I put down the larger stones yesterday:


I figure that should get us through winter.

We have our last regular-season game of Sunday Ultimate today. The weather's been great for fall season -- better than the all the rain in summer. Our last fall game was this past week, at the new fields down on Unwin. The new fields are amazing, nice location (close to downtown, although about a ten minute walk from the TTC), nice view of downtown. It's too bad they're not putting a dome over the fields for winter. There's a shortage of downtown indoor playing space with Waterside now closed (it's part of the waterfront redevelopment). We didn't get a team registered on time and the Sunday leagues are now full for winter, so I'll just be playing Ultimate on Tuesdays and hockey on Thursdays in the winter.

I should get ready for the game.

We just came back from a walk down Queen St to the DVP and back. It's getting pretty cold out there -- I should have worn my toque. Saw that a couple new places are open or close to it. Loic (a gourmet food-to-go place, although I'm not sure they need a big store front for their concept), a new art gallery (beside Comrade). LPK's Culinary Groove (a dessert place, I think) is still under construction.

We're still waiting for a nice pub to open up in Leslieville. Maybe the new place on Queen and Curzon will be open at some point. It looks like their application for a patio on Curzon was not approved because of a lack of response to a poll of neighbours, and that they can't reapply for two years. Seems like a strong penalty for a lack of response. I didn't find anything about their liquor license application.

Anyways we're just drinking a herbal tea and then going to bed.

I worked on the backyard for most of yesterday:


I decided to put flagstone for the whole path. So far I've used about 0.5 tonnes of 1" flagstone from Rock Valley. There were some larger pieces (as large as 2' x 2') that I'm going to use on the patio in front of the deck, to define the different spaces between the patio and walkway. In all the flagstone will probably end up costing about $300.

The weather has been really nice this Thanksgiving weekend. Friday I was sick (there's a bug going around work) and so I took the afternoon off and came home and slept. Saturday I felt better, but we still took it easy (just cleaned up around the house).

On Sunday I started working on the back yard again. I had 2.5 yards of limestone delivered from Homeland Garden Centre. I had thought I needed crushed limestone but they insisted that I needed limestone screening so that's what I got. I had looked at other places but this was close (they're just up on the Danforth), and their delivery trucks are small enough to fit down back laneways.


I used up about two-thirds of the limestone screening, and I have enough left to do the flagstone patio between the deck and my parking spot. I figured it's better to have leftovers because I can always give the extra away on craigslist.

It was rather exhausting work. A previous owner had put down gravel in the backyard, but only up to the house. The little alley beside the house was about 3 - 4 inches lower. I removed the top 3 inches in the front of the pic, and used it to raise the alley. I put down industrial grade weed block and then the limestone screening.

Next is to build a boardwalk from the deck to car, on top of the limestone. I don't know if wood sitting on top of screening is a good idea (maybe gravel was better for drainage), but I'll find out.

Sorry it's been a while since I updated here. Work has been pretty busy (it's now budget season).

Heather and I walked up to Little India for dinner yesterday. Went to Lahore Tikka as usual, it was fast and good. We walked along Queen E from Greenwood and noticed a few changes in the stores. Studio Oui (Heather's favourite clothing store) has a satellite store carrying men's clothing; the Stage East lofts are almost sold out, and have a cool-looking sales office on the north side of Queen; Timmie Dog Outfitters are opening a Queen E location; the used car lot near Wild Thyme's old spot is now up for lease; and the pub at Curzon looks like the renovations are done (and it looks amazing inside), but our guess is they're still waiting for the liquor license.

I've been fixing up my travel blog. Finally got CS3 installed and so I've been going through my old travel pics looking for images that crop nicely for header photos. I created about a dozen. I've been trying to find a free site that will host server-side scripting so that I can randomly rotate through the pics. Unfortunately Google Pages doesn't.

JP is back in town, and he came out after our Ultimate game on Sunday. We won our game 19 - 15, in a fairly competitive game. Went to Jawny Baker's (in the middle of nowhere at O'Connor and StClair). It's a nice restaurant to head to after a game. Most of our Sunday games are at 1pm, and they serve brunch (including a decent eggs benedict) until 3pm, so we'll most likely be there every week. Our games are near Bermondsey and Eglinton (even more in the middle of nowhere). We should do pretty well this season.

Hockey hasn't started out that great. We lost our first game 8-0; and then our next game 5-0. Hopefully they'll re-sort the teams soon. This week's game is late, at 11:15pm, but it's also the night of the VP debate in the US. Most people I know are looking forward to watching the debate, to see if Palin makes a fool of herself again. The clips of her Couric interview on youtube are pretty funny, if it wasn't for the fact that she really is running for VP. The Canadian english debate is also on that night (I guess so TV stations minimize lost ad revenue), but my preference will be the US VP debate. I actually watched Letterman for the first time in years, to see if he would make fun of McCain suspending his campaign for the 3rd night (the first two nights Letterman spent about eight minutes ripping McCain because he skipped out on his show).

We had our 1st wedding anniversary last week. We went out to Tomi Kro's on the Saturday, because most restaurants are closed on Mondays. Heather had the scallop carpaccio appetizer and duck main; I had the foie gras appetizer and beef tenderloin w/ stilton cheese. All the food was great, as usual.

The little black bugs are all over our backyard again. It happens around this time every year. We stopped using the back door, because every time we open it about 40 bugs fly in, which we then have to hand-vac up. If I remember the only way they go away is when the temperature finally drops below zero. It's quite a nuisance, especially when barbecuing. I asked my Ultimate team and other people have the same problem. The bugs are somewhere between aphids and mosquitoes. They don't do anything except fly towards lights and the ceiling, and then die within hours.

Anyways I should start getting ready for bed.

The end of summer and the deck is finished

Summer came to an unofficial end today, being Labour Day. It feels like we were cheated out of a week of summer because Labour Day was so early this year. (I was also sick for almost two weeks at the start of August which made it go by rather quickly).

I was at Deerfield today with Doaner, Craig and Chris. We all started well on the 1st hole. I had a 6, and there were two 5s and another 6. We didn't do so well after that. I shot a 45 on the front, and then fell apart on the last 5 holes to end up with a 102. Bleh. The only club really working for me was my putter.

I finally finished the deck yesterday!



Oddly enough I tore down the old deck on Victoria Day weekend (the unofficial start of summer) and finished on Labour Day weekend. So the deck can officially be called my "summer project".

The lighting turned out as I had hoped; I took some pics but my camera can't handle the low lighting levels. The front of the deck looks a bit odd right now, because there's no plants yet. There will be two globe cedars on each side of the stairs, tucked under the overhang. The idea is to make it look like the deck is floating. Our new city-issued garbage bin arrived this past week and fits in nicely under the bench with the recycling bin. (Fortunately, as I designed it that way). Our green bin will go around the side of the house, as it contains smelly stuff. (We wash out our recycling before throwing stuff out, and garbage is mostly non-recyclable plastics, which doesn't smell).

I haven't figured out what to do with our old garbage bin -- the city suggests using it to gather leaves. Obviously suggested by some city staffer who lives in the suburbs where they might have room to store an extra garbage bin or two, and who don't have to design decks around garbage bins. The city did pick up the old blue bins, maybe they'll do the same with old garbage bins.

The whole backyard project started because I need to disconnect the downspout. I can now landscape a bit of the yard (so that water flows away from the house). I'd like to complete that before winter.

We lost in our hockey playoff game on Thursday so we're done for the season. All my summer sports are now done, and fall seasons don't start up for a couple weeks. I may have to go for a run to keep myself active over the two weeks.

I'm going to try to read a bit of my book so that's it for now.

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.