The Neighbouriest Neighbour (part 1)

If only Mr. Rogers lived next door. Our neighbours are...interesting. On the one side is our boy P. P says hi to us and seems to be friendly but also seems to be very...how should we put this...concerned about his finances.

On the other side is, D, one of the strangest dudes we've ever met. Granted, we are just approaching the two-and-a-half year mark of our lives but we like to think of ourselves as somewhat worldly. If you don't want to take our word for it, our Dad thinks he's got some screws loose...

When D wants to talk with us, he usually opens the gate, strolls through our backyard and walks up onto our deck so that he can knock on our glass doors. Not sure what is wrong with our front door but I guess if you are one step away from going postal, people just let you do what you like (Daddy says, "If the psycho dude wants to let himself in so that he can give us a tomato, who am I to correct that type of behaviour?"...We're starting to think Daddy might be a bit of a coward...).

Usually when Mommy bakes things, she'll send a plate over to D's house since he's in his 60's and his mother, who also lives there (another 'indicator'), is in her 80's or 90's. Last year, when Mom left some lemon muffins on his porch, the following conversation was had:

D: You didn't leave those muffins for us did you?
Mom (with big smile): Yes, I did. Did you like them?
D: I hope you didn't make those?
Mom (smile wavers for a second): Yes, I did...
D: Oh, I didn't touch them...they didn't look very appetizing

Who is so socially inept that they say something like that? We've decided that we are on Daddy's side about this one. The crazy socially inept neighbour can knock on whatever door he likes and we won't say a darn thing about it...

And if things go awry one day (if the steps up the back deck are out of service and he just loses it), we want you all to know that we love you (On vous aime :)

But on a serious note...

Daddy's all frowny these days. He says report cards are no laughing matter. Sounds like blogging has to wait until reports are done next week and he's no longer in stinky mood.

Until then, you can read this enormously inappropriate joke...

Dad's Grant Proposal

Daddy says he is applying for a grant from the "gu'ment" (he says he learned that term from reading the facebook pages of morons and "brampton thugs"). We found the folder where he has started collating his data.


My sister and I cautiously opened the folder and quickly realized that it wasn't what we thought it was (like you, we assumed it was going to be a study on rhinoceroses). It is actually a study on horn honking after the light turns green.

Dad says he hopes to use the grant money to conduct a traffic study in order to better understand the psyche of a typical driver in any given area in the GTA. The plan is, whenever Dad is at the front of the line at a red light, wait for the light to turn green and start the stopwatch. He is not going to move until someone honks; at which point he will record the length of time it took from green light to horn and proceed to his destination.

He has a whole section in his folder labeled "Troubleshooting". It's an interesting read to say the least and we have made copies for anyone who is interested (the copy itself is free but shipping is $9.99...we take paypal). This section covers such topics as:

-Reducing bias: where he discusses how he must behave at every light when the light turns green (namely, do not look occupied or busy...just stare straight ahead until the horny people reveal themselves).

-Excessive concern or aggression: where he discusses people who choose to exit their vehicle instead of using their god given car horn (for concern or aggression, he has a baseball bat and a supply of clown horns to throw at the "data")

-Overly patient data: where he discusses his own reaction if he is on a tight timeline and nobody is honking (the appropriate response is: after one full minute of not moving at a green light, put the car in reverse and inch backwards slowly...a horn should come soon. This data will be discarded from the rest of the study but Dad will treat himself to a Blizzard from Dairy Queen for forcing a horn out of someone who so obviously didn't want to use one)

We have our suspicions as to whether or not he will get his grant (especially if he shows the "gu'ment" his 'file').

The Snow Whisperer

Daddy has started whispering to us...constantly. We started whispering back to him but we have grown tiresome of that and started speaking normally again. He continues with the whispering.
To be honest with you, we are starting to suspect that he is doing it on purpose in order to force people to come closer to him (perhaps some sort of attachment disorder??). You see, anyone that is more than 3 feet from him won't hear him so he sidles up close and ends up in these uncomfortably close conversations all day long.
Unbeknownst to everyone around, he has made a seemless transition from a normal person to...a close talker. Needless to say, it is a disturbing turn in our lives. We have a close talker in our midst.



We want to warn everyone...be aware. If you need to hear what he says, you better cozy up.

Attempt #2

Daddy has been badgered/inspired to try again. We won't discuss who did the badgering but part of the inspiration was from here:

Often Funny Vlog - language warning

Daddy says that he has analyzed the failure of attempt #1 and that it comes down to this: the bar had been set too high. He felt that he couldn't sustain the level of humour that was started over the long term. So from this point on, he will attempt to put out regular postings once a week or so (he'll get back into things slowly).

The first posting is already written and just needs some editing so it should be up within a couple of days...

Daddy apologizes for the time off but is hopefully back for a longer while (the last run consisted of 33 posts over 9 months...that comes to 3-4 posts per month...approx. 1-2 per week...hopefully he can pull that off again).

See ya soon :)