The 30th I bought some groceries tonight and saw Strawberry Mini-Wheats on the shelf for the first time since seeing the commercial on omnipresent American TV. The original frosted flavour is, in my opinion, the best of all the flavours but the brown sugar flavour is the runner-up. I skipped the vanilla flavour because I know for a fact that I won't like it. I know that it would end up being a gross pile of soggy, vanilla wheat sitting in sugary, vanilla milk just like the maple flavour does. I don't like maple flavoured milk. I gave the strawberry flavour a go tonight and while they aren't all that bad I'm not very keen on the sweet, pink milk I ended up with. The flavour is pretty mild compared to the types of flavours they add to other more sugary cereals but I think I'll stick with the original frosting from now on. There was a time when the sweeter, more chocolatey, and diabetes-y my milk ended up being, the better. Count Chocula was the best for that but Strawberry Honeycombs were good too. Funny thing is, I never really ate many of those sugary cereals until after I moved out because my mom very smartly did not buy that junk for us when we were kids. From time to time we'd end up with Golden Grahams or Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and my grandmother always made sure there was a box of Froot Loops in the cupboard when I visited. More often than not, though, we had stuff like Cheerios, Special K and Shredded Wheat. I'm glad she didn't buy the sugary stuff regularly because I would have been an even fatter kid than I was. I thankfully got my fill of that crap about three months after living on my own. The 28th Just for the record, I normally stay away from light body text on a dark background in web design because of the print factor and also because it can be really hard on the eyes, especially with lengthy copy. In the case of this new Ramblings design, though, I had to go with it because anything else would look dumb. It hurts my eyes to read more than a few paragraphs but I don't care. At least it's not some horribly garish default colour like blue, pink or purple. The 27th The Fountain was playing at City Cinema tonight so I drove up there with Shawn and Laine. We stopped at Value Village and I actually managed to find a new t-shirt. It's navy blue, big surprise. We ate at Rum Runners and then headed over to get tickets. With a chilled, silver Zero bar in hand, I settled in to watch the movie and after it was all said and done I thought it was awesome. The performances were really impressive and even though the story was confusing I still liked it. After Shawn gave some perspective on it with his theory, things seemed to make a lot more sense but I'm sure it's still quite open to interpretation. A lot of the visuals and concepts were really screwed up to and looked amazing. So many little details and subtle touches too; everything from similar patterns, designs and themes between the eras to quiet sound effects that added so much to the atmosphere. I really wish it was still playing because I'd definitely like to go see it again on the big screen. A movie like that just isn't the same on a TV. The 22nd I saw a commercial the other day for Orville Redenbacher popcorn where they had a CGI version of the old guy wearing an iPod talking all hip and cool about gigabytes and compact design. I was utterly astounded. They poorly managed to make that an analogy for the big flavour they pack into each little kernel. As lame as that is, the fact that they brought ol' Orville back from the grave in a poorly animated way is both lame and completely tasteless! Let the guy rest in peace! I mean, look at him. It looks like they stuck a wig, glasses, and one of Orville's old suit 'n' bow tie numbers on the Crypt Keeper and injected the sonnavabitch with as much collagen as he could hold. Deadenbacher has the damn ear buds in the whole time too! You have to see the commercial to really appreciate the creepiness and lameness of the whole thing. It makes me NOT want to buy their popcorn because they couldn't find a better way to market their popcorn and relied on crappy CGI execution and a pitiful concept instead. Here, check out the commercial on YouTube. I just watched an old commercial of his and the actor doing the voice in the new one doesn't even sound like him! Orville must be rapidly popping around in his grave. The 21st My mom invited me over for roast chicken dinner today and it hit my starving belly at just the right time. Nothing is better than chicken, mashed potatoes, carrots, turnip and stuffing smothered in thick, delicious, mouth-watering gravy. Nothing except homemade chocolate chunk cookies for dessert. I had half a dozen and though it was a good idea at the time it wasn't so much later on. We decided to work off the fullness of dinner by playing a couple of intense rounds of crokinole. I haven't played this game in years but I guess my parents play it quite often now with friends. They even got some of that shuffleboard wax powder which was pretty nifty seeing as we didn't have the benefit of that stuff when we played as kids. I actually think I want to start playing that instead of most of the board games I play now because it's a game of skill and not just dumb luck. My dad seems to be pretty good at it and now I wonder if my old board is hidden away somewhere so that I could play more. Over-enthusiastic checker flicking can lead to a sore fingernail but with practice I'm sure I'll toughen up. The 20th Laine invited people over to her place again to play games. This time I went over with Nathan and Shawn to play 90s Trivial Pursuit. I thought I had learned my lesson from the week before but it would seem after another agonizingly long game that I have not. At least I won this time. Shawn told me about Lay's Curry Chips but he hasn't been able to find them anywhere since moving back to PEI. I been looking for them too but haven't seen them at any of the grocery stores. Today, however, I happened to be getting gas at the Ultramar downtown when I came across a display with just curry chips on it. Joy! I bought a bag and Shawn was right—they be tasty! Although, they may be contributing to my current bout with heartburn. They're almost like roast chicken chips in a way except the goodness of spicy curry. The 13th Laine's birthday was yesterday so she had a little get together at her place tonight. I made her a cake and brought her a helium balloon, and then other people brought tons of food and sweets. Yada yada, I ate too much and felt sick. But there were some tasty items for sure. Just when it became very obvious there was going to be too much food, Sharon showed up with chocolate eclairs and cream puffs. Then there was a serious predicament on our hands. Melissa and Tyler brought the Spongebob version of the game of Life so we played a round of that. That was the first time I had ever played that game and I was Squidward, which seems like an obvious character for me to use in the game. Laine took some photos but this is the only one I'll share because there are others of me looking like a goof and one of Sharon showing us her I Heart Spring Break undies. After that we played a game of 90s Trivial Pursuit that just went on for way too long. I think something drastic has to be done to the rules of that game so that it doesn't turn into an arduous quest for coloured wedges after three hours. You know, when people start to wander off, fall asleep and entirely lose interest but are somehow still determined to see the game through until the end. The 12th I went to visit my grandparents and stay the night at their place because I didn't get a chance over the Xmas break. I usually go up before New Year's but it just wasn't in the cards. When I was a kid I would go up Boxing Day and not come back until after New Year's but there's no way I could do that now. They also used to have just two or three channels then and the whole time I'd have to endure those horrible holiday wishes promos during the commercial breaks when my grandparents watched their "stories". I always hated those damn promos that went on forever, one company after another thanking people for their patronage and wishing everyone a Happy New Year. The only thing that ever made some of them tolerable was the clip of the kitties and puppies playing with tree decorations in the background. Now there's a satellite dish up there and even though there are hundreds of channels it's still tough to find something good on TV. One channel might as well be called CSIMTV because all they played for hours on end was CSI: Miami. That's the worst CSI of them all! Why would anyone want to watch six hours of David Caruso taking his sunglasses off, putting them back on and crouching down over corpses? The 10th Dad's birthday was today so I went up to Sears with Mom to pick up a new recliner we all got him as a gift. It's pretty comfy, I must say. Mom made a big dinner as usual and it was damn good. Chicken Schnitzel, I think it was called, with hot fudge ice cream crèpes and strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert. I actually didn't eat until I was on the verge of busting but I did try both desserts. After dinner we sat around and watched skits, which was sort of odd since I don't usually show the skits and movies to my family. The season finale of Shawn Says was a big, tasteless hit. The 7th I've decided that when I become filthy, stinking rich I'm going hire someone whose sole duty is to buy me socks and make sure I have a brand new pair to wear every day. I'd give this person some sort of pretentious title, to be decided upon hiring, full of pomp and self-importance. A generous salary would be offered as well. This person would also be responsible for gathering my worn-once-only pairs of socks each day and have them laundered and folded at the end of every week before being stored in a local storage facility. Then, every November 1st, these socks would be shipped overnight in one of those old, wooden crates to a random inner city homeless shelter somewhere in Canada. The homeless and downtrodden (hobos perhaps) would then be treated to new socks worn-once-only by a bona fide millionaire. Seems kind of like a slap in the face to tell them where they came from but they'd be good quality socks and the gift comes from the heart. Like I said, when I'm filthy, stinking rich but not until then. The 6th Well, this is the new design for 2007. I was barely used to the old one and a whole damn year has gone by already. Ever since I watched The Good, The Bad and The Ugly a while back I've been thinking about coming up with a new design emulating Italian movie posters. There were so many great poster designs for Leone's movie—the cover of the special edition DVD is especially cool—but I ended up looking at more of the horror and thriller genres than western so this is what I ended up creating. It will end up being much more appropriate come October. And if you can read Italian, please don't correct my grammar because I used a bastardized translation from Babelfish. Mike, Tammy and her cousin Patrick came over tonight to play some Monopoly. She left early, though, because apparently Mike was making some remarks she wasn't keen about. A three player game has a much faster pace but it would have been nice to have her stay. I felt sort of bad after I made Patrick go bankrupt and he spent the next two hours or something sitting around while Mike and I handed money back and forth to one another until he destroyed me. There should be some kind of buy-in option like poker but, then again, the game lasts too damn long as it is.