Well, I figure she’s been here for two months, I should do a post. I think about it often, but don’t have a whole lot of time to actually get to it. Who knew babies could keep you so busy.

I can’t believe how fast the past two months have gone by. Megan is growing so quickly. She sure like to eat (too bad more of it doesn’t stay down)! Her appointment for her 2 month needles is on Thursday. I’m not looking forward to that. Who wants to have their little one poked like that. I know she sure is a strong little girl. She pushes herself into a standing position with her feet when I’m holding her. She has been holding her head up for quite a while and she is rolling from belly to back. I don’t know how I can give her proper belly time when all she does is roll over.
She is starting to smile a bit more, but still not as much as I would like. It really lights up her whole face. I have a feeling she is going to be a bit more serious than her brother is.
She is still having cranky evenings. The crying fits are getting less, but they are still there. She is going to bed around 10ish now and she normally sleeps until around 3 when she has 1/2 a feeding cause she’s so tired. Then she’s up again to eat around 5. I forgot how much I dislike the spit up. She’s a good eater, but doesn’t like to burp much. When she burps, it always seems to bring up 1/2 of her meal with it, through her mouth and her nose. Not pleasant. And it takes her breath away. Certainly something for me to ask the Doctor about.
Dylan really likes her. Any time she’s down on the floor playing, he has to go lay beside her or bring her toys to show her. If she’s in her swing, he’s right there pushing her, and if she’s in the cradle, he’s there talking to her. He has a special voice for her. As soon as he sees her, he runs up, says “Hi” and rubs her face. He will take her hand and rub his own face with it. He wants her to do the same thing to him. Very sweet!
They have both taken turns waking each other up, whether it be in the daytime or the nightime. At least it doesn’t happen too ofter.
As for me, I am very exhausted. Lack of sleep is certainly affecting me. I am very emotional, jumpy and holy frack, am I ever forgetful. I think the forgetfullness is the worst. Hey, just yesterday, I locked us out of the house cause I left the keys in here. Thank Goodness Matt was able to get in the front window. Then we went to Mom’s house and I left my set of keys there. I’m scared I’m going to forget her somewhere. I’m always checking the back seat when we are out to make sure she’s still there.
I was really nervouse about having a girl because I didn’t know what to do with a girl. All I can say is that I can’t imagine life without her. I can’t believe how enamoured I became with her right from the start. I am very blessed to have a wonderful little boy and a wonderful little girl. Life is good!

Pulled from MegansWorld.ca. Read the original post here

And so it would appear that the early stages of the terrible two’s have begun. I love my son but man has he become more and more defiant in the last little while. It seems that with anything you want him to do that he is not in the mood to do, he fights it. He kicks, cries, screams, gets mad, you name it. Even changing a diaper has become harder and harder because of all of his flailing. Man. What gives?

I know it’s all normal but sometimes it is a little hard on the head to deal with.

Regardless, he has gotten somewhat better with Megan and has definitely become attached to her. The other day when we picked him up from the sitter’s and Megan was at her grandmother’s, Dylan kept pointing to her carseat and saying her name wondering where she is. He’s definitely doing an awesome job as a big brother.

Pulled from DylansHouse.com. Read the original post here

Here’s a few nuggest of news in the world that is me.

My mom’s cottage down in Pointe Du Chene needed to be demolished and rebuilt. Well, the reconstruction has begun and the foundation folks were down there. Now, the neighbors beside moms are brand new. This is the first year they have had the cottage. Well, as it turns out, the trucks used to bring in the blocks and cement didn’t know that we didn’t own that property and assumed that they could park anywhere on the lawn. This included what was our neighbors lawn. This of course pissed the neighbors off and set a fire within them to come after us for using what they claimed was their land.

The real issue was not so much them, but my mom’s unfortunate emotional uproar and the neighbors inability to articulate what he was talking about correctly. So, from mom’s perspective, the neighbors were going to deny her access to a driveway she has used for 20 years. This driveway is in fact her ONLY access to HER property. Whether it’s on their property or not, it still is her only means to the cottage so she was quite upset. Me and Tamara told her we would dig and find out what our rights are and what we needed to do and that WE would talk to the neighbors face to face.

We went down there today and talked to both her and him as it is a husband and wife. Mom had given us the impression that she was easy to deal with and he was the asshole. Turns out, it’s the complete opposite. She tried to claim that the trucks destroyed her grass and created giant ruts that were never there in the first place. Any idiot could take one look at the driveway and the grass and know that it’s been that way for a LONG time. It’s plain as day to anyone else but she started telling us that we weren’t listening to her and that the spot on her lawn where it was worn down was bright green previously and so on and so on. Completely and totally unreasonable. If it had been her we had to deal with, lawyers and other legal types would have come into the picture.

Thankfully, HE was much better. Turns out the real issue was the trucks parking on their lawn. He said he could care less if mom used the driveway and even said he’d work with us to make it work well. He was fine with the situation we had come up with and we shook hands, and all was well. Luckily, SHE said we would be dealing with HIM if anything came up. Thank God. It royally irritated to see this woman who only bought the place this year, try and tell me what the property looked like before when we’ve been there for 20 years. Uhm, excuse me? I’m not that f*cking stupid and I’m not paying to re-seed lawn that was already damaged. Even the foundation guys who were there laughed at her ridiculous accusations. Regardless, it’s settled and if anything else comes up, I’ll deal with the husband.

So the next thing that’s been a thorn in my side is that I submitted an event cache to Geocaching.com for my 2009 Moncton’s Race for Cache (check out the website here if you’re interested). Now last year, the reviewer refused to publish the listing because it was “an organized hunt” which apparently is against the listing rules. Fine. I created a post-race party which had a link to the race’s website and removed the “race” stuff from the official listing. This seemed to work very well. I decided that I would do the same thing this year to avoid the hassle.

However it got rejected again. This time he rejected it because he said that the listing was linked to a charitable event and that was not allowed unless I had previous permission from Groundspeak. The only “charity” portion of this event was that I wanted to have every racer bring one non-perishable food item that could be donated to a local food bank. That apparently is not allowed to be connected in any way with a geocache listing. The fact that they don’t want the listings associated with charities seems a bit weird but when you come to think of how they have handled other issues, I am positive it has to do with an overly paranoid CEO of the website who thinks that somehow it makes them liable. In a case like this, I would think that it would give cachers a good name knowing that they are doing an event with some sort of charitable benefit in mind. But, no go.

So, I have removed all of the food donation stuff from the event and I plan to simply request the food items through team emails and other communication. It’s really ridiculous when you come to think of it but whatever. I need the event published on their site so I have to follow these rules even if they don’t make much sense sometimes.

In other geocaching news, I am off to PEI this Sunday for a full day of caching with 3 other locals. It’s the longest day of the year and we’re going to hit the island at 7am. Ya, that means I leave the house around 5am. Originally it was 4am but I managed to convince them otherwise. Frig sakes. It’s still too damn early but it should be a pretty awesome day. Hoping to get pretty close to, if not break my 1000 find milestone. Here’s to hoping.

So yesterday me and Tamara took on the challenge of going to the Albery County Caves. We decided to only go for one of the caves since cave #2 is currently closed. We got the info about the caves from a geocache listing. I had wanted to check it out for awhile so we dropped the kids off and went out and checked these bad boys out.

It was actually not that far from the trail and only took about 20-30 minutes to get there once we parked. We made a wrong turn from one spot and ended up climbing up a hill we didn’t need to  but once we got there, all was good.

The caves are BIG and there are a lot of cool little spots. Check out some of the pix.

[Show as slideshow]

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I did a post on Twitter yesterday about being annoyed at Radio Shack (The Source by Circuit City but it will always be Radio Shack to me) for telling me that if I wanted a bag for my stuff, I’d have to pay 5 cents for the bag. This is an unfortunate trend that we’ve begun to see in store after store after store. Let me tell you, it’s something that seriously annoys and irritates me. I’ll probably piss a few people off with this rant, but here’s my take on the whole thing.

First off, let me say that the so called principle behind this does have its merits. The entire point of charging for these bags is to encourage people to use more environmentally friendly bags that can be used over and over again and not end up in landfills causing an adverse affect on the environment. I have no problem with taking steps to try and help mother nature and recycle and all of that stuff. I sort my garbage, recycle my bottles, and do my own little part. That all makes perfect sense to me. The problem seems to be that now companies have seen a way to gouge the consumer even further all in the name of the environment.

Does anyone here remember back in the days when you’d go into some stores and get prompted by the clerk for “paper or plastic” when you needed a bag? I do. It seemed that for ages we used brown paper bags to put all of our stuff in. Over time, it seemed that those were replaced by plastic bags and the paper bags disappeared. Anyone know why? I don’t. I suspect it has to do with the fact that plastic was cheaper to produce, had built in handles, and in many cases, the materials were stronger so they could hold heavier loads in each bag. Environmentalists would say that producing the brown paper bags is bad because it uses paper, which is derived from trees, so therefore we’re cutting down our natural resources causing more environmental impact.

The same however could be said for plastics. Although trees don’t suffer, the manufacturing plants that produce the bags emit tons of carbon into the atmosphere causing just as much damage as cutting down trees. We can replant trees,. it’s a bit harder to re-grow our atmosphere.

So, because governments are now getting more and more strict about the environment, and companies are trying to do their part, we are now seeing these reusable shopping bags. This is not a new concept. Sears used to have little machines in the store that for a quarter you could buy a paper bag that had handles and was quite sturdy. It didn’t however seem to be a big deal back then, but since the environment is all the rave these days, they are now.

Now, Tamara has bought a bunch of the Sobey’s bags and I like them. They hold more and are a hell of a lot easier to carry my food in so I don’t mind using them. What bothers me is that places like Superstore and other stores now, are basically forcing you to buy more expensive bags and if you won’t, they’ll charge you for the other ones so regardless of how much food you need to buy, they are now sucking more money out of your pocket and claiming that the environment is the reason.

Basically they are saying that you are welcome to buy anything in our store, but if you want to leave the store with our goods, you need to pay for the bag they come in as well. You can buy the more expensive 99cent bags which hold more, or we will nickel and dime you for every bag you use.

For me, this is absolutely NOT about the environment. This is about some accountant or money guy behind the scenes who realized there was a huge opportunity to sucker the consumer. Let’s tell them that plastic bags are horrible for the environment and that if you want to “hurt” the environment, we’re going to make you pay for every one of them. If you want to help them, you can pay %2000 more for a single bag and reuse that bag. They won’t tell you that the average person will forget their bags at home, or that those bags produce far more carbon emissions to produce than a regular bag, and the last thing I heard about them recently is that many are made in sweatshops in foreign countries.  Tell me, does this sound like something that is good for the environment, or people in general?

If it really is the environment that is the driving factor, why is it we can’t simply bring back paper bags? These are far more environmentally friendly, they biodegrade easily, and can be recycled far easier than ANY plastic bag. Remember folks, even if you do remember to bring your reusable bags, companies are pumping those out by the millions and even though they aren’t making as many as they are the regular bags, they are using far more materials and time to produce them. So ultimately at the end of the day, the reusing of those bags probably doesn’t help much at all.

That brings me to the “big” picture of this rant. Months ago I responded to a letter in the local paper about how one guy suggested that if the government cared about the environment, they would ban drive-thrus. I said it was ridiculous because you’d also have to ban red-lights, stop signs, yield signs, and other forms of traffic control. I said that the man’s heart was in the right place about wanting to help the environment but this nickel and dime crap is not the way to do it.

The bottom line is that ultimately the real cause of the problems we have with our environment has to do with one simple word: oil. Oil is ultimately the fuel for almost everything around us. Pretty much anything that has a motor or engine of any kind uses some sort of oil, regardless of the variation. All of those manufacturing plants, trucks, cars, boats, airplanes, etc, all run on some variant of oil, and the waste produced by the use of oil is what causes the environmental issues we see most prominently. Yes, there are issues due to landfills, etc, but ultimately it’s the carbon release issue that’s the biggest problem. Global warming right?

Oil powers the world and because it is an unhealthy form of fuel, we have a lot of problems with our environment. The problem is that because oil powers the world, it has made a great deal of people very wealthy and they are very aware that if the use of oil was to cease, their wealth would be diminished. If you think about it, with all of the technology we have today, why does it seem SO difficult to produce a car that can run on a reusable fuel such as water? The technology exists but it either gets suppressed or just made so expensive that it’s basically impossible to market to a mass audience.

The catch is, either one of two things are going to happen: 1) The damage to our environment made by the consumption of oil products will become so bad that it is not reversable. Many say that is already the case and many say it’s nowhere near as bad as they make it out to be. Who knows. But if we cross that line, eventually the planet would be too hot to live on and we’d start seeing major effects of that. Hell, we see that now with the melting of ice shelves, etc. 2) We run out of oil. Oil is a product that has an expiration date. At some point in the future, oil companies are going to have a harder time finding oil until eventually all the wells are dried up and the world tumbles into an energy crisis that the oil companies created.

Anyways, the point of this rant was not to go off on the oil companies, but to hammer home a point. Nickel and diming our way into fixing the environment is not going to have the type of impact that we need. Some would argue that every little bit helps and I do believe that. I just think that there must be a better way to help the environment out then asking consumers to shell out more cash when we’re already taxed high enough. To me, whether it’s a carbon tax that the government issues, or having to pay out the 5cents for a bag, it’s the same thing. You might as well have another tax because that’s exactly what it is.

I’m all for helping the environment but I already get gouged for everything I buy so why is it that now I have to pay for the bags I buy my goods in?