In the ever ongoing saga of things happening to me comes this new revelation. The less than 10 year old roof on our garage is leaking and now needs to be repaired. Congratulations! You're the proud new owner of crap.

In other news, we're investigating the possibility of going to Toronto to catch a game on June 7th, so if you know where we live, please feel free to light our grass on fire. If we really do go that weekend that would put us out of the state for 5 out of 6 weekends.

We're heading down to Tampa next weekend and have tickets to see the Rays play the Tea Parties. Unfortunately, it's looking more and more as if we're not going to able to attend that game. Not that I'm really looking forward to seeing the Trop anyway, but hey, it's one more I could've crossed off my list.

This was supposed to be the Indians year, but so far it's reminding me of 2005. That was the year that they had a bunch of expectations, but started off horribly. They came on strong at the end, only to fall to the White Sox in the last series of the season.

The hole they're digging themselves now will be difficult to get out of. Sure it's early, but their pitching is very suspect and their hitting is not so hot either.

I hope that they can fix their problems, but I feel like I've seen this before.

Are you kidding me? The Patriots have the weakest schedule in the No Fun League this year. Yes, those Patriots that went undefeated in the regular season last year.

Um, can someone say collusion? Or something. Can someone say anything! Jeez! Give me a break.

I hate the NFL.

Little did I realize that talking about my brakes would be the most commented story of 2008 on this little part of the inter tubes.

It was my grandmothers birthday on Saturday and my step-moms birthday on Sunday. Therefore, there were lots of family functions happening this weekend.

I overheard some discussion about how my grandmother is doing, and apparently she's going to be needing to pain medication soon. Whether that actually happens or not remains to be seen. She had talked to hospice about 6 weeks ago now and at that time they said that she was doing fine and had no need of their services. I'd like to be selfish at this point and hope that she never needs them, but that's just not realistic.

Needless to say, I turned down the $900 brake job in hopes of finding it much cheaper elsewhere. Well, I found some place willing to do it for $700, and that may be as cheap as it gets unfortunately.

On top of that, we've got a contractor coming out to the house to look at our water problems. We have a problem that causes water to end up in our duct work. Not just a little water either. Last time it was about 700 gallons. This is the third time that it's happened since I've lived there. It only occurs when there the ground is super saturated. For example, when it snows 18 inches and then rains for 5 days in a row.

The solution looks like it will be to pour additional concrete at the edge of our slab, then run drain tile out and around to the front of the house. Hopefully that will fix the problem.

On top of that, this wasn't disclosed when I bought the house, so we may have some litigation in the future. The first contractor we had out said that there was a 95% chance that it had happened to the previous owners. If it did in fact happen to them, they're legally required to disclose it... so, we'll see what happens.

I had my car in the dealer today for it's mid life check up. They did a bunch of crap which was over priced, but none of it compared to the $900 they wanted for a brake job.

Well, it turns out that ceramic Brembo brakes are expensive to replace. Who knew?

More to follow (not like the Niagara on the Lake non-existent more to follow either).

We went to Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake this past weekend. We stayed at the Shaw Club in N-o-t-L, which was very nice. They have a 4 diamond restaurant there which we had breakfast and dinner at.

One of the highlights of dinner was when I received my appetizer of popcorn shrimp.

I of course expected small popcorn shrimp. Instead, I got something much more clever. There was nothing shrimpy about those shrimp either. They were more like mini-lobsters.

More details on the trip to follow.

The Indians hopes for an undefeated season went down in flames today.

Oh well, there's always next year.

This past weekend while we were in Maryland, I ventured to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum at Dulles Airport. It was pretty cool. It's similar in a lot of ways to the Wright Patterson National Air Force Museum in Dayton.

They had a SR-71 Blackbird (the coolest plane in the world, btw) and a working prototype of the Space Shuttle. This particular one happens to be the third of the planes that I've seen (the others being in Dayton and on the USS Enterprise in New York). They never fail to impress. In the picture you can see it, as well as the nose of the shuttle in the background.

There was a large section devoted to space, which I thought was cool. I also got my first up close look at the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It looks similar to the Raptor, though unique because of it's VTOL capabilities. I'm still surprised that they opted to go with a single engine though.

Anyway, blah blah blah, planes planes planes, maybe I'll try to come up with more coherent thoughts later.

It's almost time for the summer times to come out of hiding. The goal is to put them on on Thursday, before our trip to Niagra-on-the-Lake on Friday.

When I bought the car in 2004, I got it on February 17th. It came with summer tires on it, and it never snowed in Cleveland through the remainder of Winter and through Spring. This year and last, it's snowed well into Spring.

I feel like I'm getting snow fever from the crappy weather. Yesterday it hit 60 briefly and I opened up every window in the house because it finally felt nice.