Banooners nooner

So yesterday morning my wife throws a red shirt with the word “Canada” beside my head.

“What is this?” I ask

She says “I have one too and the girls have Canada dresses.”

“OH NO, no way” I say and I go to hop in the shower.

We thirty seconds into my shower my daughters come in to tell me about their dresses and ask me if I am going to wear the shirt? I tell them “no” and they continue to pester me so I send them downstairs. I head to my room and grab my XBox shirt.

All through breakfast all three of them make me feel like a shithole for not wearing it with their “please daddy” and their “we will look so cute!”

“NO! I don’t want to look cute!” I sorta said.

In the end we are off and I am in my Canada shirt

We go to the reptile show and we stick out cause not only did I wear the shirt but I put on my Johnny Dep “Fear and loathing in Las Vegas” sunglasses that my wife hates. “Fuck it” I says. “If I have to wear the shirt then I am wearing the glasses.

To top it all off we were spending the day with another couple who have kids the same age and the wife would throw out a few “you guys look so cute” once in awhile just to remind me what a turd I looked like.

So after reptile place we head to the park for ribfest and fireworks.

Well wouldn’t you know it, it is cloudy and cold.

So what do my wife and kids do?

They all put on sweaters and mine goes to the wife of the couple we are with.

This in the end leave me the lone “Canada” shirt wearing turd at ribfest.

Buggers!

p.s. I had a great time at the reptile place and at the Ribfest/Fireworks. HAPPY CANUCK DAY TO YOU ALL!

I sat down with the wife at the start of this month and we decided we were going to stick to a budget.
Let me tell you that this is no easy task.

You don’t really understand how hard it is not to spend until you activity try not to spend.

I am used to seeing something and going out and buying it, no matter if I could afford it or not.
Wanted a new PS3 game? Buy it!
Wanted a new 100ft ethernet cable? Buy it!

Well those days have stopped and man is it hard to stick with it.

For reference my weekly allowance is $75.
The first week I only spent $25 which meant I had $50 extra for the next week.
The next week I spent $50 which included a 4 pack of Moosehead beer and $20 in a poker game.
The $25 plus $50 from the first week brought me up to +$75.
Now comes this Saturday, Saturday the 13th.

There was a charity poker event for my friends, kids soccer team.
$60 in and another $20 to top up after the first hour.
They were expecting to have around 50 players for the evening and the top prize being $1,000.

My brother in-law was coming down to play in the game as well so I decided to book a nine hole at the White Oaks Golf Course.
I didn’t have any balls so I would have to buy some as well.

So $27 for the course fee, $6 for the balls and another $2 for the Gatorade for a grand total of $35 leaving me with $40.
This is well below the $80 I would need for poker that night so what do you do?

You cancel going to poker and you and your brother in-law go back to the house and barbecue some burgers while sucking back some beers…

Yeah right.

No you go to the bank and tell yourself “This will have to come out of next weeks $75 and hopefully I can keep up with the $20 a week spending.”

So away we go to the poker game, and 54 players are in.

Game starts at 8pm and I am finally knocked out at 6th place at midnight and I win my $60 entry fee back (for reference my Brother in-law got knocked out 8th).

So if I had not won and got my money back I would be in the red right now but now currently I am in the black.

What does this all have to do with budgeting? HOW THE HELL SHOULD I KNOW?

Seriously though I think what I am doing is what I am referring to as the “Relaxed Budget”
What is that you ask?

It’s the budget where yes you have to make some hard choices but you still don’t have to beat yourself for making some mistakes.

Just so you know here are a couple of hard choices made in the past two weeks.
1: Not buying “UFC Undisputed” for the PS3 even when my buds all have it and are telling me to buy it.
2: Not buying a new set of headphones even though my kids ran it over with the chair (duct tape).
3: Not buying the Ethernet wall plate to clean up the hole I made last month.
4: Not taking a cab ride home after missing the train at 10:38pm but sitting around for the next one (hour later) saving $40. Normally I would do this and not stick around an hour.

Obviously these choices are not difficult in the “Will I die?” sense of it all, but for someone who never before gave these purchases a second thought… they are pretty fuckin hard!

Ok so here is the update on the homestead.

1: No solar power for me

Turns out the trees in my yard are to large and throw to much shade in order to generate any real power for the house. This of course was only on company but none the less I have been disappointed by the outcome.

2: Pool heating options:

Option A: Gas heater, Haven’t looked into this in that I have not had a company come out and quote me. Looks like it comes under $2000 but there is the constant cost of gas.

Option B: Black plastic solar heating, this is where you cover your roof with a black bladder and run the pool water through it. It is between $4000 and $5000 for the install and this doesn’t include the structure I would have to build to hold it. I have to build a structure (read as cabana) because my homes roof does not receive enough sun. So you might as well bring the costs up another $4000 at the least.

Option C: Glass tube heating, this is meant more for home hot water heating and not pool heating. This is about $5000 and I have a company coming out tonight to give me a quote so I will find out fo sure. Turns out this doesn’t need as big a foot print so it may work on the homes roof.

Option D: Tie into existing Geothermal, this would work but I think you have to cool as well as heat so it wouldn’t work. What I mean is in order to heat the pool I have to cool the house because the heat is pulled from the house and transferred to the pool… I think.  If this is the case then when I would need to cool my house when it is cold outside in order to heat my pool when its cold outside.  This doesn’t sound correct but either way I was quoted at $9000 for the tie in.

Option E: Air heat exchanger. Works the same way the geothermal system works except it takes the heat from the air and transfers it to the pool. All electric and it comes in around $5000. Not familiar with this option so would need to look into it more.

Oh yeah WISE is having a meeting on Monday the 22nd of this month so I am going to take a look at this as it looks like the focus is water heating so it is right on par with what I am looking into.

WISE 2009 Solar Information Night
Monday, June 22: 7- 9pm

St. Matthews United Church (corner of St Clair West and Rushton Road)
(Click for Map)

So what do you do on a Saturday evening when you have done it all already?

Well you first go and buy a 100 foot Ethernet cable and run it from your basement all the way to your livingroom.

Next you take a drill and punch a hole into the wall *note to self* drill towards the basement to avoid large chunk of wall popping out on other side. Doesn’t matter anyway cause I am going to go to active surplus tomorrow and buy a wall plate for the Ethernet cable.

So now I have the notwork up there in my livingroom, now what?

Well now I take the leaf from the dinning room table and two chairs down to the livingroom and make a makeshift table

I then head back down to the basement to unplug my computer and bring it upstairs and this is what comes up with me.

• new keyboard and mouse (my regular ones i use are tied into my desk and pushed through hole, real fuckin bitch to get them out)
• New power cord for the computer (the black cord that hooks to the back of the computer, same reasons for not taking the regular one as the keyboard)
• headset with built-in mic.
• webcam
• 10 foot VGA cable (this is what I used to tie into the TV)
• 2 beers and one smokable

So down to business, I plug the stuff into the computer and hook it up to the TV.

I quickly Skype my bud “Brindle” and fire up my webcam to showoff my hookup in the livingroom.

We chat about it and we laugh at how cool it is. We both agree that I need a better table and seat to sit in but for a quick half-hour setup it wasn’t bad at all.  What was left to do?

Obviously it was time to fire up COD4 and see how it fared in the online world.

What can I say?

IT WAS AWESOME!!!

So much in fact that I want to now ditch my two 19 inch monitors for one large 43 inch monitor. I dream about it now and stare at my 19 inches in disgust

I am now dreaming of a lazy-boy seat and a large screen monitor right in front of me

liv01.jpg

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 3