Old Lane Sign?

I've managed to deflect plans from going to Niagara Falls for New Years, which I had neither the money, nor particularly the energy for, to relaxing around here, playing some games, enjoying fondue, and drinking with friends. Getting smashed with friends is after all the point of yet another arbitrarily set holiday. New beginnings, resolutions, blah blah blah, there's really no significance to the day anyways, except that its the day of the Rose Bowl. And that's not til 5 which means I'll have plenty of time to clean up and sober up before I watch Michigan show that they really should have been in the title game.

In other news, the sasquatch has invaded the wooded areas of the Waterloo moraine. Sasquatch's girlfriend appears to enjoy taking pictures of sasquatch's moss stained crotch, and hitting him there with knees, or foosball table handles at every available opportunity.

Oscar the Grouch

I went out today with the intention of spending the gift certificate to the fish store that I got for my birthday from Carolyn. After wandering around for 45 minutes, dodging the kids of families wandering over from the Chinese buffet next door, and finding the fish I was after was out of stock, we moved on to the smaller, more local fish store I've been to for years.

The people who run the little shop have known me since I was so little that I had to be lifted up to look in the tanks above the bottom row, or warned not to put my little digits into the piranha tank. I found out today that they've finally found someone to buy them out of their little shop and allow them to retire home to their own personal wildlife community and family. While they were nice people and all, I'm going to be most disappointed if the new ownership either a) runs the place into the ground or b) jacks up the prices, and changes the selection much, or some combination thereof.

Anyways, I picked up some new fish for the tank downstairs which was down to just my oscar. The oscar has been getting pickier over food as it gets bigger, so I decided to grab some feeder guppies to change it up a bit. Little was I expecting to be so entertained by watching the oscar hunt down 11 of the 12 guppies within half an hour. Slowly at first, but with more effectiveness as it figured out the technique, and wore down the smaller fish. The smarter of the guppies, or at least those who lucked out by zigging instead of zagging lucked out for a little while behind the filter, but that no long-term memory thing will kill you every time.

Unfortunately, now that the fleeting guppy supply has been dispensed with, the oscar has kept up a bit of an aggressive streak and is poking at the other, larger (but not large enough) fish I also picked up. They're doing a slightly better job of finding the places in the tank the oscar can't get to. Survival of the fittest at its finest; hopefully they hold out a bit longer to give me a bit more enjoyment out of my rapidly dwindling savings.

Aftermath Redux

I'm happy to report there was no drunken frollicking in the snow associated with birthday drinking this year. I'd like to attribute it to maturity and better handling of my liquor this time around, but mostly I think it was the lack of snow.

The night was a blast. Lots of drinking, kissing cousins, and only one prairie fire to contend with. That one prairie fire came too early in the evening to be handled smoothly, but really there's no good time to take prairie fires.

Later in the evening, the night turned into a small highschool reunion, with another buddy of mine since elementary school showing up with a group of friends. Its funny how with some people the gossip and drama don't get left behind somewhere. I did my best to leave all of those things in the long locker lined hallways of my highschool, but for some people its good entertainment. I suppose looking in from the outside on those same situations has its own entertainment value, just not in the same ways.

And so another birthday is gone by, as is the associated hangover, and now its time for some poker to try to aid the coffers that have already been drained by the holiday season.

Sweet Sweet Freedom

The exams are gone, the lab work is done until the new year, with me pretending to ignore all the problems that have crept into that situation. The x-mas shopping got squeezed into a one day affair yesterday, despite having to fight with my 'pimpmobile' and its frequent stalls, and with the obscene number of people who take holidays from work just to get shopping done. Those kind are the worst, with their over-eagerness to throw away money, while pushing around and running into as many people as possible with their oversized bags of crap.

This year I pretty much managed to have a list of what I wanted to pick up for everyone on my list before I went out. The most difficult of course was shopping for the girlfriend; leave it to the holidays to really reveal your shortcomings as a guy and your ability to read subtle hints/remember details. The first idea that came to mind was the requisite gag gift. For whatever reason, my Simpsons boxers are quite amusing to the girlfriend, so I was going to try to find some Simpsons underwear for herself. Of course I was unwilling to spend much time milling around the ladies undergarment section of any store that might carry such things, and there's a distinct lack of gimmicky stores in the malls around here anymore, so I first turned to the internet.

Try typing in 'Simpsons panties' without the proper use of search strings in Google and see what comes up. eBay had a poor selection, and all the items were across the border which generally means risking a long wait on delivery. So it was off to the mall, not only in search of the gag, but a decent 'real' gift, as well as picking up the other items on my list. I found most of my list without issue, but of course the one item I decided on for the girl was nowhere to be found, and cursory searches of the women's intimates were fruitless. By cursory, I mean actually walking through the department, and looking for anything with cartoons on them, but not spending much time.

With the van stalling 4 times in the same parking lot, I decided it was time just to get my piece of shit ride home and wait for another set of wheels. I managed to regroup in the evening and pick up the outstanding items on the list, plus a new gag gift, thus concluding all my x-mas shopping in one day. Not quite down to the one hour dash like some, but I'll take it.

As for the panties, it turns out my girlfriend and I were on the same wavelength, as for my early birthday gift last night, I received none other than...well okay, not Simpsons panties, but, some shiny polyester Simpsons boxers. Between that and this glorious weather (see picture above and the distinct dominance of the colour green), I couldn't ask much more for the birthday. That said, there is still the birthday drinking to participate in tonight.

These G-Strings Ain't Shakin'

At the end of the summer I worked on my best Bob Vila impression, renovating the converted room in the back of my garage. At the point I left it off, there was some carpet down and an otherwise empty room. For the first bit of this term, while it was still warm, I let the room serve as a room for my buddy and I to crank our amps, or to host games of poker.
Since the onset of the cold weather however, the poor insulation back there, combined with the unrelated piling on of course work, has seen me go back there less and less frequently. I've since moved the weight machine that was acting only as a threat to toes everywhere as an obstacle back there, and not used it as much as is warranted either. I've found a little time to pluck away at my mid-range Washburn acoustic that otherwise hangs on display in my room, but other than that my guitars have been neglected. I haven't touched my electric since early October, or put new strings on either since perhaps late August.

But after I finish the lab work for my thesis on Monday, I plan on stopping at the music shop on the way home to grab new strings for both and doing something about all that. None of this means anything of course because I still have no intentions of ever playing for anyone but myself, but I still find my fun. Infact, I probably should have taken the time out from work more often this fall to plug in the guitar. Few things work quite as well for releasing tension as cranking the gain, and thrashing out some old school speed Metallica riffs, with no care for the quality.

Aside from the guitar, and its neglect, I've switched to Foobar for playing my music collection. Its a simple, plug-in oriented music player that I've known of for years but was unwilling to part with Winamp over. Winamp started pissing me off, and Windows Media Player is, in short, trash, so here we are. Foobar works well, with far fewer resources than either of the above, and has also lead to me re-tagging most of my collection, and starting to add track numbers to the tags to facilitate the excellent sorting options that it offers. The advent of mp3s has for most meant a lean away from listening to albums front to back, as some of the greater ones of all time were originally intended, but Foobar is getting me away from that again.

If you're not gonna give Foobar a try, at least buy/'legally' download the new Emily Haines (of Metric; I wonder how long that qualification will last) album, as its well done.

Oh, and I switched to 'Blogger beta'...we'll see how this goes.

I Lied

So, when I suggested I would be around posting more frequently, I did so with the best intentions. And then I got sick. First time I'd really say I was 'sick', not hungover, in 5 or 6 years. Usually I'll end up with one of a cough, stuffed sinuses, a headache, or a sore throat, but never all hitting at the same time. Does it mean I'm gonna get off my ass and get a flu shot next year? Of course not.

It really only managed to kill me for one exam anyways, which in itself seemed like an unfair test of the material taught to us in the course. There's a history of that with the prof for the course too, but I'm not a whiner and don't plan on raising a fuss over it. I'll still pass the course, the mark from there will just depend on leniency and part marks.

The end of term party was as usual a blast with all the bar regulars making their appearance. As far as I recall, it was for me the first time I wasn't around to close down the bar at the end of the night, but there's also been somewhat of a priority shift since those 'younger' days.

In other news, I think I might try switching to the new Blogger, if only for the ability to tag my posts, which was the reason I wanted to switch to Wordpress way back when. The Maple Leafs are now on a 7 game losing streak and I'm loving every minute of it, despite the fact that the Avalanche are comparatively no better right now. Raymi wants/needs your vote. Tony was almost deemed wikipedia material. And I'm thinking about getting some of these to keep me amused, and maybe help mess with some of those creationists with my buddy Steve:

Its Here

Damnit Nick, I told you to keep this shit to yourself, have you no common decency?!

Yes folks, its that time of year. The snow, the christmas shopping, and final exams are all combining in one implicit formula for fun. But the thesis presentation is out of the way, and off the radar, until the next one in April, and only went off with minor embarrassment. Oh the joys of computers and a school that's world renowned for their computer science program, yet doesn't keep their presentation room computers up to date. And now just a paper and two finals, one of them open book, separate me from my relative (in)sanity for the holidays.

And so, in the interest of study procrastination, along with the likely added influx of photos from the next few weeks of end of term, birthday, and holiday partying, you can expect an increased posting frequency around here for a while.