Happy 5th Anniversary

Whew.

This July 1st represents 5 years of being married to the most awesome woman I have ever met in my life, and I’m not just saying that because she will probably read this. I am very much blessed. We have a wonderful child together and another one on the way. I owe her credit for everything good that has happened in my life. She’s truly one of a kind, and if you ever get a chance to meet her, you’ll understand what I mean.

With that, I want to wish a very happy 5th anniversary to my wife, and state for the record, that this year will be focussed on getting you what you want and need as a mother, a wife, a friend, and in life.

I love you,

Urban Daddy

Now for the gift portion of this post…

5 years of marriage are represented by wood and silverware. The gemstone is turquoise and the flower… Daisies. I’ve got them all covered. Also covered and a few other essentials, to make things work this July 1st.  Chocolate (works every time) and the memories of our wedding day, so long ago it seems, at the incredible Art Gallery of Ontario.

When your 18 month old child goes “thump” in the night…

Would you believe this happened to me?  Actually it happened to my son?

All 18 months of him.

Here’s what happened…

It’s 12:30am, and I’m on the computer trying to write an essay on e-Procurement wondering when, if ever, I might be off to bed, when directly above me, I hear a loud “thud”, but no noise to follow.  So I set aside my essay, make my way upstairs and into our bedroom.  Still no noise.  I make my way over to my side of the bed and reach for the flashlight we use to check on Linus.  I had left the flashlight on the floor when I brought Linus into our bed at 10pm to sleep with his mummy.  

I reached down for the flashlight, and felt… hair.

Then a head?!?

It was my son.

The thud was him falling off our bed onto the floor (and power bar).  He was on his hands and knees and out cold… Still sleeping.

I scooped him up and took him to his crib where he is snoring up a storm.

Poor little guy is back on anti-biotics, still has an ear infection, and those drugs make him sleep sounder than he did before.

Surprisingly, I was able to pick him up and carry him considering the intense pain I feel in my sciatic nerve. I get sharp shooting pains from pretty much my left buttock (glut muscle) all the way down to my toes (which sometimes go numb). I went through a month of serious physiotherapy, and massage but to no avail. Now I continue to stretch a lot, but no avail. So today I got new walking shoes. That might work.

Also I posses a very cranky wife who is 24 week pregnant and already feeling like she did in the 9th month with Linus.  Her back is probably worse than mine and that says a lot.  She, like I, am very tough and are able to move on considering the pain.  I think the only thing that would make her feel better (after a good massage) is if we paid off our mortgage.  She hates debt.  I love that she hates debt except it adds to the stress of a sick child and being pregnant.

So now it’s time to get back up to bed, I have to be at the office in 5 hours.

“thunk”

I’ve been tagged Part 2

5 THINGS:

5 Things in My Refrigerator:
1% milk for my cereal fetish – yum
Cheese – goes on everything! Except meat.
Ketchup – essential for grilled cheese, potatoes and eggs
Sour cream – low fat for the awesome french toast UrbanMummy makes

5 Things in My Closet:
Many, many custom dress shirts by Maxwell the tailor, because I have monkey arms
Shorts that I used to wear in high-school
Over 25 baseball hats, and I no longer wear hats.
A pair of Doc Maartens that I no longer wear, but keep
A laundry basket full of clean clothes I should put away

5 Things in My Workbag:
Cell phone;
iPod;
School textbook(s);
Cheque book;
Allergy medicine

5 Things in My Car:
Stroller
Gas receipts
CD cases hidden from my wife
Change for the parking meter (or Tim Horton’s)
Map Art / Perly’s – for my lousy sense of direction

5 People I Tag:
Angela’s Magic Carpet Ride
Shroom-Monkey
Bin-Jip
Dora the Explorer
Bob the Builder

I’ve been tagged!

Holy Hell, I’ve been tagged, by the lovely and extremely talented Urban Mummy.

Now I need to go find out what that means…

Long live the Whale

It finally happened.

Long Live the Whale.

The Hartford Whalers have won the Stanley Cup!!!!

They did it, of course, in disguise, dressed as Carolina Hurricanes from that hockey (NASCAR) hotbed of Carolina.

First Tampa Bay, then Carolina. OY. What is the NHL coming to??? What happened to the Black Hawks, Leafs, Bruins, Rangers, Habs or Red Wings? Well those team all suck, except the Wings, of course.

Kudos to the Bruins and Black Hawns for REALLY fucking up their teams. Do you guys want fans? Wake up before it’s too late.

And while I’m on it… Build a fucking arena in Pittsburgh already. They deserve it. They are going to be a great team for years to come.

And my beloved Leafs… Bye bye Domi, Belak and Belfour. If Ferguson Jr can’t find a scoring winger and number 1 Centre to play with Sundin, then he needs to go too.

Anyways, I couldn’t find either my home or away Whalers Jersey, but I have my hat with me at the office. (Boss is an Oilers fan – oops). Make sure everyone sees it.

We adopted a kitten for our son (and ourselves)

Kittens. Crazy. But who knew? I certainly didn’t.

This past Sunday, which happened to be father’s day, we took our son to the humane society and picked out a kitten for him. We had three cates (they came with the wife) until 2 of them died, both within the past 6 months and both at great ages.  One was 19 years old and the other 15 years old.

Having only one cat turned out to be very odd for me after spending 6 years together with three of them.  As Urban Mummy put it, “the cats to people to square foot ratio was very good. Now, not so good.”

We got this kitten to help the ratio and because Linus loves cats.  He named his own kitten Owen.  We’ll call him that too…

Well Owen, is crazy. After 3 days, he wont leave me alone. While I was working on my laptop, the little critter was doing laps of my head, running around my neck sometimes stopping to look me in the eyes. Then he followed my feet around. Stopping inbetween them, trying to stay close in case I left the room, or so he could get a good run at my shins. Crazy.

At 2 in the morning I could her the rattling of the cat toys as they moved from one side of the bathroom across to the other. He was playing. Awwww.

He’s a little cutie!!!

Welcome to the family, Owie!

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Things Urban Daddy dislikes 1. Grafitti. If you want to paint things, get a job for student painters. I paid a lot of money for my house and don’t appreciate your “artwork” anywhere near it. If I did, I would have hired you. 2. Bamboo Shoots and Water Chestnuts. YUCK. Texture, taste, everything. 3. Fighting unfairly. If you want to fight, do it above board. Hitting below the belt makes you a coward. If you feel that engaging in fisticuffs is the only way to solve a problem, fight fairly. 4. Skinny Women. Like really skinny, I can see your bones. Gross. Eat some food! 5. The word “Stupid”. No one is stupid. No one deserves to be called stupid or referred to as stupid. Doing so makes you, well… The opposite of smart. 6. Racism. Why do people have to make fun of other people because they look, talk, or thing differently. What make YOU so special. Last time I checked, as humans, we were ALL the same. 7. Monopolies. Why do some companies get to charge an arm and a leg for things without any checks and balances. See oil companies and banks. Is a trillion dollars profit a quarter not enough?? 8. Bad sportsmanship. Being competitive is a very good quality. Bad sportsmanship really is unnecessary and just makes you look like an ass. 9. Pushy people. Take a breather. Not everything can get done this minute. Some things take time and require patience. 10. Needles. Yuck. Say no more. 11. The Golden Girls. That show drives me crazy. I cringe when I hear the music. 12. House, and techno music and stuff like that. If it sounds like one really long song created by a computer, it’s not music. 13. My aching back. It’s keeping me from playing sports, and putting on my socks and shoes. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here! The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted! View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

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Hello and Good Morning starts my day off just right!

This morning on my regularly scheduled hurried walk to the subway from my house to the office, I had no less than 4 people say good morning to me. You know what, I believe that they actually meant it. It didn’t appear to be forced. It was actually quite pleasant.

I think in the 4 years we lived at our other house, I had 4 people say good morning to me in total.

I think I am going to have a good morning today.

There, that didn’t hurt. Toronto the friendly.

Hartford Whalers

Hmmmm.

The Carolina Hurricanes beat the Edmonton Oilers 2-1 to take a 3 games to 1 lead in the Stanley Cup finals. As a lover of the sport Americans call Ice Hockey, I have some thoughts.

1) Why don’t the Leafs have any of these great players?
2) Does Carolina not look like the most calmest, skilled team to play for the cup in a long time. They are so good, it’s scary. I mean really, who is Cam Ward?
3) If Edmonton cannot win the cup it is fitting that Carolina should win, and YES, the Stanley Cup parade should be in Hartford. They did move the Whalers and their 15,000 fans to Carolina and their 3000 fans. Now hockey has “caught on” there, but really, who are we kidding. Americans would rather watch a spelling bee, dog show, or women scratching their asses, than NHL hockey. I just don’t get it.
4) If the Stanley Cup gets that much exposure, do you want your players hidden behind those yucky playoff beards? What does that do for player recognition. And yes, I am jealous becuase I cannot grow one.
5) The second the cup is hoisted over the head of Eric Staal, it becomes baseball season. Go Jays!
6) How long until training camp begins? And will the Leafs finally find someone to play with their superstar, Mats Sundin? and I don’t mean Tie Domi!!!
and lastly…
7) How weird will it sound to hear, … “The Stanley Cup has been won by the Carolina Hurricanes”??? I guess just remember the call when the hockey hot bed of Tampa Bay won.

Hey, that was my idea… Now what?

English: A solution consists of: plan, rationale, idea, and insight (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tough situation here:

It’s not like I’m new in the workforce or new to the organization that I work for – the Canadian Revenue Agency – but I’ve been here for 8 long years.  I am also 2 years into my MBA so I can now add the academics behind how an organization works to compliment my practical experiences.  I’m especially good at getting the most out of people.

This situation happened to me today and it blew me away.   I was at a total loss until now, but I’ve decided to just let it go, because I’m a team player and to be honest I don’t need to toot my own horn because the quality of my work speaks volumes.  Today, however, after spending quite a while trying to solve a complex matter with my team leader we found a solution based solely on a concept from one of my graduate school classes.  The professor in that class worked in the public service in the US so his views were interesting and relevant.

Later that day, I came across my TL holding court among a bunch of people when I overheard him speaking about the problem and they telling everyone my solution but misrepresenting it as coming from him.  He even said that not only did he come to the solution but her researched it and  reviewed it too.

Hmmmm.

But here is where it got even more interesting… Obviously he did not know I was there, and he had made a factual error on one part of his explanation so I corrected him.  Do you think he’d stop at this point???  Nope.  Instead he  just kept on embellishing the story to make it sound even more impressive.

I wanted to speak up, but I had to leave.

If you have to depend on someone else’s thoughts, words or writings to make your own life interesting that’s fine, just give credit where credit is due because if you’re found out to be a phony then you lose your credability.

What would you have done?  Remember this is a unionized environment…