acidbasement

^What Steve said. I interviewed for the position of development officer for my local planning district last night. Within an hour of the interview, they offered me the job. I think I'm going to take it. It's part-time and it's not in my field, but new challenges, blah blah blah... The pay is solidly mediocre, augmenting our current income enough to sock some away for retirement and buy the occasional modest audio upgrade without guilt. The part-time aspect is what sold me on the job though - it means I get to continue farming, renovating my house, growing a vegetable garden, spending time with my kids, heating my house with self-cut wood, and maybe even finishing my master's thesis.

They look like a lot of thought went into how expensive they ought to look. I'm skeptical, but interested. edit: Sort of.

All the best to everyone affected, and your families. May your feet stay dry.

Happy birthday!

Thanks all, and happy happies to Carl and Iron_Dreamer! I had a fine day, mostly spent re-routing electric fence for fall pasture in a light rain. I soggily returned home to a lovely supper, tasty beer, and homemade cheesecake.

My fave so far:

Hope it's a good 'un!

This is amazing.

Peeling back siding and tar paper from the outside of the house before covering it with rigid foam insulation, I have found many flies, beetles, rotten wood, and mold, with the latter two being highly localized, thankfully. Hopefully there will be no more surprises. New windows will be installed soon!

389.997 + 7 = 396.997 I met Eleanor in the Geography dept. at the University of Winnipeg, where we were both doing our undergrads. She had an extra key to a student office room, where people often worked on research projects for various professors, and she gave it to me, since we were both friends with the other people in the office. It was all platonic, and I was unhappily shacked up with another woman at the time anyway. It soon became clear that we were enjoying each other's company a lot, and that on many levels we were pretty much the same person. It became really obvious that I could not stay with the person with whom I was living at the time, and I never looked back. Now Eleanor and I have two awesome boys and more animals than I should admit.

Merry birthday, Wayne!

This one? Very nice indeed.

Whoa! Therion have a new album coming out in November, and have announced that the next one after it will be a rock opera. I am giddy with anticipation.

Hippity bippity!

I'm cheap and I like old stuff, so I find myself on audiokarma.org a fair bit. HC is the only site on which I post, though, except the Winnipeg thread on HF.

A good birthday to you, Jim!

Anyone like My Drunk Kitchen? Recent discovery for me, and I laugh at some of them. [url=]

Have a good 'un!

I spend a lot of time in Jasper National Park, in Alberta. It's quite a bit less commercial than Banff, and you can get away from the throngs of tourists quite easily by stepping into the backcountry. Though I've never been, I've heard nothing but good things about Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, which is contiguous with Glacier National Park in Montana. I want very much to do a road trip through the southern parks, close to the US border. Grasslands National Park looks stunning from the photos I've seen, and Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park looks good too. I've been to Gros Morne National Park, on the west coast of Newfoundland, and I cannot recommend that trip enough. It's got all the rugged mountain beauty of Banff and Jasper, combined with ocean, and there were hardly any tourists at all. The overnight ferry ride from Nova Scotia was really cool, too. I live just a few miles from Riding Mountain National Park, which is 3000 km^2 of mixed boreal-aspen parkland in Manitoba. We've got a few sprawling vistas one can enjoy in solitude, and the wildlife viewing opportunities are definitely here. Moose, elk, black bears (highest density in North America), lynx, and wolves are relatively common, as are various owls and other birds that bird people like to watch in the early morning. I've got space to host if anyone wants to make the trip.

Necrobump! My friend was going to throw this out. I said "mine!". It's a Mitsubishi LT-90 linear tracking turntable with the accompanying DA-L90 seven-cassette deck receiver combo. Seems to work perfectly. It's very '80s, with the seven-cassette drawer sliding automagically out from the receiver when you push the button. Not that I needed it, but it's pretty neat. Playing Black Sabbath through my old psb alphas, it's a pretty thumpin' mid-fi throwback.

I've got one picture disc that sounds (and looks) amazing - Touched by the Crimson King, by Demons & Wizards. I guess it's spoiled me for all the others.

They're going to be made from the original masters, too. However, I have their 'Death on the Road' pic disc, and it's a terrible pressing for surface noise*. I hope these ones are better. *I don't have a proper record cleaning system, so take this with as many grains of salt as you wish.

Smithers, release the hounds.

S.H.I.E.L.D.has not had a bad episode. Whether it will have one remains to be seen, but I'm hopeful. We should just have a general Joss Whedon thread already.

They sound pretty cool, Dusty. I'm listening here.