morose code

I was going to have New Years Eve dinner with my parents on Friday, so I decided to leave work early so I could cancel my Sympatico account and drop off the modem at the Bell store at STC.

I was walking to the bus stop yesterday to meet people downtown. There were these two black teenage girls on the sidewalk in front of me headed in the same direction. Since I was in a rush and they were walking slowly, I passed them on the boulevard. A few feet ahead was a middle-aged white woman pushing an empty baby stroller walking towards the three of us. Again, because she was walking in the middle of the sidewalk and showed no sign of moving, I passed her on the boulevard. As soon as I did:

Woman (yelling): Fucking white people!
Teenager 1: I know.

I've mentioned previously that I had been thinking of using the comments field to tag all my music. While I still haven't rated and tagged everything since my iPod originally failed, I've done enough that it's starting to get hard to remember all of the tags I've put in already.

For your amusement, I present to you A Short Conversation With Bruce Campbell:

Bruce: Hey, Dave, how's it going?
me (shaking Bruce's hand): Pretty good, Bruce. How about you?
Bruce: Good, good. Busy night.
me (about to ask how he felt being one of the last actors to work with Ossie Davies): Y--
Bruce (pointing to my iPod remote): Is that an iPod?
me: Yeah...
Bruce (signing my book): My wife loves hers. Have you taught it to walk yet?
me: Uh, no, not yet...
Bruce: Ha! All right, take care, Dave!

I went down to the Harbourfront Centre yesterday afternoon for their Dim Sum festival. There actually wasn't all that much in the way of Dim Sum, it was mostly just a clever name for a bunch of Chinese culture acts. The two that I really wanted to see were the Quartertones and Kid Koala.

The regular business hours for Scarborough Town Centre, colloquially known as STC:

Sunday: 11 to 6.
Monday: 10 to 9.
Tuesday: 10 to 9.
Wednesday: 10 to 9.
Thursday: 10 to 9.
Friday: 10 to 9.
Saturday: 9:30 to 7.

So you want to buy a left-handed guitar?

I was once, in my youth, looking to buy a left-handed guitar and found myself in a music store of some sort. I told the salesman who approached me this and he showed me the few models they had. I wasn't too impressed with them or the fact that they were almost twice the price as the "regular" versions. The salesman told me that it would be better to buy a right-handed guitar.

Me: But I'm left-handed.
Salesman: Yes, but you wouldn't learn how to play the violin with your feet, now would you?
Me: (thinking) Touché.
Salesman: You'd use your hands! Your right hand!

I did not buy a guitar that day, nor any day since. Not until I can play a violin with my feet.

People, when you hire someone to move your office from Point A to Point B, there are several things you should take care of beforehand, one of which is to please remember to check your personal effects beforehand. While this should go without mention, this includes family pictures, fragile glass objects, loose money, and, of course, that pair of underwear in the top drawer of your filing cabinet with the skid mark in it. Failing this, it is a wise idea to limit your personal appearances after such a discovery to zero.

I met Ram for dinner before we headed to the Herbaliser concert last week. Carvill and Mezan were to join us, so we thought it would be best to abuse Carvill's generosity and have her chauffeur us around town yet again. We did not, however, count on traffic being so horrible that it took her over an hour to drive to Ram's apartment.

Coming back from work on the bus today was an experience. When I got to Lawrence RT station I could hear loud cracks of thunder and see lightning striking in the distance. By the time I was on the bus and at McCowan, the rain hit us, and hit us hard.

I went to Ticketmaster a few days ago and, as I was waiting in line, I overheard this conversation:

Teenager 1: (pointing to a t-shirt) Hey, it's that guy.
Teenager 2: Yeah, who is he? He's everywhere.
Teenager 1: I think he has something to do with the desert.
Teenager 2: Wasn't he a rapper who got shot?
Teenager 1: In the desert?
Teenager 2: I think so, yeah.

The t-shirt in question was, of course, that nomadic hip hop pioneer MC Che Guevera, sadly taken from us before his time by Bolivian gangbangers.

I went to see the Canadian Live 8 concert in Barrie today with Carvill and her sister. I wasn't too impressed with the line up to be honest, but I figured that maybe a solid streak of B-list acts would equal one or two A-listers.

For Ram's birthday, some of us decided to buy him a bunch of tickets to various concerts since he's always complaining no one wants to go downtown and watch them with him. The first such concert was for the Herbaliser and Mezan said that he would come along but ultimately did not, because he is a pussy.

Carvill, able to score some cheap tickets thanks to work, and I went to Wonderland today. I love going to Wonderland. I love walking around, I love looking at rollercoasters, I love riding rollercoasters. I hate waiting in the rain for rollercoasters to start up again.

Bina and Trupti were celebrating their birthdays at a private party at Sage last night. I don't know either of them myself, but Bina works with Carvill in some capacity and she snagged me and some others an invite.

I went downtown to do some errands beforehand. One of the things I had to do was buy a shirt to wear to the party since the invitation said to dress "party chic." I don't have that many dressy shirts, so whenever I have to go to some place fancy I tend to buy a new one. That way I don't have to worry about the horrible fashion faux pas of always showing up in photos wearing the same outfit.

Martha was back in town, so I went downtown with Mezan to meet her and Carvill. We decided to hook up with Ram, who was over at the Embassy in Kensington Market. He was already there with Laura, Heather, and Matt, his appropriated friends of Tyler.

The Embassy looked nice, but very small. The patio was tiny and only had four tables on it, so when some more of Ram's friends arrived we decided to finish our pints and head over to Super Market.

I first heard of Seven Numbers about a month ago and it sounded like a nice place to eat. Yesterday I met up with Carvill and Ram and we decided to try the one on the Danforth out. The restaurant wasn't too big, but it was pretty packed when we arrived around 7:30. We were lucky that someone had just left, so we got to sit outside in perfect patio weather.

I was at Mount Sinai hospital today. While I was riding the elevator, a pretty young hospital worker of some sort got on with both her hands full. She was carrying a large tray in both hands, as well as a tied up bunch of flattened cardboard boxes. When her floor came up she started to shift around, trying to pick up the cardboard boxes without dropping her tray. Me, being the shining knight in armour that I am, went over and picked up her boxes for her. She seemed surprised as I guided them into her hand. "There you go," I said and went back to leaning against the wall.

"Uh... thank you?" she replied. Another passenger got off, she didn't move, and the elevator doors closed. Of course, she wasn't actually getting off, she was just shifting the weight of the tray. No one else said anything and we rode the rest of the way to her floor in silence.

As much as I love Apple's products, I hate their support system. Specifically, their phone system. For some reason, the Yorkdale Apple Store didn't call me back to tell me that my new iPod hard drive had arrived and that I could bring it in to be fixed. Sometimes, these things happen and they forget to call. Perhaps, as they were having trouble locating my iPod in their records, they were having trouble finding my phone number? Maybe the part hadn't come in yet. So today, twice as long as they said it would take, I called up the store to check what was going on.

Ram and I headed down to Honest Ed's this afternoon to check out a small comic convention put together by the Beguiling. Glancing over the guest list, I noticed a lot more writers and artists that I wanted to meet than there were was the con earlier this month.

Apple has a strange support policy for the iPod. Basically, it's under warranty for a year, but you only get free phone support for half that time. Since the first Apple store in Canada opened up over the weekend, it seemed like a good time to take my broken iPod over and see if they could diagnose the problem.

Why can't banks be open every day of the week?

Sunday: Closed
Monday: 8 to 8.
Tuesday: 8 to 8.
Wednesday: 8 to 8.
Thursday: 8 to 8.
Friday: 8 to 8.
Saturday: 9 to 3.

I want to go eat at Seven Numbers. There's also one on the Danforth. Found out about it from a Slashdot post in this Tiger sues Apple thread.

I went down to the Ex this afternoon with Howard and Ram to the Toronto Comicon hosted by Paradise Comics. It wasn't as big as the last con I went to (two years ago, hosted at the Metro Convention Centre) but it was a fun way to kill some time and spend some money on paper and ink.

For about a year and a half, I lived in an apartment in Ottawa. There were many things not-so-great about this situation, but one thing that would annoy me to no ends was elevator. It was a small building, only six stories tall, meaning that there was only the one to serve everybody.

My income tax refund came in the mail today. It's almost double what I was expecting. That makes me happy.

Today I went out to donate blood. This was actually the second time I've given up a pint, the first was four or five years ago. Embarrassingly enough, after giving that first time at the mall I went up some stairs and fainted. On the plus side that meant I got to go back and eat more free cookies. After that, I figured they wouldn't allow me to donate again, and for a long time it looked like I was right. Surprisingly, they called a few weeks ago and asked if I still had my card and was willing to drop by. I'm proud to say that I didn't pass out this time around, and that I'll be back in 56 days.

My roommates Chris and Amanda recently broke up and Amanda has started to pack up all her things. I've decided it was a good time to take a look back at all the things of mine that have been wrecked since we all moved in together.

1 bowl, smashed
1 plate, chipped
3 glasses, shattered
2 plastic glasses, cracked
3 mugs, handles snapped off
1 measuring cup handle, snapped off
1 spoon, cracked
1 left-handed wooden spatula, snapped
1 metal pie plate, stained a horrible brown
1 wooden cutting board, broken in half
1 table, water stained
1 chair, legs snapped
1 backgammon board, latch broken off
1 favorite hoody, burnt
1 rubber inflatable couch, popped

In retrospect, it would have been nice for some sort of offer of compensation. One of Amanda's friends broke the measuring cup and did buy me a new one, and Chris did give me money to cover the hoody, but that's only two things on the list.

Dora used to work in the bakery until she quit and opened her own diner just down the road. She makes some pretty good food, even if her prices are just a bit too high:

Sunday: Closed.
Monday: 6 to 5.
Tuesday: 6 to 5.
Wednesday: 6 to 5.
Thursday: 6 to 5.
Friday: 6 to 5.
Saturday: 7 to 2.

Being closed so early isn't so great, either, but she has a family to run.

I saw The Pixies Sunday night:

Back in Toronto I was lucky enough to have a bank with decent hours. The one by my apartment in Ottawa used to have the worst hours imaginable. Closed by 4 or earlier on a weekday and never open on the weekend. It made banking very difficult. Luckily they've changed that:

Sunday: Closed.
Monday: 9 to 5.
Tuesday: 9 to 5.
Wednesday: 9 to 5.
Thursday: 9 to 8.
Friday: 9 to 8.
Saturday: 9 to 3.

I decided to throw a Halloween party this year. Previously, I've done everything from going bar hopping to nothing at all. Unfortunately, things didn't go as great as I'd have liked.

I had a smoked meat sandwich today for lunch. I felt really gassy for the rest of the afternoon. Sadly, I was stuck up front at the cash, which meant that I couldn't just leave for a moment and let one rip and be down with it. Instead I was forced to stand there like a slowly deflating balloon. At one point I let one rip. I decided to ignore it and pretend that nothing had happened, hoping that anyone who heard would assume it was the fat lady standing behind me in the next lane over.

I don't think I fooled the cashier in that lane.

Today was my day off, so I decided to head downtown with my camera and wander though the Market. Whenever I'm feeling pissed off or grumpy, I like to walk around there, and be reminded of a happier time when I was living in a posh apartment in a cool part of town by my self with very little responsibilities. An hour or so down there never fails to recharge my spiritual batteries and leave me in a better mood.

I was working cash the other night when I served this one guy. It was a fairly busy night, so I didn't pass the little divider bar back to the next customer in line, instead I was busy bagging some his stuff. The guy decided to play small time hero and passed it to the woman, to which she replied something that it was my responsibility to do so. "Hmm," I thought, "someone's grouchy." When I'm in line as a customer, I often pass one of the little bars to the next person in line. It's akin to holding open the door for someone behind you, or so I thought. The guy said something that I didn't catch and the next thing I know, he and she are in this big argument about who's more immature and ruder than who. It ended when I handed back his credit card, he stuck his tongue out at her and left with his things.

I went out and bought a 40 gig iPod today.

First impressions: the box seems quite big for something that's supposed to be so small. Apple seems to enjoy making opening it up a theatrical experience. There are slides and drawers and flaps and pieces of plastic that come at you one after the other until you hold the thing in your hand. I swear, it's like holding a tiny little baby in the palm of your hand. You just want to coo and stroke it when no one is looking.

Setting it up was a snap. There was a CD with software to install, but I'd already used the Software Update panel to grab that. It came with a little battery charge, so I played around with it for a bit before hooking it up to the dock and plugging it in. Right now it's both charging the battery up and copying all of my songs over.

Man, this thing kicks ass.

Everything went off without a hitch. The stag was held in this guy's garage. BJ had managed to round up an actual ball and chain that we padlocked to Aaron's ankle. For a dollar, you could shorten the chain by one link. In hindsight, we should have raised the price to make the fun last longer as one guy immediately put down $40 to shorten the entire length. I forgot his name, but it was his garage and he had a dog named Timmy so I'll just call him that.

My friend Aaron is getting married this coming Saturday to his longtime girlfriend. On the weekend, Chris, Calum and I drove to Havlock (just outside of Peterborough) to help set up his stag party. Most of the legwork had been done in town already by Aaron's friend BJ:

BJ is a funny guy. He lives in a double wide trailer with a confederate flag on the wall. Not just any one, but one with a skull and crossbones. He just bought a banjo and learned to play his first song: Dueling Banjos. His bedroom is consists of a large Queen sized bed and all 4 walls completely covered in plastic vines from the dollar store. And a sex swing. He runs a very successful DJ business that he co-founded with Aaron back in high school as well as doing chimney and masonry. He swears like a sailor and sweet talks like a carney. He and Aaron couldn't be more opposites. I could not picture Aaron hanging out with BJ and if I hadn't known they were such good friends I would deem it impossible. Hanging out with BJ was a blast.

My friend Emma celebrated the start of her second decade of life today. She decided to throw a Fantasia party instead of the usual birthday festivities. For those of you not aware, a Fantasia party is not a celebration where one watches obscure Asian cult movies all night long. Instead, it is more like a tupperware party in which the tupperware is replaced by anal lubricants, dildos, and powders that make you skin heat up very pleasantly when blown upon. I'd been invited to one a few years before but unfortunately was unable to go then.

It was an interesting experience. They're technically only for women, so my being there as the sole male was most certainly a violation of some sort of code of honour. They decided to combat this desecration by having the entire presentation done in French, peppered throughout with the occasional English word, like "penetration." I now know how to find a woman's g-spot in French as well as English.

Afterwards more of Emma's friends arrived and many drinking games commenced. Poor Emma was forced to drink many a shot in "celebration." There were several cute French girls there. I had a good time.

My iBook just froze up for some reason so I did a hard restart. When I launched Mail, I was greeted with a prompt that told me I have no email accounts configured and would I like to create one. Say what? Everything looks like it did the last time I checked my /user/library/mail folder. Any suggestions to get Mail to "remember" my old accounts?

I bought a package of 8 swiss rolls last night at work and ate two. I left them in the fridge overnight as I've done with all kinds of food before. This morning when I went in to the break room before my shift started there were only two left. I expressed my displeasure to some of the people there, then went to work. Finally it was time to take my break. I hurried up to my swiss rolls only to discover that since I had last seen them, someone had eaten one and taken a huge chunk out of the other. You could see the teeth marks in the thing. I was upset.

I ran into an old woman at work today. Here's why.

Fuck. I just wrote a huge ass post on why I hated the Village and it got erased. I put so much bile into that post I don't have the energy to retype it all out again. I'm talking a How to move a fridge level of effort here, too.

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

-William Carlos Williams

In the great literary tradition of of assigning someone you know a pseudonym based off their first initial, here is a quick anecdote about Emma.

Emma is a nice French girl I work with who is a few years younger than myself. Her english is fine, although occasionally she can't think of the proper word and lapses back into la français. One night she turned to me and asked "how do you call people who can't hear?" I began to tell her what I knew of it, basically that they have special phones with a flashing light attached to alert them when it was ringing. The phones themselves are hooked up to a TTY service which enables them to communicate via text. At this point she became confused, so I began to elaborate on how the system works. After about four more minutes she became even more impatient with my answer and again asked me how you call people who can't hear. It was then that I realized what she meant was which word in english was used. "Oh," I replied. "They're deaf."

Rather than stay glued to the screen watching the talking heads last night, Amanda and I decided to watch "Monster" and "Win a date with Tad Hamilton." I don't know what all the fuss was about Monster. I found it to be very, very boring. The first forty minutes could have easily been compressed into 20, and the last hour into 30, leaving over an hour's worth of time for something entertaining to happen. Sadly, it wasn't meant to be.

went out last night with some girls from work. drank too much fireball. had to work at 8. very sick. napped today from noon till now. just finished cleaning bathroom.

Co-worker #1: Hey, let's ask Dave.
Co-worker #2: What would you say the taste of pussy reminds you of?
Co-worker #1: I think I'd say it's like meat, but without any salt.
Co-worker #2: How would you describe it?
Me: I think I'd describe it a little less loudly.
Customer: (staring at us) ...
Co-worker #2: What?

1. Have you heard the one about the five cows living in a two bedroom apartment? It wasn't big enough so they had to mooove.

2. Two termites walk into a pub. One turns to the other and says "so, where's the bar tender?"

3. Once there were two melons, a boy melon and a girl melon. These melons were madly in love with each other, but their families hated each other and refused to let them see each other. One day the boy melon decided that enough was enough. He asked his father to give him one good reason to forbid the love between the two of them. His father said "because she's a watermelon! No son of mine is going to marry a goddamn watermelon!" The boy melon goes to see the girl melon and tells her the bad news. She asks "why don't we run away together and get married? We don't need our parents to be happy, we only need each other!" The boy melon looks at her and realizes she just doesn't get it. He shakes his head sadly and says "I'm a cantaloupe."

A week or so ago "Kelly" at work came over and told me about her weekend: she took her parent's car and went over to Hull to Hot Shots with some of her friends and was disappointed that I wasn't there. Hot Shots is, of course, a strip joint for the ladies. She asked if I wanted to go with her the next time and I casually replied that maybe that wouldn't be the best of ideas. For one, I'd imagine going to the strippers with a straight someone of the opposite sex would be uncomfortable regardless of whether it's a Jack or Jill club. Toss in the age difference between us and it would be quite awkward. I didn't see her for the rest of the week and I found out on the Friday that she had suddenly quit. No one knew why, and a few jokes about her broken heart and our forbidden love were made.

Fast forward to two days ago when I was combing the mall looking for some cooling trays for baking. I ran into her outside the Gap and we have a nice, clumsy smalltalk about what was going on, people at work, etc. She's going to be teaching rock climbing, among other things, at a summer camp for teens back in Quebec. The topic turned to why she had quit and she told me that she couldn't stand all the rumours of her sleeping around with people at work. Personally, if it was anyone there I'd blame her ex-boyfriend who struck me as a bit of a tool.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss the attention, though, even if it did feel a little bit creepy at times.

Ask MeFi has an amusing post about puppy urination:

My roommate and I adopted a dog about two weeks ago. He's a submissive/excited urinator. When I get home from school, if I so much as look at him, there's pee everywhere. Same thing with scolding--he does something bad, I'm all "no, that was bad," and he's all "okay, have some of my urine!"

One Mother's Day I was having dinner with my family at Bluffer's and I ordered a beer. My brother, older by four years, decided to have one as well and the waiter asked him for ID. Not I, though, since the waiter thought I was the older brother. I never get carded. And yet I went to the Beer Store during lunch today to pick up some Sleeman's Honey Brown and the guy there asked me for ID. I've been going to that particular store since September, I even dropped off a job application back in October (thanks for never calling back, by the way). He remembered that I had last bought Sapporo and told me they were all out. And then, with no one else in the store, he carded me.

Last night:

Customer: I want it thicker than normal. Is that a word?
Me: Yes it is, it means more thick than the usual thickness.
Customer: (impressed for some reason) Wow, you should work for the dictionary people. I also want some of this, but thinner.
Me: (joking) "Thinner" ? That's not a real word.
Customer: It's not? Oh. Less thin, then.

Last night, one of the girls at work came over and we started chatting. When the other person I was working with left for their break, she asked me if I wanted to come over to her house when our shifts ended and have a beer. She mentioned that her parents were out of town for three weeks.

Oddly enough, the one thought that flashed through my head right then was that she probably hadn't even been born when Transformers the movie was released. I politely declined.

My roommate Chris received a job offer from the University of Winnipeg for the summer. I don't remember what he's doing (slicing open fish or something is a possibility, but I think that's what he did when he went down to Florida to visit his sister last week), but in an email from him he describes how cold it is there. Unluckily for him, the snow and the ice pellets has caused the Trans-Canada Highway to be closed down and so he can't leave the small town he's staying in and get into the big, bustling metropolis that is Winnipeg.

Meanwhile I am sitting on my balcony typing this while sipping on some Sapporo and eating some freshly chilled grapes, wondering if I should change into some shorts and bring out that small inflatable kiddie pool we have stashed away somewhere and if this run on sentence is too long.

Me: Do you know how I could get rid of the pigeons on my balcony?
Cute, yet sadly too-young coworker: Are you making fun of me?

I've really fucked up my computer and I need some sound advice.

I restarted into OS 9 to do some stuff and when the desktop booted up my OS X partition wouldn't initialize. So I restarted a couple of times to see if that would do anything. It didn't.

I scanned the partition using 9's Disk First Aid and discovered the following errors:

-Mount Check reveals serious errors
-Overlapped extent allocation 4, 3456
-Volume Bit Map needs minor repair 4, 162
-Volume Header needs minor repeair 1,0

As I understand it, if I try and repair these using Disk First Aid I'd "fix" the drive in the sense that these errors would (most likely) be gone, but because of differences between 9 and X's file structures, etc. I'd probably wipe all the data stored there. Which would not be cool.

So please, someone have some good news for me before I start checking out Apple tech support forums.

Ever since Sunday morning I've had a soar throat and a bad cough. I've been sucking on Halls, drinking orange juice and gargling salt water, but so far it hasn't left me. One of the worst things you can do to aggravate a case like that would be to inhale smoke. So today, when the back room at work caught on fire and the smoke alarm went off I was understandably uncomfortable. By 9:00 the fire department seemed to have everything under control enough to let us back in to grab our coats.

I was reading the Sun at work today during my break. One of the girls came in and sat down and was just sitting there for a while not really doing anything. In an attempt to break the awkward silence I read this article aloud to her:

An Australian handyman has admitted he was stupid to shoot himself in the head with a nail gun in a misguided prank which left him with a nail lodged in his brain.

We both agreed that he was quite stupid, and then she mentioned how, when she was 5, her best friend's Dad had accidently killed himself playing Russian Roulette.

Awkward moments are cyclical.

Sunday: Quarter Pounder with cheese
Monday: Big Xtra
Tuesday: Big Mac
Wednesday: McChicken
Thursday: 2 Cheeseburgers
Friday: Filet-O-Fish
Saturday: Double Cheeseburger

Last night, I went over to Jordan's and Michelle's apartment for some DVD Trivial Pursuit. It's exactly the same as normal Trivial Pursuit, but all of the categories were about pop culture and the pie questions were asked on the DVD. There was fifteen or so of us there, split up into three teams. Our team consisted of myself, Michelle, Tara, and a couple whose names I've since forgotten. It seemed like every question the other two teams were asked, our team knew, but rarely were the ones we were asked as easy to answer. In the end we managed to win by stealing the others' pie questions in the free-for-all round.

There's a community centre just down the road from my apartment that, among other activities, holds pick up badminton games twice a week. Chris gave me a racket for Christmas and we've been meaning to head over and hit some birds and tonight was the first night we did so. There was a pretty diverse group of people there from a couple of guys our age to Roy the really old guy who drives in from Stittsville just to play. I got off to a very shaky start, but by the end of the night I was doing pretty good if I may say so myself. Roy was a big help in bringing me up to speed. One problem I had was the fact that, as a southpaw, everyone else there was a righty. I hit more than my fare share of my partner's rackets. Hopefully I can keep that to a minimum next week.

And yes, I stole the title of this post from the Yearbook's badminton page. I think Rishi came up with it originally.

Chris and I met up with Calum and his ex-girlfriend last night and went down to see Aaron's band Stairwell K perform in a battle of the bands. The cover charge was a bit steep, but all the bands there were excellent. They didn't win, but all the bands did get a $100 credit at a recording studio. You can listen to some of their stuff here. In addition to the music, we argued who would win in a fight, cavemen or astronauts. The general consensus around the table was our noble ancestors would beat the astronauts, even if Captain Kirk did once create gunpowder to fight that Gorn.

Chris, Calum and I went over the bridge to Hull to visit the Museum of Civilization, which is running an exhibit on the Dead Sea Scrolls. There were three of the scrolls there, the first time two of them have ever left Israel. They were kept about halfway through the exhibit in a dark room. Every minute, red diffused lighting would flood the room for only twenty seconds to prevent further damaging the scrolls. The scrolls themselves I didn't find as interesting as the rest of the exhibit, which included things like an ossuary, a tile mural, and a complete historical timeline of Israel.

Unfortunately, the rest of the museum closed while we were making our way through it, so we didn't get to see anything else. Instead we went to Hooters for dinner and then back to the apartment to watch Full Metal Jacket and drink beer.

My parents came up from Toronto to visit two years ago and while showing them around the city, my mom wanted to see the tulips on Parliament Hill. Unfortunately, because the buds were buried under several inches of snow we ended up going down the street to the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography.

Chris heard about a rally on Parliament Hill to protest Canada's proposed involvement in the U.S. SDI program and wanted to go check it out yesterday. Unfortunately, we arrived just in time to hear the organizers thanking the fifty-or-so people there for turning out and everyone began to disperse.

We decided to head over to Confederation Park to see the ice sculptures being carved for the start of Winterlude. There were some really impressive designs there, including a huge, fifteen-feet tall wooly mammoth and a kickass Macros battle suit. Hopefully the photos I took will come out decently.

After that we headed over to Wasabi, an excellent sushi house down the street from my old apartment in the Market. Their bento boxes and Dragon Rolls are exquisite, although their prices are a bit steep.

Scene: exterior of a strip mall pharmacy, around lunch time.

As soon as I got out of the store with my bottle of orange juice, I started to run. Not three seconds later I felt my foot hit something very light. I turned my head around to see what I had kicked and this small, brown bird flew right by my head and out into the parking lot. Nothing else was on the ground around me and a nearby man confirmed that I had indeed punted the bird. I managed to convince myself that had I done any damage to it, it probably wouldn't have been able to fly away. I then went to a nearby bench and drank my orange juice.

Right now I'm in debating whether to use the style of my old Carleton blog into MT. I've also been thinking about posting some of my old blog entries in the archive, but I haven't reached any decision yet. It feels like I'm wrist deep in a dead thing as it with the design. We'll see once I get things up and running to my liking.

Having just installed Movable Type, this is my first post. Hopefully all is well. Props to Ram for holding my hand and squeezing it every so often in that troubling period.

Any entries before this one were imported from my old blog. In those days I added each entry manually and then uploaded the new index file; a real pain in the ass that meant it was updated infrequently at best.

Unpacking my stuff has gone very slowly. I arrived in Ottawa late Monday afternoon carrying three large bags and promptly got on the wrong bus. Instead of getting the 7 I got the 7X which, instead of stopping directly outside my new apartment, stops a good twenty minutes away on a side-street off the main road. While carrying my stuff down the street I happened to remember that my bed-sheets, towels, and pillows were back in Scarborough. Whoops.

Carvill's always admonishing me for what I eat, so this should at the very least amuse her. When I went to Ottawa last weekend for my graduation ceremony, my mom gave me a shopping bag and told me it was for breakfast the next day. I put it in my apartment fridge without thinking about it and walked her to the hotel. The next day, hungrily, I opened the fridge and grabbed the bag. Inside: a can of Coke and 2 packets of butter from a diner.

So off to a coffee shop I went.

Later, her care package led to some interesting conversations about the eating habits she had when she was living at home with my Nana and Papa. If you think the food I eat is greasy and disgusting, you probably don't want to hear about my Nana saving all the boiling fat from porkchops so that the next morning for breakfast she could put it into a frying pan and cook some bread in it. It kind of went downhill from there. So in hindsight, the coke and butter breakfast probably isn't all that bad. At least my family's genome is developing healthier eating habits with each generation. Who knows, my kids may even eat the occasional fruit.

When someone tells you to move a fridge, always hope that it's one of those small bar fridges that you can toss up into the air and then prod to wherever it has to go because they're constructed primarily out of space age materials, freon, and helium.

Carleton's posted the April exam schedule and as luck would have it, my first one is on the 22nd and the last one is the next Tuesday night. I've never, ever finished early in the 7 sets of exams I written. That just blows.

My Mom sent me an email today about a man, Danny Mandolidis, who was killed at Cederbrae Plaza. An elderly gentleman drove his car over the curb and crushed him against the wall at the liquor store. Mr. Mandolidis was a retired vice-principal that my Dad knew, and he had a daughter and son that my Mom taught. His daughter also was dating my cousin for a while, back when my Grandfather died.

Last night was poker night down at Chez Norwood. Not too many people showed up, so the winnings were a bit slim. In the end, I managed to walk away down only a buck. Sadly, I seem to win big very early into the night and then it's downhill from there. It's never too great to peak that early, but a good time was had by all. One funny moment was ordering a couple of pizzas at 2 am and paying the delivery guy over twenty dollar's worth in nickels, dimes and quarters. He wasn't too happy with us. If I was sober and in his shoes, I don't think I would have been, either.

The trip home was nice change of pace. On the ride back I rolled snake-eyes for my saving throw versus bad luck and one of the few times that they put on a movie, all the screens decide to stop displaying the picture. No great loss since they were showing Dr. Doolittle 2, but still, I had invested myself in it for a good half hour. Also, it was funny to note that the dog Norm McDonald voices gets a golden shower at one point in this Disney kid movie.

We did better at yesterday's trivia night than the last time, scoring 27 out of 40. Didn't win, but hey, that's better than last time's horrible 14. The consolation was that last week's Team Adobe-Parliament weren't the winners. We did do pretty good in the dollar beer rounds, though. Basically -- and bear with me, it's very technical and complicated -- the bartender asks a question, you pony up a dollar into the pot and answer. If you're right, you get a free beer. Andrew, Callum and Chris each got one and yours truly won two.

Tonight I hit the bus and head back to Scarborough for the old two-year dental checkup tomorrow morning. Got to get at least one in before the parent's health coverage stops in April.

I went down to registrar's office to beg and plead with them to let me graduate. I sat down and told them that I have a problem and that I missed the deadline. The girl just said "no you didn't" and I proceeded to fill out the form. It was basically "are you graduating? What's your name? What's your major? Okay, congratulations." Bah. Way to stir up a hornet's nest over nothing.

Found out today that apparently I missed the deadline to apply to graduate this year. First of all, how stupid is it that I need to apply to graduate? Second of all, why the hell wasn't I notified about this deadline? There's no mention of this deadline in my student handbook, on the registration CD that I got, in the various pieces of mail Carleton's sent me this year, nothing. Hell, last year I got an email saying that if I was going to graduate then (not sure how I could have even qualified for that since I was only in the second year of the English program), I had to let them know if I was going to attend some summer BBQ. Obviously my name is on some kind of list somewhere if it popped up then.

This reminds me more than a little bit of that time back in high school where I was called down to the main office out of Physics to get my diploma in Grade 12. I'm still not sure why that happened. The reason they gave me was because I had so many English credits I had technically graduated, but I still had to stay enrolled for the following year or I wouldn't be able to use the diploma they had just handed me.

When I was a wee laddy, I went on a couple of trips down to Florida with my family. Once with just my Nana, and I think twice with my mom and my brother Steve. The fun thing about these trips was the ride down. Unlike any sane family, we wouldn't take a plane. Oh no, we'd go down in style on a rented bus. You've never traveled to Florida in style until you've gone on a bus with forty-some strangers, your mom, and your brother. A trip that takes 36 hours. Well, on one of those trips with my mom the bus caught fire and we had to pull over. Of course, the driver didn't let us know this: he merely pulled over to the side of the highway, grabbed the small emergency fire extinguisher he had up front and ran outside to the back of the bus. Turned out it wasn't a real fire, just grease on the rear axle or something. But to a ten year old kid, the happening two hours in on a day-and-a-half long trip isn't exactly comforting.

Trivia Night has been happening at a more frequent rate. Unfortunately, no such luck in the success department. We've had two matches this month. The first time Angry Dan, Callum, and Andrew joined us. It was a tight ("very toight") match.

Friday's exam wasn't that hard after all. A couple of short, fill-in-the-blank questions, one critique of a poem, and a standard write about pretty much anything essay. I think i did fairly well on that. Not sure how many of the short answers I put down were nothing more than unsubstantiated race memories and whether or not I knew what I was talking about with the poem, but the essay (which was worth half the mark) was on "Pride and Prejudice" -- a novel that I did my presentation on as well as having to read it once in high school and again last year for a different class. Rock on! Found out today by email that my American Lit. professor decided to raise everyone's mark by 10% because he felt the class average was too low. So I ended up walking away from that with a 78%. Nice, you won't find me complaining about that.

Apparently having mats in the hallway to wipe your wet boots on are considered a fire hazard in my building. Serves that one guy on my floor right, him and his Labatt Blue loving commie ass. Also got a 3.12% rent reduction starting in the new year. That whopping sum will cover one of my biweekly food bills by the time April swings around. I had a drop like that last year, but of course the rent was raised by a slightly greater amount by the landlord later on. God bless Harris for getting rid of rent control. There's not really all that much snow out up here but it is really really cold, and that's about all that has been going on up here.

For the past month I've been going to the MegaLoMart Dominion's since the nice small and nearby Loeb closed to undergo renovations. Yesterday was the first day since they reopened that I stopped by. It's very strange to show up at some place you've spent a lot of time in and find it completely different. It was like coming back to Toronto after first year and seeing that Harvey's by Woburn that was painted orange and purple for the first time. The Loeb is completely redone now. The rear entrance by the LCBO parking lot has been retconned into a meat locker emergency exit and the main entrance is this bottle neck where on the left is two rows of microsmall shopping carts. On the inside the geography of the store is completely messed up. Putting aside the fact that it now looks like one of those Second Cups where everything is oak, maple, or some other kind of classy wood, nothing is where I left it. Everything is a few meters off or in a completely different row. Very unnerving and aggravating to swing down an aisle to pick up something and all there is is cat food.

Went over to this place in Hull last night for some go karting. It was pretty cool, they made you wear these helmets and race car driver suits. They had guys running around with checkered flags and everything. At the end of it they give you this printout telling you something, I don't really know what since it was in French, other than my almost hitting 70 k per h. I gathered that I didn't win, though, since I kept getting lapped and Chris, Aaron and Niels would shake their fist at me. We did 40 laps and afterwards you wouldn't believe how tired I was. My hands were freezing since the place was basically a warehouse with open doors at both ends and it had begun to snow while we were inside. Plus the wheel was a bit stiff so my arms were sore, too. Then there was my right arm which was basically right by this burning hot engine exhaust. Did I mention that they had a bar and didn't care how much you had to drink before you went racing? That's both kinda cool and unsettling at the same time.

Mike's party was supposed to be some huge affair but most of the people that were supposed to come ended up canceling. There was just me, Mike and Scott, Lisa, Saurus, a pirate, and some guy dressed up as Freddy Kreuger. We sat around for a while watching the official bootleg version of Army of Darkness drinking some beers until around eleven when we gave up waiting for more people to come and left. Headed down to Zaphod's (losing the pirate and Freddy along the way) which was all right in a lame kind of way. If I'd known we were going clubbing I would have brought more than ten bucks with me. Saw this girl from one of my classes dressed up as Velma. I was dressed up as Clark Kent.

Last year one of the things that me and my chums liked to do was head down to our favorite little pub for their trivia night. Of course, things being what they are, they never seemed to actually have a trivia night whenever we went even though they had an event calender up behind the bar with all the dates marked out in black magic marker. This went on for something like a dozen times in a row before the year was over and everyone went home for the summer. Nevertheless, last night we were surprised to find out that yes Virginia, there is a trivia night.

My toilet is constantly cycling water and someone is stealing my newspaper everyday (again). For some reason the guy that delivers them doesn't drop it off outside my apartment door like last year; instead he leaves it outside the apartment door on the street. Like any reasonable person I don't wake up before 10 am any day of the week so by the time I get down there to look for it someone's snatched it. I have to get around and call the paper and see what's going on because that just pisses me off. Still, at least there hasn't been any hand-me-down pornography in any of the ones that I've been lucky enough to grab.

On a scale of 1 to good, where yesterday was good, today would have definitely rated a 1. I needed to see one of my profs about an assignment and her office hours were from 10 am until 11 am, so I had to get up at 8 am to have enough time to get ready and down there in time. I'm a slow starter in the morning, what can I say. So I get down there and discover that it's actually noon 'till one. Great, just enough time that going back home would require me to turn right around and head back to catch her. So I spent an hour and a half in the library wandering around, reading random books, imagining things about the people around me, napping, everything I could think of to stay sane. When I head back to her office someone else is in there already and I had to wait half an hour before I could go in and just grab this assignment sheet I needed. Again, I was left in this Catch-22 situation where I had just enough time to go home and back before her lecture started, and if I skipped it she'd surely noticed since attendance records looked somewhat like a Bell Curve. So I go to eat at the Uni. Center then decide to stop off at Lee's room and chill there for a bit. Too bad she was sick and I woke her up. Feeling somewhat like an ass I left and went over to Norwood and Aaron's place. Of course as luck would have it, neither were there, only their new roommate Aaron Number 2 whom looks like a slightly more athletic Aaron Number 1 but I know about as well as my local MPP . So I head over to Billings Bridge and putter around there. Imagine the joy on my face when I discovered that since it was Thursday my class started in fact at 4 pm and not 2 like I thought. Great. So I chill in the Oasis drinking orange juice, reading the National Post and watching tennis. Finally class starts and it is so goddamn boring. There's not enough people that I can covertly sleep (she's the kind of prof to yell at you to wake up until you do) so I had to settle with doodling Autobot logos in my notepad for an hour and a half. I couldn't get the eyes right from memory, I kept confusing them with the Decepticon's or something just totally wrong.

Today was pretty eventful. Started off by finishing that essay off and I decided to go cruise around the Market since it was so nice out. On the way out I found out that my Ulterior Emotions CD had finally arrived (and believe you me, it is mighty damn good). Walked around the market, smiled at plenty a cute girl. Discovered that I had enough stamps at Second Cup for a free coffee (aside: why does a coffee company require Flash on their website?). Some old man sat next to me on the bus and started chatting to me about bad bus driver stories. Had lunch at the Rideau Center. Overheard some guys on the bus talking about Braveheart, aka "MacDonald." They went on to talking about American movies like Jurassic Park being dubbed and released in Calcutta when one of them said something that really got my attention: "that's weird, even for the Portuguese." Later I was checking out this girl as I was crossing the street and I realized that she was also checking me out and smiling, which totally threw me for a loop once I realized. 'Cause it was me, and she was hot. But I digress. Decided to rent a movie and discovered that I got to rent it for free. Not sure on the details, so I did the old maneuver nod and smile. As I was walking home, I saw this big brown guy. I thought I recognized him but I wasn't sure from where until he saw me and waved at me. So I went over and started talking to him. It turns out I didn't know him, he was just selling weed. But he didn't mock me openly for the confusion.

Went down to Quinn's today for Trivia Night only to find that the bartender who told us last Wednesday that it had been pushed back to today was mistaken. Every time we head down there to bone up on obscure facts they keep pulling the carpet right out from under us. We'll show them, though: if they use the circa 1980 Trivial Pursuit cards they have there they'll quickly discover that we've gone through them twice, not to mention Norwood's more current version back at the Shanty House. I, in my infinite wisdom and/or folly, decided to sample their two pound offering of "really, really hot" barbecue wings. I managed to eat them all, but I had to have an extra pint as well as guzzle down the sour cream and vegetables. The silver lining of this little story is that we scored some box seats to tomorrow night's 67's game against Peterborough.

Tonight is the annual Battle of the Bands at C.U. Stairwell K will be performing and, god willing, taking home the crown for a second year in a row.

Essay writing was never a fun experience for me back in high school and university is just a continuation of that trend. Had a minor panic attack when I realized that I have a test and another essay due next week. Luckily the essay is actually just an essay outline and the test is just, well, it's still a test, but only on three chapters. I should have plenty of time to get ready for both this weekend. Once I finish the first essay that is. Ugg.

I was all jazzed up today. I went down to pick up my mail and I noticed how nice it looked outside. So I grabbed my coat and went out walking around for about half an hour or so. Give it a day or so and I might be able to ditch the winter coat and toque. Maybe then I can grab the camera and take some pictures. I was always meaning to do that during Winter when the canal was frozen but I kept putting it off because it was too damn cold.

Ever leave your dishes in the sink for a couple of days without washing them? Ever systematically go through all of your dishes because you were too lazy to wash them? This morning I was eating some pie with not a fork but a carving knife. In hindsight that's a pretty retarded thing to do (I imagine that you could seriously hurt yourself up by cutting and stabbing your tongue and gums) but those thoughts didn't flicker across my subconscious until much much later in the day. Especially considering this is me, Captain Accident Prone of the Legion of Amusing Anecdotes. I'm getting off track here... I managed to bite the bullet and do the dishes. Plates and glasses wasn't that hard since I only have four of each, but when you've used up all your little forks AND big forks, little spoons AND big spoons, all your knives, even your ice cream scoop (that you used to eat some tasty Zoodles with just a hint of paprika and garlic powder), it can get a little tedious. Thank god that's all over with for another couple of weeks.

Got back in to town today at noon thanks to the miracle that is the 7 am express. I saw this really cute girl waiting at STC but it turned out she wasn't as cute as I thought she was. But then I saw this other cute girl and she saw me seeing her and I think I scared her with my patented Stalker Face. Then, on the OC bus making my way back to my apartment I saw this other other cute girl and I swear I know her from somewhere (high school maybe?) but I did my best not to inadvertently follow her all the way up to her floor in her condo. We both got off at Rideau Center though, so i will keep my eyes peeled there and in my classes. I know I've seen here around town here before as well. Hopefully this won't be a dangling plot thread for six or seven seasons.

As you can see, I've shaved my head again. I'm going to let it grow out a little bit and then do something drastic to it, like let it grow some more or shave it again or perhaps even bleach it. Something earthshaking for sure. I don't know why my eyes are blue. My webcam is a strange and mysterious animal.

I'm so very happy that Canada won gold in men's hockey. I was concerned how the US' players were handling the puck quite well and our boys kept making some shaky passes, to say nothing of the very tight score. So very happy now. Did you know Brewer's dad, Carl Brewer (recently deceased) was on Team Canada's team in the '50s? Incidentally, it turns out that my mom went to school with Foote's sister.

I have an essay to write tomorrow. That should be fun.

I've been puttering around the apartment these last two days, trying to figure out how to make it a bit more bearable. I've been watching perhaps an unhealthy amount of HGTV as of late. For some reason I've found myself watching all of their home renovation shows whenever I have a free moment. And I do mean all of them: This Small Space, Homes to Go, Real Renos, even Trading Spaces over on TLC. So, I've moved some stuff around a bit. I'm thinking of buying a pair of bar stools I saw at Zellers that were really cheap. I've even constructed a night stand out of some milk crates and a particle board shelf that I'm not using on my TV cabinet. Despite the Soviet Industrialist look, it works very well. The junk in the crates give it that much needed quality of stability while simultaneously reducing amount of space my clutter used to take. The particle board on top adds the convenience of flatness, ideal for the placing of items. The only problem is that one of the crates is actually of a different brand and is a hair's breath bigger than the other three, so I've decided to case the parking lot across the street for the right time to run over and grab a couple that I've had my eye on.

My brother has decided to renew his contract and stay in Japan for another year, though he may come back for part of the summer. Kudos to him. It must beat working with the kids at U of T for the summer, which I am so loathe to do again. I'm running down some leads here in Ottawa for something better but so far no such luck. C'est la vie. Speaking of Toronto, I'm coming back for part of reading week as soon as I churn out an essay. I'll probably be back Thursday or Friday.

RadioShack is having a sale. I've been meaning to buy a bigger, better, faster, stronger hard drive for some time now so I could upgrade to OSX, move all my mp3s from my external drive over, not have to constantly erase one program so I can install something else -- the usual geek routine. First I have to check my bank account though. Last time I was brave enough to peek at it it was somewhere south of three hundred dollars. I'm hoping that my parents have graciously deposited some money, or that there's been a bank error in my favour; collect $300.

Stairwell K has a gig tonight at Zaphod's and at the Elbow Room on Saturday.

Yesterday night I went grocery shopping at around 8. About halfway there I saw Calum walking towards me, pushing one of those granny carts with some bottles of Coke in it. Naturally, I jokingly yell at him something to the effect of "hey, you lazy ass! Why don't you carry all those cans!"

Of course, it wasn't actually him, just some startled looking old man wearing the same jacket. He didn't say anything, crossed the street and picked up the pace.

So I had a dentist appointment yesterday, 10 am. It's in the building by Scarborough Town Center, opposite the YMCA. My dad drops me off at a quarter to and I go up and try the front doors. Locked. I go around to the back doors. Locked. So I bang on the doors for a couple of minutes before thinking to myself "hmm... there are stairs going down to the basement level parking garage" and head over there.

I walked to the bus stop to go to my first class this morning and there was this girl there. Not really hot or anything but that's not the point of this story. I'm standing there drinking some juice and she asks me if I go to Carleton. I figure she needs directions so I say yeah. Instead, she offers me a ride there in her friend's car, who's just driven around the block. I say OK. We wait for a bit engaged in some small talk, but when the guy doesn't show up after five minutes she flags down a cab. I tell her that I'm poor and don't really have any money to spend on a cab when the bus will be arriving soon, but she tells me it's all right, that she'll pay for it. So I kind of reluctantly get in. We hadn't even been talking at the bus stop that much to warrant sharing a cab, much less ditching her friend.

In the cab she starts chatting about how she has a midterm today and she's in fourth year. We get to school and she pays the cabby. She tells me her name (which I promptly forgot), I reciprocate, and she says "it was nice meeting you. I'll see you around." I go "you betcha!" and leave for class.

I was on the bus coming home today after work and I saw this hot Iranian looking girl talking with her boyfriend. I stare at her for a bit and she sees me looking at her. Having learned my lesson from that day I went to Simon's house, I gave her a smile and kept looking for five more seconds. Her boyfriend spots me, gets up and walks right up to me. I'm trying to pretend I don't see him coming up through the corner of my eye. The guy goes "David, how's it hanging?"

I look up and stare at him. It's Edris! I say "uh.. good. What have you been up to?" and he points to this paper shredder he's carrying and says "tax stuff" and gets off the bus with his hot Iranian girlfriend.

Yesterday I was riding my bike to the library when I rode right into two bees. One hit my face above my right eyebrow and seriously freaked me out, the other hit my helmet.