This ain't the blog you're looking for

Due to Google's elimination of FTP posting, I have migrated the julieandian.com blog to Word Press and off of blogspot, so this site is just a placeholder for the old blog. I'll likely delete it once I've confirmed everything is working and organized over at the "real" site.

The address for our blog will continue to be julieandian.com

Thank you for reading this.

Ian

This blog has moved

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RSS feeds

Hmm. I'm still having problems getting the RSS feed to work properly.

Also, Google has said they're going to discontinue FTP uploads of blog posts. Looks like I'm going to have to spend some time revamping this whole domain.

Always a distraction to keep me from my goals, I guess.

Cheers.

Updates are a-comin'

As the thousands of you who read this blog have no doubt noticed, I've updated the look and feel of julieandian.com. What does that mean, you ask?

Well, I did make a New Year's resolution to do more writing more often, and I think a general precursor to doing any writing is doing writing warmups, which is a perfect fit for blog entries.

Thus the goal is to write a blog entry, then write 500-1000 words on my other works.

Barack mania

Given how terrible US political scene has been over the last 8 years, I've got to admit, I'm really hyped about the Obama presidency and what it might mean for not just the US, but all of us, around the world. As a tribute, I took the new official portrait and made (IMHO) a sweet wallpaper for y'all. (Original photo by Pete Souza - not sure of the copyright for this photo):

(In 1440x900 - for my MacBook):


(And in 1920x1200):



(Same again, but reversed for you "leftists" out there ;-) ):


Right click and "Save Link As..." to download the full size files. Then use your usual methods of changing your desktop wallpaper to keep Obama on your desktop, telling you "We cannot walk alone."

Sad...

Glass houses

I don't know if this post should go here or on the 3 O'clock blog, but here goes.

I just bought glasses.

On the internet.

For $38.

Yeah, I'm doubtful about it too, but clearlycontacts.ca is having a $38 special (though it works out to about $50 after shipping - overnight Fedex - and handling) in November, where they're offering their glasses at a heavy discount. Since my kids have managed to break arms on both of my current glasses over the last year, having another spare pair is a good idea. I had my prescription handy (something I recommend to everyone), found a pair I thought would look good on me, punched in the numbers and -- BAM -- glasses on the way.

I'll let you know how this goes. And post some pictures too.

Cheers.

A very good piece from David Suzuki came through my inbox today, and I wanted to share it with you all:

Lessons my father taught me are worth sharing

Now in the seventh decade of my life, I look back at the world of my childhood, with its shared phone lines, ice boxes, radio soap operas, and no television, and it seems like an ancient, lost civilization. And yet the ideas and values I learned as a child seem every bit as important for today’s youth, for whom rappers, billionaires, and movie stars are role models.

When I was a boy, my father was a bigger-than-life figure, a wonderful storyteller who enchanted people with his outgoing personality. He was my hero. He took me camping and fishing and instilled in me a love of nature and the outdoors. When he came home from work, he always asked me what I had learned in school, and as I recounted my lessons, he seemed genuinely interested, often amplifying my information or correcting me. I loved those sessions, and I now realize that he was reinforcing my education by making me recount what I had learned.

Dad was my biggest booster, but he was also my harshest critic. When I began in television, he followed everything I did. More than once when he couldn’t follow my narrative, he would call and bawl me out: "If I can’t understand what you are saying, how do you expect someone who doesn’t know you at all to follow your ideas?" To this day, I think of my father as my audience whenever I prepare a script or write a book.

My mother was the rock-solid foundation of the family. She was the first up in the morning and the last to bed at night, but unlike Dad, she did it quietly. I only understood how important she was as she developed Alzheimer’s disease and I watched Dad struggle to fill her shoes. I begged him to allow me to hire help for him, but he declined. "She gave her all for me," he said, "and it’s my turn to pay her back."

Both of my parents are now dead, and in my own dotage, I think about the important lessons I want to pass on to my children and grandchildren – and I realize they are the same lessons I got from Dad. I can’t help thinking they are not quaint ideas from the past but very modern ones that we need desperately today.

"Respect your elders," he told me.

"But Dad," I protested, "Mr. Saita is a fool."

"David," Dad remonstrated, "he has lived a long life and has had experiences and thought about a lot of things you haven’t. I know he seems opinionated and stupid, but if you listen, even he can teach you something."

"To do well in Canada as a Japanese-Canadian," he said, "you have to work 10 times harder, you must be able to get up and speak extemporaneously, and you must be able to dance."

Fortunately, hard work was never an obstacle for me and I entered oratorical contests for which Dad drilled me in the art of public speaking. I never understood the dancing part and was not successful in that area.

"Whatever you do, do it with gusto. Don’t do it in a sloppy, half-hearted way but enthusiastically, whether it’s scrubbing the floors, picking cherries, or playing basketball. That’s how you get the most out of life."

"We all need money for the necessities in life, but you don’t run after it as if money makes you a bigger or better man. If someone flashes his fancy new clothes or big car, pity him, because he has gone down the wrong road."

"Live within your means." This important lesson is embodied in the familiar expression "Save some for a rainy day."

"You must stand up for what you believe in, but be prepared for people to be angry and to disagree. If you want to be liked by everyone, then you will stand for nothing."

"You are what you do, not what you say." Kids have a different way of saying this in their taunt, "All talk and no action."

My mother also taught me useful homilies like "Always clean up your own mess," "Be kind to animals," and "Share; don’t be greedy."

Today’s youth are bombarded with news about the antics of Lindsay Lohan, Amy Winehouse, and Jay-Z, and look to them for inspiration, but that’s all the more reason to listen to the words of our elders.

Test

Quick test post. Nothing to see here.

When the hell did I get old?

I could live with the few grey hairs on my temple. The grey hairs in my beard were concerning, but I could live with those too. But now, I've got grey intruding on my chest hair. What the hell is with that? I'm barely in my 30's!

I think it's also telling that I still have chest hair, unlike most 20-something metrosexuals these days, who wax everything between their belly-button and eyebrows.

Found writing

I found this piece while cleaning up my old stock of crap writing that I've had sprayed over multiple disks. The date on it says I wrote it in 2005, but I think it's from even earlier. Still relevant though, whatever the calendar says.

---

I can be anything I want to be. Except President of the United States.
Apparently, you have to be born there. What a crock. How elitist-you want to
be a good leader and rule the "free" world? You'll need a log cabin to apply,
I'm afraid. Oh, and did I mention the white male clause in the contract as
well? So sorry, perhaps you could try somewhere in South America instead?

It's especially unfortunate because what that country really needs is an
outsider's viewpoint. Someone impartial, with an unemotional connection to the
issues facing the US. I tell you I'd have things fixed in a jiffy-none of this
I-need-two-terms-in-office-to-make-history crap. In, out, wham, bam, Boom! All
handguns confiscated. All drugs federally regulated, with proceeds going to
social programs and health care-it'd be the biggest cash cow any government
could ever hope for. Not bad for the first week in office. And I'm just
getting started.

I could do it too. Know why? Because I'd be an outsider. Fresh. Cool.
Uncorrupted by 200 years of white-washed US history. It'd be grand, don't you
think? And the best part would be that if it didn't work out, if radicals (or
Republicans) attacked the White House, I'd just jump on board that big old green
helicopter and get my non-US butt back over the border to Canada. ASAP. Maybe
that's why you have to be born there-they want to make sure you don't have a
backdoor to retreat through.

Makes sense, now that I think about it.

Vacation

I've been feeling kind of run-down lately. Partly due to illness, partly due to the fix-up-the-house-at-all-costs mentality that comes with a new home. But whatever it is, I'm flat. I wondered today if it's because I haven't had a vacation in a very long time.

When I was a kid, vacations were the long breaks between the joyous end of June and the terrible woe of Labour Day in September. I remember weeks at our cottage in Manitoba, a trip across the northern US, and many other time sinks that seemed to narrow as I grew older. The last trip I really recall with my parents was a 3 day whirlwind drive through Montana, Idaho and the top corner of Washington. I spent most of it reading prep materials for my Grade 12 courses.

My last long vacation was in my 5th year of university (1997) when I was doing my English degree. I only had essays due at the end of the fall term, and no finals, as all my courses were year long. I remember leaving Queen's on the 3rd or 4th of December, and realizing that I had no responsibilities, exams, classes -- nothing for 5 whole weeks. During that long lazy winter break, I even remember thinking to myself that this was likely the longest break I'd get until retirement. Sobering.

The last three years, my long vacations have been: 2006 moving cross country and setting up house in Alberta (2 weeks), 2007 Bailey's birth (combined with parental leave 4 weeks), 2008 moving cross country (2 weeks). Hardly stress free relaxation time.

For me, the dream 'vacation' means packing bags, going to the airport and flying somewhere to lay on a beach sleeping and drinking pina coladas for 6 days. The last vacation where I flew somewhere was Florida in fall 2005, and that week was spent fighting a cold and putting up with Ronan (who also had a cold). Not good times.

What's your idea of a vacation, dear reader? Post your thoughts in the comments.

Happy Canada Day

Just to show you how behind I am on everything, I'm now 2 days overdue in wishing you all a happy Canada Day!

Bailey nickname

How the heck did I forget "Bailey-boo". We call her that all the time. Seriously.

Is this thing on?

Fffttt. Ffffttt. Test 1 2 3. Sssssibilence. Ssssibilence.

We have just switched hosting providers to site5.com which means we have a lot more bandwidth and a lot more space to keep files and stuff, so we'll be able to give you a much better julieandian.com experience in the near future. Stay tuned!

McDonalds

Why the heck do they not give you ketchup (or catsup for you weirdos out there) at the McD's drive through window anymore? Their french fries are barely palatable, even when they are piping hot. When they're soggy and cold (like 90%) of the time, the only way to choke 'em down is covered in tomato-based lubricants.

What a sad state of affairs -- and people think what's happening in the third world is a problem.

File under "things I'm likely to forget as I get older"

Our kids' current nicknames (given by grandparents, parents and the children themselves):
Ronan (age 4)

• Ronan D'Gonan
• Ronan Dotcha-four
• Ribbet's buddy

Bailey (age 1)

• Bails
• Bailey Mac-A-lay-ley
• Bailey Dotcha-kay-ley
• Haybales
• Sugarbooger

More as I remember them.

I wanna rock...

Ronan and I occasionally play "Guitar Hero III" together on our Wii. This has become much easier since we bought a second guitar controller. We don't last too long in cooperative mode, as his arms don't really reach the strum bar and the note buttons at the same time. But he loves "rockin' out" with his dad.

Last night, Ronan stayed over at his Grandad and Grandma's house, but had a bad night, and had been up since 3:30 am. Which meant that by 7:30 tonight, he was pretty brittle. He was in good spirits and behaved well through dinner, so when he asked to play Guitar Hero with me, I gladly agreed. We told him "one song" only though before bedtime. He and I played "Slow Ride" twice, failing miserably to get farther than twenty bars into it before we were booed off the stage.

After that, Julie took over Ronan's guitar for one song with me (she's getting pretty good) and then we said it was time for him to go to bed. And thus provoked the funniest tantrum in his long history of tantrums.

"I don't WANNA go ta bed. I wanna ROCK! I WAH-HA-NAH ROCK!"
"I wanna ROCK! I don't WANNA go ta bed! I WAH-NA RO-HO-HO-CK!"

It's hard to carry a kicking, screaming rock star down the hallway to his bedroom when your sides are shaking with laughter, and he sobs and wails at the top of his voice:

"I wanna ROCK! I WAH-NA RO-HO-HO-CK!"

Oilers get bounced

Crap. The Edmonton Oilers got booted out of the playoff picture with their loss last night to Calgary. Big downer, as it means the Oil have been out of the Stanley Cup picture both seasons that we've lived here. After 12+ years in southern Ontario, you think I'd be used to the local team not having a shot in the playoffs, but I'm still a big enough Oilers fan that this one will sting for a while.

I did wonder though how much of an impact the extra overtime loss point system played in the Oilers downfall this year -- even though they were great in the shootout, they let a lot of teams get away with that one point for making it to the overtime session. I fired up Excel and did some quick calculations for the standings, based on the old (2 pts for a W, 0 for a L) system, and a English Premier league style system (3 pts for a W, 1 for an overtime loss, and 0 for a loss). Here's the results for the Western Conference:

Classic system (2 points for a Win)
(Games, Wins, Losses, Points)

1 Detroit      79 52 27 104
2 San Jose     80 49 31 98
3* Minnesota   80 43 37 86
4 Anaheim      80 45 35 90
5 Dallas       79 43 36 86
6 Colorado     81 43 38 86
7 Calgary      80 41 39 82
8 Nashville    80 40 40 80
 Edmonton      81 40 41 80
 Vancouver     80 39 41 78
 Chicago       79 38 41 76
 Phoenix       79 37 42 74
 Columbus      79 34 45 68
 St. Louis     79 31 48 62
 Los Angeles   80 31 49 62

* Minnesota gets 3rd place due to conference winners getting top 3 seeds.

So no help for the Oilers there, but they'd still be alive mathematically.

EPL type system (3 points for a Win, 1 point for an overtime loss)
(Games, Wins, Losses, Overtime Losses, Points)

1 Detroit       79 52 20 7  163
2 San Jose      80 49 21 10 157
3* Minnesota    80 43 28 9  138
4 Anaheim       80 45 27 8  143
5 Dallas        79 43 29 7  136
6 Colorado      81 43 31 7  136
7 Calgary       80 41 29 10 133
8 Nashville     80 40 31 9  129
  Vancouver     80 39 31 10 127
  Edmonton      81 40 35 6  126
  Chicago       79 38 33 8  122
  Phoenix       79 37 36 6  117
  Columbus      79 34 33 12 114
  St. Louis     79 31 35 13 106
  Los Angeles   80 31 42 7  100

* Minnesota gets 3rd place due to conference winners getting top 3 seeds.

No changes in the placings here. So no help for the Oilers with this system either, but again, they'd still be alive mathematically.

Guess we just have to wait until next year...

Wagons HO!

View Larger Map

Ts have been crossed, I's have been dotted...

All the signings took place today in an Edmonton lawyers office.

The only thing left is for a big wack of cash to change hands on the 31st, and then Julie and I are once again Brooklin home-owners.

Reap the whirlwind.

 

 

Bailey is 1!

Yeah, this post is way late, but Bailey had her first birthday last week. Hard to believe it was a year ago that I was holding Julie's hand and listening to her moan and scream during labor.

Ah, good times.

And did I mention that Bailey's started walking? She's coming right along -- she'll be in the Olympics for the marathon in no time at all.

Shoveling complete

It's 8 C here today. The half-foot thick ice rink I call a driveway has finally softened enough that I was able to completely remove all the thick ice chunks. All that's been left behind is a couple of slightly watery pools which will, I'm sure, be gone by the time it dips below zero tonight.

You know you're a father when... (2)

The phrase "explosive diarrhea" no longer makes you laugh

You know you're a father when... (1)

The first place you think to look when missing a tool is in your son's playroom

1-15 or 18-1? Which is more heart-rending?

A dark day in Phoenix, my friends. The New England Patriots have lost the game.

If you recall earlier this year, I gave up on the Miami Dolphins after years of front-office stupidity and on-field ineptitude. After washing my hands of the 'Fins, I looked over the list of NFL teams to pick a new team to root for. It came down to the Green Bay Packers and the Patriots. I was intrigued by the addition of Randy Moss and Wes Welker (one of my favourite Dolphin players), and my father-in-law is a fan, so I decided to go with the Pats. Good choice. 16 straight wins in the regular season and another 2 wins to get to the Superbowl. So much build up and expectation all came crashing down this evening with a 17-14 loss to the offensively challenged Giants. I was so close to going from rooting for a bottom feeder to sipping sweet championship champagne. So close!

Will the Pats challenge for a Superbowl next year? Likely. Will I ever get to see one of my teams go through a season undefeated? Probably not.

Newest member of the team

Say "Hello" to Ben Jon Jacob Hakes, our new nephew born on January 9th
(photo courtesy of proud parents, Jacqui and Andrew Hakes):

Best Simpsons in a while

The episode last Sunday contained a great montage sequence:

(I don't know how long this will last on Youtube, so view it while you can).

UPDATE (01/18): Youtube has removed this video, so no sense in keeping a busted link around.

Imagine Peace

War is Over

Holiday road

This past weekend, we made a car trip down to Calgary and Kananaskis for some R&R. We arrived on Saturday afternoon, visited with Andrew, Jacqui and Sara, and then Andrew and I took in the Calgary Flames game (they lost in OT, 4-3).

The next day was fairly easy going; we invited the "Southern" Hakes over to the hotel for some hot-tub and swimming in the hotel spa. The only bad part of the day was when Ronan jumped up on the bed and broke my eyeglasses right down the middle. My only bit of luck was that I found a pair of my contacts in my overnight bag, so I didn't have to spend the rest of the trip constantly wrapping my glasses in electrical tape.

On our way out to Kananaskis on Monday, we stopped by the house of my old university pal, Laura, to catch up and have our kids intermingle for an hour or so. When we got to Kananaskis, we found that it was actually raining, instead of snowing like everywhere else! I still haven't really figured this out, as it was -20 in Calgary the next day. The resort was very nice and pretty empty; an indoor-outdoor hot tub led to much hilarity for Ronan, as he jumped out and played with the melting snow on the hot tub deck, even starting a snowball fight with some other (adult) guests!

Our room had a loft, with two queen size beds and we were quite comfortable, though a fireplace in the room would have been perfect. Can't have it all, I guess!

We started the return trek on Sunday worried about super icy roads from the rain, but we managed to make it safely to Calgary, and had a nice dinner with my old friend Gary and his much better half, Amber. After that it was time for the long drive home. The first hour went well, but after a stop in Red Deer, Bailey decided she'd had enough of everything, and much screaming ensued for the next 60 minutes, until I performed the dangerously positioned "front passenger seat to rear seat" massage and managed to get her to drift off. The final hour went by much faster after that and we arrived back in a very snowy Edmonton, much exhausted by our four day rest.

Now I really need a vacation!

Hockey night in Edmonton

Thanks to my Dad, I'm going to be at tonight's Edmonton vs. Vancouver game. We have really good seats (apparently), so keep an eye out for me during the live telecast (Sportsnet West). I'll be wearing my dark blue Oilers jersey, and my red Canada hat.

Post a comment if you see me!

When dreams fly

Lately I've been feeling the slippage of time more than ever. I don't know if it's seeing my kids growing up (so FAST!) makes me realize that I'm also getting older or what, but it's been hitting me a lot lately that I haven't really done a lot of "life" things.

I've never gone on a tropical vacation, or really any kind of "get on a plane and spend a week lying around" kind of vacation. I've never visited the Taj Mahal, or the Pyramids, or Maachu Picchu, or Tahiti. My dreams to cruise the Caribbean in a sailboat are still just wisps of nothing. I didn't spend a year backpacking through Europe -- as a matter of fact, the longest time off I've had in the last 10 years (not including paternity leaves) has been a 4 week break during Christmas of my final year of university in 1998.

It's more than vacation dreams. I've yet to finish any of my novels that I've started, let alone have one published. I have a lot of material goods and I'm grateful I don't have to sleep on a grate at night. However, at the age of 32, I still don't know what I want to do with my life -- a question I've been asked about since I was probably 12 or so.

Not a very uplifting post today, but I'm in a bit of a philosophical mood lately, and philosophy and happiness rarely go hand in hand.