Stuff on Stuff

*yawns* what day is it again? I can't even tell anymore.
This is pretty close to living the good life. I could go on about the free food and stuff like that but then I'd just be bragging.

The college strike came at the best and worst time. We finished most of our projects just before the spring break and there's only one Midterm we have left to do. It's been 2 weeks of no classes so far, 3 if you count the break. I spent the first week lounging around the apartment and playing games with my peeps, and this last week here at home. I only intended to drop by for a few days, but I keep finding reasons to hang around for another day or so. The biggest reason is that there has been absolutely no progress on the strike and it probably won't end until the government steps in and forces things to go back to motion. Seeing as I have no job and nothing to work on for school, I might as well hang out where the big TV and free and easy food is, no?

Other than that it's been pretty quiet and windy (more on that later). My mom's gone for the week, and My dad's working.. sooo I pretty much sleep in till around 12-2pm, lounge around and watch TV and movies all day. On the weekend we went out and rented a bunch of DVD's to watch over the last few days, and they are as follows.

Blade 2: Good stuff, lots of action.

Blade 3: Good stuff, almost as much action as 2, but with more annoying characters to try and catch a slightly younger market.. blech.

Walking Tall: Actually a decent movie, more than I expected from The Rock. Short and to the point. Decent stuff and kept up the pace.

lethal Weapon 4: The first three were on TV back to back the day before so we figured we might as well watch 4. If you liked the first 3, this one is good stuff too.

Into the Sun: Avoid at all costs.

Shaolin Soccer: Awesome movie. An excellent balance of amusement and over the top martial arts. It was like live action anime.

AAAAAaaaaaaaaaanyways... yea. Lazing it up real good over here, though I'll be going home shortly. I would have gone back today, but it's been really windy here these last few days, windy to the point where the gate to my grandmother's back yard was actually blown right off the fence, so we're going over to fix it tonight when my dad gets home. Such is life I guess.

On some good school related news, I actually secured myself a co-op position for the summer, doing some internal development and support for Fanshawe's Continuing education office. Should be good times.

Water, warm and blue.

Hello again, and welcome to another exciting episode of "Stuff I got to do and you wish you could too"! Today we travel deep into the depths of the ocean and explore the deadly but beautiful reef environment. Remember not to attempt such a quest without the proper professional breathing gear, such as a snorkel or bendy straw. Another important item to remember is some goggles, at least if you want to see anything clearly. Some have said that the goggles do nothing, but any experienced diver will tell you otherwise, myself included. With that taken care of, here is the first installment.



This guy was interesting. If you can't see quite well, it's a Parrot fish, and I think he was about half as long as my arm. They're named that because they have a fairly prominent beak-like mouth, and are very brightly coloured (at least I assume that's why, I'm just making this up as I go but it sounds pretty reasonable, doesn't it?) Anyways I must have followed this guy around the reef for a good 10 minutes trying to get a decent shot of him. I'd try and get beside him and every time he'd stop to do something he'd turn in weird directions making it hard to take a picture (probably on purpose too) and this was the best I got. Anyways he was still interesting to follow around because it's quickly apparent why they have those beak things: they like to chew on rocks. Not like little pebbles or things on the sea floor, no, these guys just swim up to the big boulders and coral things and just gnaw on the solid surface. It's very obvious because you can hear them underwater from like 20 feet away, sounding like rock grinding on rock. I guess that's why the rocks aren't all slimy and covered in mossy stuff down there..



This little guy was interesting. He just came out of nowhere and started swimming in circles right in front of us. Speedy little guy though, I must have taken 5 pictures of his tail trying to get him in the shot. I saw some others later poking around in the sand, but they did what all nice looking fish do and kept moving just as I was about to take a picture and then went somewhere else and put them selves in a perfect position until I tried to take a picture again. They're all sick twisted maniacal things, I swear. Oh well, I would be too if people kept taking pictures of me and following me around all the time :)



This here was one of the neatest things. Under the boats and docks, there were like entire walls made up of these huge fish. They must have liked the shade or something, but whatever the reason, it was really neat to see. They weren't really even moving or anything, just kinda.. floating there, moving enough to keep position. I wanted to see if I could swim down there and go right up to them, but I didn't want to give them any reasons to A) get scared and go away B) eat me.
I've seen too many movies and documentaries to know what little, seemingly harmless animals can accomplish in large numbers, and I'm not the strongest or fastest swimmer among them, so I was content to just float by and take some pictures. In fact since I liked them so much, I'll post an extra picture of them, just for you. It's a little grainy though, because I'm without a graphics program for the next day or so, but it'll do. Until next time!

Jelly Beans

Heeeeey, look it's the opera house. This place was always in sight whenever you went anywhere important in Sydney, probably because it's in the middle of this very large harbor that Sydney encircles, and it stands out very very much. But it's neat looking so that's alright. Notice the large amount of people crowded in at the bottom? There's a huge outdoor bar there called The Opera Bar and it looks like it's the place to be as it was very, very full of people, and they all seemed to be having a good time. But if that kind of thing isn't your style, there was more to see ahead. The thing about the opera house is that it isn't all one big building, it's like two or three. The first and smallest one is made up of the closest 3.. uhh... shell thinggies on the roof. If you look at the pic you can kinda see that it's separate from the rest, and there's actually plenty of room between them. Anyways, this smaller section is actually a super-classy restaurant where you can go to impress your big date or something. If you take a close look just above the second set of stairs in the background, you can see a bunch of black and white stuff up there, those are people in like fancy suits hanging around outside the place. I can't imagine how much it must cost to eat there, and I also can't imagine the food being really worth it. Oh well, I'm sure it's very classy.



And this is when nuclear war broke out Terminator 2 style. Actually no, it's just the sun exploding. Either way it looks kinda neat, and is another example of how my camera's sunset mode makes a normal looking scene very dramatic and fiery. It's kinda fun. Anyways, after around this time we started heading back to the hotel, but decided to get some food on the way. This was actually harder than you'd think, because despite being the holiday season in the downtown core of a world class tourist driven city... Most restaurants CLOSE at 8pm. We managed to score some fish and chips from this little stall place just before they closed up (we got the last 2 fishies, and free tartar sauce!) It was quite good, but breaded fish and chips just isn't the same, and nobody I tried down there was any good with the batter either. Oh well, a great time was still had by all and the fries were pretty good too.

More soon :)

Moving right along

Updates first: The ice melted and it continued to rain all day, and it actually was warmer when I was walking home from the bus at midnight than it was when I was walk to school at noon that day. Rather odd.

Almost as odd as waking up the next morning to a white a fluffy snow covered world right after. Now it's snowing all the time, but it's not coming down too hard so it's not too bad. Good packing snow though, I miss being a kid. Oh well, I guess life just sucks like that.

Anyways, you're probably wanting that lost entry now, so here goes.





These are the Blue Mountains.
They are called the blue mountains because they are... yes, blue. At least the air around them has this constant blue haze in them. It's from all the trees in the area reacting to the air and I don't really care, it's just pretty and it isn't poisonous so win/win!
Naturally the images can't actually capture the scope of the scenery quite right, so it just looks like a neat litte set of cliffs and stuff, but I assure you it was very pretty. Lots of lookout points that were just sheer cliff faces and the like. Oh and FLIES! OH GOD THE FLIES!
Forget all the dangerous animals and poisonous crap they tell you about the Australian wildlife, it all means NOTHING once you get attacked by the most annoying flies on the Earth. I'm serious. The flies up here for whatever reason like to fly around your head and go buzz buzz and you shoo them away and whatever, but OH NO, that's not good enough for these flies. Instead of just flying around you and being annoying, these flies have invented a way to drive people INSANE. All they want to do is fly straight at you and land on your face. Or in your ear. Or up your nose. Never mind your arms or shoulders or anything, they just go for the annoying parts. And it gets better too; if you go to swat them away, they're very well practiced at simply flying around your hand and landing right back on your face. Just one of these flies can get very aggravating, but just wait till 15 of them decide to maul you. I wonder if anyone has just run right off the cliffs trying to get away from them?



...Wait a minute. If they did that, they'd be dead at the bottom of the cliff and all the flies could feast on them uninterrupted! Oh my god I'm on to something here, they're trying to kill us all. ): It's actually kinda freaky that I came up with that, as the place with the most flies was the place with the least railings on the cliff edges. Scary :s





I really like this shot for some reason. It's the blue mountains again, but from a different location. This might be from when I took a ragged trail down the mountainside in pursuit of a scenic spectacle. It worked out prtty good, and I got at least 20 feet before the trail just turned to some different looking ground going through dense foliage, I wanted to go a little more but the threat of death by either spiders snakes or a rocky cliff bottom kept me from going. I also didn't feel like crawling through the plant life without a machete, so I just went back. Got some nice pictures though. That's right, I risk my life just so I can bring the people some things to look at and say 'oh neat'. I'm just that great. ;)





Since I seem to be on the topic of pretty scenery this time, I figured I should throw this one in as well. A tropical beach? Oh hells yea! It was very pretty, and be sure to check out the other 2 in that set (just change the number in the file name) for a few more perspectives. This was a kinda neat beach, as the sand was pretty dense and solid under your feet, but it was still sand, and the trees all around it made it quite nice to look at. It's be a great place to hang out and swim at if not for two things:
a) it's a popular stop for lots of tour groups, so there are always people moving through there
b) there are very dangerous jellyfish living in the waters there, and the picture on the sign is enough to keep me out of the waters. Those things look hungry.
Oh, the other neat thing about this place was that right on the other side of the beach was a small forest of mangrove trees. You can't have a tropical beach without a kickin wicked external root system based plant formation. Anyways, I think that about wraps it up for today, remember: enjoy the snow!

Frozen hopes

Well poo. I seem to have lost or at least misplaced my latest entries, so they'll be a bit later than expected >:{

In the mean time, here's some news from the home front
Bad weather. Bad bad weather. It's currently raining outside, and the ground is quickly becoming a continuous surface of ice. Walking to the bus stop in that mess was no fun, and it was even too windy to use an umbrella most of the way. Good times. Although it can be amusing watching a whole busload of students try to scamper through the rain from the bus to the building while trying not fall, most of which are actually capable to some degree. Forecast looks like rain/snow all week hovering around 0 so it could get ugly. Oh well. I can't wait to see what it's like at 11:30 when I get home tonight.


also, here's a pretty picture.


edit: Yes I was sleeping at the time :p all better now

Flying south

Well I'm back and it's time to start the year off right, with another late blog entry! Woohoo! I that calls for a little celebration. :)



There, I feel better now. Now I've been kinda debating the best way to go about the blogish representation of my exciting journey, as the results are as follows.
Each of the hand selected images I have selected as worthy enough to be hosted on my wonderful domain will be posted with a small story explaining the origins or backstory associated with the picture. I'm going to try and put as much content as I can into them, and post up a few each day or so. I'll try and do them in pseudo chronological order, but I can't guarantee anything. There are also like 60-70 pictures I have hosted so far, so this should take a while.

Prepare yourself!






This is me hovering over Sydney on my way into Australia for the first time EVER.
Come back tomorrow for some more enchanting stories!

Yea, I'm kidding a little, although the princess is in another castle. Anyways This was a happy moment for me as it marked the end of my longest solitary voyage of all time. Unless you count me sitting here alone in front of my computer a voyage, because that would win for sure. Anyways It was essentially three flights, each longer than the last and each full of the same exciting material: nothing. There really is nothing to see out that little tiny window when you're flying over the ocean at night. Seriously. Nothing there. Anyways it really wasn't too bad as for the first two flights I was sitting beside nobody, which meant I got extra leg room and also didn't have to worry about the person trying to talk to me or ending up being some little twerp or anything like that. At least there was free diet coke and every flight had a meal (two on the last one even) which almost made up for the TERRIBLE movies they decided to show. I'd tell you what they were but I forgot the names. Probably for the better. It didn't help that air Canada has ancient seats on the older planes and the sound comes out all crackly on your headset and the two lowest settings on the volume control were 'too quiet' and 'too loud' with about 10 levels above that. It of course defaults to one of the higher settings when it turns on so everyone can go deaf and then not have to worry about things like engine noise.
Anyways, the best part of the flights was probably me getting the chance to see the sun rise from over the cloud tops. Me being up early enough to see any light from the sun only ever happens when I've been cranking out a project or something overnight, and I usually take it as a sign to get some sleep, but this time was different so I took some pictures instead. They'll be first up in my next installment of this, so prepare to be wow'd!

Snippets

At long last a few pics from Todds wedding are starting to trickle through. Not sure what the deal is with them but I do know that the professional ones were taken on actual film and thus need to be scanned. The following images are from... somewhere else and I'm assuming they were scanned in on some ancient black and white scanner or some deal. Anyways The wedding party was all in black and white anyways so it all works out ok for the most part.




I guess I'll start of with some pic of the bride getting ready or something.


Here are all the girls.



Here are all the guys. This isn't a very good picture as the sun was rather bright and at eye level, there are a number of other pictures from this scene out there somewhere, I'll post them when I get em.




Here's the happy pair, and in colour too.




And I don't know what's going on in this picture.



That's all for now. More as it breaks.

Experiment Complete: Shocking Results!

You may remember my post a while back about the terrifying discovery I made involving me getting up early one day and actually getting a ton of stuff done early on in that day. This of course shook the very foundation of my way of life, and thus my very being. And as such I have devoted a great period of study into forming an unbiased opinion as to whether this incident was isolated or some kind of hidden power to be harnessed for good or evil.
So after months of extensive testing involving me trying to accomplish a set amount of tasks in a day- sometimes allowing myself to sleep in, and sometimes forcing myself awake to attempt to complete things early- I have come to the undeniable conclusion that no matter what time I get up or how much I plan things ahead of time, it's still equally impossible for me to get around to doing it all in a timely manner. I think in between my original post on the subject and today, I have had a total of one day where I was almost as productive, and I think it was because I had a deadline and had let a number of things coagulate on the last day... But that's life, eh?

Of course once I had some kind of conclusive data regarding the situation, I promptly stopped getting up any earlier than was needed to get to school or work on time... gotta find a way around those two someday.. hmm. I guess I've also been known to get up a little earlier if I had something decent to eat for breakfast available, like bacon or something.. Bacon always works. :9

Anyways, everything is all under control and normal now so you can all sit back down and go back to your daily lives while I put my feet up and play some video games whilst the unwashed dishes in the kitchen get a little more dusty.

It was a nice day for a white wedding

So this dude I know got himself married... well I guess he's not just some dude, he's like... my best friend Todd... so I guess a cool dude. Anyways yea, he really did find himself a girl that would marry him, which is good news for our kind, knowing that techy people who spend their free time downloading old Power Rangers episodes can also be capable of finding and keeping a girl. Thumbs up to you, buddy.

Also, since I was a groomsman for the big occasion, I got a different perspective of the whole wedding thing, for once. This is my tale.

It started simply enough, me heading down to the old south end of London after school one Friday afternoon, making my way over to Todd's apartment via the unusually on-time local bus routes. I managed to get there at exactly the same time as Jason (Val's brother{Todd's now-wife Val, not to be confused with my non-wife Val, who has no brothers}), who I had met at the earlier stag and doe of several months past. Anyways, with us arrived all the groomsmen were present (Me,Jason,Troy and Lucas(Todd's brother and step-brother), as well as Todd himself) so I pretty much just dropped off my things and sat around for 10 mins and played some Gran Turismo with Todd while we waited for everyone else to be ready to go out again (I lost, but I never liked the GT series anyways, but let's not go there right now)
All assembled, and several last minute tasks later (assigned with lightning speed to Todd, by his then bride-to-be {I hope he knows what he's getting into}), us men were off to pick up our stylish outfits for the next day. It's a good idea to go ahead of time for this stuff, as there are usually problems for one reason or another. Things went pretty quickly though, although Todd's pants needed to be swapped out and mine were broken in two places, but nothing a little work from the guy there couldn't fix in a few minutes. Satisfied with our awesome appearance for the time being (I'll post pics here later when I get them), the 5 of us left with our 5 packaged tuxes, each in their own body bag-like coverings. A quick trip back to the apartment and off we go again to the church, to make sure we have at least some idea of what we were supposed to do the next day.

Once there, we met up with the rest of the involved group - the bridesmaids, the two sets of parents and a few others, and talked with the priest a bit about what we needed to do and when. It's pretty simple really, usher in the people as the get there so they don't just stand around and clog the entryway, as all people seem to naturally do in any given situation. Then once things are all set, we sneak off around to the front rooms through the back doors and then show up in time to walk the bridesmaids down the aisle to our front-row seats (woot). Then we went through a basic rundown of what was supposed to happen, all pretty simple stuff, and about an hour after we got there, presto! time for dinner. Off we all go to the house of Todd's parents where a small feast of meats, veggies, buns and snacks and cake awaited. Another hour or two of eating and localized chatter and once again we were off.

After that point, just us guys went back to Todd's place to hang around for the rest of the night, with no more responsibility than to make sure we got Todd to the church on time the next day. Being a bunch of slackers, the rest of the night pretty much consisted of most of us hanging out on the balcony with some drinks and munchies trading tales of old and new. It was a good atmosphere for roasting some marshmallows over a fire, but we didn't feel like lighting up the charcoal bbq or finding sticks, so we let it be. Good times though. Next morning we got up, removed the slob from our appearances and played some video games till it was time to get ready. Once we were all as sexy as possible, we all crammed into a tiny Saturn 4 door that seats like 4.5 normal people, but we were all pretty big/tall, and the smallest one was Jason, but he was driving so it was a little like being a clown in a circus car. We did get a lot of weird looks from guys on the street as we drove around though, you'd thing they'd never seen 5 guys wearing tuxes crammed into a little green car listening to slipknot before. Oh well.

Before we hit up the church, we stopped by at Todd's parents place, so his mom could check us out and give us some food and stuff. A few chicken sandwiches and pictures later, we were off to the church for the big occasion. We got there right about on time and Todd disappeared while us handy ushers.. ushered. People arrived in a steady stream and the seating went smoothly, nobody fell or died on the way to their seats and everyone was there when it was time to start. The ceremony itself went well, a bunch of talking with intermittent sitting and standing, the usual stuff, put on some rings, give her a kiss and everyone is happy :)

Now that the hard part was over we got to go have some fun. This is the part where most weddings get boring for most people because there's a big gap of time between the ceremony and the reception with nothing for most people to do, and the whole wedding party goes and disappears for the whole time. This of course isn't a problem when you are in the wedding party (like me) and it actually makes for an interesting time. Todd and Val got into to their spiffy little Rolls Royce and we followed in a few little flowered up cars around town on a hunt for some nice pictures. Lucky for us it was a beautiful day and the sun was shining, which makes everything nicer, although a little hot sometimes in all those fancy clothes (Luckily the groomsmen were in white, so it wasn't too bad ;). We headed down to Springbank Park, cuz they have a pretty garden there that is very photogenic for things like weddings, so much in fact that while we were there in the space of less than an hour, two other weddings showed up towards the end with the same idea in mind. We had finished up by then though, so we just went on our way.

Another few minutes in the car and we arrived at the well known Storybook Gardens, where we proceeded to innocently pressure kids and employees to give us free photo ops, which is actually very easy, when you all show up in bridal gear and tuxes with a photographer. Our first target was the carousel, and the young female attendant was all too happy to give us a free ride complete with music and the works, while we all looked pretty for the pictures. It must have been quite a sight or something, because we had a few other people who were just passing by take pictures and some of the people with kids who were waiting to go as well. The only people that didn't seem to enjoy it were the kids whose ride we had jacked, and more than once I heard sounds in the distance of "when can we go on?" "can we go on now?" "I wanna ride :(" Kids are great that way. After a few mins we got off and thanked the still smiling attendant and headed out across the parking lot looking for our next exploit.
The little train ride was also unable to resist our combined awesomeness and we got another series of shots on and around the train as it made its short and uneventful trip around the track. I wonder if this kinda stuff works at Canada's Wonderland.. that'd be interesting. Anyways we got off that little train and headed on down towards the park to get some other cool shots and stuff. We got stuff of the wedding party on the swing set and a few of Todd and Val in various places, all in all they should be very nice and I'll be sure to post them when I get them so you can all see what I'm talking about. After that we got a bunch on this nice big wooden staircase, and by then we were all starving and it was about time to get back so off we went.
By the time we got to the hall, everyone else was there and ready, so most of us went in, announced the bride and groom and then in they came, we all got seated at our table and not too long after, dinner was on the way. We had some nice garden salad and rolls to start, followed a few mins later by some roasted chicken and potatoes, and assorted veggies, all in all quite tasty. After dinner was the traditional dances and then the floor opened up for the usual stuff. The next few hours were spent more or less socializing and stuff, then we did the ever popular bouquet and garter routine. Oddly enough, Jason caught* the garter and the bouquet went to his girlfriend (who was also a bridesmaid) so I think it's a pretty clear signal on who's next (* it landed on the floor between him and Troy, and there was a scuffle, but Jason emerged victorious).

Anyways, things went well and they brought out pizza and dessert around midnight to keep us going, I don't even think most of the pizza made it from the kitchen to the dessert table, so it was probably a good idea. It was some tasty pizza though. I caught a ride back up town with Todd's step dad after stopping by Todd's place to get out of my tux and pick up my stuff, and I finally got here around 1am or so, and promptly passed out. It's very tiring to look that good all day.

So that about sums that up, gotta say it was a good time, went smoothly and the happy couple are now relaxing in Cuba for the rest of the week. As stated before, you'll see some pictures here as soon as they start filtering down to me and I'll of course explain them as they come.

Boing

So my last C++ class was amusing. We're still going through the steps to writing that program that simulates a bouncing ball, and we needed something to use for a realistic comparison, so we can get a feel for what the results should be. Anyways, he didn't have a ball or anything on him, and it was kinda funny. So he asks the class for a ball, but no one has one, then he goes off about how he's surprised that no one has a ball, like a base ball or tennis ball or anything, don't a lot of IT students play sports and stuff? Then he tried mouse balls, but every person in the class had an optical mouse. Lucky me, I had a small tiny plastic ball that's been in my bag since who knows when for whatever reaosn, although he was convinced it was a candy at first (it's about the size of a gobstopper and orange) but it bounced, so I was special and he said he'd give me timmies certificates for helping class (woohoo!)
So he takes the little ball and grabs one of the tables (this was in the long room in M with all the long square tables for desks) So he gets up on to the table and stands on it, at the front of the class, and holds the ball up to the ceiling. And we had like 3 people with stopwatches to time how long it took to stop bouncing and stuff, since that's part of what our program did.
So he's standing up there, and he'd say 'when' then drop the ball and say 'when' when it stopped bouncing. The time we got back were as far as almost a second apart from the stopwatches so we did it like 10 times. JJ seemed to be enoying this, and then Christina managed to produce a marble from somewhere, he got more excited and promised her timmies as well. Then the guy who was writing the results on noticed the crappy com,puter at the front of the class had a crappy mouse with a mouseball in it. JJ thought this was the greatest thing ever and said he had always wanted to bounce one, he kept saying how this was awesome and he was such a nerd.
Mouse balls don't bounce very well btw. Anyways it was amusing overall, and he was laughing it up pretty good by the end. :)

Hey little sister, who's the only one?

So last Saturday I was witness to a marriage of two people, one being the oldest cousin of mine. This... is my story.


It begins on a pleasant Saturday afternoon, after a short drive south from Barrie, to a supposedly luxurious greenhouse, we arrived right on time to get the best seats in the house.. the back row. But wait, is that a joke? No, I fear not, for as I said before.. it was a greenhouse. Greenhouses are very warm inside, especially when you're in a suit. Luckily, there was a big AC/fan thing at the back of the little hall thing they had, so we were sitting right in front of the airflow (it was blowing sideways) but it was still pretty warm in there.. thank goodness it wasn't sunny out, or we would have fried. Other than that, it was a nice ceremony. It was fairly short compared to the last few weddings I remember going to, mostly because there was no religious service, and everything else in a wedding is fairly short, a few readings, a song, the usual stuff. Took about 30 mins all together.

Then it was kinda off for a bit, as the reception didn't actually start for another two hours. So we were standing around outside for around 20-30 mins, greeting family and people that were there and stuff. So then we go off to find this place where the reception is. It's at a golf and country club.. still very new, turns out that Drew's (groom) dad was the architect for the place. Anyways, it was a nice place for a reception, but overall I found it quite strange. You see it was more than just a golf and country kind of place.. it was a golf and country community. With houses and little subdivisions spread out between and around the various golf holes. Some of them even have an extra half garage for the golf carts. But that's the normal part.

It was actually very creepy there.. everything is just so... perfect. The grass was too green and soft and there wasn't a blade of it out of place anywhere. Every lawn was perfect and had a perfect garden, and there wasn't a weed within 2 miles of the building we were at. And the grass. I can't get over the grass. it was like fields of perfect grass, when you walked on it, it was like a soft cushion under your feet.. very unnatural. But wait there's more. After dark, when we were checkin the place out a little, we noticed that the little ponds move. Not like get up and move.. but.. move. It's like 10:30 at night, dark, and this pond, probably 50x20 feet across, is rippling. Constantly. Like it was raining. Only it wasn't. At All. But the water just kept rippling. Creepy. Also there weren't any people around. Some of the lights were on at night, but I don't recall seeing any cars go by or any people asides from the occasional golfer, and one guy who was walking his dog. I was constantly reminded of Stepford Wives for some reason that I couldn't quite place. It just felt like there was something weird going on behind the scenes I guess.

Other than that, it was a good wedding, the food was good, buffet style with nice variety, although they were a little late in setting up dinner, so it was delayed like an hour.. but it otherwise went smoothly. On a side note, my other cousin Shannon caught the bouquet, so maybe people will bug her about getting married for a while. I doubt it though.

The End

Sleep is bad? NOOOOoooo...

So yea, for the last month or so, I've been a little lazy in the mornings, seeing as I work nights Tuesday through Saturday, and usually don't have to leave this place till like 4 in the afternoon. But today was different. Being as big a fan of space travel that I am, I had to personally ensure that the space shuttle touched down ok this morning (it was supposed to come down from 4-5am, but got delayed to 6-7am due to bad weather at the preferred landing site. So I got up for the first one, but hearing it was delayed, I went back to sleep for the next few hours. Then after everything went well (It's amazing how fast it goes from space to runway, and halfway around the world at the same time)

ANYWAYS, back the important part (me!)
Asides from sleeping in all the time, despite all the technical hours of free time I have while awake, I've been generally extremely unproductive the last few weeks. And then today, the one day I got up early, I managed to get like a million things done. I did the laundry, washed all the dishes, cleaned up this place a bit, and had time to actually prepare, make and cook a real meal from raw ingredients. I'm talking I made my own bbq sauce to go with the chicken I was marinating in the fridge. Seriously. If you'd seen the way I've been eating for the last few weeks, you'd be in shock. Anyways, I did all this, and managed to have enough time to get all cleaned up and ready for work on time.

That's more work in a single day (a work day no less) than I had done in the last week and a half, including both weekends. I know. I'm scared too.

In conclusion, I'm going to try getting up at a decent hour, and limiting my sleep to about 6-7 hours (instead of the 8-12 I was getting before ;) for a bit and see how that works out.





Also, I'd just like to point out that this doesn't mean I LIKED doing all these chores and stuff all of a sudden, I'd still rather lounge around or play Guild Wars or something.. But sometimes stuff just has to get done (which sucks). So at any rate, I'll still sleep in when I can, but I'll just have to make sure there isn't anything that needs doing around here beforehand. I miss being a kid with free everything :p

Some things are not meant for humans to find.

Especially not in their homes.

Especially not in their kitchens.

And ESPECIALLY not when it's like 110% humidity outside, and you have no a/c!

This is where my story begins.
I come home from work today, Saturday, after a long 8 hour shift at the local data farm, to discover something slightly amiss. I put my stuff down and went to sit down and thought to myself: "gee, that's an unusual smell" but I couldn't tell if it was coming from in here or not, as I have the fans going all day blowing air inside and around the apartment in an only slightly successful attempt to make the atmosphere in here suitable for sustaining life in this hot, humid weather.

Anyways, after a quick survey of the place, I determined the smell seemed to appear only around the kitchen area... but that can't be right, I just cleaned the kitchen like three days ago, and have been working the nights since then, so it hasn't been really used much, and there are only a few dishes in the sink. So I quickly did a sniff check of the obvious places, like the sink, stove, fridge and freezer and everything seemed ok. I was about to dismiss it as stale air combined with the humidity (the kitchen doesn't get any of the circulated air from the fans at all) when I remembered something.

The cupboards under the sink had always had a slight rank and funny smell to them, something I haven't been able to find the source of, despite a few attempts. Maybe the heat and moisture was just making it worse? Maybe now I could at last find the source of this mild odor and eliminate the problem. Craig, you sly dog you, you'll get to the bottom of this in no time, and you'll be a hero for your deeds.

Fool.

Now, before I continue, I just want to clarify a few things. My sense of smell isn't exactly what you would call sensitive. I mean I can smell things just fine, but often very subtle smells escape my notice, and after cleaning out the fridge a few times over the years, I can safely say I have a much higher tolerance for stinky things than say... some other people I know. So wasn't really worried (or prepared) for whatever could be there.

So I reach down and open the cupboard door, leaned down and gently inhaled to sample the local scenery. I've never recoiled from anything so fast in my life. DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SMELL? is about all that went through my head for the next few moments as my mind attempted to recover from the shock and I tried to figure out how a whale had died under my sink six weeks ago without me realizing. After a second or two I noticed two plastic bags at the bottom of the cupboard containing last week's remaining regular and sweet potatoes.

At least, that's what USED to be in them. The sweet potato had flattened to about a quarter of its size and was sitting in a small puddle of brown liquid. The only reason the puddle was small, was because there happened to be a cloth next to it, which was supposed to be a nice light blue plaid colour, except now it was BLACK. But that was the clean side. The other bag of potatoes no longer contained potatoes , but instead was a quarter full of a very dark, watery liquid.
The potatoes had melted.
I didn't even know this was physically possible. I've seen potatoes sprout, mold, dry out or get squishy before, but nothing like this. There was almost more liquid in there than solids, and the solids weren't very solid at all. I immediately went to dispose of the bag of death, but as soon as I moved it, I discovered that because it was the bag the potatoes came it, IT WAS FULL OF HOLES. As soon as I moved the bag from the cupboard, a stream of dark green watery.. substance spilled out onto the kitchen floor.

Oh.
My.
God.

All the smells before this point in time suddenly meant nothing, as I was instantly treated to the single most rancid, rotting smell of anything I ever smelled in my entire life. I'm not kidding. I've seen entire dumpsters of garbage open and in the sun that have smelled better than this. And it was now on my floor. Whatever this stuff was, it was not from this Earth, and in NO WAY could it have come from the delicious potatoes that resided there only days before. After searching for any kind of term to describe this violation of life and nature, I came to only one conclusion. It smelled like DEMON PISS. I could only conclude that some kind of demon, possibly even Satan himself had for some reason, snuck into my kitchen while I was at work and pissed on my potatoes.

But that's not all. Thanks to the clever addition of holes to the bag of potatoes, the lovely Satan sauce had spilled around and under several other items nearby, including my giant woven bag of rice. You know those huge bags with the rooster on them that cost like $20? Yea, one of those. NO! I JUST BOUGHT THAT LIKE A FEW MONTHS AGO! IT'S ALMOST FULL! My mind screamed as I dragged the bag out, noticing the long trail of slime underneath it. I cleaned off the bottom only to find that the vile substance had indeed violated the woven plastic fibers and poisoned my supply. :(
After some examination, I took the first 3/4 of the bag into separate containers and was forced to discard the final 10" or so of rice.. my poor rice :(

After all is said and done though, the area under the sink is now as clean as it will ever be, and I now have containers of rice stashed all over my kitchen.

I hope we all can learn something from this.

Life Continues

Weekly recap!


Last weekend was my family getaway extravaganza, starting the day after the previously mentioned S&D, which I've been informed made Todd a smooth $800 (and not a ton of people showed up either, it was mostly family and some friends)
Anyways, the parents picked me up in their nice shiny new car, and it was a smooth ride over to Chatham, which is now referred to as 'the land that time forgot' which is very understandable once you drive through there.. it's not a very happening place. Lots of small, old buildings, and old people. Speaking of old people, we had the reunion thing at my grandpa's retirement village and oh man.. I hope I never get old.

Lots of very, very old people walking around with lots of noting to do. We had it outside, which was nice, because there's a big sitting area next to a fenced in garden and the river is just down the hill.. very nice scenery. And the weather was nice too. So after hanging around there for a few hours munching on snacks and troubleshooting my aunt's laptop (more on that later) I came to the conclusion that old people lead very simple (or boring) lives.

Lots of them kept wandering out slowly.. they'd go walk around (or get pushed) the garden area and then disappear back inside. And there was this one lady that just kept coming back, from one direction or the other.. it was like every 20 mins she'd walk by, maybe go through the garden, then wander off somewhere else. This went on for the whole several hours we were there. And when we were cooking up the burgers on the residential barbecue (that had an empty tank, the wrong size burner, and a guard that actually stopped to burner from working, till we pulled it off) she walked past and looked at the table with all the burger buns still in their bags and said something like "oooh, don't those look good!" before wandering off again. Maybe she hadn't seen bread for years or something, I don't know. Something to look forward to someday, I guess :|

Anyways, about my aunt. She knows nothing about computers, so she bought this laptop based on the fact that the guy at the store said it would take the memory card from her camera (she even told him what camera) and just let her move the pictures over. So she goes for it, and now here I am with it and she wants me to show her how to do it. For anyone who's ever read any story anywhere along these lines, you can guess what happened. The guy at the store was probably just guessing, because the laptop DID have a 4-in-1 card reader built into it... too bad there are like 6 kinds of cards out there, and my aunt's camera uses one of the other 2. So she was gonna go yell at the store or something, oh well.. not my problem anymore!

Afterward, it was off to my cousin's stag and doe which, amazingly enough, was remarkably similar to the one I had been to the day before. Except this one was in a smaller hall, the music was too Lund, and a whole bunch of young (as in not middle aged) people showed up and got drunk. (not much else to do around there I guess) Anyways, I had already had my fill of stag and does when I got there, so it was a less than exciting night. I bet they made a killing off those drunk people though.

Afterwards, we went back to my uncle's place, slept there and came back the next morning. We were hungry when we got to London, so we went out for lunch at Wit's End, the little pub we always go to for no apparent reason. Food is good and pretty cheaply priced though, so I'm not complaining or anything.

Since then it's been pretty uneventful.. I bought some groceries.. cleaned up the place a bit.. and went to work for a few days. I've also got myself hooked on Guild Wars and am enjoying it, so if anyone reading this plays or wants to start, contact me in some way for more info. It's good times, if you like RPGs and stuff.

And so ends another glorious chapter of the world.