Oven Fire

A little oven fire this evening.  Of course, when there is a fire in your house, it never seems little.  I think a taco shell cracked & fell onto the element.  Had the fire extinguisher out in about 5 seconds, pulled the tab, unclipped the hose, got ready to open the door & shoot it... then I thought "damn, I just cleaned the oven yesterday".

Don't know if you've ever needed to clean up after a fire extinguisher, but the 'dry chemical' type are a messy pain in the butt.  So I left the oven door closed and stayed ready in case the fire didn't burn out from lack of oxygen.  A nice plume of dark smoke poured out of the vent in the back element and filled the kitchen, but the flames died out fairly quickly.

Tacos are seriously flammable though!  The whole episode got my heart racing nicely, scared the dogs to death after the smoke detector went off, and made me worried for Mars.  His breathing has been acting up again for the last few days, and we're still not 100% sure on the triggers.  Leaf took the boys to play in their room while I ran the air cleaner in the kitchen.  Worked well, there isn't even a burnt popcorn smell.  Had burritos instead of tacos for dinner...

Gluing Odin together again

Odin had a little boo-boo at Holly's yesterday. Fell and hit his face on ice about 5 minutes before I picked him up. A nice bump on his head, big scrape on his face, and an ugly cut on his cheek. Based on the copious blood inside and outside his mouth (which I thankfully missed), Holly thought maybe his cheek had been punctured.

Had to interrupt Leaf at yoga, we decided to take a trip to the hospital. He took the whole thing rather well.  A little compulsory screaming when the Doctor wanted to look inside his mouth - which worked well for looking inside!  She didn't think it was a hole, just impact damage of cheek to tooth on the inside, and the cut on the outside.

After a quick clean, she crazy glued the cut on his cheek and stuck on a little bandage.  Ah, the wonders of crazy glue.  I've always found it pretty useless for anything except gluing skin together - in my case, usually unintentionally.  Odin should heal up pretty quick.

I call Bulls*t on the Olympic opening ceremonies

The Olympic hype (more acurately BS) has arrived in a big steaming pile.  I just read on the web page of the Toronto Star that "3.5 billion people watched the opening ceremonies".  More than 50% of the entire planet watched?  What a load of crap reported as fact.  I guess whoever made up these television numbers was the same person who said the games would turn a profit!

A very interesting article on "Lies, damned lies and TV viewing statistics".   Some info on the "informed guesswork" that goes into the lies that are worldwide television audiences.  Torino 2006 opening ceremony claimed 2 billion viewers, only 98 million verifiable.   Happy to see that Superbowl numbers equally BS, and that World Cup, though also throwing around inflated numbers, had, BY FAR, the highest verifiable numbers.





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Battling the Tim Horton's Addiction

First off, for the record, I would like to state that it is all Leaf's fault!  I didn't drink coffee, and the only time I would ever go to Tim Horton's would be to get a chocolate eclair (sadly no longer offered at Tim's).  Not a coffee drinker.  I resisted for at least 5 years, but eventually got hooked.  I think the deciding factor was moving into town and going from 20 minutes away to less than five.  Its on the way to everything.  I can even kayak to Tims.

This past summer, we started putting everything on credit card to better help with budgeting.  Although this goes counter to the conventional  wisdom of paying cash so expenses are noticed, we decided on credit card since everything is tracked.  No more guesstimating the Tims budget, I can just add up the statements.  It wasn't pretty.  I figure we were spending about $100 a month at Tim Horton's (twice what I would have guessed based on cash).  And their coffee isn't even that great.

In our defence, Tim's is our fast food of choice.  If we are away from home - down to the city for  shopping for example - we'll usually eat there.  I don't know about factual information, but their sandwiches and soups at least give the illusion of being healthier than typical fast food.  A family meal is going to run about $20, we eat there at least once a month, the Tim's budget can't be that horrible...

Nevertheless, it needed to be remedied.  We were easily spending over $1000 a year, and there are so many things that would be a better use of the money.  Decided in December (after the giant $120 November tally) to start cutting back.  Due to vagaries of billing cycle we didn't start until mid December, but there was an immediate improvement.  I'm pretty happy with the January numbers.  I don't think we'll ever eliminate it completely, but reducing by two thirds gets us to a more reasonable budget amount.




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Breathing check panic

I think it is a 'new parent' thing, the breathing check.  Infant is fast asleep and somewhere in the depth of your brain there is a little fear impulse that compels you to make sure he is still alive and breathing.  Went through it when Mars was born, again when Odin was born.  More frequently early on, wanes away before they turned one.  Then Mars got sick and the breathing checks restarted for a while.  That lasted a few more months and the compulsion was fading...

5:00 am today I wake up and Odin looks odd.  Pale?  Lying awkwardly?  Too still?  Don't know what it was but immediately look to see if his chest is rising.  Start to worry and feel to see if his chest is rising.  Start to panic and gently shake until he moves.  Holy adrenalin batman.  I had gotten myself completely freaked out.  Of course he was fine the whole time (at least until I disturbed his happy little sleep).  The light, the angle, the blankets, blurry eyed at 5:00 am... once wide awake it was completely obvious to see and hear he was breathing completely normally.

Pre-kids I never truly understood what made fear such an excellent motivator.  Now I do.  Logic is forgotten and some kind of reptilian hind-brain kicks in.  It explains a lot.