Out of The PIT

We sent EYS away for a few days so that MJNL and I could regain our sanity for a little while and try to catch up on cleaning up the house. EYS will be back later today and we are nowhere near clean but I guess it will have to do..

So I ended up staying up most of the night because MJNL had to rest. Unfortunately I didn't prepare and now I am quite exhausted. I got a couple hours of sleep here and there but this will catch up to me soon. I'm going to nap.

After the whirlwind events of the weekend, we've finally settled down to a semi-stable schedule here at the hospital. We will be here for at least another night if not two. This has put a crimp on our plans for receiving a shipment of a large piece of furniture today. The stipulation was that the movers would only leave the box on the threshold and we would need to move it in ourselves. Alas, we were all sequestered away and I told my dad to ask if they would move the box inside if we gave them a little bit of cash. Unfortunately the response was always no, and we were left with the conundrum of what to do. MJNL told me to contact AL and HKL to see if they could help. HKL was not working so it was easy for him to accept, and I posted on the family chat to see if anyone else would help but there were no quick takers. Well, it was quite serendipitous that I had just announced Serena's arrival over e-mail and got a response from GF that he was more than willing to help with any er...

They just went upstairs to the OR. I am not allowed to go into the OR so I am staying in the room. I wonder if this baby will be born today or tomorrow?

MJNL started feeling not so well today so we went to the hospital to check in. Now I'm stuck here until baby is born.

I got woken up by MJNL telling me that my phone had been ringing repeatedly all morning so I checked it out. Apparently it was from one of our clients who was having problems with an upgrade. He didn't know that we were off today otherwise he would not have attempted to install the update. I spent all morning working then most of the afternoon taking care of EYS. This included a call with Laz and MJH. It wasn't a very relaxing or productive day and I feel exhausted.

We took full possession of the mini-van yesterday and I immediately went on a pickup excursion in Brampton to get a large dollhouse, baby clothes, baby toys, and other miscellaneous stuff that have been waiting for us there for months. After looking at the dollhouse and boxes of stuff, I was amazed to see that it actually all fit into the mini-van! It was a little tough to move everything in by myself, but patience and persistence pays off in the end I guess.

We finally got our summer tires on the car. I held off due to the cold weather and the fact that the tread on our summer tires was nearing the end of it's life. This will be the last season for these tires for sure. I figured that with the reduced travel due to the pandemic and number two, I do not foresee us driving the car all that much this summer. Also, I am going to try out storing our tires at a warehouse. We have a small house and any extra space is appreciated, especially since we expect to purchase another set of winter tires for the minivan this winter.

I've decided to set up my own mail server again. My domain used to have one when I had it hosted somewhere else, but when that kinda of stopped working, I did not bother creating another one because I did not really use it. Then I realized that I was using that e-mail address in some places so..

So it seems as if the bag trick is working. MJNL's car has been poo free for the past day. My car on the other hand looks like a bird war zone. Time for another car wash..

So, our cars are getting rather lathered with bird poo. Not much more I can say about that, except I actually started looking up potential solutions today. Why did I not tap into the power of the internet weeks ago? Well.. I guess I did not think that it was that big of a problem and that maybe it would go away? In any case, our resident robin has been pretty territorial with our driveway area and apparently has not found a mate yet. The nest is still empty and I think the constant flitting around is probably going to scare of any a potential mate. So I think I will try the first simplest solution: cover the side mirrors. I grabbed a couple of plastic bags (of which we now have loads of due to the suspension of plastic bag costs), and covered up the side mirrors on MJNL's car. We just washed it before we got home and my car is not worth protecting at this point. Apparently some robins will see their reflection in the mirror and think that it is a potential rival, so they would basi...

I finally got the final portion to the car transfer so I will be heading out to a service centre tomorrow to get the paperwork done. I do not know how bad the line up will be but there is only one centre open in the old city and it is only open for six hours in the afternoon! I have a bad feeling that the line up will be bad..

Okay, I checked my cameras and it looks like one of the squirrels took off a couple of tulips. *shakes fist* Sorry for blaming you chuck.

My parents came over to celebrate Mother's day, and my dad went to pull out the dandelions on our property. While we were discussing how some of the early flowers had disappeared, I noticed that a lot of my tulips were gone. In fact, all of the tulips that had already flowered were eaten by something! My guess would be the resident woodchuck, but I will have to see if my cameras caught anything..

I decided to head to Costco to pick up groceries today. However, due to work, I did not get out to the warehouse until the late afternoon and by then, there was quite a long lineup to get into the store. It was also a rather chilly day today and as usual, I went out without a jacket. Not the brightest choice in hindsight, but I have been through worse, and I was able to keep myself warm by staying in the sun, out of the wind, and trying to move whatever muscles I had without moving. I did not want to attract any more attention to myself than I had to. I was out there for at least half an hour. The line was moving quite slowly. At one point, I could see snow drifting down from the sky. Sure, it was just a few flakes, but it was still snow! This is May! Anyway, I survived, and to celebrate, I walked out of the warehouse with give times more stuff than I had planned on picking up. Oh wait, that's like a normal trip out to Costco..

We are expected to have an extended frost warning over the weekend and I have been watching my garden wondering if I'll be losing some of my plants. My tulips have just started flowering and my trees have leaves, and a robin has started nesting at my house. Freezing temperatures are not good for any of them. There is not much I can do, but at least for the robin I will try not to disturb it as much as possible. We do not want the bird to get spooked and stay away from the next too long. Those eggs and chicks cannot last long without their mother's warmth.

We could have been hit by a car running a red light. The intersection near our house is notorious for that. Ever since we started living here less than a year ago, I've seen close to half a dozen of these traffic violations. The cars do not stop. They barely slow down. Honking them only results in them honking back if there is any sort of response at all. I am not sure what the solution is. It is not as if all of the drivers are coming from the same direction. It seems as if drivers on the main street will drive right through the intersection from either direction. The lights are pretty visible and the road is straight, so.. I dunno? The case in point. I have been using a dash cam for a few years now and I was able to catch this perpetrator in the act. However, since the driver was going perpendicular to me, we only catch a glimpse of the vehicle on the camera and no license plate. The best I can do is to post it on line and try to publicly shame the driver, but this would pr...

The trees have really started to turn green today. The leaves have shown up on all of our trees as well as the trees in the ravine. The rhododendron started flowering this weekend and the cherry blossoms have started to appear in the cherry grove. By next week we probably will not be able to see the ravine from our back yard anymore. Birds of so many shapes, sizes, and shades have shown up in our back yard. No longer is it mostly robins and the occasional cardinal. There are plenty of other birds. Brown birds, black birds, singing birds.. you may have noticed that I have no idea what kind of birds we have, but there is quite a variety of them now. We had dinner outside yesterday and I noticed that the insects have started showing up. Mostly on my windows, but it will not be long before they are buzzing about in the garden and the ravine beyond. Spring truly has arrived.

So I spent most of the day putting up the frames that MJNL wanted to hang on our empty wall today. The difficulty with this task was due to the fact that our outside walls had very little drywall and no insulation, which means that unless we were using really small nails, we'd be hammering into brick. The solution was to use one of those command strips to hang the frames, which we were planning to do with those velcro type strips. However, the strips were thicker than the frame, which meant that we either had to have them stick out the sides, or have them overlap with the inner frame which would mean that replacing the pictures would require removing the strip. An expensive proposition when there are two strips per frame. I eventually settled on a hook style strip that worked with the sawtooth hangers, but these suckers were pretty expensive so I had postponed the purchase until.. well, until MJNL told me to just do it. So I just did it. It took most of the day because EYS needed...

So I got my car washed yesterday. It got rid of most of the guano, but there was still a noticeable patch around the side mirror, but I figured that I'd hose it down later. By the end of the day, my car was about the same as it was this morning. *shakes fist at robins* This calls for more drastic action..