Month: April 2013

Hands up, who has checked out a Rob Zombie in the last ten years?

I sure have, and I have to say that they haven’t really captured my interest.  They may stay in the stereo for a few weeks but that’s about it.

Until now!  Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor is Zombie at his best again.  I feel that I am listening to a proper Zombie album…with cuts of horror film narration and in your face guitars, I really can’t recommend this album enough if you are a fan of Rob Zombie.

Tracks to Check out: Rock N Roll (In a black hole), We’re an American Band [Grand Funk Railroad]

This week’s research mission has been to acquire a kegerator.

I have been looking at a kegerator (a fridge that holds kegs of beer) for some time now. Broadhead Brewery has a kegerator built at cost for $470+tax.  From what I have seen, this is a pretty solid deal and there are some great reviews on the web.

But then I started thinking about the two mini-fridges that are sitting in my garage doing nothing.  Could I salvage them and create a kegerator from scratch?  Only time will tell!

Sunday morning was around 15 degrees so you know what that means…spring cleanup time!

First stop was replacing the water in the hot tub which went surprisingly well. I must be a master at this process at this point.
Next up was changing the winter tires. But wait! Andreane calls needing the trailer to pick up some furniture that is being thrown out at her friend’s apartment. I hightail it downtown and pick up two sweet wicker chairs as we as a Futon! Considering she is planning on moving into a house in the near future, you can never have enough furniture. It was also a surprisingly easy move considering we had to bring a Futon on an elevator! I did have to pull over about 45 times because the tarp kept flapping in the wind.

I should have known that with all these easy moves, there would be something that didn’t go my way on this beautiful day. Changing the tires was the victim. I searched high and low for my torque wrench but no dice. Turns out it was in Vero’s car who was out running errands.

I realized that I am a man who should be able to use the emergency tire wrench to take the lug nuts off. While I am a man, I was a man with sore hands because that tire wrench has about a six inch handle! In the end, I got all the tires replaced and I managed to torque them when Vero got home.

It was around 22 degrees yesterday which called for some relaxation after all this hard work. I settled in on the back deck with a Fantastic Four in hand when Mike showed up from a motorbike ride. We hung out, ate some BBQ with Vero and headed on our way.

Also, I won $131 on my Lotto Max! That’s definitely the most I have ever won on a ticket.

Sunday was a good day.

This year, my beloved TELEFILE shut down for filing my taxes over the phone. I found this to be a great utility to file my taxes without the hassle of sending in any paper forms.

With the cancellation of this service, I was surprised to find that there were free tax programs out there vetted by the Canada Revenue Agency so I decided to check some out.

I had originally thought I would use an application for the computer but then I noticed online services. Like any good service…online is the best as they can be updated if a problem is found. With stand alone applications, there always requires new updates.

I decided to try out Simple Tax. The only thing that scared me was to provide my SIN number to an organization which isn’t the Federal Government of Canada. I find this to be strange considering how much the GoC talks about safeguarding your SIN as much as possible.

But honestly, that was my only negative comment about Simple Tax. Simple Tax truly is simple for a well-seasoned tax veteran as myself. I have to admit that it definitely helped that I am familiar with the paper forms and had done my taxes by hand beforehand. This way, I know if I’m missing anything when filing by Simple Tax.

Simple Tax isn’t like Turbotax or one of those ‘wizard’ programs. It’s a site that depends on YOU for what information it should ask. Do you have T4s? Do you have T5s? You need to tell them that. Once that’s done, it’s easy peasy.

I also enjoyed how it saw that I was married this past year so it allowed me to also fill out my spouse’s form, generate the NETFILE file to upload, print my tax form to PDF and bingo bango, the process is complete.

I will definitely use the service again. The only disappointment is that I messed up somewhere by doing it by hand and now owe $275! This could have been avoided by using Simple Tax next year. 🙂

“How do I tell everyone I just scored the greatest job and I’m not even done my co-op term yet?”

While I love all my friends in my life, it’s nice to have a little family around town as well. This is why I’m super pumped with the news that Andreane is sticking around for at least another year.

She is finishing up her school term at University of Ottawa. Man, time flies. She is currently doing co-op placements and stumbled upon a job interview at CHEO (which was also home to her co-op placement).

She waltzes into her first interview, nails it, and gets a part-time job with a sweet hourly wage. When I say part-time, I am talking about the greatest part-time schedule there ever was: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday full days. What the heck! I wish I could get long weekends as well!

I’m super stoked.