Last week was another long week at work. The hard drive that hosted our main websites died… we lost a bunch of data and the sites were down for several days. Pretty unreal. I’ve been in web development for many years and have never seen failure at this scale. I’ve mentioned how ridiculous I think it is to stay with this host. Not my decision. *shrug*

Saturday we had a birthday party to attend for one of our nephews. We made a few stops before going to the party. The first was to get Winter tires put on the Subaru. Bdot had sourced out tires from a small tire dealer in Markham. So that was our first stop. She has quite the knack for researching odd subjects and quickly becoming an expert. She ended up finding some strangely named Scandinavian tire. I’m confident the Sweds, Fins and Nords know their snow tires. We also stopped at Costco before going over. As usual we spend more money than we should have. Cogeco is an evil evil place. Bdot’s brother and Mom had already arrived. Her brother-in-law is a techy geek in his own right, often builds things and has home projects on the go. He was eager to show off his newest creation. And it was badass. For any older gamers (such as myself) he built the ultimate arcade cocktail machine. So I enjoyed (indulged) in an afternoon of awesome sit-down joystick retro gaming. I played Zaxxon, Qix, 1942, Pooyan, Dong Kong 3, Time Pilot, Galaga, Space Invaders, Dig Dug, Ladybug, Xevious and Gunsmoke. Phew. I’m certainly going to look into getting one of these at some point down the road, it was so much fun. Good games really do stand the test of time. The rest of the evening was enjoyable, some highlights include : chocolate fondue, TR Racers and the kids opening their presents.

Yesterday was a long day working outside. The plan always was to rake the leaves on Sunday… yesterday morning our neighbour’s very elderly mother was outside with a broom sweeping leaves off her lawn onto ours. It was an odd sight. *headslap* So, raking got bumped up to top priority. I have one of those mulching leaf suckers. The mulching is nice since it reduces the number of bags I need (with four Maple trees can be a ridiculous number) but it makes a lot of mess and taking the bag on and off and on and off is pain in the ass. I wonder if just raking and bagging would less of a hassle. After raking, I finally finished cutting down all the limbs from the tree we cut down into smaller bagable pieces. I have a big pile of firewood now and no firepit. Ho-hum. Fortunately it was nice working outside as it was a beautiful and warm November day. As I was coming in from this bdot got home with her Mom (who stayed the weekend) with groceries. Apparently one of the bags of milk broke at some point and created a mess everywhere and ruined a bunch of stuff. Blah. The rest of the evening was pretty tame. I finished laundry and watched Walking Dead and Thor. It was an entertaining action film with some wonderful settings and spectacular special effects. With the Portman bonus the film is ⭐⭐⭐⭐!

The inconsistent play of the Sabres at home has made the start of this season unexpectedly challenging. Additionally Miller let in three goals in 6m v. Philly and got pulled and Bronx cheered. I may have cheered too, that said, I don’t understand why people appear to hate Miller. I listen to Sabres radio 550 a lot and some of the things people say are so ridiculously myopic. Do you not remember who was in net in Montreal a few weeks back when the team was flatter than a desert? Miller kept the team in the game and they still came out with two points. I like Enroth. What isn’t to like? His numbers are very impressive, but he is still the backup. Should he play more? Sure. But Miller is the Sabres #1, stop trying to run him out of town.

Fall back burned me this morning. I’m up an hour earlier. Lucky you, I finished this entry with my bonus time.