lookin' good!! J, be honest though, did you pick the name because of The Bold and the Beautiful? If so, I swear I'll name my firstborn ridge if it's a boy and Sally Spectra if it's a girl. Well, not really. But y'know.

No, there isn't any connection with any soap whatsoever.

Btw, it's not pronounced in the English way (thorn), it's 'thor-ne'. If you know what i mean.

It's derived from Thor (or Tor).

Oh ok. And yeah, as the only other Belgian guy here I know what you mean.

Sorry for poking a little fun at the name, I thought it was pronounced the English way!

Awww! He is way too cute. Seriously he is a good looking kid. Not to be negative but most kids come out with cone heads and such and well yours looks like an angel. What cute feet! I just want to tickle them! He has cute little fingers and toes! And even more amazing is that he does not look tiny/skinny. He is like really well sized. Very Very cute! Poor Satis - I told him your son was so cute it was making my clock tick. Then again I am smart enough to know I would make an awful parent so in the end that wins. But, that kinda stuff doesn't happen too much for me.

Oh and I mentioned to Satis I really liked the name too! Satis said he remembered you mentioning the name previously but I didn't but it is a good strong name. But since it was for Thor I guess you know that! Seriously congrats! I hope your wife is doing well. If you all need anything just let us know!

I love babies as long as they are someone elses I get to play and send them home when they start to cry.

(which with Shiny is almost immediately)

Ox: English is overrated anyway

Thx for the compliment Shiny, as a dad i obviously adore him and think he's cute, nice to hear others share my point of view.
I even don't mind changing his dirty daipers. I'm not doing that with other kids (not even the one i'm godfather of), just for my own offspring.

I have attached a couple of pictures of the garden Satis and I are creating. We are making it a raised garden bed with a fence because well we have dogs and they eat everything! So I am sure you all can see why we are so muscle sore. That was well over a ton of weight.

Lookin' good! Will the fence stop the dogs tho? I mean, can't they jump over? It doens't look very high, is all.


I love working with my hands. (Un?)fortunately enough I'm also intelligent so I don't HAVE to to make decent money...but sometimes I wonder if it hadn't been a more fulfilling life 'making' stuff. Then again, don't wanna be crippled from work by the time I'm 40 either.

It was a lot of work. I was sore for days... it was probably the best upper-body workout I've ever had. I don't really enjoy physical labor... I couldn't do this 5 days a week, 40 hours a day. No way. But man, I'd be buff as hell if I did. Anyway, it's satisfying building stuff like this for myself, but I doubt I'd have that same satisfaction doing it for other people. If/when this turns into an actual garden we'll see if it was worth the effort.

About the dogs, one is too lazy and short to jump the fence. The other probably won't because she's a wus. But we'll see. The wus one ate a jalapeno plant of mine a few years ago.

a jalapeno plant?! wouldn't it fart for its life the next couple of days? Or maybe dogs don't suffer the same effect from spicy stuff humans do...

yea, they seem to be immune. She ate the whole plant... peppers, leaves, stems.. it was ridiculous.

Cool. I like the little black fence. Kinda gives the place a neat graveyardy effect.

I love the odd manual labour. Although im more inclined to get thinking / desk jobs, I get really twitchy if i dont build or smash something once every 3 days or so. Speaking of which ive been hitting the gym regularly these days and im loving it. Havent been this happy since university probably.

As for the fence, well they could both jump it if they wanted or truthfully probably run it over, but our dogs have a pretty good sense for what they are not allowed to do. Akira can come pretty close to jumping the wooded fence in the picture. Poor Will, well he is getting old (he's my dog if you can't tell).

I really hope the garden turns out well with lots of fresh goodies. I dunno, it's not that I am a greenie or anything but I do enjoy doing little bits every now and again to be a bit better for the world. Plus I like the idea of not depending too much on other people.

Anyway - as for the fence, I really liked it. It is much better than I figured we could do. I would not let us start the garden part until the fence went up because Akira really likes to eat everything. Will does too but he is sneakier about it. So, I knew that it would be like a buffet for them. I am still shocked Akira ate the Jalapeno bush. Those Jalapenos were REALLY hot! Like a friend of ours who eats really hot stuff choked on them the day before kinda hot.

ok, so as some of you may have guessed, Shiny and I were out of town this past weekend. We actually went to San Francisco... left early Saturday morning, came back Tuesday afternoon. We had a great time.

I've posted some pics here: http://clankiller.com/stuff/SF09

The horse pics aren't from SF.

So anyway, for a more complete timeline:

Friday
- 9pm we get out of class.
Saturday
- 3am we get up to get ready to go to the airport.
- 6:15am the plane takes off
- 6:20am Satis falls asleep on the plane
- 7:45am we arrive at SF after a 3 1/2 hr flight and 2 time zones
- 9:00am we check into our hotel room
- 10:00am we eat in Chinatown
- 12:00pm we get massages... I have a Japanese woman walk on my back.
- remaining day we wander around Chinatown, then walk down to Fisherman's Wharf, to Ghirardelli Square, and back up some killer hills.
- about 9pm we go to sleep. Hard core!
Sunday
- 7am we get up and go on a wine tour
- We start off in Muir Woods (big ass trees) freezing our asses off
- As the day progresses, it gets warmer and we 'taste' wine. By the end of the day we're pretty warm and fuzzy.
Monday
- We wake up, walk into Chinatown and eat breakfast
- Wander around Chinatown a bit, then hit a street car downtown
- Get accosted by homeless people, then end up going to the SF museum of modern art.
- Walk back to the hotel, have food and do some gaming.
- In the evening, head down to the bay and do a night tour of Alcatraz (the prison).
- Head back to the hotel, wander around and get food, then crash.
Tuesday
- Wake up, go to the airport, fly home, do laundry.

Anyway, it was really cool. We rented a car, but that was pointless. If you ever go, just take cabs or walk everywhere, though walking can get pretty killer due to the crazy hills. Or take a Segway tour. I don't regret renting the car because you never know if you need one or not, but take it from us, you don't need one. Unless you're in a crappy hotel in the middle of nowhere, I guess.