Freezing Rain Warning Is In Effect

Looks like I chose the best day to start my vacation. I'll bet the girls at work are grumbling about it right now...

Apart from the general traffic carnage and the physical strain from digging myself out of the house, I love winter. If people hated winter as much as they say they do, then what the hell are they doing here? This is Canada. It's cold here. Get over it.

I think it's been 6 or 7 months since I've gone climbing. I miss it. I've had a couple of excuses (busy at work...all my climbing buddies are gone...etc.) but I have to admit they're not really good excuses. I'm going to try to get in as much climbing as possible in the next two weeks. If I'm going to be attempting ice climbing, then I'm going to need all the help I can get.

Do you like the smell of a camp fire? I love it. Don't know what it is exactly, but it's sort of soothing, very natural. Guess what I found? Candles that are campfire scented. Can you believe it? I bought them immediately and gave them to Emily for Christmas. Why? Because the last time we went to the One-of-a-Kind show, she was joking with one of the candle merchants about making a candle that smelled like wood smoke. And what do you know? Someone has already done it! But I hope it doesn't end up smelling like her house is on fire. That would be considerably less than soothing.

"The lamp is burning low upon my table top, the snow is softly falling"

30 Seconds

Do you find it difficult sitting through the 3+ hours of "It's A Wonderful Life"? I know it's a classic holiday movie, but I have never been able to watch the entire thing from start to finish. Good news! Now you can go here and watch the entire movie in 30 seconds...re-enacted by bunnies.

Nature

It's frickin' freezing...

That being said, you can still find some really interesting scenes of nature. For example, I was driving along the lake shore this morning, and the wind was whipping everything around, especially the water. The whole lake was covered in white caps, something that I don't get to see that often. Giant waves crashing over the breakers and the rocks. Reminded me of the ocean, something else that I don't get to see very often. Beautiful and powerful at the same time.

On the other end of the spectrum, I witnessed a gigantic swarm of pidgeons (I know it's the wrong quantifier but holy crap, there were a lot of them) clustered on the side of the road and either fighting over a morsel or quite possibly pecking something to death. Kind of scary.

"Jealousy, turning saints into the sea, swimming through sick lullabies, choking on your alibis"

More Knick Knacks

Ah...I love the One-of-a-Kind Show. Or, as my brother calls it, the "Knick Knack Place". I already went last Thursday and bought a couple of things, mainly for Boni's birthday but also an item or two for myself. I went back earlier tonight to try to pick up some Christmas gifts but two of the three purchases were once again for me.

The One-of-a-Kind Show...where you can purchase a resin pendant, yogurt-covered berries and a little margarita man all in the same place. And the cranberry pudding with butter sauce is excellent.

I think I'm going to go again on Friday...

"If you like pina coladas, and getting caught in the rain"

A Tale of Two Parties

'Tis the season for excess.

Friday kicked it off with my company's "holiday" party. None of us were in the mood to work, and of course something came up half an hour before the end of the day, so I had to rush around to get it started and then passed it off to Marianli who was kind enough to take over so I could leave. I went to Anna's place to get ready, then went to Farrah's to pick her up. We were exactly on time but there were already a ton of people there, having drinks and chatting. It was then that I realized that I would only know about a third of the people at most, but it would give me a chance to meet people I had only known through e-mail correspondence. The food was excellent, there was plenty of people-watching and gossip going on, and there was a lot of dancing. I must say, I love going to these kinds of events because you get to see people as they really are...crazy, fun-loving, and able to move their bodies in ways you can hardly imagine. Monday is going to be FUN.

Last night, we pulled another surprise birthday, this time for Boni. I went to "kidnap" her at her place, blindfolded her and put her in the back of my car. Then I got a call saying that key people were going to be late, and so I had to stall. I ended up driving around and around in circles for 20 minutes, keeping in mind that Boni was most likely counting the times I was turning right to figure out where we were going (and she was). When I got to the restaurant, I decided to have some fun and told her to stay in the car. Then I locked the doors and went in to see what was going on. I talked to the people who were there for a few minutes, then decided that I should probably go and get her, since it looked like the "late" people were going to be really late, and it was kind of cold outside. I solicited Kimmy's help by asking her to take one of Boni's arms when she got out of the car, and I would take the other, but we wouldn't say anything, allowing Boni's imagination to have a good workout. We led her in, giving "right" and "left" commands when necessary. After we got the blindfold off, and Boni was able to say hello to the people who were there, she finally asked, "Where ARE we??"

We were at Anatolia, a great Turkish restaurant near my house. It's been a really long time since we've seen Boni eat meat (they used Halal). The rest of the night proceeded well, with a surprise guest whom I had never met before, but, funnily enough, knew Cathy through the "Love Boat" program and had a mutual friend with Ada. There were also some incidents, naturally, like the waiter accidentally pouring tea down the back of Jocelyn's pants and the little girl who was sitting at the table next to us who decided to throw her book over her shoulder. But it was great seeing people we hadn't seen for several years, and after dinner the conversation carried out of the restaurant and into the parking lot for another half an hour.

Biggest laugh of the night: "I'm cold. I need some more tea down my pants."

Needless to say, I'm a little partied out today. But give me a minute and I'll get my second wind.

"Who really cares cause it’s your life you never know it could be great"

Have You Ever...

...wondered how someone can work overtime and leave early on the same day?
(Actually, I can answer this one..."Pam" follows her own rules governing time and space)

...watched the sun set almost every night?

...seen a tow truck being towed away?

...taken half an hour to drive one kilometre?

...been to a book signing?
(CRAZINESS...)

...considered Band Aid to be a great idea...and how sad it is that Band Aid 20 is still necessary?
(By the way, the new version of "Do They Know It's Christmas" sounds nice...but a little weird near the end)

I have.

Lesson of the day: If you want to cut in line at a book signing, bring a baby with you.

And now, a Public Service Announcement: ease off the gas if you're heading south on Martingrove past Eglinton. The cops are back and this time they're ticketing. Luckily I'm still dodging that bullet.

"Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you"

A Busy Bee

I know, I missed you guys too. I didn't mean to leave it for this long, but I've been busy with this. It took me a while to get the hang of it, and then it took me even longer to sneak onto my home computer (between my mom's games of mah jong and my brother's games of Rome Total War) to scan the appropriate photos. But it's funny how dedicated I was to finishing it once I made up my mind to do it. Crap...now I know what it reminds me of...yearbook...

In any case, stuff has happened in the past couple of weeks that I've been meaning to talk about, but didn't. Some of it has actually stuck in my mind without the aid of a written list, so here we go with "the list":

• Dodging the bullet: I don't know if I'm lucky or the cops just don't care, but lately I've been breezing by the radars without getting a second glance. And I don't mean that I'm one or two kms over the speed limit...I'm talking 10-20, and I'm almost the only car on the road. But I think the guy stationed across the street from MCI was just gathering information, he didn't look up from his notebook when I passed by.
• Speaking of Martingrove...: Have you ever witnessed a game of "chicken" where nobody chickened out? Again, this was one of those "why do I always witness these things?" kind of moments. People who are familiar with the two-lane stretch of Martingrove that passes West Deane Park know that the lanes used to be separated by the dashed yellow line, but after the construction they made it solid. That didn't stop some yahoo from passing me anyway as we came down the hill. Then he tried to pass the guy in front of me, but the other guy kept the pace, and so the two of them were hurtling towards the intersection, and into oncoming traffic. Nobody slowed down, nobody budged. By some coincidence, there was enough space between the guy in front of me and the oncoming car for the yahoo to squeeze in between, straddling the yellow line. I don't know why he was being such a jackass, the light was red anyway. And of course, it was a souped-up Honda.
• Speaking of witnessing things...: I seem to be an accident magnet at work too. Some of you may remember me talking about "Pam" from a previous blog. Well, last week, I was exiting the office, heading towards the washroom, when I heard a shriek behind me. Pam had just exited the office and headed in the opposite direction towards the cafeteria, but had failed to notice an empty wooden skid on the floor just outside the office doorway. By the time I turned around, she was somersaulting on the floor. I was more concerned about her hurting herself than anything else, but I suppose later on it did seem kind of funny (okay, it was hilarious). I had yet to see her upset to the point of tears up until that moment. Then she was red-faced and on the warpath, STORMING into production to get them to remove the skid. By the time I returned from the washroom, the skid was gone, but after I retrieved my lunch and started heading to the cafeteria myself, Peter the IT guy was putting the skid back, looking pretty peeved and asking me if I knew which "moron" had who moved his skid. "The one who tripped over it?" I replied, before I realized what I had said. Just then Pam came out of the office and had a discussion with Peter, who then moved the skid to the other side of the door. Luckily, I don't think she heard his question, which makes my answer less insulting even if she heard it.
• "Matt & Ben" is a really funny play.
• A classic Ada line of questioning: "Do you do drugs? No...wait...I mean, does your company do drugs?"

"I walk this empty street on the boulevard of broken dreams"

Starting Over

I don't think I could feel like a bigger idiot. But I guess I got upset over something that perhaps wasn't so devastating. I was sprucing up my little computer, rearranging things so that I would have more space on my C drive. Since there's always the possibility that Microsoft will ruin my life, I backed everything up, including all of my e-mail and calendar events (both past and future).

I went through the process and everything worked out great. So the next day I started going through the stuff I had backed up and stupidly deleted the mail archives, thinking that everything was still on my computer.

1st Lesson of the Day: "Archive" means "cut and paste", not "copy".

Of course, I already knew that, but somehow I didn't clue into it until hours later, when I realized that every single e-mail and event that I had saved over the past 3 years was wiped out. I completely lost it. I know it sounds ridiculous that I should get so worked up about electronic data, but it was in this moment that I realized exactly how much I relied on this technology.

I have the worst memory. Sure, I can quote Simpsons' episodes and recall that time that Mrs. Plevins yelled at me in front of my whole Grade 5 class, but otherwise, it's hard for me to remember what I was doing last week, or last year. So I use old e-mails and the calendar in Outlook to remember for me. So it was really important to me that 3 years worth of memories was erased because I was careless. And the saddest part of all this is that I don't remember what I lost. I know most of it was correspondence between me and my friends, and there were some newsletters that I get once in a while, and there might have been some important stuff, but I had placed all of my faith in this little machine to remember things for me, that I just pushed it out of my own head, thinking it was in a safe place.

I actually had trouble sleeping that night. By the next morning, I had come to my senses and realized that all was not lost. Half of my messages were still saved on the server. In my attempt to recopy all of the messages back onto my computer, I forgot to click one little box, and now all of the messages that were on the server are now downloaded onto my computer.

2nd Lesson of the Day: "Download" means "cut and paste", not "copy".

So, the server is empty, and I have most of my recent e-mails on my computer. The majority of the stuff that I permanently lost were really old Waterloo Engmail messages from my classmates about projects and from my profs about assignments. Technically, this was all stuff I should have ditched a while ago. As for the rest of it, I'm going to have to rely on friends to fill in the gaps. I suppose I should just make this a "silver lining" experience and move on.

But I still feel like an idiot.

"I don't feel the way I ever felt, I know, I'm gonna smile and not get worried, I try but it shows"

It Could Have Been Me...

I don't know if it's the weather, or if people just don't pay attention anymore, but lately I've been passing a lot of accidents on the way to work. Specifically, on the 404. Yesterday, traffic slowed as I passed Highway 7, which is unusal because when you get that far north in the morning there's less traffic. I crawled past a couple of cars that were mysteriously dented (mysterious because they were both dented on the right side...and I didn't see any other cars on the shoulder).

Today, traffic slowed again, this time near Major Mackenzie. A pretty bad rear-end accident had just happened in the middle lane. I got to work a little late but it was okay. A couple of hours later, I found out that one of the guys in my department, Robert, had gotten into an accident. What happened? He was slowing down due to the traffic caused by the accident I passed, and he got rear-ended. Can you believe that? His bumper was in pretty bad shape, and after a lot of convincing from the rest of us, he took the rest of the day off to go to the doctor in case he has whiplash.

So, my first thought was, what the hell is going on? I know accidents happen every day, but to have another accident caused by an accident? Luckily Robert was slowing down properly and wasn't following the guy in front of him too closely, otherwise he would have plowed into the front car. That means the guy behind him was going pretty fast despite the fact that everyone in front of him was obviously slowing down.

But the really sobering thought for me is...that could so easily have been me. I could have been the one that guy slammed into. I mean, Robert gets to work the same time I do, so he couldn't have been that far behind me on the road at the time.

Lately in the news, they've been talking about how commuters are more likely to die from a heart attack due to the stress of sitting in rush hour traffic.

Right...because what we should be worrying about when we're on the road.

"Crash...on the last splash"

Little Bugs

This has been bugging me for the past couple of weeks. Why does Bono say "Uno, dos, tres, catorce" at the beginning of Vertigo? It's...weird, and it throws me off for some reason. Is he trying to be different? Does it mean something? Because I refuse to believe that he can't count to four in Spanish. For that matter, I refuse to believe that ANYONE can't count to four in Spanish.

Have you ever had the feeling that something is missing? You can't quite put your finger on it, but there's a very tangible hole somewhere in your life, and you don't know what's supposed to fit in it. I've had the feeling for a while, and I'm starting to not like it. I know what you're thinking, and it's NOT IT. I'd like to think that I'm not that shallow. But I think I'm formulating a solution as to how to go about looking for my missing thing.

More to follow...

"Hello hello (hola!) I'm at a place called Vertigo"

Multitasking Technology

I was at yet another warehouse sale with my parents on Tuesday (Levi's this time). Same old, same old. As my dad was trying on a reasonably priced, decent-looking belt, all the lights went out. Talk about flashback. But a glance outside the door told us that the only place with no power was the room we were in. So...okay. But it's a fairly large room and somehow the dark seemed bigger because of it. So what do people do? They started turning on their cell phones and continued to shop by the light from the screens. And I have to say, some of those coloured screens are really bright. For pete's sake...it only lasted ten minutes. And naturally the first things to regain life were the cash registers. Naturally.

Now, for my real cell phone rant. In the middle of the standing posture sequence of my yoga class yesterday, there was a sudden and very unmistakable melody permeating through the new-age ocean wave music that the instructor always uses. Everyone sing along! "I see a red door and I want it painted black..." The instructor asked the guilty party to turn off her cell phone, and all the woman could say was that it was going to stop playing in a few seconds. Um...right...until the next minute when the person calls back? Even as the woman went to turn it off, someone else's cell started ringing. Honestly. It rang again just before the final meditation, prompting the instructor to firmly, and with no attempt to hide her irritation, say, "If anyone has a cell phone in the room and thinks that it will ring in the next ten minutes, I'd like to ask them to leave now." The second cell phone woman picked up her stuff and left the class.

Is it too much to ask people to leave their lives outside the door for one measly hour? Okay, I know better than anyone that it's easy to forget stuff like turning off the cell phone. But, seriously! It already rang once! And isn't the point of practicing yoga to relax and let go of the stress in our lives? Why bring the phone in with you?? That's like the source of all stress!! Holy crap, just thinking about it is stressing me out!!!!

Thank you, and good night.

"I have to turn my head until my darkness goes"

24 Hours

I just recovered from a 24-hour cold. It was absolutely fascinating...okay, it's absolutely fascinating in retrospect. At the time, it was pretty crappy. When I woke up, I felt fine, except for a very slight scratchiness in the throat. It didn't hurt as much as it usually does before the onset of a cold, so I decided to deal with it later (especially since I was already a little late for work). I started sniffling at around 2:00 pm, prompting me to make a mental note to take some medication before I went to bed that night. I didn't have a chance to do anything...by 4:00 pm, I was sneezing and congested. By the time I got home, it was a full-blown sinus attack. I lay on the couch in front of the TV like a slug until it was time to take some drugs.

Sidebar: The apple-cinnamon Neo Citron kicks ass. Not only does it actually taste like both cinnamon and apples, but it works like a charm. A little promo just in time for cold and flu season.

So I took the Neo and passed out for the night. By the time my alarm rang this morning, I was perfectly okay. Other than some residual sniffles during the day, you couldn't tell that I was sick as a dog the night before. It was like a week-long cold compressed into 24 hours. If only all of my colds were like that...

24 hours can do a lot to a person. For example, you think that you're going in to get your chemo treatment tomorrow, and then 24 hours later, you find out the chemo isn't working, and just for extra kicks, it turns out that the reason why you can't breathe properly is because fluid has been building up around your lungs and you have to go into the hospital to get it drained out of your body. It was the first time I personally saw my boss cry, which was pretty upsetting for me. You have to hand it to this woman, though. She finds out she's only got one working lung, but she comes into work anyway while she's waiting for a bed in the hospital to become available. I swear, she is my personal hero. Meanwhile the blood clot in her right arm hasn't cleared up yet, so she's in constant agony. It's astounding when you think about how life can be so unfair to really nice people. She's supposed to be in the hospital for a couple more days, so I'm going to try to visit her tomorrow. Just another 24 hours.

"I wanna hold you high and steal your pain away"

This Should Happen More Often

Another reason why I think Sarah McLachlan is cool. And an awesome person in general.

More Proof...

...that I have a ridiculous capacity to retain all facts and trivia relating to pop culture and entertainment. Last week at work, we heard these words broadcast on the PA system: "Birdie num-nums". I was in Marianli's office at the time, and I just started cracking up while Marianli looked confused. Thankfully, Scott was passing by and started laughing too, since he knew who it was who had made the "announcement". I said to Scott, "It's from 'The Party'!" And he confirmed it, saying that Malcolm used to say "birdie num-nums" on the PA all the time. He figured that Malcolm decided to do it one last time before he left the company (makes sense). The next day, Scott mentioned to me that I was the only person he had talked to who knew that the line came from that movie. I was kind of shocked, for a few reasons: 1) the movie predates my existence by more than a decade, 2) it has become a classic Peter Sellers movie, and 3) given my relative youth compared to the majority of my fellow employees, I would have thought at least one other person would have seen that movie in their lifetime. In addition, I haven't seen that film since I was a preteen, but the line sticks with you long after you watch the scene. Now, in retrospect, I guess the only minor problem is that it makes fun of East Indians the way Mickey Rooney made fun of Asians in "Breakfast at Tiffany's". But it was the '60s, and I guess I can forgive them for being a little politically incorrect. So if you're bored sometime, and you've never seen Peter Sellers make a complete ass of himself, go rent it.

"There was a little Spanish flea, a record star he'd like to be, he heard of singers like Beatles and The Chipmunks he'd seen on TV, why not a little Spanish flea?"

Well, Aren't We Pretty...

So...what do you guys think? You have to admit that my blog needed some sprucing up, and I was really tired of trying to figure out how to fix the comment formatting.

Critical Eye

One and a half weeks, 8 films. I still laugh when people consider this an impressive statistic. Not to say that it isn't, I guess, but being someone who knows what the festival is like, I'm impressed when the woman who's standing in line behind me has seen 30+ films and it's not even the last day yet. That's an average of 4 films a day. I think I read somewhere that someone once saw 6 films in one day. That would probably mean that they didn't stick around for any Q&A's, or see the end of a lot of films for that matter.

But I digress. As promised, a little recap of the week's highlights and a sneak peek at some films about hit a theatre near you:

Les Revenants (They Came Back): Not your typical zombie movie. Everywhere in France, the recently deceased start walking into towns and villages. No blood and guts, no feasting on brains. The citizens of the town in the movie begin to reintegrate the dead back into society, reuniting them with their families, giving them jobs, etc. But the dead behave differently than the living, and they discover that they are resistent to disease and don't die quite as easily as they did the first time. Fear takes over, and then some really weird stuff starts happening. Not likely a movie you'll see at the Cineplex, but still interesting.

Haven: If you liked Traffic or Love Actually, you will like this film. Three groups of people converge in the Cayman Islands, with plenty of sex, drugs, violence and millions of dollars in offshore accounts to go around. Anyone who thinks that Orlando Bloom only gets pretty-boy roles will be happy to know that he becomes physically disfigured during the course of the movie. During the Q&A, there was a question to the cast asking them which aspect of the Caymanian culture made a lasting impression on them. Bill Paxton replied, "The jerk chicken is just excellent." (Watch the film to understand the joke)

Beyond the Sea: Hitting your local theatre on November 24th. A biopic that blends fantasy with reality with a bit of song and dance thrown in. Kevin Spacey was really impressive, singing all the songs himself. He's a really funny guy in person too. When the film fest dude was telling the audience that anti-piracy devices were going to be in use during the screening, Kevin added, "I'M the anti-piracy device...I'll chase your motherfuckin' ass down the street!" The film itself is set up so that it appeared as though Bobby Darin was actually directing the film about his life, so you get the "film within a film" idea. He talks to his 10-year-old self quite a bit, and the boy who plays the young Bobby, William Ullrich, is really talented. He's already done 4 Broadway musicals. My mom thought that the real Sandra Dee was way prettier than Kate Bosworth. All in all, a highly recommended film.

White Tower: Unfortunately, not at all what I was expecting, and mostly disappointing since it could have been much more interesting. It's a documentary about the deaf in China. Since we NEVER ever see or hear anything about the physically handicapped or how they're treated in that country, I thought it would be enlightening. It was a couple of hours of watching the camera move back and forth while deaf people talked to each other. The other problem was that there were technical difficulties with the projector, and everything was kind of blurry, which was really bad since subtitles were extremely essential. They stopped the movie after half an hour, spent about ten minutes fixing the problem, and then, at the request of the directors, started the movie again from the beginning. Oy. There was a story (a partially deaf man fell in love with a deaf girl who was already involved with a deaf Taiwanese man), but it was really hard to watch. However, it answered my question about how the Chinese sign a word that doesn't have a sign (since there's no alphabet). They just write the word in the air with their finger or on the palm of someone's hand. I doubt that anyone will see this film in a theatre in North America.

A Good Woman: Funniest film of the lot. Set in the '30s, a woman with questionable morals (Helen Hunt) leaves New York and heads to Italy to target a newlywed couple (one half of which is Scarlett Johansson). Based on the Oscar Wilde play, "Lady Windermere's Fan". Some of the best lines I've heard in a movie in recent years. A lot of social commentary about men and women and relationships between the two. And there's a twist in it. It will likely be in theatres eventually.

Siblings/Trouser Accidents: The latter is a five-minute short film about accidents caused by pants. It's like a mock-documentary, with what appears to be actual statistics of pants-related mishaps. It also compares them to accidents caused by other household items (brooms, newspapers, etc.). But it's important to keep in mind that the statistics are a little misleading, since there are some trouser accidents that are not reported, or reported under a different category. Siblings is a great film. Four kids who are not blood-related to each other or the people they call "Mom" and "Dad" accidentally-on-purpose kill the parents after their grandfather dies. A black comedy, to say the least. The parents are the worst people on the face of the earth. The little girl has the best lines in the movie, as she tries to come up with ways of killing the parents and making it look like an accident. Film fest veteran Sarah Polley has a supporting role. Go see this film. Support Canadian cinema.

Innocent Voices (Voces inocentes): This was by far the most serious of all the films I saw. It's based on a true story, and takes place in El Salvador in the 1980s during the civil war. The Salvadorean army "recruits" 12-year-old boys by force and trains them to become soldiers. The story centres around 11-year-old Chava, who, with his family, is caught in the crossfire almost every night. After being introduced to an underground radio station by his uncle, Chava begins to fight back in his own way. The kids in this movie were amazing.

L'Équipier (The Light): A predictable but still nice French film about a wounded veteran who takes over a position in a lighthouse on the Breton island of Ouessant. The residents are furious about the idea of an outsider taking the position over a local. But he slowly wins some of them over, and falls for the wife of a fellow lighthouse keeper. A lot of humour, and a tiny bit of action too.

So...that's it. Good thing I didn't see 30 films, huh?

Does This Count As A Degree?

Oh my...where to start? I was planning on writing up the whole festival experience after next Friday, so that I'd be able to share my reviews of the films I'd seen and make my recommendations. But I had to write about my close encounters now...while I'm still reeling from the excitement and absurdity of it all.

Last night I went to see the world premiere of "Haven" with Ada. Yes, there was an ulterior motive for my choosing of the film (Orlando), but the story was also interesting. So, the two of us were in line waiting to go in. There were some people in front of us who started screaming, but that was because they were listening to the radio and Canada had just scored to make it 3-2 (I think). Then, I kept hearing sporatic screaming from further off. As the line moved closer, we could hear the ridiculous chanting ("Or-lan-do! Or-lan-do!"). And then the screaming, and people running into the path of oncoming traffic, and flashbulbs lighting up the street. The guy behind us was asking his female companion why they were going nuts. I turned around and said that it was probably because Orlando Bloom had just arrived, and the guy looked at me with a mixture of complete incredulity and disappointment and said, "Aw, MAN! Is HE in this movie?!" Hmmm...looks like he wasn't the one who bought the tickets. As we passed the red carpet area on our way in, we tried to look at the commotion but it was really quite blinding and chaotic.

As we sat and waited in the theatre, we noticed that the people in the front had started standing up, looking towards the back and taking photos. We looked ourselves to see who they were looking at, but it took us several minutes to figure out that Kevin Bacon was about 20 feet away from us. He was wearing a leather jacket and glasses, and Ada kept saying "It doesn't look like Kevin Bacon!" until he stood up to greet someone and took off his glasses. He's not in the film, but he's here to promote his own movie ("The Woodsman") and I realized later that he was probably there to support his good buddy Bill Paxton.

There were many more highlights but I'll save that for the final review later. After the showing and the Q&A, the stars fled out the back door while we went out the front. There were STILL people on the other side of the red carpet with their cameras and pens. Honestly. They're not going to come back out the front door. We continued towards Yonge, past the line of people waiting for the Midnight Madness movie to start, when we noticed the line of limos on the side of the road. Then there was a crowd of people being stopped by security, and suddenly we realized we had stumbled across the "back door". The security guys opened the car doors and there, not two feet in front of me, the whole cast was getting into the limos. Bill Paxton walked right by me and thanked the crowd for coming out to support the film. That was...moderately thrilling. Still doesn't top the Fran Drescher/Kim Cattrall moment from last year, but it's a very close second.

This morning, my mom (pinch hitting for my dad, who wasn't feeling well) and I went to see "Beyond the Sea". While we were in the theatre, people were whispering excitedly and craning their necks to look at the back corner. There was Kevin Spacey. To my mom, she was kind of amazed at how people can pick out and identify "just another white man" in a dark corner of the theatre. I laughed and said, "Yeah, they all look alike to us, don't they?" She asked me if I was going to go over there to ask for an autograph, and I said no way, I'm not weird like that. It wouldn't have worked out anyway, since a couple of girls were stopped by the large bodyguard before they could get near him. I was just impressed that he was there at 9 in the morning, since the movie had screened the night before at Roy Thomson. But he was there and he answered questions at the end and everything.

So, four brushes with celebrity in two days. Three films down, five to go.

"And someone's sneakin' 'round the corner, could that someone be Mack the Knife?"

Family Matters

Hallelujah...my brother got a job. For months he's been the laziest ass in the world. Each day started melding into the next to the point where every Friday he asked me, "Don't you have to go to work tomorrow?" And I reply, "No doofus, it's the weekend again." And he answers, "Oh yeah...what month is this again?" But lately he's been getting tired of the routine himself. He told me recently, "Karen, I've gotta get a job...even if it's at Canadian Tire." And lo and behold, he got the call today. I got home from work and found out that my brother got a job at a nearby CT on the spot. Well, he went in for the interview this morning around 11 and they called him at around 2 to report for work at 5. To me, that's on the spot. Right now he's doing all the gopher work but eventually he'll be in the service department. You gotta start somewhere.

Not two days after my youngest brother went back to Queen's, a letter arrived for him from the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. That's right folks, my 19-year-old brother is getting audited. I just started laughing when I found out. What, they're going to question him about those three days that he tried to sell natural gas? Or the four weeks that he did those heavy lifting jobs from the temp agency? Or whether or not he's actually a university student? Well, it turns out that it's a question about the amount of rent he paid last year. Do they have nothing better to do?

It's been about five days and my mother is still getting persistent headaches. Why? Because she spent last Sunday afternoon in Kingston inhaling chlorine bleach fumes in a closet of a bathroom that isn't even remotely ventilated. I am still incredibly pissed off at her. So my brother's bathroom is a disgusting mess. That doesn't mean you should clean it using EVEN MORE bleach than you usually use in our home bathroom that's ten times bigger (and I can usually tell that she cleaned the downstairs bathroom almost before I open the front door). On the plus side, her eyes have stopped watering and her throat has stopped hurting and her lungs have stopped burning.

Daddy...nothing to say about Daddy. Daddy's been REALLY busy lately. Daddy deserves a break.

"My mother, my mother she hold me, did she hold me when I was out there, my father, my father he liked me, oh he liked me, does anyone care"

Not Complete Without a Crazy Person

In a way, I guess I could have qualified as the crazy person. You know, going downtown at 6:30 in the morning on a holiday, sitting in a line for two hours, just to pick up some film tickets. But, I'd like to point out that I wasn't the first person in the line. Actually, there could easily have been 60-70 people in front of me. And the whole point of being down there so early was that in the event that I didn't get all the tickets I ordered, I could quickly get into the OTHER line for the replacement tickets, which moves much slower comparatively to the first line. But, lucky for me, I got every ticket I ordered this year, so woo hoo, etc.

The crazy person was a guy that I encountered after I picked up the tickets. It was about 9:30, so it was still relatively early, and as I was walking along Yonge, I heard a commotion somewhere behind me. I stopped to look, but couldn't see anything. Then I heard the voice again, only it was louder and closer. Then I saw him walking down the street in my direction. I couldn't think of anything to do except to walk away from the crazy man. Of course, I didn't want to look like I was running away from him, so I just casually walked down the street. He got closer and closer and finally I could sort of hear what he was saying. I say "sort of" because he was screaming at the top of his lungs in a semi-maniacal manner. I heard him say something about starving children, and "fucking this" and "fucking that", and then as he passed me he said something like "for the glory of the British Empire" and then mentioned something about George the VI. I guess that officially qualified him as a crazy person for me.

Not that he looked crazy, he wasn't noticeably dirty or carrying plastic bags. He had normal clothes, a hat, and he was even wearing headphones. Wasn't sure if they were plugged into anything, but I haven't seen very many homeless crazy people with headphones. I lost sight of him after a while, but as I was about to go into the Eaton Centre, there he was in front of me, heading into the mall. At that point I became convinced that I should walk outside, since it was such a nice day.

"Welcome to a new kind of tension, all across the alien nation, everything isn't meant to be okay"

Somewhere...Beyond the Sea...

Son of a...!!

Sorry, it's just that I've managed to get a song stuck in my head. "Beyond the Sea", as you may have deduced. No no, not the Robbie Williams/"Finding Nemo" version or the Will Young version and certainly not the Wet Wet Wet version. The original Bobby Darin version. It's a nice mellow song, don't you think? I guess it got stuck in there because I'm doing my pre-film fest research, and I want to go see "Beyond the Sea", the biopic about Bobby Darin starring Kevin Spacey. Who looks like a reincarnated Bobby Darin when you put the two photos next to each other. CREEPY. But I like the music. He was actually more famous for "Mack the Knife" and "Splish Splash", among others. Of course, his life story is full of controversy, otherwise they wouldn't have made it into a movie. Kate Bosworth is going to play his wife Sandra Dee. It looks like it's going to be a good movie. And hey, Kevin Spacey is (possibly) going to be there, so how cool is that?

"My lover stands on golden sands and watches the ships that go sailin'"

Which Came First, The Bad Idea Or Me Befallen By It?

I don't know why I kept thinking of this Matthew Good song these past few months. It's not like the song has anything to do with surprise parties. Or maybe it does. I'll have to go back and listen to it again. But what am I talking about? OH YES...the REAL surprise party, the one that we'd been planning for the past 3 months, the one that finally happened yesterday, the one that we had to cover up with a "fake" surprise party last week.

BSF: Bring Several Friends. At least that's what Jocelyn thought was going to happen when we found out that Em's parents were going to be decidedly out of the country and we were going to recapture some lost youth. In reality, it became BSJF: Bring Several of Jocelyn's Friends. People we had not seen in ages, and people we had never seen at all. It took some major sleuthing and lucky coincidences to put this thing together. I was told at the party that I should have been a party planner. To be honest, I just have a knack for organizing almost anything. Okay, my room might be evidence to the contrary, but when it comes to big groups of people and a single event, then yeah, I'm not too shabby.

Alert Status Red, But The Sun Comes Up Instead:

The problems...and boy did we have some doozies. I have decided that the worst possible words to hear when planning a surprise party are these: "Hey, why don't we use Evite?" Thanks Jocelyn, good idea. How were we supposed to secretly invite people when she could see everyone we invited? Solution: fake Evite. Create an invitation solely for the benefit of Jocelyn. Turn the privacy mode on full blast so that nobody could see anybody else's info, ESPECIALLY their e-mail addresses. Create 15 fake e-mail addresses for 15 fake invitees. Have a minor aneurysm when, just before the ball gets rolling, ownership of the fake invitation gets transferred to a fake guest. Every day, manipulate the guest responses so that it looks like Rehmat is a "maybe" and Tess is bringing the Shrinky Dinks (for the record, I did not make up that response). Meanwhile, send the real invitation out to a bunch of people who have little idea who I am, ask them to invite others, watch as the guest list balloons fantastically out of control, then even itself out when half of the invitees back out or don't respond.

Party planning: Uh...no Jocelyn, we haven't started the planning yet. Uh...no Jocelyn, I think we should wait for Emily to return from the cottage. Uh...no Jocelyn, you don't have to bring anything. After all, you're going to be at a bridal shower in the afternoon. Uh...don't worry about it Jocelyn, we'll take care of the food and we'll just split the bill later.

Oh wait...the fake surprise party. Some of the people at the fake surprise party are supposedly coming to the BSF. What if someone brings up the topic? Solution: get to the restaurant early, provide everyone with their alibis. For the third time, Chris, you said YES.

And now, for the party: Jocelyn arrived before most of the surprise guests, so crisis control kicked in and people had to hide around the side of the house for 15-20 minutes, partially sprayed by the lawn sprinkler, until we regrouped, kicked Jocelyn out of the kitchen, and finally got the festivities started with "Jocelyn, This Is Your Life!", a plan that got cooked up about 5 seconds before it was executed. Why can't I think on my feet like this in other situations??

The Only Place To Find Freedom Is In The Dictionary Under "F":

So in the end, Jocelyn was completely and utterly surprised to the point of helpless confusion. It was a success. And now I can breathe. For a couple of weeks, anyway...

"Beneath the ancient sand lies crushed and tanned those sapphire girls"

Talk About Sweet!

I keep my eyes open for any kind of contest/promotion that features prizes that interest me, like all expense paid trips to South Africa and the like. But it's not just the biggie prizes, it's small things too, like music.

This summer, Fruitopia has been offering promotion in conjunction with Puretracks. Now, I say to myself, fruit juice AND an ethical music download? Sweet! The bonus was that I got the Fruitopia for free. Double sweet! There's an access code inside the bottle cap, and you just go to the Puretracks website and follow the arrows. The contest itself is a little devious. Once you enter your info and the access code, they play a random song and show ten random cartoon DJs, and they ask you to pick which one you think is spinning the track. Now, there is NO way to tell just by looking which one is doing it. It's not like they head-bob in time to the music or anything, they're all pre-programmed to move in the same continuous looping pattern. It' s more like the rubber duck game at the CNE: try your luck, pick a duck, win a prize. You're allowed to play up to three access codes a day. I only have two, but I've been trying almost daily. So far, in the past four weeks, I've won four times, and each time, it was always the first DJ I looked at. If I waffled and tried to guess logically, then I always picked the wrong one. It's kind of weird how it works better when I don't think.

Lesson of the day: Don't think. Trust your instincts.

"Just do it, just start the commotion"

Conspiracy Is My Middle Name

I can breathe a relative sigh of relief today. I've been harbouring the hugest secret for some time now. Once again, I found myself in the middle of a double surprise birthday event. Jocelyn and Em's birthdays are less than a month apart. And it would seem that we have now created a level of surprising that requires the bar to be raised every time. Which, as you can imagine, is kind of difficult after we've known each other for so long and have been doing this for many years.

Due to scheduling difficulties, we finally were able to settle on a date a couple of days after Jocelyn's birthday. But that still made it a couple of weeks too early for Em's, but as our motto for Summer 2004 states, "We gotta take what we can get". Boni and I took our places as the co-conspirators. But how to make sure the both of them are where we want them? Simple: make them part of the planning. Jocelyn was told to "reserve" the day for us, and Em was told "strategic" information about the day, but not all of the details. All Jocelyn knew was that the day would be filled with events, culminating into a dinner. That left the door open for us to spring a dinner surprise on poor hapless Em, who had no idea that we invited several of her friends and relatives to dinner. I had to miss the day portion because of work, but I was able to get to the restaurant on time (sort of). A surprise guest, a late brother and a few no-shows made the event what it always seems to turn out to be: a success. I still don't know how these things always manage to work out. I guess you could say I have a really organizational mind. And a flair for espionage. Maybe I should change professions. Or give lessons.

Sounds Like "Yours To Discover" or "Live Free or Die":

There were some surprise gifts for our birthday girls, which included our "slogan t-shirts". Now, for those of you who don't know, I have been inspired in the past several months to come up with slogans for each of us (Ada, Em, Jocelyn, Laboni, and me). After a while, it sounded a lot like a marketing campaign. In any case, some of them are ridiculously funny (and have some long stories attached), and some sound like slogans you'd see on a license plate. So here, for your enjoyment and ridicule, are our slogans (in the order they were created):

"More attractive than a 12-year-old"
"Dense...not lighter than air"
"Has to beat them away with a stick"
"Always an adventure"
"It's all about balance"

I'll let you guys figure out which one belongs to each of us.

"Shakedown 1979, cool kids never have the time"

I Am A Hot Commodity

Okay, how many people did not see this coming? I would have to say...zero. And yet here we are. It's just ridiculous. It kind of brings new meaning to my perception of "roaming Asian posses". Hide the women and children! Man, I hope Ada is okay in Beijing...

Larry, Curly and Moe, Eat Your Heart Out:

Yesterday I witnessed the fine art of slapstick in all its glory. I was at a BBQ, and a bunch of us were hanging out in the kitchen. Jack was standing near the dining room door, holding his drink ("girly punch", as he called it) and talking to a few people. From the other door, Tim came bounding into the kitchen, straight towards Jack. Jack, startled, moved backwards quickly but bumped into someone (we believe it was Jeff), and spilled some of his drink onto the floor. Tim slipped on the drink, wobbled in the most ungraceful manner I have ever seen, and hit the floor. He also bumped into the wine rack, which teetered in the most frightening way. Then Jack, as he leaned forward to help Tim onto his feet, forgot that he was still holding the remnants of his drink and promptly spilled the rest of it onto Tim. The wine rack (which held a large number of bottles as well as several glasses) settled back to its original state with all contents intact. While this was unfolding, there was a collective gasp, silence for a few seconds, and then the room burst into a mix of laughter and 'are you okay?' and 'what just happened?'.

Lesson of the day: Don't forget that you're holding the girly punch.

"Oops, I did it again..."

Suicide Rates Skyrocket in Stouffville

Something is going on in the hinterland. Driving along Stouffville Road today, I encountered something like 10 dead animals (or at least bits and pieces of them) all over the road, and spread out between the highway exit and the plant. These were not the usual squirrels and skunks. They were somewhat larger. But, unfortunately, they were a little too disassembled for me to tell what they were.

Poor things...was there no other way?

"I don't know what's worth fighting for, or why I have to scream, I don't know why I instigate and say what I don't mean"

He Ate All The Shrimp, And Two Plastic Lobsters:

Taste of the Danforth...what a wonderful concept. On a lazy summer weekend, stroll down the middle of one of the major streets in Toronto, sample all kinds of food (mostly Greek, but there's still an interesting international mix) for low low prices, dodge the rain, give in and buy a $5 umbrella, be a walking advertisement for one of the lemonade stands, watch where you step (stupid corn cobs), learn how to stand in line without letting people pass in front of you, keep the ice cream guy at Demetre's honest (we saw you drop that scoop of vanilla and consider putting it back on the crepe), and check out the street entertainment (maybe that was flamenco dancing after all).

It wasn't until I was on my way home that I realized that Matt's eating pattern reminded me of that Simpsons' episode where Homer takes the Sea Captain to court over the false advertising of his "all-you-can-eat" seafood restaurant. "'Tis no man, 'tis a remorseless eating machine."

"In the heat of summer sunshine, I miss you like nobody else"

Mazel Tov!:

My first Jewish wedding. MUCH more entertaining than most. I mean, the ceremony is brief, there's all kinds of singing/chanting, you're constantly wondering if the teetering chuppah is going to fall down, and the bride and groom don't just stand there, they get to move about in circles and break things. Just to recap, this was my cousin Kimberly's wedding to the Moldovian dermatologist (Ben). It was a nice ceremony and a really nice reception. So many great creative ideas for this one: the ceremony and the reception were held in the same place and one after the other, they gave mixed CDs in three different languages (English, Chinese, and Russian) as parting gifts, they had gigantic glass vases of white calla lilies as centrepieces (which we got to take home), they had a list of the members of each table framed on the tables (which we also got to take home), and, here's the part I liked best, they had live music instead of a DJ. It was almost exactly like "The Wedding Singer", except it was a four-piece, with one guy on guitar, one guy on keyboards, one guy on sax/flute, and one female vocalist. She did an amazing rendition of "Time to Say Goodbye", which blew everyone away. If I ever get married, I would go with the live music for sure.

"The way you hold your knife, the way we danced 'til three, the way you changed my life, no no, they can't take that away from me"

Buzzards and Bicycles:

It's been a pretty busy week off for me. I think the concept of "mandatory vacation" should be implemented more often.

Yesterday, I attended a graduation of a friend of a friend at the Ontario Police College in Aylmer. On the way there, it was a pretty enjoyable drive through the countryside. The corn is much shorter than I would have expected at this time of year, but then we've had a pretty cool wet summer. We also encountered a couple of huge black vulture-like birds circling around a carcass on the road near a tiny little town with the unfortunate name of Crampton. A rare but interesting sight.

It was a nice ceremony, although I'm already used to all the formation marching and the pipe and drum bands due to my brother's association with the Toronto Scottish Regiment. I think they should have reconsidered having a couple of motorcycles circle around the parade square (we got a hefty dose of diesel fumes). But it was short and to the point, which is what everyone always hopes a ceremony would be. The highlight of the day had to be finding out that Wendel Clark was in the audience. We saw him drive into the parking lot with his honking huge black SUV with (we assumed) his wife and two cute kids. He was there to support his brother, Kerry Clark, who was also graduating. After the ceremony we were all standing outside and he was within 30 feet of us. Young kids went up to him for his autograph, but since in our group we were all in our 20s and above, we thought it would be slightly tacky if we tried it. I think we were able to sneak a photo of him from a distance (yikes, we've become amateur paparazzi!).

Today, I decided that I want to live on one of the Toronto Islands. My friends and I brought our bikes downtown, took the ferry across the harbour, biked around the islands, and had ourselves a nice little picnic too. The first thing that really struck me was how quiet it was. Even with the downtown core not that far away, it was as though we were biking somewhere in the country. Very cool. It didn't take that long to get from one side to the other, but it was a leisurely ride, interrupted occasionally by cars passing at 30 km/h (the speed limit) and those little tour trains that you see at places like MGM Studios ("and on your left, you'll see the 'clothing optional' beach"). We had to cut our adventure short (some of us had to get our long weekend started), otherwise we could have stayed until dusk and rented a firepit on the beach (the one where clothing is somewhat mandatory). But now I can add another "favourite Toronto activity" to my list. I wonder how much one of those houses costs...

"What would you say, don't drop the big one, if you a monkey on a string, don't cut my lifeline"

One Little, Two Little, Three Little Asians...:

Actually, there are four of them.  For those of you who hasn't heard my story yet, my dad's high school alumni association (Queen Elizabeth School Old Students' Association) got together many years ago and founded another high school, which they creatively called Queen Elizabeth School Old Students' Association Secondary School, or Q.E.S.O.S.A.S.S.  I don't know about you, but it makes me appreciate my high school's abbreviation a lot more.  Anyway, every year the alumni association sponsors some of the top students to spend some time in North America.  Usually it's been Vancouver, but for some reason they decided to send them to Toronto this year.  My dad, being the president of the Ontario chapter of Q.E.S.O.S.A., organized their trip.  So, for the next two weeks, my family, along with several other families, will be housing these three girls and one boy and taking them to see the sights.  Since we live the closest to the airport, we picked them up today and will be housing them for tonight and tomorrow (I think), and then they'll split into two groups and spend their time in other homes across the GTA until the last night, when they'll be back here and we'll take them back to the airport the next day.

They're all fourteen, except for Emily who just turned fifteen.  Of course, she's the tiniest one in the bunch.  The boy (Bobby) seems to be the most talkative, despite what he wrote in his letter (but each one of them wrote that they were quiet and shy).  He's also the smartest of the group.  I think the prinicpal of the school wrote to my dad that Bobby has an IQ of 150 (I just tested my own IQ, and apparently I'm 146, or "genius"...how did that happen?).  Helen was the only one who got a little sick on the plane.  She was pretty pale but a couple of hours and a shower later she looked okay.  The last one, Edy, reminds me of someone.  I can't think of who...

I Fought the Law, and the Law Won:

Well, more like the law kicked my butt a little.  I went to a two-day seminar this weekend to prepare for the Professional Practice Exam to become a professional engineer.  My exam isn't until the 14th of August, but I figured I needed a little help on how to study, since they didn't really provide any guidelines.  The ethics section was okay, even though it's the less cut-and-dry of the two.  But as long as you write everything down and explain your logic, then it's all good.  And I'm pretty okay in the BS department.  Law, on the other hand, has an okay part and a not-so-okay part.  The okay part is that the instructor gave us templates for the different types of questions (tort law, contract law, fundamental breach of contract, etc.) and so when we encounter those questions, we would just plug the facts into the template and the answer would write itself.  The not-so-okay part is that we have to memorize these templates and all the legal definitions, whereas the code of ethics and the definition of professional misconduct will be provided during the exam.  There was one case that confused pretty much everyone in the room, including the instructor, which is never a good sign.  It had to do with calculating the amount of damages the owner could get from the contractor in a fundamental breach of contract case.  There were two trains of thought, so everyone was arguing about one or the other, when in fact both methods ended up producing the same result.  But the next day the instructor came back to clarify the answer and confused me again.  I don't know, I'll just BS through that too I guess...

"Into the river below, I'm running from the inferno"

You Can Tell That I'm Supposed To Be Studying:
 
What is this, the third blog of the night?  I'm sitting here trying to make some sense of engineering law, and of course this pops up in the book and I had to share it with the rest of you.  It gives you an idea of how much sense I've made of everything I've read so far:
 
Sometimes letters of intent are clearly agreements to agree, rather than well-defined agreements.  The agreements to agree do not constitute enforceable contracts: the courts will not enforce an agreement to agree.  It is, in fact, no agreement at all.

Nothing Beats Raspberries:
 
I was having the worst day yesterday.  Nearly killed myself 10 times on the way to work due to drowsiness at the wheel.  Had little to do at work since I was waiting for other people to finish stuff for the projects I was working on.  Guy who was supposed to get a document to me by yesterday didn't.  Got gouged at the gas station.  Drove home in the pouring rain.  Found out that gas is cheaper closer to home by something like 10 cents a litre.  Came home to an "I told you so" speech (regarding the gas).  Had to scrounge something up for dinner for me and my brothers.
 
But then the girls came over, the sun actually came out from behind the clouds, and we went raspberry picking in my backyard.  The bushes are dense and thorny but that didn't stop Em or Boni from crawling right in there to pick the fruit.  Jocelyn screamed every time a snail was about to attack her.  Doyali went for the surface fruit, then watched the rest of us like we were a floor show (which we were).  Every so often you'd hear someone say "OW!" and then "CRAP!" as she drops a ripe berry.  I'd be checking around to make sure we didn't lose Boni to the bushes.  In an attempt to get rid of a mosquito on Jocelyn's foot, I slapped at it, which of course caused it to explode, so Jocelyn blood was everywhere.
 
We came back into my kitchen and had some of the spiciest hot chocolate ever.  It had ginger, chili peppers, Madagascar vanilla and orange peel infused into it.  Completely reminded me of Turkish coffee (you know, the kind that you can actually chew while you're drinking it).  Except with Turkish coffee, you're only supposed to drink a shot.  We each had half a mug (and in the case of Boni, Doyali and Em, two servings each).  I was ready to give up but I chugged it down in the end.  Everyone left with a smile and a bucket of berries.
 
So my day was saved by raspberries.  Is there anything they can't do?
 
"Raspberry in my hand, you feel alright but I don't know if I am"

Sights and Sounds at the Distillery:
 
I went to the Distillery District on Sunday to check out the pre-Beaches Jazzfest scene.  I've said this before, but the Distillery District is my new favourite place.  Yes, it's become touristy and expensive, but it's one of the few cool places in the city that's all 19th century but not "look don't touch".  The jazz was pretty good, the weather was not.  But every time it rained we just ducked into another art gallery.  A few things I noticed:

• While I was sitting in the Sandra Ainsley gallery, I noticed a woman who had all the appearances of being blind (the dark glasses and the white stick kind of tipped me off).  However, she walked to each piece and stopped.  She even asked a by-stander how much the giant rotating glass cube cost and when he couldn't find the price tag she helped him out by pointing to a tiny square on the floor.
• Outside the bakery there was a one-legged pidgeon.  The bird just hopped around on the one leg, eating the stuff under the picnic tables, flying off if people got too close, but always came back and hopped around again.
• I saw the skinniest woman ever.  She had to have been something like 4 and a half feet tall, but her legs were nothing but skin-wrapped bones.  Well, I couldn't tell with one of her legs since she was hobbling around in a cast.
• There was a Chinese girl with Down syndrome that passed me a couple of times.  Even though, statistically, Down syndrome effects everyone of any racial background equally, I still think it's rare to see it in someone of Asian descent.
• One of the great things about the Distillery District is that it's incredibly clean.  This is largely thanks in part to the boys they hire to walk around with garbage bags and tiny rakes to clean up all manner of crap on the ground, even the small blue water bottle lid that one of them saw near the bench I was sitting at.  As he walked away I finally saw what was written on the backs of the red shirts they wore:  "Don't Litter".

"Come one come all into 1984"

Pass the Mish-Mash, Please:

Everyone has crazy co-workers, right? Sure they do. So do I. Now, I'm not sure I should use her real name, given how much I might make fun of her at this point (and actually, some of you who read this already know her name anyway), so I'm just going to call her "Pam". Pam...she's one of those people you just really can't figure out. I mean, she's a nice enough person (if you don't upset her), and she means well (despite being slightly hypocritical), but frankly, I think she's a nut. I've only been working with her for five months but I've already accumulated a book's worth of stories about her.

Let's start with a couple of recent events. Before my department split into two groups, one in the office and one on the production floor, Pam made an almost daily trip out into the plant to observe the operators and make notes about any and all deviations she can find. Basically, she was the snitch. And she's really particular, she will report every little detail she can see. So, for someone who's that...for lack of a better word, anal, it was really surprising when I found out that she was a total slob. Her house, her car, her desk, it's all pretty much a horrible mess. Monica had to check something on Pam's computer and came back motivated to clean her own office. She said that Pam had the most disgusting keyboard she's ever seen. She didn't really want to touch it.

The other Pam story for today isn't that spectacular, just a little funny. Last week she came to work in a fairly conservative outfit: a sort of brown and tan-coloured top, black pants, and a pair of hot pink platform flip-flops.

Yeah...we all looked twice.

Keep in mind, she's gotta be in her fifties by now. She's been around forever.

Okay, switch gears. I was at the Street Festival this weekend and I separated from my friends briefly to go up to Yonge and Lawrence to get something. On my way back to the subway, I was following a Chinese family down the stairs. Here's how it went: the older generation (grandmother, I'm guessing) was trying to get everyone to give her their hats so she could put them in her bag. The father, carrying the stroller, scolded her for distracting them as they went down the stairs ("do you want us to fall to our deaths?"). The mother starts yelling at the daughter for being disobedient. The father tries to make peace between everyone because hey, they're supposed to be having a good time today. The moment they reach the bottom of the stairs, the grandmother starts grabbing the hats off the kids. All of this was happening in Cantonese. I moved away quickly after that because I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep from laughing. I swear, it was like I was watching my own family.

That's all for today. Hopefully, I will have done this correctly and you'll be able to comment from now on (yes, I have succumbed to the peer pressure...whatever).

"Narrow daylight entered my room, shining hours were brief, winter is over, summer is near, are we stronger than we believe?"

Dum-da-da-dah!!!

I have finally updated my website with the Winter Getaway story complete with pics! Peruse at your leisure...

May I Have Your Attention Please:

As of Monday, June 28th, Karen Lee has become a full time employee, with all the responsibilities and benefits (ESPECIALLY the benefits) associated with the position.

Please join me in saying "woo hoo!"

Thank you, that is all.

"Movin' on up, to the east side, we finally got a piece of the pie"

So That's What It Tastes Like...:

The Bell City Chase sounded okay. In theory. And I guess it really wasn't that bad. In theory.

Emily and I started off the day feeling pretty confident. Both of us have done scavenger hunts before, just never on such a short time limit and never in the city of Toronto. We had six hours to find 10 of 15 checkpoints and to complete the various activities at said checkpoints to receive a stamp in our passport. We could only travel on foot or by TTC (they gave us the day passes). Sounds okay, right? So...first of all, before we could get the checkpoint clues (of course, they're not going to just TELL us where they are), we had to do a mini-scavenger hunt at the beginning of the race. Within 45 minutes, we had to find 10 of 15 objects in and around the Air Canada Centre before we could get the list (after 45 minutes, you could go and get the list by default). The ten things that we found:
1) a dandelion
2) a TTC transfer
3) a page from yesterday's Toronto Star (with the date on it)
4) a carrot with the leafy part still attached (they gave us a clue about that before the race)
5) a lock of hair, 10 strands minimum (we took the scissors to my head)
6) a worm (Em found one in the median on Front Street across from Union Station - quite impressive)
7) Canadian Tire money (a girl on the street gave us 10 cents for free)
8) a maple leaf (I was wearing a Canada hat)
9) a magnet (had to buy that one)
10) a 1984 coin (the last coin I had on me, naturally)
The remaining five things that we didn't get were: the main label from a beer bottle, a cup of sand, goose poop (still in log form), an inflated balloon, and a golf tee. So, this gives you an idea of the kind of day we had in store for us.

To make a long story short, we only got six and a half of ten checkpoints. Briefly and in the order of completion:
1) Ransom: My hands were tied with a plastic chain and a Dudley lock and I was blindfolded while Em had to run up and down the street with the ransom note to find a way to set me free. She got the list of combinations but we tried them all and none of them seemed to work. The guy eventually had to help us out.
2) Boggle: Make as many words (five or more letters) as you can with the letters from "Bell City Chase". You can't reuse letters, you can't use the word 'chase', no plurals, no proper nouns, and at least one word had to be 6 or more letters. With some help from Boni via cellphone, we got it done pretty fast. Em was the wordsmith of the day with 'blase'.
3) Show Me The Money: Panhandle for 20 minutes or until you get $5 at the corner of Yonge and Bloor. We tried for five minutes, then I just put in $5 and we were off. (The money was for charity)
4) A Rooftop View: Who knew that New City Hall had an observation deck? Who knew that it was on the 27th floor? Who guessed that the two of us had to climb 27 flights of stairs before doing a small orienteering task?
5) Surprise!: After searching for a specific car with a clue in the City Hall underground parking, we made our way over to Queen and Peter to...eat stuff. A bad roll of the dice and flip of a coin meant that the two of us had to eat two cans of cat food. I had to ask the guy what the difference was between the pink one and the brown one (salmon and tuna). I don't know what's worse - the bones, or the crunchy stuff that I couldn't identify. I only almost threw up once. But it could have been WAY worse. The other choices besides the cat food were sardines, hot peppers, a live grub (actually, that was the easiest), chew a whole pack of gum and blow a bubble, or drink a cup of the first five items blended together. I heard that a lot of people ended up with that choice, some refused to do it, while others tried and quickly regurgitated it.
6) Trivia 101: Sit in a classroom at U of T, answer 10 of 15 questions involving pop culture, history, and math. By far, the easiest part of the entire race for me.

The last thing we tried to do was actually an ongoing process. We had to find four business cards: one with a non-416 area code, one with a Dundas Street address, one with a photo on it, and one from a police/fire/ambulance worker. The only one that gave us trouble was the photo card, because it was incredibly difficult to find a real estate agency when you're downtown and running around. After we got them all, we had to find a Bell store on Dufferin. Somehow we got misdirected to Yorkdale, but by then it was 5pm (they extended the race by an hour), so it was too late.

We got back to the ACC but we were not the last to arrive, so I guess that says something. It took us a total of 7 hours and 30ish minutes, I think. The winning team finished in 4 hours and 45 minutes, so they're representing Toronto in the National Championships in September. If we thought this race was gruelling, that race is probably going to be killer. First of all, they're competing with eight other teams from across the country, but nobody will know WHERE in the country the race will be held until the day before. And for today's race, finish times were measured in hours...the Nationals will likely be measured in DAYS. Good luck to them.

My legs have rarely hurt in this manner, but hopefully I'll get over it soon. What's really sad is that I started getting tired before we even got to the first checkpoint. I feared that I would burn myself out in the opening moments, and my fears were realized. But this was our first attempt, and it gave us a chance to work out the kinks and realize that our strategy was slightly flawed. I'm sure it'll turn out better next year.

"Just sweet beginnings and bitter endings"

Little Blue Car:

Our FDA inspection went well. And I mean REALLY well. There were some tense moments this past week and a half, but in the end the inspector was impressed with us. I never really saw him up close, but we noticed him leaving the building on Wednesday afternoon. He looked like an average guy. After a few minutes, I saw him pass the window again in his rented car. Now, these inspectors usually have expense accounts in the neighbourhood of tens of thousands of dollars. Nenita said that she's seen some of them that have a limo come and pick them up. So here's this guy, driving away from the plant, in a little blue car. I have no idea what make or model it was, but it was EXACTLY the kind of car that I would have pictured any kind of inspector driving. It reminded me of old-school European cars, like Renaults or Citroens. Or if you've ever watched Mr. Bean, it's kind of like his car. Only blue.

"So far so good, 'cause no one knows I'm faking, I wish I could show you the toll it's taking"

Addendums:

1) Yes, that was a llama.

2) My estimate was a little bit off for Kimberly. She GRADUATED from Med School at around the same time I was starting 3rd year.

3) Huzzah! I am in no pain whatsoever! The miracle continues...

New Business:

1) The fashion industry doesn't like me. At all.

2) They've discontinued one of my favourite products at the Body Shop!

3) I'm going to the Dido concert tomorrow.

Made off, don't stray, my kind's your kind, I'll stay the same"

Exceeding All Expectations:

Wow...I am absolutely amazed. Here I am, just a few hours after riding by bike (almost) 50 kms, and I AM NOT DEAD.

The scoop: Emily and I arrived at the CNE for the Becel Ride for Heart at 7:15am this morning, but that was the time we were supposed to be at the starting line. We quickly grabbed our stuff and found our way to the start and it turned out we could go even though we were about 15 minutes late.

Biking along the Gardiner Expressway and up the Don Valley Parkway was kind of pleasant at some points (the downhills) and quite brutal at other points (the uphills), but overall it was not as bad as I had imagined. It was less of a gruelling ordeal than, say, the CN Tower Stair Climb because (1) the scenery changes, (2) you can bring food and drink along with you (actually, it was provided for free at the rest stops), and (3) you get to see some interesting things, like a guy on a unicycle (I think he was doing the 50km ride, which is crazy) and a lot of people on tandem bikes (what happens when one person stops pedalling?). There were the hard core types in the racing gear who were passing us at top speed even on the uphill, but there were also entire families who looked like they were just on a leisurely Sunday bike ride.

There were two distinct moments when I was completely ready to give up. Both of them occurred during brutal uphills after we had rounded the top and were heading back down the DVP towards the lake, and Em was a good 200 metres ahead of me and there seemed to be no way in hell that I was going to catch up. But somehow I was able to mentally push myself up the hill. I was really surprised with myself.

Then there was the part where we kind of cheated. We didn't realize that we had to take the Bayview/Bloor off-ramp and bike for a little bit in the valley and then come back up the on-ramp and continue on the DVP. The sign just said "rest stop", and although we did stop at the top of the off-ramp for a break, we didn't want to go all the way down to the actual rest area and grind up the hill again, so we just cut across the ramp. Oops. I guess we should remember that for next time.

So our total time, from start to finish including all rest stops, was 2 hours and 22 minutes. That still really amazes me. I was so sure, based on my own preliminary trials, that it would take me twice as long. But this leads to:

Lesson of the Day: Always bring Emily with you for all physically challenging events. She will push you to your limits in ways you didn't even know were possible.

We were provided with a lunch that consisted of a lot of low-fat, soy-based products. The tofu dessert scared me, but Em said it tasted like the tofu dessert they serve in chinese restaurants (which I can't stand), so I just left that for a member of my family (most likely my dad). We met up with the rest of the McBride Bicycle Junkies (the group we registered with), and we hung out on the lawn for a while listening to some guy butcher one song after another at the bandstand. As we were about to leave, there was a loud pop, like a firecracker. Andy's tire had exploded, even though it wasn't really overinflated, but the sun had just come out while we were eating. It blew a tear in the outer tube of the tire. Kevin was able to mcgyver the tire using one of the Ride for Heart ID stickers. We all laughed and someone said that he was probably going to start patching it with grass next.

In a stunning display of endurance on my part, Em and I left the car at the CNE and biked to MEC so that she could get a hydration pack. We didn't have a bike lock so I got to hang out for an hour and a half on King Street, watching the bikes and checking out the scene (it's an interesting demographic of people who frequent the MEC establishment). I got home an hour and a half ago, and I am still really surprised that I'm not in an immense amount of pain. I hope I can still say that tomorrow at work.

P.S. Thanks to everyone who supported me, both in pledges and in words of encouragement. It made a huge difference.

"You're on the road, but you've got no destination, you're in the mud, in the maze of her imagination"

Takin' a Look Around:

Since I'm on the road a lot these days, I get to see a lot of interesting things. Like close calls. Goddamn, why do all the crappy drivers hang around me??? It's almost a daily occurrence now to see someone almost get hit by someone else (thank God it's never me...so far). And it's like it always happens in slow motion. The guy starts moving into the next lane, not noticing that someone else is already occupying the next lane, and he just inches closer...and closer...and closer...and finally the guy in the other lane gets a clue and swerves out of the way, honking like there's no tomorrow. Or the ones where the guy stops just centimetres away from rear-ending the guy in front. Hello, do you not see that the car in front has come to a complete stop?

I probably mentioned this in the past, but Stouffville is the horse capital of Ontario. So naturally, I see a lot of horses. Even more now that the weather is nicer. There's this one farm that's right by the highway, and the horses are usually grazing by the fence so you can see them pretty well. Lately there's a new foal standing around looking cute. But today on my drive home, I glanced at the fence, and although I only saw it for a second, I'm almost certain that I saw a llama. Otherwise it was the ugliest horse I've ever seen. On second thought, it could easily have been a camel too. I'm going to have to take a closer look tomorrow.

The other day my dad asked, "Where's Moldova?" To which I gave my standard geography answer, "I dunno, somewhere in the middle." The reason he was asking was because one of the many cousins in my family is getting married in August to a guy who's originally from Moldova. Kimberly's the daughter of my dad's cousin, which makes us somewhat related (I can never get the categories straight. Second cousin? Third cousin? Removed a couple of times? I don't know). This is also the infamous "brainchild" cousin that I think I may have met many many years ago, but haven't seen since. She's the kind of kid that our parents will heap praises on and make the rest of us kids feel completely inferior. She got into Johns Hopkins University at age 15 or something, then got into med school at around the same time I was starting 3rd year at Waterloo. Now I think she's a practicing OB/GYN. And she's about the same age as I am. And she's getting married. To a dermatologist from Moldova. Grrr...

"Hey, don't write yourself off yet, it's only in your head you feel left out, or looked down on"

If It Isn't One Thing, It's Another:

Lesson of the day: Hippopotamus sweat is a natural sunscreen.

Maybe it's just been a long winter, or I need a refresher course on applying sunscreen. No sooner had my hand burns started peeling away, I go and burn myself again. First, on both my arms in a single band, right where my t-shirt sleeve ended and the apparent sunscreen protection began. And also...on the top of my head. Yes friends, I have sunburned my scalp. That's going to look great when it starts to peel.

So how did I let this happen? I was at my good friend Jocelyn's first horse show this weekend and I neglected to bring a hat. Who knew we were going to be sitting out in an open field with no shade for about five hours? At least I was smart enough to copy some of the other spectators and get the umbrella out of my car. Otherwise I probably wouldn't be able to touch the top of my head for a week. But other than the potential skin cancer it was a fun day. Jocelyn did as well as could be expected with an ornery horse and really subjective judging. I'm sure next time we'll be able to entirely cover her outfit with ribbons.

So the photos of that day are in the process of being developed, and yes, I am STILL in the process of getting those other photos up on my website. But...in the meantime, here's a little something I was finally able to scan for your viewing pleasure. (Kev, this one's for you)

P.S. In case anyone wants to kill me for some reason, I just want to point out that the only link to the photo is through this blog...so this internet experience will be somewhat contained.

"And I'm so sad, like a good book I can't put this day back, a sorta fairytale with you"

As Though It Never Happened:

Hello one and all. Well, some stuff has been going on lately, but due to work, social encounters, a weekend out of town, and a very brief but violent bout with nausea, I haven't been able to keep this blog up to date. So here we go.

This past weekend I went with my good friends Emily and Jocelyn to Warsaw (Ontario, not Poland), just north of Peterborough, as they prepared to do their first adventure race, Storm the Trent. 4km run, followed by 16km bike, followed by 10km paddle (canoe, not doggie). Since it wasn't set up as the most ideal spectator sport, I got into volunteering to help the organizers (my specialty, I guess you could say).

The race started early Sunday morning, so we headed out Saturday afternoon/evening to Em's friend Ryan's place just outside of Peterborough. Since we were a little late getting on the road, Ryan and his fiancee Stacey had gone out by the time we got to their place. But they left us their key and their dog Tripper to keep us company. We watched the ends of "Point Break" and "Harry Potter" on TV before we realized that it was 11pm and we had to get to bed soon if we were going to be able to get up at 6 and be on the road by 7. Now...keep in mind that I have never met these people before, so it was extremely weird wandering through their house, looking for the bathroom or some kind of sign of where they expected us to spend the night. The basement was unfinished, but we found some sleeping pads so we quietly borrowed them to sleep on the living room floor. After learning that the cold water faucet in the bathroom doesn't shut off properly, I went to sleep wary that at some point in the night Tripper was going to bound off the chair and land on my head. But not long after lights out Ryan and Stacey returned and took Tripper with them up to their bedroom. In the morning, we tried to make as little noise as possible as we let ourselves out. That was the weirdest overnight visit I've ever had. Not only did I never get to meet the owners of the house, we left the place almost exactly the way we had found it. It's as if we were never there...

The overcast sky worried us a little, but it turned out to be an awesome day. Not as many bugs as I had feared, but much more sun than I had anticipated (Lesson of the Day: Remember to put sunscreen on the back of your hands). As with any event, the initial registration was the most chaotic part of the day, but I was able to hold my own against a sea of eager racers. When they all left on the buses to the starting point, it was eerily quiet. I hung out with the other volunteers (very nice ladies) and walked around and took photos. After about an hour and a half the first bikers started to arrive. I got worried when most of the people had already checked in and taken their canoes and Ema and Jocelyn were nowhere to be seen. Finally I saw their matching red bike helmets. After they took off in the canoe, Sean (the main organizer guy) asked me to man the Wall. This thing was pretty impressive given that I think Sean and his dad built it on their own. It was a roughly 12-foot wall, with two bells attached to levers at the top. There was also a small climbing wall right next to it with a bell at the top. The 2- and 4-person teams had to work together to boost one of their teammates up and ring one of the bells at the end of the race. Solo competitors got to climb the wall. My job was to be at the top of the wall (there was scaffolding behind it) and help out the teams by pushing the bell a little lower if they were having a hard time reaching it. I have to say, it was the best part of the race for me. For some reason, when the person rang the bell, it was like a signal for the person/people at the bottom to just let go. Luckily, nobody got hurt really badly, and I started to caution the teams about letting them down a little more gently.

So the race results are posted up at the website, and Team Triboluminescence came in 68 out of 85 in the 2-person team category with a time of 4:04:02 and no time penalties. Add on to that the fact that Em won a t-shirt and socks in the draw, and I'd have to say it was a pretty successful race. I don't have access to my scanner right now, plus I haven't gotten the photos developed yet, but once things are sorted out I'll post some on my website. And I SWEAR I will get the dogsledding photos and stories up as soon as I can. Kev, I'll let you know when I've got the OTHER photo scanned too. =)

Oh, I guess you're wondering about that nausea thing I talked about earlier. Well, it seems to be a unanimous diagnosis at work that I suffered some kind of heatstroke on Sunday that didn't hit me until 10am on Tuesday when I was at work. I couldn't handle it and barely made my way home at lunch (had to pull over on the 401, but fortunately the traffic was slow). I collapsed on my couch for a couple of hours before my mother fed me some water and the nausea really kicked in. Funny thing about me is that once I get it out, I'm 100% okay, as if I had never been ill in the first place. I'm a weirdo.

Finally, in a really unrelated way, congrats are in order for Laboni! She secured herself a teaching position in Mississauga, which means she can enjoy the summer knowing that kids will be waiting for her in September. Wait...is that a good thing?

"Between my fire sighs and my burning eyes, my heart burns wildly in his eyes, he's just a drunken, gambling man, dealing with the hands of desire's game, I'm gonna shuffle his deck clean"

High Rate of Turnover:

It's a game of musical chairs at work. Last week Tina (one of the Validation girls) left the department and went to work at the Markham site. During her farewell dinner there were some horror stories about her new boss and the plant in general (Lesson of the Day: the smell of penicillin during production will permeate everything you own). She was cool but I didn't really get a chance to talk to her. All I really know is that she loves the show "American Dreams".

This Tuesday will be Shanthini's last day. She got offered a job at OPG (hooray for nuclear power). She was kind of surprised because she had the interview in November. But a job's a job, and in particular this is an engineering job. She's kind of nervous about it and a little hesitant because she likes the pharmaceutical game, but it's not like she can't come back. So we're having her farewell dinner on Monday (I've been eating out a lot lately). I guess this means that there is yet another opening in our department. Oh, and the new summer students started last week. Jonathan's a kinesiology student, which is a little different than the rest of us, but like Monica said, this ain't rocket science. He's sort of the hobo of the group, since there weren't enough desks in our area. He's using Michael's (the night shift guy) desk right now, which works out. And all the production guys are drooling over Maria. I'll admit that she's pretty, and it was funny how some of the guys reacted when they first saw her. Especially the guys who are married and have a few kids. Actually, that's kind of dirty...

Anyway, by the end of the month the new QA office on the floor should be finished, and so half the department is moving out onto the floor and the rest of us will stay in the office. All this moving about made me think about my situation, and how I kind of feel bad about deciding to move on after my contract is up. But this is after all a contract position, and the woman I'm replacing right now will be back, so it's not like I'm leaving them with another space to fill. The most ideal situation would be to get an engineering job with this company, but I guess we'll see. I suppose I should start to get to know the engineers a little better...

"Combat baby, come back baby, fight off the lethargy, don't go quietly"

Viral Chaos:

Sasser struck my workplace today, leaving most of us with little to do for the majority of the day. Funnily enough, my computer was the only one that escaped infection (hooray for Windows 95!). By mid-afternoon, the one IT guy at our site came around and patched things up.

Continuing on the topic of diseases (and, coincidentally, from my last entry), my boss got the results from her biopsy today...and as we had feared, it turned out positive. So on top of the silence in the office today from the lack of PC fans whirring, there was a sombre stillness. Oh...I suppose I should mention that she is already a breast cancer survivor, and so it's quite understandable when she mentioned last week that she would prefer NOT to go through chemo again. But it looks like that can't be avoided now. I was thinking today that she is the first person I've really personally known who has cancer. I know I talked about Vince last week, but I didn't really know that much about him, and had only talked to him sporatically. Then there are those distant family connections who have had leukemia and so on, but I didn't really know them personally either. Monica's been a really great boss, and since we have lunch together almost every day, I've gotten to know a lot about her and her life and her family. But she's a toughie, and I'm pretty confident that she'll be okay. It's just a little hard to watch sometimes and knowing that there's nothing you can do to help.

Sorry for the downer, friends. Hopefully next blog I'll have something more fun and peppy to write about.

"If I could find you now things would get better, we could leave this town and run forever"

My God, I'm So Depressed Now...:

This has been a weird evening. I was watching Sixth Sense on TV, which if nothing else is a pretty sad movie. I flipped between that and Everwood, which featured the character who had AIDS leaving town because people were shunning her and mainly because Dr. Brown just broke up with her. And then, for some reason, I decided to log into Friendster to see what was new and found out that last month a guy I had met at CUTC had died from cancer. When I met him, he had just come back from missing about a year of school and the chemo had left him relatively bald and somewhat thin. But he was such a great guy, full of awesome ideas and energy. He came with me during our midnight grocery store raid for pop and chips, and he was one of the guys who agreed to pull the overnight shift for me at the headquarter desk.

I think he was about a year or so younger than I am, but since he had missed so much school he had to drop back a couple of terms. I remember that I didn't see him at this year's conference in January and I meant to ask someone about it but it slipped my mind.

Vince, we hardly knew ye...

Word Play:

I don't know if any of you look closely at your spam, but I've been getting some fun ones. And not the usual teen sluts or Viagra discounts. These are just a random grouping of words. It's in both the subject line and the message, but there are too many words to list here, so I'll just give you a sample of a couple of my favourite subject lines:

liquefaction juliet rainbow religious facade cornell scram lemonade...

confucian wine tetrachloride jacobus romulus anionic child yank furtherance...

(I couldn't copy it all down, but that second one really brought out the Chemmie in me)

Has anyone ever been able to buy playoff tickets online through Ticketmaster? Is that even possible? Because I've been trying and it's like they allow you to try, but they don't have any left if you wait a second after 10am. You just end up clicking back and forth, typing ridiculous words as their way of attempting to bypass clever computer geeks and their programs. It makes you wonder if the words they use are real too. Hungred? Ostiary? Then, after a bunch of relatively small (5-8 letter) words, they threw this one at me: "trialbalance". After about half an hour of trying (while...um...at work) I started to get the feeling they were telling me something when they were reusing some of the words. And then this word showed up and made me give up all together: "damnum"

Finally, a little tidbit of something that I had heard on the radio while driving to work. There's some new book about the White House and their role in Iraq or something, and they interviewed Colin Powell for it. They asked him what his relationship with the Vice President was like. Powell said that they had an informal and friendly relationship, and here's a direct quote from the book: "When the Vice President and I are alone together in a room, it's just Colin and Dick."

If you don't get it, just remember to pronounce the names correctly.

"And I see you standing there, wanting more from me, and all I can do is try"

Why I Am Not Asleep:

Stupid me is waiting for my cell phone to finish charging. Yeah, I'm weird.

So, Hairspray was pretty good last night. It was cheesy in a fun way, like Grease. And I was mistaken, it's set in the 60s, not the 50s. The hair is impressive, and there were a number of surprises in terms of the set design. Oh, and that American Idol chick is not too shabby either. I don't watch American Idol at all, but the only thing I think I recall about this girl is that Simon called her fat or something. Okay, so she isn't a stick, but what does that have to do with anything? For Christ's sake, check out the guy who won...

Where was I...oh yeah. So yes, I would recommend Hairspray to anyone who doesn't mind some good clean cheesiness. I mean, when you've got 60s style music, racial tension, several sexual innuendos, and a large man dressed as a woman, what more do you need?

Moving on...

Is anyone out there interested in going on a cruise? Sometime between July 24-Aug 1? To the Mediterranean or thereabouts? For roughly CAD$2000? I was just wondering...

BB16

"That's the start, the middle, and the end, aren't you glad the universe pretends"