Bruce Toews

As many of you know, yesterday I took off for Fargo, North Dakota, to visit kittytech. When I got to Fargo, the plan was for me to use the bank machine. I tried, but the thing was out of order. So I called Caroline, and she did have some cash, so I took the cab over to her place and she paid the driver. Some knight in shining armor I am, huh?

So yesterday afternoon and evening were terrific. Caroline greeted me with this amazing peanut butter chocolate cookie thing, right out of the oven. Yummy, delicious, fabulous, and ... and ... stuff. Thencame the main course, after I'd given her the farmer sausage and jars of honey dill sauce I brought over for her. The main course was pizza burgers. These were hamburgers with pizza sauce made into the patties. She had pizza cheese and sauce on top of that. No ketchup, but for once, that wasn't an issue with a burger. There was some leftover pizza sauce afterwards, so for a nighttime snack, my beautiful sweetheart made pizza buns with the sauce and cheese on the remaining hamburger buns.

Breakfast this morning was the traditional continental breakfast: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with a glass of milk. High society eats breakfasts like this all the time. Lunch was toast, because we had to try out the new toaster Caroline got.

Today happened to mark the 1-2/3 year mark since we started going out, so for dinner I took Caroline to Ruby Tuesdays. I've never been there before, and I loved it. We each had steak. On top of mine, I poured a generous dose of that incredible flavor-enhancer, ketchup. My steak was an aged prime sirloin. Caroline chose filthy rotten fungi on her sirloin instead. Some people's kids! The appetizers were chicken tenders and chips with cheese sauce.

It is wonderful being here, just spending time with Caroline, laughing with her, being together, listening to old-time radio, basically doing whatever fancy strikes us. Since we're both self-professed computer nerds, we've both been online pretty much the whole time. I am very happy, and I expect this happiness to continue. It's a beautiful thing.

Always in the search for an LJ style that works well with screen readers, I recently went and changed the appearance of my journal. Hey, it sounded great. Headings in all the right places, bla bla bla, I thought I had it made. But no, 'twas not to be.

Today a friend of mine e-mailed me privately and told me, as tactfully as it's possible to say such a thing, that my LJ had a girly appearance to it. Which is fine if you're a girly. But I'm a boyee, so this was not what I wanted. And so, dear reader, I hope my new appearance, or at least my journal's new appearance, will straighten this thing out, and rest assured that I am not dealing with some mid-life gender identity crisis or anything. Just to prove it, I'll go look for something blatantly obvious not to notice.

So yesterday, I was eating my dessert at one of our fine local eating
establishments, Smitty's Family
Restaurant. I realized I still had a piece of veal left over from
the main course. No, veally, I did! So, ever the adventurous type, I
thought, how would the combination of veal and ice cream taste? No,
veally, I did. Oh wait, I used that line already. No, veal ... I
digress. So, anyway, I tried it. You know what? Is's actually very good.
I recommend it. What do I call it? I know, vealnilla ice cream!

We couldn't find the Canadian voice post number for LJ, so I whipped out my handy-dandy cellphone, an old cellphone, and used the sound recorder on it. This was recorded on the Paddlewheel Queen, a river boat here in Winnipeg. You are more than welcome to listen to the recording here. I dare anyone to try transcribing this.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This message is written with tongue firmly
in cheek and is not to be taken seriously.

kittytech and I have reached a point in our relationship
where I am not sure if she can be forgiven. Just how does one forgive
the utterly, totally, and absolutely unforgivable?

For the last several weeks, she has been including links to the daily
trivia sampling from FunTrivia.com. If you haven't
checked this out, you may wish to add yourself to our little group and
have your daily scores compared withours. I've gotten two ten out of ten
scores, of which I am immensely proud. But I digress.

So one of the questions in today's quiz was as follows:

No, wait, on second thought, if you want to find out, you can check it
out for yourself. Go to kittytech's LJ and follow the trivia
link in the most recent entry. The question she actually got wrong,
horror of horrors, is #2. How could she? And after all we've been
through together? The pain is unbearable, to think that she would have
gotten that question, of all questions, wrong! It really hurts. Can I
forgive her? Is reconciliation possible? My heart aches with grief.

Well, I'm planning my trip to Milwaukee in December. I'm looking at
leaving on the 27th and coming back on January 3rd. This one's going to
be expensive, probably around $800. I'm thinking of making the booking
on Friday.

Here's the latest on my new computer. It appears to be only screen readers that do not work with this machine. I've tried SAToGo, Window-Eyes, and my screen reader of choice, JAWS. Other programs install without problem. I'm both getting better and better at using Narrator, and hating it more and more, simultaneously.

It must be something with the display adaptor, it's the only solution I can come up with. If I can ever figure out how to re-enable the integrated video card and disable the ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro, I think I'll try that.

Caroline is really emphasizing that she feels I should brave trying to deal with Dell tech support. What are they going to know about screen readers? I've got an e-mail in to Freedom Scientific, in which I have told them everything I can think of that might possibly be relevant. I can't call them from work, and besides, they work during the same hours I do, basically. This really sucks. First I unknowingly buy a computer that can't be expanded with the goodies I bought for it, then the thing won't even work. It's enough to make a grown man cry, but as it is I feel like such a bungling fool, utterly unable to get the slightest thing right. I feel very much like a money-wasting failure.

Yesterday, I took kittytech to church with me. It was the first time she'd been to my church, and it was terrific. We had a baptism and a communion yesterday. These are not every-week occurrences.

For lunch, my roommate made us pizza pops. We spent the afternoon listening to some old radio, some Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I'm sure there was something else which escapes me.

My roommate and I struck up a deal for dinner, and we went to the Elephant and Castle. I paid for the cab, and Rod (my roommate) paid for the meal. We headed out of the hotel in which the restaurant presides, and there was this limo parked outside. I decided to hire it. Turns out it was Rod's first limo ride, so he spent the time flirting with the driver and I spent the time flirting with kittytech. I got the better deal, though Rod doesn't think so. This is all as it should be, I daresay. We spent the evening listening to Treasure Island Oldies together. This has become sort of a Sunday night tradition for us.

How can one man be as blessed as I am?

First, I want to wish imafarmgirl a happy birthday. May 30th is the best day to have a birthday. Did you know that we even share a birthday with Mel Blanc?

My roommate bought me the best birthday present I've ever gotten so far.

I'm sitting in my chair after work. Rod says he has to go down to get something, a surprise for me. So I wait. He comes up and says he wants to give me my gift early, but I'll have to go over there to get it. So I get out of my chair and walk toward his voice .. and straight into the arms of my beautiful Caroline, kittytech. What an incredible, wonderful gift, and what a wonderful way to spend my birthday.

I'm hungry. I thought you'd want to know. As long as I'm being removed
from several people's friends lists these days, I might leave with a
bang. Or at least a growl from my stomach.