johnkean's blog

Well as most people reading this blog will know that both my parents have passed away from Cancer at a young age. I strongly feel that if cancer research was where it is today when my parents got cancer that they would still be alive today. So with peoples continued support to the Cancer Society maybe we can make cancer history!

I am going to be heading back east for a one day curling tournament "Curl for Cancer" in Fredericton on Jan 23, 2010. A couple of friends of mine Kevin Haggerty and Grant Lawson will be driving down on the Friday and returning home on Sunday. Once there we will be meeting up with Trevor Mason to make our full curling team. We are calling ourselves "Stones of Stone" and we are planning on wearing some Scottish outfits. If you would like to sponsor us we would really appreciate it! Some Pictures will be available of our team and outfits after the event.

To donate you can go to the following link:
http://convio.cancer.ca/goto/johnyk

Thanks in advance for your support.

Haggaret, you know: Think... TPB.... Think agian. Headed out toe Undcle Ron and Auntie Katnica house and aad a few drinks..... now I plan tp type I as as I sprek. I am having yhiouble.... I nam I dinkeing a fe ding's.Juline is now suxing... I guess not priness is going ot bed... poo por ;itl,e,m fe;llos.w... ji Oit.

john...

Miss yu all!!1

John

Well, here we are again, back in the state of Florida at Gram and Grampy's Florida house. Right now I am sitting out in the lanai (screened in porch) blogging today. Kevin and the boys in Ottawa are going to be having mustache Disc golf round on New Year's Day, and I want to be a part of it so from the picture below you can see my mustache as well a pole hole in the background. The course was quite a bit busier this time when I went. I did not shoot very well I finish with Bogie golf. All the holes are now listed as par 3s, so not very good +18.




I think and hope we finally finished all our shopping. I am amazed with the amount of people in the malls and box stores on Dec 22 and 23, there was NO-ONE! fantastic for me since I am not a big fan of people. Gram and Grampy bought a new Christmas tree with the lights already on it. It was the last one but one of the strands in not working so I think they are going to return it today, hopefully they will be able to find another one, or else we are going to have to get a Jesse tree.
Today we are planning on going fishing with Uncle Ronnie and Auntie Cathrina and maybe going on his boat out to an island depending on how rough the water is. Hopefully David will be able to catch some fish.

I need to apologized for this long winded post.

Well where do I begin! We booked a flight to Saint John for Cathy and Bob's wedding using aeroplan points that when I first signed up for it was free to cash them in. Now the points expire within a year and you have to pay tax on the flight, which I don't understand since it is free, I guess everyone wants their money. The flight down was quite good I was impressed, however at the Ottawa airport I lost my coffee since I could not bring it through security since it was liquid, oh well. David really enjoyed the flight and looking at all the airplanes and telling us what color they were. He was also asking which color plane we would get on. When we landed in Saint John we waited until everyone had gotten off the plane so we would not bother anyone. So that flight was good, now upon returning from SJ we have not had much luck! We are put on a plane that only had 1 side of the airplane that could have an infant. This was the side of the plane that they put Dana and Daniel and David in one row and me in another one on the side of the plane that did not allow infants. The reason for this was the oxygen masks. I was OK with this but what comes next I was not OK with. The stewardess was mean when addressing both Dana and I. Daniel started to get fussy since it was time for supper, this was OK so Dana sent me up top to get the baby food, it had exploded since the lids of baby food don't really close properly. Well there was strawberry banana everywhere, I asked the stewardess for something to clean it up with, well apparently that really put her out since she gave me dirty look as if to say, "don't bother me". I was only trying to clean up so she would not have to. Anyway while cleaning up the strawberry banana that was all over the plane I needed to throw out the napkins I was using, apparently this pissed her off to since I got in her way again, next time I will leave it and if there are napkins covered with crap I will leave them for her to clean up.

Well, where do I start? I was headed to ball hockey tonight, I haven't really driven my truck for about 3 months. As I am driving down Cambrian road, which appears to be live a washboard or corduroy. It felt like I was in the tragically hip song. Anyway as I stopped at the stop sign everything seemed normal. Well, when I started to move again, everything was not normal. Apparently my oxygen sensor blew out of the exhaust pipe. Now the truck is loud. Not just 2 weeks ago, I said that I have not put any money into this truck, and now here it is. I am gonna have to sink $500 or more into this thing. At 11:30pm I called Tony Graham Toyota, and they were able to fit me in at midnight to get the truck looked at. I thought hummm... this is pretty good. I am glad they work until 2:00am. So after discussing with Dana what would be the most convenient, we decided I would head over there now. So here I am sitting at Tony Graham blogging about this experience since I have nothing better to do. When I arrived they were expecting me which I was surprised, so I thought humm... I should get good service. They had my truck in the shop ready to work on it before the guy at the counter could print out the work order. This mechanic was a Keener, this is good. The guy I was talking to on the phone came over and asked me if I wanted anything from Tims. I thought to myself, its midnight and I am going to be here until 2am, I should get a coffee. So I took out my money to pay and he said not to worry about it. I was quite impressed with his generosity! Within 5 minutes of me typing this blog the service man came over and confirmed that the oxygen sensor had blown off and they think they should be able to put it back on with $30 worth of parts. Again I was surprised, however I would have to pay for about an hour of labour, this sucks since I will likely be here for the next hour, but it is better than waiting until 2am. This is what they are going to try, as it appears that the pipe where the sensor attaches is still good and the sensor is also good. Tell me this service center being opened until 2am is not a brilliant idea. Well, my coffee just arrived! As promised, it was free, Fantastic! Now I am in a holding pattern, to see if that worked and if I will get my truck back. Now it is ready, and it had its oil changed.

It is now 12:52, and its all done, I arrived at 12:00. Pretty good I must say and a lot cheaper than I thought I would spend.

This time I have the hard work of looking after the children. Well it is now 32 minutes into my tenure and so far so good. Daniel has been eating now for 32 minutes and David is trying to eat my toast with 100% pure peanut butter. As Sarah always says it needs salt, this time she would be correct, it needs salt. :) On our last day off together we went over to Carolyn's house for a visit on this new holiday called family day. I am not a big fan of this family day as everything is closed! It is like Christmas, but you are not prepared for it. Oh well. When we got home we wanted to make lasagna however we did not have meat, cheese or bread. I had to borrow some meat from the Haggerty's and get some sketchy cheese at the quickie mart. All in all it was a nice last day together before Dana had to go back to work at NT. Hopefully she has a nice relaxing day as she will have lots to do when she gets home :)

Well Gram and Grampy offered to babysit the boys this morning so we could spend some time alone. We decided to hit the Disc Golf course in Port Charlotte. Dana really impressed me with her game. She had a couple of pars as well. We might even go again before we leave. While walking to the tee for the 1st hole there was a sign for golf discs for sale at Walgreens, so we headed over there to check them out, Dana now has 3 discs and I have a new bag. I bought the bag for $15 and Dana got a stratus and Magnet for 8 bucks each. I have been trying to figure out what discs I need :) I will be heading back to get some more discs later this week too. When we got home Gram and Grampy were just coming back from the beach with the boys. They really enjoyed them selves. Today I finally planted the 2 coconut trees, we will see how much they grow in a year. Hopefully they don't die.

This time we headed about 1 hour south of where we are staying to hit another DG course. I dropped Dana and the boys off at an outlet mall. The boys were not in a good mood so I got off pretty lucky. Anyway I went to the Bay Oak DG course in Fort Myers. I thought this course would be a good course because it would not be in a sketchy neighbourhood since it was on a key in Fort Myers. To make it 9km it took almost 30 minutes to get there. This is because apparently there is a very popular beach in the area. There was aparently a DG store in the "Topps Supermarket", well apparently they stopped selling discs. I thought that was odd with a course right around the corner. I headed off to the course to play the round. The course was not very good at all.,my guess as to why the super market stopped selling the discs. The signage was awful and there were a couple of holes I had to throw it through a parking lot or through a childrens play ground. I thought this was not a very good idea. I could hardly find the pole holes, due to the signage and the fact that some of the pole holes were used for 2 different holes, again something I am not a big fan of. Never the less I was able to get a round in and this time my score was a +10. I assumed all holes were par 3 however I don't really think that is the case. I am hoping to get one more round in at the course in Port Charlotte to see if I can improve on my original score, now that I have an idea of where I should be throwing.

Well, I was able to get out for another round today when Dana, David and Daniel went to an Aquarium in Sarasota. This allowed me to hit a different course. I dropped the kids off at about 10:50 and headed off to the course. As I was getting closer I thought to myself, this neighbourhodd is getting a little sketchy. Anyway I find the park it is well marked which was good. As I drive into the parking lot there is this dilapidated Nissan Sentra in the parking lot with 2 people sitting in the car looking at me. I thought to myself that I was going to be robbed or worse killed. By the time I got my cleats on and started to make my way to the 1st hole they decided they were done watching and drove off. I started to play and I must say this was a very nice course some interesting things to be noted to change the course up with minimal cost. They had 2 concrete tee pads and 2 basket locations. This allows for 4 different holes with a semi permanent course. This time I brought some beer with me. On the 5th hole I cracked it open, and had it finished by the 6th hole, but there was no place to put it down while I was playing. There was no-one there playing when I arrived however by the time I started on the back nine there was another car that pulled into the parking lot. I heard this sound, I thought I have heard this before. I looked into the distance into the parking lot and this new car was getting packing saran wrapped around one of the doors. I thought to myself WTF. I am going to be killed here and never see my wife and kids again. On my way to the 15th hole I see this guy sitting at a picnic table reading a newspaper with a keyboard, bike and a can of beer in a paper bag. I was thinking oh dear what is going to happen, he was very polite and told me this was the worst hole on the course because the trees bark. I tee off and think I hit a tree about 20 feet infront of me. I felt like Rage as I think I might have hit every tree on the course! Final round was +16 with one disc OB, landing in a shit creek. Good thing I made it back to pick up Dana and the kids by 12:30 and we then went and spent a pile of money at SuperTarget.

Well, this sounds like a stupid question, well it actually is quite interesting what I have found out after being here for a month. As a canadian it is quite painful to buy gas!
So everywhere you go now a days is a pay at the pump, which is great if that was what it meant for everyone. It says "Insert card" so I put in my credit card, then oddly enough it asks me if it is a credit card or dedit card, what the hell do you think? You read everything else off the card, enough to charge my account and it still asks me if this is a credit card, come on! Then it asks for a zipcode, as a canadian I don't have one, so what do I do? I have to go inside. That is fine. This is apparently to protect you credit card. I go inside and
I said, "I am Canadian, how do I get gas", with my arms up in the air, picture it :).
Anyway she laughs and says "Oh this is a safety feature for your credit card",
I thought, "well that is nice of them."
She says "How much gas do you want?"
I say "I want it full."
She says "How much is that?"
I say "I don't know, I just want it to be full."
She says "Is it a little empty or a lot."
I say "An eighth of a tank."
She says "Oh that should be about $30."
I have never put less than $40 in this car. She make me leave my credit card with her, anyway and I have to go out and pump? How is this protecting my card. A stranger is sitting there at a gas station studying my card and who knows what else. I finish pumping and then have to go back in again to get my card, how is this even remotely convienient, its not. I think I am going to contact Visa and ask for a 5 digit number as my ZIP and see if they will go for it.