The McKenzie's Blog…

Over the last few weeks this has come up at my work a few times and I’ve just been watching The Gadget Show on Five when they came up a segment on this exact topic.  I figure it’s all too coincidental to not blog about it.

This won’t work every time, but from my own experiences it has worked each time.  I’ve never personally filled a laptop with liquid or sunk a mobile phone (either I’m just more careful or really lucky), but I know a number of people that have done this.  So here is the advice I’ve given in all the cases an d it’s managed to work.  You must follow the advice closely and NOT try and rush the process!!!  I can’t say that enough, DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!!

Here it goes.

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It was only a short time spent in Bonnie Scotland, but each time I go there I find the draw to return stronger and stronger.  It’s always been part of my life long plan to return to my patriarchal ancestral home of Scotland.  While the big cities aren’t dissimilar to the big cities anywhere else in the world, it’s the smaller towns and villages out in the county side that are the real draw for me.

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Mega Scotland 2010 was very good to say the least. We’d got ourselves checked in about 11am or so I suppose.  We had a bit of a lazy morning on Saturday, but who can blame us after the 10hr marathon drive from Heathrow to Kinross.

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The trip to Mega Scotland (GC1XDQ0) for Gord started with a flight from Canada on Thursday July 29th. I started at 8am with a drive to Heathrow to meet him. then it was what turned out to be a 10hr drive to travel just 400 or so miles from Heathrow to the camp site in Kinross, Scotland. Even I, a Veteran of 8 yrs of UK driving, was amazed at how painfully slow the drive was.

We arrived at the camp site about 9pm and had everything set up by about half 9 or so. A quick trip around the camp site to see is about and scope out the facilities, then it was back to meet the neighbours and chill out by their fire.

The sleep was great, I used my new down sleeping bag, it was very warm and comfy. Only problem, on a clear morning the Sun in Scotland shows its face about 4am… Needed my siesta glasses but could be arsed to get out of my bag to get them. Won’t make that mistake tonight thought haha

Saturday: first on the list besides getting showered will be to find food. Then its off to the kilt makers for Gord and I. Then to the actual Mega Scotland event.

I will post more later including some pics I hope.

Cheerio from Scotland

Posted by Wordmobi

In the quest to cut the weight of my backpack load I’ve been looking at my cooking setup.  I have a number of nested pot sets that we use for camping and one that I bought for back packing, however as light as they are they are still bulky and rather heavy for what you are using them for.  Having done a lot of searching on the net for what has worked for others I came up the short list of things.

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We’ve now been in Fredericton, NB for nearly a week now.  Only one more day before we pull out and head back to Ontario again.  It’s been a good week here and Nana Shirley has had a great time with the kids.  The kids have been staying with her in her condo while Yuki and I stayed in the guest suite they have in the building.  It’s been so nice for us not to have to wake up to the kids each morning hahah not sure Nana Shirley can say the same thing though   Mind you, she does have “Minnie” her little dog that needs to get up every morning about 5 for a walk outside.

I must get some more pics of the girls with Minnie as well.. but she’s pretty skittish of the kids (and adults too really).

Continue reading to see about the trip to St Andrews…. (photos from the day are in Canada – 2010 – Group 3.

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Well here we are, just about one week on in our holiday back in Canada.  It’s the first time in 6 years that I’ve been back home, and the first time ever for Emma to get over here.  We’ve had a pretty good first week.  Done a lot of shopping and a lot of driving.   We arrived on Saturday May 29th and were met at the airport by my father, from there we went back to his place just outside of Kingston. 

On the Sunday we went for a 90 min boat cruise around Kingston and Wolfe Island.  Here’s a couple of photos from the boat with Emma and Lisa taking turns at the helm (before leaving port haha)

We’d stayed until Monday morning when we packed up the van and headed out for Burlington VT.  We planned to stop here and shop, but clearly we made some wrong shopping choices as we didn’t find much in the way of bargains or much of any thing really.   Here we are crossing the bridges at Cornwall Ontario heading for the US.

Here we are taking the ferry across Lake Champlain that separates New York state and Vermont.

After a good nights sleep, but a stupid early wake up for some reason (still a bit jet lagged I guess), we got an early start on the second leg of the journey to New Brunswick to see Nana Shirley and the family in that part of the country.  We’re pretty well shopped out now I think   The girls have been spending money getting all kitted out for the wedding back in Kingston on the 14th of June.  I still need a shirt and tie but other then that we’re all set haha

When we arrived in New Brunswick it was starting to rain, and it rained for the next couple days.  Today we’ve had dry weather but it’s threatening to rain again for the next couple of days.   Saturday (June 5th, our wedding anniversary) we’re hoping to get an early start to the day and get down to St Andrews for sights and seafood, Yuki is a seafood-a-holic if ever there was one.  However, the weather forecast isn’t looking good for Saturday, so that might get pushed off until Monday.

Tonight we took the kids around to my cousin Gregg’s house to play with their 3 kids (Chanse, Dakota and Kendall), they were great and our girls had an awesome time playing with them.  That Kendall is a real cutie.  The kids had a great time running around and playing games.  I hope their kids sleep as well as I hope ours sleep haha.

Like usual, all the photos from our trip will be on Flickr.  They’ll all be in the Canada 2010 collection.

I’ll try to blog more as the trip goes, I’ve been time sharing the computer with Yuki so I don’t get to use it as much as I’d like