Parade fun

This past Saturday the HPVOoO gang once again took part in our local St. Patrick's Day Parade. I could not attend last year, so it was fun to make it this time. Photos can be found here.

St. Patty's Day joke

(Courtesy of my friend Ian in Montreal)

Paddy had been drinking at his local Dublin pub all day and most of the night celebrating St Patrick's Day.

Mick, the bartender says, " You'll not be drinking anymore tonight Paddy." Paddy replies, "OK Mick, I'll be on my way then."

Paddy spins around on his stool and steps off. He falls flat on his face. "Shoite" he says and pulls himself up by the stool and dusts himself off. He takes a step towards the door and falls flat on his face,

"Shoite, Shoite!"

He looks to the doorway and thinks to himself that if he can just get to the door and some fresh air he'll be fine. He belly crawls to the door and shimmies up to the door frame. He sticks his head outside and takes a deep breath of fresh air, feels much better and takes a step out onto the sidewalk and falls flat on his face.

"Bi'Jesus... I'm fockin' focked," he says.

He can see his house just a few doors down, and crawls to the door, hauls himself up the door frame, opens the door and shimmies inside.

He takes a look up the stairs and says "No fockin' way". He crawls up the stairs to his bedroom door and says "I can make it to the bed." He takes a step into the room and falls flat on his face. He says "Fock it" and falls into bed.

The next morning, his wife, Jess, comes into the room carrying a cup of coffee and says, "Get up Paddy. Did you have a bit to drink last night?".

Paddy says, "I did Jess. I was fockin' pissed. But how'd you know?"

"Mick phoned... you left your wheelchair at the pub."

snow fun

Well, the snow just won't let up, and this past weekend's 56 centimeters has put us very close to our all-time record amount of snow. And while in my new place a contractor clears the driveway (though they're not very quick about it) I still have to shovel my way to the basement door, and my neighbours and I also do the front walkway.

Recall my post about clearing ice off the trikeport? Well, I've had to do that at least five times now, with upwards of 3" of ice thickness at a time. That has been a LOT of weight, but I did design the 'port to hold up to that. Most of the times though it has just been a matter of pulling the snow off, and yesterday was no exception.

There's a 4' high, 12' long trikeport under there, somewhere...

And the front walkway

After that was done it was time to meet some of the HPVOoO guys for a slushy bike ride. Our destination was Rideau Falls, to see how the ice was piling up now that the induced ice break-up is happening.

Along the way we passed some cars that might not move for a while:

The annual ice wall was not happening yet, but that could change in a day. Still pretty, though...


The prevailing wind has slammed enough spray against this railing to really cause a build-up:

This machine lifts out the squared timber logs that make up the water level control dam:

After that it was time to head to the Sunday noodle soup dinner. Here's the snow at Somerset and Arthur Streets. Keep in mind that in preparation for the incoming storm city crews had completely cleared the previous snowfall and all snowbanks 48 hours earlier.

Icanhascheezburger

Some of you may be familiar with the Net silliness that is LOLcats. These are photos of cats (usually) with captions written as if the cats are saying them (for the most part). And of course being cats they don't spell well or use good grammar. ;)

A fine site for one's daily fix is icanhascheezburger.com/, and below I give you some of my faves from that site.