April 29, 2004

Don’t Be Brash (Cause Your Friends Will Suck, Just Like You)

When the char­ac­ter of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.

—Japanese Proverb

Ever meet some­one whose com­pany was ques­tion­able at best, and think, “Why does this per­son hang out with these people?”

One may imme­di­ately think of the “friends” in ques­tion, peo­ple who prove to be stu­pid, super­fi­cial, unpleas­ant at best. Ultimately, how­ever, the truth lies in the key per­son who keeps such com­pany. The apho­risms have never been more true.

In the case of ques­tion­able com­pany, the answer is atten­tion. A per­son with a mot­ley crew of friends, each one unlike the next, and each one con­sis­tent in their lack of social skills, is most likely a per­son who is after attention.

The rea­sons for this are as plen­ti­ful as they are var­ied. Some are only com­fort­able when they are around oth­ers. Others enjoy the feel­ing of being a per­son who knows every­one. And some are so sub­con­sciously inse­cure as to need such com­pany to believe they’re of some value. So, to under­stand the seem­ingly eclec­tic taste in peo­ple of the key per­son, one must look to his or her company.

And often that proves to be more reveal­ing than any­thing else.

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April 29, 2004

Bad Week, Good Break

Bad week has come to a pre­ma­ture end, as of 4:50 pm today. Things some­how worked them­selves out bet­ter than I could have imag­ined. The day was hell though; I was run­ning on lit­tle sleep, lit­tle energy, lit­tle time, and lit­tle patience. Had to skip out on din­ner and movie tonight, just because I feel so drained and need some down-time.

This break couldn’t have come at a bet­ter time. Tindersticks was tear­ing my fuck­ing heart out this morning.

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April 28, 2004

Why Do We Do This To Ourselves?

crazy bitch still looks good!“
“dont look man”

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April 27, 2004

The Begging Landmark

One of the more inter­est­ing local land­marks is a pan­han­dler who has his prac­tice set up on the Mackenzie King Bridge. I started notic­ing him ever since I came to this city, every time I walked up the bridge to the Rideau Centre. I’ve seen him in stills in the uni­ver­sity news­pa­per, or in pass­ing while tak­ing the bus along the tran­sit­way. Ever since win­ter started though, he’s been wear­ing a very blue, very “Toronto Maple Leafs” toque. I won­der if some­one gave it to him, or whether he pro­cured it him­self, using the change given to him by his fel­low cit­i­zens and Sens fans.

It’s a dan­ger­ous thing to be wear­ing such a high pro­file hat in this city. Especially when one is so easy to find.

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April 27, 2004

Hoodie Mood

Fuck bad day. This is going to be a bad fuck­ing week. The only sav­ing grace is that I can come home and hang out with Trolley every day.

Maybe I’m just in a bad mood because of lack of sleep. I can’t think straight, I can’t con­cen­trate, I can’t remem­ber things, I can’t do shit. Can’t get my fuck­ing freezer moved. It’s rain­ing and I just washed these pants. Remembered my dry­wall putty in my 16th floor room when I stepped out­side on the cement. Couldn’t find pics for a post on the drool mate­r­ial over at Tristan. Where did my red­head of choice in the pin-striped suit go? Have to com­pletely clean the old apart­ment after work. It’s time for some In Utero. I could really go for some super sweet, super creamy, real cof­fee right now.

It’s a hoodie day. An over­sized BR hoodie day.

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April 26, 2004

I Need To Be More Tolerant

I hate cheap, self­ish, incon­sid­er­ate peo­ple who piss me off so much that I can’t sleep and it causes my hate to build up again.

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April 25, 2004

Crush

Never been so fuck­ing fun.

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April 25, 2004

A Weekend House-Sitting

Thumbnail: The house
Thumbnail: Spike shakes on my lap
Home theatre

Spent the week­end house sit­ting for my boss (on a trip to watch his daugh­ter per­form in New York) with Trolley, Nick, and two Eric’s. We spent most of the week­end hang­ing out, play­ing some Gamecube, watch­ing movies on the 100″ pro­jec­tion screen, and mak­ing runs to Timmy Ho’s.


[kml_flashembed movie=”/videos/events/housesitting/spike.swf” width=“320” height=“255” wmode=“transparent”/]

My boss and his fam­ily has three dogs, two cats, a few tur­tles, and some guinea pigs. One of the dogs, named Spike, is a tiny ter­rier but is like a lit­tle light­ning bolt. He’s still a pup, but won’t be get­ting any big­ger than he already is.

[kml_flashembed movie=”/videos/events/housesitting/cats.swf” width=“320” height=“255” wmode=“transparent”/]

The two cats, Boots and Puffy, are well behaved and friendly.


I got the chance to hang out with Eric, the one who’s not Trolley’s brother. He can appre­ci­ate a glass of Appleton Estate as much as a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, as much as a well designed com­puter game. And I mean really appre­ci­ate, as a per­son who almost com­pletely under­stands what he likes, instead of the super­fi­cial tastes that so many have nowa­days. I can light up with him, talk to him on an unbe­liev­able num­ber of lev­els, play games with him, or just hang out. He rarely speaks, but when he does his speech has weight, it has mean­ing with so much insight. I hope to hang out with him some more if he doesn’t go back home to Toronto. There should be more Eric’s in the world.

April 21, 2004

25% Just Right

Well, it’s offi­cial; Dolly is approx­i­mately 25% over­weight, with a mass of 12.6 pounds. The gut-poking and belly-teasing hasn’t been based on noth­ing. Sometimes I wish she could talk so that I could know whether she would rather live a life of glut­tony and go out like Chris Farley sans the cocaine, or whether she would rather live health­ily and restrain her eat­ing. I always leave a dish of food out and it’s obvi­ous that she doesn’t know how to con­trol her eat­ing habits. My deci­sion will prob­a­bly be to make sure that she’s a healthy weight, instead of spoil­ing her and let­ting her eat as much as she wants. That way there’s less chance of dia­betes, heart dis­ease, or other health com­pli­ca­tions down the road. I could start cut­ting back on the amount of food I give her, or start buy­ing diet food, but for now I’ll just mon­i­tor her weight. 25% I can live with, but any more and I’ll have to take action. After all, I like hav­ing a kitty that has a bit of a paunch. I’ve come to iden­tify the belly sway­ing walk with her now. And as Aaron says, “A fat cat is a happy cat.”

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April 21, 2004

Non-Stop Life

It’s been non-stop for the last two weeks. Exams, mov­ing, vet appoint­ments, unpack­ing, clean­ing, errands, etc. I don’t think I’ve ever been this busy or sleep deprived. I’m so tired that I can barely stay awake on the bus rides home. I can’t even think long enough to come up with a decent entry, and writ­ing and read­ing have fallen on my pri­or­ity list. Hopefully I’ll be set­tled in by the week­end so that I can enjoy it, hous­esit­ting for my boss. Lost my bus pass this morning.

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April 19, 2004

Guilt-Free Selfishness

I’ve been brave enough to lis­ten to The Postal Service lately, although my enjoy­ment is restricted to head­phones on the bus. It’s still some­thing that’s a lit­tle too per­sonal to be lis­ten­ing through speak­ers, and for some rea­son, I’m not com­fort­able with oth­ers hear­ing the same songs that I do. It’s as if being able to hear the same trippy beats and soft voices gives other peo­ple the abil­ity to expe­ri­ence the mem­o­ries that the music brings to my mind; curves in a gen­tle face, car rides through the thick sum­mer air, ner­vous fum­blings on the couch, the scent of unfa­mil­iar sheets.

They’re all good mem­o­ries, noth­ing painful any­more, but it’s all some­thing I’d like to keep to myself for just a lit­tle longer.

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April 18, 2004

Moving To Clearview

The mov­ing is mostly fin­ished, and all that’s left is a bunch of com­put­ers and mon­i­tors from Trolley’s and Wheaties’s old place, and a small freezer, suit, and food dish from mine. There’s still lots of unpack­ing to do; the 24-foot mov­ing van we rented was actu­ally too small, and some stuff had to be dropped off at the new place before the rest could be fit in. The small freezer is a bit of a worry, but hope­fully we’ll be able to bor­row my boss’s 4Runner and have Nick’s help to move it in on the weekend.

We ended up hav­ing nine peo­ple help­ing the three of us, twelve peo­ple mov­ing in total, so things went fairly efficiently.

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April 15, 2004

The Last Day Of University

Thumbnail: Last day of university 1
Thumbnail: Last day of university 2
Thumbnail: Last day of university 3
Thumbnail: Last day of university 4
Thumbnail: Last day of university 5

The exam I wrote today may pos­si­bly be the last one of my uni­ver­sity career. I don’t plan on going back to school any time in the future. It was both the most and least sat­is­fy­ing exam I’ve ever writ­ten. I’m pos­i­tive that I failed, so it’s sort of a sour note to end on, but I’m also ecsta­tic to be out of school. I approached my final com­puter sci­ence exam writ­ten last year with hes­i­ta­tion. The entire tech sec­tor was suf­fer­ing at the time, devel­op­ment jobs were already scarce, and I was about to be thrown into limbo. Now that I’m done, and noth­ing fol­lows me home, I’ll have time to work on a few extra projects I haven’t fin­ished yet. That also means that I can hang out with Aaron and Trolley more, or go home to visit Darren and John on the long week­ends. As for Pat, I’ve learned to let him arrange the sub­se­quent meet­ing because he’s always busier than I am.

Today, I left the exam two hours early, after throw­ing every­thing I knew on the page. I stepped out into the refresh­ing spring weather, when it’s between a brisk fall day and a sum­mer night.

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April 14, 2004

One Out Of Two Ain’t Bad

Just fin­ished writ­ing my eco­nom­ics exam. I found out last night that the exam was at 9:00 am instead of 2:00 pm. Usually, I make a last minute check of the sched­ule before I go to sleep the day before, so it was a shock. The last few hours before an exam are inte­gral in my abil­ity to pass, so my plan to study with Aaron basi­cally fell through.

I have no idea how well I did though. Going in, I was think­ing that it would be a sure fail, but I ended up con­fi­dently answer­ing the major­ity of the ques­tions. I only read through the mate­r­ial once, and didn’t do any review. If I do some­how end up pass­ing this course, than either:

  • I can remem­ber 90% of what I under­stand or
  • eco­nom­ics is a really easy pro­gram com­pared to comp sci, or
  • first year courses are extremely sim­ple after pass­ing fourth year ones, or
  • there was some sort of divine intervention

I’ve decided that just pass­ing one of my courses will my sat­is­fy­ing. That way the term won’t be a com­plete waste.

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April 13, 2004

The Only One I Keep

I found an old receipt in my wal­let while pack­ing up and clean­ing today. It was for a VCR I pur­chased two years ago for the par­ents of an ex-girlfriend. I got the extra two-year extended war­ranty, and even though we’ve long been bro­ken up, I still kept the receipt just in case the par­ents ever decided to con­tact me if the VCR ever broke. The war­ranty expired this February though, so I can finally toss the receipt. I hope the VCR is still okay.

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