Author Archives: Court

About Court

This is Courtney Vallentyne's blog.

In which I re-affirm the miracle of air conditioning

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I hereby propose that air conditioning is the single cause of the modern age of prosperity.

Let me explain.  Recently our air conditioner suffered a little problem, which naturally only happens when the temperature reaches into the absurd, like it did recently in Ottawa.  If felt like an eternity of way above average temperatures, reaching 40C with the humidity.  Anyway, I happened to be on holidays for most of the heat wave, which may be a good thing most times, but seemed to hinder our activities due to the crazy heat.  Anyway, when the air conditioning died in the house, needless to say I called the repair guy immediately.  Also, finding out that there would be a long delay before anybody showed up was also not much of a surprise.

So I was left to contemplate the fact that my thermostat in the hallway read 30C, with every window open in the house, and the outside humidity approaching 94%.  Several things came to my mind slowly over the next 48 or 60 hours before we had AC again (the humanity!).  First off, beer tastes much better when you are being slowly cooked alive in your own home (good thing I was on holidays).  Second, sustained heat does something to your brain where any drive you may have to get things done just melts right away.  You just can’t put two thoughts together, no matter what you do.  So, combine those two things and you have the basis for my hard-won theory that air-conditioning brought us to our current level of prosperity, not the other way around.

I may not be the only one….

However, one notable exception to this rule is Nikki.  As I have mentioned before, she is thermally challenged at the best of times.  So when I was literally reduced to a drooling moron affixed to a chair, she was more and more comfortable.  Her skin was literally cool to the touch at 30C.  She said more than once how comfortable she was, and was not very sympathetic to my grumbling and complaints.  I may have mumbled something about how that isn’t natural, and that she may be a robot, or something like that.  I can’t recall now since I was more or less sweating beer by this point.

This post would have had a stunningly crafted conclusion if it wasn’t mostly written while my brain was turned off.  You get the point, right?  Right?

Don’t take your AC for granted, people.

 

Spartan Race Pics

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So, hopefully these are in some sort of order, here are some pics from the Spartan Race that I thoughtfully yanked from the site where they post these.  I have probably missed several of folks that I know, but these are the ones I saw at first glance.  Handy that we were wearing those red shirts, they stand out well in the thumbnails.

Needless to say that running up and down Edelweiss three times made this thing hard, but having most of the obstacles all at the end of the race was a bit silly.  Spreading them out more would have been a lot more fun.  I guess it was a problem with the available space they had.
Ot2BWJ2780-X2 Ot2BWJ2781-X2 Ot2BWJ2782-X2 Ot2BWJ2783-X2 Ot2BWJ2784-X2 Ot2BWJ2786-X2 Ot2BWJ2788-X2Jordy and I really had quite the photo shoot on the barbed wire for some reason.  I suspect it was bored photographers, since there was nobody else around at that point.  🙂
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The iced water pool was a nice touch….

The fire jump was neat, and not as scary as it sounds.  The brief warmth was very welcome that day.

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I look like I’m levitating here.

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This montage made me laugh, watch Wilson trying to find any enthusiasm for the rest of this race, anywhere.  There’s nothing, just nothing.

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Ya, just jump, monkey boy.  Still contemplating.  There may not be any fucks left.

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Ya, there’s probably at least one fuck there somewhere, if only because it’s near the end of the race.  Sorry to poke fun buddy….  🙂

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Not many pics I could find of this ramp thing, but the mud is everywhere, even on the camera lens…..

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And finally the finish line, none of us look all that happy at this point…..

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So there you go, a partial documentation of the day.  It was fun, cold, and oh so dirty.  I probably won’t do it again and just stick to road races for now, but I am glad I did it.

Let’s Mess With the Kids – Part 452

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This has probably been covered before in many ways on this here website, but Nikki and I have noticed the completely inconsistent things we do to our poor children.  Let me explain.

First off, to our own delight, we don’t have even the slightest hint of music taste concerns at our house.  Not sure if this is even a thing anymore, but our kids like the same music we do, and boy is it rather an eclectic mix.  At any minute, they could be singing along to Ray Charles on their iPods, or maybe rocking out to the new Daft Punk album.  Quinn finally got over his unrelenting Bron Yr Aur Stomp addiction recently, while Cael couldn’t stop dancing to Thrift Shop, you get the idea.

In this very same vein, this week I realized that we are giving them the STRANGEST childhood as far as culture is concerned.  For starters, we introduced them to Smokey and the Bandit on Monday, which was an enormous hit as you might imagine.  That movie is remarkably kid friendly for something made so long ago.  The only real problem is Jackie Gleason’s rather foul mouth, and thinly veiled racism, but most of the worst ones went right by the boys since he uses a particularly incomprehensible southern accent.  Anyway, we saw that movie, and then on Tuesday for some reason or another I got talking to them about my Grade 5 teacher at Naismith Memorial PS, Mr. Lake and how he loved poetry.  Which led me to find and read some favourites to the boys:

William Wordsworth – I wandered lonely as a cloud
Robert Frost – The Road not Taken
Alfred Noyes – The Highwayman

We even discussed what they might mean, and enjoyed the descriptive language together.

Now, separately these two things are just lovely anecdotes of family time.  But when you realize that these two things happened within 24 hours of each other, you begin to realize that perhaps I’m not really qualified to have children.  I mean really.  What. The. Hell?  I’m not really giving them a solid literary background, as Paula will probably mention in a comment here, these poems are like popcorn, not really all that nutritious or filling.  And the movie clearly isn’t really worth all that much in terms of their development, with the possible exception that I was able to demonstrate where the Dukes of Hazzard CAME from.  It also probably explains why Cael wants a CB radio installed into the Sienna.

So anyway, there you go.  The kids will be weird in that ever so unique way that makes them Vallentyne weird, and not Jones weird or Smith weird or, well you get the idea.  That’s your job as a parent; not only to give your DNA to your kids, but to provide your very own special mix of strange so they can go off and mix it with some poor unsuspecting person and raise their own special kind of weirdos.  The circle of life turns onward.

Isabelle Boileau

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While there were several announcements made on other sites already, I thought I would welcome Isabelle here on the blog and share a little pic that may not have already been publicized too much.

Isabelle was born May 21 and has kept our attention FULLY for the last 9 days, even more so than adorable little baby girls do normally.  The medical details aside (they are vast, technical and rather hard to follow) she ended up having open heart surgery at a ripe old age of 3 days.  She’s doing fantastically well, and is quite obviously fully infused with the patented “Vallentyne Disdain for Rather Large Medical Problems”(tm).  Many of her ancestors have honed this skill over the years and there’s no better way for her to flaunt this ability than in this pic here:

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This little pup is literally sneering (adorably) at the array of medical equipment surrounding her.  Her arrogant(ly adorable) curled lip indicates her lack of concern for these paltry machines and stitches.

Indeed, she seems to be focused mainly on giving us all conniptions, while coolly observing our concern with a flippant attitude and nary a worry.

The only silver lining in all of this for me, as near as I can tell, is if this beautiful little girl is this much trouble at 9 days old, I am very grateful that she won’t be my responsibility when she turns 16.  It’s all about me, of course.

Joking aside, her journey has been an amazing testament to her Mom and Dad, and just how amazing modern medicine is these days.  The Toronto Sick Kids hospital is nothing short of incredible, and we are in their debt forever.  Simple as that.

Here’s to Isabelle and many more years of grey hair-inducing hijinks that DON’T involve hospital beds.