— Buy 10 and get the 11th one FREE!			The 27th I remember two of the harshest, meanest driving experiences I ever had involved little old ladies. Once I was driving with a friend and his little brother to the mall uptown right after some really heavy rainfall. There were literally small rivers on the sides of the roads and puddles that resembled small lakes. This little, old lady was walking by herself on the sidewalk and my friend (I think) actually sped up and plowed through one of the giant puddles with the express purpose of soaking her. I distinctly remember a tsunami rising up to overshadow the woman, her arms raising up in a useless defense. A look of fear and disbelief overtook her before the wave came crashing down all over her. My friend and his brother laughed devilishly at the purely evil act. The second time involved two old ladies and me in a car full of people. My friend driving the car spotted the old gals enjoying a late evening stroll and crossed the meridian, swerving directly at them. The headlights zeroed in on them and we could see the complete and utter shock strike them before they DOVE from the sidewalk onto the grass of someone's yard. Again, driver laughed devilishly. We chastised him for his malicious driving tactics but for some reason we were sort of laughing at the same time. Why is that? I mean, the image of the old ladies in shock and diving off the sidewalk was *sort of funny* but I guess it's more of a reaction to something you don't really know how to react to. Or maybe we're all just evil bastards but reluctant to admit it. The 21st So I just finished the two projects sitting at the top of my list. The other night I launched Nathan's new site and then last night I launched my site (finally!). I'm pleased with Nathan's site because it's clean and well-organized. But it's the inner workings of the site that are really cool. Steven (our programmer at work) helped me out with this project and did an excellent job with all of the backend. He developed custom PHP tools for news, photo galleries, gigs, a newsletter, and a bunch of other neat stuff. This leaves it open for other people to update the site's content on a regular basis instead of relying on me to do it. But even if I'm the only one making updates then my job just got a whole lot easier. I actually kind of enjoy updating the site now because of the admin functions' ease of use. Then there's my site... A Flash beast that's put together like a Frankenstein monster. Pieced together over two years (and it shows a great deal in the working files), I learned new ways of doing things and implemented those ideas in some places but left almost archaic methods in other spots. It's like I got a 2003 Lexus or something and am using parts from a Pinto from the 70s to keep it running. So far so good though. It seems to run pretty smoothly and load fast enough. I noticed a few minor bugs and had some others pointed out to me but all in all it works. Now I just need to get my damn portfolio loaded into the site and I'll be happy with it for a while. The 12th I worked a 13-hour day today which sucked rather badly. Is working a 13-hour day ever a good thing though? And now I'm actually considering going in EARLY tomorrow to get caught up. This is ridiculous. Look I'm a Sherpa! Sherp! Sherp! There's a ton of fluffy snow coming down which is always fun plodding through on your way home from work at 10:30 at night. It would have been nice to have had this snow on Sunday when we went tobogganing. That was fun but it didn't last nearly long enough. Surprisingly, I wasn't sore afterwards which is strange considering I get about a minute of exercise every day. I should probably go get tested for diabetes. The 6th Tuesday night I went to see Nathan open for Blue Rodeo at Confed Centre with my mom and her friend Paulette. Not the greatest night to be travelling but it was well worth the drive. Nathan and the band were tight as hell and sounded great—theatres always make a huge difference. With Dale Murray on pedal steel it added a lot to the songs and the keyboard player from Blue Rodeo sitting in on organ for Bottom Dollar Baby sounded sweet. I wasn't sure how well I was going to like the Blue Rodeo show but I was pretty surprised by the performance. It had a ton of energy, sounded great, and had a pretty cool light show. The band was amazing and Jim Cuddy's voice has to be one of the most recognizable voices I can think of. Combining his singing with Greg's is a pretty cool mix. And horns! Except for the Saturday Night Live sax solos, the horn players brought so much to the songs. The band was so tight. It was so good. I was surprised at how many of the tunes I recognized, mostly because of how much my mom used to listen to Blue Rodeo when I was younger. Such a good concert.