We are the champions!

We won our Sunday Ultimate final to win the championship! It was a very close game, the other team, Disco, was pretty good. Disco was up 9-7 at half (games go to 19); and at various points in the 2nd half were up by three points. At 17-15 for Disco I didn't think we would pull it out. But we scored two points to tie the game. I was exhausted and sat out a point, which Disco scored to make it 18-17. We needed to score the next two to win, and we did, winning 19-18, just as it was getting dark. The game took almost two hours to play. The win gave us an undefeated season over the summer.



l-r Ed, Chris, me, Trishia, Craig, Maricar, Helen, Marshall, Cindy

Chris showed up for the first couple games in spring (when we took the picture) and hasn't played since. The core of us (me, Trishia, Craig, Maricar, Helen & Cindy) are now into our 5th year playing together (anywhere from 1 to 3 times a week). After so many years we are all pretty good at reading the plays the same, which makes us a better team and harder to beat.

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I surfed around to learn how to change my icon. Depending on your browser, you may see a little picture of me as the icon in your browser and favourites.

It rained this afternoon so I'll have to finish the deck next weekend. I just have a little railing to build, and then install lighting.

We have our championship game for Sunday Ultimate this evening. We won our game easily last Sunday in the semis, but surprisingly The Enemy lost their game! I don't know how good our opposition is because we only played them on the August long weekend and both teams were missing key players. They only lost to The Enemy and us in the regular season, and then beat the The Enemy so they can't be that bad. The weather forecast looks good, it's hot and sticky out now but there's a cold front moving in so hopefully it will be comfortable on the field by game time.

We won our first playoff game in hockey on Thursday. It was my first game in four weeks, and I scored again! I almost had two more goals, but missed the net on both. We finished 4th (out of four teams), and are playing the top team. It's a two game series, with an OT and shootout if we split the games. They are much better than us, and our goalie (who's by far the best player on our team) is out next week, so it's not looking good. But we'll see.

I also went golfing out Thursday afternoon. I had a meeting out in Listowel (over two hours west of Toronto), and so we golfed at Listowel Golf Club. It was just two us, and we played the front nine in 1 hour 20 minutes!! We caught some other players on the back nine, but still finished the round in under 3.5 hours. I shot 92, and was generally consistent.

One of the big old trees on Wayne and Walter's yard has an orange paint marking on it. Heather and I are a bit concerned, we wonder if it means the city's marked it as dangerous and are going to cut it down. There's three big trees that frame the entrance to our street, and the main reason I was interested in the house when I first saw it (after living here there's much more to like, but at first I noticed the trees). A lot of trees in Leslieville are about 100 years old, and then there's a big age gap in trees. On our street fortunately there are a couple 40 - 50 year old trees.

It was a nice day today and I worked on the deck most of the afternoon. Replaced the stairs, with a more sound design. Also finished the other hinged door under the bench. The next little task is to put a small railing on the non-bench side of the stairs, and then do the lighting. Unfortunately the weather doesn't look like it's going to co-operate tomorrow so it may have to wait until the long weekend.

Heather and I walked down to Lahore Tikka for dinner. It also happened to be the Festival of South Asia on Gerrard E, so the street was closed to traffic and the restaurant was packed. Our dinner was great as usual. After we walked down the length of the street festival to check it out. It was really busy! It was still early (9:30ish) so we headed to Strat's for a Keith's. They always have good draught beer there, and we sat outside having our beers until the patio closed at 11pm.

Heather's old printer died an ignominious death on Thursday, so we had to go get a new printer. Bought a HP K5400, which I hooked up this morning. I had had the house cabled with ethernet when it was gutted, although I had to re-seat the wiring in the ethernet jack in the basement to get it working. The electronics in the house are finally coming together as I first planned -- a network printer that we can print wirelessly from a laptop and backyard speakers hooked up to the stereo. The printer is pretty good, although there is some black streaking that I need to fix. I did a test print of a photo, and it came out looking amazing -- near laserjet quality, and the full 8.5"x11" (there's no white border). Althought, it's probably cheaper to print at Staples, given the amount of ink used.

I was out sick for much of the last couple weeks, with a bug that's knocked out a few people at work. Heather caught it a couple days after me and she was out too.

I felt better this past weekend and finished off a bit more of the deck. The deck boards are all done; the speakers sound amazing (the wood surroundings make for great acoustics); and one of the hinged doors under the bench to the recycling is done.




The door had to be weighted so that the natural position is closed. I wasn't sure if it would stay shut but the design worked out.

I was concerned about the original design for the stairs (I wanted them to look like they're floating). I had cut away at the stringers but that weakened them. I bought new stringers to replace them with a different design -- good thing too, cause the bottom step snapped off this morning.

I tested out the lighting over the weekend, to see how bright they were and where the best placing would be. It was a bit of a catch-22 because it's easier to install the lights before the deck is finished, but I couldn't figure out how the lighting would look until the deck was done. So I have to lift up some of the deck boards to install the lights but oh well.

Last night Heather and I were at the Jays game (against the Yankees no less), in the Skybox (Rogersbox?). Paula (my boss) had the box and invited all the directors and their partners. It was a pretty good time, and cool for all the partners to meet all the people they'd only heard about. The Jays won thanks to a couple errors by the Yankee's centrefielder.

After (surprisingly to me) we went bar hopping! First to Gretzky's and his very nice Oasis rooftop patio. Heather and I had been there years ago (it's where Heather first met Doaner), and neither of us remember the patio being that large and nice. Next we stopped in at Rain (!) for a (probably very expensive) drink (Heather was on sparkling water at this point). Then onto Ultra Supper Club's rooftop patio, which was packed (on a Tuesday night!). Heather and I left around 1:45am, with the rest of the crew still there.

I just downloaded Jott.com...

I just downloaded Jott.com and trying it out to see how voice recognition works. I think I may have to stop mumbling. listen

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