Blair's Blog

Yep; I’m still at it – today is not merely St. Patrick’s Day but also the 8th anniversary of the day I started the license plate game. For those of you following my progress with breathless anticipation, you’ll be pleased to know that today I spotted plate 679. Sadly this has been a slower than average year with only 76 plates seen since last year at this time. My overall average is now 85 plates/year or 7.1 plates per month, a slight decrease from last year. I blame the job change mostly – including the fact that last summer I didn’t get out for lunchtime walks as had been my practice at my previous job.

One interesting (YES, interesting!) note is that I still haven’t counted one of the new format plates yet. They really are just that little bit harder to read and, in the winter when the plates are filthy and the light poor that makes a noticeable difference. Fortunately the vast majority of plates are still the old format.

p.s. We’re in the midst of the repainting project, prep today and paint tomorrow. So we had an easy St. Paddy’s Day supper: Lipton Noodle Soup dyed green. …the kid’s liked it!

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Despite Balzac Billy’s dire predictions regarding how much more winter we might have to endure, there are some signs that Spring may arrive – some day. With the clocks springing forward early this morning and the lengthening days, I guess winter will have to eventually give up.

I suppose the other sign of changing seasons is the urge to deal with some of those projects that have been lingering all winter. One of those is our main floor powder room. Some time ago, the kids ripped the toilet paper holder out of the drywall and I managed to procrastinate on the repair for quite a while. A couple of weeks ago I finally patched the hole and of course that meant the patch needed to be painted. And a little more procrastinating ensued.

It’s such a small room and the paint was the original from when the house was built. So, one thing led to another and we ended up with new colours and the nasty, cheap, 90’s vintage “bulbs on a stick” light fixture got targeted for destruction. Anyway, yesterday I finished up and the results are pretty good. The patch is only noticeable if you know to look for it and the new colours and lighting are a nice improvement.

Only trouble is, while mudding the patch I accidentally wandered around the entire main floor filling dings and dents in the walls. The whole place looks like it has a bad case of white freckles – now the only way out of this mess is more paint. Ah well, it might keep us from noticing that it’s still winter outside!

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Well not quite, but my delightfully shabby old Mazda truck rolled over 333,333 km on the way into work yesterday morning. That’s about 90% of the distance to moon (at apogee). We bought the truck in 1998 with 170,000 km on it so I guess we can only claim about 45% of the earth-to-moon distance for ourselves.

The truck is a 1993 (pre-Ford) Mazda B2600i 4×4 extended cab. It has been a really great vehicle despite it’s thirst for fuel and propensity to leak oil on my garage floor. We have used it, and used it well, for landscaping, house moves, dump runs and hauling motorbikes. It’s been subjected to the type of over-loading that Jed Clampett might cringe at, but hasn’t let us down. Maybe it’ll even survive Steven learning to drive it – he’s old enough to get his learner’s licence this June!

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