2005 is over and I rang in the New Year with some time spent with friends here, at The Heritage and at Dooly's playing pool. It was a pretty quiet night but at least I got out of the house and wasn't sitting at home channel surfing.
The 29th
I saw King Kong tonight and enjoyed it for the most part. There were some really great scenes that were super fun to watch but then there were some that weren't. Kong actually looked a lot better than I had expected and they did a great job capturing the feel of a real gorilla's mannerisms. There were just so many horrible lines and unneeded sub-plot material that almost made me vomit because it was so cheesy. A lot of time could have been shaved off the movie if it hadn't been for that stuff. I'm all for character development but not the way it was done in this case, unless I'm missing the point somehow.
The 28th
I figured I would have a receipt and gift laden odyssey uptown tonight full of long lines and unappealing characters. I was wrong. The first cashier I dealt with at Mark's Work Wearhouse was super friendly and funny which was unexpected. She must have been new. I returned everything without any problems whatsoever (which was also unexpected) and I didn't have to wait in a single line. I ended up being on time for trivia and now I can put the cash towards winter tires.
It would have been nice to win something at trivia though. I met up with Shawn, Neil and Mark and the place was packed. We tied for third with four other teams and lost. They didn't have a new air hockey paddle yet either so I imagine this is going to be the same situation every week from now on.
I'm worried that there's going to be dozens and dozens of The Neil Forbes CDs that won't sell and that will suck. It's tough to sell an indie CD, especially when we don't play anywhere, and it's even tougher to sell it when no one even knows who you are. I guess it's good that we did it though and if they don't all sell then at least we have something to show for it. I just don't want boxes and boxes of unsold CDs to show for it.
The 27th
I need to stop letting weird little social interactions throw me for a loop. I met up with Ian and Holly today for breakfast and when I went to pay for my $5 meal I handed the waitress/cashier a toonie and asked for two loonies. She said thanks and just put it in the tip drawer. So like a dumb ass I just walked away confused instead of repeating myself like a normal person would and asking for my two loonies so I could leave a $1 tip instead of an unintentional $2 tip. I don't usually tip 40% for my meals. Plus she was wearing what looked like scrubs. Why the hell is a waitress in a diner wearing scrubs? It felt like a dental assistant was serving me my #1 special.
Today and yesterday has had the crappiest weather ever going on. I braved the roads and drove me and Shawn over to Mark's place though. Neil met up with us there and we had lasagna and veggie gumbo. It was pretty damn good and better than anything I would have eaten here. It was good to hang out with Mark for a bit because he'll be leaving fairly soon to go back to Laysan Island for about 2 years this time. That will be weird for him to be gone so long.
There are some total nutjobs in this world. A woman took out a restraining order against Letterman because she alleges that he subjected her to "mental cruelty" for 11 years and forced her to go bankrupt. She asked that Letterman be forced to stay at least three metres from her and not "think of me, and release me from his mental harassment and hammering."
She says she started sending him "thoughts of love" in 1993 and that's when began to use code words, gestures and "eye expressions" to harass her and show his love for her through his TV program.
She claims in one secret message that he invited her to come to N.Y. and become his co-host and also asked her to marry him by saying "Marry me, Oprah" because Oprah was his codename for her.
She could not produce evidence for any of these claims. The restraining order was lifted.
The 26th
So fat…must stop eating excessive amounts of delicious food. I've been eating non-stop for 3 days and it's actually getting pretty tiring at this point. It was all really good though but I have so much chocolate and sweets still waiting to be eaten that it scares me.
I got some good loot for Xmas this year and got to spend some time with the family. That was nice but it was kind of weird without my brother there since he's out west working. I talked to him Xmas day though and his gifts showed up late which is a piss off since they were couriered to him 12 days in advance. Bastards.
Boxing Day was just kind of bleh and it has ended with me paying too much money for a bunch of crappy Greco garlic fingers and now my mouth tastes horribly like garlic and donair sauce.
The 24th
Tonight was a perfect Xmas Eve night. It was mild, calm and quiet. I really should have gone for a nice, long walk but after dinner I was barely able to keep awake. I stuffed myself until I almost burst over at my parents' place tonight. Mom always makes an insanely huge and tasty Xmas Eve dinner. Tomorrow she'll do it all again and I'll eat until I pass out.
I got some nice gifts today. Catherine dropped off some baked goodies, Laine gave me a pin-up girl calendar and some chocolates, and Tyler and Melissa gave me a toy robot, some Bettie Page buttons, and a colour-your-own SpongeBob cookie. All of that plus the Southern Culture on the Skids CD and Ray Condo photos from Greg and Charles last night and the Napoleon Dynamite dart board from Melissa last week. It's not even Xmas yet and that's a pretty good haul in my books.
The 23rd
Hectic. This time of year is always crazy but the gawdamn phone is what's driving me crazy. The phone might ring here maybe 5 times a day on average but the last few days has been about that every couple of hours or more. The ringer will be silenced for much of the holidays.
Tonight was the annual A Christmas Story party and it went pretty well. The place was packed but everyone had a seat and I actually had real food this year and not a bunch of Doritos and crap. Unfortunately, lots of different kinds of foods and various sweets don't tend to mix very well in the guts but I'll be fine I guess. I need to stretch for tomorrow's massive Xmas Eve dinner anyway.
On Monday afternoon, I managed to put a nice, big scratch on a van door with my car mirror. I wasn't too happy about that at all. It was a pretty shitty way to start off my day and my week. But I left a note and the guy that called is a friendly Newfie so hopefully this will get straightened away nicely after Xmas sometime.
On Wednesday night after trivia I almost smashed into a car driving home. I don't know how I didn't see the guy because I took lots of time to look both ways. It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if I should just hang up my keys and sell my car before someone gets hurt.
Oh, and the cracked paddle for air hockey is apparently completely busted now so no more air hockey. Awesome.
The 14th
Holy fuck, enough with the people screwing people and giving them HIV without telling them before they have sex. Another guy is in court out west for giving HIV to 3 women. What the hell is wrong with people!?
Anyway, it stormed here like mad last night and it's still pretty crappy outside. I went to trivia anyway tonight and it turned out there were only 3 other teams. We came in 2nd place because we were sucking a whole bunch but it was ok because I managed to get out of the house and play some air hockey.
I saw a woman at the SuperStore the other day that looked like Jeff Garlin's twin sister. He's the big fat guy from Curb Your Enthusiasm. I saw her again at Shoppers the next day. The resemblance was uncanny.
The 12th
I was watching an interview with John Malcovich today and he mentioned how he and his family went to a Bedrock theme park in the U.S recently. Kind of weird that I should have a dream about a Bedrock theme park only a week ago.
It was mild and the snow went away. Now the bloody stuff is back.
The 9th
We got a bunch of unwelcome snow today which just made everything difficult and dangerous. First of all, I went to go re-shoot a couple of scenes with Neil for his movie but because of the light snow falling everywhere we basically shot everything again. As we were driving back, I almost slammed into the back of a car at an intersection because of the slippery roads. Luckily, there wasn't any oncoming traffic and I was able to steer away from them but it was close. I was even driving slower than normal and braked earlier. I doubt much would have happened damage-wise since I was going so slow but it would have been bad enough. So do I pay the $500 or whatever it is for studded tires or do I chance being able to avoid getting into an accident and not paying damages costing more than my car is worth?
In other fucked up news, what the hell is going on with people who know they have HIV just screwing everyone and giving them HIV without telling them? There's that football player who has at least 2 women suing him and some woman who apparently screwed a bunch of soldiers in Ontario just got put under house arrest and probation. Knowing you're infected and not telling someone beforehand and not using protection is just plain evil. House arrest doesn't cut it for me, judge.
The 8th
For a snack this evening I decided to have dynamite pepperoni sliced up on crackers with cream cheese. It was pretty damn good except I don't know why I keep buying pepperoni. I get the worst heartburn every time and, of course, I only buy the spiciest stuff I can find on the shelf. I complain after I eat it each time but I keep on buying it. I'm stupid and now I feel sick. My stomach is churning and it feels like my throat is on fire. My guts will probably distintegrate. Boy, I'm stupid.
The 4th
The last four days have been pretty frustrating for a number of reasons but I'm trying to find an upside to everything.
Firstly because my damn Mac wouldn't let me login to my OS X account. So that meant I was locked out of my daily routine, my work programs and files, and old email. Thankfully I had a workaround to help me check email and try to figure out the problem. After a lot of tests, backing up data, cursing and message board posts, someone finally led me on the right path to getting this damn thing fixed.
It turns out after mucking around in Unix a bit and doing some trial and error that one measly, little, corrupt preference was causing the problem. Deleting it solved the problem but it caused me days of headaches and lost work time.
The upside is that I understand my Mac quite a bit better and that I didn't drop $100 on a disk utility I didn't need.
Second on the frustration front: I was supposed to meet with a client in Charlottetown the other day so I got up early, hopped in the car and drove in the rain until my wipers screeched to a halt. I was stuck in Bedeque without any wipers in the pouring rain and there wasn't a garage anywhere. I had to drive back slowly with hazards on to Summerside hoping I wouldn't crash into someone, another car or a ditch.
Thankfully Charlie was able to fix them that afternoon but my day was basically wasted as far as Charlottetown was concerned. At least the wipers didn't break when I was further from home or after all of the garages closed.
Lastly, I recently read an article in MacAddict on how to make a steady cam rig so I decided it looked easy enough to make so why not give it a try? Turns out I had to spend a whole afternoon running all over town to every hardware store to pick up all of the items I needed. The combination of the rain, each store only having bits and pices of what I needed, being extra clumsy that day and constantly bumping into things and dropping stuff under the car made for a wonderful frustrating mix.
At least the thing works pretty well and actually didn't take long to make. Hopefully I'll get some use out of it at some point. I'd like to get some interesting shots and get away from so many static shots.
I had a dream the other night that I was driving down MacEwen Road with Tyler and Melissa. She was all dressed up as a goth and driving me and Tyler somewhere. He was in the back jumping around super excited for, I'm guessing, what we saw all along the sides of the road.
All of the buildings and houses were gone and replaced with a gigantic Bedrock theme park. It was still under construction with lots of granite, stone and dust everywhere. The whole road was lined with high chain link fences and all of the buildings looked so cool even though they were still pretty rough. I was sort of disappointed to have been awoken by the phone because I was hoping to have gone in or snuck over the fence or something.
I went to this big baby shower celebration type of thing for Catherine in Charlottetown tonight with Tammy and Mike. It was at A Piece of Cake Restaurant which is a pretty nice spot and a great venue. Lots of people got up and played and a few did poetry readings too.
Tanya was really great, I can see why she won her poetry award for CBC. She wrote a beautiful poem for Catherine and Isabelle and then did two more that were extra impressive because, well, they were great to begin with but she had them memorized and they weren't exactly Haiku length. I couldn't believe how well she delivered them and how well written they were. It was cool to see her talent shine through like that and also to hear her sing. I had no idea she sang too. She's a pretty talented girl.
The night overall was pretty nice. Some great food, nice atmosphere and a lot of good tunes. Catherine's really lucky to have so many friends and so much support. I ate too many cookies though.
 |
   |
 |
