Saturday was my 1 year anniversary of quitting smoking. I haven’t faltered even once in that full year. Its actually to the point where if I smell smoke I get nauseous, whether its people smoking, or just the smell of smoke on their clothes.

I do still get the occasional craving under some stressful situations, but that’s more psychological I think. Then I tell myself that I’ve beat this nasty habit for a year, that there’s no point in restarting and going through the pain of quitting again.

My wife had her 3rd ultrasound today and I’m more and more amazed on how rapidly our little bundle of joy is growing. Baby Gareau is now 7.5cm long, has full legs, arms, hands and feet. Its heart rate is a powerful 147 bpm. At 7.5cm long, the July 13th due date is dead on (though we know the chances of an actual birth on the due date is slim). Its so amazing to see such a little miracle, and to see if so full of life. We could see Baby Gareau moving its arms and legs, shifting its body and head around.  We’re just beaming!

(I’m using it because we don’t know if its a boy or a girl, and we decided to wait til the birth to find out)

Click the above picture for a bigger pic.

Wow, its mindblowing to think how fast the last decade flew by. It seems like it was just yesterday that I was busy updating thousands of router configs to combat the Y2K bug. Hard to believe that this was 10 years ago already.

Like many sites out there, I felt compelled to come up with my own personal Top list for the naughties decade, and here it is! I consciously tried to keep it short and to the point as to not bore you too much. These are not listed in any particular order.

Top 5 Music CDs: Metallica’s Death Magnetic. Since its release, that CD has been the music that’s played in my Jeep probably 90% of the time. That one was an easy choice. The other 4 music CDs that really stood out for me this decade are Nine Inch Nails – With Teeth, Korn – Take A Look In The Mirror, Linkin Park – Meteora, Bullet For My Valentine – The Poison.

Top 5 Movies: Dark Knight, Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Watchmen, Star Wars Episode 3, Casino Royale.Yup, Star Wars Episode 3 made the list. As bad as Episode 1 was, Episode 3 I felt was amazing and brought both trilogies together.

Top 10 TV Shows: I couldn’t pare this down to 5, so I had to make it 10. Even shrinking it down to 10 was a bit hard. Not surprisingly however, most of these shows were on the air in the latter half of the decade. Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Survivor, Dexter, Family Guy, Futurama, Stargate: Atlantis, Firefly, The Office, Smallville

Top Life Changes: I’ve had quite a few big life changes in the last 10 years, most of them coming in the last couple of years. I bought my first house, I got engaged and married. I had a wonderful honeymoon in Paris, where I fell head over heels in love with that city. After 15 years of smoking, I was able to finally quit the nasty habit (and I’m almost 1 year clean). And very recently I found out that I’m going to be a father for the first time.

Here’s to another great decade.

Not only am I lucky that I have a loving wife who loves hockey and football as much as I do, her knowledge of hockey won her pairs of tickets to 3 Ottawa Senators games this morning! She called in to TGOR on Team 1200 and won the tickets and a hat. They’re a great birthday gift Woohoo! Click play below to listen to her call.

rapid-fire (rap′id fīr′)

adjective

done, delivered, proceeding, or carried on swiftly and sharply

On Monday July 13th I finally got to see a band that I’ve been wanting to see in concert for many many many years; Stone Temple Pilots. STP were playing the  Cisco Bluesfest festival here in Ottawa. Even though we were cold and wet from the rain that poured down during the open act, it didn’t deter me from having great fun in what I consider one of the best concerts that I happened to lay eyes on.

Scott Weiland showed that he was a true frontman, entertaining and captivating the audience throughout the 90 minute show. Dean DeLeo was electrifying on guitar, his brother Robert was bombastic on bass and Erik Kretz was explosive on drums. Mix them all together and you have a show of epic proportions that rocked the socks off of 25,000 fans.

To view a collection of pictures I took of the show, head on over to my photo gallery.

---

My wife and I saw Ice Age 3(D) with some friends of ours. I was a little apprehensive as I didn’t think that Ice Age 2 was a very good movie (I thought it was just OK). I was happily surprised to see that Ice Age 3(D) was almost as good and almost as funny as the first Ice Age movie!

The story is a little slow to get going but after the first 10-15 minutes it does get much better. So don’t walk out on this movie early!

In this 3rd installment, Ellie and Manny are expecting their first child together. Sid grows jealous and adopts 3 abandoned eggs, which hatch into Tyrranasaurus. The dinosaur’s mother soon returns to take her children back, and grabs Syd as well, taking them back to a lost kingdom where dinosaurs still roam. Ellie and Manny, accompanied by Diego, Crash and Eddie head out to find and rescue their pal Syd. Along the way they meet up with an insane weasel called Buck, who helps them to cross the savage lands and find their friend.

I give Ice Age 3D: Dawn of the Dinosaur an 8 out of 10

---

My wife and I saw The Taking of Pelham 123 back in June. I found Pelham 123 to be surprisingly entertaining, but that wasn’t a hard feat to reach. I’ve never seen a movie with Denzel Washington where I didn’t think the movie was at the very least entertaining (unfortunately I can’t say the same about Travolta, but in this movie he was pretty good).

The story revolves around a group of led by Ryder (Travolta) who take over a New York subway car full of people hostage.  Garber (Washington) plays a NYC subway dispatcher who happens to be the lucky one sitting in the chair when it all goes down. The movie revolves around the interaction between these 2 characters as Garber and the city try to meet their demands before any hostages are killed.

Viewers are taken through different twists and turns which leaves us asking questions until the last 5 or so minutes of the movie.

I give the Taking of Pelham 123 a 7 out of 10 stars. 

---

Its been a pretty crappy summer so far in good ol’ Ottawa. We’ve seen rain, rain and more rain come down. There’s been more rainy days than sunny days, a lot more. Here’s some stats that date back from this past Monday:

- The average temperature for July has been 18.3, down from the norm of 20.9

- We’ve had 0 days in July where the temperature exceed 30 degrees celsius (not counting humidex)

- There’s been only 6 rain-free days in July so far.

-Since the beginning of June, we’ve had raid in 7 out of 8 weekends.

-Normal rainfall for July is 90mm. We’ve had 183mm fall on our fair city so far this July.

-This is the worst July on record since 1992.

---

And finally, I will leave you with a funny video. Strangely enough, however, I find this video not only funny, but slightly erotic for some reason. I think the Shake Weight exercise machine is more than just a piece of exercise equipment.

Like an acquaintance exclaimed after seeing this video: “This is why in highschool us guys didn’t have flabby arms”. LOL!

Shake Weight Exercise for Women