The aftermath of a house warming

I must admit to my many (?) readers I am somewhat disappointed by the lack of audience participation. The links to comments that are at the end of each posting are there to be used, please, please, feel entirely free to add your $0.02, and while you are at it, answer the survey I've got. I know I am not the only person reading this blog, there is no way in ten days since I got that hit counter I've hit my own blog 143 times. (Actually that's a bad counter, hit refresh and the count increments by one.) It is possible with the use of the (F5) key that in fact I could hit this blog 143 times in about... hmm, two minutes twenty three seconds assuming one key stroke per second. But I have not been doing that, so someone somewhere is reading this, let me know, I need to feel the love.

Anyway last night Jacky of Passion on Wheels (see the blog roll on the right) who exercised his post enlightenment Locke-ian right to life liberty and property, a month ago had his house warming. Of course Jacky does not own some vast tract of arable land in the country side, rather its a two bedroom in Mississauga. This positively sucks for me, now I cannot carpool with him to Hamilton. Whatever happened to the notion of having a town house in the city and the country estate? Oh that's right, the invention of the automobile and the middle class. Damn fangled contraption cost me over $1400 yesterday, new timing and serpentine belt, water pump and spark plugs. I guess I should be grateful, the items I just listed were all replaced as part of regular maintenance. If, for example, the timing belt, had gone on the highway the car would probably be a write off.

This morning Banff Designs had a massive sale on all manner of outer wear. I was interested in the cycle jackets, would have been good for cold weather skating. Sadly I think I broke the bank at the shop getting the flippin car repaired, so I slept in and skipped Banff, maybe when I go to China I can find something, after all that is where most of our clothing comes from and there are still a few cyclists in Shanghai. Apparently skating is taking Shanghai by storm these days, so maybe when I go there I can visit the SISC (Shanghai Inline Skate Club) if there is such an animal, see what there conditions are like.

Actually an interesting thing, I just did a quick Google Search for inline skating in Shanghai and when I ran the search the very first page suggested that there are seven rinks and arenas in the city of 18 million. Sadly, on closer inspection of the addresses I recognized (three of the seven) two are near the airport in the area of Hongkou district, the third arena although much closer to where I will be staying, in PuDong is called the Pudong Children's Palace... hmmm, I don't think that will work, and even if the Children's Palace takes 30 year-old "children" its actually quite far from my in-laws who are in Western Pudong. Ultimately I have to ask is it really worth it to haul my skates all the way to China for perhaps two or three hours of entirely less than satisfying skating? Oh well, something for me to sweat on when my wife returns.

Speaking of returning wives, tomorrow at 3pm Eastern Standard, Air Canada flight AC 088 arrives in Toronto having departed from Shanghai Pudong only 20 minutes earlier at 14:40 local time. (Remarkable World we live in, eh!) On board will be The Boss, aka 'The one who wears the pants'. In expectation of her arrival I suppose I ought to clean the house.

A closing note, to the person who writes what I judge to be the best comment in response o this posting, free beer at my own house warming when that happens in March or April of 2008.