This is the worst case of insom­nia I’ve had in a long time. And it totally isn’t sup­posed to fol­low the awe­some night before it.

1 year, 7 months ago

Tried out a gui­tar today and it felt MASSIVE com­pared to the ukulele. Not so sure I want to change instru­ments anymore.

1 year, 7 months ago

Visiting Pita

Pita is soon mov­ing to the west coast of Canada, so I went to visit him in Montreal on the week­end. We lived together in res­i­dence in uni­ver­sity and for two years in an apart­ment down­town, but hadn’t seen each other in years. I’m prob­a­bly the only per­son to still think of him as Pita, the nick­name given to him from the first week of res­i­dence. There were two pairs of room­mates named Jeff and Peter, so every­one decided that one pair should have nick­names to make the dis­tinc­tion, and that ended up being us.

Pita's house

He’s mov­ing out in two days, so his house is a jum­ble of packed boxes and mis­cel­la­neous items.

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Just found out what a “hot richard” is and now I’m con­vinced there’s a nick­name for absolutely any­thing even remotely sexual.

1 year, 7 months ago

Apparently, quit­ting TF2 really means tak­ing an eight hour break.

1 year, 7 months ago

I’ve decided the best thing to come out of Foursquare is being able to say, “I became the mayor of your mom”.

1 year, 7 months ago

29 8/12: The Son

There’s no rev­e­la­tion more star­tling than the fact that your dad is cooler than you.

This is espe­cially true of my own father, who isn’t just cool for an old guy, he’s cool period. As a teenager, I remem­ber him wear­ing a leather bomber jacket, and learn­ing to ride a pur­ple Kawasaki Ninja sport bike which he even­tu­ally traded in for a sil­ver Porsche.

When I was even younger, my friends would tell me he looked like a secret agent. One time he came to help me move out of res­i­dence, and his jeans had wider cuffs than mine (and back then I loved wear­ing wide-leg khakis). I can’t remem­ber a time when he didn’t wear some­thing by Lacoste, Polo, or Tommy, and even though he may dress far younger than his age, he can still pull it off.

Now he’s a man mov­ing closer to his 60s, dri­ving a Mercedes and a BMW, with what seems to have a coterie of women whose com­mon inter­est is him. He watches pop­u­lar movies, prac­tices singing, and dances on a reg­u­lar basis. Even my grandma once told me that peo­ple like him because he’s the fun one to be around.

Self portrait at 29 8/12

 

This is all very dif­fer­ent from me; a shy, intro­verted, awk­ward per­son whose idea of a good time gen­er­ally involves being in front of a computer.

Still, with all these dif­fer­ences, I know I’m his son. Just a chip off the old block, with the same work ethics, the same per­fec­tion­ist ten­den­cies, the same neu­rotic tendencies.

We get grumpy when we’re hun­gry. We hate feel­ing sweaty and some­times have to shower twice in a day. We make the same silly jokes when we’re around new peo­ple. We dec­o­rated our houses exclu­sively with mod­ern, min­i­mal­ist fur­ni­ture before we knew what each other’s houses looked like. And as I grow older, I’ve also started devel­op­ing the same night owl habits, care­free atti­tude, insom­nia, and diges­tion problems.

I turn 30 in four months, and I’m becom­ing my father’s son.

The Turning 30 Series

Pretty sure the fact that the local super­mar­ket has 95% of my weekly sup­plies is the rea­son I rarely go more than a kilo­me­tre from my house.

1 year, 7 months ago

Hmmm…$11.99 for a box of six and $11.99 for a box of eight. Same brand and prod­uct. Which one to choose.

1 year, 7 months ago

Note to self: stretch after every seven hour snip­ing marathon. #sooooore

1 year, 7 months ago

Team Fortress 2

On nights like this, I won­der how I’m going to kill the time before it’s late enough to fall asleep, wor­ried that I’ll be bored on a Friday and con­se­quently faced with the fact that I’m so very alone. I was crav­ing some kind of human con­tact tonight, but spend­ing time with peo­ple takes too much energy nowa­days so I decided, instead, to play Team Fortress 2.

I pur­chased it on an impulse, but this was still three years after TF2 first came out. There’s a very good rea­son I avoided buy­ing it for so long: it’s the sequel to Team Fortress Classic, one of the games I was most addicted to in my life, and a huge time sink1. An entire day could go by with­out real­iz­ing it when I was play­ing TFC, and I pur­posely didn’t buy TF2 when Aaron was get­ting into it too; I knew I wouldn’t stop if I had friends encour­ag­ing the habit.

TF2

 

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  1. Also the same rea­son I haven’t tried World of Warcraft. []

I can’t stop look­ing at it. It’s so…big. http://twitpic.com/23jrfz

1 year, 7 months ago

This is the part where I explain where I've been for the last week

I decided to work on Canada Day and take Monday off instead. It was strange to be pro­duc­tive when it seemed like every­one in this city was out cel­e­brat­ing in the stran­gling heat. At this time of year, I can’t help but think of euca­lyp­tus oil first kisses blue blan­kets shy embraces, con­stantly unsure of whether the mem­o­ries made me happy or sad. Canada Day will never be the same.

I was left feel­ing com­pletely dis­con­nected from the world. In my room, I won­dered what Aaron was doing at his place this year. The fire­works pop­ping out­side my win­dow were so loud it was as if they were going off in my back yard. I didn’t bother to look. It was still just another day.

cat in bag

Dolly can never resist sleep­ing on unfa­mil­iar objects, such as John’s duf­fel bag.

The sec­ond plot was John pass­ing through Ottawa for a bach­e­lor party. It ended much ear­lier than expected after two days of debauch­ery that got too much for even him.

So we had a lot of extra time together over the long week­end though we didn’t do any­thing spe­cial. It was mostly games, sun­shine, dri­ving, three sea­sons of the IT crowd, pop­corn, and duets. Also, three movies were watched: The Hangover (which I agreed not to watch until we saw each other again), The Prince of Tides (to switch gears a bit, and my third time see­ing it this year), and The A-Team (which is what we decided on for a movie in the the­atres, and the likes of which is gen­er­ally only pal­pa­ble dur­ing the sum­mer in the com­pany of other male friends).

I sort of…unplugged. Drifted off in the haze and lost my mind for a lit­tle while.

ginger rose tea

Ginger rose tea. Delish.

I also invited Heather and Sergey to pho with us because they had yet to meet John, and every­one got along swim­mingly. I shouldn’t be sur­prised; Heather and Sergey are type to find some­thing inter­est­ing about any­thing, and John’s the type to say inter­est­ing things.

John explains

John with his sher­bert and hol­i­day scruff, say­ing the kinds of things that make him pop­u­lar to everyone.

Now I’m catch­ing up on work and sleep and alone time.

Holy fuck, I need a blue cardigan.

1 year, 7 months ago