Good God, that's a lot of meat.

Kelly took us out for dinner at Schwartz's, and we gorged ourselves on meat. We also managed to walk through a corner of Mont Royal park, so that's 2 whole landmarks in one day. Then we went back to the hotel with Kel and he graciously allowed me to change the channel. CNN just isn't watchable. So we watched an episode of Bones - there was terrible karaoke and Angel was shot by Fat Pam. It was wacky fun times, and almost makes me want to watch the show on a regular basis. Then I stole Kelly's hotel tea and condiment packs. He wasn't going to use them.

So now I'm home, in my meat coma, and Gord has toddled off to a club to see if there really is music in this fair city. I'm under a strict 'No Buffy' till Gord gets back clause. So.....what do people do when they aren't watching Buffy? I'm at a loss here.

Kentucky Jelly

Kelly told us a terrible story when he got here, and I'm going to have to share it. Apparently some woman was in the hospital and she was complaining to her nurse about the food - she just didn't like the taste of the Kentucky Jelly they'd given her to put on her toast. This is hilarious only if you konw that the abbreviation for Kentucky... is KY.

Nearing the end of Season 6. We skipped the episode where Xander leaves Anya at the altar, because who needs that kind of emotional upheaval anyway. But we're going to have to watch Tara die tonight. I don't know why Amber Benson wouldn't come back in Season 7, Joss had this whole beautiful thing worked out...and we had to settle for the brat queen of entitlementville that is Kennedy. Can't stand that girl, and her talking like she's the great love of Willow's life. Please. She isn't the first great love, or even the second. She's just filler. I tell myself that, anyway.

We're fully intending to do something this weekend before Kelly goes home. Really. I'll let you know how that works out. There may even be pictures of buildings and so on.

Kelly's internship is going well, from the giant smiles and general glee we observed yesterday. He can't tell us anything, because of the NDA, but he's having giant amounts of non disclosed fun. Oh, and he told me that Fable 2 is coming out the day before my birthday and we can run around getting RPG drunk and fighty together.

In other news, I found a parking spot that doesn't require the Wednesday Runaround, so my weeks have even less structure than before. Mwahaha.

How creepy is Warren? With his constant use of baby. I'm glad he was skinned. And how cute is Andrew? He's like a nerdy little kitten.

Got to go - these last 2 episodes require my full attention.

We are not alone

Kelly's here.
We took a couple wrong turns on the way to the airport, but we managed to find it and weren't even late. Made it home with only one wrong turn, had pizza and watched Buffy all night. The poor kid is burnt out from nonstop school all summer, so we're making sure he's well rested before tackling Ubisoft on Monday.

On our way home, we spotted the Montreal Wawanesa office, so I think I'm going to have to call bullshit on that whole "Wawanesa doesn't operate in Quebec" thing. And I'm going to have to call Wawanesa and sort it out. Idiots.

Sometime before Monday we're going to scope out the Ubisoft building, and Kelly's hotel, but other than that, we have no plans. It's business as usual for us, and hopefully a nice change for Kel.

We're up to Season 4 of Buffy, and Oz just left Willow. I hate that episode. And the girl that plays Veruca - who names their kid after foot warts anyway? She relies too much on making googly eyes and twisting her head around when she talks - bad acting.
One thing I love about Buffy is that as the show goes on, every sentence becomes loaded with meaning and if you haven't seen all the previous episodes, you'll only get about half of what is going on. Everything is so layered. Those aren't sentences they're speaking, those are onions.
Which is why I don't understand why crap like Smallville, One Tree Hill, The OC etc etc etc, are even watched. It's just piss poor writing if you can't maintain some consistency between episodes. All tv shows should have to be approved by Joss Whedon before they air. It would save a lot of time, and no one would ever have been subjected to laugh tracks or Raymond. Yeuch.

Congrats to Eric Lamaze, btw. That was some good suspense first thing in the morning.

Title goes here

I found out yesterday that I have to find a new insurance company, because Wawanesa isn't operating in Quebec. Yes, I know, I should have checked into all this before we moved, blah blah, but there was enough crap to worry about at that point. Sheesh. And why does it take so damn much paperwork just to be able to live your life anyway? I like the simplicity of earlier centuries. You probably didn't have to insure your horse, just in case your horse got drunk and smashed into another horse. If you were drunk, odds are the horse would plod home anyway. I've been reading L M Montgomery, can you tell? I'm always left with a desire to can vegetables and commune with trees after reading her books, but there's nothing but disappointment when I leave the house and realize it's not 1890. Granted, if it were, my life would be very different. Too bad you can't pick and choose what bits you'd like - internet and horse & buggy, a thousand times less concrete and todays social mores. Ha. Well, if you're going to dream, dream impossible. I suppose I could always end up on a farm somewhere, and drive a horse and buggy. This is a rather elaborate plot to avoid car insurance...

In Olympic news, Sherraine Schalm is the shit. It took me forever last night to find an article that actually repeated what she'd said to the Hungarians (halfway down the page) and when I did it was awesome. Sportscasters like to talk about how the Olympics brings out the best in everyone but that's crap. It brings out the best athletically...but mentally, ethically? Between stories of doping, lying about the age of athletes (crap again - if they can compete, let them) and medal hogging (though everyone else seems to think it's a good thing), the Olympics brings out the regular human weaknesses and exaggerates them. I'm surprised that more athletes don't have a fit, get angry, kick and scream, swear on camera, punch the idiot journalists that tackle them immediately after crushing defeat and get all prissy about sportsmanship. I'm glad that Sherraine lost it (Not glad that she lost, just that she didn't hold back). It lets the kids watching know that the Olympians are human, and that it sucks to lose. It really sucks to lose to someone who sabotaged your chances, in public, with a country of couch surfers whining that no one has won a medal yet, and know that you don't get another chance for 4 years, and then only if you do it all alone, because this home country wants nothing to do with you until its medal time.

This is why we left :)

Kelly sent me this charming news item, and it reminded me of all the things I hated about Alberta. The sense that everything was spiralling south - deep South, that is. If there's one part of north america you should not aspire to be like, it's the American South, but here's Alberta with a creation museum and a majority belief in 'intelligent design'. Shudder. I'm not trying to force my beliefs on anyone, but COME ON. This 'intelligent design' crap is the equivalent of believing the world is flat. Maybe we need to have a little rethink about what science is, and how it's based on facts, and what 'having your head up your bloody ass' is, and how it is based on people being uneducated. Just so we're clear, I think a belief in God is hunky dory so long as you aren't killing anyone because of it. But it's ridiculous to ignore facts and live in a fantasy flat world where everyone just popped out of thin air exactly as they are today when there is absolutely NO evidence to support this, and literally tons of bones to prove the 'fucking fact of evolution'. I think we've done the idiots of the world a great disservice by calling it the "Theory of Evolution" because they hang their continued ignorance on the word "Theory", without understanding what that word means in scientific terms. I'm not the one to argue this with - you want Kelly for a real good throw down on this, but he's awfully busy conquering the world and getting his second degree, so we can't bother him.

Rant over.

Mr. Christie, you're ripping us off.

I think they're putting less icing in Oreos these days. The ones on the bag have icing right to the edge of the cookie bits. Of the many I've eaten tonight, not one has lived up to the picture.

I'm watching the mens 3meter syncronized diving, and I'm really hoping we can get a medal here. Just one freaking medal can't be too much to ask. At least the men do 6 dives, so there's a chance everyone else will make a mistake and we can sneak onto the podium. I always forget how disappointing the summer games are. Oh, the very hairy German team had a bit of a miss, according to the lady at CBC. Maybe that's our chance. I'm not saying he should wax his inner thighs because who needs that kind of pain, but that's a lot of hair if you're going to wear a speedo.

My stupid scanner thinks it's not connected, so I have to wait for Gord to fix it. If that doesn't work, Kelly will be out on the 19th (what time does your plane get in, and does it bother you that for the rest of your life, you're stuck fixing every electronic issue in the family? Not that I'll stop asking, but maybe I'll start paying you in cookies or pocky sticks instead of nothing.) The HP help forums suggest getting a shorter USB cable, and I think we have one somewhere, but I can't find it. The old "unplug & restart" didn't work, so I'm O-U-T of ide-ers.

Curse the Ukrainians, they're going to steal our fourth position. But, according to CBC lady, 'they're not as beautiful to watch' as the other divers, because their knees are bent. Maybe that will work in our favor. Hot damn, we weren't syncronized on the 5th dive, so we have to pull off a perfect dive in the last round. And everyone else needs to do a bellyflop. Ah well, we've still got hockey.

I was reading Winnie-the-Pooh and the House at Pooh Corner but had to stop before the last chapter so I didn't read the bit where Christopher Robin outgrows Pooh. Other than that slap of realism, it's a beautiful book.

OOOooh, the US might have made a mistake, short of vertical. Hope springs eternal on the back of someone else's mistake.

You know what's satisfying? Cheering for the Chinese. They don't disappoint, unlike Oreos.
And the Canadians? I'm not going to spoil it for you.

There are a few strange things about life here in Montreal that we didn't really pay attention to at first. Like, Videotron, our internet company, keeps track of how much you download & upload, and charges you by the gigabyte if you go over. We've gone a bit over our limit....like, doubled it. So we have to change our internet plan. Shaw didn't really care what you did so long as you paid your bill on time, and I wish they'd kick their eastern expansion up a notch so we can switch providers when our contract is up.

The other thing that we've noticed for a while but have only recently begun to appreciate, is that channel 25 here has the audio & video mixed up so what is on screen has nothing to do with what's being said. We've started watching just to see what will come up. So far the funniest mix we've had is someone reading "Treasure Island" to clips of a young man being interviewed. There's a clip of him in the shower and the voice over says "...began to choke Long John..."


We finally had Montreal Chinese food last night. They don't have ginger beef, which was disappointing, and the egg roll wasn't that great, but the General Tao chicken and crispy sesame beef were good, and the salt and pepper squid was just the same as home. Also, it comes packed in tupperware, not those stupid foil and coarboard beasts, so much easier to handle.

We were watching Kyle Shewfelt early this morning/late last night and were both holding our breaths for every routine, praying that nothing snapped. I can't believe he broke both legs on a landing, and came back from it. If that had happened to me, I don't think I'd go anywhere without one of those blow up sumo suits for cushioning just in case I fell. But he's back doing harder routines than before, and we're rooting for him.

Did you catch the mens road race? The six and a half hour bike race.....holy crap. Some people watch the Olympics and think "Hell, I could do that", because the athletes make it look so easy. I have no illusions. There is not a single sport at the Olympics that I could do. I can't serve a volleyball over the net, I can't barely ride a bike uphill, I know I don't have the coordination for rowing, most gymnastics scare the bejesus out of me, and no one would let me do a floor routine that consisted entirely of somersaults. Running.....just reminds me of junior high and the damn Turkey Trot. This took place before Thanksgiving each year. They made all the students run around the school grounds, and for each grade, the first one done and the kid who came closest to their guessed time (we weren't allowed watches so there was no cheating) got a Cornish Game Hen. Not a Turkey. But the Cornish Game Hen Trot doesn't have the same ridiculous ring to it. I think I'd been out of school a couple years before I realized not every school did this. In fact, I'm pretty sure only Delburne does this. Because people are strange out there.

Peter Mansbridge is really tan.

We stayed up all night so we could watch the opening ceremonies. We had a dozen donuts, down to 7 now and it's just about time. I can't wait, I love the Olympics. Boycotting them isn't going to change how many female fetuses are aborted, or change the economic situation for the billions living in poverty. I don't see why world leaders can't use this event to build relationships with the Chinese government, and find solutions rather than just bitch about stuff that was happening long before the 2008 Summer Games were awarded to Bejing. Jackasses. I'm betting Canada will come in fourth more than any other country, cause it's not nice to take a medal.

I spent 4 hours fussing with the damn quotes, there are now 150 of them, and there will never be any more because I hate it. Miss one semi colon and you're fucked. Do you know how long it takes to find one missing semi colon in 7 pages?
Is this what you're going to be doing, Kel? Are you INSANE?!?!

...now that I think about it, I'd rather do that again every day than go back to my cubicle. Nevermind.
Hell is relative, I just had to adjust my perspective.

The perils of late night tv

Gord wants a juicer and I want the Cricut. It's one of those things that I know would just sit on a shelf and mock me, I'd never use it. That's the risk you take if you watch tv after 2AM.

In other news, Dark Chocolate Peanut M&M's are very tasty. Highly recommended. Also on the snack board tonight, Cheddar flavoured Bits & Bites. You can't go wrong with salty and cheesy in the same snack.

Clearly, I have nothing much to say. I'm onto the 3rd episode of the second season of Rome, and I don't want to get to the end, so I'm only blogging to stall myself.

Do any of you remember when music used to be relevant? Me either, I wasn't alive in the 60's. But I've heard of that mythical time. Remember when movies used to be so good you could watch them 50 times and never get tired of them? I was alive for that, but the only thing coming back from the 80's is the fashion, to which I cry "What the hell is wrong with you people?" No one looks good in a pastel headband. What am I getting at? Rome was a really good show, and I wish there were more episodes. Also, contemporary culture is devoid of meaning, yada yada, but the really important point is that Rome was a really good show, and there will never be any more of it. That's the real tragedy here.

What has happened in the last 6 days? A hell of a lot of nothing. Made some chili. Went to Ikea. Watched Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (and may I say, this surpassed the original IMHO). Have been drawing a bit, reading a fair bit, and generally wondering when this thing called 'motivation' is going to kick in, hopefully when my new art supplies get here.

The last thing I want to do right now is get a job, so please stop asking. I moved out here so I could finally focus on being an artist, and it ain't gonna happen if I get sucked back into that 9 -5 crap. And despite appearances, there's a lot of work going on. I'm having to rewire my entire brain to allow for such nonsense as 'drawing = working' and 'sleeping when I'm tired, not when it's some arbitrary universal bedtime'. Its anarchy. Sometimes we have hotdogs and chili for breakfast, and waffles for dinner, a sure sign of the apocalypse. I moved out here so I could focus on being the person I want to be rather than the person I've been pushed to be my whole life, and to do it without having to apologize for it every step of the way, so that's that. NO JOB. I will make money doing something I actually enjoy for once in my life, and there will be no further discussion. If you don't believe in me, at least keep quiet and let me believe in myself for a while.