Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Brick Mover Guy
One of the things Erika has always wanted to do with the back yard has been to brick it over. No more digging out the hand mower just to mow a postage stamp-sized lawn -- I'm all for that.

Her mother's new neighbour is doing extensive renovations to his house, which includes knocking out the whole of the back wall of the house in order to extend the building. What does this mean for us? Free bricks! New brick costs about 50 cents apiece, and we both prefer the weathered, battered look of older brick anyways.

I was looking forward to the physical work, as I was in a rut in terms of my writing for The Computer Paper. I managed to finish one unsatisfying book review (it doesn't say what I intend it to, yet) and got "stuck" while writing an article on Internet scams. Am hoping some labour will shake out the writer's block.

Jean looked after the kids while we loaded up the truck with several loads of brick. I dug in the pile of rubble looking for good brick, and Erika loaded them onto a little wagon to take them to the truck. We came away with the majority of unbroken bricks from the place, amounting to about 300 bricks total, which we stacked in an impressive pile in our driveway back home.

We were both pretty tired at the end of it. The kicker is that Erika had a half-day's film work ahead of her after this.

Erika set off for work at 2:30, and thankfully Vanessa got to play with some kids down the street and Annie went to sleep -- all of which allowed me to take a cat-nap on the couch.

I woke up and realized I was ill.

It was either the chicken sandwich or I had a case of the flu. I was "on the run" for the rest of the day and couldn’t stomach any dinner.

While watching "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" later with the kids, I watched proudly as Annie started crawling on the floor. It was haphazard, and involved as much rolling as crawling, but Annie was definitely crawling! If Annie wanted to get somewhere – usually to get something she had tossed just out of reach – with dogged determination she did it. Her travels probably amounted to no more than a 3 or 4 feet total, but she was crawling.