Happy National De-lurking Week! (Thanks cahwyguy) For those unfamiliar with the term, a “lurker” is someone who reads a blog (or newsgroup, message board, etc.) but doesn’t post anything. This is the time for those who read but don’t post comments to expose yourself! Feel free to leave a comment on this article if you’re reading it – make it something deep and insightful, or just “hi!”.
Just remember: 
Another video of Ryan singing. He’s almost three in this one as well.
My first foray into the world of YouTube! Here’s a video of Ryan singing Old McDonald. This was about four years ago – Nicky was only a baby. Ryan couldn’t say “farm” properly, so he said “darm”. I love how he ponders Gail’s animal suggestion before continuing.
I took a quiz to discover which superhero I’m most like, and found:
| You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.  |
Should I be worried that I’m more like Supergirl and Catwoman than Batman?
There was another one to see which super-villain you’re most like:
| Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity. |
I’m not even sure I know who Dr. Doom is.
I’m watching the first NLL game of the season, broadcast live over the intertubes. Mike Accursi just scored for Rochester, and the Knighthawks now lead the reigning NLL champion Colorado Mammoth 11-10 in the second quarter.
My friend Mike has a nephew, Shawn Williams, who is a great lacrosse player. He was signed by the Toronto Rock in 1999, and Mike got Rock season tickets to watch Shawn. He brought some other friends to a couple of games, and they started to really enjoy the game. In early 2000, they decided to head to a Buffalo-Philadelphia game in Buffalo, and Mike asked if I wanted to go and check it out. I tagged along, though I knew nothing about lacrosse. I was instantly hooked, and when Mike said they were considering expanding their four season tickets to eight for the next season, I told them to count me in. Since then:
I don’t think you could say I’m obsessed with lacrosse, but I’m certainly a fan.
Colin Doyle was traded from the Toronto Rock to San Jose the other day, which took the lacrosse world by storm, since Doyle has been one of the top scorers in the league over the last few years, has been named championship game MVP three times, and was league MVP in 2005. (Incidentally, Doyle’s page on Wikipedia was one of the ones that I created.) Doyle was traded with another guy (who the Rock acquired in a trade last month) and a draft pick for three young players and a couple of draft picks. One of the players the Rock got was Ryan Benesch, who was the first overall draft pick last year, so the Rock have essentially traded a proven scorer (who’s only 29 — likely lots of good years left in his career) for an unproven rookie, though one with lots of potential. I didn’t care much for Doyle for the first few years, because he was a bit of a hothead, and tended to dive now and again. Over the last two years or so, however, he’s calmed down a lot, and my respect for him has really grown. He also stands perfectly still for the national anthems, and even sings along with O Canada, which impressed the hell out of me the first time I saw it. Long story short, I’m not really sure how I feel about this trade. It’s nice to bring some young blood into the team, and the draft picks in 2008 and 2009 may set the Rock up nicely for the next decade. But Colin Doyle was the anchor of the Rock’s offense and a bona fide superstar player. If Benesch’s potential doesn’t pan out (does the name Nik Antropov ring any bells?) this could be the beginning of a number of “rebuilding” years for the Rock.
Merry Christmas to all! Christmas at the Perrow household was quite stress-free
this year. We always travel to the grandparents’ places around Christmas, but we
always wake up Christmas morning in our own house. In previous years, we would
wake up Christmas morning, open our presents as fast as possible, then pack the
kids in the van with one or two of their new toys and head 3-4 hours north
to either my parents’ place or Gail’s dad’s place, to be there in time for
Christmas dinner. Then we’d do Christmas all over again there, and a day or two
later leave that set of grandparents and drive the hour to the other set. A day or
two after yet another Christmas, we’d come home to the huge mess that we left.
We only made one change to that schedule this year, but it made a huge
difference. We decided not to go north for Christmas dinner, but leave later in
the day. As a result, we took our time opening presents, and if the kids wanted
to play with something for 10 minutes before opening the next one, no problem.
This small change completely killed any time pressure that we felt, and made
Christmas Day very enjoyable. However, that’s not the perfect day I referred to
in the title of this entry. Boxing Day we spent at my in-laws place, and the 27th
at my parents’ place, and both days were very relaxing and enjoyable, but neither
of them was the perfect day either. The perfect day was yesterday, the 28th.
The boys slept
until about 7:30, and I got up with them while Gail slept in. Ryan had already
made himself a waffle, and I got Nicky some breakfast as well. They watched
some TV while I got their clothes and swimming stuff ready, then I drove them
over to the YMCA for a “Kitchen Chemistry” class followed by a swim. While they
were there, Gail and I cleaned up the family room — moved new toys to the
play room or the boys’ rooms, collected all the wrapping paper and boxes for
recycling, stuff like that. Then I got the boys, and they played happily until
lunch time. Lunch was something simple, and then we played a game or two as a
family. I got the Scene It: Harry Potter DVD game, and we played that a couple
of times. Ryan’s seen the first movie once but not the rest, and Nicky hasn’t
seen any of them, but they enjoyed watching the clips and stuff. After that,
Ryan wanted to do one of the puzzles he got for Christmas, and I
helped him until he got bored and went to watch TV with Nicholas. Gail and I
continued the puzzle until dinner time. We had dinner (leftover
turkey, believe it or not), and then watched a TV show on UFOs, aliens and the
whole Roswell thing which we all enjoyed (though Gail said the boys were a little
freaked out later), and then I went to my friend Jeff’s place for an evening
of Texas Hold’em poker. The last time I played poker at Jeff’s I didn’t win a
single hand all night. This time I did win some hands (some with fairly big pots)
and I came 4th out of 9 people, so I was pretty happy with that.
It wasn’t a great day because we got a lot done, or because of any one
event, or because the meal was great, or anything like that. It just seemed
like the perfect family day — the boys had fun doing things by themselves,
with each other, and with us, and we had fun doing stuff with them as well. There
was a minimum of fighting, squealing, and yelling (though with our boys, some of
that is inevitable), nobody got sent to their room, nobody had to go to bed
early because they weren’t behaving, it was just a great day all around. The
Perfect Day.
I received this piece of spam email today:
Subject: I speak?A most harsh one and not.
In a lawful deedAnd lawful.
Where are my other men monsieur?. I have butlittle more to.
Our houseBequeathed down.
I’m sure it means something deep and philosophical, but I can’t figure out what.
I blogged
before about Harvey Danger and their
free-as-in-beer CD download. I downloaded the album, liked it, and attempted
to buy it, but they charged my credit card without sending my anything. I emailed
them about it and they reversed the charge, so I tried again. Once again, they
charged my credit card but nothing got sent. I emailed them about it today, and
they said that not only would they reverse the second charge, but now they’re
going to send me a free copy of the CD.
So: I paid nothing to download their album. I liked their idea of releasing the
album on the internet (plus I liked the album itself), so I wanted to make sure
that the band actually makes a profit from me. But because I had
trouble buying the CD, I’m getting a free copy. The end result is that the band
will still make no monetary profit from me. How’s that for irony?
The best I can do now is to promote the living hell out of the band, so that’s
what I’m doing here. I will probably buy their other albums as well, but if I
do, it’ll be from amazon.ca, not from their web site!
Well, spam is useless anyway, but I seem to be getting a lot of spam recently that has no links, no images, no URLs, nothing. People who send spam, I thought, were generally trying to sell you something – buy my stolen / copied watches, buy my illegal drugs, buy penny stocks (that have already peaked) in my company, check out my porn web site, stuff like that. But if the message contains no way for you to get to their web site, how do they make money off of it?
My family web site has a guest book. Every couple of weeks or so, I get a couple of spam postings, which I promptly delete. This morning I got one from “Bill” (uh-huh) which said (this was the entire text of the message): “Hello, nice site look this:”.
Bill, if you’re reading this blog, I assure you that I really wanted to “look this”, but there was no “this” to “look”. My interest was piqued, and then disappointment washed over me like I was a Senators fan during the playoffs. Most of the people who visit perrow.ca are my family, so in order to spare them that level of despair, I deleted your message. I’m sorry, but I have to do what’s best for my family.
I went to the Raptors game against the New Jersey Nets tonight, my third Raptor game this season. In the first game, the Raptors led 2-0, then Atlanta tied it up and went ahead, and never lost the lead again. In the second game, they had a 2-point lead around 24-22 or so, but then lost the lead and never got it back again. So when the Raptors had a five point lead early in the game, I was pumped. Sure it was only 10-5 maybe 2 minutes in, and sure, this is basketball, where a 10-point lead can vanish within a minute, but still. I was kind of right – the Raps had 12-14 point leads several times, and almost every time, the Nets clawed back to within 1 or 2; they even tied it up at least once. The Raptors persevered (even without CB4), and came out on top, 90-78. Their defence was much better in this game than in the previous two, and I thought (being the basketball novice that I am) that T.J. Ford played really well.
Ex-Raptor Vince Carter was booed every time he touched the ball, and whenever he took a shot and missed, the cheers were louder than when the Raptors scored. One time, Vince even attempted a three-pointer and missed the net, rim, and backboard entirely; the crowd went nuts. Vince — an air ball? Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Vince ended up with a positively mediocre 12 points. Fans were yelling “Carter sucks”, and a couple of years ago, I would have been right there with them, but tonight I just didn’t feel the hate. He’s no longer the slimy bastard who admitted that he gave less than his all for the last year or so of his stay in Toronto, now he’s just a guy who used to play here. It’s not like he’s Roger Clemens or anything. Oh, and Alonzo Mourning, who was traded to the Raptors as part of the Carter deal but told them he would not play, and forced them to buy him out for $10 million, is still a scum-sucking dirtbag.
This was the third major sporting event that I’ve been to where something exciting happened to the person next to me:
Cut The Chatter, Red Two 