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Finally have time to post about the cottage trip, starting with the tree! Here it is, the hunk of wood that briefly stranded us in the cottage, and the two lovely neighbours who chainsawed it to bits. (The Sweetie and I had a mad scheme to go at it with axes in the morning if we had to, but man, that would have taken a long time.)


( More cottage pics this way )

Since planning a birthday party the week before Christmas was insanity, I decided to forego a 50th birthday party in favour of a 50 Years and a Black Belt party in June (assuming I manage to survive that long *g*), and instead we took a family trip to New York City for a long weekend. (I've been trying to get us all to NYC for a couple of years, so it was a good excuse to finally do it.)

( Photographic evidence behind the cut )

Things have been a bit mental, so it's been a couple of weeks since I've done an update.

The team are getting better at working together and passing. And they're still really good at holding even high scoring teams to very few goals. (We still have the lowest goals against by a long shot.) But they are still having trouble turning opportunities into goals. Some of it is just bad luck--shots going wide or the other goalkeeper getting hold of a near thing--and some of it is their desire to put the ball in the goal themselves, even if someone else on the team has a clearer shot at the net. ::sigh::

Last week we played the team that was lowest in the standings, and I thought we had a shot at winning. But they have clearly improved (they've got a three game winning streak going) and our defence fell apart at a couple of key moments, so they managed a 2 - 1 win. But Ros got our "1," so that was awesome. She's definitely become a much more aggressive player, which is lovely to see.

This week we played the top team in our division, and they really could have killed us, but we played a really solid game. They scored early, but we kept the pressure on and our best player got a really lovely goal she chipped over the head of their keeper. (Ros also made a really lovely run and had a clear shot on net, but kicked it right at their keeper, alas.) We had them at a 1 - 1 tie for most of the game, and I thought we might keep that, but our defence fell apart two minutes from the end and they got a goal in. Still, it was a great game.

Outside of soccer, things have been a bit crazy. I did my back in about a month ago, irritating two arthritic vertebrae doing some yoga moves after a running class. Yoga always seems like a good idea, but my crazy passing-itself-on-a-curve spine just can't handle it. This has not only meant no Taekwando until I get the pain under control, it has also meant I've been sleeping badly to not at all a majority of the time. Which means that every few nights after we get Ros to sleep I pretty much keel over where I'm standing. This has almost entirely eliminated most of the computer and TV watching time I usually eke out.

Stupid back.

In spite of that, there has been fun had.

We went camping two weekends ago, which I always enjoy. Though sleeping on an air mattress really did not impress my back, and was managed only after I ventured into the nearest town to buy the strongest over the counter pain meds I could find. (It was that, or find a cheap nearby hotel so I didn't feel like someone was drilling into my spine.) The drugs were lovely stuff for knocking you out, but not a sustainable solution due to its not-so-lovely side effects.

Today, I took the day off work to take Ros and a friend to the Canadian National Exhibition,a.k.a. the Ex. It's a fall fair on a huge scale, with a midway, a giant food building where you can get all sorts of crazy things like donut hamburgers (the girls had perogies; I had a yummy fish taco), and lots of shows, demonstrations and ridiculous things for sale.

Ros loves to go primarily for the kids' circus workshop that gets put on every year. She always has done the tightrope walking and acrobatics, but this year she was finally big enough to do the trapeze, which was very exciting.

( Circus pics this way... )

For the past few months I've been going through a number of medical tests as various doctors try to figure out what the heck to do with the horrible acid reflux I've been having that's been immune to all drugs. My GP decided he was going to run some cardiac tests just to make sure there wasn't anything going on with my heart. Which led to me having a stress test on Monday.

( This did not go how I expected. )

It's been a mad few days, with a bit of good stuff mixed in with a bit of bad.

The Good
We took Ros to a Saturday afternoon kid's screening of the original Bad News Bears at our favourite local rep house and she enjoyed it. Though, man, there's more tough stuff than even I was expecting, including a coach/father hitting his kid on the field and a tough little kid who uses the N word. Repeatedly. (Yikes!)

At the urging of franzeska, I've started putting pages up on AO3 for my vids, including non-password protected links. The vids up there so far are:

I Would Die for You (I Spy)

Forget Regret (Pros)

Love's Not a Competition (Pros)

Pieces of Heaven (Pros)

Halo (Sherlock Holmes, Downey Films)

The Patron Saint of Lost Causes (Take That)

This has led to the shocking realization that I made I Would Die for You, my first vid back in 2002! Where has the time gone?

The Bad
I started my Saturday with a 6:45 a.m. black belt training session at our martial arts school. And promptly started having an anaphylaxis attack after we'd completed the run at the start. Mouth swelling, eyes swelling and, most alarmingly, throat swelling. Which meant taking Benadryl, hightailing it home, waiting to make sure that my throat had stopped swelling, and then letting the drugs knock me out for over four hours. Not the way I'd planned on spending my Saturday morning. And annoyingly, it meant missing the martial arts part of the class that I actually enjoy.

The Sweetie: You know, some people would take this as a sign that they shouldn't be exercising.
Me: But I like exercising! I don't want this to keep happening!

Nor was that the end of it. I woke up both Sunday and Monday with my eyes swollen again, and the Benadryl hangover was giving me a persistent headache that finally tipped into migraine territory today. Joy. Adding to the fun, the cold that's been nipping at my heels finally caught me today, so I bowed to the inevitable and took the day off.

The Inbetween
Since I was stuck at home anyway, and the headache wasn't quite enough to require a dark, quiet room, I decided to park myself on the couch and mainline six of the Legends episodes I had sitting on the PVR. That was...interesting. I wouldn't call it good, but it's at least amusing seeing what accents The Bean attempts each episode when he's undercover. Worst accent so far: Texan. (Who the hell thought Sean Bean doing a Texan accent was a good idea?) Most amusing: a Liverpool accent that never drifted past the outskirts of Sheffield. Oh Sean, never change.

A month ago, work announced that they were going to send me to Edmonton. For a day. For a five hour meeting. Only two hours of which actually concerned me. Oh, and the flight is four hours, each way.

I kept trying to wriggle out of it, but never quite managed.

And this week, to add insult to injury, I realized my flight was going to be during the World Cup final.

I'm currently sitting in my hotel room in Edmonton, and it hasn't turned out to be too bad of a trip so far. I'm travelling with three co-workers, and we found a great little Greek restaurant across the road with a wonderful waiter who ordered us an assortment of wonderful food (saganaki and dalmades and moussaka and baba ghanouj and calamari) and also brought shots of free ouzo at the end. (I shouldn't have had the ouzo, but it was yummy. And also strong. I may still be a bit woozy. It's official; I have no head left for alcohol.)

Here's hoping the actual meeting tomorrow turns out to be valuable. Or at least semi-useful. And that we make our airport shuttle, and the plane isn't late.

I'm still sad about missing the World Cup final, though. I recorded it, but it's really not the same, knowing the outcome. And my vague plans to avoid finding out who won were foiled when they announced the final score on the plan. Oh, and one of my co-workers showed up at the airport wearing a German jersey, so I was always going to find out who won.

But still, yummy food and free ouzo, yay!

In spite of some rain, it was a good Hallowe'en. Ros went as Violet from The Incredibles. (Not that she's a fan of the movie, but one of her best friends at Taekwando was going as Violet to their Hallowe'en party a couple of weeks ago and they wanted to go in matching costumes.

Here's my little superhero tonight:


Ros and I carved our pumpkin this year.

( This way to a pumpkin pic )

So, there was some doubt that I'd make tonight's soccer game.

See, this morning was a Taekwando morning, and because it's summer and people are on vacation, today it ended up being just me, one other guy, and our replacement instructor. This is the instructor who makes our usual instructor, the one who regularly gets me lifting 20 pound kettle bells, look like a wimp. It was a great class, and I pushed myself really hard and totally enjoyed myself. I tripped my asthma a couple of times, but seemed to get away with it. But when I got home I went from covered in hives, to face swelling and throat doing funny things in a few minutes. Exercise-induced anaphylaxis strikes again! So it was two Benedryl for me, which meant passing out for the remainder of the day. Which is marginally better than the alternative of taking my Epipen and spending 4 hours in the E.R. whilst they make sure I'm not going to keel over.

All in all, I wish I wasn't allergic to exercise. Because I really, really love that class.

Oh, well. I surfaced in the afternoon, and was alert enough to coach. And the Sweetie took over the player rotation, which was helpful. We played a really tough team (the last time we played them, when the game was over all of my players started telling me about how they'd been poked, prodded, tripped and generally roughed up by their players) and whilst we put in a really great effort, they beat us, 1 - 5. But we still all had a great time.

Ros put in a good effort, and really got stuck in a few times, which was nice to see.

I am, unfortunately, going to miss our next game. They re-scheduled our rain out for this coming Friday, and we're due at a friend's cottage for the weekend. Fortunately, another mom has volunteered to step in, even though we'll only be fielding five players. The other team has the same number coming, so at least it'll be even.

Six years ago today, Ros became a member of our family. Today we had a family dinner at Ros' favourite local bistro. And on the weekend we got together with another family from our travel group and their daughter. The other dad is a fantastic photographer, and sent us a few pics of Ros from the day.

( This way to Ros pics )

I was going to put up some Ros through the years pics, but I already put up some of the best ones last year. So I'll just say we're lucky to have her in our family, and I cherish every day with her.