New Job for the Brockster

I've been sitting on this powderkeg for the last week or so and can finally spill the beans, to mix a metaphor.

Today was my last day at the illustrious Peel 1 house where I've worked for the last 5+ years. I've loved working at the house and part of me really wishes I could stay. However, 5 years doing the exact same job in the exact same house with the exact same people does turn the brain to mush after a little while. I'm really going to miss the guys at the house though. They made my job as challenging as it was but also made it as fun as it was and were really the only things keeping me as attached to the house as I was. If it weren't for the lot of them being such awesome guys, I would probably have left ages ago.

So, what am I doing instead of working at Peel 1, you ask? Still working for CH, at least for the near future. I am going to be working at a new house that is less than 5 minutes from my house and has a bunch of awesome NEW guys to look after. That, and the house is desperate for experienced staff and pretty much begged me to go there. But in all honesty, the 5 minute commute is what sealed the deal. The best thing about all of this is that I will finally have an alternating evening/day schedule so I can do stuff in the evenings. I'm already getting up by about 7am anyway, so doing a 7-3 shift shouldn't be too difficult and I'll actually see my family every so often instead of on alternating weekends :)

The best thing is that as of this evening, I no longer have to commute to the festering cesspool known as Brampton. Make that, I no longer have to do a 30 minute commute to the festering cesspool known as Brampton. While I was on my parental leave, I wanted to go visit the guys but just driving into the outskirts of that vortex of doom made my skin crawl. I don't mind going in there to visit, but I swear my blood pressure spikes as soon as I pass the Georgetown/Brampton border and have to make my way through suburban hell.

Did I mention I hate subdivisions? But that's for another, longer, more vitriolic rant.

Anyway, that's my big news. The worst thing over the last week and a half was having to hear from all of the parents and the guys, etc. that they were so happy that I was back at work. All the while I knew that I was going to be transferring out in the not too distant future. I just didn't expect that future to be so soon!

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What I'm Reading: Brilliance Of The Moon, hopefully will start Illium on the weekend.
What I'm Playing: Fire Emblem, Atelier Iris, Destroy All Humans
What I'm Watching: Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Top of the list.

For the past couple months I've essentially stopped buying videogames. I'm trying to limit my purchases to one new game a month, if that. GetGames.ca has helped as I'm able to try out all sorts of games that I used to pay stupid amounts of money for. Now I can put my money towards getting my A+ certification!

Now, that said, there are still games that I want for my collection. I've got a short list and sadly most of them are months away from coming out.

Suffice it to say, Shadow Of The Collosus is tied for the number 1 spot with We Love Katamari. It was going to be in second place until I saw the new trailer and couldn't stop drooling.

It's made by the guys behind one of my all time favourite games, Ico. It looks like it will have the same stunning art style of Ico but be focused on more action than Ico was. I can't wait.

Now if Final Fantasy XII was coming out this year, I'd have a 3 way tie for first place. Unfortunately, every time it seems to be coming out it ends up getting bumped back about 3-4 months. Right now it's slated for December. Unfortunately, it hasn't come out in Japan yet and that tends to happen about 3 months before we get it over here.

Sigh.

Google Earth

While it looks like I won't be seeing War Of The Worlds tonight due to my being such a nice guy and helping my friends move *glower* I have had a fun time fiddling around with the new Google Earth program.

It's sort of like that WorldWind program I mentioned a couple months ago, only it's fast and much nicer to use.

And contains no human flesh substitutes or zombie animals.

How refreshing.

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What I'm Reading: Brilliance Of The Moon
What I'm Playing: Destroy All Humans, T.H.U.G.
What I'm Watching: The West Wing: Season 1

Garrett: Giant Baby

Garrett went in for his 1 year checkup today and he's over 100 pounds.

Er... that's not right...

He's 22 pounds, 8 1/2 ounces and 33 inches long.

That means he's over the 100th percentile for height, which means he's taller than any other baby his age in the history of the world.

So much for that pair of stilts I was going to give him for his birthday. Maybe he's gotten as tall as he's going to. That'll teach him not to do all of his growing the first year of his life!

I had a long day... leave me alone :P

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What I'm Reading: Brilliance of the Moon
What I'm Playing: THUG, WoW, Demon Stone
What I'm Watching: The West Wing (as always)

Zombie Dogs

Lots of stuff to yammer about but it's too hot up here and I'm melting into the chair as we speak.

So I figured I'd link to this cool article about a group of scientists who have been able to revive dead dogs a few hours after death and with no brain damage. To the dogs, that is.

Of course, nobody has seen the scientists since their zombie dogs went on an unstoppable killing rampage and depopulated a large part of the midwestern US. Hmm. I think this is how the Romero [BLANK] OF THE DEAD movies started...

Woof.

For the cannibal in all of us

I saw this yesterday and I have to say that it's interesting if nothing else.

It's called Hufu. It's tofu that has been textured and supposedly flavoured like human flesh (though I don't want to know how they figured that out).

If you're a vegetarian and you eat hufu, how messed up would that make you?
"I don't like to eat meat, but I'll eat substitute human flesh, thanks."

The website has all sorts of cool information about the history of cannibalism. I used to say that when I die I'd donate my body to McDonald's. It can't be worse than what they actually have in their burgers :)

Now they can just make Hufu burgers part of their 'healthy' menu and I can have my body thrown into an active volcano like I'm supposed to.

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What I'm Reading: Brilliance of the Moon
What I'm Playing: Stranger's Wrath, WoW
What I'm Watching: The West Wing: Season 1

Happy Birthday To Garrett!

It's Garrett's first birthday today!

He says thanks to everyone who sent him cards. Well, he sort of roared while he ripped the envelops and then tried to smoosh the cards, but I'm pretty sure that means "Thank You" in Garrettese.

I always knew that Tom Cruise was evil...

What more can I say?

Live Monopoly

This is pretty cool. There is a live version of Monopoly wherein they've outfitted 18 cabs in London, England with GPS units and essentially turned all of London into a giant Monopoly board. You pick a cab and various properties and collect money based on when the other cabbies land on your properties.

I think they should do this more often! It really doesn't interfere with the cabbie's daily grind (aside from the more industrious people calling rival cabs to stop at their properties) and seems like a lot of fun for the rest of us.

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What I'm Reading: Brilliance Of The Moon
What I'm Playing: WoW, Stranger's Wrath
What I'm Watching: The Inside, Doctor Who, The National

It's like they read my mind...

Just this past week I was complaining to all and sundry that our local MPP, who happens to be a member of the provicial Tories, is really getting on my nerves.

Why?

Every week our local paper has columns set aside for both the MP and MPP to write about things in the region and to comment on parliamentary proceedings. Our MP, who is also a Conservative, usually writes a good column that I don't mind reading.

Our MPP, on the other hand, has spent each and every column inch provided to him since the defeat of the provincial Tories whining and complaining about how horrible the Liberals are and basically rants about everything under the sun.

Now, this is fine if you're a humble blog writer who is practicing his curmudgeon skills so that he will be able to hold his own when he retires in, say, 35-40 years.

This behaviour isn't fine when you're a duly elected representative of your constituents and all you do is rant and rave like the crazy man on The Simpsons. I also have a hard time taking the guy seriously when he and his party were in power for the better part of 8 years and caused half of the problems that he is now complaining about. The guy seems on the verge of blaming the fact that it gets dark at night on the Liberals and their broken promises. Seriously, that's how much credibility this guy has, at least with me.

And while Julie and one or two helpless bystanders have heard me prattle on about this, it seems that I am not alone. Just today, in the venerable Independent & Free Press, some brave soul took our MP to task for his 'negative and bile-ridden column'.

I feel vindicated now. I'm no longer the lone voice, yammering in the wilderness. Now there's two of us!

Garrett's (Almost) First Birthday (Cup)Cake

We decided to have an early birthday party for Garrett (if you can call it that) since I have to work on Friday, which is his actual birthday.

I'd suggest you start with this picture and go down as that portrays the chronological documentation of the cupcake's demise. 

The feral baby pounces on its prey, rendering it immobile and ready to devour. 

"Maybe I can fit the whole thing in my mouth. I am a whole year old (in 2 days)!" 

Everyone knows the proper way to eat a cupcake is to rend it in two. 

Checking to make sure there's nothing left in the dish. 

After the carnage, the feral baby licks his paws. 

And now he wants another one! 

Weekend pics.

Like most great golfers, Garrett bites his clubs to make sure they're not made of chocolate (or pure gold). 

Garrett was riding on my shoulders a lot this weekend. Unfortunately, he was using my hair as a bridle to keep me going where he wanted to (or to keep from falling off). If I start going bald, I will know who yanked my hair out by the roots! (BTW, I know my mom is going to hate my shirt :) 

Best Blizzard Ever

We went out to DQ tonight and got some Blizzards since we had a coupon for a free one.

I got a Brownie Batter one, which is exceptionally delicious. When we got home, I added some Bailey's and that made it even better, especially after it had a little time to thicken up in the freezer. Mmm...

Just figured I'd pass along this tip in case anyone wanted to enhance an already yummy dessert.

Mmm... Vapoury...

Today was a beautiful day here in the rolling Halton Hills.

I would actually enjoy, nay, look forward to summer if today was a typical day. Yesterday too. It was sunny and nice out and the temperature was warm enough for shorts but not humid at all. Add a nice breeze to keep you cool and you have a day that saw Garrett & I spending most of our time outside.

Too bad we get so many heat waves that I don't remember the nice days like today. Sigh.

Anyway, I was walking back from the park this afternoon with Garrett and there was this big round cloud in the sky [As opposed to the ground or underwater? ed.]

The cool part about the cloud was that it had this big hole right in the middle. You could see the clear blue sky right through it. I'd never seen that before.

So that's my crazy doughnut cloud story.

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What I'm Reading: Eberron Sourcebook, Brilliance Of The Moon
What I'm Playing: WoW, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, Phantom Brave
What I'm Watching: The West Wing: Season 1 DVD

Grease is the word...

This is how my first Father's Day started. I was asleep upstairs and Julie was making french toast (or Liberty Bread as they call it south of the border) when she heard a bang. She thought Garrett had just dropped his bib.

We were so wrong.

THIS is what happened.  


I guess that Garrett had realized that he was rapidly approaching his first birthday and wasn't getting any younger. To fight the ravages of old age, he decided to give himself a full body butter bath. He also ate a bunch of it for good measure.

At least his skin is silky smooth now.

No sooner do we turn our backs when BAM! The french fry thief strikes. 

Aw, isn't this cute?

Would you look at this.

My little brother Grant has gone and got himself his own rant-blog. Aw... :)

I love the name though. Oknowimannoyed. Awesome name.

Of course, now I have to go and update my template, etc. etc. blah blah blah... woe is me.

There's a 6:30am?

I woke up on the couch this morning at around 6:30 or so. I keep falling asleep there after work. Not good!

Anyway, I was going to just go up to bed but I was spotted on the way past Garrett's room. Julie was up too and none of us ended up going back to bed.

This meant that we could go and hit all the garage sales! Unfortunately, most of them were more along the lines of garbage sales. Sigh.

We did find a few neat things though. I picked up a copy of Kid Icarus for $3 at the Trunk Sale. There's this guy selling NES games for $9 which is absolutely ridiculous. He did slash his prices to a low, low $8, but that's still not worth it. $3 for an NES game is just right.

And Kid Icarus has one of the coolest villians of all videogame history. That's right, I'm talking about The Eggplant Wizard. I think I'll blame my hatred of all things photosynthetic on him. Mom was right! Videogames did mess up my mind!



The other thing we picked up is a board game called UpWords. It's made by the Scrabble people and it's essentially 3D Scrabble. You can stack letters on top of other letters to change the words. I think some of my friends are coming by tonight and we're going to try it out. It was only $2 for it. Ah, the joys of haggling.



It was wierd to be back home by 10am after walking all over town and hitting every garage sale around. Garrett's passed out now, so I'm going to go play some WoW or something.

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What I'm Reading: Brilliance Of The Moon, Eberron Source Book
What I'm Playing: The Punisher, WoW
What I'm Watching: Batman Begins, The trailer for Serenity on the big screen (mmm...)

Some Pictures Of Garrett. Finally!

Now he can see where he's going. If the hat doesn't fall down in front of his face, that is. 

This was Garrett's final ride in the car seat before we flipped it around last Saturday. 

This is what happens when Garrett doesn't want to have a nap and someone *cough* me *cough* forgets to close the t-shirt drawer. 


Of course, he also managed to take off his pants AND move the crib over so it was close enough to the drawer for him to wreak the havoc he wreaked. [Wreaked? I mean wrought. I pity the poor English language after all the mangling I put it through. Ed.] Some people's kids, I tells ya.

Worst... Joke... Ever...

Did you hear about that new pirate movie that's opening in theatres?

It's rated "Arrrrrrrrr!"

Garrett The Pirate

Here's Garrett's pirate name.

Dirty Harry Vane

You're the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean -- not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. You tend to blend into the background occaisionally, but that's okay, because it's much easier to sneak up on people and disembowel them that way. Arr!

Garrett Goes To Day Care

Yesterday was Garrett's first day of day care and he seemed to have a blast. Supposedly he took a couple steps while he was there.

Sure... I'm home for 5 1/2 months and on my first weekday back at work he decides to take his first solo steps. Sigh.

The day care we're taking him to is great though. There are a couple other kids and the lady has a huge backyard, so Garrett gets to go out and play a lot more. They also have a big, friendly dog that Garrett is fascinated with. I just hope he doesn't decide he wants one. I'll have to introduce him to the wonders of cats before then!

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What I'm Reading: Box Office Poison
What I'm Playing: Phantom Brave
What I'm Watching: The news. Rain fall horizontally.

Uh oh!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The upside is that SW Ontario isn't one of the blood red death zones. The downside is that we're already stupidly hot so we don't have as far to go....

First Day Blues

Well, I survived my first day back at work.

It was pretty sweet, actually. The guys had decorated the place with balloons and 'Welcome Home' banners and even got me a yummy Oreo cake! It was a treat to see all the guys again.

It felt like I hadn't been gone a day. Hmm... I don't think that's a good thing. I think I'll go cry now :)

Ah well. By the end of the shift I'd stopped feeling sorry for myself that I wasn't on leave anymore and was starting to get into the swing of things again. Give me a couple more days and I'll be right as rain.

Now the big test comes tomorrow as that's the first day that Garrett will be at the daycare lady's house by himself with no Mommy or Daddy around. He's had a bit of a fever since Saturday but his temperature seems to have come down during the day today, so we'll see how he is in the morning.

I just wish we had a breeze of some kind to get the air upstairs here moving. The main floor is nice and cool with the AC on but upstairs it's really hot. Ah well.

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What I'm Reading: Box Office Poison
What I'm Playing: Count the litres of fluid sweated out by the average human in 30 degree weather.
What I'm Watching: Whole lotta nothin'

My computer has a DNR order on it

Last night, in a fit of supreme stupidity, I decided to try to defibrillate my computer. I was thinking about plugging in my old hard drive so I could access some of the MP3's on it and burn a CD to take to work. I looked into my system and voila, there was a power plug that I hadn't noticed when I'd installed the fan for my video card a few months back.

Rather than turn off my system, plug in the old hard drive and boot everything back up, I decided to just plug in the hard drive while everything was still powered up.

BAD IDEA.

A little spark arced from the plug to the terminal on the old hard drive and my system shut down that second.

The bad part was that it wasn't turning back on. Suffice it to say, I freaked out a bit. I was hot, sick and already antsy because of my impending work startage. Then I go and do something like this. Thankfully it turned back on after much cursing, praying and fiddling with the computer, but man...

The wierd thing was that Julie's profile was working fine. I could access the internet, surf around, look on the hard drive. My profile, on the other hand, would load up the background but it wasn't connecting to the net or letting me do anything.

I had to make a new profile for myself and then I tried my old profile and everything seems to be working fine. Wierd. I guess that's just my system's way of sticking its tongue out at me for shocking it senseless last night.

The moral of this story is: NEVER EVER EVER plug in a live feed to a hard drive or anything else on your computer. I'm just happy that the system seems to be back to normal and I didn't have to dig out the Dreamcast so I could check my mail like the last time my system died on me.

I think I'm still suffering PTSD from the near loss of computer... I'm blaming the heat for doing that. Stupid, stupid Brock...

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What I'm Reading: Something. I'm taking my library books back because I have too many out right now.
What I'm Playing: Wipe the sweat from my brow.
What I'm Watching: Primer (very odd movie), Le Grande Seduction (awesome movie)

All Good Things...

Well, as they say in Star Trek: The Next Generation, "All good things..."

I'm not sure what all good things do, because they never finish the line.

Anyway, today is my final full day of parental leave. Tomorrow I get sucked back into what some call, "Real Life", as I will be doing the 3-11 shift at ye olde group home. I was kind of annoyed to have to start back to work on a Sunday. Now that I think about it, Sunday is great because it's pretty quiet around the house and that should give me time to get caught up on everything that's happened while I've been away.

I don't really want to go back to work, but part of me is looking forward to it. I've pretty much done all the lounging about that I can do and Garrett is wearing me out with all the chasing around I have to do during the day. I'll still be pretty busy but I've gotten used to getting up relatively early, so I should be able to transition back and not explode.

Ah well. I just wish my final week off hadn't been full of a heat wave and miscellaneous illnesses. At least Doug came by today and helped me get the air conditioner installed! Hooray for AC!

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What I'm Reading: Ghost Liners, Eberron Sourcebook
What I'm Playing: Haunting Ground, not much else
What I'm Watching: Supersize Me, The Seduction Of Doctor Lewis

Yarg!

My pirate name is:

Dirty Jack Kidd


You're the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean -- not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. Even though you're not always the traditional swaggering gallant, your steadiness and planning make you a fine, reliable pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

Keep your fingers out!

I think I need to build myself a computer case made entirely of fans in order to cool down my office... or at least me.

Just don't put your toes too close to it!

I'm being punished

I must have done something wrong because I swear that God is punishing me this week.

Ever since Sunday I have been sick as a dog. I thought I was actually hacking up chunks of lung tissue at one point. So I have developed an unhealthy addiction to Buckley's Cough Syrup and was finally feeling more or less back to normal yesterday.

As we went over to the Annual Condo Board meeting, my right eye started to itch a bit. I thought it was just sweat getting in. Then Julie commented on my eye, which was along the lines of, "What the heck is wrong with your eye?".

By the time we got home I was oozing really gross stuff out of my eye. Now I've got acid eyedrops to put in and I'm on an inhaler to top things off. Honestly, the eyedrops are an actual acid that I'm dripping into my eyes! Sigh.

My body must either be allergic to the reality that I'm going back to work on Sunday or my brain is subconciously trying to kill me so I don't have to go back :) If I'm blind, I can't do the van run, I guess :P

Top 11 Signs Your Dad Was A Geek

Saw this on BBSpot and had a chuckle.

Signs Your Dad Was a Geek Too
11. You ask him for computer help.
10. He was proud when you joined Chess Club because now the family tradition would be upheld.
9. Your allowance was always a multiple of $3.14.
8. He likes telling you stories about how computers were before they had keyboards.
7. He has more Legos now than you did as a child.
6. He can beat you in at least one video game.
5. He moderates a BBS.
4. His ring tone: the sound of a 9600 baud modem negotiating.
3. You learned a new coding algorithm that is named after him.
2. He made you wear a Spock costume to your first Star Trek convention because he wanted to go as Kirk.
1. He named you Luke just so he could say "Luke, I am your father."

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What I'm Reading: Eberron Sourcebook, Instructions on my crazy medicine, Chill Factor
What I'm Playing: Baten Kaitos
What I'm Watching: The last day and a half of my leave slip away!

Dave Wager and His Infamous Head

Hey! My brother got into the local paper, albeit without knowing it at the time.

We went out to the Acton Library Book Sale on Saturday. Dave, Kate and Connor came with us. Turns out that while we were shopping, the Acton Tanner was taking pictures for this week's issue.

Now the funny part is that you can't see Dave's face. It's just the back of his head an upper back that are visible, but I tell ya, it has to be Dave. Julie took one look and said that it was Dave's hat and head in the picture.

So Dave is in the paper (at least the back of his head is).

The Inside

Did anyone else happen to catch the awesome show The Inside last night on Fox/Global? It premiered in the evening and I have to say that it is very good.

It's done by one of the guys behind 24 (Brian Grazer) and one of the people behind Buffy/Angel (Tim Minear). It's got a very cool feel to it. Sort of like X-files/Millenium but grounded in reality. Last night's episode introduced the FBI profiling squad in LA that was chasing a serial killer who liked to cut off people's faces and hands. Starts off with one of their own profilers being the latest victim and goes from there.

It had a few cool twists, nice gory visuals and very cool characters. I'm also happy that Adam Baldwin (Jayne from Firefly) has a new job as one of the profilers. There was also a character on near the end of the show who had a shirt that said, "Wolfram Security". Fans of Angel will get a chuckle from that.

I would love to see this show keep going. It's got great writing and it would be great to see where they go both with the characters and with the storylines.

Of course, knowing Fox, they'll air 5 episodes out of order, forget to promote it and pre-empt it with a cheesy reality show about marrying your obnoxious boss. Then say that the ratings were too low and cancel it.

Sorry, maybe I'm just projecting the curse of Firefly onto this one... Fox has awesome new dramas that they put out and then don't give the time to find an audience. If they let this go for more than a season, I'm sure it'll find its audience and could be the next X-Files. We'll see...

It's too damn hot...

I just want to go on record as hating each and every one of you freaks out there who actually spend the winter looking forward to this miserable heat and humidity called Summer in Southwestern Ontario.

It's the second week of June and I'm already hating the weather. Aside from a brief thunderstorm last night we really haven't had any rain to get the humidity out of the air since at least last week. I don't mind a nice sunny day with a temperature of around, oh, 23-25 with a nice cool breeze. That's fine. The problem is that the days have been getting hotter and hotter for the last week or so and according to the forecast they're going to keep being up around 31 (89 with the humidex) till at least next Tuesday or so.

I tell ya, I'm actually looking forward to going back to work if only to have air conditioning. Our AC isn't hooked up yet and I shouldn't have to deal with an early June heat wave...

Stupid summer. Sun's up too long and the days are too hot. I miss winter and the inky darkness it brings...

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What I'm Reading: Chill Factor, Condo board meeting minutes and financial report
What I'm Playing: Guild Wars, Haunting Ground
What I'm Watching: The Inside

My border crosser is an axe murderer

Ok. I'm all for letting us have a nice open border with the States so that people like, oh, myself, Julie and Grant can go across the border and not get pulled into the US Immigration Office in Port Huron like we did 6 or 7 years ago...

But we had to go sit in Immigration while someone like this gets to just waltz in with a BLOODY FRICKIN' CHAINSAW!!! Yeesh. I mean, would you let a guy like this:



into your country? I don't think you could look much more like Stereotypical Psycho Murderer #897 than that guy. Actually, he kind of looks like Dave with his old 'Chelsea hair'.

Ah well. There's actually a real explanation as to why he was allowed in, but I still think that if someone pulls up at the border with a blood covered chainsaw, they should check with the Canadian authorities to see if there are any legal issues outstanding (which there were).

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What I'm Reading: Chill Factor
What I'm Playing: Guild Wars, Baten Kaitos, Raze's Hell
What I'm Watching: Doctor Who, The Insider

Kung Faux

As I've been lounging on the couch late at night, flipping through channels the last few Sundays and I've found a really cool show on Showcase after Trailer Park Boys.

It's called, wait for it, Kung Faux.

Two words describe this show. Awe Some.

It's essentially an old chop-sockey hong kong martial arts flick from the '70s that has been pared down to half an hour in length. Then the masterminds behind it have added in all these crazy comic book and videogame type panels and special effects and there's this thumping backbeat playing behind most of the stuff. And then there's the 'dubtitling', which is what makes it so funny. They recorded some rappers as they were watching one of these movies and made up the dialogue as it went along. I love it because it's what I do when I watch these things.

Actually, it's very remenicient of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 only with kung-fu movies instead of horrible sci-fi B-movies as the fodder for the show.

I just figured I'd pass that along to anyone who wants a good laugh late on a Sunday night.

I don't know when to fold them.

Yesterday was my first crack at playing some Texas Hold'em poker with the illustrious Touring Poker Tour of Poker over at the Garagio in Kitchener.

I think that the upside of the whole thing is that I wasn't out last and I didn't rebuy at all. The downside was that I was 3rd out. Ah well. It was a lot of fun regardless.

Texas Hold'em is definately the most fun variation of poker that I've played. It took me a few hands to get a firm idea as to what the heck was going on but once I figured it out, it was a hoot. My only problem, aside from just sucking in general, is that I tend to resist the urge to fold even if my cards are horrible. By the end of the night I'd learned that folding isn't for wimps. If only I'd done that earlier in the day!

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What I'm Reading: Chill Factor
What I'm Playing: Guild Wars, Find the best interest rate, The Suffering
What I'm Watching: The Blues Brothers, the rain not fall, humidity soar

I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing

There's a website out there that sends out mystery shoppers, er, worshippers to various churches around the world and rates them. I think it's a very interesting idea. BUT...

Given the vast differences in styles of worship, denominational traditions and so forth, this could be a pretty bad idea in practice. For example, sending a Pentacostal worshipper to a traditional Presbyterian service would probably be an excruciating experience for the Pentacostal, but for the average Presby it's just dandy.

Rating the congregation on friendliness and being open to outsiders is fine. I think that if you have diametrically opposing doctorines rating each other then it could get messy.

But that's just my take on it.

TIE Desker

I wish I had a cool computer/computer desk like this. Man...



Alas, I'm still using my good ol' Wood On 4 Aluminum Legs model that I've had since, oh, Grade 9. Until the legs buckle, I may as well keep using it!

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What I'm Reading: Chill Factor
What I'm Playing: Poker with real live people, The Suffering (which could be used to describe my poker game), Guild Wars, Undying, Warioware in various incarnations
What I'm Watching: The rain that was predicted for the last week or so NOT COME.

Watch out for the Thai Fighters!

It's Store Wars! Watch as your favourite veggies re-enact all of your favourite scenes from A New Hope. Sadly, the veggies act better than Anakin and Padme in Episode 3... sigh.

I really could care less for their "Organic is good, GMO's are bad" message, but as far as Star Wars spoofs go, this one is pretty good.

Hee hee... Chewbroccoli...

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What I'm Reading: Wanted Words Vol. 1 & 2, Blankets, Ebberon Sourcebook
What I'm Playing: Warioware Twisted, Guild Wars, Guess That System Error, The Suffering
What I'm Watching: O Brother! Where Art Thou?

I lost on Jeopardy!, baby... ooo oo oo oooooo

Garrett & I braved the 1/2 off gas sale at the giant Q-store to meet Ken "I'm the end boss on Jeopardy!" Jennings down in Milton today. Of course, Garrett seems more excited by the stacks of autograph pictures than Ken himself. Sigh. Garrett did give Ken a really big smile AFTER the picture was taken. Ah well.  


On the upside, Garrett & I might be on a documentary they were making about Ken Jennings and why he's a good role model, etc. etc. A camera crew was interviewing the guys behind us in line and as they walked by Garrett smiled at them and the camera guy actually turned around and grabbed the boom mike guy and pointed Garrett out. I got to spin my yarn about how Ken Jennings was the only guy on Jeopardy! that Garrett knew as he was on every night from the day Garrett was born till that fateful day last fall. We'll see if we end up on the cutting room floor.

CN Tower shots

Here's Julie on the glass floor. Doesn't she look like she's having fun?  

This was the best shot I could get of the sunset last night at the 360. It would have been better had I not had 5 people between me and the window. As you can see, the struts which support the clouds in the sky are clearly visible in the foreground. 

I think that 90% of you will hate me now

I think the majority of my friends who read this blog will hate me now.

Why?

Oh.... Dressing Circle, Row B, Seats 31 & 32.

Yup. Julie almost missed having her name in the draw for the door prizes and lo and behold, she ended up winning the two tickets to see The Lord Of The Rings musical next February! Woohoo!

You can't really get much better seats than that. I'd pretty much written off ever getting a chance to see the musical as the tickets sold like hotcakes when they went up for sale a few weeks ago. Now we get to see it with seats that are pretty much the best in the house.

We could have put our name in for an iPod, a digital camera or the tickets. It made the most sense to go for the tickets as we already have an MP3 player and a digital camera and the tickets are nigh impossible to get. Did I say woohoo yet? :)

I just hope I don't get that guy with the huge afro and top hat sitting in front of me. I hate that guy.

Dinner at the top of the center of the world

Tonight was Julie's work's 20th anniversary and they took the whole company and spouses out to the 360 Restaurant at the top of the CN tower for dinner.

Mmm...

Julie had never been up the CN Tower before. I had gone last year and was able to show her around. Not that it's that confusing. The nice thing about this time as opposed to last summer was that there weren't very many people there tonight which meant that we could actually see (and walk on) the Glass Floor and also not feel like total tourists. Having the whole bar to ourselves (and 90 other employees) was nice too.

Dinner was absolutely delicious. I actually ate a good number of vegetarian quesadillas and veggie egg rolls during the hor d'ouevres section of the night, much to Julie's amazement. I even ate a bit of lettuce in my salad.

We had a delicious maple-glazed chicken with some fantastic mustard and garlic mashed potatoes. Thankfully there was just enough room in my tummy for dessert, which was this tower of dark chocolate mousse in a crunchy chocolate shell.

Of course, the best part of the evening was the view. It was a beautiful sunny evening when we went up the tower at 6pm and the sunset was absolutely breathtaking. Seeing the city light up for the night was just delightful. I'd wanted to see that from the top of the CN Tower ever since I went up last year and it was just dandy.

Garrett stayed at our friend's place for the evening. We thought we'd be back by 8:30 to get him, but we didn't even leave downtown till just after 10pm. Ah well. He was sound asleep when we got to Mississauga to get him and went right to bed after we got home.

Actually, that was another cute story. Garrett & I got home a bit before Julie did and the spring peepers were going crazy out in the swamp. Garrett's usually asleep before they start their racket, so we walked over to the edge of the driveway to have a listen. He had the biggest grin on his face as he kept looking into the darkness that was making so much noise. Ah, there's hope for him yet!

In all, it was a wonderful evening that I wish we could do more often. Alas, we haven't won the lottery yet, so I guess we'll just have to wait for another 20 years when Julie's work has its 40th anniversary :)

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What I'm Reading: Hex & The City (almost done), Ebberon sourcebook
What I'm Playing: Guild Wars, The Suffering
What I'm Watching: Everyone get mad at me after they read the next post.