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September 17 LayaboutIt's been awhile, I know. Again, I blame my computer situation: can't edit these pages from my only functioning desktop computer at home because this website uses broken HTML that Firefox 2 on Linux won't tolerate. Still considering retiring this blog and moving over to blogspot.
So this weekend we jointly celebrated Erin's birthday (which was Saturday the 15th) and mine (which is tomorrow, the 18th). Rebecca's parents gave my a gift bag brimming with chocolates, most of them decadent. My sister- and brother-in-law also gave me the traditional 1lb fancy chocolate bar (and RONA gift certificate, to be spent on a stand for my compunt miter saw). So all this means is that it's a damn good thing that I am playing soccer and ultimate frisbee this fall, or else I would be extremely fat. It also means that I will be asking for liposuction and a new insulin-producing pancreas for Christmas.
The other thing is that when we came back from dinner to pick up Pokey, there was a box of junk that Rebecca's dad brought up for her to go through. In this box was a shoebox filled with academic award plaques, of which I don't recall ever having any. So that lead me to wonder: how is it that I got to finish 3 university degrees, and am working on a PhD in the area of cognitive neuroscience, but never received, oh I don't know, maybe a science award or something? September 03 Working under the hard sunToday was the last day of summer. Labour day. Funny how the day end up being used by many to do work around the house. I used it to finish my second utility shelf for the garage. I finished half the job by noon, when Alan came over and we went and rented a nice bloody movie called Pathfinder, featuring barbarians. Miranda and Alex came by to borrow a drill partway through the movie, so it seems they were getting things done today as well. By the time Alex had returned with the drill, I was just finishing up the shelf, so I got my summer shelving project in just under the wire.
After I cleaned myself up, I resumed my search for a song. The other day on the radio, I heard an Eddie Vedder cover of a song I remembered hearing long ago. I looked it up. The song is called Hard Sun, from the album Big Harvest buy a guy working under the name Indio. Anyways, it was a good song at the time. I don't blindly support the argument that remakes are never as good as the original. I think when a remake comes out, and a younger generation flocks to it, people who remember the original play the "remakes suck" card as a way of reclaiming the song. Basically the music world's equivalent of "what evr u n00b... u r teh suxx0r". It's just elitism, in my opinion. However, in this particular case, I quite prefer the original, mostly because I don't care much for Eddie Vedder's singing. I shall have to come up with a witty characterization of it sometime for a future blog. Anyways, the original CD by Gordon Peterson, working under the band name Indio, is out of print. Can't find it for sale online through any online stores, except used for a great sum of cash. Nor is it available electronically, except through a dodgy russian mp3 site. Guess I'll have to keep my eye out at used CD stores, or else on ebay.
And now, off to bed. Tomorrow is the first day of school, after all (well, sort of. It's buddy day). August 29 Good with the ladiesTonight I'm hanging with my main man John at his house, playing board games. I lost all 3 times, so I decided to go upstairs and sulk. Okay, not really. We're finished for the night, which is good because it's almost 2am. But before I went to bed, I wanted to write about one of the stories I had forgotten. It's a quickie, so it should be okay to blog about it this time of day.
When we were in Texas, on the 2nd last night there, Jude was with Rebecca in our guest room. I think Rebecca was knitting, with Jude on the floor beside her, sort of keeping her eye on him out of the corner of her eye, I suppose, because she hadn't noticed what he was playing with. When I came into the room, I found him with my cellphone in hand. Not only was it turned on, but he was 45 seconds into a phone call with Allison. That call was on hold. He was in the middle of dialing Miranda when I got the phone from him. Long distance. From Texas. On a cellphone. I'm going to have to teach that boy about roaming charges. He's going to have to tell me how he got to be such a playa. And also, how to put someone on hold with my phone. August 26 Your tax dollars at workIn the last week, more than one potential blog topic occurred to me. Unfortunately, I didn't act on any of them as they entered my mind, and as a result, I forgot all but one, which perhaps doesn't even merit its own entry, but I'll mention it anyways, for lack of anything better to talk about. I received in the mail one of those Government of Canada envelopes that gets under my skin precisely because it originated from the Canadian Revenue Agency. I wouldn't mind gathering some statistics about the number of Canadians that receive notices of reassessment, etc. from them so I can determine for myself whether my belief that they have it in for me is baseless or not. Anyways, I opened up the envelope to find that they sent me a notice for my quarterly tax installment. How much did they say I owed? $0.00, which is less than the value of the paper and postage used in their notification that told me something I already knew. August 21 Jay-SussIt's been a couple days since Rebecca and I were at Jesuspalooza, so I should write about it before I forget. We're in Texas. That may be part of the bible belt, I don't know. But they sure like their Jay-suss here. I come from a Roman Catholic background, so I'm used to certain things when it comes to The Jesus, as does Rebecca, who is also Roman Catholic. Now, Rebecca's dad is catholic (and was actually in the seminary for a little while -- before Rebecca was born, obviously), but her mom is Baptist, as is the rest of her family, I presume. It's Rebecca's mom's family that we're visiting, so that sort of sets the stage. When we got here, one of the things that was on her mom's agenda was to go to Lakewood Church, part of Joel Osteen's ministries. They televise their celebrations, so if you want to see what I'm talking about first hand, you can try and catch it on TV on a Sunday morning (I understand that there is a 3-week lag between the taping and the airing, consult your local listings for details).
The plan for the day was to go see Joel Osteen for the 9am service, then the catholics among us were going to go right from there to a Catholic mass at 11. To get to Lakewood church, formerly the building in which the Houston Rockets played, we had to leave the house at 7. Seven. The service started at 9. So for the next 90 minutes, I stood there and made some observations, many of them somewhat cynical. For example, if you want to get on TV at one of these televised evangelical services, it helps to stand and sing with your hands in the air and your eyes squezed tightliy shut in ecstasy, as if you're straining under the weight of an invisible barbell that you're hoising over your head in the clean and jerk event. Everyone I saw on the projection screens had that same look. Another interesting fact that of which I was formerly unaware is that God has given us the tithe as a way to get to know him. It's true! The only way you can truly know all of Him is to tithe, as I learned in a 5 minute lecture, just before the collection baskets were passed around. Interestingly, it was Victoria Osteen who talked about the importance of tithing, rather than Joel, who gave the sermon (which I can summarize as the commonsense advice to pay attention to your audience when communicating with them). My theory is that this was a deliberate division of the labour into "dirty work" and "clean work". Like I said, many of my observations were quite cynical. I did have fun pretending that I belonged there though, all with the singing along and the exclaiming AY-MENN!. I just pretended that I was trying to infiltrate the organization. But I drew the line at the religious ecstacy -- if I were to do that, it would feel more like a mean-spirited mockery to me.
Um, yeah, so that's enough about that. After that service, we went to a conventional Catholic Mass at St. Vincent de Paul parish, who had a choir that actually did some parts of the mass in latin with 4-part harmony. The contrast was like going from radio jingles to Bach. Am I a bad person? Perhaps, but I know what I like.
And now... a quest for a Texas steak and a 10-gallon hat for my dad before we leave tomorrow. August 09 Eager beaversRogers is really eager. I currently get the whole shebang from them: internet, digital cable, phone and wireless. But they aren't satisfied. Why, you ask? Well, the reason we have our home phone through them is because a few years ago, they assumed Sprint's subscribers. We had swtiched to Sprint a few years ago because Bell really pissed me off. I hate Bell. When they call every once in a bit to let me know that they are now more competetive, I take some glee in telling them that I am not interested in their services because they irritated the hell out of me when I was their customer. But I digress (sort of). This is about Rogers, and why they're asking a subscriber to their home phone service to switch to Rogers Home phone. What? Exactly. But there's a difference between the two. Bell owns the phone lines that go into the house. Rogers owns the coax cable that goes into the house. Currently, because I have my phone signal come in over the phone lines, Rogers has to give Bell a cut from my monthly bill. They would like to instead switch me to phone over cable, so that they don't have to share. 'cept I don't particularly want my phone over cable, partly because the first two people I heard of with the service, John and my dad, reported less than 100% satisfaction (John had a nightmare installation, and my dad kept complaining about dropped calls). Plus, while I hold no particular love for Bell, I'm not in love with Rogers either, so it's my way of thumbing my nose at them, because I know what they're up to. August 08 Unknown (2006)I saw this movie about a month ago with Alan and Kevin and had been meaning to mention it in my blog. I was the dissenting opinion, and thought it was really good. Definitely a really cool premise. Al and Kev thought it was kind of 'meh'. But whatever. They don't know what it's like to be me.
Anyways, the premise of the movie is that there are a bunch of guys who wake up in a chemical storage warehouse, where it is clear that something went down. It is clear that there are two factions present: the good guys and the bad guys. What makes it interesting is that at some point when everything was going down, a cyclinder containing some noxious agent broke open, releasing a gas that not only knocked everyone out, but also caused temporary amnesia. How cool is that, thereby setting up the scenario where the characters know that the guys around them are either good guys or bad guys, but no idea who is who. So yeah, I'd definitely recommend it. The whole plot is a big twist. August 06 I gotterdoneBuilding shelves in my garage isn't exactly a hobby of mine, but it seemed like the best category of the existing bunch. While Rebecca was still away, my dad and I emptied a bunch of crap out of my garage to make room for some shelves. I had a weightlifting set that I had bought off Paul probably 15 years ago or so, but since I got out on my own, the only time I had ever lifted weights was in the process of changing residences. So they had to go. The actual weights I brought to a 2nd hand sporting goods store where I got a fraction of their value, but it's better than nothing. Later that day my dad and I went to the Home Depot and bought a pile of wood for to build shelves in the garage. I was duped. I was under the impression that we were going to get some shelves built that day, or perhaps the next. It did not happen, which is sort of par for the course as far as projects involving my dad goes. I think he might be ADHD. He's good for tasks involving a single step. If planning is involved, forget it -- he gets mired in the planning stage until something more pressing distracts him.
So anyways, enough about my dad. I'm not here to complain about him, I'm here to proclaim that I built the first shelf this afternoon. Holy crap was it hot working in the garage though. I'd put up a picture, but that would take a little bit of effort, and I don't think anyone seeing a picture of the shelves would be especially impressed anyways: they're purely functional, not a great example of mennonite craftsmanship. Maybe I will get the second shelf done next weekend. August 03 The great outdoorsI haven't been here in awhile. Was busy for a little bit back there, as you may have gathered. But Rebecca came back, the house was still standing, and I hadn't sold Pokey to the gypsies, despite what I might have told him in the middle of the night during the second week of our adventure.
During that week, I picked up a rear bicycle saddle-bag style panier. I thought that was the generic name for a rear basket thingie, but when I went into the bike shop on my mountain bike and said I wanted a panier, the guy game back with a woven basket and a confused expression. The only thing missing was a plastic daisy on the basket, and plastic streamers for the handlebar. Because of the frame on my bike, I had to get a basket frame that fastened to the seat stem rather than to the bike frame itself. That ran $30 or so. The real money was in the saddle bag which was $110. Holy crapface. And then it was $10 labour for him to put it on because I had cycled to the shop. Yeah, so $170 later I have a cool bike basket. Ever since then, I have had a drive to ride my bike. Also since then, I have had not much cause to go into school, and it has been somewhat hot, especially this week. The need to get out of the house outweighed the heat this afternoon, however, so I rode my bike to the Rogers Video to return an overdue movie (An Inconvenient Truth), and pick up some groceries for dinner tonight - mostly so I could get some more use out of my panier. Now I smell like outside. July 20 Morning PeopleToday we are pretending to be morning people. We were also middle of the night people, but that's neither here nor there. Two nights ago I figured out that a bottle of milk seems to solve alot of problems, so last night, when Jude was waking up frequently, I was throwing milk at the problem. It worked, as far as calming him down, though it created a problem of its own in that Jude's diaper was saturated to capacity by the time I changed it this morning. It was at that time that I realized that the sky was brightening, and a quick time check -- 5:20 am -- persuaded me to abandon any intentions I may have had for getting any more sleep. I can always try for a nap later on. Likely? No, not really. But I will be working with power tools this afternoon, so hopefully I will still have my fingers by the end of the day. So far, I don't feel too bad.
Oooh, what will happen to Harry Potter in the last book? July 14 Comic timingThat Jude. He's got a good sense of comic timing. Just a few minutes ago, I was talking to him and he was looking back at me blankly. Then I asked him, "¿hablas inglés?". Know what's awesome? He shook his head. Funniest thing I saw all week. July 03 Mini meI was just researching the Mini Cooper. You know, the car Mr. Bean drives. I used to think they were kind of silly. Everytime I saw one, I would think, 'oh, look, it's Mr. Bean'. Several years ago, I was visiting with my uncle Dave, who had an X-Box with a driving game. I have a theory about video games: when there are multiple characters to choose from, don't overlook the ones that look lame or wussy. In Street Fighter, for example, Chun-Li is actually pretty
Rebecca liked The Italian Job. I wonder if she'd be down with a Mini in the driveway. I know Brad would be all over the idea of me driving around in a Mini ... smoking a pipe ... with patches on the elbows of my jacket. Pip-pip, cheerio! July 01 Babies are disruptif!Check the timestamp on this entry. If you're reading the imported version on facebook, let me help you out: it's 6:38 am on a Sunday morning. I've already been up for an hour. If you're someone other than Karen, who I gather to be a morning person, then I think you will all agree: what the hell?!?! Fortunately, I feel pretty good. I aspire to be a morning person some day. Early mornings bring back memories of when I and my cousins Mike and Jeff would go fishing with our grandfather at a trout farm out in Komoka. We would sleep over at my grandparents house, good old 1050 Oxford Street, and get up at the crack of dawn. Then we'd have breakfast of bacon and eggs and toast cooked over an open fire in the backyard. And then I'd proceed to catch nothing in a pond that is stocked with fish. Those were good times. June 27 The plot thickens...I occasionally google my last name. Not so I can see references to myself, mind you: Those are pretty static, and all point to the same academic thingies. Rather, I do it to see where else the McNorgan name shows up. Our name is rather uncommon. To the best of my knowledge, all the McNorgans are closely related, having my great grandfather Paul as a common ancestor. No McNorgans are listed in Ireland, so I had speculated that the name appeared upon Paul Mc_____'s landing in North America. I just now did a google of the last name, and found a reference to a tombstone in Tasmania for a Lord Charles McNorgan.
I wonder if there is an estate to which I can retire. I must fetch my smoking jacket!
Update: LORD was his last name. His name was Charles McNorgan Lord. McNorgan was his grandmother's maiden name, and she hailed from Scotland (b. 1831, d. 1910). Okay, so am I of Scottish or Irish ancestry?! JUST SOMEONE POINT ME TOWARD MY ANCESTRAL CASTLE! Once more with feelingBetween the triangle, the gang-signs and the the fist-to-fist greeting, the psychology grad students at UWO have a number of funny mannerisms. They also speak a peculiar dialect of English. The latest thing that I noticed is that many sentences begin with the phrase "I feel...", as in "I feel we are playing well, but are maybe a little disorganized on the field."
I find this interesting. Is this a learned skill? Perhaps a little trick that some have picked up in their coursework and have propogated? Where did this start? The interesting about "I feel" is that it is somewhat unassailable. By saying "I think X" or "I believe X", well, that opens you up to counter-argument. When someone feels something, however, there's not a hell of alot anyone can do about that. Feelings are not generally open to debate. So by stating your opinion as a feeling rather than a belief, perhaps that decreases argument. Interesting, non?
Jean Ghomeshi, formerly of Moxy Fruvous, is employed by CBC. I listen to Radio 1 alot. And it seems to me that during the summer season, I have been hearing alot of Jean. How many programs does he host? You know, I once talked to him on the phone. His home phone number was listed at the contact number on the liner of the Moxy Fruvous demo tape. When I was on student council, we wanted to see if they would be willing to have some involvement in Londonpalooza, which was an AIDS charity highschool battle of the bands. He was quite perplexed -- nay, irritated -- that he was getting a phone call at home from some punk highschool student.
And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming. June 20 End of my carefree daysAs of today, Pokey can most definitely crawl. He doesn't yet go tearing off behind your back when you turn around, but if you put him down in one place, if he sees something of interest somewhere else, he will now get there. That's all I have to report, really. We have a soccer game in less than an hour, and I'm waiting for Rebecca to come home to pick up me and our gear. I sort of feel a little strange -- a kind of unwell -- and have felt this way for most of the afternoon. I didn't skip any meals, and in fact I think I ate fairly well. I did have a cup of tea just before noon, and a coffee (because we're running out of teabags) maybe 2 hours ago, but I was already feeling odd before I even had the coffee, so I don't think I can attribute it to caffeine jitters. I didn't exert myself (yet) today either, as all I have done today is select stimuli for Experiment 4 for my dissertation project. June 16 Moving dayI move my friends. It's one of my hobbies. John is probably my favourite person to move. Except his TV cabinet. I think it almost killed me once. I moved Alan out of his apartment in Montreal this morning. It worked out okay. No near death experiences. Just a long truck ride home. I will at least report that the UHaul truck had comfy seats. Shall I shame Kevin and Auger for not being able to make it to unload the truck? Is it fair to do so? They did have plans, after all, that were possibly made before Al's moving date was set. I'll let everyone else weigh in on that, mostly because I just want to cause some trouble. Montreal was nice. Hot, but nice. Montreal is one of the cities that I miss when I leave it. It's really quite interesting. I don't know why I didn't get into the french this time around. Usually I bother to speak in french, to the best of my ability, whenever I can. Not this time. I do have one theory though: I'm convinced that my hearing is going. I've been noticing in the last year or so that I always ask people to repeat themselves. It's bad enough in one's native language, I think not being able to hear properly may make comprehension that much more difficult. Trainspotting (June 13)I'm blogging from the train right now. We're on route to Montreal to visit with Magda and help Alan move back to London. While there, we're going to hook up with Vivian. Note that I'm not actually online. That's because VIA charges an exhorbitant amount of money to use their WiFi. It makes more sense to just write this in Notepad and post it later on. Y'all are probably just eating your breakfast right now anyways, because it's 7:40 am, and we've already been on the train for over an hour. At least they now seem to have more electrical outlets to power one's computer. The last time I took the train, they only had outlets at the front of the car.
I just watched Pokey eat some napkin. Does that make me a bad parent? He's looking between the seats at the ladies behind us. He's such a pick up artist. Travelling with a baby is a collosal feat. The amount of equipment you must bring with you is inversely proportional to the size of the baby. I have a minimal amount of luggage. I'm a minimalist that way. Update: the train from Toronto to Montreal only appears to have two outlets at the end of the car. I wish they would update their damn trains, because we're certainly paying enough! How are they going to gouge anyone for wireless access if they can't power their laptops? June 10 PDAMiraculously, I did not stroke out yesterday. If I did, it would be a good thing that I recently bought a ticket for the Heart & Stroke Foundation lottery, because then it would be like I would be funding my own cure. I had put stuffed peppers in the oven, and figured I could just step out for a couple things while they cooked. That was just the first in what ended up being a number of bad decisions. If your goal is to just get in and out ASAP, then your best bet, in my opinion is Sobeys. The Sobeys at Fanshawe Park Rd & Adelaide is relatively close to where I live, and I don't think I have ever had to wait behind more than one person in line. Normally, I would have considered going there, or else to the A&P. However, Kipp's Lane is currently having some extensive construction going on. It's completely dug up, and frankly, reminds me of the streets of Baghdad. Actually, I might prefer driving through Baghdad to driving down Kipp's Lane. So I headed in the direction of the Superstore on Oxford. Holy crap was it busy. I quickly got everything I needed, but when it came time to check out, every cashier had a huge line. So I went to the self-checkout. You know, I don't think that the self checkout saves anyone any time at all except under very particular circumstances. It turns out the longest line was the one to stand in, because I first stood in a line with some people in a standoff with Mr Noodles: Mr Noodles refused to be scanned, and the couple purchasing Mr Noodles refused to relent in their attempts to scan him. I then decided to switch over to the faster moving line that unfortunately contained an older woman whose movements could be best characterized as excessively deliberate. It was then that it occurred to me that I really should have told Rebecca that the stuffed peppers should be taken out after 40 minutes, because it seemed to me that I was going to be spending at least that long waiting for this woman to scan her goddam tomatoes.
After dinner, Auger and Allison came over for a games night. Kevin came over as well, albeit a bit late, which I suppose I can fault him for since this games night was his proposal in the first place. Everyone brought food, and Rebecca made some snacks as well. So we really have alot of junk food to go through. Most of it is pretty high in sugar, so if you have an extra pancreas, please take it away. Also, Auger and Allison are really keen on each other. June 06 Dear Darwin: Please work fasterThis will be the second time I've written this. The first time, my stupid computer froze up. Its days are numbered, I swear. So the first time I wrote this, I was remarking on that jerkwad Andrew Speaker who flew to Greece to get married against medical advice because he had tuberculosis. If you haven't heard about this guy, CBC has the story here. While in Europe, he was informed that his TB was worse than they originally thought because it was drug resistant. The US authorities then put him on a no-fly list, and was (redundantly) urged not to fly home. He circumvented this by 1) finding a doctor who was willing to go on record as saying he was okay to fly, and 2) hopping a plane to Canada, and then driving over the border. He subsequently apologized for any grief and inconvenience he may have caused by potentially exposing a number of people to an unsavory disease. He claims he didn't mean to hurt anyone. A couple points. First, I think it's more accurate to say that he hoped he didn't hurt anyone. He meant to do exactly what he did. That's why he got a doctor on record as saying he was good to fly - presumably this recording would be used in his defense if someone came down with TB. Frankly, I hope he gets sued back into the stone age. If you find yourself doing things in an attempt to cover your ass in case you get sued, little warning bells should go off telling you that you're probably doing something that you shouldn't be. Secondly, this guy was playing the same game that little kids play when they want something they can't have. When mommy tells them, no, they can't go swim at Jimmy's (because of an ear infection) they wait till dad gets home, and ask him before he finds out about the doctor's appointment. Mr. Speaker is told by the CDC that he is not fit to fly. What does he do? He asks around until he finds someone who will vouch for him. Type II error is cumulative, folks. As enough doctors, and you're bound to find someone who gives you the diagnosis you're looking for. I hope Darwin steps in before he can breed. |
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