I go away for Christmas only to come back to one of the best presents yet:


I'm the Gak-A-Teer of the year! The first ever! That's, like, the first time I've ever been first at something and had it be a good thing. Not like those other times. Like when the doctor said to my mom, "Mrs. Mohninger, your son has the first ever case of..." Or when my high school science teacher said, "Derek, this is the first time anyone's ever gotten below zero." I recall saying, "That's the first time THAT'S ever happened," to many a young girl I was interested in, then running away all hunched over. However, this is truly and honour.

Thank's Jason! I mean it! I think My Living Dead Girl is a very entertaining strip. I've always been attracted to the type of entertainment that includes some way out aspect that everyone takes as normal. That's perhaps why I liked the first Ace Ventura so much. Hey! Everyone might have been thinkin' this pet detective guy was crazy, but they accepted him for who he was and didn't have him committed.

Courtney Davers goes around eating anything she wants, and everyone just takes it for granted that their school mate or cat won't be around anymore. Love it! Jason, you have truly come out with a product that has me enthralled.

If you head over to MLDG's News Blog, you'll see that Jason's awarded the first ever Gak-A-Teer of the Year (me again...schwing!) with an autographed clock. Now, my wife was totally excited about this clock and has given me permission to hang it in my office out of site. I will hang it with pride. I've got kind of a theme going as I got a MLDG hoodie, too. I've never has a quality hoodie before, so I though that since I wanted some MLDG paraphernalia, I might as well kill two birds with one stone:


You can tell two things from this photo with out using any psychic abilities. Those with psychic abilities: STAY OUT OF MY HEAD! The two things are:

1. I spend way too much time on the internet.
2. I hate to shave regularly.

Once again, I have to say, "Thanks, Jason!" I want to encourage everyone who likes and dislikes the zombie genre to head over to his site and read about Courtney. Also, head on over to Top Site to vote for My Living Dead Girl as the best zombie site ever. I want to get more traffic Jason's and Courtney's way so that we can encourage them to come out more frequently.

What are you waiting for? MOVE!

And now for some personal stuff. We had a wonderful Christmas with my mom at her's and dad's place in Creston. Sucked that dad wasn't there, though. Apparently he'll be there next year, so we have that to look forward to. We got something that Calgary didn't have: a white Christmas. I also got a cold that is just now going away.

Doesn't that beat all? Michelle and I get ten days away from the kids who are still in Creston with my mom, and we both get sick. Nothing spells romance better than the honk of someone blowing their nose into a used and dried up Kleenex.

We watched Little Miss Sunshine last night. I tell you, I just can't get enough of Steve Carell. Not only is he the master of uncomfortable comedy, but he shines here with a touch of dramatic acting. The rest of the cast were spot on in their rolls from the wife hiding her smoking, the husband convinced that his nine step self-help program is the key to success, the gay brother who fails at committing suicide because of his lack of recognition for being a scholar in something I can't even remember, the father who snorts heroine and swears in front of everyone, and the son who's taken a vow of silence until he reaches his goal of becoming a military test pilot. Oh, and the innocent little girl who's beauty pageant routine you just have to see. Not a family film, but very, very entertaining.

In closing, I want to wish everyone a happy New Year. It usher's in mine and Shannon's webcomic, and we're going to strive to entertain. If nothing comes out of it, at least we're having fun doing it. I hope you have fun reading it. So don't forget to check out Take It Like A Husband starting tomorrow:

Santa did something special this year...he made it possible to sleep in till 7am. Other than that, the kids tore into their loot this morning made out like bandits.

My sister got a special present this year. The novelty wasn't as, er, novel since she owned it already, but it came in a shiny new box:

Seriously though, what I think is really cool is this:

A white Christmas, ladies and gents. Just awesome!

So, here's a toast to your very merry Christmas! I hope it is shared with friends and family be it with their physical presence or warm fuzzy thoughts.

Love you guys,

Derek

I thought I’d write it all down to see if I’m being reasonable or not. Chances are that I’m not seeing as I know myself better than anyone, but I’ve been known to surprise myself on occasion with an actually piece of well thought out diatribe and decision making. However, perusing my previous posts proves to me that these are rare occasions to be cherished and, possibly, collected into a novella as proof to my offspring and future generations that I wasn’t a complete moron at all times. Just part-time! However, in a lot of the movies I watch, the loveable goof-of-a-guy is always rooted for, right?

How many people know that I’m having car trouble? Show of hands please…

Okay, now how many people knew that it was actually cars and not car? Ooh, a few hands went down.

Michelle and I have somehow become a GM family. This was not intended as I didn’t really read any lemon guides to automobile purchase, but through a series of good fortune we are both able to use separate vehicles which both happen to be GM products. The first, a Pontiac Sunfire, was purchased brand new back in Victoria from Dave-Wheaton Pontiac Buick in 2002; the second is a used 2002 Chevy Venture, yes, a minivan, that was purchased used from Murray Chev in Medicine Hat at the beginning of this year, so I’ve had it for almost a year now. I couldn’t afford to be choosey at the time (yeah, because now I have more money than I know what to do with NOTE SARCASM), and even though one could tell by the way the vehicle looked that the previous owner had been less than kind to the vehicle, I had been assured that the vehicle was in tip-top shape because it was a GM Optimum Used Vehicle. Reading through that link, it seems like every used vehicle sold under GM’s Optimum name is gone over from top to bottom, inside and out. I was assured by the salesman that the van had been thoroughly inspected and every conceivable detail had been taken care of. Upon test driving the vehicle, I noted a certain smell to the salesman who told me that the van would be detailed before it came into my possession. Man, I’m thick! Why the heck would they detail it after a purchase was made? Why wouldn’t they do that before to increase the appeal of such a vehicle to a consumer? I was told that the interior would be steam cleaned and the engine shampooed or what ever it is you do to engines. Kiwi-lemon rinse, maybe? What they actually did was put some sort of scented deodorizer in the interior carpet to mask the smell for a short period of time. Now, I had my humorous dealings involving this van, but like I said before, I was assured that it was inspected to the very last diminutive detail. However, I purchased a protection plan anyway.

The “Emissions Control” and “Traction Control” light lit up early last week on the Sunfire’s display. The automatic shifting became vary rough at high RPMs. Not being under the bumper to bumper warranty anymore, I took the car to a Petrocanada Certiguard mechanic or, as the big dealers like to call them, jobber shop. They hooked their diagnostic tool up to the computer of the car and found a trouble code (P0717) that informed them that it had something to do with the Transmission Speed Sensor (TSS), but seeing as they weren’t transmission specialists (they could take them out and put them back in, but they wouldn’t open up a transmission), the mechanic wanted to send it to a transmission place to be diagnosed. He informed me first that I shouldn’t drive the car too much in its current condition (no kidding), but then totally failed to inform me that the transmission guy he wanted to send the car to was about 20 kms away. He phoned me later to tell me that they had pretty well been right about the problem and that because of where the sensor was located (apparently in the transmission), several things would have to be done to get at it. Part of the axel would have to be move, a priest would have to bless the area, a microscopic population of unknown creatures would have to be relocated, and, finally, the transmission would have to be taken out. All in all, the total approximated cost would be around $1450.

I was dumbstruck (big surprise)! The car is only four years old! There’s no way that any repair should cost that much…yet! Unless I had been driving erratically (I don’t) or had been in an accident (I haven’t), I mean.

But wait!

The bumper to bumper warranty may be up, but I remembered that the vehicle still had a 5 year, 100000 km powertrain warranty. Being a person of my intelligence level, I suspected that the powertrain warranty had something more to do than protecting any toy train sets I may have purchased and taken for a ride in my car, so I phoned up the GM help line and barely had time to listen to the hold music before I was speaking to a very friendly lady on the other end. I told her my dilemma; she put me on hold.

She didn’t take too long, however. She informed me transmissions fell under the warranty but even though the TSS was located in the transmission, it was considered an electronic part, and the powertrain warranty only covered mechanical components. My hopes were dashed!

I considered this after I finished speaking with the GM representative: the component is electronic, yet it tells the transmission what to do. If it fails in doing so, the transmission shifts roughly and will eventually fail. When the transmission is all gibbled and useless, the problem has then become a mechanical one. Wouldn’t my warranty cover that? I’m not saying that this is the course that I’m taking, but I find it odd that the powertrain warranty wouldn’t cover small items that would prevent major mechanical failures. I looked up the price of a TSS; 50 bucks at most! That’s almost $1500 to replace a $50 component!

I tried phoning some dealers to see what their take on it would be, but they just wanted me to bring it in and pay to get it diagnosed again. I’ll probably have to do this, anyway.

Now, the van had some brake work done on it a week or so before this, and since then when the van stops there is a serious squeak or grinding sound that wasn’t there before. Could be that the brake pad are wearing out, but seeing as the van was just serviced and an inspection done, I thought the mechanic doing the servicing would have caught this. The van was serviced at Certiguard, as well. The technician wrote a whole list of items that he found, though, upon his inspection. Items that included a leaking oil pan, a leaking steering column, leaking brake lines, etc, etc. All sorts of items on the barely year-old purchase of a GM Optimum Used Vehicle. On the list of items that he gave us, the brakes were the most important, so we got those done right away. I had completely forgotten about the protection plan. So we paid for the brake work to be done, and no, this did not involve new pads.

A few days later we noticed the squeaking and grinding every time we would brake to a complete stop. Only when stopping did this occur and not when holding the brakes to slow down. We brought the van back to Certiguard where the technician had guessed that it was just brake dust. What he found would cost almost $400 in parts alone. It was at this point that I remembered the protection plan, and we took the vehicle out of Certiguard’s care and made an appointment at the nearest GM dealer, Shaganappi Chev http://www.shaganappi.com/. Michelle dictated to them word-for-word every item on the Certiguard technician’s list. This included about five items, and we added two more: the air conditioner that didn’t work and the rear windshield wiper that didn’t wipe. Every item was covered under warranty, thank goodness, and all I had to pay for was the $100 deductible. There is a $100 deductible per visit not per item.

I went to pick up the vehicle yesterday. The attendant told me they had found a few more items that we didn’t know about that were covered under warranty, and that I had definitely taken advantage of the coverage that I had purchased. I had been reassured that there were no more leaks, that the ABS light wasn’t going to be on constantly, that my AC would blow cold air and that everything had been taken care of. I even found out that the brake work that Certiguard had done was covered, and that all I had to do was fax the receipt to head office where they would reimburse us minus the $100 deductible. I was happy.

That’s when they pulled the van around, and it made the same squeaking, grinding noise when it came to a complete stop. I said to the kid that got out of my van that I thought that noise was supposed to be fixed. He hadn’t a clue about it, so he got the attendant who talked to me before. I asked why the noise was still there. He looked through the work order and said that it wasn’t one of the items we had given them. I said that we were told by Certiguard that it was due to the brake problem we stated. We looked through the book of a receipt they had given me which detailed every item that was covered during my van’s stay at Shaganappi Chev, and under the first item it said that the technician heard a squeaking, grinding sound while taking it for a test drive.

Why wasn’t this investigated, I asked the attendant. He said that the technician had made a judgment call and deemed it not important enough to pursue. They didn’t even check what it was making the sound. I was flabbergasted! Yes, I just used the word flabbergasted in a sentence. I was stammering! I read the note again, and I’m paraphrasing here because I don’t have the actual receipt in front of me, and read that the service technician had hear a squeaking, grinding sound from the rear brakes or suspension when coming to a stop. How could that not be important? I said. I’m pretty sure that the brakes and suspension are a core piece of the vehicle that prevents its occupants from, oh, I don’t know, DYING!!!

He reiterated that the noise was not mentioned on our list of complaints. Michelle had dictated the list over the phone and never mentioned the noise. I don’t blame her at all! We had the vehicle in at Certiguard and were told exactly what the problem was. That was the list Shaganappi Chev was given. It didn’t occur to us that we’d need to mention the noise as well.

But they heard it anyway! I have it on the receipt they gave me! And they never even checked it out because they deemed it unimportant! I don’t even care if this particular problem wasn’t covered under warranty; I just want to know what the problem is and how to make it go away.

This attendant asked if I wanted to bring it in the following morning, but I was just angry at that point. Now if I brought the van in again and the problem they discovered wasn’t under warranty, they would charge me for inspecting the vehicle. This just floors me! They had the vehicle in their shop, and they didn’t bother to check something that could potentially be a serious issue. Mind you, it could be a simple item, too. But they didn’t check! Now I have to take time out of my busy schedule to get this checked out! Again! And I have to because my kids and my wife and, sometimes, my dog ride in that van, and I like them alive! Always have.

And what really grinds my gears is that the attendant kept making excuse after excuse and said that the noise wasn’t on the work order. Why hadn’t we mentioned it? Well, that point is moot, my friend, when you actually know about it. The attendant didn’t know about it personally, but the technician did! They should have checked. They should have at least checked. They made me feel like I should have diagnosed every little problem with the vehicle before I brought it in. Well, if I did that then I’d be a mechanic and wouldn’t need them now, would I?

I wanted to make an appointment to get the car’s problems checked out, but they didn’t have any space before the holidays. I’m leaving on Friday for mom’s and dad’s, so the car will have to wait till I get back.

If it is in my power and within financial feasibility, I will never, ever buy a GM product again. I may have the same problems with another manufacturer, but that is an adventure I’m willing to take. From problems with the vehicles to the people who sell them and the people who service them, I find that I now have a particular loathing for GM.

Grrrrr!

I can’t wait till Friday!

Ola! How is everyone?

Michelle kind of freaked me out Saturday night/Sunday morning…ish! I think it was actually Sunday since I remember picking my cell phone of the night table (I use it as an alarm so Michelle can use the clock…I’m so good to her) and seeing around one in the ante meridiem. You have to understand where I’m coming from when I relate this tale. I’ve been reading, on and off, Neil Gaiman’s short story collective “Fragile Things,” and while I wouldn’t describe him in the same vein as Stephen King, I would definitely put him in the horror genre of a book store. And yet I wouldn’t, as well. He is an author of such caliber that he can jump around from every section of your local library and still feel comfortable. He’s written comedy with (my favourite author) Terry Pratchett; he’s written horror; he writes fantasy. Kristen even has one of his many “for younger readers” books in her desk at school because I recommended it. He even wrote comic books of which one was my very favourite of all the titles I collected: Sandman. Dark, gritty, intelligent and just enough content to make you uncomfortable as your skin tries to crawl away from your body.

So now you may have an inkling of the mindset I’ve been in lately when the lights turn out, and I attempt to sleep. Neil has done many stories in the H.P. Lovecraft universe, and while I’ve only exposed myself slightly to Lovecraft’s works, I definitely know enough about it to describe Neil’s horror works as Lovecraftian. For those of you familiar enough with Lovecraft, you won’t need to follow this link to learn about the popular Cthulhu of Lovecraft tales. I will definitely be reading more of his works.

I had a dream while in this mind set. I remember my dreams, mostly, after awaking, but the level of detail retained has always varied. I sometime immediately remember the dream and its contents as soon as I open my eyes, or an event during the day may cause a jog in my memory reminding me of the previous evening’s slumberland entertainment. Sometimes the dreams are so vivid that when I’m reminded of them later I have trouble distinguishing them from an actual event from the past. And other times the dreams are so emotionally draining that I find they affect the way I feel and act throughout the day or days to come.

In this dream, Michelle and I sat in chairs in a room of insignificant mention. A phone rang, and my wife passed it to me saying that I was wanted on the other end. I don’t remember saying hello, but I do remember that it was Michelle on the other end. I looked over and saw her in the chair beside me, no phone in her hand and her mouth wasn’t moving to the words coming from the telephone’s ear piece. I enquired as to who this really was on the other end, to which the voice replied. “Very funny!” and continued to speak to me about matters I found trivial. Michelle, who sat beside me, continued to sit beside me. Michelle, who was on the phone, continued to speak as if answering questions I hadn’t actually asked her.

I continued to voice my doubts about the identity of the person speaking to me, and Michelle, who sat beside me, didn’t seem to notice that I was becoming agitated, and, in fact, didn’t seem to realize that I was even in the room.

The voice on the phone finally gave up on me and said, “Hold on!” There was a moment or two of silence on the phone before another voice came on. “Hello,” it said.

It was me!

I could recognize my voice easily enough. I continued to talk to myself from the other end, but the part of me that was sitting in the chair talking to myself over the phone was becoming quite upset with the charade, and I started to voice my discomfort. I started to fling insult after poorly thought out insult at myself over the phone. The voice on the other end started to protest, but he couldn’t get a word in edgewise as I had had enough. I was not going to be made a fool of.

“What am I if I’m not dead?”

It took me a moment to realize that I had woken up and was lying in my bed with Michelle to my left. The room was still dark, and it was at this point that I checked my cell phone for the time. I thought I had heard someone ask me a question, but I wasn’t sure if it was the tail end of the dream or if it was real.

So I asked, “Wh…what?”

Michelle, in her drowsy voice, asked me, “What am I if I’m not dead?”

I couldn’t tell if she was asleep or not; Michelle and I have carried out many conversations that she would never recall as she was asleep and dreaming while I should have been, as well.

“Um, alive?” I responded.

“No!” she exclaimed. “What am I if I’m not dead wood?”

If I had been more awake, which it may seem impossible at the time as I had no intentions of falling immediately back to sleep with the way my brain was buzzing and my heart was pounding. But if I had been more aware of the situation, I would have said, “Useful?” Instead I said:

“I don’t know!”

She didn’t respond after that, so, finally realizing that she was still asleep, I asked her the same question:

“Well? What are you if you’re not dead wood?”

With just a tiny hint of a drowsy pause, she answered: “Alive wood!”

No amount of urging could get her to continue, and I am now forever left with wondering what had brought that particular topic up. She doesn’t remember saying or asking anything, but the tale really amused the kids.

I got to play drywaller helper this weekend. My buddy Roger hasn’t had the best of luck when it comes to hiring people to help him out. He related the fact that he went through three people in one month, all of them falsifying their experience, but readily showing their lack of it on the job. So I got to help him out at a particularly nice duplex on Saturday. I’m actually a little sore seeing as my job hasn’t required any heavy lifting, and I’ve forgotten what the free gym upstairs is for.

This is a shout out to anyone with drywalling experience living in Calgary. Roger needs reliable people! Let me know if you’re interested, and I’ll pass your contact info to him.

There is one thing you have to know about me if you plan on frequenting my blog, which I am happy to see that you are doing. Friends, family and strangers alike are welcome here. I just ask that you wipe your feet because we just had the floors done. Oh, yes, the one thing you need to know about me is that I am, now what was that technical tern the special doctors used….Right! GOOFY! I’m goofy! In no way should you take me too seriously. People who have taken me too seriously have wound up with a weird perception of what reality is. My sky truly is not blue! There are shades of taupe and some spatterings of puce. In other words, there’s no rhyme or reason to any of this other than the order it comes out of my itchy fingers.

And I was in no way implying that you weren’t being family friendly, but once again just stating random obvious facts. Some cows are black and white! There I go doing it again. I will also run off on tangents that are only slightly linked to what I’ve previously said. The bulls in the movie Barnyard frightened me because they all had udders. See? Only slightly linked because I made reference to a cow a couple of sentences ago. Please don’t think I’m offended…it’s not like you’re my next door neighbor or landlord, right? Right?

And “anonymous post” post away! Any comments I receive, good or bad, lets me know that people are reading. That’s some serious ego stroking, dontchaknow? And to know that I’ve actually touched on a subject that others care about makes me see that everything I write isn’t complete drivel but only part drivel-part real world commentary. Hah! That last sentence WAS complete drivel!

I am SO looking forward to taking Kristen to see Eragon. She managed to read the book while I did not. I’m still immersed in Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things, and I just read a short story entitled The Problem With Susan. It was Neil’d fictional take on what happened to Susan from the Narnia series, and I did not like it. I’ve liked most of the short stories in the book so far, and I could see what he was doing. He actually had the characters make mention of previous versions of children’s stories such as the Grimm tales and how they were originally made for adults with all the macabre details left in that children shouldn’t (in my opinion) read or hear about. However, CS Lewis’ stories were, I believe, written for children in the first place, and Neil did a sort of reverse engineering of the process and made an adult story with regards to Susan. I didn’t like the effect it had on me. However, that was probably his intent, so since he was able to accomplish what he set out to do, “Bravo!” He’s still tops on my reader’s list.

Oh, yes! Kristen and Eragon! It starts this Friday, and you can see the trailer for it here. I wish I had a chance to read the book first seeing as I’ve heard a lot about how the author started writing it at a young age. He came out with a sequel that Kristen also read. These books are about a foot and a half thick, and Kristen put it away in about a week or two each. She loves reading, and it warms my heart to know that.

I’ve kind of taken a step back from writing too much for two reasons. First, after sitting idle at my job for almost 6 months, I’ve finally been given work to do. In fact, I’ve been given lots of work to do. I could literally sleep at the office if I wanted to…I don’t, mind you, because my bed is softer than my desk chair. The second reason is that I’m hard at work on Take It Like A Husband. That takes a little bit of time, dontchaknow?

And with that I leave you for now. I’ll show you a picture of me cleaning gutters at night, however. That’s an interesting story in itself, and I’d print it here if I didn’t think lawyers would get involved. Suffice to say it’s another one of those adventurous speed bumps I’ve mentioned previously. I’ll tell the story to anyone who wants to hear it though! It’s a doozy!

I don't mind having anonymous posters to my comments section since, ultimately, I have the power to keep or delete the comments at will. This is just to keep things family friendly and all.

However, it seems like a certain poster felt the need to defend the Village Square Rec Centre. I replied in due fashion as well.

Just check out the comments for that post to see what I'm talking about. Oh, and happy hump day!

Well, besides a certain "gutter" issue, everything's been a little quiet on the home front. I have to get off my butt so I can, er, actually sit back down on it to draw an immense amount of entertaining strips for maybe one or two people to enjoy. So I thought I'd make this a quick little photo blog.

Here's Kristen the night of her dance:


Oh! My! Gosh! I mean, oh my gosh! What the hell am I going to do? I'm either going to drink myself stupid with worry, or I'm going to jail for beating on boys who look at her in a certain way, and seeing as any way is a certain way, it's open season on every freakin' male child in the whole freakin' world!

Oh my gosh!

So she went to this dance at the community centre with three of her friends, and she stayed the entire time. She only phoned when the dance was over because she thought her mom wasn't on the way yet. Thankfully we're not at that age yet where she phones to say she doesn't need to be picked up.

Oh my freakin' gosh!

I asked her if any boys asked her to dance, prepared to start my list of names to remember. She said one did, but that she said no to his request. I jokingly asked if he was ugly. She said yes, yes he was. Apparently he had braces, too. So either my baby has standards or she's a snob. Either way, she didn't dance with the kid.

Oh my, agh! Give it a rest, Derek.

We decided to take a Christmas photo for our cards this year. So I set the camera to take automatic pictures of this pose:


However, I guess we didn't realize it was taking pictures, so we just thought we were waiting for a very long time. Eventually, we all fell asleep from boredom:


Later, we roused from our slumber. Everyone seemed normal, but I was a little peckish:


Rylee didn't seem to mind as she was using her right brain at the time. Kristen, who I swore I mentioned was very beautiful before (OH MY FREAK-A-DEAKIN' GOSH!), was practicing her boy-repelling, and Michelle, er, um, Michelle was doing some sort of Willy Wonka impression. Don't ask me! It was her impression!

Okay, I just had to show this to everyone. This is probably the most high tech urinal ever created, and where's it going if it's constructed? That's right! Victoria!

Here's the link to the article about the Urilift System which is, essentially, permission for every guy to just whip it out in public and do their thing. Awesome! I wonder if there's a female version in the works?



The Urilift is a urinal that rises out of the ground at night. It's pupose to stop people from peeing on the street.

Edit: If the video doesn't work, it's also located on the article page I linked.

It's officially December which means we can finally put the tree up. I know a lot of people have already put their tree up (COUGH! Roger! COUGH! May), but I just don't feel right about doing it until it's officially the Christmas month. Actually, my favourite way of putting the tree up is going to sleep and having it all ready for decorating the next day. It's happened before when Michelle didn't feel like sleeping. Ah! Those were the days...