Holiday Insanity

Well it's been a week or so since I've had the chance to put something in here but it's been a pretty full week, so I hope you're ready for a bit of a read.

The Holidays have always been a crazy time of year for Shelagh and I, as we both have wonderfully dysfunctional family's, who have managed to nicely spread themselves out all over Nova Scotia, Ontario and Alberta.

Shelagh and I don't celebrate Christmas for it's religious aspects but some of our families do. We don't get forced to any midnight masses or anything but it's important for them that we go through the ritual, or at least I think it is. We both love an enjoy our families company very much and always have an amazing time but it can become tiring.

It all starts with the present shopping of which we waited exceedingly too long and became super stressed out about. As we are both people that like to put a lot of thought and care into our gifts, I became even more stressed out about finding just the right thing and making sure that each person would get and equal distribution, all within out seriously tight budget. Needless to say, I think we did pretty well, all considered. I managed to start a couple paintings early this year so was able to quickly finish them off for wrapping.

Shelagh and I had some hard decisions to make this year as far as making our gifts count, the paintings were a great start but we really didn't want to get people stuff that they would either toss on a shelf, re-gift or maybe even toss in the trash.

We decided over a bit of discussion that we were going to use OxFam and give some gifts that will actually help people who really need it. I know most people groan when they even entertain the thought of receiving a donation in their honor, as a gift, but we both agreed that OxFam was much different than most charitable organizations in the respect that it is non religious in nature and it helps anyone in need. They have a wide array of packages to suit almost anyone and most of the packages include education related to the topic you choose.

For example, we purchased 2 Chickens and a Goat.

Each chicken will go to a family or village in need and includes education that give them the skills to run and maintain poultry and poultry related production. This will not only provide food but create economic relief.

Each Goat will go to a family or village in need and includes education the give them the skills to breed and care for goats. This will also provide food and create economic relief.
The first born female of each goat goes to another village and the cycle continues.

There are many other packages available such as clean drinking water, emergency preparedness kits and wide assortment of educational packages that include such things as AIDS prevention.

Most of the packages were exceptionally inexpensive, as low as 15 dollars for a Chicken and the highest I remember seeing was a Donkey, for 120 dollars.

Anyway Check out the site and give anytime, not just for an occasion.

The 24th came pretty fast, which, incidentally, was my birthday and is also the day that Shelagh's family came for Christmas as we were spending Christmas day with my family. Last year we went to their house but we insisted upon cooking the meal this year and having the celebration here.

Everyone arrived around six'ish just after an insane wrapping frenzy. I was happy to see them and to take a load off for a few minutes before getting supper going.

This year we were graced by Shelagh's mother, Monica, the ever lovely, Sarah and Shelagh's brother Iain. We started with some hugs and hello's and then some conversation over a few appetizers.

We opened presents for what seemed an eternity ( they are so good to us) and I almost choked opening many of them, they always get me exactly what I want and need. Among the many presents we received from them was a desktop scanner and a sweet veterinarian book from Monica, a wad of art supplies and a really cool mask from Sarah and a digital video camera from Iain.

After we enjoyed our gifts for a while we moved onto dinner which consisted of roast prime rib, marbled mashed potatoes (sweet potato and red potato lightly mashed) Yorkshire pudding with au jus (beef broth) green beans, peas and snow peas. There was also an assortment of horseradish and mustard sauces for the prime rib, rolls and pickled stuff.

After a brief coffee and conversation break we indulged in a slice of my mom's homemade apple struzzell pie topped with french vanilla ice cream.

We chatted for a bit longer and shared many laughs and stories. After a thoroughly enjoyable and exhausting evening everyone said their goodbyes, Shelagh and I finished off a few last minute details and headed off to bed early in preparation for an equally fun filled Christmas day.

We were up reasonably early Christmas day and were on the road by late morning off to St Croix to visit my Mother, Kathie, Step Dad, David, Grandmother, Gwen and Grandfathers; who are still with us in spirit only, we miss you Howard and Ron.

We stopped at our usual Christmas day destination, the Irving in Mount Uniack, for Shelagh's traditional Christmas Day, Christmas coffee, some gas and the washroom and got back on the road.

We arrived around 1 ish and after the usual barrage of hugs, happy birthdays and merry Christmas's we started opening presents. For 2 hours, we opened presents. We actually had to hurry and open them all by 3 so we could take off to visit my other Grandmother who lives in the area. My family is nuts, they start shopping in January and compile stuff all year so when we finally open it all it takes hours, I love them so much and not because they get me tons of stuff, they get me thoughtful stuff.

I honestly don't know where to begin in telling you what we got from them. I collect camels so I got about 6 or 7 of them from my mother and Dave, ranging from metal to wood to stone, each one more amazing than the last. My mother got me an assortment of wooden boxes, which I also collect, one of which is a really cool retro artist box for storing my supplies when I'm mobile. My grandmother got me a couple gift certificated, which I love getting as well as a sweet new wallet. She also gave me my traditional Lego set.

Ever since I was a child I loved Lego and even though we were extraordinarily broke, my grandmother always bought me Lego for Christmas. It's one of my fondest memories, receiving that new set and seeing all the cool new pieces you got to play with, not to mention that you could add them to your current collection and your building possibilities increased 10 fold. I still love Lego and I love receiving them as gifts, thanks Gram, I can always count on you to remind me of what Christmas was like as a child.

3 o'clock came way to fast and we had to head off the my Grandmother Knowles' (Pat) place, where she and my Uncle Steve were awaiting our arrival. After some hugs and fun with the video camera we all taped a little Christmas cheer to my sister, Tricia who lives in Ontario and couldn't make it home for Christmas. We all miss her so much, especially at this time of family gathering. I love you baby sis, I hope your Yule was special and I hope to see you soon.

My father, Alan, was Christmasing out west this year with his wife Linda and they were unable to join us this year as well. I hope you both had a great holiday. Dad, it wasn't the same without your infectious smile and Linda's whispers are always entertaining, she knows what I mean, wink wink. lol

So we spent an hour or so opening presents, laughing and sharing our lives. My grandmother is a really good woman, a strong, independent business woman, always a plethora of information. We shared our feeling on art, investing and so many other things. It was a really good visit and Shelagh and I had a genuinely great time. My Uncle Steve is always in a great mood and is always laughing, despite having a terrible flu but a few days before. When I was younger he was the coolest guy I knew and I loved visiting with him and I still do.

Unfortunately 5 o'clock came upon us very quickly and we had to rush back to Gwen's place for Christmas dinner. We walked in and they were already eating, as usual, we were late arriving and my grandmother has diabetes, so she has to eat by 5. We quickly caught up and regaled them with stories of our visit with grammie Knowles.

After we stuffed our bellies with food, food and more food, we opened our table gifts, yes you heard me, table gifts. I'm not sure when this tradition was started but my mom always buys everyone something really little but usually really cool and saves it for after dinner. Dave buys her one and everyone gets one last gift to open. Crazy but fun, this year she got me a wooden pizza cutter, it's shaped kinda like a boomerang. It's way cool.

Dave and I finished up the dishes and joined the women in the living room for some Christmas day TV. Dave popped on a new video he got and we watched a couple 20 minute episodes of a hilarious British comedy which was a bit crude in parts but overall quite funny. I'm not knocking the show at all, I just don't find incontinence that amusing. After the fat suits and incontinence show my grandmother put on a crappy Christmas movie to punish my Mom and Dave for making her watch that show. After a few yawns and a head nod or two Shelagh and I decided to hit the road before we fell asleep. It was a seemingly long ride home but I guess road travel seems a lot longer when you're tired.

That pretty much wraps up that day, we got home loaded our stuff in and after some brief down time went off to bed, happy , stuffed and glad it was over!

The next couple days I took off and just kinda poked around, picking up the Christmas trash and straightening up. I don't remember sleeping much because I slept like freaking log the last couple nights from built up exhaustion. Last night we watched Much Music's Top 50 favorite 80's Video's, wow did that ever take me back... oh shit, I can't say that, it means I'm getting old. lol

I had an awesome, exhausting, exciting, frantic, and relaxing holiday. Thanks to everyone who made it special and a very special thanks to Shelagh for getting me through it, I love you baby, you rock, in so many ways.

Happy Birthday Shelagh!

Another awesome weekend! It started off with Shelagh coming home early on Friday. She was feeling a little off and quite bummed out about her job, it seems it is not as fulfilling as it once was. After a nap and a little talk she was feeling much better and we decided to do a little more work on our website. We got a lot done were quite satisfied with our accomplishments. Shelagh created an awesome banner for the site and I polished off some of the verbatim.

Saturday was Birthday Dinner Night at Curry Village. We spent most of the afternoon poking around and getting ready for dinner. Shelagh's Mom,her girlfriend Sarah and her brother Iain all showed up around 6'ish and we chatted and ate some fresh baked chocolate chip cookies to get our appetites going. We left around 7 for our 7:30 reservation and soon we were eating some of the best curry dishes the east coast has to offer.

I really enjoy spicy food and what some people don't realize about curry is that it comes in a very wide range of textures and flavors, It's not all red hot spicy. We ordered all sorts of dishes including a vegetarian dish and some Raita, which is a yogurt dish to cool your mouth if you need it. I swear one of the curry dishes made me see through time, it was seriously that hot. I was sweating bullets by the end of the meal but, wow, was it ever delicious and flavorful.

After we finished our meal off with some mango ice cream we headed back to our place and hung out with Iain for a while and then called it a night after a couple episodes of Man VS Wild, great show btw if you like survival type stuff.

Sunday was by far the laziest day I have ever spent in my life, we literally watched movies and talked all day, truly my favorite times are these.

We watched a old favorite, "The Day After Tomorrow" in the theme of our impending storm. Great flick and it got me in the mood for the coming Nor easter that evening. We also watched"The Fifth Element", which we've seen many times but there wasn't much on TV and I think we switched it there and just kinda got sucked in.

After that we watched "Stardust". I thought it was pretty good but I only give it a 2/3 rating because I wasn't blown away by it. It was, however, a pretty good movie with amazing visuals and imagination. You will definitely enjoy watching this movie with the family and guys won't be too cheesed out by the Chick Flicky love story because there is still a few action sequences that will entertain you and most of the female leads are quite easy on the eyes. For girls there is everything and the kitchen sink.

I'm pretty sure we watched another movie after that but I honestly can't remember.

While all of this movie watching was going on there was a huge storm going on outside with massive blowing winds and wet snow. There were snowdrifts everywhere. Eventually it turned to freezing rain and then rain. All in all an awesome night, man, I love storms.

At Midnight, I wished Shelagh a Happy Birthday and gave her a big hug. I proceeded to say Happy Birthday baby sporadically for the rest of the night, until we decided to hit the bedroom for some reading before sleep.

I watched, "The Terminator", while she read her book and then off to sleep.

We woke up together this morning, which is rare but nice when it happens. We shared some conversation, drank our coffee and went about getting showered and dressed. After many more Happy Birthday Baby's, Shelagh headed off to work. She doesn't know but I slipped a word jumble in her lunch box with colored letters that spell... you guessed it, Happy Birthday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY!

Summarization

Well, it's been a hectic week and it seems as if, one thing or another, has been keeping me from blogging. Pretty much everyday life stuff.

Obviously, I've been trying to get some Christmas stuff done but with very little money, I have to rely on my creativity a lot more this year. Needless to say, I am trying to make everyone something and you would think being an artist would make that easier but it doesn't. I have a lot of, "I hope they like it's", swirling around in my head but I'm sure being my family, they would love anything I made for them.

Charlie, one of our oldest cats somehow got an impacted anal gland. (And yes, it is as painful as it sounds) The poor guy is on antibiotics and feeling pretty soar but all in all feeling much better than he started. He's napping a lot and still can't sit down very well but is on the mend.

My cell phone is really starting to act up and die on me almost every time I try to do something on it and when I try to power it back on it has a mind of it's own and sometimes takes all day to get the power back on and even then it's shaky at best. Time to switch up I think.

At some point in the last 6 or 7 days or so I also decided that on top of my favorite word "Shank" as in, "You Shank!", I also find the phrase "Nut Meat" utterly hilarious. Call me juvenile if you must but it's not only the words I find humorous but the sound the two words make together.

The way I came to this decision was, as I was eating filberts (Hazel Nuts) and almonds from the shell, our youngest cat, Munchkin Man, came over to see what all the noise was about and started sticking his nose near the bowl. I figured, what the hell, see if he wants to try it.

So I broke off a teensy little piece, then smoothed off any sharp corners and skin and offered it to him. What do you know, he likes filberts! I was going to offer him an almond but the nut meat was too hard for an animal that rarely chews their food more than three times.

There are certain "Human" foods that will poison cats, some that will make them sick and some they simply can't digest. I highly recommend that you do the research, as I have, before feeding your animals anything other than cat food and even that, I recommend you research before feeding it to them. We feed our cats all natural organic dry food.

Never feed any animal Chocolate as it is a mild poison for cats and in high enough concentrations will kill them. Never feed your pets raw meat as they are subject to the same digestive ailment we do eating raw meat. There are conflicting views on raw meat but I go with a," better safe than sorry", attitude. Pork is really hard for cats to digest and can cause stomach and intestinal ailments and upset.

Knowing these and many others, you can avoid giving your animal anything harmful. I don't give my animals much other than cat food and cat treats anymore but occasionally, if they express interest in something natural, (No junk food for kitties!) I will make sure it's clear and test them out with a very little piece. I never give them anything that isn't reasonably soft and no sharp edges, ever.

I dropped a chip on the floor one time and my cat Woogie ran over and slammed it into his mouth in seconds. (He was trapped without food for 2 weeks before we found him, so he now eats whenever opportunity arises) Well, because he doesn't chew more than three times, the chip splintered and he started choking on it. I got him through it but it was pretty rough and at one point I was sure I was gonna have to suck out the chip.

That said, we have 6 cats that all like a variety of different "safe" foods.

Roni's (Ralphie) favorites are strawberries, honeydew melon and medium cheddar.

Chewy's (Charlie) favorites are black olives, romaine lettuce and Gouda cheese.

Heady's (Bobby) favorites are cereal milk, donuts and cooked hamburger off a Kraft pizza.

Woogie's (Douglas) favorites are pretty much anything you give him.

Beeb's (Tweak) favorites are cooked meat and dry cat food and thats it.

Munkin Man's (Munchkin Man) favorites are dill Havarti and Hazel Nut Meat. giggle

Maybe I'll explain how they got their nick names in another blog...

Oh yeah, my wife, a friend and I are starting a website together. I'm not going to ruin the surprise because we don't have it built yet but we're pretty excited and it will provide an very useful service to our global community. You can be sure I'll post it here when it's ready for public consumption ;o)

The Legend of the Griffins

Here's a video, I created a few months ago, to honor my old High School, which was in the process of being torn down. I wanted to preserve the memory for all those who loved being there.

Enjoy the clip...

Winterized

Well, it is officially winter in Nova Scotia and as far as I can tell from the weather network, all of Canada as well. It started about when I was finishing up yesterdays Blog and is still snowing as we speak. We had a brief reprieve though, long enough for the plows to do their thing.

I had a visit from my good friend Kainan a little after noon and we decided to grab some lunch at Subway. Kainan is a very intelligent guy and we have very similar outlooks on life, so as usual, we got wrapped up talking. He finally had to head out about 2 ish.

About mid afternoon, Shelagh sent me a text telling me to check my e-mail and the word YaY attached. I followed the link she provided me, which was the link to the weather network's warnings page, indicating the huge storm already in progress.

I remembered she said she was feeling down because it didn't feel much like Christmas yet, so with the impending storm, I decided to dig out the tree. It's one of those fake, natural, adjustable ones with the light's already on it, much better than hacking one down... Save the Tree's!

Anyway, neither of us is a Christian but we still throw up the tree for family and company, plus we both like little white lights lol So, I finally got the tree looking like a tree and headed off to dig out the rest of the Christmas stuff.

The cats were going nuts, tearing around the apartment, playing with anything and everything, at least 3 were trying to chew on the tree. The window to the deck was opened and they kept launching themselves out the window into the snow. This is our youngest cats first winter and he was having a blast in the snow, sniffing snorting and eating it and didn't seem to mind the coldness of it. It was really funny to look out the window and see 3 or 4 different sized cat prints intertwined in the snow. A couple of them simply weren't having it and wouldn't cross the window ledge barrier.

I wanted to get some pictures but alas my camera is toast, I'm hoping for a new one for Christmas but things are tight this year for everyone.

Anyway, when Shelagh came home from work, we lit a few candles, dimmed the lights and had some supper. We talked while watched the progressing storm and a little TV, then called it a day.

I tried to set up the humidifier before bed to counteract the fact that everyone in the building had their heat cranked up. Needless to say after 15 minutes of messing with it I decided it wasn't worth the hassle and went to bed.

The power went off once but came right back on and after that we didn't experienced any storm related problems.

Bliss

What an awesome weekend, two blissful days with Shelagh and our half dozen cats.

Saturday we went out and ran few errands, the usual exciting stuff like going to the farm market and hitting the bulk barn. We picked up a nice assortment of fresh veggies and fruit and I even scored a couple Asian pears. If you like pears that have a crisp and juicy texture of an apple, I highly suggest you get your hands on one.

Shelagh baked up some fresh oatmeal raisin cookies, while I finished putting away the days purchases. After a bite to eat and one of those tasty cookies we popped on the 4th installment of the Die Hard Series, Live Free or Die Hard.

I really liked this movie, the script stood alone and was definitely in the true Die Hard Fashion. There were lots of great action sequences, as you would expect from any Die Hard movie and a few fresh things that will most definitely impress you. I give it 3 star rating, 1 being crap, 2 being watchable but didn't blow me away and 3 being a good solid enjoyable flick.

We also watched Breach which was pretty good I guess but I only give it a 2, solid story just a bit slow for my flavor, It is based on a true story about the take down of a Russian spy living and working in America.

Thus concluding our Saturday.

Sunday was one of my all time favorite kind of days where we loafed around all day, laying in bed, playing video games and hanging out with the cats and each other. I can't describe the sense of bliss I get from being curled up under the blankets with the person I love, 4 or 5 cats spread around and interacting, touching and just being with them, I love those days so very much.

It snowed a little, we both expressed how excited it will be to finally get that unbelievably peaceful silence, that comes right after a fresh snowfall. The world seems to be a peace, everyone is hunkered down in their homes, hopefully with a hot cup of something a loved one.

After an exhausting day of napping and enjoying our time together we both expressed our enjoyment of the weekend with each other and it was off to the land of dreams and that's where I'm a viking...

Uneventfulness

There are some new pics of paintings I have done on my blog, take a peek around...


Not much to say about yesterday, it was like one of those days that seem like a blur, even the very next day. I was able to spend one more day with Shelagh and my cats and that's the best it gets for me.

I guess still feeling blah from the night before, I wasn't in the mood for much activity so we threw on the idiot box and watched a few documentaries. Nothing of major interest and although the hour focusing on central Australia was very cool, the show, Extreme Homes, which featured a sphere home that you hang in the trees, was really interesting.


There's no way I could describe this product and do it justice but you can see it's a 3 meter'ish sphere with almost every amenity you can imagine. It very much resembles a mini motor home inside and comes with everything including the kitchen sink. Down side, no toilet but if you took along a composting toilet, you'd be all set and it's geared to be of low environmental impact. Shelagh did some poking around on the internet and found the website HERE . It's worth checking out.

Today I was up ridiculously early because of yesterdays illness, which I'm still feeling the after effects of, kind of a general ravaged innards type thing. On the up side, I got all the stuff I wanted to get done, as far as housework was concerned. I also spent some quiet time listening to music and caught the beginnings of the years first real snowfall.

Tweak, my calico, was kind enough to slash my hand while I was grooming her, no problem, I payed her back by cutting her nails, she slinked away defeated and cranky off to the back room to sulk.

Shelagh had a nice long sleep this morning due to an unrequested nausea incident last night, which caused her to take a Gravol. She's up now and feeling much better and well rested. She's currently in the other room, on a perilous journey, battling her way through strange and wonderful lands...actually she's just playing Bard's Tale on PS2. Sporadically, I hear her bitch at an extra rough enemy, it's pretty funny actually and as odd as it sounds, comforting in a way.

Well, It's a full blown snow storm outside now and I need to go to the farm market and pick up some fresh goodies, so I'll say goodbye for now...