Friday, February 13, 2004.......... I enlisted my wife to help me out with my work this morning, with which I was somewhat overwhelmed with.  I had the usual stuff to do, the two hospitals, the three stores and the train station, and between 11 and 11:30 I had massive orders going to Harrison Trimble High School and Arnold H. McLeod School.  These orders were gargantuan, so Janice's help was very appreciated by me.  Something worthy of note here, is how shocked Janice and me were with so many of the kids that we were among at HTHS, at how amazingly rude they were.  We're carrying these huge trays full of food through the halls, and apparently it's between periods or something; and no one makes any effort to make our task easier whatsoever.  There was one young gentleman who did open doors for me, but I continuously bumped into kids in the hallway.  Janice and me were both puzzled at the behaviour we experienced.  Janice went to noon hour TKD class, with her pal Nancy, and I picked her up and we went and got Alexandra from school, and after a short spin on the job I brought them both right back to ACTA for Alexandra's afternoon class.  I got my stuff done in a reasonable amount of time.  I picked them up again, then brought Janice to work, and Lexy and me went back to McArthur's Flower Shop to get a single long stemmed yellow rose for Janice from her daughter, with a little card to go with it.  Janice received her delivered bouquet of roses in a vase at work as planned, and called to say thank you and "you sneaky rat!"  I made omelettes for Alexandra and myself for supper, no meat today after all for our weekly sacrifice to God.  We got an unexpected visit from Tobie from taekwondo here at the house, where she thought she'd say hi on her way to the bus stop.  I gave her a ride home.  Then I went to Superstore to get a few things and pick up Janice.  Before we did, though, I told Alexandra to run into the house as soon as we parked the van in the driveway and get the little card and the yellow rose out of the fridge so she could present it to her mom.  We parked in the driveway and I never saw our kid move so friggin' fast.  She presented the rose to Janice, who expressed her  heartfelt gratitude at all the attention bestowed upon her by her husband and daughter.  Then it was my turn.  As it happened to be, they had something for Dad as well.  Alexandra presented me with a card with a Cadbury Mint chocolate bar in it (one of my faves), and a plush monkey with boxing gloves on him.  Pretty cute little thing.  I have this other plush monkey that I got last Valentine's Day, who we called Mindy.  Now we have a Mork to go with her.  I've got this affinity for monkeys, eh?  I get a kick out of them.  So these two will join the big gorilla that I got from Janice many years ago (whose name is Big Wilfred.....also an MSN alter-ego of mine).  It was a good little Valentine's Day for all of us, though a day early, as we usually do it to avoid the whole rush that happens on the actual day-of.  Now tomorrow is Alexandra's turn, where we'd bought her a little Peppy-le-Pew plush doll holding a little box of chocolates, a Willie Wonka tin of treats, and a small Barbie box of candy.  Alexandra thinks that all the stuff comes from a little naked guy flying around with a bow and arrow called "Cupid", pretty  cute.  But, after this Easter, we're blowing the whistle on all of the fictitious holiday characters and setting her straight, rather than let her heart get broken at school from some cruel kids.  That could be a daunting task.  But, right now, we're still going to have some fun with it.  Right now, Janice is watching "Talk To Her" on The Movie Network, for the second time, after seeing it once on DVD.  I saw it twice on DVD, and watched it again tonight earlier.  This is a great show for anyone curious about watching a movie with subtitles, seeing it done really well......... Farmer's Market tomorrow, plus a little party thingy going on at Main Street Market for kids hosted by Janice, and maybe skating after all that for her.  Till then........

 

Saturday, February 14, 2004......... This morning I got up earlier than I'd have liked to, being my one day off, when I usually catch up on my sleep.  Especially during this last week where I didn't get to bed as early every night as I should have.  But this morning, Alexandra was pretty excited to get her Pepe le Pew plush doll with chocolates and her other candy packages from 'Cupid' for Valentine's Day.  After a bit, I had to drive her to TKD Demo class and Janice to work.  After that, I went to the Farmer's Market and got a ton of stuff.  It's hard not to buy things there, I tell you.  There's just too much to tempt the tastebuds.  After that, I picked up Alexandra and brought her to Superstore where Janice was doing a kids' cooking class, where they made heart shaped pancakes and other culinary goodies.  While they did that, I came home and surfed the web, reading in detail the press conference with White House press secretary Scott McClellan as he tried to pass off a bunch of illegible records as proof that George W. served his time with the National Guard as he claimed to have.  It's really quite amusing to read it and see the same answers being given by McClellan over and over again as he tries to dodge the bullets, very unsuccessfully I might add.  Anyway, I picked up my wife and kid and we came home and killed time until supper, which was in the form of hot turkey sandwiches, which apparently didn't quite agree with me tonight.  I think it was the gravy, I don't know, but I feel like the turkey that I ate is coming back to life right inside my gut.  Lots of weird and wonderful noises coming out of the basement and the attic tonight, if you know what I'm saying.  We got in touch with the lovely and talented Sara, and the four of us went to Centennial Park to bring Lexy to skate on the pond, using her skates for the first time.  She did incredibly well.  Her ankles didn't cave in, like mine always do with skates on, and she fell lots and lots of times, but she just laughed it off all the time and got better and better, falling less and less toward the end of our stay there.  Sara wiped out a few times being near Alexandra, providing comic relief for the evening.  Another word about Sara, this woman is such a great friend of ours; she knows we like those big tins of popcorn, one of which she bought for us for Christmas.  So when Wal Mart got more of them in, where she works, she got two more for us for a Valentine's Day gift.  Now that's just great!  I should also note here that the girl's losing weight and size in an effort to get more healthy.  It's certainly evident from a visible standpoint, but most importantly, I think it'll do something for her on a confidence level, something she could use a boost with the most.  We got done at Centennial Park, where I didn't know if I was going to puke or what with this pissed-off turkey resurrection inside my stomach or something, and brought Sara back so she could do her thing, and we did our thing back here at home, where I pretty well just kicked back, sipped chamomile tea to sooth my stomach, and Janice did housework tonight so she wouldn't have to do anything at all tomorrow.  I'm feeling guilty the last little while about not doing enough around here, so maybe tomorrow I'll catch up a bit.  There's nothing planned around here, unless we bring Alexandra back out skating, so perhaps I'll clean a bit before the WWE pay per view starts in the evening.  We'll make an attempt to attend church tomorrow morning too....... With that, the evening has come to a close.

 

Sunday, February 15, 2004.......... Got up this morning and headed straight to McBuns Bakery to pick up the bread order for the sub shop, brought it there, and packed an order for the hospital and delivered that, and then picked up my wife and daughter to go to church at St. Bernard's for 11 o'clock mass.  I find mass a lot more rewarding than I ever did when I used to go, I guess because I pay attention to what's going on now.  Father McKee said mass as well as the sermon, which was a great one, as always when he speaks.  He's a very personable man and easy to relate to, as he doesn't talk down to the parishoners like I've found many priests to have done over the years.  Janice and me went to Tim Hortons after that while Alexandra did her catechism class.  Then we picked her up and came home.  It wound up being far too cold to bring her skating today.  I went over to my buddy Pete's for the afternoon while Janice stayed home and napped, while Alexandra did whatever she wants.  I got a rundown on what happened with the whole Hub Cap Comedy Festival thing with Pete, and found out that he won the "Open Mike" contest for amateurs.  Pete's an entertaining talker, so as he told his story on how the events went down, I listened with a pretty clear visual on how everything went.  Within the next couple of months things may get serious for him, especially when the Yuk Yuk Comedians Tour comes around, which could be a break for Pete where he has a guy high up in the comedy circuit that can get him a gig in it.  I don't doubt that he'd go over great, so I hope that he gets the chance.  Another thing that we touched on was getting a band thing going again.  What we ultimately came down to was, me singing, him playing guitar, his nephew playing bass and another guy playing drums.  I've always wanted to try the frontman thing, so we'll see what happens if it pans out.  I'm certainly not counting on anything.  How this came about was, Pete's nephew tried to get a band started, and members kept falling away because of their own spazzed out reasons.  Pete and myself have been there and done that over and over again.  So Pete is going to propose trying this idea I just mentioned and see how it flies.  We'd be doing mostly our own stuff, especially where I'd told Pete that I have a lot of songs of my own on the back burner, and he does too, and so do the other two guys.  And this will NOT be a "poor me" act either where we sing songs about how much life sucks or where our girlfriends have all gone, or why can't life be better.  That's been overdone, to death......... In the evening, Sara joined us for the WWE pay per view, which was pretty good but nothing overly special, and Steven was MIA for his own reasons.  A good night with lots of laughs was had by all of us.  Right after the pay per view, the power went out, either because of the bitter cold or maybe because of the catastrophic stench that was oozing out of our butts all night as a result of our stellar diets, namely Janice and me.  It came back on after about 15 minutes, though.  I did find an article at Ain't It Cool News that I found insightful, about "The Passion Of the Christ" movie that's coming out on Ash Wednesday next week.  It contains a letter from a rabbi who actually defends the movie and what it has to say, as well as its right to say it.  I couldn't agree more.  There are a lot of people of high Jewish 'authority' that are trying to tell Christians how things were, and ultimately that's upsetting much of the Jewish community because of the inflammatory, condescending tone of their implications.  I look forward to seeing this movie the day it opens, or as soon after as possible........... That's it till tomorrow.

 

Monday, February 16, 2004.......... Man oh man, the cold snap is back.  Not quite as severe as it was a few weeks ago, but minus 26 isn't what you'd call balmy, especially with the wind factored in.  I went into work a half hour late because of things not quite going so smoothly upon wakeup as I would normally expect, but things settled in eventually.  When I went to work, I discovered quite the lineup of things to do.  I had the stores and hospitals, along with a list of five or six catering deliveries to do throughout the day, some with hot soup accompanied by large soup warmers, which makes for a bit of a struggle for transport.  I'm no fan of transporting hot soup and coffee.  For coffee, I just can't stand the smell of the stuff.  It's one of those things I've come to detest just from the smell, but also from its lack of nutritional value which the health community just seems to be blind to.  Soup is just plain messy to get moved around.  Janice didn't have to work until the evening today, though, so that took a limited amount of strain off of my day.  There was enough lifting and stuff today though to make my lower back tweak a little bit, which worries me slightly, but I'll just have to watch out I guess.  That's what tends to happen when large soup warmers are handled within my schedule.  Anyway, I got the day done, and Alexandra got picked up from school and brought to ACTA for the afternoon class.  The afternoon saw a small amount of things to be done for PreLam, just three pick-ups, but they were all at different corners of the city, which made it more time consuming than it appears up front.  I did pick up Alexandra and Janice, who went with her to class, after work was done, and we went home briefly before driving Janice to work.  Once home, I made Alexandra her Kraft Dinner, and after that we headed to ACTA for the evening class.  There were only seven adults and a few kids tonight, and Mr. Thorely was the instructor.  This guy is truly Mr. Friendly unless you piss him off, and I didn't do that - nor have I ever or hopefully ever will - but he showed us all some things to do to people who might try to physically cross us.  I was the guinea pig tonight, with Mr. T asking me to grab his shirt while she showed everyone how to twist and manipulate someone's body via yours truly to thwart an attacker.  Didn't hurt though, but it was a bit scary!  Funny more than anything.  Anyway, after class, Alexandra and me brought Sara home, who had to do some studying, and we came home and played Trouble and farted around until it was time to go and pick up Janice at work handy to 9:00.  We came back and put Lexy to bed, and then got ready to watch RAW at ten.  Tonight, Mel Gibson is being interviewed by Diane Sawyer about his movie, "The Passion of the Christ", the first major interview about it that he's given.  We'll be recording it and watching it tomorrow.  After a decent showing of RAW, it's time for bed, and tomorrow it's Fun At the Dentist's Day.

 

Tuesday, February 17, 2004............ If I had a chance to replay this day in real life, I think I'd hit the "skip" button.  Holy frig what a day.  I got up at the usual time, although this time I was headed to the dentist's office instead of work, to get some work done downstairs in the choppers.  My appointment was for 8:30am.  I got in slightly early so the doctor could freeze my gums before he went in there with the excavating tools to do the work.  This brought back a bit of a frightful memory for me about six or seven years ago, when the same thing was done before I had fillings.  Back then, he froze my mouth and sent me into the waiting room while the freezing took full effect, obviously so that the nerves would go snugabye while the hardware went poking and prodding and drilling.  I really didn't feel like it was a big deal, but my subconcious, or something, took over and went bonkers on me.  My head started spinning, I could feel the blood drain out of my face, and I thought I was going to be sick.  My breath got shallow, and I finally decided I needed to go outside and get some air.  After doing some deep breathing, and balking at my initial instinct to leave and come back another day, I went back in and the stuff got done and everything was okay.  But I never forgot that frightful, jittery feeling that came over me that morning.  So, this morning, when he did the same thing, I tried to get into the right mindset so that this wouldn't happen again.  After a bunch of shots to my lower left gums, I started turning into Mr. Droopy Face and went into the waiting room, and picked up a copy of Canadian Consumer Reports, which featured an article on the best TV's to buy.  Since we're sort of in the market for one, perhaps at the end of the year, I read with interest and appropriate distraction what my choices might be when the time came.  It turned out to be the same choice that we pretty much own now, Toshiba's FST brand, which delivers the most quality and bang for the buck, basically the same reason that we'd bought the Toshiba that we own now, which is nearly 14 years old and still in great condition.  Anyway, like I pointed out, this provided a good enough diversion until I was due to go in and get drilled.  The usual things went on.  You know the...well...drill, they put that miniature trampoline thingy on your mouth, the nurse gets the noisy suction thing ready and the dentist goes through the motions with the drill, starting with a small bit and progressing to the big one.  The one that grinds and rattles your whole head to the point where everything is almost blurry.  My jaw was frozen good enough, though there was a bit of pain when he went really deep into one tooth that he was working on.  But I didn't want another freakin' needle so I just endured it.  But just as I thought that he was done with drills, he went back in and drilled some more.  And I'd noticed that he was calling for cotton from the nurse quite a lot.  I was oblivious to what was going on, just laying there with my mouth wide open with the trampoline thingy draped over it.  Once in a while water would spray in to the open tooth with the "SSCCCKKKSSSSHHH" from the suction tube cleaning it out, getting on my glasses.  You know what else I hate, besides everything I just typed, is the stink that the dastardly drill makes when it's sawing down your teeth.  Yeeeesh.  I'm just laying there, not able to breathe through my mouth for obvious reasons, and smelling the stench of my own teeth floating up into the air.  Anyway, after more drilling, more spraying, more suction, more cotton, TWO HOURS LATER, I was finally done.  He took the trampoline thingy off my mouth, and I'd noticed it was spattered with dark stuff.  Turns out it was blood.  He had taken a lot of time during this operation to stop bleeding that had happened as a result of finding an infection between the teeth he was operating on, which was very hard to see, because I have kind of a mutant tooth inside my mouth that you can only find if you look right inside, so the gum in between the three teeth is nearly impossible to see.  Unless it's infected and it starts letting blood out.  This lengthened the procedure and kind of made a simpler task a bit more complicated.  As it was, one of the teeth that I was getting worked on was actually a fractured tooth that was being re-built, so he had to be pretty meticulous about the bite that it had when he was done with it.  I'm talking about a big-ass filling here.  If you ever see me, ask me to see it and you'll see what I mean.  Anyway, he told me that there were some minor problems that made this procedure even longer than a route canal (but more painful, take it from me---because I've had those too), and that if there were any problems to let him know.  In the meantime, I've got to make another appointment and get the other side done next week, two minor things compared to what was done today.  I left the office to find that it was after 10:30am, and I'd told Carla that I didn't think I'd have been much later than 9, so I had to forego my brief visit at the house to clean my mouth out, and head straight to work.  So Mr. Droopy Face gets to BJ's peaking wid nud muck uvva voich becud uvva froden mout, so I limited my speech to the bare and essential essentials.  I came to realize that my mouth hurt like old hell, more than I'd expected.  I just attributed that to a long operation where my mouth imitated a manhole for two hours with a workman going to town with drills looking for gold or something, and waited things out to see if they'd improve on their own.  There were as many catering deliveries this morning as there were yesterday morning.  I had to get the two hospitals, three stores and two catering orders delivered, while Carla helped and took care of two other catering deliveries herself, understanding the plight I'd faced with my dental dilemma.  I'd come to realize as I went with those deliveries that I did that biting down and making contact with my uppers and lowers was not working as far as my lowers were concerned.  It felt like nerves in my teeth were raw and exposed.  It made me slack jawed the whole morning, while I waited to see if it would subside while my mouth thawed out from the novacaine.  The pain got worse.  I completed my deliveries and went home briefly, to take extra strength Motrin, which didn't help in the least.  As I lay on the couch, with Janice beside me, suddenly I felt severe, sharp spasms shoot through my lower left molars.  I mean severe enough to be vocal about it.  Janice wondered what the hell was going on and had the look of panic on her face.  I guess that mirrored how I looked at the time.  The more the freezing subsided, the more my mouth hurt, and it got to the point where all I could do was loudly groan about the intense pain that I was feeling in my jaw and in my mouth.  I drove Janice to work for one o'clock, leaving her to worry and wonder what was going to happen with me, and I went to PreLam to get my list of things to do for the day.  At one point I pulled over because the incredibly intense pain was interfering with my judgment on the road.  I got my things from PreLam and went to pick up Alexandra at school, the pain still getting worse, and from there I went straight back to the dentist's office.  I told the secretary "look, this is absolutely killing me and I need help", briefly explained what was going on, and I got to see the doctor about five minutes later.  Concerned, he hastily sat me down and went right into my mouth to see what had gone wrong.  He had me bite this plastic thing to find out where exactly the pain was originating from.  "Sorry to have to do this, Mike, but we've got to find what we're looking for", he said, and tapped each tooth with a pick.  But nothing, oddly enough, resulted from it.  Finally, I wiggled my jaw around and we were able to find the culprit that may have been causing the problems.  He took a drill into my mouth, again, and began filing down a couple of fillings that he'd done in the morning.  I bit down, and pretty much instantly, the pain had dissipated.  I could make contact with my uppers and lowers again.  What a relief!!!  I couldn't take that kind of pain a whole lot longer.  I was even prepared to just tell him to yank out the offending tooth, it hurt so much.  He said it can be one of two things:  that he may have filled a tooth that was already dead that didn't show up on x-ray, and there may be an infection, or one of the teeth was over-filled.  Having a tooth over-filled can throw off the whole alignment of the jaw and cause spasms, making it feel like a genuine big-time toothache.  Sounded pretty accurate.  He gave me Tylenol 3's and a prescription for antibiotics, which he gave me the choice to take or not as a precaution (I won't), and pretty much ordered me to take the Tylenol to get me through the next day or two where the whole area where the tooth was over-filled is inflamed.  He told me to go back tomorrow and tell him one way or the other how my tooth is progressing, and to "stay on top of it".  He also pleaded with me not to go to Emergency at the hospital about it because they likely won't have a clue as to what to do, where he knows what it is if it isn't an over-filling.  I told him going to the hospital for my teeth was never an option, and meant it!  This was a simple judgment thing.  I've been going to this same dentist since I was a grade schooler, and this is the only time I've had any type of problem.  And he was eager to correct it and seemed genuinely concerned.  So....I got through the afternoon.  I brought Lexy to TKD class for the afternoon, did my BJ's and PreLam work, then picked up Lex again and then came home so I could take the Advil that my dentist gave me for the time being.  He didn't want me taking the Tylenol 3's while I was driving, so instructed me to take them when I wasn't.  I picked up Janice, who was relieved to hear that I'd finally gotten on top of the problem, and while my teeth still hurt and ache right now as I type this, it feels mostly like just the typical just-got-fillings-done kind of aching more than anything else.  Janice, Sara and Alexandra went to the evening TKD class while I took a Tylenol 3 and stayed home for a short snooze, trying to sleep off some of the pain.  When Janice came back and woke me up, I felt somewhat better, and the medication did indeed help.  After putting Alexandra to bed, we watched "American Idol", where just about everyone who sang sucked save for three singers (or two, if you ask me), and then we settled in for this week's episode of "24".  And man oh friggin' man, the "holy shit!!!" factor is back in full effect on that program.  Janice and me were giddy at the end of the show with excitement at the turn of events that we never, ever saw coming from the beginning, and we're relieved to see that this show has its edge back after a brief lull from the last two episodes.  We still didn't get to see Mel Gibson's interview yet, though, and that's put on hold until tomorrow.......Wow, what an entry this was.  I'm sure tomorrow will hopefully prove less trying.

 

Wednesday, February 18, 2004............. I was relieved to wake up this morning having had a pretty good night's sleep, with thanks to the addition of Tylenol 3 to my arsenal of ammo to dental pain defense.  I don't reckon that I'll be having much more of a problem now and that I'm on the rebound from yesterday.  I got up this morning and made it to work in plenty of time, to no avail, because two people were missing from the roster which sent us back by a couple of hours, leaving me to peddle around the shop looking for things to do.  There were three catering deliveries for noon hour, so with my regular stops in addition to these, it actually made for a pretty tight morning.  In the afternoon, with Janice working and Alexandra going to TKD class, I managed to get things done in a reasonable time, and my kid and me came back home and waited for Janice to be done work.  When I picked her up at nearly six, I'd brought her TKD uniform, and she changed into it in the van while we went straight to ACTA after I picked her up.  Alexandra sat out tonight's class.  I concentrated on getting my form honed enough for my testing next week, then joined the regular class midway through, and we left, Sara-less (she was working tonight) for home, where I was about to discover some gastrointestinal unrest about me.  Pretty much all evening I've been feeling rather lousy, and I've pinpointed the problem.  It's pop.  I'm drinking way too much of the damned stuff.  When Lent begins next Wednesday, I'm cutting it, and chocolate and sweets and chips and all that junk, out altogether.  Seeing as I'm a practicing Catholic now.  We watched an episode of "Star Trek:  Enterprise" tonight, a so-so outing, and watched "American Idol", and we were both shocked to find out the roid-rager himself, the football guy, got through to the next round over the the redheaded stunner that was on last night.  We couldn't believe it.  And the Americans make fun of Canadians for bad taste.  This brings me to right now, where I'm going to sign this off and look ahead to payday.

 

Thursday, February 19, 2004........... This will be a day that's going to go down in local weather history as the "Blizzard of '04".  How it started out was, rather calmly, a bit snowy in the morning--with not really any problematic accumulation on the ground just yet and some light snow flying in the air.  The forecast was saying that we were going to get hit with somewhere between twenty and thirty centimetres, with winds gusting up to 100 km/h eventually by the afternoon.  This is pretty frightening stuff, if it's true.  As I went about my rounds for work, it got progressively worse.  Snow piled up on the ground very quickly, and the wind picked up just as fast.  The wind actually made it far worse than it would have been without it.  Lots of snow fell, for sure, but the snow made driving absolutely treacherous.  I decided to take to the highway to head out to Lyon's Store out on Lutes Mountain, figuring that the highways are going to be in better shape than the city roads.  They were in just okay shape.  And when I got to the mountain itself, white-outs began happening where I couldn't see much past the hood of the van.  The wind blew the snow so much that it actually made things somewhat claustrophobic.  I managed to get to Lyon's, though, and then doubled back to take care of one other store, then out to the French Hospital.  Conditions were deteriorating very rapidly at this point.  The wind had just about reached its peak and the snow was falling very, very heavily, and pretty much anyone who was on the road for no other reason than life or death would be categorically branded insane, yours truly included.  I decided to forego my lunchbreak and stay at the sub shop until the afternoon order for the French hospital was done.  In the meantime, I had three deliveries, amazingly enough, to take care of in the morning.  At the beginning of my shift, actually, I was amazed to find out that a continental breakfast catering job was still on, with cancellations coming in all over the place.  This was at one of the University of Moncton buildings with a bunch of tie guys with laptops.  I was to make another order at lunch hour for this same group for soup and sandwiches, and still another order close to the Moncton Airport for another business meeting.  At noon hour, the storm was close to, or at, its peak, and these orders had not been cancelled, to my sheer amazement.  Getting to these places made for some very, very nervous driving.  I had to go fast enough so that I wouldn't slow down and get stuck, but slow enough so that I don't get sucked into a snowdrift with a white-out, which came dangerously close to happening a few times.  At one point, at an exit while I was making a hospital delivery, I was on a ramp to get to the road to take me there, and I was in the situation where I couldn't see anything past the hood.  I only barely saw an SUV spinning its wheels appear right in front of me just in time before I smacked into him.  Then, when he was gone, I got stuck in that same place.  After a lot of forward/reverse acceleration, I finally got loose, all the while taking the chance that no one would smash into me where we couldn't see each other, and got into the hospital parking lot.  One lady in the elevator with me who works there asked how it was outside.  I told her it was crazy for anyone to be driving in these conditions, and I think I actually talked her into not driving out home, to which she would have had to take the highway to get to, which would have been a potentially disastrous mistake.  I finally headed home, very slowly, and parked on the street momentarily while I shoveled out the driveway entrance.  No easy task.  So much snow had fallen that a six foot high snowbank had been created from the plow that had recently gone by.  I'm left with a plastic lightweight shovel that's great for shoveling powdered snow, but not good for anything much heavier.  With the wind blowing hard and me shoveling, in a race to get it cleared before it blew right back in again, I found myself at one time losing my breath from a harsh breeze blowing snow into my mouth with cold air and causing me to skip several gasps.  It lasted about five seconds, but to have your air taken away from you without warning for that short a time makes it seem ten times longer.  Anyway, I finally managed to get the driveway navigable enough to shove the van into it (GERONIMOOOO!!  pttooooofff......van inside the driveway), and I sought refuge in our house where I spent the rest of the day with my wife and daughter while Mother Nature had her way with the outdoors.  When all was said and done, weatherwise, something like 62 centimeters of snow had fallen here in Moncton, and in Halifax somewhere over 90 centimeters.  Leading me to wonder how my ex/now-friend Michelle is making out, seeing as she lives there.  E-mail was out of the question, where we had no cable TV or internet from 1:30 in the afternoon on to the next morning.  We still had power, though.  We wound up doing whatever came to us.  Playing Trouble with Alexandra, we all watched "Finding Nemo" again, played around, talked a lot--- it was a different kind of day with no TV or internet.  Actually we were on the verge of going nuts.  Soon enough, though, it was time for bed for all of us, and we're left to ponder what kind of mess we'll be waking up to tomorrow.

 

Friday, February 20, 2004........... Shoveling is such a fun thing to do!!  For insane people!!  But you know, I'm all right, because I still friggin' hate it.  I got up this morning to find the end of the driveway piled in with snow.  I got up plenty early enough to deal with it though, and Janice and me actually went out to do double duty on clearing it.  For the second time in as many storms, we ran into the super good fortune of having a neighbour across from us who was enjoying the novelty of using his new snowblower, and cleared us out, to which I thanked him profusely.  I headed out to work to find three more catering deliveries on the agenda for the day, as well as the usual stuff.  After getting through what was for the most part a regular morning, including driving Janice to work  and keeping Lexy with me for the day because school was cancelled for the second day in a row, I came back during lunchbreak to widen our driveway a bit and make a clearer walking path to the mailbox.  Then after that, I took it upon myself to make a path to the mailbox from the road to the steps of our next door neighbours, Janice's parents, especially where they're older folks.  In the afternoon, I had my work cut out for me at BJ's.  I had this really big order for City Hall that had punch, sandwiches, crackers, fruit, chicken wings and meatballs, and I had to get this delivered and set up after I did the hospital, with Alexandra with me.  She actually helped me quite a bit, opening doors for me as I went along with my hands full.  I got done with BJ's stuff handy to four o'clock, and Alexandra had a late afternoon TKD class to get to.  I brought her there,and then I went to PreLam to get five things taken care of around the city, followed by bringing stuff back there after it was finished.  I had equipment to pick up too, and had to bring it back to the sub shop.  Then I got Alexandra from TKD and then went to pick up Janice as work, and by this time I'd decided I wasn't going to take part in class for the evening.  Janice decided not to either.  We had our roasted root vegetables supper, and then headed out shortly after that to do some grocery shopping, replenishing the fresh vegetables that we'd been eating lately.  We returned home, and took it easy for the most part, and as Alexandra is now in bed and it's past midnight, I'm going to sign off.  Not before I mention that there's another storm on the way, where they're calling for another 30 centimeters of snow.  Halifax has actually laid down a curfew on their residents tonight, where if anyone is caught driving or walking the streets could be up for a thousand dollar fine.  Sounds crazy to me.  They're desperate to get things cleared up down there.  But---that's going to be it for me tonight.  Let's see what the next volley from Old Man Winter will be like.

 

Saturday, February 21, 2004.............. This morning I got up a few times from a noisy neighbour using a snowblower off and on, which pretty much continued throughout the day.  Some people's kids, I tell you.  Janice brought Alexandra to TKD demo class this morning, where she is beginning to learn to use nunchuks, and after that we went to the Farmer's Market to get this week's supply of treats.  This will be the last week for a while that I get goodies from the Market, because as of Ash Wednesday, I'm cutting out the hard junk food for Lent.  That being, pop, chips, bars, pastries, sweets, that sort of thing.  It'll serve as part of my act of being a Catholic as well as clean my body out from all the garbage that I've been eating the last long while.  As far as I know, Janice is going along with the same thing.  With Alexandra, we'll ask her to give something up, but giving up sweets is something that she couldn't really do at this point, I don't think.  Anyway, Janice had to work noon to five today, so I brought Alexandra to the dollar store for her little hunt for cheap treasures after I gave her a $6 allowance, then we went to Famous Players Theatres to find out what the scoop is on "The Passion of the Christ" movie.  It is indeed starting on Wednesday there, but tickets aren't available until the day of the show, so I'm going to do my best to get them.  We've been looking forward to seeing this movie since it was announced Mel Gibson was making a movie about Jesus in a dead language without subtitles nearly a year ago.  Of course, there have since been subtitles added to the idea of the movie.  After that I went to get my Entertainment Weekly magazine to read tonight, then came home to do more shoveling, to widen and deepen the driveway some.  It seems like everyone around me has a friggin' snowblower except me.  Alexandra played in the snow for a lot of the afternoon while I browsed the web a little, then I picked up Janice again and we came home and had homemade fries and fried balony, something that I used to have as a kid back on Emmerson Street quite often.  I still enjoy it, and so did Alexandra and Janice.  The three of us watched "Ice Age" which I now have on tape after that.  I really like that movie.  I think I've seen it six or seven times now and still get a kick out of it.  It's kind of an animated, prehistoric, "Three Men and a Baby", kinda sorta.  Alexandra went to bed not long after that, then Janice and me made an attempt to watch "Chicago" on The Movie Network.  We made it through about half an hour, and had to give it the gong.  Geez, the whole show-tunes with trumpets and horns and cabaret singing thing just does NOT fly with me.  Or Janice evidently.  I guess I thought I could get to enjoy watching a movie with sexy women in fishnets dancing around, but I hadn't accounted for how much I hate that music.  We switched the channel to another movie, "House of 1,000 Corpses", and we survived about five minutes of that.  I just can't tolerate stupidity in movies like that when it's unintentional.  We eventually settled on "Castaway" playing on ABC, meaning there were commercials, meaning we couldn't really get more than the gist of it.  That brings me to now.  We're waiting for a supposed snowstorm that was initially supposed to bring us up to 30 more centimetres of snow, and it was supposed to have started by now, but nothing yet.  We won't be too sad if it passes us by.  That's all the folks in Halifax need is another dumping of snow on top of what they have down there already.  Time to cut out.........