scotchneat.ca

It’s the next gen of web entertainment: the world’s first online dance adventure…

http://www.thelxd.com/

And it’s Joss-approved. I can’t wait.

Friday was the day! Some young guys showed up with tools and installed my new fireplace in the ,living room. I mostly sat on the couch and peered over my book at what they were doing. And I must say, the most impressive part was just how professional they were. They cleaned up every speck of dust and even brought in a little carrier for their boots by the door because they were worried about my cork floor.

I got to satisfy my inner construction nerd by asking lots of questions about combustibles, gas hookups, fire-rated caulk and those little bits of fake embers. And since the weather has been crappy with a side of wind for the last week, I was more than happy to turn on the thing as soon as they were finished. That plus a blanket and a book is exactly what was required. It`s a wonder that Andrew got me out the door later on to go to a holiday party.

But the install part is just the firebox — now I have to figure out how the father and I are going to finish this baby off. But I’ve decided after looking at many a mantel that most of them are, well, fugly.  Which means I have all kinds of room to mess this up.

And if that wasn’t excitement enough, I also received delivery of my new laptop and router. Besides the fact that it took several hours to get the two of them to work together, I’ve already managed to mess up my font size and go into some kind of international character mode such that everything I tried to type came out as an accented E. Apparently, if you select Canadian as your language, it assumes you mean French and not English (gotta wonder if the government of Quebec had a hand in this).

Anyway, after a lot of research I ended up going with the Toshiba Satellite AS500 model. Poor Patsy was really on her last legs, but who can complain when you get 6 years out of the same laptop/motherboard and fixins that she came with. I gave serious consideration to a few Lenovo models as well, but the keyboard on the 16″ really put me off. The space for the wrist rest was more like an elbow rest given the space from the edge of the base to the start of the keyboard.

The new one is called Lydia – she just came out as a Lydia somehow. But I think this keyboard stuff is going to drive me mental. I still haven’t figured out why the font size shrinks to a size suitable only for a superhero with xray vision is beyond me. I’ve discovered it’s hard to see what you are doing when everything is in 4pt serif.

Banner day.

Cathy &Jean, and Camie and I had dinner and went to the KW Symphony’s Jeans & Classics last night.

Dinner was at Uptown 21, where even the desserts have meat. I had fresh greens with bacon (mmmm. bacon) followed by aged cheddar & potato ravioli with a maple glaze. Cathy and Jean had a wine pairing prix-fixe, and Jean’s included foie gras–twice. He was a happy man.

We got out of there with what with thought was ample time, but underestimated the KWian love of  ”symphonic rock”–couldn’t find a parking spot for love nor money near Centre in the Square so we had to park on Weber and walk. In the pouring rain.

The concert was fun as always, but I thought the arrangements were a little less adventurous than some of the ones I’ve seen before. And I was sorely disappointed because my favourite Tiger double bass performer disappeared sometime after the first song. The cover of “Under Pressure” was decent, though, and the trumpet soloist on “White Shade of Pale” did an awesome job.

Always a good time.