There’s this cat we found, you see. By “we” I mean “my wife”, and by “found” I mean “got after spending an hour and a half chipping away at my resolve with tremendous patience, skill, and unwavering determination”. She was the sculptor, her words the sharpened instrument of her trade, and I the marble slab, heavy and unmoving. I was chipped and broken, piece by piece, and by the end of it I found myself driving us down to the base to pick the kitten up. Funny how these things just seem to happen out of nowhere.

In any case, I went from marble to some sort of doughy substance once I saw him. His slave name was Fisk, which (I am told) is Swedish for ‘fish’, which seems somewhat appropriate. His new name is Danger! Mohammed Rakim al-Sayiid. He is, without question, the most awesome cat in the universe, the pinnacle of feline evolution condensed into a single squirmy little package.

It should be noted that he has an unending hunger for toes.

He’s taken on the (normally) tenuous position of ‘third cat’. I invite you to recall the last cat to occupy this position. Thumbs, who was also orange (coincidence?) disappeared one day. The circumstances of his disappearance are still under investigation. I’m hoping that Danger! manages a little better than his predecessor. I consider him to be the spiritual successor to Thumbs. Thumbs had some very large shoes to fill, both literal and metaphorical. Literal because he had extra toes, metaphorical because Thumbs was awesome.

Did I mention we bought a house? Oh, yes, I did, rather recently. The day we take possession looms ahead of us like some great looming presence. The hope is that my brother flies out here (on a plane, not under his own power) to help. The renovations (the interior ones, anyway) will take us until some time around Christmas. What’s strange is that as a child the thought of anything taking “until Christmas” (except for Christmas) might as well have just been “forever and ever, probably after you’re dead”. Interesting how things seem more attainable as you age. I wonder if there’s a word for that.

My entire house will be wired for a house-wide stereo system with satellite speakers in every room, piping in the latest Panic! at the Disco record or something. Führermore, both the upstairs living room and the downstairs Man Cave^(tm) will be wired for their own surround sound systems. It has been a dream of mine to have the speaker wires hidden inside the walls, leaving me with nothing more than the speakers themselves affixed to the walls in the most esthetically pleasing manner possible. Friends, my Man Cave^(tm) is going to be the most wonderful room in the history of interior design.

Things are looking up. Be excellent to each other.

To say we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us might be an understatement. We found the house we wanted for a decent price and the renovations taking place over the course of the coming year won’t break the bank. I’ll finally have a house of my own that looks how I figure my house should look. We’re just waiting for the final approval stuff to go through, then it’ll be ours by next month. Not a bad pull, if I may say so.

To that end, I’ve been working like the proverbial dog. I’ve put in over 100 hours in the last two weeks. I’m enjoying my only day off until next weekend right now, but already I find myself with nothing to do, waiting for Monday’s work day to come, fully aware that once it does, I’ll be wanting nothing more than time off. It’s a strange cycle, to say the least.

Within a few months we’ll have the kitchen, living room, and master bedroom fully renovated (minus the new kitchen cabinetry, which comes later). Black and white tile for the kitchen floor, hardwood for the living room, and probably laminate for the bedroom. We have yet to finalize any decisions with regards to the colors of our walls, but I’m sure Kaitlin will come up with something fantastic.

My man cave downstairs will eventually have a bit of a bar, some couches, and possibly a TV in the near future, along with a pleasant variety of liquor. There will even be a wood stove! It will be the room of my dreams, of that you can be sure.

I’m just glad we’re actually able to buy our own house at this point. Renting is okay for a while, but you quickly realize that the money you spend in rent is just getting thrown away every month. I’ll be building a fence for the front yard and I’m looking into putting in another patio on the cement courtyard behind the driveway that leads directly into the kitchen. It’s cheaper than stone and probably the easiest way for me to cover up all that ugly cement where a lawn should have been.

With only one day off this week, I’m loathe to play video games. They’re such a time sink, but at the same time I’m fully aware that I don’t really have anything else to do right now. I might just fire up the BBQ for supper tonight, grill up some teriyaki steaks.

Yes, that sounds delicious. Be well, everyone.

It’s been a while since my last update, but my attitude going into this whole “blogosphere” thing was that I’d never apologize. In fact, I try to adhere to that rule in every facet of my life. Apologies are for pussies. I, sir, am no pussy.

Let us continue, by which I mean to say “shut up and listen”.

A few days ago I woke up for work and found that, upon a routine trip to the bathroom, my feet had gotten wet. It turns out the wetness was not limited to my socks. Said wetness had spread from a broken line to the washing machine to the majority of my house (“house” being a fancy word for “shitty basement suite” in this context). Short story long, a few hours later there appeared some contractors courtesy of my landlord.

By the end of it, they’d drawn a few conclusions: 1) the damage was extensive enough to warrant the tearing down of several walls and the tearing up of several floors, and 2) the work required made our living there a near impossibility.

So we moved.

When I say “we moved”, some people might say such a description is “woefully insufficient”. Some people like me. It was a great clusterfuck of a four day weekend, but we made it out alive. Bonus: none of our stuff got wrecked.

The landlords are being difficult about the damage deposit, but from their view, it’s understandable: they checked the place before we cleaned it. Reasonable, I know!

Kaitlin and I are having wonderful conversations with our bank with regards to purchasing a humble dwelling of our very own. Plans for this hypothetical abode include a white picket fence, a dog (of my choosing, and don’t let her tell you otherwise), an aquamarine kitchen, and all sorts of things for my man cave.

If I were asked to sum up the recent events with a few well-chosen words, I’d simply call it “a strange and exciting time”. Things are looking up, as they should.

Furthermore, several of you missed my birthday yesterday, though many of the people on my Facebook friends list were kind enough to remember (even if it was thanks to the prompting of Facebook itself). Your superficially friendly good wishes warm the cockles of my heart. My parents bought me a rather finely crafted BBQ and my wife, well…

You get the idea. ;)

Wikileaks recently released an 18-minute video depicting the deaths of about a dozen civilians. At the time, the civilians were identified as combatants. The pilots saw what they assumed to be weapons. They were, in fact, cameras. Only one weapon was retrieved from the scene.

News agencies and private individuals are condemning the act as the wanton killing of innocent civilians. While I agree that the deaths may have been avoided, there are a few points I’d like to make.

If you don’t realize that driving a van into an area that was recently blanketed by 30mm gunfire is a bad idea, you can deal with what comes next. The fact that the children were injured is a horrible thing, but consider the thought process of that van’s driver. Did it not strike him that it may have been a bad idea to bring his children into an active war zone?

The situation in that country is so fucking tense for servicemen stationed out there. You’re in combat zones every day with the very real possibility of getting shot. I can’t even begin to imagine the fear and apprehension those soldiers must experience. It’s said that there is no training in the world that can prepare a man for what happens in a wartime situation.

I imagine that when they’re in a helicopter that can be taken down with one well-placed RPG and they see what looks like an RPG to them, they’re not going to hesitate. If that were a combatant and he had fired, he could have easily killed everyone on that helicopter in seconds.

It’s a war situation and in wars there are civilian casualties. It’s a truly tragic loss of life and my heart goes out to anyone who lost a loved one in that incident. Sadly, this is the nature of war. People die, and not all of those people are armed.

It’s very easy to sit back, review the video frame by frame, and cast judgment, but until you’re the one on the gun, I don’t feel anyone is justified in calling what they did ‘wrong’.

Here’s the video.

Collateral Murder – Wikileaks – Iraq

I came across a certain article the other day. Go ahead and click the link. Read it thoroughly. Understand and embrace it. I’ll wait.

Here’s the deal.

I’ve got this three day weekend ahead of me and I’ll be spending it alone. Kaitlin leaves for Victoria on Thursday morning. I’m thinking of picking up a nice bottle of scotch, sitting down, and getting to know it without any distractions. I’ll be sure to post my findings.

[17:22] <Emilia> my knee’s been hurting for 3 days straight
[17:23] <Alex> Lame.

I’m not sure if I’ve related the full extent of my desire to be a father yet. It could be because, until now, it’s been a private discussion between my wife and I. Or at least I thought it was. Turns out she’s okay with me writing about it, so here it is.

I want to be a dad more than anything else. I don’t care about shitty diapers and a lack of sleep and puke, pee, and poop getting all over everything I own. I find that the most common thread among conversations I have in that regard is that I’m somehow assumed to be unaware of how much work a child is. I’m not. I know I’ll be dedicating the rest of my life to raising a kid. I know what that entails, even if I’ve never experienced it directly.

The prospect of creating a tiny little life is a daunting one, to be sure. The fact that I have this power is a bit scary, really. The fact that people are born being able to do this is just baffling.

I don’t often wonder if I’m too young to be doing this. Kaitlin and I share the same fear, that we’ll put it off and put it off, and then one day we’ll find that we’re too old to do it. What teenager wants parents older than fifty, honestly? We’re at a point in our lives both emotionally and financially that makes sense.

The responsibility is incredible. I’ll be shouldering a larger load than I’ve ever done in my life. I’ll be responsible for teaching so much. I’ve heard it said that one learns to raise their children with their children. It makes a certain kind of sense to me. I only hope that I am worthy of such a task.

I had this fear for years, ever since the tender days of my teenaged youth. Marijuana, I was told, was the devil. In this I heartily agreed, but a lack of actual experience on my part brought on the inevitable curiosity. I decided to try it for myself, to gain empirical proof that marijuana was, in fact, the devil. Turns out it really wasn’t. The first time I tried it, I hung out with my friend, sitting against the outer wall of a nearby church, and giggling about who knows what.

The second time I tried it (and every attempt thereafter), I found myself beset with an overwhelming paranoia. I existed, it seemed, in a kind of dream state, wherein sensations were altered in subtle ways. The end result was a horrifying one. I ran home, cried, confessed everything to my parents, and slept it off.

Not so, last night! I bought some from a friend of mine, squirreled it away inside an iPhone box beside my Xbox, and waited for my wife to get home. She knows more than I do about pot, since she’s basically been able to smoke it without losing her mind. That makes her an expert in my eyes. I tried some, totally ready to flip my proverbial (and possibly literal) shit, but it didn’t happen. In fact, it was rather enjoyable.

Here’s the thing.

I was never really against smoking pot in the strictest sense of the word. I just knew (or thought) that I didn’t react favorably upon smoking it. My body’s chemistry, I assumed, was such that even the tiniest amount of weed would send me into a paranoid frenzy. I have since concluded that, on those occasions, I simply smoked too much of it. Moderation, it seemed, was to be the word of the evening.

I got stoned, after taking only two “tokes” (I still prefer the term “puffs”, but it makes me sound like a n00b), and enjoyed it immensely. I was in control of myself, motor functions were behaving as expected, and I couldn’t stop giggling. Also, my mouth got so dry. I was eating sushi and it became a chore.

After my high wore off (and it did, disappointingly quickly) I just drank beer until I fell asleep on the chair, at which point I was escorted into the bedroom by my wife. I passed out.

I might try some more tonight, but I could just as easily drink the rest of the beer in my fridge instead. I guess we’ll see.

Oh, one more thing.

I think I want to be a dad. I’m gonna get on that.

I’ve got a younger brother (he’s 21, I’m 23) who I love dearly. He’s a sweet kid, exuberant, and he makes a great impression on everybody he meets. The only problem is that he’s dating the psychotic harpy from hell. He’s a different person around her.

Just recently, he flew up here from Victoria to spend a week with the family, sans harpy. I was overjoyed. I got to spend a lot of time with him, just hanging out and talking with my parents and my wife Kaitlin. He’s leaving tomorrow, which is fine, because it was a fucking gift and a half to see Ben as he truly is, without some useless cunt latched onto his back screaming and barking orders and acting like a fucking nutcase.

Here we are.

(left to right) Me, my brother Ben, and my dad.

My family is a perpetual source of comfort and happiness in my life, and I just need somewhere to express how fulfilling it is to have all of us together again.

I always figured I’d play World of Warcraft a hell of a lot more if I didn’t have to pay for it. I fully realize that Blizzard makes the majority of its money from the game, but I don’t want to feel like I have to put X hours per month into the game just to justify the $15 recurring fee. I’ve been neglecting my Xbox lately, too. It’s little more than a home theatre system at this point, letting me stream my (legally) downloaded movies and music from any one of my three computers. Occasionally I will play some dorky arcade game, but there’s never any ’staying power’ in them. Even now I hear the siren’s song of Modern Warfare 2. I lash myself to the chair and think to myself, “This is how Odysseus must have felt.”

In an effort to expand my musical horizons, I’ve been favoring remarkably vague tags for Last.fm’s radio application. Terms like “hip hop” and “indie”, while ambiguous, will sometimes yield interesting results. Other times, not so much. I’m listening to Passion Pit right now. I’m not sure how I should feel about this.

Kaitlin picked up a Neutral Milk Hotel album on vinyl. Those music snobs were right: vinyl sounds way better. I’ve always known, academically at least, that vinyl gives music a certain brightness that no digital medium could ever hope to reproduce. Hearing ‘In an Aeroplane Over the Sea‘ was pretty fun.

I’ve mentioned my IRC role playing addition several times. Lately, the game has begun to lose its appeal for me. The biggest ‘channel’ (chatroom) I played in basically died as a result of cliques and an unfriendly atmosphere. I found another channel to play in, but I find my interest waning daily. It’s a damn shame, because I love the way I’m able to stretch my creative muscles when I play. It’s been a few days and all I’ve really done is lurk and watch the whole genre in its death throes.

The weekend is upon us. In honor of these auspicious days, I’ve resolved to keep today’s physical activity to a bare minimum. Work this week was pretty long, even if it did go by fairly quickly, and I believe I’ve earned a few days respite.