ridiculous fear.

Well, I did a bit of research on the mice rats that I have and they are indeed rats, rats! (remember when rats was used instead of shoot as a verbal sign of disappointment). I checked out the size of my guys against the online ones, and pegged them as… the common rat. Some interesting facts can be found at wikipedia with my favorite being:

Rat-free zones

The only rat-free zones are the Arctic, the Antarctic, and, since the 1950s, the province of Alberta in Canada. Provincially appointed rat catchers, a lack of sea ports, an alert population (mainly grain farmers), and a prohibition on holding rats as pets have succeeded in keeping the province free of rats, resulting in substantial savings to the farmers. The similarly landlocked province of Saskatchewan has been discussing a similar programme.

For those of you who still want to come over for hockey football, I applaud you.

I’ve been running on the goose egg for far too long, today I caught my lucky break after not catching a mouse for about 2 years (hence, they score 2). When I was falling asleep about 30 mins ago, I heard some rattling in the ‘trap’ area and went to check it out and saw my same little mouse/rat buddy but this time he didn’t look so cool and relaxed. He was completely freaked out because he was totally stuck in my sticky trap and was viling like crazy because this time he knew I’d deadify first, take pictures later (actually, I couldn’t take pictures because Heidi has the camera, otherwise I probably would have taken pictures first).

After deadifying and disposing, I have a renewed sense of confidence that I’m man enough to rid my house of these varmits. Tomorrow, I’m off to Cdn Tire for a ton more of the sticky traps (they’re the only things that seem to work). Seems like I may be able to avoid the $300 charge of having a real man come in here and flush these suckers out; sounds like there’s a treat somewhere in there for me…

Let’s go see if I can fall back asleep now after that adrenaline rush…

** Update **
This morning I caught another one in the big rat trap (much better cleanup since it’s already dead). For those of you keeping score, that ties it up at 2-2! Oh, and I did feel bad for my niece, Kelsey, who loves these little rodents; hopefully her mom won’t fill her in on the gory details…

Since I ever-aspire to be more like Chris, who recently returned my Arrested Development eps, I’m told (my collection is finally complete!); I’ve Chris-ed up my webpage by adding feeds (to get you the pretty google page like mine) and del.icio.us links (which I’m beginning to like enough to abandon Yoono) on the sidebar.

RSS Feeds

So, I’ve had a long time battle with the ridiculous mice in my house for the last long while and recently they’ve been taking their hooliganism in this house up a huge notch; so I’ve responded.

The other night I put out a ton of traps to catch these varmits and later when I was just going to bed I heard the SNAP of a trap so I zipped upstairs to see this little (well, actually quite big) mouse just hanging out by where the trap was, he was blinking really slow but the trap wasn’t on him so I thought I got him and he wasn’t quite dead but that he certainly would be soon.

So whats a geek like me think to do? Grab my camera!! I snapped this pic and then thought I should get on with it and discard the little dude so I grab some stuff I needed and when I looked, he looked like he got his second wind and he was zipping around, not too be seen again. Sheesh! Why didn’t I deadify first, then take pictures?!?!

I’ve been placing other smartly placed traps with all kinds of things that mice really like and will be sure to let you know when it’s been exterminated (either by me or some ‘real’ exterminator that I’m going to hire shortly).

On Friday I was quite upset with the bus driver for rejecting our transfer so I wrote the STM a sweet note, (there are some MTL specific things in there but it should still be fun reading – I’ll put links in to really take it home)

Yesterday, my wife (who is 5 months pregnant) and I were traveling home to NDG after a night out on Mile End. We caught the 161 going west to Plamondon then took the Orange Line to Villa Maria where we take the 162 W home. The problem is that we forgot to get a bus transfer at Plamondon so we sneakily took one from Villa Maria where we were catching the 162 W from.

This proved to be our undoing as the driver of the 162 W yesterday (June 16th) at 11:30pm was actually checking the transfers and found that we cheated by taking ours from the wrong metro stop and rightly turned us aside, leaving us to buy a new ticket or walk home. I’ve been riding the bus pretty regularly for the last 2 years and periodically find myself in this situation where I forgot my transfer and need to grab one from the metro I’ve arrived at (a clear violation of STM’s policies) – sometimes the drivers are checking the stubs and notice the fault but this was the first time I was actually turned aside.

It took great courage for your driver to reject the sham transfer of an obviously pregnant woman at 11:30 at night – the only greater test of his resilience would have been if it was raining outside – that would have taken a dedication to the minute details of STM regulations that is, unfortunately, not seen very often.

Please accept my congratulations on training your bus drivers to follow the rules so carefully.

I did make sure not to write this right after the incident but I don’t think my tone was soothed too much by the waiting. Oh, how I love to bus!

Heidi and I are deep into coming up with names for our coming addition and we were listening to the interesting book Freakonomics which has a whole section devoted to this exercise. The one fact (could be debated) that we found hilarious was that someone named their kids Orangejello (oRONjello) and Lemonjello (leMONjello) – who knows, maybe we’ll take them too!

I’ve devoted the new webpage format to these new names and have taken liberally from all over the internet to make it happen, the background jello picture, the know how to make a diagonal line in PS, and the tip on how to cycle through new fonts in PS – all winners!

Based on a solid review I ordered myself some new noise cancelling headphones from protravelgear (promo code ‘geek’ for 5% discount) that I’m going to be picking up next week when I go down to the States – I am quite excited about it all

I was browsing around on the net today and found some a link of 50 Weight Loss Tips and thought what a great time to Oprah up my blog. I had my life coach and health co-ordinator (Heidi) look over the 50 and give her input – overall she really liked the points quite a bit; some things that she would have emphasized a bit more

• Her Motto: Be Reasonable: meaning
  
  • don’t go crazy eating things that aren’t good for you
    
  • Don’t completely cut them out either – use moderation
    
  • Don’t over-do anything, good or bad
    
• Eat natural if at all possible – if you know every ingredient in what you’re eating then that’s a good start
  
• Eats fruits and vegetables like crazy
  
• Eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full
  

The things that I think she would agree with:

• watch what you eat, and expend more energy than you consume
  
• Diets do not work. Diets are temporary.
  
• Start reading labels
  
• Don’t pick a routine that you don’t like – or you won’t want to do it, and you certainly won’t stick with it for long.
  
• Set realistic goals (One pound a week)
  
• There is no such thing as a magic pill
  
• Sure, your sandwich would taste amazing with an extra tablespoon of mayonnaise… but do you really need it?
  
• it’s important to have a regular exercise routine somewhere in your schedule
  
• You’re allowed to “mess up” every now and again, so long as you don’t make a habit out of it
  

So there’s some tips from my life coach (see, I WAS listening babe).

Now, why do I bring this up? I checked my height to find my ideal weight and found that for a 6’0″ guy I should be between 137 and 186 – I checked the scale and I’m 184 putting me right at the top (Lyf is beside himself right now that I could get so high – he can’t put on weight if he tries). So, I’m considering taking some affirmitive action here – I’ve got all the brain skills, but do I want to practice?