First of many pumpkins

I Have not forgotten about the stair climb pictures and video, I am just recovering.

So here is the first of the 2005 Pumpkin's

Erin's Wolf Pumpkin, designed and implemented by my lovely wife Erin :)

CN Tower

Huzzah, I have conquered the tower, more details, pictures, video and sillyness forth coming.

Thanks everyone for donating, I raised $338 and I couldn't have done that without Erin's help.


Again thanks!

G

Amen Brother

The comic says it all.

One last gloaming reference

In a back track to an oldie but a goody, I want to link to my own blogging of yesteryears, to Scooby-Doo Nowhere. If you remember the definition I put forward back then of Scooby-Doo Nowhere, (as identified by my friend Trevor) I would like to further qualify Scooby-Doo Nowhere. If it is not specifically Midnight, then one always happens upon Scooby-Doo Nowhere in the gloaming. Also since moving to Milton, I have noticed that the early morning drive to Mississauga comes eerily close to being through Scooby-Doo Nowhere.

The Duck!

Well I was at the Erin's parent's cottage this weekend, and I was inspired to capture these images for my brother, the eminent duck hunter (if you knew Colin before he moved out West that might sounds startling, I've gotten used to it, I'm just waiting to try some of wild game cooking!) Anyways, these pictures are for you Colin, beware of these specifies of duck, they have been known to be difficult to spot in the wetlands, and have unique natural defenses against hunters. While I don't know the formal genius and species, I have arbitrarily decided to name them Quackicus Turntableus.

The Screen Door

I'm not sure how much of this I already blogged about, but I will retell the story while I am on a blogging role.

So back in summer it was blisteringly hot, so hot Erin and I bought two air conditioners. The first one we bought was a central unit hooked into the main furnace/duct work. About ten minutes after we signed, and in our defense we signed while under the duress of the extreme heat, we realized there was no room in the budget for the AC, actually there was no room in the budget for food, but that was another issue. So sheepishly we called up the AC guy and had him rip up the contract, and we settled back into our sticky sofa misery. A little under a week later we purchased a used in window unit. It cost $50, and was in pretty good condition. This produced a near instant improvement in living conditions. What it didn't resolve was sleeping conditions, because it wouldn't fit in the bedroom window. The nightly routine became, come home, open all windows and doors with screens, cook dinner, retreat to AC room until bed time, crawl to bedroom and hope the house has cooled down. At this point we resolved, we should get a screen door to increase air flow through the main floor.

It took a few weeks to get organized, and when we did we priced out and made plans to buy and build from scratch a screen door. This was based on a price of about $200 for a very basic prefab unit. So first stop was my favorite store, Lee Valley, we purchased all the hardware, hinges and etc to make the screen door. Next step Revy to load up on lumber, screen, and other things not carried by Lee Valley. Now we got everything we needed from the hardware store in the cart, then we headed down the screen aisle, when what should we find… An end of line, fancy prefab door, marked down from $250+ to $50. How could we say no, it was complete and a lot nicer then what I was going to make. So we proceeded with all the returning hoo haa, and walked out with our new door. The trip home with it handing on the top of the car was a little funny, but we got it home without issue.

The following weeks saw difficult tool selection, and trimming work to be done to the door, followed by painting, and finally hanging. I still need to install an internal door knob, and a little bit of touch up fitting, and painting, but all and all it looks great! So here are some cool pictures of it, and some finished pictures of the garden. Enjoy.

The Gloaming

The gloaming is a wicked time,
Ghouls arise, and ghost wonder.
Light from suns last breath,
Give umbral glow to the beasts of night.

Shadows loom, until darkness conquers,
Minions of the night shake off sleepless slumber,
Ichor drips from putrid flesh,
Talons clack with anticipation,
Empty eyes and cavernous maws await the foolish.

Terrors walk the land,
Simulacrums carved in orange gourds
Please the beasts that they venerate.

As day looses this battle of its eternal war,
The firmament shudders as the balance shifts,
None but the foolish and the deranged brave this time,
For surely they will meet their end,
Or their end will meet them.

For in the gloaming mortals must yield,
It is not their time upon the land,
They are not the favoured; they are not the chosen;
Their time has passed, and they must flee,
Or join the fiendish in their heinous hour.


The preceding was a piece of puff poetry, it holds no window into my inner soul, nor any grand eloquence, beat, rhythm, style, or anything else of literary value. I wrote it for two reasons: With Thanksgiving behind us, and Halloween swiftly closing, it is the time for frightful stories of ghouls and beasts. Secondly, and more importantly, I have been subscribed to a word of the day email list for a while, and a word landed on my lap a few weeks ago I couldn't resist, that words was gloaming, I mean really, how can you say no to gloaming. I have been dying to drop it into sentence or prose since then, and I'm afraid my wife has suffered for it, as lame sentences like "What a lovely gloaming we are having." Or "Would you like to go for a walk in the gloaming." Neither form do justice to the word, or my wife. While I am disconnected while I right this, and you can easily look it up yourself, gloaming essentially means twilight, but with a little more olde-English (actually Scottish) oomph (Oomph was not a word of the day, but it is in the MS Word spell checker, go figure.)

For those of you who want to complain about this entry, go ahead, but realize you get this tripe over no entry at all, so it isn't all bad.

Your Blogger from the gloaming,
Gloaming Geoff

And to fully satisfy my use of the word for the time being:
Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming, Gloaming

This seems to work

Sometimes, I am to lazy to post, so it seems if I post what I am going to post about, I actully get around to posting it. So up coming posts include:
Pictures of the screen door oOooo Ahhhh
The Duck!

I will say no more

Serenity

I saw Serenity a week or so back on opening night, and I am happy to report it met and exceeded my expectations! (Truly that is a tag line they will append to the DVD sales, Geoff Peart of Coast of Araska says 'met and exceeded my expectations!') Really, it was phenomenal; I just don't have the words to articulate it. The following link will take you to the home of everyone's favorite raging Mormon, Orson Scott Card, who has the literary agility to do justice to this movie. I strongly agree with him, and can only hope (as he does) that when Ender's Game becomes a movie that it is as good as Serenity.

For those of you who don't have a clue what I am talking about, Serenity is a movie based on a TV series that was cancelled halfway through the first season. "But if it was cancelled why did they make a movie?" you might ask. Well, it is difficult to predict exactly what went through the minds of the Fox executives, I imagine it went like this:

Ex 1: How's that new Firefly show doing?
Ex 2: Okay, for a nerd show, in a bad slot?
Ex 1: Nerd show? I thought it was a gun slinging western?
Ex 2: No no no, it's a space thingy, like Star Trek Wars or whatever that is called.
Ex 1: Ewww, nerds, watching my channel, kill it!
Ex 2: You sure? We are getting tons of fan mail.
Ex 1: From NERDS! Burn that mail to, before you get tainted and I have to fire you!
Ex 2: Yes Sir.
Ex 1: That sounded a little to Star Trek Wars nerdy of you, quickly to the gold course, and then the snooty brothel, we have to make a real man of you again, and quickly!

So another great show was cancelled, and this one never had a chance to get off its feet. Really it was a rough year for director/producer Joss Wedon, Buffy came to its natural conclusion, Angel got cancelled, and while I wasn't a huge fan, I know it had a rabid following. You can tell from the last episode or two that everyone was pretty bitter about the raw deal, and so they pretty much killed everyone just for good measure. So Joss went from 3 series to 0, and all of them were really well done. Firefly of all probably was the most open to any audience, and definitely had the most potential. Buffy had run her course, and Angel was a spin-off that had very much tried to capture the same audience as Buffy. Firefly really appealed to anyone, and had a feel to it that was truly unique. It really was space cowboys, but not in a bad way.

Anyways, no more crying over spilt milk, what is done is done. What followed was a rabid word of mouth campaign that made Firefly probably the most popular cancelled show ever! The DVDs of the first/only season flew off the shelves, and people flocked to the media, and the internet to talk about it. Letter campaign after letter campaign bombarded anyone and everyone begging for the resurrection of the series. What happened, I think, was beyond anyone's imagination. Fox adamantly refused to touch Firefly with a ten foot pool, but some how, from the ashes it rose up as Serenity, the first of possibly three movies starting where the series left off. There is a comic clip floating around the internet with two of the actors chatting between scenes, the one who plays Mal, and the one who plays Jayne. One says to the other "Well it's not everyday your TV series gets cancelled and you get a multimillion dollar movie deal."

So with pomp and circumstance production began on Serenity, stalwart fans were treated to inside tidbits, and even a prescreening months before release to try and boost hype. The tragedy of the prescreening is they may have been to far out front so that the hype cooled down before the movie release. Tragically the box office numbers might not be strong enough to justify the follow up movies. We can only hope. In spite of the poor showing in numbers, it is still a phenomenal movie, I want everyone to go see it, and even those who have never see the series. You won't regret it.

When you're done, come back and read this other guys review. I don't truck with the majority of the opinions on that site, but this article (while spoiler laden) really gave me a greater appreciation for a great movie!

So get off your butts and go watch Serenity, and then tell your friends about it!

Place Holder - Serenity -

Here is place holder for a coming post, on the movie Serentiy, so just hold on to your goram shorts!

http://www.reason.com/hod/js093005.shtml
http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2005-09-30-extra.shtml

Sponsor Geoffrey to Conquer the Tower!

CN Tower,
1776 stairs of sheer maddening vertical
1 hollow, dank stairwell
1 Engineer, on a mission, to climb them all!

To my friends, and random visitors, this is my contribution to my community, I don't always have the liquid assets to support various good causes, but I can give my support by climbing this tower, and getting you to sponsor me. I have done this once before, but not with such enthusiasm, my first climb taught me to respect gravity, for she is a formidable force. So it isn't without a touch of humility that I say, THIS IS FREAKING HARD!

So please support me, and the United Way in this years CN Tower Stair Climb. For more information on the climb, you can go to there site. For more information on the local, national, and international effects of the United Way's charity efforts, you can check out their site

If you click the main link above or this one here, you can directly contribute to my Stair Climb Effort.

Now against my better judgment, my brother has convinced me to carry my .1288 kg camera, the 335.28 m up the tower with me, to document the occasion. For reference that will require me to exert an additional 423 J of superfluous energy to carry the camera with me! So those pictures had better be worth it!!!

Thanks in advance, your poster/climber Geoff