I have been complaining for some while now about the limitations of the Microsoft Live blogs. I was especially annoyed by the fact that I couldn't even access the site using Firefox on my Linux desktop -- which is has had zero problems thus far, and has taken over as my primary computer at home.

Through a series of hyperlinks, I found myself on the blogger website. It appears that google owns blogger, and since I have a gmail account, I was halfway setup for having a blogger account. So I went the whole nine yards, and set up a blog to replace this one. I expect this will be my last post on this blog. Future updates will be found on my new and improved blog page, http://lesbonneschoses.blogspot.com/ now with gender agreement between subject and adjective!

Rebecca sent me a picture of a stranger's baby. She most likely found it on one of her knitting blogs, who is in all likelihood married to a nerd. Or is a nerd herself. Clearly, there is some kind of correlation going on here. Well, anyways, here is the shirt:

I needs me one of those for Pokey. Not that I'm a nerd. Nor is Pokey. It's just too funny to not want.

Today, Pokey and I are wearing the same outfit: an orange waffle-weave crewneck pullover and navy blue pants (his are fleece; mine are denim). You will submit to the cuteness.

 

I also wanted to post an update that I think is kind of interesting from a concept-development sort of perspective (which is what I do for a living). I noticed yesterday (or maybe it was the day before) that Pokey, who is turning 1 on Sunday, has learned that keys are things that are somehow used in locks, which are in turn found on doors. Carrying him past our keyholder, he points at the keys to tell me he wants to go over there. There, he grabs a key. He then points to the door and does the same thing. Standing at lock level beside the door, he touches the key to the deadbolt. One of the things that we never know in concept development is the trajectory for learning about things in the world. This anecdote will probably find its way into a talk sometime.

Today Pokey made his (alleged) first steps. I say alleged because there's no telling what he does when we're not around. Like those fanciful stories of toys that come alive or animals that act like people when nobody is watching. He's a little daredevil, that Pokey. He's been running and jumping for awhile, I'm sure of it.

 

Speaking of running for awhile, I went in for the 3rd time to try and make the cut for an athsma study at the Robarts center. They were testing a medication and an MRI imaging technique on people with exercise induced athsma, with which I was first diagnosed in June '06. I'll skip the back story, and get right to the part where I showed up two Mondays ago to see if I was a candidate for the study. I followed the instructions they sent the previous Friday. I kept them, so I was able to refer back to it and confirm my non-idiocy when they had to halt the test because I had taken Benadryl 9 hours prior. According to their procedure (but not their email), I was not allowed to take Benadryl for 48 hours. So I had to rebook the test for Wednesday. It also meant that I had to play soccer that night without taking my puffer. I have moved to defense, so that was much easier than it would have been had I remained in midfield (sorry, defense players, I don't mean to insinuate that your position is easy).

 

I went in last Wednesday, and they put me on the treadmill. They had a heart monitor, and kept talking about staying in the target rate so I followed along with their speed suggestions. Turned out they were just being cautious with the speed suggestion because some people tend to exaggerate when describing their fitness levels. Well, I was unable to induce an athsma attack that day, nor again yesterday because I only reliably get them when I sprint (though I did run through an attack at the 5K Run for the Cure 2 years ago). I am not aware of a treadmill on which one can safely sprint. And as the treadmill challenge requires 4-6 minutes of exertion, it's also hard to cover 5K in that time without sprinting either. Stupid limbo lungs. Too crappy for sports, too healthy for their damn study. It's like the opposite of goldilocks. 

There is a cartoon called Pocoyo that Rebecca and I like to watch with Pokey. Okay, I admit it -- Pokey sometimes watches it with us. I don't know why I find it so amusing, but there you go. Anyways, Season 2 should be airing soon, if it hasn't started already. I learned this from the official Pocoyo blog, which features behind the scene details on the Spanish children's cartoon. From that site is a preview clip, which you have to admit, is pretty slick, and I think rather humourous.

So there you go. That's Pocoyo, just so you know what I'm on about. We're looking into making Pokey a Pocoyo costume for Hallowe'en this year. They sort of look alike. I think it's the cheeks. Oh, and hey, wasn't Ellie's model strut great? Right out of ANTM. I couldn't have done better myself - just ask the girls in the Jared lab.

Edit: Also worth mentioning is that ANTM started up again. And there's a girl on there with a name like "Ridiculeuse". No, seriously.

It'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?

Today 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).

Tonight 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.

In 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.

It'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.

Rogers 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.

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.

Building 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.

I 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.

Today 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?

That 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.

I 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 hot good. For that reason, instead of choosing a dream car like a Ferrari, I raced with a Mini. I still sucked, mind you, but it was kind of fun. What really elevated the Mini, in my eyes, was the scene in the remake of The Italian Job that involved a small fleet of souped up Minis, and man, did they make them look really cool. So, yeah, I want a Mini. I'd prefer a Diesel model, because those things apparently get the same fuel economy as a Prius, and I think that Diesel engines are brilliantly elegant. I have no idea why Diesel is so hard to come by in North America.

 

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!

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.

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!

Between 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.