Simian Farmer

The financial crisis explained

2008-10-09T08:49:58-06:00

Dear (erstwhile) readers,

More content and a new banner coming soon to this space. Honest.

But first, for your edification, a thorough understanding of the cause of the financial crisis plaguing the US and affecting all the rest of us. Reading this linked article will only take you two minutes, and it's written from the perspective of Pokémon as explained to a 14 year-old girl.

I feel smarter already, and it's not even 9 am.

Financial Crisis Explained

The simplest solutions...

2008-09-20T10:24:56-06:00

... are often the best.

I bathe Declan and Tavish together every night (because it's more efficient), and they always sit in the same spots: Dex a little higher in the shallow end and Tav down in the deeper end by the drain.

Tavish regularly complains of a sore bum during and just after his bath, but never at any other time. It is a conumdrum that has stymied me, but to which I have given very little thought outside of the bathing arena. The solution presented itself one night last week, and he hasn't had a sore bum since.

The conversation went something a little like this:

Tav: Daddy, my bum is sore."

Si: "Again, Tav? Why is it always sore?"

Tav: "Don' know!"

He smiled after saying that, and wiggled his bum a little back and forth.

That's when the light bulb went off in my head.

Si: "Hey Tav, are you sitting on top of the drain plug, and rubbing your anus on the plug puller part?"

Tav: "Yeah!"

Si: "Well, if you stop doing that, you won't have a sore bum any more."

Tav: "Oh. OK!"

Late Summer Corn Maize

2008-09-14T23:10:24-06:00

A couple weekends ago, my good buddy Lance and I took our (total of) three sons to an awesome little farm about a half hour north east of the city. There's a corn maze, a hay bale maze, a puppet show, petting zoo, wagon rides... and a compressed air Corn Cannon.

Good times had by all!

Tav and Dex posing in front of the Arachno-Dragon. I don't know why, but the farm had a dragon theme throughout the whole place. We just went with it.

There was a series of eavestroughs under these old hand pumps (sucking water from horse troughs underneath), and if you pumped fast enough, your duck could win!!

Or fall over and get stuck time and time and time again!!

This spiral "maze" was sort of a let down, but it gave us a reason to say, "go run around those circles as fast as you can!" They did not disappoint.

The entrance to the Great Prairie Corn Maze. Since it was pushing lunch time when we entered, all we had to do was grab the nearest ear, shuck it, and pass it off to a hungry boy until we reached the exit. It was a great way to spend the better part of an hour.

Well and truly lost.

Declan inspects a fuzzy caterpillar. These guys were all over the place in the corn. Many squished ones on the path. We felt like saviours for our new friend here.

One last ear of corn on the wagon ride back to the main part of the farm.

Me! Just in case you've forgotten what I look like. The other bald fellow in the reflection is Lance. We are the same sort of coiffure connoisseurs. I love the stunned look of the employee chick coming into frame.

Uh... if you're wondering about the strings of beads around my neck, those were our "tickets" to get into the corn maze. Tavish really enjoyed strangling himself with his, and that's why I'm wearing two.

Tavish, apres corn, and just before we got our lunch.

Both boys loved climbing the huge round hay bales over by the petting zoo. We went back the very next weekend again since we had so much fun the first time.

(A similar picture makes up the new Simian Farmer banner. Refresh the page if you don't yet see it.)

Bye!

Disparity (the good kind)

2008-09-12T22:21:14-06:00

Simon sits on the living room sofa, laptop on lap, listening raptly. Amy ambles upstairs from having gotten her Facebook fix on the computer downstairs.

Amy: What are you watching there?

Si: A TED presentation on what the Large Hadron Collider is hoping to achieve for science.

Amy: Oh God! [walks away] I really can't believe I married you sometimes.

Simon: [defensively] Come on! It's pretty much the greatest single scientific device ever created! It just may give us the means to confirm the building blocks of the universe as they came into existence at the Big Bang! It could...

Amy: [interrupting, kissing me on the head] Yes, dear, I know. It's OK. I really do know why I married you.

Si: [very coherently] What? Huh?

Amy: It's 'cause you're the bomb in bed.

The stars are a little farther away

2008-08-18T10:00:30-06:00

I got my form letter email back from the Canadian Space Agency late last week. It turns out that my short-lived dreams of becoming an astronaut got grounded indefinitely, and I have been informed that my application will no longer be considered to proceed further through the selection process.

This is exactly how far I thought I'd get in my impromptu decision to apply to fly into space. Still, there was, of course, that little part of me that couldn't help but be excited at the prospect of being selected to be trained as an astronaut.

I'm holding out hope, one day, to be able to take a trip on the Vomit Comet as well as experience a high-G test. I'm pretty sure I'd do really well on both of those.

At least now I know how dejected Pluto must have been when it found out that it was no longer considered a planet.

Backyard fun

2008-07-26T09:38:18-06:00

Amy and I are heading off to a wedding for the afternoon and evening, so in the mean time (and in between time), here are a few pics of the many I shot last weekend when the boys and I were out playing in the yard.

(I know it's time for a haircut or two.)

You mean that in the "happy" sense of the word, right?

2008-07-08T14:04:56-06:00

There's a page on our company intranet where employees can post personal items for sale or rent. It's full of mostly used cars, TVs, and miscellaneous household electronica.

So I shook my head at myself at being pressed to utter:

"So Tony, I don't know which is gayer: you posting scrapbooking supplies on the intranet for sale, or me asking to see what you have in stock."

The things I do for my wife.

Awesome wife-ism No. 312

2008-07-07T08:42:44-06:00

Friday evening was a busy one for the Fraser household.

I had to bail early on a company meeting at a local hotel (though I did manage to score two free beers before high-tailing it) in order to get home in time to help get the boys fed and ready to run out the door. We had a birthday party at 6 p.m. and Amy had a girlfriend's baby shower at 7, just a few blocks away from the birthday party, thankfully.

So there we were at our friends' house in north Edmonton, mingling amiably on the balcony while Lance (the birthday boy's dad) and Bernie (random friend #2) hauled the barbeque down to the back patio. (They have a walk-out basement that slopes down to the man-made lake, so the balcony is just off the main floor.) I was chatting with my lovely wife and another wifely person on the balcony, both of whom were wearing summer skirts of one sort or another. (My wife in denim, the other a breezy, flowery thing in subtle, seasonal hues... not that it really matters.)

The barbeque secured on the patio beneath the balcony, Lance looked up with the mischievous glint in his eye that marks so much of what he does and barked, "Hey ladies, nice skirts! How come your carpet doesn't match the curtains?"

Both ladies looked down at Lance, their collective eyebrows raised in that way that married women have, and then at each other, also in that way that only married women have. Unfortunately for Lance, Amy decided to retort. "Sorry Lance, no carpet."

He walked away to attend to important matters of cooking, mumbling something incoherent, flushing slightly. Amy turned to me, then, "Well, that shut him up, didn't it?"

I just smiled and enjoyed the rest of the evening.

Diapers in space

2008-07-04T09:28:48-06:00

Two items of note today, and I'm not entirely sure which has greater significance.

First, I am pleased to report that, for the past several weeks, the Fraser household has been completely diaper-free. We have exchanged Tavish's Pampers Cruisers™ for Pull-Ups at night and Curious George undies during the day. It seems the younger boy went and potty-trained himself. Mostly. One thing about having an older brother in the house is that the younger one wants to emulate him ALL THE TIME. While frustrating and annoying when the older guy is misbehaving and the wee lad just exacerbates a situation simply fraught (FRAUGHT, I tell you!) with angsty teeth-clenching and restrained violence, the good times are way better too, and Toddler Behavioural Modification Training (ToBMoT) is very nearly a perpetual motion machine. (We break so many things in our house, why not the second law of thermodynamics as well?)

We're not out of the woods yet -- not by a long shot. Heck, I sometimes still look for a break in the trees. He still pees his pants on a daily basis, and we are not unfamiliar with the practice of taking underpants to the yard to hose the crap out of them. ("Tavish, where are you supposed to poop??" "Inna toy-yet.") His car seat in both vehicles may have a distinct aroma should you steer your olfactory inquisitiveness to the waft that is both earthy and a little bit nutty.

Amy and I both feel quite fortunate. Dex took the better part of a year to piss in the crapper with reliable consistency, and Tav had it mastered almost before we yanked his pants down. The day we can bid farewell to absorbent undergarments of any kind will be a day long remembered chez Fraser.

...

More exciting than potty training (for me) is that I've submitted an application to be one of the next Canadian astronauts.

There are currently four space cadets in the CSA (Canadian Space Agency), and they want to boost that number back up to six, where it once was. So, for the second time in its history, the CSA opened its doors to nation-wide astronaut recruitment. During the brief time they were accepting applications they received over 5,300. For a total of two spots.

I'm not too sure that I like my chances, but I'm going to plug away at it to see how far I get.

The initial application requirements were pretty broad:

Canadian citizen
Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Applied Science, Science, or license to practise medicine
Stand between 149.5 and 190.5 cm (4'-9" and 6'-3")
Visual accuity, with or without corrective lenses
Other basic fitness

So I matched all of that and sent in my application.

Just yesterday (Thursday) I received notice that I will be eligible to fill out the second stage of the application, which will entail my sending more detailed information for consideration. (personal info, grade point average, cover letter, experience, relevant experience [??], expertise, certifications, resume.) After that's all done, the field will be whittled to a precious few invited to Ottawa for a first round of interviews. I don't really expect to make it to that stage, but at least I can say that I applied to be an astronaut and was, initially, qualified.

That's kinda cool all by itself.

(When I shared this bit of information with a couple friends at a wedding this past weekend, one of them quipped, "I guess you just have to work on the '-tronaut' part then, huh?")

141, eh?

2008-07-03T08:27:29-06:00

Like renewing an exercise program after a long stretch of indolence, I'm getting back into the blog posting thing. Perhaps with a tad more regularity? I'll have to eat more bran. And like those sore muscles after exercise, I hope to feel a sense of invigoration that drives me to keep at it. We'll see.

Tuesday was Canada Day up here in the Great White North, and the weather in this western part of it was nearly perfect. The temp crested to 30 degrees (C), which was, quite frankly, a little on the sweaty side. But we donned our red and white best, slapped on a few classy temporary tattoos, and hauled the kids in the wagon down to Lion's Gate Park to partake in dollar hot dogs, free cake and ice cream, and a band on the temporary stage that made most karaoke-ers sound pretty darned good.

We still had a good time for a couple hours.

Once we arrived, the boys immediately repaired to the playground where they set up a defensible sniper post. Declan chose his target early while Tavish mulled the moral implications of the day's intentions.

Tav decided he'd have better luck if he chose higher ground, even though he was also more exposed. Brave little fella.

Sweating from both the nerves and the heat, Dex fiddled with his gum while he calmly surveyed his marks.

Under the guise of taking in the petting zoo, I counsel Tavish on why it's not very nice to take out small children and pregnant women. You have to live with yourself afterwards, you know.

Deciding to have hot dogs instead of going on a rampage was probably for the best, in hind sight. It ended up being a pretty darned good day.