Liam and Uncle Ryan

Liam loves his extended family, every time we visit someone, we have to endure many days afterwards of Liam saying their names over and over and over.

One thing I find odd is that his male relatives never seem to get names. Oma, Opa, Dose, all get called that by Liam, but poor Ryan and Bernhard just get "Onkel" or maybe "Onke." I can even understand Bernhard's name being a little hard for him, but surely he should be able to master "Ryan" in some form or other.

Here is a picture of Liam and Onkel in the park. Ryan kept calling this Liam's "Communist hat" since it looks like one of those funny Cuban ones. I would like to point out:

1) This hat is from H&M and they are surely a pinnacle of capitalism
2) Communists also notoriously have beards.... hmmmm what are you hiding behind those dark glasses "Onkel"?

Swiss Hot Dogs

One day on an outing, we stopped for lunch and I saw there were "hot dogs" on the snack bar menu. Always enjoying a comparison to things I know well (and I know hot dogs!) I got one. The first and most obvious thing is that it is not on a hot dog bun as I know it. It is a mini baguette, which is also quite nice, although much more firm and stiff than the traditional bun. Rather than slice this bun, they cut off the top like a little hat, then impale it on a spike and insert the wiener in this newly made hole. The only toppings available were Ketchup and Mustard, which they put in the bread hole first. Then the hat goes back on the bread and you get your "hot dog"
First thing I did to eat this was take the hat off. It was tasty in its own right. The wiener inside was pretty much a hot dog wiener, and much more like a hot doag than what the Germans will give you. In Germany they just give you a Debreziner sausage and call it a hot dog, although the taste is totally different. here is my "hatless" dog.
On the whole, I will give it a thumbs up, the bread was different but good, and the sausage was hot-doggish. The lack of toppings was also a bit of a let down. I think I prefer my Toronto "street meat" when you can pile on onions, cheese, bacon bits, mayo, sauerkraut and a myriad of other toppings.

Ryan also enjoyed his hot dog, washed down with the wierd orange Sinalco drink that I only see in Switzerland.
I plan to contact the Swiss tourist board and advise them that these are proper hot dogs:

I will also point out that they should everyone working there dress like hot dogs to promote the greatness of this lunch time treat, how cool would me and Liam look like this:

Gaming in Genf - Day 1

As always when visiting Geneva, we spent our evening playing some games. Well, game in singular this time. Doris and Ryan had recently bought a new game called "The Pillars of the Earth," which is a licensed product, based on the Ken Follett novel of the same name.
The idea of this game is that in the year 12xx the king commissions the building of a cathedral in Knightsbridge, England. The players each take the role of a person with a building company or whatever they had back then. There are then three phases to the round, the first where workers are sent out to collect raw materials like wood and stone, the second where players place their builders on various points of the board to take certain building actions and the third where the points are counted.
These three phases are repeated six times until the cathedral is complete, at which point the player with the most points wins.
I must say, this could be my favorite game at the moment, there is very little left to luck, lots to do at every point in every round and it was a close game every time.

Here you can see us as we first started out, followed by an image of the sisters, deep in thought as they planned how to spend their valuable resources.

Near the end of the game, Doris thought that she had come up with a genius strategy, one that would give her many many points and possible win the game. However, Claudia immediately pointed out that she had mis-read her card and in fact got zero points for her effort.

Look at the first photo, where the evil gloating joy of Claudia can be seen as she crushes Doris hopes and dreams of victory, then in the second image, the anguish and suffering of the Doris as she moves her points marker back to last place.

In the end, it was a little shocking that RYAN was the big winner. Ryan had been having a streak of bad luck lately as far as games go and he was very pleased with this win in a brand new game. The final standings were.

1. Ryan
2. Fraser
3. Claudia
4. The Doris

Getting ready for the big Drive

Lately Liam has a big love of the car. I was getting things ready to drive down to Geneva to visit the Joneses and I had the door left open to let the heat out, when a little shape darted past me and hopped into what he believes to be his rightful place.

He climbs right into the driver's seat and then tries to do what Daddy does when he is sitting there. He wiggles the levers and turns the wheel. He has thankfully not figured out the horn just yet, but he does know how to work the hazard blinkers, which are a source of great amusement.

Liam was a very good boy for the drive down and back, there was no complaining and lots of sleeping. The only time we really heard some peeps out of him was when he was asking for something to eat or drink. I was really expecting the worst with him back there bored and yelling at me. However he had Bobby and the other bears to keep him amused and all was well.

Off to Geneva

We are off to visit the Joneses for a couple of days, so no updates for the moment. I should have some nice new photos up for next Tuesday though.

Liam still sneaking into bed

Well another night spent with a little guest. It is always a pretty horrible night's sleep for me when Liam is wiggling around and carrying on through the night, but it is better than having him scream next door at 3am for an hour.

It is also hard for me to stay annoyed with him when he is such a cute little fun boy the next morning, clowning around and having a good time.

Lazy Monday and a cruel child in the 70s

I did not have any great creative thoughts, and I think it is very possible that I have even posted this picture before, but I think it is well worth a second look.
Look at what my parents did to me in the 1970s.... Brown and orange tartan polyester suit. how amazing is it that this fashion did not stick around. My sister was not left out, but I have to say that her outfit is much much more attractive than mine.

It fairly much inspires me to put together some REALLY bad outfits to photograph Liam wearing, just so that in the year 2040 or so when he is my age (wow!) he can do things like this too.

For fashion bonus points, I once again revel in the glory of that couch and the truly outstanding cushion resting upon it. Maybe in one of my trips back to Canada I will be able to raid some photo albums just to get more images of the amazing decorations of the era. I am pretty sure that the things we had in our house were typical representations of what was common around that time. Or if anyone of the few people reading this has a particularly nice 70s-80s era photo to share with me, I would be delighted so spread that joy to the internet.

The Little Sneak

About a week ago, Liam started to have some bad dreams or something that woke him up at 3-4am. He would awake with a cry, then start to call for mummy and papa. Normally we would just go calm him down and he would sleep again, but this time it did not work.

The next alternative is to sit next to him until he calms down and goes back to sleep, but at 3am neither of us really feels like doing that. This leaves the alternative of bringing him over to our bed. This is also not my favorite thing. He starts out fine in the middle, then nudges over to my side a few cm or so every few minutes. This has the net effect of pushing me out of the bed.

Here is Liam's morning position, I was filling the space of the dark blue cushion until a few moments before this.
So, I am hoping the bad dreams stop very very soon, since I am not yet ready to begin sleeping on the floor so that the tiny overlord can have a comfy pre-warmed non-scary place to sleep.

Basement floor

Well, the basement floor tiles are fairly much in. The tiles are all down and the big room is grouted. I think they look pretty good and I am quite excited to have the house pretty much finished and usable inside. Downstairs is where we will have the guest room and eventually, the office.

Here is the hallway, with ungrouted tiles:
Here is the future office, with everything complete:

So right now all of the walls are white, but I think we will paint them. The big question is which colours to use? What goes best with a terracotta/reddish-brown floor?

Since this is a downstairs floor, I think the walls should be a light a colour as possible so that it does not feel closed in and cave-like, but I am not too sure what colours actually go best with this floor. I welcome any suggestions from the more decorative minded than myself.

One funny thing is that in order to get this floor in, we had to move EVERYTHING into the storage room to free up the floor space. This storage room is literally filled wall to wall with boxes, furniture, and miscellaneous junk. Here is a view in the door...

Living room looking done

Well, I finally hung up the pictures in the living room on the weekend, so it finally looks like it is rather "done" from a moving in point of view. The actual living room area is quite sparsely decorated, but personally that is a look I prefer. Less stuff makes the space look nice and tidy.

Eventually, Claudia would like some sort of furniture piece for that wall, a wall unit or some low cupboard or something, but I think that will be fairly far along the list of things we need to buy and do for the house. I would like to get rid of the glass table, I hate it. I really dislike glass and metal furniture, the TV stand will also go one day, but it was cheap and there are not many alternatives for a corner CRT TV of that size. I think a nice wooden unit with a flat screen would be better, but these things take time. That TV meets our needs for the moment.

The pictures are both a nice reminder of Canada, and Claudia and I both quite like the style of native art. The print on the right is one I bought her for our anniversary back in 2003 or so, and then we needed a second picture so the wall would not look so bare. We ordered it from a gallery over the internet and now I think I may like the whale picture even better.

Here is a "before" photo for a comparison, so floor, furniture, lights, pictures and curtains are added. I realize now that the curtains are not so visible in my picture, perhaps I will have to take a better angle to show them. oops:
Here is a close up of the orca print so you can have a better look at it:

Kids are so cute/evil

Liam is a very nice boy, he is cute and charming and likes to have a good time. Sometimes what he thinks is a good time works out rather poorly for his poor parents.

On the weekend, Liam had it in his head to play with mummy's electric toothbrush, which mummy handed over without a problem. He has done this before, and liked to run around with it while it made such exciting whirring noises. He wandered off on his own waving the brush around, making his happy chirping noises. This time, though, Liam decided to remove the brush part to see what was underneath.

It turns out there is a nice pointed piece of metal underneath.


Now the toothbrush still runs fine with only this piece of metal exposed... and Liam continued to play with it. In fact, it was even better like this, since now it looks and sounds just like..... Daddy's drill! wow, Liam can be just like daddy with this device, and what does daddy drill? The wall of course.


So, there were some lessons learned by all on this day. And here is how I spent the afternoon:

My trip back to the 1980s

Claudia and Liam are in Augsburg visiting her parents, so I found myself home all alone last night. In a moment of inspiration, I decided to go to the movies and watch "The Transformers" since it was 4-euro Tuesday at the english cinema.
Tranformers are of course based on a cartoon from the 1980s, so I thought it was only fitting that I go see the film in the cinema with 1980s technology. This is the only all-english cinema in the Stuttgart area, so if I have the urge to see things in the original version, this is where the buck stops.

Excuse the poor quality of the images here, but I only had my wonder phone with me to capture the glory of the corso. Here is the outside of the Theatre, I actually took this on the way out, it was barren when I arrived.
This was also on the way out, a line and formed to see the Simpsons which was also on. Notice the huge 1970s looking sign saying "WE ARE GOING TO THE MOVIES" sooo nice.

Once you are inside, this place defines the "One Man Show" This same guy sells you your ticket, operates the food stand, opens the doors to the theatres, and works the lights and projector. For those of you who have never been to a German theatre, you would likely find odd that you can buy beer in bottles or ice cream and whole cans of pringles at the concession. I just got some popcorn this time.Sadly, I could not capture the best part of the whole experience on film as it was too dark in the theatre. But here it is; I WAS THE ONLY ONE THERE! I have never had a whole theatre to myself before, another dream come true. I felt a little bad for "the employee" having to come in for the early early show, set it all up and run a film for the 4 bucks revenue I brought in.

Now as for the movie... I heard unflattering reviews about it but I think they were unfair. I mean come on, it is a film based on a cartoon based on a toy robot that turns into a truck. What sort of high drama was expected? It could have been a little shorter, but for me it had all the elements of a fine popcorn movie:

1) Robots
2) Robots exploding

Things I did not like about it:

1) too much "bathroom" humour
2) a little too long
3) robots with lips

Just Like Papa

One of the new habits of sneaky Liam is to try to be like papa. That means following me around the house and doing all of the same things I am doing. If I am vacuuming, then he must have a turn, if I am cooking, then he needs to be in the kitchen doing things as well.

Something I do quite a lot is use the computer (surprise surprise.) Now when the office door is left open, I often hear the stomp stomp of tiny feet running in the room, then the noises of extreme chair climbing. When I peek in, the wee man is in my spot, pounding away on the keyboard, just like daddy does. In this case, he somehow managed to open the windows control panel.
Then when I catch him and say LIAM! what are you doing, he just casually turns around and puts on his best "who me?" face, trying to look as cute as possible. Of course I usually just laugh at him for looking like a clown, but I am sure that one of these days he will somehow manage to erase the hard disk or do some other catastrophic thing. Then he will get out of trouble by hugging my legs and saying "MUPPETS PAPA MUPPETS" or one of his other cute things. I am really a sucker.

Today I Wish I Was a Spaceman

My Simpsons Family

So on the Simpsons Movie website, you can build your own Simpsons style character. I was trying to do one of myself and Claudia, and this is what I came up with. It is not as easy as I thought, but let me know if you think this was a decent representation:


Then I tried the "Simpsonize me" where you upload a photo and the computer does it automatically. this is what they came up with:

Who did a better job?

It is a little annoying that the build your own one does not give you much in the way of clothing selection like the other method does. But I make do with what is available. I always wanted to be a Simpsons character, yet another dream come true.

Glorious New Hardware

So another great day of technology in the workplace. I arrived to my desk today to see a nice huge box filling up my tiny cube. Inside was a glorious new 20 inch LCD monitor. Finally I can join the modern age and get rid of my HUGE (21-inch) CRT which was taking up a lot of desk real estate.

Here is a view of my glorious workspace with its new monitor:

You will take note of my standard issue Hewlett-Packard mug.

In all seriousness, it is a pretty great monitor and I wish I had another one for the house. Although, if I have to pay my own real money for an LCD, I think I would get one that is 16:9 format, which sadly HP does not offer as far as I know. I dearly want to get a new computer, but given the priority of spending, I really doubt that I will be buying one for at least another year or so. Too many other costly projects like front and back yards... basement finishing... flooring the attic...

Ugh, one little lottery win would be welcome around now. I am not greedy, I don't need the Euro-millions jackpot, just enough to get all these little "projects" done. Oh, and maybe a new car.... or two... and a solid gold hat.