If you like hockey, and if you like to see and hear really expressive people, I strongly recommend you hang out at my house on hockey nights, especially when my Favorite Mother In Law is around.  ;-)

Book your seats early, places are limited.

And now, for some Crazy Sunday Meme action:

1. What was the best thing that happened to you this week?

I received this kick-ass palm-sized helicopter just because I’m an extraordinary guy. All right, it was a random draw, but I’m still extraordinairy. Because I said so. 

2. What was the worst thing that happened this week?

After weeks of trying to upgrade our LMS, we finally did it, and lo and behold, the new component does not appear. I’m puzzled, and so is tech support apparently, they have not replied to my request for assistance at this point. I guess they don’t care that I have 35,000 users waiting for this.  

3. Describe an item of clothing that has definitely seen better days but that you refuse to dispose of and still wear. Why won’t you toss it?

It’s a greenish t-shirt. If it doesn’t have 50 holes in it it doesn’t have one, and all the colors of my house are on it. I bought this t-shirt in 1999 when I went to Switzerland, and I wore it every day to renovated our first house in 2003. I keep it because it’s the counterpart to LW’s sexy PJs.

4. Have you ever lied about your age?

Yes. At my old job, one person was telling another that being fat made you look younger. Since I’m pretty overweight, I said: “Yes, nobody ever believe me at first when I tell them I’m 54.” I was 33. He did believe me.

5. Would you rather be behind the scenes or in the spotlight?

I’d rather be behind the scenes, but somehow I almost always end up in the spotlight. It’s my tendency of wanting things done. All right, I’m a control freak.

6. Where was your first out-of-country trip? How was it?

Switzerland in 1999. It was bittersweet for many reasons, and that’s one of my first good blog entries, 10 years later.

7. Do you like surprises? If yes what kinds? If no, why not?

Sure, I like good surprises, like “Hey you won an RC helicopter!”, or “Hey, you won a million bucks!”. I don’t dislike bad surprises as much as I have a tendency to kill whoever gives me the bad news. I’m just kidding. Don’t remind me that Montreal lost yesterday.

8. Have you ever had sex with two different people on the same day?

Of course, who didn’t? Now that I’m married, I’d have to count my hand. It still counts, right?

Clicking makes it bigger

I’ve had the last of the DNS problems that were affecting my blog! Turns out I had totally forgotten to change my DNS nameservers on my registrar’s page. That created a situation where I could sometimes see my blog from work and not from home, sometimes it would work with Firefox but not with Internet Explorer, or vice versa.

Now I finally managed to fix everything with the help of Pascal (Thanks Pascal!) and my main page (lesombre.ca) now points to my blog. I think you’ll need to suscribe to my feed again, but I’m not 100% sure at this point. I’ll see what happens with this post. 

Once again, thanks Pascal.

I always bug Lovely Wife about her eyesight. Stop making that face, I always do it in a loving way.

On our way to work today, Lovely Wife saw a hare from 100 yards. So of course, I compared her to George Constanza, able to squint and spot a dime on the other side of the street.

Now if you’re familiar with Seinfeld, you know that as George says that, he bites into an onion that he thought was an apple. Hilarity.

I had to wait all day for my onion. It came around 19h30. We’re driving to go show the new car to my friend the Beaster.

Oh, look he’s out in his driveway! Lovely Wife says.

Except that the Beaster is thirty something, 5’6″, somewhat muscular, black hair, goatee, smile. The guy Lovely Wife was looking at is close to 80 years old, 6’5″, asparagus thin, white hair, clean shaven, looks pissed. He was walking with a cane. In fact, he looked like Bob Barker with a deep orange tan.

That’s my wife. The government still thinks it’s safe for her to drive.

You see (or you’ll see in a minute), when I woke up Wednesday morning I dragged my “I’m sick but I’m feeling much better” ass to the bathroom to get ready for my return to work. I had been home for two days at that point and decided I was going to work instead of spending the day at the doctor’s office to get a note.

Holy shit! I said to my reflection.

I ran back upstairs to grab the camera, under the shocked ever loving look  of Lovely Wife. I normally never bring the camera in the bathroom. I swear.

What are you doing? She yelled lovingly asked.

I stared at her and pointed at my head. This is what she saw.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at. She said.

Don’t you notice that my right ear is 3 times bigger than the left?

A beat. Ahhhhhhh! she says.

And yet she drives (me crazy).

For kicks and giggles, here are days 2 and 3 (click to make bigger)

Zoé: “Mommy, where is Funkytown?”

Isaac: “This could cause quite the capharnaum.”

This entry has absolutely no structure. I blame it on my the combo headache stuffy nose scratchy throat ear popping thing I have at the moment. Apparently it makes me act like a cry baby and write like a cocker spaniel. I am never sick. I am almost never sick. I am rarely sick. Once per decade is pretty much the normal cycle for me. I can remember the last time I had to go to the emergency room because I was sick, it was… never. In fact, in 36 years I only went to the emergency room for:

• Motorcycle accident (does it count, I went by ambulance?).
• Torn ligaments in right ankle.
• Dislocated shoulder.
• Tendinitis of the thumb.

I am not the kind of person who spends his week-ends at the emergency, I hate going there and am most likely to “walk off” any semi-serious disease / injury instead of spending hours in that dreadful place. I am also not big on medication. I don’t cure headaches with pills, I don’t take Gravol when my tummy hurts, and so on. Once in a blue moon, I will take some Tylenol if I get a massive headache and I can’t function. Until I went to Africa, my pharmacy consisted of nothing and could’ve been carried with me at all times. You should see the amount of pills I had to take while there (okay, it was only one a day, plus another kind in case of explosive diarrhea) and I know some people have to take 4-5 a day or more. I am not saying those people should not take medication, I am saying I wouldn’t be able to do that. Shoot me now!

But lately I’ve been sick almost on a regular basis. What the Frak? It seems to me that the 2008 fever is much stronger than the 1988 fever. And it’s a very bad year for the 2008 headache. Is it me or are diseases getting nastier and nastier? The sad thing is that I know it’s me. Did I reach this point in my life where I am going to start being a sissy about every little cough I get? Will every headache, cramp, runny nose send me running to the doctor’s? I hope not. I know 36 is somewhat of a middle point in my life (hey, if I reach 72 I’ll be amazed!), but this is getting ridiculous.

I would be the worst guy to get some serious illness*.

I can clearly picture this:

Doctor: “Mister LeSombre, you have some serious illness.”

1995 Me: “Meh, I’ll walk it off.”

2008 Me: “Isn’t there some drug I can take? And can we also do something about this serious illness?”

*I was going to write “cancer”, but I chose to go with “serious illness”. It seems that talking about cancer is frowned upon nowadays. Case in point, over the week-end my Lovely Daughter had a Kinball tournament. Their school decided to name their teams after “diseases”. I know it seems weird, but this part is totally true. So the teams had names like “feverish”, “phlegm” and so on. Except my daughter’s team.

You see Caroline is on Zoé’s team, and Caroline used to have cancer. Her parents threw a big party when she went into remission. So they called their team “Cancer on fire”. The Kinball people thought that was politically incorrect, and changed the name to “Sickness on fire”. But they forgot to mention this to the kids on the team. So here we are, the good parents, sitting in the stands holding signs that read “Go Cancer”, “Cancer is great”, “Cancer on fire” “Cancer will win” and “We love Cancer”

And I realize now that spending an afternoon at kinball might have been the first sign i was sick.

I’m sick. Sick, sick , sick sick, sick. You know that watching Apocalypse Now while half passed out on the couch might not be the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

Isn’t she beautiful?

Look, it's beautiful!

Seriously.

32

I could sooooooo take more than 32 five year olds in a fight. Please.