There is a dog in there somewhere

The Sabres woes continue. They are off to an embarrassing 1-8-1 start. The stench of the season is already quite pungent. Sure the effort has been decent on most nights, and they have dropped a lot of one goal games – but – wow… ONE WIN. NO HOME WINS. Brutal. I fear this is only the beginning of the suffering as well… Things will actually get worse. You think Vanek and Miller are signing up for another season of this? LOLS. Who is going to score when Vanek is gone?! Think about that Sabres’ fans. The suffering will be many years to come. The Darcy firing talk has also evaporated… so there is very little to get excited about as a Sabres’ fan these days.

It was an odd weekend. Bdot worked most of Saturday, so I did a bunch of housework to free up time for us on Sunday. We’ve been using hottub pretty regularly. It is pretty awesome to have the soothing benefits of hydrotherapy in your backyard. I’ve been eyeing the brochure from Hole-E-Burger for a few weeks now and we finally tried it Saturday night. Hole-E disappointing! First off, $10 bucks gets you just the burger… which is lucky to be 5oz. I was expecting a massive burger, like you would get at Jack Astor’s. Sure it was tasty… but $10… no fries (a large fry will ding you $5 more…. no drink… It just wasn’t good value at all. I can’t see returning anytime soon. Especially with better options like Cheeks in town. Ho-hum.

I’m having a medical test performed on Thursday. This test necessitates some annoying dietary restrictions. What a bother. There is history of cancer in my family (among the men) so not getting checked isn’t an option. Le sigh.

Yesterday was a lovely day out with bdot and the dog. We returned to the Alton Mill for their Empty Bowls event. It is a charity event where local artists make cool pottery bowls and local chefs fill them with delicious soup – all the proceeds going to local food banks. I think this is a great event. You take home a nice bowl and make a contribution to a worthwhile charity. Sounds like a win-win to me. After soup we wandered around and admired the art. There are always so many pieces would make great additions to our home. Not this time however. It was disheartening to see a few of the artist’s rooms vacant. It could be for any reason I suppose… Hmmpt.

After the Mill we made a stop in Orangeville for coffee. It is good to note that Starbucks in Orangeville is actually really close to Alton. Hello Oat Fudge bar. We also stopped to look at a few more stools for the kitchen island but none of them worked. It seems it will take longer than expected to match the price we want to pay and the look we want to get. The majority of the afternoon however was spent outside wandering around Mono Cliffs for a lovely Fall hike. I think we missed the optimal Fall colour of the tree by a few weeks… still…. it was a perfect afternoon to be outdoors. The dog ran around like a crazy thing and we took a bunch of photos. I’ve posted a bunch on my photostream or search it for Mono Cliffs. A few of bdot’s impressive captures. I don’t care for iPhones, but they do take decent photos.

Hiked past this dog trapped in a bush. Mono Cliffs. Photo by bdot.

Lovely reflection on a pond. Mono Cliffs. Photo by bdot.

It is pretty luxurious to be able to soak in a hottub after hiking all afternoon. Gah. What an awesome toy. The rest of the evening was spent doing more laundry and Sunday night TV. We are really enjoying the flexibility of having the new ‘NextBox’ PVR. The pausing of live TV, skipping commercials and of course simply being able to record stuff… So far it has been a nice piece of tech… the sound and picture also seem better than the previous digital box. *shrug* Also had to rebuild and reinstall W7 on my secondary computer… Not really sure what happened to it. On boot it would hang and never reach the logon screen. *Even on a fresh install* So getting a computer running meant cannibalizing parts and a waste of a lot of time. I did get it up and running eventually however…

While the install was going on I played a bit of Crysis 2 (PC). It is a very impressive game visually. The environments and settings have a great degree of detail paid to them. I certainly get the joke ‘does it run Crysis’ now.