I had a busy couple of weeks, between wedding preparations, turning a year older, home renovations, and of course, reading Harry Potter.

We just got back from my godparents, Lionel and Veronica, who live up in Newmarket. It's been over 20 years since I last saw them. We had a nice visit, along with my mom and dad. They still live in the same house, but I didn't remember much of the layout. We had invited them to the wedding, but unfortunately they can't make it.

We mailed out our wedding invitations on Monday night, and on Friday we received our first reply! (from TnT). It was then that we realized that there's no obvious place on the return for the guests to write their name -- so we're hoping that most people will write in their names on the invite, or put a return address on the envelope.

We're really happy with how the invites turned out. Maricar's friend Myrtle did our invites (she runs her own company, Heart to Heart Designs). We picked them up a week and a half ago, and spent a couple hours last Sunday addressing. There was some debate at Canada Post about the cost to mail the invite -- we had three answers from three different Canada Posts. We took the middle number. There's not a whole lot of choice for stamps (in fact only one stamp at 91 cents). Later I found on canadapost.ca that you can create your own stamps -- just send a jpeg to them, and 4-6 weeks later you have stamps. We may try to use a wedding pic of us for the thank-you cards.

We've been winning at Ultimate on Mondays, and losing at hockey on Thursdays. Both are fun teams to play on.

It was my birthday last Friday. We celebrated by going to William Ashley to pick out stuff for our registry. (Actually, we were planning to do that on Saturday, but we had to be home for my Harry Potter to be delivered, so we went Friday instead). It was pretty quick -- Heather and I are fortunate enough to have similar tastes.

For my birthday we went out for dinner at Fare, a new restaurant in Leslieville (where Verveine used to be). It was really good, although a little pricey. It was also a bit empty, but it's still fairly new (it's only been open two months). It should become more popular as people discover it.

Harry Potter arrived on Saturday as promised by chapters.ca. However, it was also a nice day, so I spent most of it working on the deck. I only got around to reading HP on Tuesday and finished it on Wednesday. I really enjoyed it, (although I had guessed most of the endings).

The deck renovations are coming along. I've removed all the old rotting wood, and replaced all the framing. There's a bit of work to be done, which I'm hoping to complete before we leave for PEI.

Well it's getting late and there's only six minutes left on my battery. Later!

I surfed around about the wood boring insect, and it's definitely NOT termites. This link had some good pics. The pics for the damage caused by a wood-boring weevil and the furniture beetle were very similar to what I saw. I didn't see any actual bugs, so I just have the damage to go by.

We played Ultimate tonight, and won 17-15. It was a good game; we had two full lines, and I was on a line with Craig, and another guy Ki (sp?). Both are very good handlers who can throw deep, and the game turned into a bit of a Ki-and-Eric show. I don't mind, but I think the rest of the team find it not so interesting, because they don't get involved in the play. So I'll have to not go deep as much in the future.

There's been a bad odour in the neighbourhood over the last couple weeks. There's a lot of talk on the Leslieville Yahoo group. Heather called the Ontario Ministry of the Environment to file a report today. (And so did about 25 other people on Yahoo after Heather's posting to the group). So we'll see what comes of this.

Well it's time for bed.

Well the project to fix the roof over the front porch (I was informed at work that it's the back deck and front porch) got larger as I took down the layers of old alumimum and wood. A lot of the wood (except the rafters) was rotted which I've since removed. Part of it looks like it could be termites, but I have to do some research on that. (The wood had tiny tunnels and wood dust and broke apart very easily). Fortunately the roof only connects to the brick of the house, and so there's nowhere else for the alleged termites to go.

I had to build a temporary support column so that I could remove the cross beams. The whole job has been rather awkward given the position of the roof structure. I've been using my 16' ladder from the ground, and my 6' ladder from the porch. It would be easier with scaffolding, but much more expensive.

Anyways, I've finished gutting everything as of today. I've called Tony (our electrician) about putting in pot lights (which is easier while it's gutted), and I may end up getting professional advice about the supposed termites. Then I can start rebuilding the whole thing.

We got a few things done for the wedding this weekend. Heather's dress came in, so we picked it up and called the seamstress to arrange for adjustments. Then we went to my suit guy (a friend of Craig's who works at a men's store near Yonge and Eglinton), and picked out and bought my suit. It's a Hugo Boss suit, with accented stitching that makes it look not like a work suit. We both really liked it.

We also booked our honeymoon at the Inn at Bay Fortune. We'll be staying there for a couple nights after the wedding.

It was a really busy week last week. Monday was Ultimate (we won 17-10). Maricar and Robin had their game at the same set of fields, but their opposition didn't show; and so they subbed with us. We stayed out quite late after the game, having a few beers (MC drove my car home and then I walked her home).

Wednesday I got out golfing for the first time since my rotator cuff was hurt. Went with Craig and one of his co-workers to Lakeview. I didn't do too badly -- shot 51-55, but was hitting the ball cleanly with my irons. My short game sucked -- I need to practise my pitching to get my touch back.

Tuesday was a big fiasco. I wanted to go to the driving range at the Docks, (to prepare for Lakeview), but couldn't find my golf shoes. I think I either had them stolen from my trunk, or threw them out because they were falling apart. Anyways, I decided to quickly drop in at GolfTown (on King W), and then to the Docks. Found a pair that fit, but then realized I had forgotten my credit cards. So went back home, picked up my Visa, back to GolfTown, bought the shoes, onto the Docks, hit a bucket, to Loblaws to buy groceries for dinner, and then home. We had the salmon planking away on the barbecue, and then we ran out of propane. Fortunately there's three 24-hour gas stations that fill propane within 2 minutes of us; so filled the tank and continued cooking.

Thursday was the annual United Way soccer tournament at work. All the departments enter a team, and it's held up at VPC. The IT team has not fared well in recent years (we hadn't scored a goal in the last two tournaments), and we didn't do too well this year. However, we did finally score! It was off a corner kick, which nicely arced over the defense and hit my head and bounced into the net. Yes, I scored on a header! I have never headed a ball before in my life, and was had closed my eyes and was cringing in case it hurt. But it didn't hurt at all, very odd. Apparently the goal looked pretty cool according to the specators. We stuck around to watch the rest of the tournament (the Mailing Room team won). (At the Star, the Mailing Room is where the papers get flyers inserted, and bundled into skids and organized onto the trucks).

Well it's quite late and I hear Heather puttering about (sounds like she's done writing for the night), so I think I'll call it a night.

I've started on the next project on the outside front of the house -- fixing up the roof over the deck. Today I ripped out the old fascia and soffit, and the eavestrough and downspout. It looks like a squirrel built a nest in the roof years ago, and a previous owner just covered up everything with aluminum siding. At least the rafters look like they're in good condition. I'll actually get to use my reciprocating saw, to remove the wooden planks in the ceiling.

I also started cleaning the paint off the corners of the wall. Last year I spent most of the summer removing the bulk of the red paint from the bricks. I didn't get into all the nooks and crannies at the time, so I'm fixing that this year. It looks great when the bricks are completely clean. I'll try to post some before and after pics.

I'm finally getting back into sports, after quite some time off between hurting my rotator cuff, then vacation, then being sick. I had definitely lost my endurance. On Monday Ultimate we have a lot of guys (last Monday we had two full lines), so there's not too much running. Thursday hockey is a nice workout though. This past week we went 1-1 in sports -- winning Monday but losing Thursday.

Well it's almost time for dinner -- we're having ribs (that I bought at Loblaws a few weeks ago for $5 per full rack of ribs). Mmmm.