Life: Catching Up

As Aerin so helpfully pointed out, I haven't posted here in a long while. There wasn't much to say since it was a lot of busy time just doing the living life thing. However I guess I can update things with some more exciting news.

We bought a house in Deer Run. It's close to Fish Creek Provincial Park and the off-leash dog park. My commute will stretch from a 20 minute walk to under 60 minutes on mostly the LRT. Overall we are very happy with how things turned out with the price, location and the house.

The house itself is a four-level, front-bank split with a double detached garage. The garage needs some exterior finishing and new shingles, but we'll do the shingles this summer and then redo the exterior next year when we'd like to upgrade the windows and house exterior. The windows are original, and the house has metal siding right now. We need to replace the foundation parging, so this would all happen together. The eaves off the gables were not installed properly either, so that's a matter of bolting things back on. Replacement of the furnace and hot water heater is also future project, but for right now the exterior is our focus.

The first order of business after possession is changing locks, and then it's out with all the carpeting. We're getting a cash deal with someone Aerin knows, so we should be able to redo everything with laminate that's currently carpeted. Renovated bathrooms and the kitchen are on the future projects list, but the structureal stuff is of most immediate concern. After the initial bit of busy work it's on to moving. By the end of June we will be in our very own house.

I am doing more strength training and cardio on the recumbent bike at the gym. I can wake up in the morning and not feel soreness or stiffness in my back once I get moving around. This will continue for another month before I start into the running again. I've had some stiff shoulder/neck spots due to being a little stressed over the whole house thing, but that is slowly working out too. Lots of long walks with Ursa have done well to help keep Aerin and I active.

And speaking of Ursa, SHE'S HUGE! I knew we were getting a big dog when we got her, but she is officially way past the breed standard for a female Black Russian Terrier. She stands about 29.5"/75cm at the shoulder (standard max. 28"/72cm as I recall), has a big, black nose (the breeder even says so), has a chest of 35" (and growing), and some darned long legs. We haven't had Ursa on a scale in almost two months now, but the last time she was weighed the scales tipped just over 100lbs/45kg. One of her brother's already has 10kg on her. Basically we couldn't show her if we wanted to since she's bigger than standard. Another BRT we know named Sasha is a good year and half older than Ursa, and last we heard he wasn't even 100lbs.

We love our puppy a lot. It's great fun seeing peoples reaction to her when we go for walks along the river. "Fantastic", "beautiful" and "great" are some of the many positive adjectives people use to describe Ursa. We still haven't met anyone that has guessed her breed right the first time, but we don't keep her trimmed in the usual BRT cut either. "Big" or "huge" are also commonly mentioned in conversations with other people about Ursa, but she's just our dog. We can't help it other dogs look so little. No doubt we'll have a whole new group of admirers and people in awe of Ursa's wonderful puppy-ness once we've moved.

The Flames of War Escalation League I've been running at The Sentry Box has been quite successful this year. Lots of new players and many battles fought on Sundays for the last five months almost. I plan to try another league in the fall that I am trying to decide the details, but it will be set in the Late War period.

Some other players and I have also started up a historical game club with our focus being Flames of War. We will branch out a little, but for now it's just FoW. We are currently planning to run a big D-Day battle that covers Juno Beach from Courselles-sur-Mer to Bernier-sur-Mer. I have my work cut out for me building terrain over the next month. Trench lines, barbed wire obstacles, an enfilade bunker and some tank tobruks are all waiting for my attention.

I had thought I'd gotten my American Armored Rifle company finished just about, but then I realized I'd completely forgotten about the damned transportation. So now I have to finish those too. Except I have now hit a bit of a snag with applying decals because the gloss varnish is beading on the basecoat to form a bunch of ripples and ridges. So now I plan to take a little 600 grit wet sanding paper to things to try and even out the surface before going back to finish the decals. I have a detailing left after that, but otherwise things are pretty well complete. Then it's on to my next army - Soviets. Then it's back to Americans and Soviets in alternation to finish off some of the other platoon options for switching out or expanding things.

I will try to do some more catching up later this week or next.