Kalamaf Drackonsbane » Life

My First Truck

kalamaf — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 02:30:34 +0000

I’ve been saying it for years now but I finally got around to doing it, I got myself a truck. Just a small one, a Ford Ranger, and it was cheap. The truck itself was only $600 and it didn’t need much work to get it road legal. Technically it was already legal since the safety inspection is good for another year, but it did need some work. A new power steering hose, a new fan belt, some body work and a couple of tires for the front. It’s not pretty but it runs well and suits my needs just fine.

It had been in a little fender bender at some point which is easy to tell just looking at the front fenders (which aren’t even the originals!) they look like they could use a visit to www.wrinklefiller.org, but nah, the bumps and bruises add character and the multi-color paint job too. It all adds up to a truck that no one would bother to steal cause it just doesn’t look like it’s worth anything >;)

Busy around the House

kalamaf — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 01:40:34 +0000

Damn it’s been a hot summer so far and it’s barely started! Temperatures have been over 25 celcius already pretty much every day for the last week, but stuff needs to get done regardless of how hot it is. Mowed the lawn, put up the trampoline for the kid, started putting up a frame around the deck so we can fence it in with mosquito net so maybe we can enjoy the outdoors a little more this year without getting eaten alive by little blood suckers.

It’s a good thing I’m a pretty stress free guy or I’d be needing migraine treatments by now. It’s good to be busy, but it’s good to have some time off to rest. I’m not complaining though, things are a lot worse for many businesses in this town since our tourism industry has been cut off at the knees this year.

Halifax Trio In Town

kalamaf — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 22:02:01 +0000

Funny name eh? Rain Over St Ambrose will be in town to play their collection of songs. Cory Leblanc writes his own son and plays the drum, bet he must have had some over the counter sleep aids since he must have been too excited working on them. The group, which also features Cory’s brother Curt, Marc Durkee, Luke Amirault and Matt Amirault, plays the Red Knight this Friday with Jon McKiel, for whom LeBlanc has drummed on and off for the last few years, and Sleepless Nights. The Halifax power trio with Yarmouth roots (Aaron Wallace, Trevor Murphy and Josh Pothier all grew up here) just finished a tour that took them to Ontario and back to showcase the material from their latest free download release, The Phone Booth Outside the Video Store. Red Knight – this Friday evening – show your support to our local talent.

Too Much Change

kalamaf — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 02:25:38 +0000

Change can be a good thing. Too much change is typically a bad thing. Unless it’s the clinky clink type of change you find in your pocket at the end of every day and throw it into a can or bottle and forget about it. Do this on a daily basis and eventually you’ll look into the can and go ‘damn, that’s a lot of change’. I’ve got 3 cans full of change right now and I’m sure it’s at least a couple hundred bucks. I’m just too lazy to roll it up and bring it to the bank, so there it sits. Rolling money isn’t fun. I need one of those machines you dump a handful into and it does all the work for you. Maybe I have enough change here to buy one of those machines. Vicious circle I seem to be stuck in eh?! I want fun things to do. Some people find it fun to sit around googling strange words like phentermine, I find it more fun to play games whenever I have some spare time. And right about now is some spare time so I’m off to play me some games before I fall asleep at my desk. Damn 7am comes waaaay too early.

Argh! Floor Flood!

kalamaf — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 02:59:29 +0000

We had a pretty bad rain storm about a week ago and when I got up in the morning I was greeted by a huge puddle of water in the dining room floor. Great! It tends to happen when the wind blows from the East during a rain, but this time was much worse than usual. Really gotta get off my lazy ass and get some door hardware to fix the weather strip at the bottom of the door, I hope that’s all it needs, I can’t see anywhere else that the water could be getting in from.

High Power Bill

kalamaf — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:13:23 +0000

Just got my worst power bill of the year, the Feb. bill is always the highest, just about $700 for the last 2 months of electricity. Time to start cutting corners again, I can’t imagine how but we’ve apparently used quite a bit more on average than during the same period last year. Maybe the weather has been colder this year than last, I can’t really remember. Lately I’ve been keeping the living room at 15 when I’m just in there by myself playing games, and I should probably get a heated blanket to hide under so I can keep the room even cooler, that would probably do for saving a bit of coin.

We’ve also been considering getting one of those infra-red furnaces to put in the basement, they’re supposed to be pretty cheap to run and if the basement is kept warmer for cheaper it should make the whole house easier to heat in general. At $500 though it would take a number of years to recoup the cost in power savings, so we’re still on the fence about that purchase.

It’s the Thought that Counts

kalamaf — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 04:01:23 +0000

Someone gave us a little gift bag at Christmas that included a box of Lifesavers. It ended up under some clothes in a pile in the bedroom until a few days ago when it was re-discovered, opened and (almost) eaten. See, they’re supposed to be the old-school hard life savers, not the new gummy type. But, they were going kinda soft although they still tasted fine. I opened a 2nd roll and happened to see the expiry date on the silver foil under the paper wrapper. March 30, 2007. Ack! No wonder these things were beyond the help of anti aging vitamins, they were nearly 3 years past due. Good thing they don’t turn poisonous or anything! I think someone needs to go back to the store and see what’s up with that, cause damn that’s old!

Losing a Family Doctor again

kalamaf — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:58:18 +0000

It seems like this town has a hard time holding on to good doctors lately. A few years back the wife & kids family doc picked up and moved without even letting them know. We managed to find a new one for them fairly quickly and he’s been around for a few years now. It took a while for the kid to warm up to him since she was only 3 when she first saw him, but now she’ll even climb up on the exam table without fussing, and lets him check her ears and throat and all that. So it’s such a shame that we just learned he’s moving away in 3 months and we’re stuck with once again needing to find a new doctor.

House Stuff

kalamaf — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:02:33 +0000

The rest of my time this past weekend was spent trying to build a slide for the kid. I brought home some old lumber from the store, stuff that used to be for movie shelves, to build a platform out of. The slide part I bought on sale at Kent a couple weeks ago, $50 marked down from $100. It won’t take long to build, but I need to get 2 more longer boards to use as support braces. The platform is about 4 feet high and only a foot and a half wide, not the most stable thing when put on the lawn, so I need to do something to make it a little more solid. It would be done already but we needed to get some grocery shopping done, and pick up a new laundry hamper to replace the old cloth one that’s 6 years old and falling apart.

Not Getting Any Younger

kalamaf — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 04:45:50 +0000

I’m not getting any younger, that’s pretty obvious, and neither are my parents. They both smoke so getting term life insurance for seniors can be quite a hassle around here. I bug them constantly to quit, but I guess it falls into the ‘old dog, new tricks’ category. They’ve been smoking since before I was born and no amount of effort will convince them to stop. Luckily there are several online insurance companies willing to take on ‘higher risk’ clients.

New Year New Bills

kalamaf — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 02:37:37 +0000

Christmas is barely behind us and already a fresh crop of bills are appearing in the mail, it just never ends eh? The car insurance comes due in the middle of January and it’s been a few years since I’ve shopped around to make sure I’m getting a good rate. Looks like it’ll be time to round up some auto insurance quotes in the next week or so, and decide whether to keep the same features on the policy this year. Since the car will be paid off in a couple more months we can choose to drop the collision coverage, that would save us a couple hundred bucks a year, but then again if the car did get totaled it would suck to have to replace it, so I think we’ll keep coughing up that extra 200 for a few years more.

Custom Bike Parts

kalamaf — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 03:54:45 +0000

I want a motorcycle. Been wanting one for years really. Back when I was in high school I had a little Suzuki TS100 dirt bike. It was kinda small but really a great size for a beginner, and I had a lot of old wood roads and trails nearby to ride on so having a small bike made it easier to get through narrow areas. My brother had a Yamaha 175 something or other that he was always working on, so there were yamaha motorcycle parts scattered all over the driveway. I haven’t even been on a bike since I sold that Suzuki, that was about 17 years ago. Hopefully next summer I’ll have a little spare cash to drop on a little street/trail bike so I can go cruising around again, both on and off road.

Ultimate Gaming Chair

kalamaf — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:23:46 +0000

I’ve seen gaming chairs advertised before, ones with a bit of vibration, or with speakers built in. This one however takes the cake. It’s not a gaming chair. It’s a full blown massage chair from Takemi Select ! What better way to relax when playing some games than to sit in something like this? Sure it wouldn’t be good for Rock Band, but when you’re done wailing away on guitar or drums you can pop in a less energetic game and let the chair work out the knots.

Self-employment, Not all it’s Cracked up to Be

kalamaf — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:45:19 +0000

I’ve been self-employed for a little over 9 years now, and even before that I spent a few years working other general retail jobs (stocking shelves, sweeping floors, etc.). Minimum wage sucked, but at least there were no headaches or worries, you just show up and do your job then go home after 3 to 8 hours.

When you’re the boss though it becomes even more than a full time job. You put in hours in the store and you put in hours at home doing paperwork. You get the fun task of trying to manage other people who are most likely earning the previously mentioned minimum wage and who don’t tend to put much effort into the job. It’s great when business is booming, but during the slow periods it can get rough and stressful. After 9 years though I can say, I’m still here. So far I’ve survived a Walmart/Staples/Movie Gallery opening all in the same year and am still plugging along in a struggling downtown area. Hopefully there’s another 9 years and more ahead of me.