Archive for August, 2004
August 31, 2004 at 11:30 am · Filed under Family+Friends
A few family things to report:
Last night we went to The Keg for a belated birthday supper with granny Loula (she’s 92 you know!), which was fun. We were showing her the NZ pics until the battery on the laptop died.
My Mum recently celebrated her silver wedding anniversary. 25 years!! I’m still having some trouble believing it’s been that long. But hey Jen and I have been together for 6 years, and I’m counting those 5 years of living in sin damnit.
It was my youngest brother’s 21st birthday this month. Happy Birthday James! I always seem to be a year off, so I thought it was only his 20th.
The grandmother visit to Simon Oliver is going well. The giant tinker toy we got for them was an instant hit with Dan, but Simon probably isn’t so impressed just yet.
August 30, 2004 at 8:50 am · Filed under General
The blork blog wants weird musical stories, so here is mine:
I went to a Madness reunion concert a few years ago in London. After a day of drinking watered down beer out of plastic cups and watching support bands of dubious quality, the crowd was more than ready for the main act.
As Madness came on stage, there was a huge surge forward, and being the svelt person that I am I kind of got lifted and carried along in the sea of people. Unfortunately one of my shoes didn’t get lifted with me, and there was no way I was going back for it, so the other one got kicked off and I spent the rest of the concert barefoot in the mud. It was actually quite liberating.
The problems came at the end of the concert, when we had to walk the streets of London looking for a taxi. It’s amazing the variety of things you can tread on or nearly tread on just walking down the street.
August 29, 2004 at 9:49 am · Filed under General
I was just drifting off to sleep last night when Jen woke me up to give me this piece of insightful commentary on the book she was reading:
When writers describe something as ‘vanilla’ such as ‘He was wearing a vanilla coloured suit’ they generally mean white or cream when in fact vanilla pods and seeds are black or dark brown. I guess vanilla has been linked with ice cream for too long.
Oh and I just discovered that the word vanilla comes from the latin ‘vagina’. I’ll never look at ice cream the same way again.
August 28, 2004 at 6:02 pm · Filed under Home
The bathroom painting is done! We just finished applying the third coat, and three coats is enough damnit. Now all thats left is to take all the masking tape off, put the caulking tape on, put all the hardware back on the walls and leave Jen to add all the girly Martha Stewart touches.
We are never ever painting again.
August 27, 2004 at 11:00 am · Filed under Movies + TV
I’ve been watching Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace on the train to work the last few days. When it came out the Star Wars fans didn’t like it much, myself included. Watching it again though, I realise it is a good Star Wars movie. It’s not a good acting movie, or a particularly good story movie, but it fits in perfectly with the other Star Wars movies (which also weren’t particularly good in the acting department).
I’ll watch Attack of the Clones next, see if that one has grown on me too.
August 26, 2004 at 11:11 am · Filed under General
There is often a strange black man dressed all in white and wearing shades hanging around outside the university gates, holding a large sign aloft which contains various rantings and ramblings about corruption at the Montreal Jewish Hospital. As far as I know these rantings are unsubstantiated anti-semitic delusions of a deranged mind, but freedom of expression rules.
This week may have been too much for the poor guy though. It’s orientation week on campus so the place is swarming with new and excitable students. Some of them decided to surround him and generally ridicule him yesterday, including one guy standing right next to him with another big sign that simply stated ‘This Guy Sucks!’. Nice.
On a completely unrelated note, I joined Tyler and Mike last night for my initiation into the world of Magic: The Gathering. It’s a fun game, and I think I picked things up fairly quickly. Didn’t win though, maybe next time.
August 24, 2004 at 10:02 am · Filed under Family+Friends
We received permission from the proud parents today, so I’ve created a web page to show off photos of our cute new nephew. The little person is Simon Oliver. The big people are Dan and Susan, his parents. A very proud and excited grandmother is flying out to Vancouver to see them tomorrow, so no doubt more photos will be forthcoming.
I also updated my website to have a more consistent look and feel (ok so the blog looks completely different to everything else, but that can wait) and to make it standard XHTML, not that anyone cares about that kind of thing except me.
August 23, 2004 at 10:01 pm · Filed under Home
Applied the second coat of Mountain Peak White this evening. It looks like it might need a third. Doh.
August 22, 2004 at 9:01 pm · Filed under Home
Al, our painting guy, is on vacation in Italy at the moment, so we decided we could tackle painting our bathroom ourselves. Bad idea. Whenever we paint a room, it ends with the decision to never ever paint again, then a couple of years go by and we think oh it can’t be that hard.. Well we are never ever going to paint again.
After taking off all the hardware, spraying the walls with TSP and washing them down several times to get it off again and taping up all the bits we dont want paint on it was finally time to paint. Yesterday we put the primer on, and today we did the first coat of Mountain Peak White. It’s a small room with not much paint area but still it’s a horrible job. Tomorrow I have to come home from work and do the second coat. Joy.
On a happier note, we just returned from a very pleasant evening at Cara and Tyler’s. A delicious meal of lime chicken, scalloped potatoes and yummy salad washed down by a very good bottle of Reisling and good conversation. Apparently I’ve been recruited into Tyler’s Magic: The Gathering group, with my first lesson beginning on Wednesday. The geek in me is very happy.
August 20, 2004 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Rants
Ugly signs have been pushed into the grass at both ends of our street, advertising some kind of window treatment. I hate that nearly as much as I hate email spam. To add insult to injury, the signs tell us that this window treatment is a ‘patended’ process. Let me see now, do I want to do business with someone who can’t spell? Uhm, no. Do I want to do business with someone who advertises illegally with street spam? No.
I’m tempted to go pull the signs up. Maybe I will on the way to work on Monday. Maybe I’ll make a plane out of it.
August 19, 2004 at 9:00 am · Filed under General
Last night Jen took me to the gym. I’ve been trying to avoid this horror for as long as possible, but in the interests of marital harmony and because there is a part of my brain (a very very tiny part) yelling at me that I need to be fitter, I finally succumbed.
It was boring, tedious and painful, but I could probably get used to it if I force myself to go regularly. There is something almost zen-like about strolling for 20 minutes on a treadmill, I found myself tuning out of what was going on around me. If I spent any longer on there I would probably fall into a trance and keep walking until somebody poked me and told me it was their turn. It still doesn’t beat being out walking in the real world, but it’s a different kind of experience. I also discovered I can ride one of those exercise bikes at a steady rate while reading a magazine. Next time I’ll try it with a book.
August 17, 2004 at 10:59 pm · Filed under Home
Our House is in the middle of our street. Sorry, channeling Suggs there for a second. We bought our house just over a year ago, a four bedroom cottage on half an acre of land in the heart of Beaconsfield. It’s a great house, the bedrooms are a little small but we have nice bathrooms, a very functional kitchen, a massive family room addition thingy and a cool basement. Out back is a big deck looking out over our country-like garden.
We both love living here, but owning a house is a lot of work! Gardening, cleaning, decorating, maintaining, it all takes a lot of effort, money and time. It also doesn’t help that we’re incredibly lazy a lot of the time. It’s all worth it though when we come back from a couple of days away somewhere and see what a great house we’re coming home to.
August 16, 2004 at 2:58 pm · Filed under Family+Friends
So Dan and Susan’s newborn has been officially named, I lost the bet, his name is Simon Oliver. Very respectable and civilized. That also means his initials are SON, and as Dan’s initials are DAN they are DAN and SON. Nice.
Yesterday Elisabeth and Richard came to visit and I used them as guinea pigs for my BBQ skills. I cooked beer marinated pork ribs, baked onions with rosemary and thyme, roasted garlic, baked potatoes and corn on the cob. All done in the BBQ, and all delicious, although the potato skins didn’t go crispy.
We finished the evening off by watching Fight Club. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of that movie.
August 13, 2004 at 11:54 am · Filed under Family+Friends
And Jen’s an auntie! Jen’s brother Dan and his wife Susan are the proud parents of a new baby boy. He weighs in at seven pounds five ounces and was born August 12th at around 4pm, after 2 days of labour (ouch!). No name or pictures yet, my money is on Gilbert or Oscar.
August 12, 2004 at 9:53 am · Filed under Home
After a week on my own, Jen came home from Toronto today. I picked her up at the airport, which as usual involved circling around the arrivals area until she came out, because they won’t let you stop for more than a few seconds. We celebrated her homecoming with a sushi dinner then watched the Canadian Idol results show (yes Jen got me hooked, it’s all her fault).
Next entries »
