Archive for December, 2004

UCVHost is a crappy host. They’re cheap though. Anyways, www.shroomAzoom.com (with a capital A) has been out of commission for the past 36+ hours because of them. I’ve now switched back to good old reliable (ha) rogers.com hosting for the time being. But I’m looking into a new host presently, so things may switch up again soon — and if they do, look out! Thanks for reading.

We had Jenn’s sister and Don over for our annual Ottawa-Family-Christmas-Appitizer-Fest last night. It was lots of fun with tonnes of great nibbly foods. We got to open our gifts for each other too. We give each other “couple-gifts.” This year our gift was slanted my way and we got The Simpsons Monopoly! So we played a game last night — and I didn’t even suggest it!

So, I haven’t played Monopoly in longer than I can remember, and I don’t ever remember finishing a game in my life. So, kudos to Jenn, Shannon and Don for playing the whole game to the end. I wheeled and dealed early on in the game to buy and trade for all the properties between Jail and Free Parking: Moe’s Bar, the Jazz Hole, Disco Stu’s, Noise Land Arcade, Sir Putts-A-Lot and Barney’s Bowl-A-Rama. I paid good money to get Moe’s from Don and even better money to get the Arcade from Shannon, but it paid off in the end. Shannon was first to fall to my row of hotels (sorry, monorail stations,) then Don fell out and I finally spent my last three turns (exactly where I wanted to be) in jail while Jenn got stuck for her $950 bill at the Bowl-A-Rama.

So, Monopoly is just like Snakes and Ladders or Candyland in that you roll the dice and hope it works out for you (for the most part) but I had a good time moving Kronos (or was it Kang?) around Springfield for a couple of hours. Thanks guys!

It’s funny to note that the Jail, Free Parking, Go to Jail and Go spaces are the only things not redone with Simpsons art. We decided that Snake should be in Jail, Free Parking should be the Canyonaro, Go to Jail should have Cheif Wiggum and Go — well, we didn’t think of anything else for that.

Just in case you’re following along… I’ve updated my online portfolio with my latest work. There should be some more of it up in the new year. Thanks for your interest.

Andrew asked me at church today how the blacktop was. He also commented, “Hey, you really do have handlebars.” Good to know someone’s reading my blog. Anyways, We’re still walking in a winter wonderland here in downtown Ottawa, but the mercury was up to 0°C (well, that’s what my neighbour told me — I doubt it got above -5°C) and I was able to continue the fight with the ice today. And today, I won. There’s so much blacktop showing, I’m positively proud. One more day of favourable condition and I’ll be up to four parking spaces of blacktop. I think that’s what I’ll keep it to this winter too — it leaves me with a large area to shovel the snow onto without having to throw it onto the street (and having the plow push it back into my driveway.)

I’ve made this observation before — and under different circumstances — but it’s appropriate for today, so I’ll make it a blogservation. When I was living at home with mom and dad, one of my chores was keeping the driveway clear of snow. Notice that the chore wasn’t to shovel when it snowed. I was to keep the driveway clear of snow. I thought it was a bit obsessive to try to keep blacktop showing all winter long, but that’s how dad liked it. I liked parking on a clear driveway too.

Now that I’ve got my own driveway and no dad telling me how it’s to be done, you’d think I could be as lazy as I always wanted to be when I was living at home. But no, I want to keep the blacktop showing now too. I know this because it just stopped snowing, fourteen hours after it started and I spent an hour and a half (with my new shovel) scrapping the driveway down to the blacktop.

It’s hard to give up TV. Jenn and I decided a couple months ago that to curb our TV watching and to save some money, we’d downgrade or cancel or cable package. I finally made the call today and came to the realization that it’s hard to cut the cable. In the end, I managed to save us $25 a month but cutting out a whole bunch of channels we hardly ever watch anyway. I was going to get rid of the whole digital cable box, but for the same price we could keep it and have the very minimum digital service and keep the digital music channels and PPV movies (which we get every once in a while.) I could get the deal because we’ve got internet through the same folks.

It’d be a great experiment to not get any form of cable tv when we move. I wonder if I can end the affair then? By the way, for those of you not as TV savvy as I am, the title “Teacher, Mother, Secret Lover” is a quote from Homer Simpson refering to TV.

I think it’s fair to say that I no longer have a driveway on which to park my car, but a iceway. About a week ago, Ottawa got it’s first real snowfall and it was very wet snow. In fact, it was so heavy and wet that when it stopped falling in the afternoon, I only shoveled half the driveway, figuring that I’d shovel the rest of it later, if it didn’t melt in the warm weather we were supposed to get in the following days.

There are three apartments in our house and spaces for six cars in our drive way — three cars across, two cars deep. No one else in our house owns a car, so I’ve got the whole six spots to myself. I also have the responsibility of shoveling it. When I shoveled my spot last week, I shoveled one and a half spaces wide and two spaces deep. Over the past week, we’ve got very little snow but a lot of freezing rain and the high temperature has only reached 0°C.

Today, I figured I’d drive all over the driveway and try to crack up the snow and ice and clear it off (you should have seen the driveway last year, I kept the blacktop showing all winter long.) Well, when I drove up onto the driveway from the street this morning, none of the snow and ice cracked. It was like driving on a frozen lake. It was solid. And when I tried to stop, I started sliding — towards our neighbour’s driveway — which is a two foot sheer drop off the side of ours. But I stopped and slid the car back onto the street and into my clear little spot.

I don’t like this ice. I need a day of sunny, positive temeratures to clean this mess up, or winter will be a bigger pain than usual.

I’ve been growing my beard for a while now — probably since my birthday on the first of November. I haven’t had a real beard for a while. I let it grow in the fall of 2003 and our Thanksgiving photos from them show me as a pretty scruffy guy. This time, I had my old, red beard back — arrrh!

But, you know, I’ve decided that I like myself clean shaven. So, I decided to shave it all off before returning to Thunder Bay at Christmas time. I asked Jenn what she thought. She liked it — though in the summer she said she liked me so much more without the beard. She suggested last night that I just trim it to a goatee.

I decided that if I was going to have a little fun with it on the way out, I’d do it right. So, for tonight, I’ve got a big, nasty, handlebar moustache. I hope it doesn’t offend anyone from small group! Now, if this isn’t a good reason for someone to get me a digital camera, I don’t know what is.

I had a dream this morning about Tompkins. But before I get to who Tompkins is (and he’s not this kid) let me give you the context of the dream. I was in Thunder Bay, visiting my parent house. They were showing me around and I was trying to figure out what was different. The house was all changed around. The back was flipped and both the dining room and the living room had their rear walls knocked out making it a much more open concept place. The stairs were in the same place, but had been un-wound to a long straight staircase.

I was upstairs when I first heard Tompkins. He was jingling some bells and whispering something. He really freaked me out — especially because I couldn’t see him. I went downstairs to the kitchen and asked mom what the noises upstairs were. She told me it was Tompkins. He was a ghost and though I heard him upstaris he usally hangs around in the corner of the breakfast nook. (Did I mention that mom and dad were in the process of painting all the downstairs walls? They had one coat of white paint on them, and it wasn’t covering well.)

I figured it would be a good idea to excorcise him but at the same time, I didn’t believe he was really a ghost. So I called him out and just as I did, the tv set in the corner of the breakfast nook turned on by itself and there was a skeleton in it. It was Tompkins! I realized at that point that I didn’t really know what to do and I was so scared I started fumbling my words.

Jenn woke me up at this point. I asked if she heard me talking and she said I was talking jibberish. Well, at least I wasn’t running (in bed) in my sleep, like I was a few weeks ago. I imagine this was the result of the peanut butter and marshmallow confetti Christmas cookie squares that I made (and ate a lot of) before bed.

I watch Survivor each week and I think I’ve seen all nine or however many of them there have been. But, I didn’t watch it this thursday. I taped it and just watched it tonight. When it comes to reality shows (of which I could go off about how I hate reality shows in spite of watching Survivor and The Apprentice) I’m a sexist. I want the guys to win.

A couple of weeks ago when it looked like the last guy was going to get voted off Survivor, I thought to myself, “Well, I guess I won’t be watching this show any more.” So, last week I was so glad that Chris stayed on and then this week not only did he win immunity, but that nasty Ami got the boot.

So, let it be known, I root for the boys, but not because they’re boys. I root for the boys because I don’t like the girls. I guess that makes me the worst kind of reality show sexist. Not only am I pro-boy regardless, I’m anti-girl just because they’re girls. That’s not really true, I’d be happy it it came down to Twila and Chris or even Eliza and Chris. As long as Chris makes it to the last two, a girl can win. And that’s probably what’s going to happen too.