Got the terrible news today that one of Brandon’s friends from his old school passed away after a long battle with cancer.  Sigh I remember chasing the boy around the playground, after he “recovered” he came over to play and history is all we have now.  When I told Brandon he cried and it’s ok to cry in situations like this, I also told him that we all handle grief differently, to take as much time as he needs and that if he wants to talk I’m available.

I’m glad he can also talk to his old friends in Scarborough through Discord, they’re all devastated as well and I can only imagine the pain the poor parents must feel.  I don’t know what I would do if that happened to me…  Life isn’t fair, hug and tell your loved ones how much you care because there is never a guarantee for tomorrow.

Belated, forgot to post yesterday but woo it’s 2023! Is it me or does it feel like 2020 was just yesterday?  Anyway I wish everyone good health and prosperity this year and hopefully cooler minds prevail at the various conflicts around the world.

Don’t have a new years resolution, maybe I’ll make it to post more on my blog as I was really slacking the last half of 2022.

For the Sun family, 2022 was a pretty good year.  Both Maggie and my careers made good steps forward, we’re saving and investing more for the future (despite the poor market, I take a long position so I don’t worry) and I got to watch my boy grow up another year.  He’s still pretty innocent and I’m trying my darndest to enjoy that while I can.  Moving was a real pain in the ass and there’s still some stuff we need to unpack but all in all I am pretty happy with how this year went.

For the world, 2022 was more mixed and the in the short term, it looks like we’ll have more difficulties ahead pretty much everywhere but I know we’ll be ok and will pull through, because we always do.

I’m a lucky man and I certainly feel like it today when I look back at what transpired through the year. 🙂

So today I turn 43 years old and couldn’t be happier.  My life has gone better than I could have imagined, lol perhaps it’s because I didn’t have that high of an ambition or huge dreams but yeah I’m pretty damn satisfied.  I have a great life partner in Maggie and our son Brandon is an absolute joy to raise.  Heck even my cat, Slinky is great, I really have nothing to complain about and feel very fortunate to be where I am right now.

Thank you to everyone who’s passed over warm wishes, it’s greatly appreciated. 🙂

So I started Thanksgiving weekend by picking up a Yakima Skybox 21.  I didn’t realize it was the big one and after getting home, yeah it’s simply too big for my Lexus NX unfortunately, I have a tall garage and I can’t even get it inside with it on!

It doesn’t look too bad but I think I’m going to resell this thing and get maybe the Skybox 16 or a Thule box.  Ahh well, it was pretty cheap and I definitely won’t be losing money on it so no big deal.

Sorry for the lack of updates, it’s been very busy at work and at home but I needed to post this update because I am so happy…  Our backyard pool turned green after 2 days and it’s been 3 weeks of struggling with it.  Chemical & pH levels are good but the damn pollen made it look absolutely terrible.  I have a family gathering at my home next weekend and told them that nothing has been working so yesterday we went to the most extreme level and I bought some Power Floc (flocculant) and my god what a difference it made!

First picture was taken on yesterday, I added the floc in the afternoon recirculated the water for a couple of hours then turned off the pump to let the stuff do its work.  Frankly I wasn’t that hopeful as everything else failed but when I woke up and saw how clear the water was it was great!  I immediately started to vacuum out the particulate matter and now my pool is mainly clear!  I might do it again, I was too fast when I did started vacuuming and disturbed the materials but it’s so much better now.  Just refilling the pool and maybe I’ll go for a swim in the afternoon/evening. 🙂

10 years…  That’s how long we were at our old house and man it flies by so damn fast.  We’ve had so many ups and downs over that time and it was an absolutely great dwelling to raise our family in but time moves on and today it closed.  It’s now owned by different people and I certainly wish them as much love and luck that we had over the years.

Had to throw out some recycling today, rented a U-Haul van to move it and then cleaned it up nicely for the next owner.  Left some bottled water in the fridge as well as a bottle of wine to celebrate the new home, just a little nice thank you that we like to do. 🙂

So today I traded the 2015 Lexus IS 350 AWD for a 2016 Lexus NX 200t F-Sport 3.  The IS was super fun and I really enjoyed driving it, I never had a sporty car before and the power is definitely addictive however in my current stage of life, a SUV is just more useful.  I also traded the car in because they frankly gave me a pretty damn good deal and after driving the IS 15k km (lots of to and from the cottage I guess) I’m not losing much.

The Lexus NX is exactly the same as my previous model except this is a 2016 vs 2017 previously.  It only has 77k km on it though so it’s pretty low mileage and that’s why I bought it.  Unfortunately my garage is absolutely full of crap right now and it’s parked on the driveway with Maggie’s CT 200h in front pretty close to the bumper and to make myself feel better I ordered a boot from Amazon.  I don’t know if this thing actually works well but it certainly makes me feel better.  Looking at it now I think I’m going to put it on a different wheel, if they drive forward the arm will break off so I’ll do that after blogging.

Anyway yeah back to a SUV for me, I’m going to miss the IS, maybe I’ll get another in the future…

Man it’s been so busy I didn’t have a chance to post this earlier but on Tuesday night we sold our house.  The market has been slowing pretty dramatically so we were lucky to get a price we wanted, still got a bidding war but less people than if we tried selling in Feb or March.  Sad, this home has been good to us the last 10 years and I hope it’s great for the new owner as well.  Will be moving onto our next chapter very soon.