Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

"It Was Great!"
Just heard a great quote from the radio (via RealAudio) on CBC:

Andy Barrie: (Talks about seeing an American fan sadly folding his US flag away, then says:) "What was it like watching them go down to defeat?

Kevin Sylvester (who co-announced the hockey game for the CBC): "It was great!"

LOL!

Sylvester then went on to talk about how sick he had been getting about the constant US boosterism at these games, but that has to be one of the most honest replies I’ve heard from any sports spokesperson in a long time.

Gonna Getta Dell
Okay, the prices are getting too cheap for me to ignore. The current lease on my 2 year-old 900Mhz Dell expires in a couple of months, and at half the lease rate of the machine I currently have I can get a computer that is fully twice as fast as the old one. The old machine has served me well, but I could certainly use a faster machine, especially for the increasing amount of graphics work I do these days.

I'd get a Dell primarily because of their easy leasing package and because I've been happy with the last machine I got from them (am I sounding like an ad yet?).

It'll be my birthday present to myself. Yeah, that’s it... ;-)

So the plan would be to get a new machine as my "base" machine, use my current 900Mhz system to provide the computing power for my Arcade box/file server/print station, and use the 600Mhz system that was originally intended for the arcade box as the multimedia machine for my elder daughter.

Erika has mentioned that she's beginning to get a bit fed up with her increasingly wonky 2 year-old Toshiba notebook computer -- I may have to look at getting a replacement for that one as well...

The trip to Cleveland also reminded that I'd really like to get a basic iMac for Web site-compatibility testing purposes, and just to finally get familiar with its OS. I have noticed that the prices for the old model iMacs are getting cheaper and cheaper...

Sunday - Driving Home/Men’s Hockey Gold Medal
Annie woke up sometime after 5am, and Vanessa at about 7am, so neither Erika nor I got as much sleep as we would have liked.

We got up, got dressed, and took a walk in the nearby park just outside where we were staying, killing a half hour or so before our appointed breakfast time at 9am.

We got there and had bagels, tea/coffee and some of the remaining treats from the previous day. Soon after, everyone else started arriving, and the breakfast and conversations lasted for a couple of hours.

David M. returned to work trying to "fix" G-Pa's. G-Pa is really frustrated with the pop-up ads that continually appear on his system, and it turns out that these are introduced by a free version of the Eudora email program that does this automatically. David suggested using Netscape mail instead, and I suggested simply buying the full, ad-free version of Eudora (it least it is a program G-Pa is already familiar with). But both ideas were ultimately scuppered by the fact that G-Pa didn't know his login/password, and had forgotten the name of his contact at the IT department of his University who could tell it to him. I hadn't realized this at the time, but poor Jennifer and David had arrived a day early expressly to try and fix this situation -- presumably with little luck, since we had to leave soon after.

We loaded up the truck, sang an impromptu "Oh Canada" at the top of our lungs just for the helluvit, and said our goodbyes.

The trip back was largely uneventful. We wanted to get some duty-free liquor, but found that the regs had changed, and that we were no longer allowed a litre of alcohol after a 24hr visit (which used to be the case). Being a (too) honest bunch, we left the duty-free, and got passed immediately through customs without the slightest incident. There were high-winds on the Skyway bridge just outside of Hamilton, and David and I jumped out to re-arrange the bungee cords on our luggage, which had slipped and become slack.

We turned into Jean's driveway just as Team Canada got their fourth goal. We left the radio on and heard the fifth and final goal while David and I were removing the rest of the luggage from the roof rack. Soon after we went inside to see the final few minutes on TV and cheered the moment the clocked ticked down to zero.

Soon after, we could hear the cars honking along with cries of "Canada got the Gold!" and other whooping and hollering.

We decided to stay and have a take-out pizza dinner. Erika went to get some beer and Grand Marnier, and I fetched a couple of Mocha Frappacinos from the local Starbucks s block away, one for me and one for Wendy (who would need it: she'd be taking a train that would end up at her hometown of Belleville at 2am).

Two calls came in while we feasted on pizza: one from Wendy's oldest sister Allison (which prompted Wendy to ask: "is there a full moon outside?", and one from Jennifer. She and her David were supposed to have gotten a flight from Cleveland at about 2pm that would have taken them straight to Ottawa. Instead, their flight had been cancelled, and she was calling from Pearson airport, waiting for a possible berth in a plane heading to their home. As Jean remarked afterwards, they could have driven home by the time she had called. Yet another nightmarish story about the hassles of airplane flight...

When we got ourselves home -- after driving through hordes of happy, cheering, flag-waving Olympic hockey fans -- I immediately took a very tired Vanessa to bed, while Erika watched the remaining Olympic events and fed Annie. Soon after both kids were put to bed and I unloaded the truck, we both gratefully collapsed into bed ourselves.

Saturday - Headed to Cleveland/Grandfather-in-Law Arthur’s Birthday
Woke up about 4:30am, about a half an hour before we had to get up. I started the tea-and-coffee-making process, After making sure that Erika was awake at 5am, I went upstairs to get Vanessa up and get her dressed. As soon as everybody was dressed we were out the door to Jean's -- without even having our morning caffeine!

Got to Jeans. Had our much-needed caffeine and made ourselves breakfast. David strapped our luggage to the roof-rack and then all 7 of us piled into the Land Rover: Me, Erika and the two kids, Jean and David and Erika's youngest step-sister Wendy. We hit the road for Cleveland and Great-Grandfather-in-Law Arthur's 90th birthday party in time just before 7am.

The trip was relatively fast and uneventful. We made two stops -- once for gas -- and didn't encounter any hassles at the border (we were pretty much waved through). We arrived in Cleveland at the nursing home dead on at noontime, after just over 5 hours of driving.

We unloaded our things and lugged us and our things inside. Once we had settled in to our respective rooms, we changed into our "party" clothes and went to visit GPa and GMa. Both looked well, and little changed (though perhaps a bit more frail looking) since the last time I had seen then a couple of years ago. It was truly a pleasure to see Erika’s Uncle Arthur and his wife Lisa again, though it was a shame that none of Erika’s cousins felt like making it to this event (which annoyed GMa considerably). Erika’s sister Jennifer and David M. also dropped by to see everyone. Not surprisingly, both Vanessa and little Annie were the center of everybody’s attention -- a very shy Vanessa meeting her G-Parents for the first time.

Soon after we headed downstairs to where the party was being held. Many visitors soon started to arrive -- many of whom I had met at previous G-Parent parties, though none quite well enough for me to remember any individual's names. ;-)

I was nominated the official photographer of the event, partly because Arthur and Lisa’s home in NY had been broken into the night before they had to fly to Cleveland, with all of their jewelry and camera equipment stolen. This was good, because I did feel like a fifth wheel at times. I think I may have made a pest of myself in the process, as a digital camera with a 96MB memory card means uninhibited photo taking from me. ;-)

I managed to chat with a few people, and even got in a bit of a talk with the "birthday boy" himself. He said that sadly, his memory was failing and that his mind wasn’t as "flexible" as it once was. He had fallen very much behind the times when it came to the field of genetic research, which has largely fallen to biochemistry, which he was not trained in. In the last week he has also resigned his professorship (which is largely just an honourific at this point) at Case-Western University within the past week, since he feels that he was "taking up space" that someone more "useful" could take. He did have one nice story though, saying that he had recently got a note from Science magazine, saying that since he had been a subscriber for 50 years, he would now receive subsequent issues of the magazine until the end of his days for free. Soon after I was dragged away by Vanessa and I never did get another chance to sit down and have a good chat with the old man again on this trip.

After about an hour or so, Vanessa was getting very antsy, so I offered to take her away from the party and visit the local natural history museum, which was only a short walk away. Wendy joined us, and we headed on over. We made our way into the "animal" section of the museum, surrounded by stuffed animals on display everywhere, including a battered and moth-eaten pride of lions, which looked a bit dustier than I remember from my last visit to the museum. As it turned out, they had a live animal display going on at the time, and Vanessa was hooked. A very experienced expert talked to the group of children and their parents about the various animals she produced one at a time, including a rabbit, a snake and a great horned owl. Watching this parade of animals ended up taking most of our time at the Museum, as it closed about an hour after we arrived at 4:30 (I felt a bit ripped off at the early closing time, and having paid full admission for all three of us). We had only a short about of time to look around at their fascinating dinosaur and fossil collection before we had to leave. I would have loved to have checked out their revamped planetarium section, but that will have to wait until another visit.

Soon after we got back it was dinner time, and a familial procession made its way into the grand "Lincoln Room". Lisa, who was carrying baby Annie, was a virtual star, attracting coos from all of the aged residents who were already there eating there dinner. We were all sat down around a large table, and then were wined and dined. We were served by a delightful black waitress named Denise, who was very much taken with Annie, and had traded banter with everyone of us. The food was, well, not great -- the phrase "rubber chicken" comes to mind, but we were in good company. Just prior to dinner we all gathered around some nearby steps to take a multi-generational picture of the whole family, which was fun trying to organize. By the end of the meal Vanessa was having a meltdown, and I escorted her up to her bed soon after. Erika came up short thereafter, and I volunteered to look after the kids while she went and rejoined her family. Annie went to sleep soon after Erika gave her a quick feed, and I settled down to write part of this journal, and to read some more of Galileo’s Daughter before hitting bed myself. About an hour after I went to sleep, Annie groggily woke up. She was still tired, so I took her to bed with me, and after much pulling of my chest hair (ow!) she and I drifted off to sleep together. That was how Erika found us about a half-hour later.

She fed Annie again, which really knocked her out, and then told me what they had been up to: watching the Olympic coverage. While New Yorkers Arthur (Jnr) and Lisa were there, they were relatively quiet, but when they left they started hooting and hollering for the home team, which ended up winning a couple of more medals in speed-skating events. It was a good conclusion to a successful day.

Friday - Visited Mom
This was the day normally reserved for my all-day class at the U. of T., and would have been my first time teaching about doing graphics for the Web , but there wasn't enough interest in the class (only two students had registered) so the school cancelled the class for the day.

So, I decided to take the day off anyways and go visit my mother. This would be the first time I'd been back there since she returned home after her long hospital stay.

I got up early in the morning and got an early bus heading up to Keswick, arriving there just after 9am. I got in and found that Mom still in her nightgown, just having her customary cup of tea. Just as I was fetching a cup for myself, in comes Tina, who is the nurse who comes and checks on her in the mornings. Then after another 5 minutes, in comes Morris, also to check up on Mom. It was like an instant party had just dropped in on Mom.

Am happy to say that she seems much better, and well able to live on her own. With Tina and Morris to help her out occasionally, she's doing very well. I think maybe she's a little on the lonely side, in part because her oxygen requirements seriously hamper her mobility, but she has a lot of local friends to come and visit her.

After Morris and Tina left, we sat down and chatted: I told her about the latest goings on of the family, what her grand-daughters have been up to, what can be done to the house to make it easier to live in, and so on. I also finally called the waste disposal company and arranged for them to come and pick up the bin in her driveway -- after first throwing in a few more items, primarily empty plastic flower pots from stashed under the porch for several years.

It was a short visit, as I had to head back to pick up Vanessa from school, but I was glad to see Mom in good spirits in her own home.

I got home, answered a few work emails (typical even on "days off") then headed over to Vanessa's school to pick her up. We ended up meandering by the boardwalk for half of the way home, stopping by the library in order to pick up some fresh reading material for the upcoming trip to Cleveland.

Put Vanessa to bed early that night as we had to get up equally early to get an early start on our trip to Cleveland the next morning. I watched some of the Olympics with Erika, then went and viewed an episode of the live action version of The Tick I had downloaded because I had missed it when it was originally on. There are few sitcoms I am at all interested in -- I figure by the age of 12 or so I had seen pretty much every possible sitcom plot -- but I made a point of trying to catch The Tick when possible.

Went to bed early.