Neil Gaiman's so good, hey? Seems I'm always finding books of his I didn't even know he wrote in used bookstores. Last week I picked up a short story collection, possibly his first. Uh, what's it called? Don't recall off the top of my head and it's alla way upstairs . . . I got Michelle reading Fragile Things which is a more recent anthology, and we're both loving it. Not too long ago I bought a Batman comic he wrote, Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? I find Batman comics kind of hard to read, because unlike the movies, in the comics there's like 70 years of history and continuity that you need to know (Robin is dead but Robin 2 is Nightwing and Robin 3 is in the future and she's a girl . . . )but this one was brilliant and accomplishes its purpose- which is to bring to an end both iconic Batman series- Detective Comics and Batman- with a story that would be 'true' now and in twenty years, or seventy. I didn't even know they canceled those titles (naturally they relaunched them with new numbering and all but still). Yeah. Check it out.
In other news, Pallas and I have been busy kicking ass all week. Well, we went on the big water slide a billion times at the rec center and found all our shopping list on our own and made supper all by ourselves (even if it sucked). I taught her to say "kick ass" so when we got home from kicking ass I told her to go tell mom. "Mommy, kickass! Kickass! Daddy Pallas kickass!" but Michelle thought she was saying Princess. Well, in Pallas' case, same thing.

This week started off so good. The first day was an overtime for double pay and it was easy money. The next day was a stat so even though it was my regular shift, it was double time and a half pay. And even easier money. Then the bubble burst yesterday when, rather than be on my truck, I was assigned to pumps. Which was my nightmare job that I hated and was the worst experience of my life. But whatever. We had to put a pump in. Which took all day and it was cold and wet and I even singed half my beard off by poking my face into a fireball. Why was there a fireball and what was I doing poking my face into it? When it's -30 pumps get all frozen for some reason, so we have to use a propane torch, basically a flamethrower, to thaw them out. I guess flames build up into fireballs in enclosed spaces.
Anyways. Today I'm even colder because I had to shave my beard off. And guess what? We have to pull that very pump since they're blasting. Nightshift never did get it working so we didn't pump so much as one gallon out of the pit. Tearing shit down is always easier than setting it up, so at least there was that. But after the blast, guess what? Back goes the pump! They asked me to stay late to get it running and I very flatly refused. Fuck em. That's why they have nightshift guys. And it'll be there tomorrow, just waiting for me to tear it apart I'm sure.

It's coming along. Now that a lot of the custom pieces and parts are arriving from all over the place. You should see the springs we got, not shown here. Thanks to my dad who did a whole mess of work in the last few days. I did a wee bit of chopping. Turned some wrenches. Nodded sagely here and there. You know. Remember what it looked like when we started?

Last week on our drive to Calgary we were listening to the Glee soundtrack, Michelle's favorite music. She asked me who wrote one song, and I said, "I have no idea, I've never heard this song in my life."
"Your musical knowledge has a serious gap in it."
"Yeah, I don't know any of the cheesy songs."
To be fair, I gave Glee a chance at her insistence and I really like it. Not the music as much, but Sue Sylvester kills me. Like, makes me laugh so hard I cry and Michelle has to pause the dvd while I recover. Jane Lynch is gonna be on Q one of these days, actually.
What else. The music I'm really digging on right now is Buck 65's new one, 20 Odd Years. I can't get enough, seriously.
What else. Been working a bit of overtime lately so I have even less time at home than usual. Pallas told me on the phone the other day, "Daddy, come home!" Heartbreaking. At last work is waaaaay better ever since I bid off of pumps. Just drive my truck and read my comics. Marvels was very good. I've also been reading the Star Wars Omnibus series that reprints the old Marvel Star Wars series we all grew up on. Classic. I only had maybe not quite half of them so it's fun to go back and read what all I missed. The original 6 issues were an adaptation of the movie, but it came out before Star Wars was released, and the artist hadn't seen it. I don't know if he went off storyboards or production photos or what, but R2-D2 is drawn as if he walks on his legs rather than rolls. Kind of funny.

The following is an extremely true account of what happened at work the other day. A Wenco is a computerized GPS dispatching thing that knows your every move every minute.

I was hauling off of shovel 9
It's Friday and I was feeling fine
Until my Wenco started going crazy
Telling me "start hauling loads, stop being lazy"
Well, we all know, the Wenco, it's gotta go
I'll be the first to say I told you so
But how to get rid of Big Brother GPS?
I knew I'd have to scheme and be devious
Just then the radio played some Miley Ray Cyrus
And it hit me! I know, I'll make a virus!
So I mashed all the buttons on that little unit
For good measure I thought I'd pull my pants down and moon it
But then something happened that was kinda weird
There on the screen a robot appeared
It laughed and said "Now you've gone and done it
"I've taken over your truck and now I'm gonna run it"
My seat belt, it wrapped around me I'm trapped
and my truck took off like a bat that'd been zapped
Went straight for the dump, passing 145
and if you know Myriame, you know that girl can drive
we came to a stop in front of Craig's dozer
and dumped it right there, not one rock went over
He was so mad he called me snot sausage
But it's not my fault! I'm being held hostage
What the Wenco did next I should have expected
It went on the network, and so it infected
all of the trucks and shovels in PC3 pit
that's when I thought I might be in deep shit
so I used ninja tricks to jump outta my truck
just my luck I landed knee deep in the muck
I pulled myself free and looked up to see
Shovel 9 with its bucket was coming at me
It tried to eat me! I swear it's the truth
Lucky for me it was missing a tooth
I jumped through the clamshell but no time to relax
I still had to dodge shovel 9's tracks
Swinging around it came in for the kill
Time to bust out all my GI Joe skill
I adopted my patented Miyagi stance
Part kungfu with voodoo and hiphop dance
With a jab and a feint and a flying round kick
I separated shovel 9's boom from its stick
My triumph short-lived as the rest of the fleet
was headed my way and I knew I was beat
I was just about to give up in defeat
When I heard on the radio Cito say "Sweeeeet!"
So I dodged and I kicked and I punched until three
That's when I stopped for coffee lunch and a pee
At 3:30 I said "Alright" and "You betcha!
"You're coming for me but I'm gonna getcha!"
I wrecked every last truck, including the Kresses
You shoulda seen Jimmy, you know how he stresses
But anyways, to make a long story short
This is the end of my Incident Report!

You should see me. I pretty much kick ten tons of ass. I'm not just saying that because this is the internet and you can say anything. It's true. And now I will only get even more awesome because our new rec center opened with its swimming pools and weight rooms and skating rinks and Dairy Queens. God I love Dairy Queen. Not sure about the wisdom of putting one inside a facility dedicated to physical fitness though. Oh well. Maybe I'll only kick nine tons of ass and have one ton of blizzard on my fat ass.
Also, me and my dad kicked some ass on my motorbike today. Well you should see how much work he did in his garage to set up a shop. We even built a bike stand in about ten seconds today. Then we chopped my frame up a bit. Wrecking shit is so easy! Putting it back together . . .
Know who else kicks ass? The vampirenomad. She doesn't really kick ass at blogging lately. But in the category of moving back to Canada after six years in New Zealand, she wins. Sweet!
Also my eldest daughter kicks ass so much. Srsly. She's awesome. Didja see this picture? Awesome.

The most exciting thing that happened at work last week was I got to read a bunch of comics. I wisht every week could be like that!
I'd heard that Age of Apocalypse was one of the all-time classic X-Men storylines so I got the Complete Epic (four volumes) from the library. Maybe my expectations were too high but I thought it was kind of terrible. Never mind that the way you could tell that the X-Men were all alternate-reality versions of themselves is because they had mullets. I dunno. The basic idea was sound, what if Charles Xavier had died before forming the X-Men? Obviously Magneto would lead the X-Men and Apocalypse would take over the world. But where it went wrong for me is all the focus on space aliens and Blastaar and the Negative Zone. What does that even have to do with Apocalypse? I dunno.
Luckily World War Hulk was better. Not as good as Planet Hulk which I loved. WWH is all about how he comes back to Earth with his Warbound buddies to get revenge for all the bad stuff that happened at the end of Planet Hulk. It had some great moments, though lots of the big things happened off-screen, ie in the tie-in comics that weren't in the WWH collection. Oh well. Hulk still smashed plenty of shit.
Batman R.I.P. was kind of confusing. Didn't really know anyone other than Batman. Even Robin was someone else.
What else. Spider-man and Red Sonja. Got that one for a laugh and it was definitely funny.
I also finished reading Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. I liked it. Makes me want to make a pinhole camera detector. Among other things. Not that I'm worried someone snuck into my house to install a pinhole camera to spy on me. Does make me wonder about the classrooms where Michelle teaches, though. And the washrooms. Eew.