Matt Good Rocks and my camera sucks! There was so much fake fog/smoke at the Matt Good concert last Friday night at Stages that my camera's light meter got all screwed up. All I could get was washed out pictures. Hello... Stages people??!?! Fix that please! I wasn't close enough for my flash to really make a difference. Here's one example of a crappy photo. Overall the concert was good... although I found it a bit short! They didn't play their recent single "It's been awhile since I was your man"...why not? Weird! And they started super early which was strange...9:45pm and ended at 11pm. Imagine being the guy who shows up for the concert at 11pm! Yikes! The place was packed! Matt Good came close to selling it out. Great job! That was the 4th time I've seen him. Matt had this great talking bit near the middle of his show where he got into talking about how he always thought Stages was a strip club... "it has a stripclub-ish name doesn't it?" Hilarious!  

Stirling and Jack love to watch the Garbage Man in the early morning. Awwww.... so sweet! 

Isn't Jack super cute in his new preppy sweater!! HAHA! 

Officially addicted to Sudoku

No...it's not drugs silly. It's a logic puzzle. Check them out at this link: Web Sudoku. I officially completed my first "hard" level puzzle last night without any errors!

Why no blog posts?

Ahhhhhh........... I'm super swamped folks! Teaching a university course (and doing marking!!!), taking a masters course (6 weeks with 11 written assignments! Double OUCH!), taking a certificate course, still breathing at my full-time job and going to millions of doctor's appointments! Dammit... I have an ultrasound appointment tomorrow even! UGH! Needless to say it's been busy. I have a bunch of super cute pics of Jack on the camera... as soon as I get around to it, I'll post them here. Stay tuned!

PS: Go Wings Go! 6 and 1 to start the season is damn good!

Birthday Suprise!

Hi all, it’s Erin again, doing Eric’s blog work for him:) I had an awesome birthday last weekend (one weekend early to trick me). Julie, Eric and Jen planned a great festive event. I don’t know how Jen, Eric and Alex convinced me to go back home from Jen's place to play cards and Carcassonne but as I walked through the door and saw everyone on the balcony with party attire on I could not believe it! It was a fun filled night with Karaoke and dancing. Thanks everyone for a great time and my econd great surprise this month (Eric!)!!!

Erin trying to blow sparlers on her cake! GOOD LUCK! ;-) 

Janice and Julie! Showing a little leg over the balcony! 

Julie, Wayne and Erin - Karaoke! 

Julie and Ken - Karaoke! 

Ok....um.... I don't quite know what exactly is going on here. !?! Um... can someone explain this to me? 

Lions, Tigers and SHEEP oh my!

Hi this is Erin; Eric was generous enough to allow me to write an entry on his well sought after blog partly because he felt I could sum up this picture with much enthusiasm. This is a photo of a man’s home who lives on our street. The first time I drove by and saw his life size horses made of what seems to be glass or a really good paint job over plastic (which is my friend Alex’s guess, an expert in equestrian products) I almost crashed the car. The sightings for these horses in the lawn are rare; I have only seen them three times this summer. There is a more permanent seasonal filly in the back yard warming up for some sort of event, she is always visible. So the other reason I am posting this message is to tell you about a new addition to the farm….. Sheep, yes while I was working one day Eric phoned me to tell me about the new animals. I begged him to get a picture for me and voila….. now everyone can enjoy this agricultural wonder of Alfred Street!! (CLICK ON PICTURE FOR A LARGER VIEW)  

It's all about the Meatballs!

Ok, we got a little rowdy at Jen's B-day party! Here's a picture of Julia, Erin and Michelle and me raving over the late night meatballs!!! Thanks to Jen for sending it to me!

It's an awesome Pearl Jam Surprise!

Ok, so Jen Archer was putting the screws to me last night at Shoeless Joe's that I have not updated the blog recently. Well, she's right! I've been busy (a.k.a. slacking!)

So anyway, last Friday was awesome. Some of you may know that I managed to pull off an amazing surprise on Erin for her birthday. It was a long orchestrated beautifully exciting surprise of a Pearl Jam concert in Ottawa. It's started with Jen Clark about 3 months ago who called me letting me know she had a pair of tickets and that I might be intersted in buying them to surprise Erin. Well how about Yes, yes, YES! I knew Erin would love it. So a string of "Super Thank You's" go to Jen Clark for her help with this.

But now I had a HUGE challenge. I had to keep it secret from Erin and I had to make a plausible reason for her to be out of town with me that night. Her sister Julie was in on it from the beginning and that really healped (more later on that). So I built this work related story of a meeting thingy in Corwall at the Nav Can Conference Centre and Erin ate it up: Hook, Line and Sinker! The key was introducing it slowly and only talking about it when I had to. Less is more. But this killed me because I couldn't really talk about going to this great concert. I had to keep my mouth shut for fear of any leaks. Man it was tough!

The week before Erin started to wonder what we would do with jack while we're in "Cornwall".... well...she calls up Julie and Julie goes with it and says she's going to watch Jack. AWESOME thinking Julie! Meanwhile once I heard of that I set Jack up to go to my friend Susan's house! Many thanks to Susan for watching jack while we are away on such a short notice! You're a life saver!

So I told Erin at about 4:45pm on Friday. I put the tickets in a card and she just about freaked when she saw them! She said it was the best surprise she's ever experienced! WOW!

On the trip up, Erin made many phone calls telling her friends. Poor Tiff was busy cleaning while we ere going to Pearl Jam! (*grin*)

The weather sucked going up. Pure rain. We rolled in 30 minutes before they came on... just enough time for a beer in the bar with Ken and Julie. That's the second part of the surprise! Julie and Ken were also going to the same concert! Too cool!

And talk about a concert! Can you say 3 hours long! Yup, officially the longest concert I have ever been to! WOW! It rocked. All the hits were in there...Ever Long, Betterman, Jeremy, Dissident, Daughter, Last Kiss, etc, etc, etc with three encore's to boot!!!! The scond encore rocked the crowd big time. A set of three Neil Young songs capped with Rockin' in the Free World which people ate up and spit out! Wow the energy was high! The Corel Centre crowd really got their money's worth that night.

Later that night we crashed at my Dad's place and returned to K-town the next day. Very cool! It was a great surprise and a great night! Thanks to everyone that helped me keep the secret! You guys are the best!

Jen's the big 3-0!

A great time was had by all Friday night as RWI (Rockin' Wolfe Island) and 25+ of Jen's closest friends gathered to celebrate her birthday at Ace's Top Card. Special thanks to the regulers at Ace's who supplied some left over pizza for the extra-hungry crowd. Yummy-licious! The Kareoke at the end of the night was hilarious too! Hats off the Robert the Keyboard player! Becky's rendition of David Wilcox's Riverboat Fantasy was the best one I've heard in years! HAHA! If someone sends me a pic, I'll post it here.

Nature on Wolfe Island!

Ahh.... a beautiful summer morning on Wolfe Island. You never know what kind of natural spectacle you might come accross while travelling the large green fields. Sometimes there are horses, ponies and frolicking puppy dogs. Other times there are rolled over 2005 Buick's. Wolfe Island is a nature's paradise! 

Da Chicken Flip day has come! Here's Julie and Chris all decked out in the gear leaving Earnie's... Stage 1 of the Drunken Bike Tour! 

Canadian's know how to drink!

I've got no stage 2 pictures. But basically we ate at Jack's Pub in Cape Vincent after travelling accross Wolfe Island and then across the Ferry to the States. We packed on a bunch of beer into the backpacks and hit the beach for some awesome water baseball sports. Including several instances of gratuitous nudity! Needless to say the women successfully distracted the men and won the game 2-1. All 21 Crazy Canucks who participated loved the beach stage! Here's one crazy Canuck, Mandy, drinking right from the Bubba-o-Beer! HAHAHA! Too funny. [Photographer's Note: I know the picture sucks because we were in the shade and the background was too bright. I had to pump up the brightness just to see it. But the picture is so awesome I need to preserve it for posterity!!!] 

Flip, Flip, Flip, Flip!

Stage 3.... my favorite stage dont'cha know! Here's Chris doing what the day is all about: the Chicken Flip at Snug Harbour! 

Dip, Dip, Dip, Dip!

Here's Erin doing the chicken dip! Gotta love dumping BBQ sauce on chickens using a rag! They don't fool around at this place hahaha 

There were a couple of major highlights in that day for me. Winning Stage 3 of the bike race and getting to wear the covetted "Yellow Bow" the entire time I was in Snug Harbour was so awesome! Old American Men took pitty on me and bought me free drinks. What a dream! 

The way back!!! a.k.a. "Eric's Wild Ride"

Ok, I have no more photos of the chicken flip day... for two reasons... first, I was too hammered to really think about pictures.... and second, I think my digital camera was full by now! I need to buy an SD card for it!!!


Anyway, the ride home was eventful! After winning Stage 3 to Snug Harbour, I somehow get into my head that I should be in the Tour de France! So out of the starting gate I push it. I pass person after person after person on what is seamingly the most grueling section of the "race." Soon I've passed so many people that I start to think that I have to be in First Place! I don't see anyone in front and I don't see anyone behind. A glance at my watch tells me it's 7:07 and I've been biking for over an hour. I remember the last Ferry back to Canada leaves at 7:30pm and I'm wondering if everyone will make it there in time. Just then a carr drives by and a nice American lady yells out... "Are you Eric?" Um.... after thinking about it for a microsecond I agreed that I was Eric. They pulled over to tell me that my friends had sent them to get me because I have missed Cape Vincent by over 4 miles!!!! GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZ Next year I need a MAP on this damn Chicken Flip thingy!!!! So a guy got out of the passenger seat grabbed my bike and stuff it in their trunk. They then drove me back up the highway to the Ferry. I was the last one to arrive...but I arrived in style! Everyone cheered! Needless to say I lost the "Yellow Bow" on Stage 4 but it made for a great story! People just laughed! HAHA


Stage 5: Crossing Wolfe Island from the American Ferry to The Island Grill. I'm so drunk I start to race again. Again...same story...passing all kinds of people. Then find myself alone. Nobody to be seen behind or in front of me. After awhile, I start to get a Deja Vu. Not the good kind, like "I've been here before so I'm on the right track"... the bad kind like "I think I'm lost AGAIN! But then I get a glimpse of the lights of the city of Kingston and I know I'm on the right track. 10 minutes later I hit the main highway...take a right and cruise on in to the finish line! Thinking I must be first...I must be first!!! But no. Alas I was third! Jen and Michelle were already there. Michelle had just jumped on the Ferry to K-town. They beat me by 4 or 5 minutes. I can live with that. I did my best HAHA!


So we gathered over the next hour at the Island Grill as the participants straggled in. It turned out to be one of the best and most fun days I've had in recent memory! And I am very glad we had Labour Day Monday off to recover because both my head and my sore butt needed it!! Is it too early to book for next year?

Jack's 3rd Drive-In

Jackie went to his 3rd drive-in night last night. A combo of Funny (40 Year Old Virgin) and scary (Skeleton Key). I give them both 4/5. Both were quite good! I laughed like crazy at the 40 Year Old Virgin movie. When I was young, I was just a few action figures away from developing his kind of life HAHAHAHAHAHA 

What's in my backyard?

Can you see something in my Hibiscus Tree? Post a comment and let me know. 

New Orleans is Sinking!

I feel quite sad for what Hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans. It reminds me of the Tsunami distaster from last year. It's crazy how mother nature can scare you into realizing that humans don't control everything.

Here in K-town, I measured from 10pm last night to noon today (14 hours) that we received about 75 mm of rain in my back yard. I spent yesterday evening setting up a third pump in my sump pit and my new triple pump pit really did the trick. No flooding! YEAH! At it's peak, my sump-pit was filling up every 41 seconds. WOW! That's a lot of water coming in. I'm just glad the power stayed ON!!! I would have been at the mercy of the water if the power would have kicked off. YIKES!!! Can you buy a generator that works inside??? Hmmm. I dunno. Oh well. Crisis averted!!!

The Adventurer's out for an early morning canoe trip!!!! 

Jack loves the cottage. After a hard day of playing, he's crashed while hugging his stuffed pelican. What a tough guy! 

Here's probably the most amazing peice of naturally formed art I have ever seen. It's a 25 foot high rock formation that looks exactly like a native man's face. The aquiline nose, the mouth and the eye are all clearly visible here. Lori named this formation "Geronimo's Head." Cool! Remember you can click any of these pictures to make them 'bigger' 

Check out this cool Otter Skull. Blair Witch baby! Erin's scared at the cottage at night and this skull doesn't help (*evil grin*) 

Shhh... it's a surprise

Jen's turning 30 soon. Alex is organizing a suprise birthday trip to the Dominican Replublic for her. Shhh.. keep it a secret. The surprise will be amazing!!! WOW! I wish my boyfriend was as good as Alex!!! ... er... wait... that came out wrong (*grin*)

U.S. Marines Silent Drill Corps

Erin and I went to see the U.S. Marines Silent Drill Corps perform with the Fort Henry Guard last Saturday. It was very cool. The Marines are very impressive. They are very precise and very disciplined you can see. I can barely brush my teeth to specifications and these guys throw working rifles backwards over their heads! YIKES!

Papillon Fried Chicken

Jackie loves KFC! HAHA! 

The Trews

The Trews concert in the Festival of the Islands was AWESOME! A couple beers set up the night for Julie, Erin and I. We were treated to some heavy duty high energy rock & roll. Mark my words... "These guys will be famous someday!" It was a quality concert! 

Drums!

The five minute drum solo was reminiscent of John Bonham from Led Zepellin. I loved it! 

The Taste Tells!

Here's a picture of the old Riverside Brewery near my mom's place. It's an awesome building. Riverside Brewery: "The Taste Tells!" Click on the picture to see it close up.