Lawyered up

So a brief update on our rental grief, it appears that our landlords lawyer didn't know about his clients bizarre tactics, the whole thing was news. As far as we can tell this sorry tale has been a poorly executed grab for cash with the assumption that we wouldn't understand our rights or take steps to defend them. I'm not sure whether to feel insulted or relieved :-). One thing I definitely am is pissed-off.

It's far from over but it looks like we'll be continuing on at 374 River Glen until we come home, sometime before March 2008. The two lawyers will draw something up by mid-week and we should know where we stand. Sadly the whole episode has been a little stressful for the family, but at the moment it looks like all is well.

Some other quick snippets -

• Jo went with Cam on a school excursion to a farm today, so it was noisy kids and the smell of 20 types of poo today.
  
• Abs had her EQA test (the standard government test for all grade 3's) and says that she felt fairly comfortable with her effort.
• Using our $20 rackets has been increasingly difficult at tennis on Friday nights. Now that Jo has found another local girlfriend who's also a member of the club she's off playing in the womans comp on Tuesday mornings. So will the number of hours of tennis per week shooting up it's about time for some decent equipment. Jo got a couple of demo tennis rackets and at around $200 plus stringing they might be a little more than I had in mind :-), oh well Jo never complains about my toys so it's time for me to shut up.
  
• Cam wants to do Ju Jitsu with a mate on Thursdays, so that's being setup, looks like he'll have a busy summer (soccor, tennis and beating me up).
• I went to Niagara Falls with the boys from work over the weekend. Played up quite a bit, stayed at the Sheraton and then played the John Daly golf course Saturday morning. AJ won $600 playing blackjack, I was the oldest and tucked into bed before 3am, Ram had one hours sleep and still hit under 90, bastard.
  

Mini Socceroos

Abs and Cam have had their first soccer games of the season and I can confidently say that a) they look awesome in their kits and b) they both showed some decent skills (especially for kids with no prior experience).Cam's games are on Saturday morning and the first team he and his mates played obviously had a season already under their belts. One of the opposition 5-yo's was heard to say 'we're gunna smoke you guys' just before the commencement of hostilities, nice trash talk for a little leaguer. Cam displayed plenty of determination and some skill, he certainly isn't afraid to get in amongst it which is awesome considering he's not played any competitive sport before. At one point he was on with two fairly timid team mates (they play 4 a side, 3 plus a goalie) and while he was head down and totally in the fray his buddies were distinctly MIA. As he battled with the 3 opponents we clearly heard him yell out 'so I guess I'll do this by myself then guys!', no word of a lie.

He had a great time and we enjoyed sitting on the sloping sideline and cheering the mighty 'sky blues' on. Fact is though that they got thumped, around 9-3, which considering that none of his team looked like they had played before and the opposition was clearly superior (ie. they consistently passed to each other) was a good result. Cam also made some good saves while 'in net' as goalie, however it's clear that 5-yo's place more credence in style while throwing ones self to the ground than actually stopping the ball, if there were points for style he would have earned a solid 8 or 9, but it did result in a goal or two to the 'smokers'. Cam did a fair bit of passing himself which was great to see, I guess having older sisters helps you to develop sharing skills :-).

Jo took Ab's to her match, which are nicely timed always at 19:00 on Thursday evenings. Since I haven't seen her form I can't say too much but Jo was pretty pleased with the way she got on with it. Both the kids haven't played a team sport before, Ab's previous experience is really the 4+ years of ballet before coming over here. Hopefully they will have a good summer and enjoy themselves. Speaking of which it's 38 degrees today (that's a humidex temp, like with wind-chill it's a 'feels like' temp taking the humidity into account). So summer is here and the kids are clamoring for the pool to be set up in the back yard.

Had an interesting conversation today with our landlord. He's apparently got someone who wants to rent our house for about 50% more than we pay and is prepared to sign a 2 year lease. Now the way that rentals work over here is that usually you sign a 12 month lease and then after that it goes to 'month-to-month'. This means that if we want to move out we have to give 60 days notice and if the landlord wants to increase the rent (CPI only) or wants to move back into the house himself, he has to give us 60 days notice. Now apparently since he doesn't plan to move back in himself he can't simply give us 60 days notice and put someone else in who's willing to pay more, so that's a good thing. I suspect that he's trying to get more money out of us, so when he drops around tonight we'll have a little chat about our rights. Hopefully all goes well.

Andy, out.

Jasmine Spielberg

Here's Jasmines first effort at taking a full video and editing it on the PC.

Kid City

Our good friends the Ballesty's came up from Pennsylvania late last week. Dan and Joyce had a weekend in Ottawa planned putting Jo and I on duty with a house full of 7 kids. We had a great time and we're pretty sure all the kids did too but it was a lot of work. I don't know how Joyce and Dan handled our brood when they had them for 4 days last year. The weather was really nice which allowed us to make the most of outside activities, foremost of which was a long walk along 16 Mile Creek not far from our house. With one car, 7 kids and 2 adults everything was going to be a local affair. Now that I have bought a new video camera I've told Jazz that she can use the old camera. She's expressed a real interest in taking shots and editing them on the PC so she and the other kids took turns taking video and still shots throughout our walk. When we got back I transfered the data to the computer and Jazz edited the footage together, she did a decent job for her first attempt and I only helped her a bit with some minor cleanups and timing changes. I'll put it up on YouTube later this week so you can all see for yourself, it's a bit of fun and nice that it's all footage from a single 3 hour walk.I had promised the kids that we would set off Cam's model rocket but unfortunately both Saturday and Sunday proved too windy. Since the rocket is supposed to go higher than 500 feet I didn't want to risk it coming down on someones roof, or even worse the major highway a few hundred metres away. So instead we took advantage of the wind and flew a couple of kites while the other kids and I played some baseball and threw a gridiron ball around. The park across the road is getting really busy now that the weather is good and the sun is up much longer, the baseball diamond is in use a lot and the basketball court is being pounded until after the sun goes down. Anyway is was a busy but very enjoyable weekend, the Ballesty kids are good people and get along with our mob like a house on fire. We love seeing them and having kids going mad all over the place. The only downer was Abs got quite sick on the Sunday morning after a party/sleep-over the night before and ended up spending the day in bed after barfing all over the carpet upstairs. Luckily is was just a 24hr thing so she's back to her best today.Last year everyone in Jazz's class had to write a speak and deliver it to the class. The best 3 speeches, as adjudged by the teacher and popular vote by the kids, would then be delivered to all the grades in a number of rounds as they whittled down the contenders and arrived at a winner. Jazz had done very well last year, even considering she was competing out of her age group and some of the other kids had obviously had a lot of help from others. Jazz's chosen subject was mythical creatures whereas some of the other kids had gone for more serious topics like bullying. Anyway it's on again this year and Jazz is once again a strong starter out of the blocks. She received a 92/100, the highest in her class, for her first run through and is delivering her speech to all the grade 5 classes today to see if she can progress further. I'm so proud of her, she seems to have a real knack for both the writing and deliver aspects of it. Her first draft, on the subject of TV violence and it's impact on young kids, was fun, interesting and well researched. I can't believe that she's doing this in grade 5... go Jazzy, give em hell.

Andy, out.

DC photos up

Hi all, the new PC is pretty much up and running nicely. Email is back online too, sorry we haven't replied to your messages since late last week, I had major problems installing my email client. Anyway it's all working now and I've even uploaded the photos from Washington DC. You can see them all by either clicking on one of the two photos below or by clicking on the animated Flickr 'badge' on the right of the page. You can enjoy a choice shot of my helmet-hair below...There's a heap of video too, I just have to find the time to get onto it. The new Xbox360 is okay, got some major problems with using it as a media player though, it's just totally crippled. Hopefully the Spring Update that's due in the next week will address some of my issues, but I'll still have to re-encode most of my video as it wont support some of the common formats [sigh]. Sadly I couldn't find Guitar Hero 2 either, apparently the guitar controllers have been recalled due to a fault, no 3-chord rockin' goodness for me yet.

Still on the games console subject our friends the Andrews bought a Wii and dropped around for a play on our big screen. It was a total hoot, everyone from Cam to Jo had a great time playing tennis, baseball and ten-pin bowls while throwing themselves around the room. It's a cool little console, we might have to get one at some point.Later this week we have our friends the Ballesty's arriving from Pennsylvania for a visit. We still owe Dan and Joyce a weekend without kids from when Jo and I went to NY last year so this weekend we should be kid-central while their parents have some quality time on their own. It's a good thing we still have the van although I don't think we can fit 7 kids in it :-). So I guess local stuff is on the cards and the weather is looking better so that's a good thing. We had a fantastic Sunday with blue skies and 20+ degrees, cool enough to lull me into a false sense of security regarding sunscreen and getting me a little burnt on my arms after a day in the back yard mellowing out. With the better weather Jo is working out a lot, gym, running, walking and cycling. The kids are starting to ride to school again which they really enjoy. And I'm getting to play a bit of golf, although I have to say I've been very inconsistent in my 4 or so rounds so far, pars and triple bogies [sigh]. I also need to start running again, my mate Garry has been injured and as a result I've found an excuse not to run myself, gotta get back to it this week, Jo's making me look bad.

Andy, out.