Archive for January, 2005

For those of you considering your impact on the world in the light of your increasing years, I’ve got a story from my childhood for you…

When I was in Kindergarden I played the part of the cow in the class Christmas play. This was back in the day when the class Christmas play was about Jesus. I still remember my line, “I, said the cow all white and red, I’ll give Him my manger for His bed.” Anyway, it was around that time (and how could it have been any earlier) that I noticed all the big kids at school doing plays in the gymnasium. We had our play in our classroom — I was disapointed not to be up on the real (pull-out) stage.

It was when I was in grade one (or possible two) that I decided that if I was going to make anything of myself as a person that I’d have to do it pretty soon. I thought that the way to do it was to write and direct the Christmas play myself and I had to do it before I was out of grade three. At that time, I figured that once you hit grade four (ten years old?) one was too old to be considered special for making any sort of achivement on that level.

Of course, I never did write and direct a Christmas play and even though by my little kid standards I’ll never be special I didn’t seem to fret too much about it.

What’s my point? Well, if you’re pushing 30 (or 40, or 50, or whatever) like Doug is, you’re way past too late to start worring about not accomplishing anything like creating Star Wars or a Christmas play. However, if you have friends who read your blog — just one small indication that they care about you — you’re probably doing alright.

I know, it’s a cheezy title for a post about the movie The Incredibles, but there you have it. Inceidently, the movie was great — score another hit for Pixar. Mr. Incredible sort of reminded me of Robin… in the way that he’s got a lot of upper body strength. The villian made me think of The Lost Dog’s Derri Daugherty — except more evil and less folksie roots musical. Anyway, it’s worth the price of a theatre ticket to see, in my opinion.

In other news, we got a photo of mom and dad’s new dog in the mail today. His name is Decoy and he’s a chocolate lab. They’re coming to visit next month, so hopefully he doesn’t grow too much before then. Pretty good looking puppy, eh?

Well, yesterday afternoon we got a good 13cm of snow, but I went out and shoveled it down to blacktop after supper. It looked great. But it snowed another 3 or 4cm over night. So, this morning, I shoveled it back down to blacktop after I dropped Jenn off at work. Call me crazy, but I enjoy shoveling my drivway. I’m sure it would drive me batty trying to shovel someones else’s, but at 34 Hazel St. it’s alright. I figure it’s giving me a little excercise too.

The canal is open again to skating, so Jenn and I should try to hit it this weekend — it’s supposed to be nice enough. We’ve only got four photos left to take on our Christmas roll of film too, so maybe we’ll get those shot off and I can get some new photos up next week.

One last thing… I start working on Monday. A few month long contract doing corporate identification, promotion material and website development for a small tech company out in Kanata.

No, I am A regular. I don’t know if it’s a good thing, but I think it might be. Jenn and I went to Drumlin’s for supper on Monday — an event we can usually push back until Thursday, but a Monday after a holiday is always more difficult. What I mean is, usually by Thursday, we’re ready to go out for dinner instead of cooking it ourselves. So we drove over to Drumlin’s in Sandy Hill, the area of Ottawa I lived in before (and just after) we got married.

Drumlin’s is a little pub that occupies the main floor of a three story brick walkup apartment building. It’s small, quaint and a nice neighbourhood kind of place. Often on Fridays when we’ve been there we’ve seen a couple of young families with children and the faces of the other folks who are there are starting to become familiar. It’s only a few blocks from the University of Ottawa and I imagine a few of the bearded older men in ties and sweater vests are professors there.

Anyway, when we were seating ourselves on Monday for supper, the guy working there (not Garry, but the other guy) walks over and greets us and then asks, “A Bass for you and you’ll have…” So, if they know what to pour when you walk in the door (oh, that rhymes,) I guess you’re a regular. By the way (and Tom will like this,) Shackleton brought Bass along with him when he ventured to the South Pole in 1915.

Isn’t it fun to grump about something every once in a while? Well, I’m about to find out. And it’s not that I’m grumpy — in fact, I don’t know where this is really coming from. Never the less…

Smarten me up if I ever start mis-using the word “virtual” in a way that one so often hears these days. “It’s a virtual snowstorm out there!” No, it’s an actuall snowstorm. Same with the phrase, “give me a sense…” Have you noticed how often the CBC uses that phrase? Jenn made me take notice of it last summer (or earlier) and now I hear it virtually everytime I turn on the radio.

Well, that wasn’t as fun as I was expecting. Lesson learned: it’s no fun being a grump.

After a relatively relaxing holiday in Thunder Bay, I flew back to Ottawa last Thursday. In my travels, I met a bunch of people I wasn’t expecting to meet. First, as Jenn and I waved goodbye to our parents and took a seat in the departure lounge one of the few adults younger than I who go to my church in Ottawa says “Hi” to us. Brian is a student here in Ottawa and he’s also the guy I caught wearing one of the 22568 tshirts last year.

After chatting with Brian for a bit, who strides by but Adam Vansickle! For the number of times Jenn and I have seen Adam you’d think he was one of my best friends. Quite the contrary, I can’t stand the guy but he just talked talked talked. I’m just kidding, it was neat to see Adam, he’s always good for some quirky conversation.

As Jenn, Adam and I were standing in line to board the plane, we walked by Joel Brigham. I haven’t seen Joel for years and as we were moving through the line, we gave each other a smile and a wave. Then, I didn’t meet anyone else until I was standing at the urinal in Toronto.

As I was going a voice calls from behind me, “Hey, Shroom! You probably don’t recognise me.” I joked that I needed a moment before I could turn around to get a better look. When I did, I met a young bearded man with a backpack. I admitted I didn’t recognise him, so he explained how we knew each other more than ten years ago when I was working at Mikadon. I guessed his name was Chris and he introduced himself as Chris Weselak from the Amiga Showroom BBS. Back before the world wide web, bulletin board systems were the online communities of choice. I ran a fun Amiga BBS called The Trash Can for a few years during highschool and university. Chris ran the rival Amiga Showroom (or Amiga Sh-room as Ron used to call it) off a 512k floppy disk. He was often in at Mikadon Computers (where I worked) getting help from me. What a blast from the past — I’m glad you recognized me Chris and stopped to talk for a bit.

When we got on our plane for Ottawa I noticed the absense of Brian and suspected that he managed to get on the phantom WestJet flight that arrived two hours earlier than ours. You know, the one that we saw online but the check-in person in Thunder Bay told me didn’t exist.

Well, since I last blogged…

I went to a New Years gathering at some folks from church. But, we didn’t stay too long (nor too late.) I think the highlight for me was seeing Steve (a guy from our small group) dressed up in his Harley Davidson leathers. I’ve got a photo of him, but — um — can’t interface my camera with my computer. Silly propietary device. Oh, and we went out for Indian food for supper and saw a Smart Car parked outside on Bank St.

Over the New Years weekend, we rented a few movies. All of them were bombs to a greater or lesser extent, except for Star Trek Nemesis (which surprised me a bit, because this judgement came from Jenn.) The movies we disliked in accending order (what does that mean?) were The Lady Killers (could have been fun but too much foul language,) Princess Diaries 2 (which was disapointing because I liked the first one so much — can you tell if I’m being sarcastic?) and Hope and Glory (which could have been a good movie, except it didn’t have a plot and just kind of ended out of nowhere.)

Aside from being a little under the weather, we played some board games this weekend too (at Jenn’s suggestion.) This was great by me and I love it when I don’t have to suggest it. We played Tikal twice, once Saturday and once Sunday. Both games were squeakers — Jenn caught on quick, and I was drinking most of the afternoon (cinnamon stuff to keep my throat from hurting and hacking.) I was joking about my drinking, but the truth is, I probably had two drinks over the course of six hours. It was good to play some games, especially after talking games with Ron at the Hullabaloo.