Here's what the living room looks like now:



As you can see, we still need a big piece of art on the wall above the monitor. Also in the pic is the painting that Adnan's wife, Snjezana, painted for Heather. The TV stand that the monitor is on will at some point be replaced with a smaller stand. For now it also contains my old (big) tuner, connected to my old (big) Cerwin Vega speakers. Both are circa 1988, and sound as good as when I first bought them, but in a 12' wide house, they take up a lot of space. At some point we'll replace those with something smaller, but for now it works. You can see the wireless keyboard and mouse (it's the white rectangles). The mouse is optical and doesn't work on the glass top of the coffee table. Unfortunately a couple days after I bought the mouse, Apple came out with their new trackpad, which would fix that problem.

The old TV used to be where the black armchair is now, and the black armchair was in the pathway from the front door. So now there's better flow through the room, because you don't have to dodge around the chair. You would be surprised at how often one can stub their toe in the dark checking that the front door is locked before heading upstairs for the night.

It's the Simcoe Day long weekend and the weather is beautiful.

So we've been cable-TV-free for the last couple weeks, and it's working out pretty good. Right now the HD antenna is upstairs in the office, and we get nine channels (all GTA-based). At some point I'll put the antenna on the roof, but then I need to worry about lightning and surge protection and all that, so for now the office it is.

The best part is that we got rid of my big old Sony Trinitron from the 90's, which allowed us to rearrange the living room furniture. The living room now has much better flow. Maybe even better feng shui, although I'm not that knowledgeable about feng shui.

I gave away the old TV for free on craigslist. The asking price for similar TVs was $1 to $200 (I don't know who would pay $200 for an old TV, when I bought a brand new 24" LCD monitor for less). We decided just to price it as free, to get rid of it. Within minutes I had five replies. I gave it to the first person to reply, who picked it up the next day. I also gave them Heather's old DVD player.

As part of the living room makeover, we also put up a collage of framed art from my travels that were sitting in boxes in the basement. On their own they were too small for our walls, but as a collage they work. It nicely fills in the wall between the front door and front window.

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For my 40th birthday, Heather made reservations at Ruby Watchco, a new-ish restaurant in Leslieville. We had both wanted to go there since it opened. They only have one set menu which changes every day (if you click on the link you'll see the menu for the current day). The interior design is really great, very much our style. We weren't as impressed with the food, it was really good, but too rich to our taste. I also felt the food too busy -- all the ingredients overpowered the main part of the course. Unfortunately on my birthday the main was chicken -- it was done perfectly, but I just can't get too excited about chicken (unless it's chicken wings after Ultimate). Overall none of the courses made us go "wow". But we were happy we checked the place out. We might go back, but it would depend on the menu being served that day.

Heather also bought me a t-shirt from Dorly Designs that says "Bacon makes me happy". We had dropped in to check out the new store in June, and I really liked the t-shirts.

The facelift of our Shoppers is moving along. They've expanded to take over most of the parking lot, and have added a 2nd floor. It fits in much better with the rest of the street now. Before, there was too much empty space and it broke up the continuity along Queen E. Already on Carlaw there's a new restaurant planning to open opposite the Shoppers. The Shoppers people also used brick on the exterior which again fits in nicely with the rest of the street.

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I went out golfing at Deerfield with Chris, Doaner and Craig on the day before my birthday. I left my driver in the bag (actually didn't even bother bringing it to the course), and just used my hybrid off the tee. (I need to take lessons before I use my driver on the course). Anyways, I had five straight pars on the front, a record for me, on holes 2-6; unfortunately double-bogeyed the other four holes, for a 42 and a bogey-free front. Ended up with a 92, one of my better rounds in a while. I also beat Doaner for the first time ever.

This Wednesday Craig and I are golfing at Lakeview with a couple guys from hockey, Scott and Marc. Hopefully I'll still be hitting my hybrid straight.

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With all the hot weather this summer, I've been looking at how to shade the sun coming in from the skylight. Eventually I want to get some sort of smart window but for now I'm going low-tech, with just a linen covering that can be put on hooks with a long pole:



It might make more sense to see it when it's completed.

Tonight we're having an experimental dinner. There was a bottle of wine at the LCBO that said it went well with chicken with olives, almonds and paprika. So I bought a couple chicken breasts, (bone-in with skin), and I'm going to stuff them with the olives etc and then barbecue. The side is a salad of navy beans and wilted spinach, with cured chorizo sausage. I think it the meal may be a bit on the dry side, so I may need a chicken broth-based sauce of some sort.

Well that's it for now.

Heather's laptop is nearing its end and so she's been using the MacBook. Fortunately with lockbox.com all her dissertation is synced locally on her laptop and the MacBook (as well as in the cloud) so it was pretty seamless for her to keep on working.

We're replacing her dead laptop with a Mac Mini. I also ordered a Dell 24" LCD monitor, which will become our TV, and a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. The total cost was a little less than a Windows laptop.

Oh yah, so I finally cancelled cable, and we're switching to an HD antenna. Rogers makes you wait (pay) for a 30 day period if you want to cancel your cable, so we have it until July 21st. It wasn't that hard to convince their call centre that we didn't want cable. I just told them we don't watch tv, and I don't think they have a script for that. They tried to offer us cheaper cable, but I just repeated that we don't watch tv. A week later they called us at home, and Heather said the same thing, an it appears Rogers has now given up. We're still keeping our Internet through Rogers, there's no additional cost to have just Internet services. We were paying $70 / month for the cable portion of our Rogers bill, so it's quite a savings.

We bought a Channel Master 4-bay antenna, and the HD HomeRun tuner, which connects into our home network. So now we can watch TV from any computer (well right now, the computer) on the network, even over WiFi. When I get the Mac Mini, I'm going to install eyeTV, which is basically a PVR for the Mac. The antenna, tuner and software will end up costing about $250, so in less than four months it will pay off.

Which means we'll finally say goodbye to my old 27" Sony Trinitron TV. I don't know how to dispose of TVs, as this is the first TV I've ever owned (it's from the 90's). I suppose toronto.ca will have info.

Which also means we'll have more room in the living room, yay! The new monitor (when it arrives) will have to go somewhere, but it will take up far less room. Also the DVD player can go, and Rogers will pick up the cable box. The MacMini will be the radio (via iTunes), DVD player, TV, and Internet. Digital convergence is happening, right in our living room! And I'll be able to control most of it remotely from my iPhone, so there's no single-use remotes cluttering up the coffee table. All of the hardware (except the monitor) will be in the basement, with the wireless keyboard and mouse upstairs. It will all be neat and orderly, just how I like it :)

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We won the Sunday Spring Ultimate championship yesterday, 18-11 over The Spinners. The game was originally scheduled in mid-June (when it was actually spring) but we were rained out. So we played at 5:30, in the heat and sun. We had our normal Sunday game right after at 7pm, so it was a long afternoon. Fortunately we had lots of water and oranges and so we were okay. We won the 2nd game too, 19-6, but it was just a regular season game. Our Ultimate teams have been doing really well over the last few months.

Well I should get ready for bed.

Walked around downtown today at lunch, taking pictures of the G20 security waiting around

Today would be a perfect evening for having a Keiths on the patio at Strats, unfortunately I pulled something in my back over the weekend which I'm still recovering from. Instead Heather and I are having a little barbecue.

We came back from three weeks in Portugal, which was a nice vacation. We've been catching up on yard work the last couple weekends. It was raining all day this past Saturday, so we went to Humber Nursery for some perennials for the front, and annuals for the flower pots on the front porch, and the new pots out in the back deck. We also stopped into Rock Valley for some 1" beach pebble, to fill in the borders around the flagstone in the back. They're sold in 70lb bags, and lifting those out of the trunk is what likely caused my back to go out.

There's a few new places on Queen St E that opened up while we were away, Dorly Designs (a clothing store with tshirts that I liked) an EZrider (a bike shop). There's also a couple places that are coming soon that I'm keen to see how they turn out: Avro, a place in the old Bergstrom that's applied for a liquor license (likely a lounge-type place), and Papa Sol, an italian sandwich place. Now all we need is a rotisserie chicken place like Eduarda's.

A new italian sandwich place also opened up near the Star, beside the other sushi store near Subway. I had the sausage sandwich today, it was excellent (and huge!) The buns are amazing. Finally a place with decent bread near work. Apparently they just opened up yesterday.

Traffic's already a mess with the upcoming G20. Next week I'm just going to walk into work.

I've missed Ultimate on Sunday because of my back, and will likely sit out sports the rest of this week. Our Ultimate teams have a lot of players and so I started doing interval laps when I'm subbing off, just so I get some exercise. I much prefer speed point indoors for the workout.

Went golfing at Lakeview with Craig last Tuesday, one of the few non-rainy days since we came back from Portugal. Shot 54-47, obviously much better on the back nine. I forgot my driver in the car (it doesn't fit in the trunk), and probably did better without it. I'm intending to take lessons this summer to figure out how to hit with the thing.

Well I should start the barbecue.

It was an eventful week in sports for my teams. Both my Ultimate teams played in championship games for the winter season, and we won both of them! Historically we've only won about five championships (doing the math, there's four Ultimate seasons in a year, and the core of us have played twice a week since 2004, so that's 5 winning teams out of 50-odd teams), so to win two in the same season is quite unusual for us.

On Sunday we had what should have been the more challenging game. We were up against the Spinners, who we beat in the previous season to win the championship. We were underdogs the previous season, having snuck into the playoffs with a .500 record and winning the final game in OT (the Spinners were undefeated until then). So they had extra incentive to come out with a strong game. Plus on paper they stack up pretty good against us. However, we played one of our best games as a team, scoring almost every time we got the disc. We won 25-16, although I would not have bet on a blowout before the game.

Tuesday we should have had an easier go of it. We were by far the best team over the regular season, and were playing the 6th place team, who we beat 35-15 the first time. Our bench was somewhat thin, with only 6 guys and 4 girls. Normally that would be perfect for us, but Trishia's back was still out and so she didn't play much, and then Mike landed funny on a jump, threw out his knee and sat out the rest of the game. So for most of the game there was only me, Craig and Nicole from the core team (who know our system and can read the plays the same). We fell behind early, 6-2, but then after a timeout scored 9 unanswered to go up 11-6, and then maintained the 5 point lead for the rest of the game, winning 23-19. It wasn't a pretty game (Craig said he felt like we had lost), but we won.

We've been having some luck with the fish recipes from Loblaws. They have a chef that creates recipes based on what's on sale, and have a sampling station right in front of the fish section. A few weeks ago we tried a haddock recipe; the most recent we tried was a rainbow trout recipe. Both were mmm good.

Last weekend I was in a curling bonspiel with some people from work (Ram, Ryan, Marc). It was organized by the Southern Ontario News Association so there were a few teams from the Star. This year it was at the Royal Canadian Curling Club right near us at Queen and Broadview. Our first game was at 9am. I've only curled about three times before, at other bonspiels. Ram had never curled, and Ryan and Marc had in high school, so we really had no clue what we were doing. The first game got off to a slow start, while we figured out the hand signals and how to sweep without hitting each other. However, we got three lucky shots, all to win ends, and although we lost the game 10-3, we still won three ends (out of six). Winning an end counted towards the overall stats so that was good for us.

We lost our next game (and all six ends). The other team almost won one end 8-0, which apparently is curling's version of a hole-in-one, except rarer (and you don't want to have it happen against you). We lost our last game as well, although we did take two ends.

Overall it was a lot of fun, and a lot of drinking. I forgot about that part of bonspiels, that the winning team buys drinks. We had a lot of drinks purchased on our behalf.

Heather had dropped by for our last game because it was so close to home. The bonspiel included dinner, which the organizers invited Heather (a lot of other people left early so there was more than enough food). The dinner was actually quite good for a buffet, with roast that was medium rare and bottled red wine. Our team finished 22nd out of 24 teams, so there were slim pickings by the time we got to the prize table. Ended up with a ceramic plant pot.

Heather and I went to see Darlene and Fed's new place in High Park last weekend. It's a nice place with character, and lots of big trees around. The really cool thing is that Fed has dropped cable, and is just getting HD over-the-air. I have been thinking about doing that, and need to do more research into it. I'm looking at the Channel Master 8 bay antennae, hooked up to a Silicondust HDHomeRun networked digital tuner. Then we can ditch cable, my old Sony Triniton TV (which I bought in the late 90's), and just watch TV on any computer on the network. I'll likely need to get a different ISP because I doubt I can get internet from Rogers without also paying for cable.