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I can’t wait until Holly finally gets here. It feels like I never sleep when she isn’t around. I just sit up all night watching tv or playing games. Waiting to feel even the tiniest little bit sleepy.

Over the last month I’ve had far too many nights where I haven’t gone to sleep until after 2am. Then in what feels like seconds the alarm starts ringing at 7am to wake me up. At which point I generally argue with it for an hour or two. Mentally playing the game of what “What can I skip in my morning routine to get five more minutes of sleep?”

Last night was game night aka friendly fire friday and I was up until after 2am again. Then I had to get up at 7:30am to be out the door by 8am to venture off and try and get my driver’s license exchanged for a local one. Unfortunatley when I got there (30 minute drive away) it turns out they had decided that they wouldn’t be open on this Saturday unlike every other Saturday.

I have to tell you. That right there; is a feeling that sucks. You drag yourself out of bed on less than five hours of sleep, drive 30 minutes away, and then find out it was all in vain. At which point you are left with a 30 minute drive back.

I had checked a few weeks ago to see when it was open/closed. I knew it would be closed on the Monday. I just went back and checked the website again, and sure enough, it does say it will be closed today and Monday. Either that is new since the last time I checked or I some how missed it.

So yay… now I’ll potentially have to take another half day off work to go sort out yet another issue. I really think if the government is supposed to be here to serve the people, that it should be open on weekends. You know, when the majority of people actually have time to go take care of things.

They could always be open for only four hours a day Monday-Friday and then open eight hours a day on weekends. Because lets be honest. If you can easily carve out time to go visit places like government offices Monday-Friday, it probably doesn’t really matter what time of the day that is.

This wasn’t meant to turn into a rant, but there it is. I hope everyone else has a great long weekend (*for those in Canada, just have a great weekend).

So much has happened since last I blogged that I don’t even know where to start.

After an incredibly grueling year on my last project (which consumed all of my “free” time and then some) I decided it was time for a change. So Holly and I packed up and moved across the continent and south one country. Okay, that isn’t entirely true. Holly isn’t here just yet, but soon she will be! I can’t wait!

Moving to a new country has been both easier and harder than I thought it would be. I look forward to when the last few bits of paperwork wrangling is over with.

The new job is cool. The tech is completely different from what I’m used to working with. In some ways that is better, and in some ways that is worse. Hopefully I can have a hand in fixing up those bits that I currently consider to be worse.

Every day at work I get to learn more and more about the existing tech. It is quite a mountain of knowledge that needs to be climbed. I enjoy the challenge though.

Other than that since I’ve been living alone while waiting for Holly I’ve started to remember a lot of things about single life, and how much single life sucked. Take cooking for example; I was never an expert chef by any stretch of the imagination, but I had forgotten just how time consuming it was. Or how… adventurous?

One of those adventures were the “Mustard and Tuna Fish Sandwiches”. No, they were not as bad as they sound. Now don’t get me wrong, by no stretch of the imagination were they good, but they weren’t unbearably awful. How did it happen you ask? I had everything all opened and mixed up and went to add the mayo, at which point I discovered it had expired. It was late enough that I didn’t want to go out and get more so I looked for alternatives. It ran through my head that mustard was good on most of the other meats so why not give it a try? So I did…

Most of the other adventures have been less disastrous and as such don’t bear repeating. Then of course there is all of that laundry. All of those dishes. So much cleaning. All of the shopping. There really seems to be no end to it all.

I am really looking forward to when Spring arrives this year. Taking trips to Pennsylvania, Washington DC, maybe even New York. Plus of course exploring around Maryland as well. Hopefully even driving to visit my family and maybe having them come to visit us.

For now I’ll stop by saying that the adventure that we call life continues on.

I’ve been a hockey fan all of my life. That’s 30 years of die hard hockey fanaticism. I’ve cheered on many teams. I own jerseys for half the teams in the league.

I just love the sport. Plain and simple. I love the passion of the players and the fans. There is no other sport like it.

The series that finished tonight between the Detroit Red Wings and San Jose Sharks is only the second playoff series I have ever seen that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The first one was when the Dallas Stars won the Stanley Cup over the Buffalo Sabres in 1999 on a goal that should never have counted.

I have no problem with a series that is decided because of a team running into a hot goaltender. I have no problem with a series that is decided because a lesser team simply outworks a better team. I do have a problem when a series is decided by poor officiating.

This series from the very beginning was clearly one sided in that department. A Red Wing gets tripped? No call. A Red Wing takes an elbow to the face? No call. A Shark closes his hand on the puck? No call.

I am not one for conspiracy theories, but it is clear that there was some favoritism shown to the San Jose Sharks in this series. Was that because of the individual officials? Was it a directive from the NHL head offices? Are people tired of seeing the Red Wings just keep winning? I don’t know. I do know that I have no interest in watching a tournament that isn’t officiated fairly.

The way that the series was decided leaves me thinking that it isn’t worth watching the rest of the playoffs. Something that I always watch. Each and every year. As many games as I can. I can honestly say that I only have cable so that I can watch hockey.

In fact, I believe I will be turning the dial away from the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs this year and focusing on what will hopefully be some fair hockey. The 2010 IIHF World Championship of Hockey. I hope everyone else does the same.

So it has been less than 144 days. Just in case you were counting. Or even thinking of counting. I know it is hard to believe.

The weekend is nearly here. This weekend I’m on my own for Saturday. Holly and friends are heading south of the border for a very busy day of shopping. What am I going to be doing? I expect 10-12 solid hours of playing games and hopefully continuing to celebrate the Red Wings victory that should happen tonight.

Oh, and most important of all; I plan to not work. It’s always nice to take a break.

So, what else has been going on? That is a really good question. There have been some good things and some not so good things. We went out for lunch with some friends at a cool little place called Burgoo. They serve “international comfort food”. Mostly it was just cool to go out and do something with friends. It has been far too long.

We went to the drive-in. A great, and nearly extinct, form of entertainment. We saw Kick-Ass which was remarkably better than I expected it to be. There had been a ton of negative reviews about it, but based on seeing the movie I don’t think the reviewers watched the whole thing.

Our infamous black cat King Leonidus killed the laptop. It was his latest victim in a long line of unfortunate victims. He has killed a TV, a laptop, several glass/crystal pitchers, jugs and vases, even an electric heater with a Wii sensor bar. The cat has mad skillz!

That’s pretty much it. I just wanted to be sure to put something here rather than not. I spent far too long away from my blog and I need to turn it back into a habit.

Have a great weekend world!

It has been a very long time since I have attempted to fill this space with words. A full one hundred and forty four days if you want to be exact. If you prefer percentages and don’t mind a little rounding up, that’s forty percent of an entire year.

I feel as though I’ve become some sort of delinquent or dead beat blogger. Hopefully I can amend this situation.

So just what happens when 144 days go by? I can tell you this, not as much as you might think. Certainly a lot of things have happened in my little life that can; but it is still well within, if not below, normal human averages.

Christmas happened. Vacations happened. Life happened. Work happened. Really, it was business as usual. Except for the whole blogging thing. I’m not sure what happened to that.

If the Earth had twenty five hour days I would probably blog more. It can be tough to find those few extra minutes to pursue things that don’t have an immediate impact on your day to day life. Or really, I could just tell the truth and say that I’ve been completely swept up in Twitter. It takes a lot of time to keep up with all of those people who tweet non-stop.

I digress, let me attempt to realign this entry.

I’ll try and give a brief run down of the things that I at least have pictures for… because pictures are cool.

Holly and I went to New Brunswick in January this year to see my family. For my family who is reading this you can rest comfortable in the knowledge that I am not posting pictures of anyone except possibly me. I know how much everyone hates having there picture taken.

It was a good time. It was great to see everyone again. I really do wish I could see everyone a little more often. I wish I was better about calling more often and keeping in touch or even writing letters/e-mails. Alas, I don’t seem to be very good at any of those things. The best I have done in past years to keep everyone in the loop has been my blog, and clearly that has epically failed.

It was amazing to see how much my nephew has grown. I swear he’ll be taller than me in a couple of years at this rate. He chose to bury me stuffed animals on this particular trip.

Then we got back and it was only a few weeks before we headed off to Oregon with Holly’s family for a little vacation. We usually go every year or two. I enjoy it there and Holly’s family have been going there forever. We went right at the end of the Olympics.

While there we did a little hiking and I took a picture of snail. Yes, a snail. It looked cool. I believe Holly was actually embarrassed by the fact that I was taking a picture of the snail because she made me stop when she heard other people on the trail behind us.

On the way back that day we stopped by a place where if you pay them you can walk up hill for a few kilometers to a light house that they won’t let you in. So we decided not to go and instead when to the very wet beach where I took many pictures of sea gulls. Yes, sea gulls. I’m from the prairie. What can I say?

A day or two later we took our usual trek to the Tillamook Cheese Factory (interestingly enough we actually go for the ice cream). It really is some great ice cream! They make great cheese too! They actually have something you can only get at the visitor center which is a sampler of all thirty eight of their flavours. Imagine that. Thirty eight scoops of ice cream…

Right next to the Tillamook Cheese Factory is the Blue Heron French Cheese Company. I’m told that if you like brie and other French cheeses it is fantastic. We go for the great grilled sandwiches. Oh, and of course you have to go feed the goats and lamas and sheep. They aren’t as scary as they look. This year they also had heritage chickens walking all over the place. Rare breeds that you wouldn’t get to eat on a normal daily basis. Holly just laughed and smiled and laughed. She loved the chickens. Especially the ones that looked like they were wearing moccasins.

I think it was on the way home that day that we pulled off the road to watch what we thought might be our very last Oregon sunset. It was beautiful and special.

Other than that we wandered around a lot. We finally saw the sea lions down on the pier. We say three squirrels facing right. I took lots of pictures of lots of things. Including weeds. I like to take pictures.

I know you’re still asking yourselves. What was the catalyst that triggered the return to blogging. Well, honestly, you probably won’t believe it. It was a bottle of pop.

You see, I drink pop like most people drink wine or microbrewery beer. I am always trying to find the best root beer, the best cola, the best black cherry, the best grape, the best other random and awesome flavors. I try just about everything. Even naturally carbonated varieties instead of traditional carbonation.

Well, Holly and I happened to be on one of our many grocery store adventures when I came across a very special bottle of pop. I say adventure because as far as I can tell we have as much fun going to grocery stores as most people have going to amusement parks.

The words describing the flavour simple leaped out at me and shouted BUY ME! It was a bottle of Fentimans Botanically Brewed Dandelion & Burdock Soda. Dandelion and freaking Burdock! I was in shock. I simply had to taste that! I thought for sure it would be incredibly, wonderfully, horribly terrible.

And the truth is, I was wrong. It was actually okay. Sort of a three way intersection between the flavours of black licorice, bubble gum and cherry cough syrup. Only better.

Now back to catching up on video games I’ve missed and debating if I should upgrade my computer, buy a new camera, or pay down debt.