Celebrate good times come on

Ah what a night :)

Last night we managed to get in to see Moses Mayes opening up for the one and only Kool and the Gang at the Jazz Festival. I've seen Moses Mayes before and they're super high energy funk and dance music...got everyone riled up....and then...Kool and the Gang. Mee hee...

Man - they know how to put on a show. They had the crowd dancing and singing and even pulled out moves and choreography - it was a really fun show. Very odd to *see* them singing songs I've heard on the stereo and radio since I was a wee sprog. Loved it :) They did Jungle Boogie...Celebration...all the hits. They seemed to be having a fantastic time along with the crowd. And the crowd was amazing...it's cool to go to shows where you see people from all ages strutting their funky stuff :)
And all this at the main stage in the Bessborough Hotel back gardens - our city's equivalent of a castle...the sort of place they just don't make anymore. In the back gardens at sunset... listening to legendary funk and soul. Seriously. Legendary. And I'm not just saying it. I'm TYPING it :)
Really great way to spend an evening :)

We have one last day with our company and we're going to make delicious pancakes and then hit the Jazz Festival for a final day of music and relaxing in the sunshine...can't wait. Hope you're all having a fantastic weekend!

Getting down with my bad self

I hope hope hope I can get in to see these guys tonight.
How can this be anything other than a good thing :)

Hooray

image source

Having profited from all the misery of others with the same problems as myself, I have sucked up their knowledge I am once again surfing the interweb like a normal person. I reverted my firmware and changed my broadcast frequency and I am once again with internet. Right now.
For real!
Hot damn.

yay - we did good

We've had family with us since thursday - J's Aunt and Uncle and cousin and her baby boy. It's been nice to visit with them, and our house was once their house, so they are very much at home. They're great guests and we've missed them since they moved to Vancouver, so it's been nice to catch up with them...

It's J's Aunt's 60th birthday in a few weeks and we thought since EVERYONE happened to be in town this weekend for the Jazz Festival we would surprise her with a party. We managed to arrange a big surprise 60th party sunday afternoon.

It went so very well - tonnes of friends and family (~60) showed up and it was a gorgeous day of BBQ, visiting and relaxing in the yard and house. Our/their house was always the "party house" where all the gatherings would be and it was so great to have a party of our own there...she was completely surprised and absolutely thrilled, especially to have it in her old home.

Today I am exhausted, but happy...We got to see some shows at the Jazz Festival over the weekend and now that the big "surprise" is over with I can relax a bit and try and fix my silly internet problems (I hope).
Have a great day all ! :)

Fix it! Fix it! Fix it! Fix it! Fix it! Fix it!

My Mac Airport Extreme base station is acting up. It's never given solid steady signal, but last week my computer went whoopda and lost contact with a harddrive, and after I restored it it still had weak to no internet...and there was an update for the airport. So I figured it might help and I installed it...and it immediately stopped working all together.
Bloody annoying. No signal at all to link to.
Sooooo I reset it to factory settings and still, despite choppy transmissions managed to get it set up and working again like before for our laptops...it took a bit as our signal was cutting in and out..and then the signal went away again...and hasn't come back so I can't set up our main computer on it as it gets nothing to attach to. And the signal is choppy so why?

I've been recommended to change the channel on the airport so nothing interferes with it (there must be one of the neighbor's wireless networks, which I can pick up no problem, interfering with it). This seems all fine and good and logical. Soooo...I go to the software I need to use to do this and it says it is not the right version to work with my airport extreme...so I install the one that came with it. Nada. I get the one off the website. Nada. I have what appears to be a properly set up airport that is not sending out a steady even signal...even when my laptop is 12 inched from it. .
Now I don't know if this is because I get no reception so it can't talk to it or what but I'm ready to chuck the damn thing out the window very soon. I just want it to work again, even intermittently like it used to. I'm doing what I should to fix it and am being bombarded with ridiculous blocks at every turn.

If I get one more "what did you do -it it worked before?" I will scream...because it SHOULD work. As is. Right now. But it doesn't...so we have no wireless...this sucks as we just moved our office upstairs and are using the wireless to get internet there and on our lappy's. This HAS to work.

So my advice to you this fine day?
So don't install updates if everything is working fine... Just don't- they f*ck with everything.

Gorram internet sandwich....

Decluttering 101

nataliedee.com
Yesterday was spent organizing and decluttering and cleaning our house. Company is coming today for about a week...AND we're hosting a big shindig on the weekend, so the house/bathroom/kitchen have to be *that* kind of clean...and we haven't really been home for days.
While away last weekend, as part of our grand schemes, we got a lot of organising materials - places for things to go. Actual ways to organise things. Scary I know...but it feels good. AND because my lovely J is doing the organising part it will actually be organised AND will stay that way as HE will know where everything goes and not just me :). J has promised to do a rush organising of the basement today (his domain), and then once company is gone we can actually get nitty gritty with all the shelves and books and such. It's contagious...we're doing it one area at a time and doing it thoroughly - and not skimping, not just tucking something away somewhere for later - this is hard core organizing of the likes of which we two have never seen before.

I have a kitchen table -I can SEE the TOP of it :) And my kitchen is GREAT now (ready to be renoed by Dad in the fall, plus more functional now that it isn't full of junk). The bathroom and bedrooms are good to go and the living room looks very spiffy (it needs a few pictures on the walls, but hey, it's organised and clean:) ). We need another bookshelf and mores storage doodads but we're on our way. Looking around the house last night made me so proud - we have a beautiful home. It may take us all summer but by god we may someday soon be able to find things when we need them. It's the clutter that has always driven us mad...and the fact that it would always continue, as we didn't really have places for things to go. But we're working on that. Bit by bit. For real. Pinkie swear.

Kewl...

My own personal (drunken) cheering squad

Yesterday was the last day of high school here...and there were lots of proms last night. On our way to see Drag Me To Hell (an amusing little film- if you liked the old film Army of Darkness then go see it) there were many people all spiffed up and walking around.

This morning while I was out for a run down by the weir I ran by a group of girls and guys still going strong, laughing and talking and watching the sun come up. I asked them if they had a good night and they emphatically told me that yes they did and that they were glad to be done school forever. I smiled and on the loop back home they were still there and I smiled and they started cheering saying "run run run run woo!" while they took swigs from what looked like bottles of rye.
Straight.
Ah yes...to be that young...to be tipsy enough that you can drink straight from the bottle and think it's not half bad after all. They were very happy...made me smile.