Well… back from vacation, and what a vacation.

As usual, we drove back to Newfoundland for our vacation. What was unusual was that we decided to tow our trailer and bring our four-wheeler along. We knew it would cost a little more in gas, we knew it was going to cost more on the ferry from North Sydney to Port aux Basques, and we knew it was risky to drag a trailer for such a long distance, but we tackled it anyway.

Just as we were about to hit the road, I realized our new trailer did not have a safety inspection completed. It was licensed and insured, but the necessary safety inspection sticker was not in place. I rushed the trailer over to a local business to get inspected, and luckily they were able to inspect it without forcing me to remove all the cargo. Loading the four-wheeler and other stuff, along with tarps and bungee cords stretched all over took me about two hours. The trailer got inspected and we were off.

We arrived in North Sydney a little later than we wanted to… around 9:30 pm. When we got there, we discovered that our boat, which was scheduled to leave port at 1:00 am, was going to be slightly delayed. It didn’t leave until around 3:30 am.

Leaving North Sydney late meant arriving in Port aux Basques late. We had hoped to make up the time, but we ran in to some issues with the trailer. (Side note… we had a 4×8 stake-side trailer that we sold so we could purchase a galvanized 5×8 trailer from Costco. The stake side trailer only had 9 inch wheels and the new one had 13 inch… more suitable for distance travel.) By the time we got to Marble Mountain, about two hours into a 9 hour drive on the Newfoundland side, I noticed that one of the tires on the trailer was low. I pulled it over the an air pump to fill it up and noticed that the problem was with the air filler stem. The metal was separated from the rubber. A quick check of the other tire revealed to me that it was also running a little low. I had one spare tire, but not two. So, Deer Lake was only 60 kms away… we hoped we could make it there to find a garage to help us with our issue. A little searching and we found a place to help us. They squeezed us in right away. Once they replace both (yes BOTH) valve stems, we were off again.

Luckily, there was no more excitement. No mechanical issues, no moose, no major construction delays. We arrived in Witless Bay around 7 pm, only about 3 hours later than expected.

RDF. Rain, drizzle and fog. That summarizes the weather for practically the whole time we were in Newfoundland. But that didn’t stop us from having a good time. In two weeks, we put 600 kms on the four wheeler (pretty good considering that much of those kms were at a crawling pace over very rough terrain). I managed to get it stuck several times, once REALLY good. My son had gotten stuck and needed to be winched out. When I followed in his path, I decided it would be best not to drive in his tracks. So, I figured I’d straddle them… my right wheels between his tracks and my left wheels to the left of his tracks. The right wheels were fine. The left wheels went straight into a deep puddle of water. It turns out that moss that is growing on top of water looks exactly like moss growing on top of the ground! I immediately jumped onto the right running board and leaned hard, holding the handle bars. I had to. Otherwise the bike was going to roll right over into the water… that would be disastrous. It took three bikes, pulling with engines and winches about 20 minutes to get me out. The new bike was officially christened.

Besides that, I found time to shingle a roof, install crown moulding, build a deck, fall off a set of scaffolding and generally kick the shit out of myself. Yes… I said fall off a set of scaffolding. It was a home-made set, screwed together, and attached to the side of the house. I was up about 6 feet and the scaffolding fell apart, sending me falling into a pile on the ground. I buggered up my ankle, both heels, my right elbow and my shoulder. The funny thing, is the sciatic nerve problem that has been nagging at me since April 2007 suddenly went away! I can hardly walk, but my back doesn’t hurt.

The whole trip, driving from Moncton to St. John’s and back and all around while we were there. 4500 kilometers of highway driving and didn’t see one moose. Ok, I saw one moose, but it was a baby and about 50 feet off to the side of the road. But driving up and down the dirt road of Gully Pond in Witless Bay, we saw 5 moose. I’d rather see them there than on the highway anyway.

And now… we’re back. It’s Saturday night and we have to go back to work on Monday. Seems like forever since vacation started but it also seems to have gone by in a flash. So, back to reality and looking forward to the next time we set foot back on the rock.

I’ll end my rambling now… and leave you with this: one of the coolest license plates I’ve seen.

Saturday. Sometimes I have the day to do absolutely nothing, nada, nudding at all. On those days, I might sleep in, get up, shower, get a coffee, have a leisurely breakfast, and then maybe cruise around to the local hardware store or Costco or wherever looking for an excuse to spend money I don’t have.

But today… well that was a different story. Last week I started staining my fence and deck and I was set to finish that this week. My plan was to get up early, go for a haircut and then I was going to stain all the uprights on my deck and give the floor of the deck a quick once over with a roller as a second coat. Then I was going to go over to my neighbours and to some odd jobs for them… They needed some bracing installed along the bottom part of their fence and they wanted to have landscape ties installed around the flower beds out back.

That was the plan. A good honest handyman’s day’s work, a cool shower, and a good feeling that I didn’t waste my Saturday. But that’s not what happened. Not exactly.

Last evening my son asked if we could go to a couple of car lots in the morning looking at cars before he went to work. Sure, I said. I’ll just inject that little task into my plan… perhaps I’ll postpone the haircut. We left this morning around 9:30, picked up one of his friends and headed to the Dodge dealership. From there we went to Tim Hortons to get a coffee and went to the Hyundai dealer. After a little looking around and kicking tires, I decided we would head home. It was 11:00. I dropped my son’s friend off at his place of employ, and headed home. We were almost there, when we saw something cross the road. From a distance, it looked like some sort of bird, but it looked a little different, somewhat out of proportion. As we got closer, we realized it was a duckling. A single solitary duckling, in the middle of a subdivision. Nothing but concrete, asphalt, and lawns. No ponds, no marsh, and no sign of momma duck and/or a string of other little ducklings. This little guy was stranded. So, my son got out and chased the little bugger down and scooped him up.

“Can we keep him?”, said my 17-year-old son. Uhm. I don’t think so. It’s a duck. We’ll be calling the SPCA for some advice. So, that’s what we did. The SPCA took my name and number and said someone would call us back. In the meantime, my son laid the duck down on the back deck and it saw an escape opportunity and made a beeline for the edge of the deck and leaped off the edge to freedom under the neighbour’s deck. While my son was chasing it down, the forest ranger’s office called. (All I could think was, I don’t want to tell this guy that, in the three minutes since I left my name with the SPCA, the duckling outsmarted us and got away.) I explained to the dude how and where we found this little bird and asked for advice on what to do with him next… something that didn’t have “a l’orange” in the answer. He said to bring it to the nearest pond, perhaps Centennial Park, and set it free. Perhaps it will merge in with another family, grow up to be a strong healthy adult duck, and come back someday to rescue us from a fire or something.

So, off we went to the park. It was 11:30 by now. On our way there, I remembered that there was a big car show at Centennial Park. The Atlantic Nationals were in town and 1600+ antique and scooped up cars were going to be strewn about all around the park. Shit. That’s ok, we’ll go to Jones Lake. It’s a nice lake with walking trails all around it. Super.

Then suddenly, my cell phone rang. It’s my neighbour, Rennie, calling from my house. Hey Steve, where are you? He explained that he and his wife, Lorraine, had gone to Kent Building Supplies to pick up a couple of sheets of lattice, and couldn’t get them into his car. So, he left Lorraine at the hardware store and came back to see if I would go back down with him in my van to pick up the lattice. Oh, and hurry up please, Steve, cuz Lorraine is pissed at me. Ok, Rennie. I’ll be just a few minutes. But why don’t you go pick up Lorraine and bring her home. Kent will hold the lattice until we get there.

So, we arrive at Jones Lake. Yup, it does have some really nice walking trails around it, but not much of an easy access to the edge of the lake, at least not where the other ducks are hanging out. We drove up a little side street bordering the lake, got out with our little boxed duckling, walked to the edge of the tree line and peered into the woods lining the lake, looking for an easy path to the shore.

“Excuse me. Sir. Can you come over here?” I turned around, and there’s an old lady on her front porch across the street, waving me over. Ok… now I’ve got to explain to this old lady that we are just rescuing a duckling, not looking for a place to dump a body, or worse yet, potential recyclables. Turns out, she simply wanted me to take her flower box off her front rail, get two different pairs of pliers, and attempt to re-bend her wire flowerbox holder so it wouldn’t lean too much. “My husband is disabled, so I figured I’d watch for the first handsome young man to come along and ask him to help.” So, did you get tired of waiting? I fixed her flower box wire-thingy, but not before I skinned half the skin off several knuckles. It’s so hard for me to slam my fist into a metal railing after a vice-grip slips and NOT curse and swear.

After some chatting and several “thank yous” I was back on my mission to free the duck. We found a place that brought us to the water fairly easily, but it was nowhere near any other ducks. This place will have to do. It was after 12:00 and my son had to get to work by 1:30. That same duck, who, when placed on our deck bolted like he was racing in the Kentucky Derby, just sat in the box when we tipped it on its side within three feet of certain freedom. After about 5 minutes of gentle coaxing, the duckling was on his way. Once he splashed into the water and swam just off shore, he chirped gleefully as if to say, “Thank you, nice gentlemen. Hey, where the quack is my mommy?”

Now, I still need to rescue two more ducklings. The ones who attempted to fit two 4 by 8 sheets of lattice into a Hyundai Sonata. I rush home and Rennie is waiting for me on the front step. He’d gone and retrieved Lorraine already. “So, Rennie, I don’t understand why Lorraine would be mad at you.” Well, Steve, I tried to tell her before we left that the lattice wouldn’t fit. But she said we got it in your van before and the stuff bends fairly easily. “Don’t tell me, Rennie, that you used the I-told-you-so words…?” Well, kinda. “Rennie, Rennie, Rennie. You are 65 years old, and married more than 30 years. Don’t you know that you have a choice? You can be right… or you can be happy. Never both at the same time.” Sigh. Yeah, I know.

We went to the hardware store, picked up the lattice and came back home. I sat, had a glass of Pepsi, and headed out to start my busy day. 1:30 pm. Start by busy day? Start? Then why am I so exhausted already?

So, I stayed out in the yard, staining my deck until after 7:00 pm. It’s now, Sunday morning, and I’ll have to go out and start the rest of my Saturday list.

As I looked in the mirror this morning, I thought two things. I wish it had rained this weekend and I need a haircut.

You know the feeling you get at the moment between doing something stupid and realizing how stupid it was? That two seconds of limbo where you don’t know exactly how bad you arsed things up? That juncture where you are certain you have gone beyond the point of no return, but you are uncertain what the consequence is?

That’s a looonnggg two seconds, let me tell you. Trust me.

Last evening, I tried to install new photo sharing software on my website. I had used other galleries and flashy showy things before, but they were either too heavy or too hard to manage. Then I found Zenphoto. It’s PERFECT. It integrated neatly into the site and I liked the design, straight out of the box. I loved it. But, my webhosting service offered an easy one-click install that, while very easy, did not allow me the convenience of uploading and downloading my photos using FTP. In other words, I didn’t have a backdoor. So… I tried to install it manually. I checked around, found others online that had done it, and followed their instructions. To the letter.

That’s when it happened. My website disappeared. When you go to ohmenerves.com you got nothing but a strange looking listing of garbage. I have a test site as well and it was messed up too! Oh my God. Oh… my… GOD! I could go to my administration panels and find my database and all my website files, but the site was down. PANIC!!!!

So I called upon Jody. My good buddy Jody. My hero. My lifesaver. He’d saved my bacon before… maybe he could do it again.

Well, so far, since you are reading this, you can see that he fixed my problem, but not before I got a couple of emails with quotes like:

• ha ha
• I don’t think it’s a problem
• what the hell did you do?
• that doesn’t sound good

When I finally got the note from him saying the site was up, I tested it. Here’s the first thing I saw.

The picture, the font on the website name, and the tagline all reflect exactly how I feel. Man!

Thanks again Jody.

Four thousand six hundred and eighty two kilometers.

That’s how many kilometers are on my 2003 Yamaha motorcycle. I’ve owned it since it was new, but never really got to use it much. I had plenty of opportunity, but I guess the romance of owning the bike was greater than the actual riding turned out to be. I was hoping my darling wifey would like riding with me, but it turns out that taking a back seat on my motorcycle didn’t exactly turn her crank. Going riding one my own or with a bunch of other folks I barely know has limited appeal for me. So…

I loved the bike, but everything has but a time. Yesterday, we traded it in on a 2008 Arctic Cat 650 H1 TRV. It’s a two seater ATV and I already know she likes to ride one of those, thanks to her brudder Jim and her udder brudder Jerry. We have borrowed theirs when we have made our various trips to Newfoundland and it is something we both truly enjoy.

I had ‘er out yesterday for a little jaunt… powerful, responsive and smooth. I like it… should have bought one of these five years ago.

Where is my utility knife? I’m sure it’s under here somewhere. Ah, there it is! Ok, now what did I do with that measuring tape? I had it just a minute ago.

I’m terrible for laying stuff down and forgetting it. I can’t begin to tell you how often I’ve left the house only to remember I’d left the shopping list on the table because I’d laid it down to put on my shoes. Then when I go back in, I come back out with my list, but don’t have my keys. Couple this absentmindedness with a tendency to allow clutter to build up and you’ve got a recipe for never, ever finding a damn thing ever, at least not when you need it. On top of that, I’ve developed an ability to sometimes remember where in the clutter a specific utensil or tool is. So, when I do clean up and subsequently need that thing-a-ma-jiggy, it’s gone. Oh, shit. Where did I put that thing?

Last weekend, I decided to clean out my shed. I have a 10 by 16 shed in my backyard, but I could only reasonably use about 6 square feet of it. I literally could not step inside the door. After about 6 hours, I could actually see enough of the floor to know it needed sweeping! And, I only threw out three garbage bags of junk.

Nice. Neat. Organized.

Will I ever find anything ever again? I doubt it.

Where have I been? Nowhere. Just hanging around. Nothing new to report. A perfect recipe for another writer’s block post!

Why can’t I find something to write about? I mean, there’s gobs of stuff happening. Work is a-buzzing and I’ve had plenty of smartass moments. Lots of stuff happening: a new vehicle, new TV, flooring and painting rooms, installing blinds, springtime gardening, helping neighbours, my son’s 17th birthday, winter pool league ending, summer pool league beginning, selling my old Camry, junk day in Moncton (giving away an almost perfectly good treadmill), installing Linux on a scrapped PC, taking my motorcycle out of storage, upgrading Wordpress, insomnia, NHL playoffs… you know, everyday life.

So… why can’t I find something interesting to share with both of my faithful fans?

Wait a minute! That last paragraph has a shitload of stuff to write about! Doh!