Happy New Year.

So 2004 as today heads into the distance to replaced by a new and shiny 2005, it's time to relect on what's been happening this year and to also make some notes on some things I would like to do this year and maybe some predictions.

This year started of pretty much like any other, although it was the first New Year in our New House. It's hard to believe over a year has passed since we moved in, but it feels good to have some bricks and mortar to call our own. In February we began fertility treatment and managed to get pregnant first time round. This of course made us realise that we were going to need a bigger car. We ummed and arrrd and finally ended up buy a nice big MPV or people carrier as they call them in England. This was most fortuatous and we later found out in March that our tiny patter of little feet was going to be a bit louder as we were having not one, but two babies.

Most of the months rolled pretty much into one another. In May we decided that a swimming pool would make a nice addition to the garden. We finally went for an 18 foot round above ground pool. This was great for Sherri whilst she was pregnant as it allowed her to take the weight of for a while.

Our summer holiday this year was spent at Sherri's Mum and Dads in Nova Scotia, but we did take a few days on the way back and stayed in Bangor, Maine in the states and did some shopping.

On October 7th, Sherri and I celebrated 4 years of marriage. We ended up with a couple of surprise presents, when at 10:20pm and 10:23pm Sarah Elizabeth Meeks and Lucy Ellen Meeks were born. Being a new Dad is great. Watching their little faces and holding them is one of the greatest things in the world and I'm sure I'll be able to sleep normally again one day :-)

So with the twins and my two older babies (they'll kill me for calling them that), the rest of the year pretty much flew by and we ended up right here, waiting for another new year to start.

So what will the new year bring. There's many things I want to do next year, but their's always so little time. But I at least wanted to write a couple of things here, to maybe give me the jolt I need, so when I look back on this next year I can say, yeah I did some of those. Anway my list of things to do, looks something like this.

1. Put up my poerty online. It's been gather dust for year, so will be good to give them an airing again.

2. Try to concertrate on my writing this year. Who knows Endle the Wood may actually get fininshed.

3. Sort out a way to add photo albums to our site easily and actually get some more pictures online for everyone to see.

4. Try to learn French so I can say more than "Bec mon derrier" LOL

5. Try to think of new ways to make tons of money, or at least some some of the money I get already. Easier said than done.

6. Try to get a bit more exercise this year and definatly get Kosmo out of the house more often than he has been this past year.

That's about it I think. So what predictions do I have for this year. Nothing earth shattering and no explainations, but here goes.

1. ZIM's stock price doubles from around the 40c mark
2. A Chinese company buys a big US company
3. The proof that life once existed on other planets
4. Nintendo quits manufacturing of games consoles (not handhelds)
5. Lord Lucans whereabouts is finally revealed
6. Corel leaves Canada
7. Napster and iTunes merge
8. Mainstream Movies become watchable online
9. Clive Sinclair Lauches a new product
10. Receiving phone calls over the Internet from a landline becomes possible

So that abouts wraps things up for another year. I hope everyone has a good New Years Eve night, don't drink too much. I hope to see you all in the New Year.

In the Blink of an Eye...

...Christmas came and went. I don't think I've ever been so tired. Having a few drinks, I'm sure didn't help, as my poor body is just not used to it. As usual our tree looked really good, that was when you could get close enough to it, to see for all the presents strewn beneath it. Oh the wonders of small children and the wonders to come. I can hear a little voice in my head saying "You ain't see nothing yet!"

The weather continues to add it's festive touch. Today we had a light sprinkling of snow. It wasn't enough to have an adverse effect on driving conditions, but is enough to disguise what Kosmo gets up to in the garden. I'm not lookin forward to the clean up in the spring.

It's this time of year that you look back and determine how productivie the year has been. Apart from the babies, which have been my best achievement yet, the rest of the year has been pretty much a blur. I intend to focus a bit better in the year to come and will aim to do this by trying to detail some objectives for the year. I'm not going to go into them now, as I think I still need to mull them over for a bit, but suffice to say, I intend on posting something here, if only to give be something to reference next year.

Hope Christmas is treating you well.

3 More Sleeps!

Wow, a while has passed since my last blog, but with the coming holidays, I'm sure you can understand the frantic comings and goings of the Meeks household.

Now with Christmas in just a matter of days, I can proudly state that as a man, I have completed my Christmas shopping for the wife, and not only that, but have also got it all wrapped and ready to go. Wonders will truly never cease, but it's good to shatter the myths the man, now and then.

This weekend was a little rough. Poor Kosmo suffered another seizure on Friday morning, and according to Sherri it was a little more intense than usual. However Kosmo did settle for the rest of the day and we were fairly comfortable about leaving him with the girls Friday night, while we went out for my companies Christmas party. We left the older girls watching the younger girls and I think they quite enjoy it, apart from the smelly nappies and crying that is :-)

Saturday was the day I went out and completed my shopping. However the morning started off rocky, with Kosmo having another seizure in the morning and another in the evening. Although this sounds like a lot of seizures, it pretty much follows his regular pattern and as long as he doesn't have multiple seizures (clusters) one after the other, then it's not too much of a major concern. He has however been seizure free since Saturday, so touch wood he'll have at least 4-6 weeks before his next attach.

Sunday was pretty much a relax day. I looked after the babies for a bit, when Sherri went out, but we pretty much feed the babies together most of the day.

Monday was my works party, the one we have at the office. I fortunatly got Sherri to drop me to work that morning, so I could have a couple of beers and let my hair down. I brought in a chlli that Sherri made and everyone else brought in food and drink. It's nice to get together as a company and John (my boss), always has some things up his sleeve.

Last night Sherri and I went and did the Christmas grocery shop. I won;t tell you how much that came too, but if Jesus needs to feed the five thousand again, he can come to our house for supplies :-)

Anyway, not sure when I'll post again, maybe on Boxing day, once I've allowed my head to clear a bit. To everyone reading this, we hope you have a nice Christmas break. Eat drink and be merry, but remember to share it with someone, it's so much better than being alone.

When I was a kid... (Part 8)

My final few months at Systematic were a fairly uneventful. Actually you could say I was a bit pre-occupied with other things (See Sherri and My Story). Consequently my work suffered, so it came as no surprise when after coming back from one of my trips to Canada, Andy and Russell took me out for a drink and said that wanted to let me go. Now some people would say, how could those cruel heartless bastards let me go so easily. But let me tell you, when I told Sherri, she could have kissed the ground they walked on. To be honest it was a case of push before I jumped, but I have no regrets. In fact I'm very thankful to both Russell and Andy. They took me on when I needed a job and enabled me to learn a hell of a lot.

I worked my months notice at Systematic and then the big push was on to get my life sorted out for the big move. I can tell you, nothing is more disconcerting than packing your life up in boxes and watching them drive off in a truck, not knowing when you'll see them again. I think my stuff was picked up sometime in February and Sherri and the girls arrived on March 3rd, to celebrate my birthday (my neighbours George and MAry had a party for me) and to take me back to Canada. While they were in England, we had a blast and did lots of shopping, saw the Millennium Dome Exhibition and had a ride on the London Eye (the biggest ferris wheel in the world).

It was with mixed feelings that I said goodbye to my Mum, Dad, brother Alan and Stuart and Gemma, my nephew and niece. It was sad to leave them behind, exciting to be going to a new Country and terrifying to have to start a life anew. At least I was in good hands.

The flight was pretty uneventful, but going through customs was not. I was taken aside by the immigration people and interviewed with Sherri too, while the girls waited outside, not knowing that I could have potentially been sent back. Basically when you enter a country on a regular visa, you have to show you intend to leave by the time the visa expires. Now although I intended on staying in Canada, I did have a return ticket to the UK. The immigration person was very helpful and told me all the things I needed to know if I wanted to apply for permenant residency. So finally there I was outside the airport, with a few suitcases of clothes and the rest of my life in front of me.

Now I had good provisions set aside to live on, but money doesn't last forever. I would have to sort something out in the near future. I ambled along for a few months, making sure I kept up with my computer skills and keeping up with all the current news. Now as everyone knows, I always seem to do things arse about face, but everything works out in the end. The time for me to use my air ticket was looming, so I extended the ticket and also extended my visa. I think I eventually extended my visa twice before applying for permenant residency.

In amongst all this, I formally asked Sherri to marry me, and on October 7th 2000, we became husband and wife. I also applied for permenant residency, only to find out, that while these wheels were in motion, I wouldn;t be able to leave the country. This is a strange feeling. Basically I was free to leave, but it couldn't be guaranteed that I would be allowed to re-enter the country as it would be obvious that I would have no intention to leave.

Whilst waiting for my residency, I also applied for a work visa, which was granted within a few months. This brought us around to the end of June 2001 and it was time to start looking serioulsy for a job. This was the most depressing period here in Canada. Although I was extremely well qualified in the computer field, the tech bubble had burst in 2000 and there were thousands of computer people looking for a job. Not that I would have been in with much chance of landing a techy job. I must have applied for over 100 jobs, either by letter, fax, web or email and got around 2 replies. It was then that I decided to apply for non techy jobs, i.e. retail, warehouse etc. I was worried that they would see my resume and be put off by my computer experience, so I created an alternate version of my resume, that downplayed my computer experience.

With new resume in hand I canvassed around 30 or 40 companies, but still couldn't get my foot in the door. I was told that I didn't have any Canadian experience. The typical Catch '22'. At the beginning of October 2001, however everything was to change. A new beginning was on the horizon.

"Run for Home"

It's funny how listening to a song can evoke so many memories. Today I was on my way to work, after having dropped Mandi off at the bus station and Run for Home by Lindisfarne started playing over the radio. Now I rediscovered this song a few years ago after not having heard it for a good 10 years. Anyway it put me into somewhat of a whistful state. I can remember first hearing this song when I was around 10 years old.

My Dad used to work, delivering croissants, mainly to hotels and supermarkets. I used to get home from school on a Friday and if I went straight to bed, my Dad would take me to work through the night into Saturday. I used to love these days. I can always remember waking up and having something to eat, watching Russell Harty and then having to leave.

I used to love delivering to some of the larger hotels. I used to drink orange juice in the Athenium hotel and was always allowed to help myself. I can remember my Dad, asking me how much I thought the orange juice cost and being horrified to find it was about 5 quid a glass, or some huge amount. I can remember delivering to the Dorchester hotel and seeing people sleeping on the ovens as they were still warm after being switched off. Now that's something I'm sure doesn't happen any more.

Anyway Lindisfarnes, Run for Home, always used to play back then. I can also remember Bucks Fizz's, Making Your Mind up also featuring heavily on a Saturday morning, being announced by Stewpot. I remember his show used to start on a Saturday morning, by some boy saying "'Ello Darlin'" :-) Ah the memories.

The Exorcist All Over Again!

I think last night was probably the worst night yet. Poor Lucy, managed to spit up her whole feed, just after taking it around 8pm. Now when I say spit up, I don't mean in dribs and drabs, I mean full on Exorcist style. I will say one thing though, nothing seems to phase her. She just looked up at me, with those big wide beautful eyes, waiting for me to clean her up. Once I did that, she slipped back into horror flick mode and spat up up the second half of the feed. Obviously we were a bit concerned and called the Telephealth Hotline. We'd already taken her termperature, which was normal and the soft spot on her head was also normal. They didn't seem overly concerned and just asked us to give her next couple of feeds as a mix of half premixed formula and half water.

When it was time for the next feed, Lucy was having none of it. As you can imagine, her poor belly was probably screaming to be fed, as was she, and all we were giving her, was nothing more than lightly flavoured water. We called Telehealth back and they said to put her back on to regular formula, which she drank without fuss and thn managed to settle down.

I stayed up with her on my chest through the night and apart from a few cries and wimpers, she slept soundly. It would have been even more soundly if the dog didn't decide at 4am to go out for a pee. Oh well, I suppose he can;t help it, and it's better than him peeing all over the floor. At 6am I went to wake the girls up and strangely enough they were a bit lethargic. I can;t blame them, the weather for the last few days has been awful. It's been about -8c, with frozen rain, snow and a whole host of other unpleasantness. The back garden is like a skating rink and it's quite amusing to watch Kosmo go outside for a skate. 2 weeks to go before it's officially winter, but no one told the weather.

Is There Anybody Out There.

I'm just wondering how many people out there are reading this. Give me a warm fuzzy glow and sign the guestbook. Go on, you know you want to.

3 Certainties of Life!

Life is a funny thing. It has it's ups and ends in the most almighty down you can imagine... the paying of tax. Yes I know it's unavoidable, a little like death, but at least with death you get to sleep for a bit. What has this got to do with this blog? Absolutely nothing. Nada. Sweet Fanny Adams. It does however give me a nice diversion to all the other things that are happening in my life. Not that I want a diversion, but I'm sure it's nice for the rest of the huge audience I have reading this blog (3+ ?) to read about other things once in a while.

Anyway, back to baby talk. I still haven't managed to get the online photoalbum sorted yet, but will do as soon as I can. With over 800 pictures now and counting, it's not like I don't have much to choose from.

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas...

Fortunately I don't have to dream too much. The first major snowfall of the year has begun. We are expecting 5cm of snow today, this is down from the 10cm we were expecting. Christmas is just around the corner, and that is all too evident by the houses that have had their Christmas lights on for the last few weeks. In fact I couldn't hold out any longer and am sitting in my office listening to Christmas songs on the computer. Before you know it, we will be knee deep in snow and Christmas will be but a distant memory.

This Christmas will be an extra special one, as it will be Lucy and Sarah's first one. Our first Christmas as a family of 6... not fogetting Kosmo, 7. Taking of Lucy and Sarah, they are both doing fine. They have another appointment with their doctor tomorrow, for their regular checkup and to get the first of their shots. Ouch, they're not going to like that one little bit and who can blame them.

Anyway time to sign off and knuckle down to some real work. Toodlepip.