— Warning: Choking Hazard			The 22nd When we consider options for a place to eat downtown, one place that never ends up on the list is Bernie's Fish and Chips. It's been downtown for at least five years in two different locations and I hadn't eaten there even once. My old boss used to rave about it when it came to good, greasy fish dinners. So tonight as I walked home from the mall I passed by the place with an empty stomach then realized I should give the it a try, to be a little adventuresome. Yes, trying a new place for fish and chips, for me, is adventuresome. The front part of the restaurant was deserted except for an old couple in the side room. It wasn't brightly lit and that wasn't because they were going for the ambience. There just weren't enough bare, incandescent bulbs in the room to light it brightly. I sat down and it was apparent that the place was your typical diner, with the appropriate placement of the Pepsi letterboards above the kitchen serving window that listed their specials, and announced the lounge's dart games and pool tournaments. It was pretty depressing. Everything from the cooler filled with bowls of tarter sauce packets, beverages, and ketchup bottles directly in front of me to the décor consisting of fake flowers hanging in the middle of sparse, white walls, and the upper window covered with a small piece of plywood. The music was a selection from a New Country Hits '93 compilation and, sadly, I knew most of the words. The woman in the kitchen looked, walked, and was built like a my previous landlord. As you can probably guess, that's not a flattering list of comparisons as my previous landlord was a short, stocky man with a hefty walk. It was actually pretty disturbing. The waitress was very courteous and friendly. Given all that I saw around me, I would have expected otherwise so I was quite surprised and moreso after realizing I had unintentionally walked in about 10 minutes before the restaurant section was to close. She helped make the place seem a little more cheery than it appeared but "She's in Love with the Boy" by Trisha Yearwood and a loud burp from the old man (or woman) from the other side of the partition quickly set the mood again. The food, for the most part, was great. Big pieces of greasy, deep fried haddock, mashed potatoes and gravy, a meagre helping of peas, a day-old roll, and a thimbleful of sub-par coleslaw. Considering I wasn't even in the mood for something heavy like fish and chips in the first place it was still pretty satisfying. I even got dessert which was ginger bread in brown sugar sauce. A small portion but it was only a buck-fifty after all. Going there at least satisfied my curiosity and my hunger but the idea of eating there again will probably cross my mind as often as I think of going to Gentleman Jim's for liver and fried onions. The 20th Bruce came over tonight and we watched the Two Towers Special Edition, and the extra scenes definitely make the movie much better. I just wish these director's cuts would just BE the movie. If a movie is two and a half hours long, I don't care if they have to make it three hours to fit the stuff in as long as it's good. I pay $10 to see a movie, the more bang for my buck the better. The only thing about LOTR I'm not keen on so far in both movies is Gimli. Not so much Gimli himself, it's more that I just find too much of his dialogue is corny, out of place, or just plain inappropriate for the movie. I mean, dwarf tossing? Come on. But that aside, I think John Rhys-Davies does an excellent job of portraying that character. It's so mild tonight that after Bruce left I sat out on the porch for a good while with no coat necessary. I believe that will be the last of that sort of activity until the spring. It's always good to get one more night like that in before the snow plummets down blanketing everything in frigid, white misery. Speaking of things that are frigid and white, Bruce also brought over a big bag full of dry ice he got from work. I just hope no one mistakes the stuff for real ice. I should probably label that bag appropriately. But it would be pretty obvious to anyone that it's not normal ice as soon as they dropped some into their drink—or scooped it out of the bag with their bare hand for that matter. I don't think I've ever seen the stuff in person but, man, is it cool. We have to use it in a skit or something. The 19th I got this business card a few months ago after taking a cab uptown and it has since enjoyed a prominent and prestigious home on my refrigerator door. I find this card hilarious. So much so that I almost started laughing in the cab when Bloyce handed it to me. If you don't know why this is funny then there's no real way to explain it to you. Sorry. The 16th Well, it's only taken me 2 months to get this done but here are some of the pics from the Los Straitjackets show I was at when I was in Vancouver. Just click the icons to view the full-size image. The 12th Apparenlty there's no such thing as a nap for me. Unless passing out for 3 hours counts as a nap. I knew if I laid down after work that it would mean I'd be completely out of it for the rest of the night and I've proven myself correct again. I really have to stop doing that. So a wasted evening of sleeping has lead to prolonging my backups and such for another night. I spend way too much time on this damn computer but when practically all of my hobbies revolve around it it's hard not to. Now I have to figure out if I should upgrade to Panther which is just another few nights of messing around with the system instead of actually doing something productive. Why couldn't I have chosen reading and ham radio as my hobbies? The 5th Halloween went pretty well this year. Great weather and being on a Friday night made it even better. The only part that sucked was that only 21 kids showed up after I went to the trouble of putting some effort into a presentation. I put a dummy on the roof above the front door with blood dripping down onto the steps. Behind it, standing in the doorway of my office's outside door, was the silhouette of a knife-wielding she-devil. I had a strobe light going for added maniacal effect, a smoke machine in the entry way, and the creepy Halloween music blaring. Unfortunately, I think I actually might have done too well of a job of being scary. A bunch of kids just walked by the house. Oh well. I ate lots of candy, went to the Maros' Halloween party next door which is always a good time (especially because of the pizza), and got to hang out with Charlotte, Kira, and their buddy Josh for the weekend while they were visiting.