The 28th My parents used to always make hamburger in tomato or mushroom soup for supper, and serve it with mashed potatoes and peas or corn. It's so simple and good that it's one of my favourite comfort foods. My grandmother made that too and there was always something about how well-cooked the beef ended up being when she made it that it is making my mouth water right now. Ground beef is great and all but I've found that veggie "ground beef" is actually quite acceptable to the palate. I decided to try making comfort foods and replace the beef with the soy, partly in an effort to eat a little healthier, partly as an experiment. Well, I'm happy to report that in tomato or mushroom soup the veggie beef holds up and I've been eating it steadily over the last week or so. The good thing about it is that you can just toss the soy into a casserole dish, mix it with one of the soups, layer on some frozen peas and corn, seal the deal with thick layer of mashed potatoes and top the lot of it off with some shredded cheddar. Pop that sucker into the oven for a bit and it's like a faux Shepherd's Pie after a half hour. Plus you don't even need to pre-cook the "beef", the potatoes are the biggest effort but, holy mother of Jeff, it's worth it. I am seriously salivating thinking about eating this mess of veggies in their various forms and varieties. Dare I heat up the remainder of the casserole sitting in the fridge at 3:30am? Tempting…so very tempting. The 27th I came to the horrible realization today that I definitely have bitten off more than I can chew. I knew my workload was getting to be pretty heavy but it just hit home today and I'm completely fucked. I can't say no to work and now I'm drowning in it. Yet, I still can't manage to drag my ass out of bed much before noon. Sigh. It would be different if all of the work was actually work-work like design and production but a large portion of my projects require me to write vast amounts of information out. It hurts my head because some of it tends to be complicated and technical so that my programmer knows how things should look/work based on the client's needs, and then there are the proposals and quotes I need to write as well. All of it is extremely fun stuff to do. I just love it. Boy, it's great. I'll have to start with going to bed before 2am, getting up by 10am at the latest and working my ass of straight for the next few weeks to get anywhere near caught up. I don't want clients yelling at me and I don't want to have an anxiety attack—both of which probably aren't that far off. The 23rd I don't understand why things need to be so needlessly complicated. I take forever to do things but I finally managed to find a device that would easily allow me to convert analogue video to DV straight into my Mac. This is, of course, due to the fact that for some reason my Canon DV cam won't act as a pass-through device for analogue-to-DV. If it did I could have saved myself a firm chunk of scratch, many headaches and a lot of time. So because I take forever to do things, I didn't actually take the video converter out of its box until three months after I bought it. I gave it a whirl and the audio and video quality absolutely sucked the proverbial big one. It's totally useless to me. I tried different cables, configurations, applications, and sources but nothing worked. Things actually managed to look worse after a call to tech support informed me that their manual listed the jumper settings incorrectly. Even switching them didn't help and, because I had waited so long to try this damn thing out, the place I bought it from would no longer accept returns. Out of frustration I gave up for the time being, wondering how much I could get for this thing on eBay. It went back on the pile of things I'd look at again after I stopped being so pissed off. It sat there for a while. I called tech support back today in hopes of getting someone else on the line who might have some insight into my problem and be able to magically fix the problems I was having. They basically told me it should be working and that I should try connecting it to another computer. Good suggestion but not exactly the most convenient situation since the only Mac I have access to in town would be at my former employer's office and I'd have to drag the box, cables, source footage, a VCR and a DVD player with me. It was a hassle to do all unconnecting, packing up and whatnot but I called them up and, thankfully, they had a Mac sitting around I could plug into and test things out on a different system. After plugging into the G4 and capturing footage flawlessly from both the VCR and DVD player I quickly realized that my secondary FireWire/USB card in my own Mac was to blame. I suspected as much but I had no way to confirm it. I can't use the fried FireWire ports in my Mac because, well, they're fried and this third-party card just didn't have the juice to grab DV video from this box. Although my iPod, external drives and DV cam all work without a hitch. Go figure. Problem solved, right? Not really because I'm going to have to get another Mac if I'm going to be able to use this converter. Either that or try to figure out how to replace my original ports which seems like a daunting task. Besides, I need a new Mac anyway and I'd love to get my mitts on a brand new Mac Pro with two 3.0Ghz DualCore Intel Xeon "Woodcrest" processors. Oh my, yes. I'm going to go look at the Mac Pro specs now, drool a bit, and wonder if I really need to spend thousands of dollars on equipment so that I can transfer several hours of VHS footage to DVD while I have a DVD-Recorder sitting in the living room. (I think this may have officially been the geekiest post I've ever made.) The 22nd Trivia again tonight (woohoo…ugh). At least it's something to do and lately we've been doing pretty good. We would have tied for third place tonight but someone marked our score wrong and this wouldn't be a problem if the host would just hand everyone's sheet back to them afterwards. Instead I find out hours later when I come across a pile of sheets on a table. Whatever. It would have been ten bucks split between four people. It barely pays for the trivia itself. I ended up staying at the pub until after closing time with Nathan and Shawn because D'arcy kept buying both of them beer with a bunch of money he won. Between the pitcher he bought himself and the beer his second-cousin bought him, Shawn must have put away at least a dozen beer. Must be nice to just have a bunch of free money to blow on dozens of beer on a Thursday night. D'arcy said he sat down at one of the VLTs and someone had left without realizing they had a free bonus round or something. Without even dropping a quarter into the machine he scored three-hundred gawddamn bucks. Lucky bastard. I did find a crumpled up fiver under a nearby table though. Nice. The 17th Seeing as there was nothing going on tonight I figured it might be a good idea to go see Zodiac in Ch'town as it probably won't ever come to our theatre. I drove up there with Shawn and Nathan, and we decided on risking a potentially terrible meal at the The Royal Tandoor since it was so awful last time. The prospect of butter chicken and na'an bread melted away any trepidation I had about horrible (or no) service and an empty buffet table. What a welcome surprise I had upon walking in the door to see 1) a waitress, 2) a full buffet table, and 3) clean tables. Not only that but this older gentleman wandered around explaining what certain dishes were and what they were made of, bragged up how tasty they were and when we could expect refills on dwindling buffet delicacies. Night and day. Plus the food was excellent, unlike last time with the crunchy rice and so-so dishes. The butter chicken was in abundance and slightly different this time, more tomato-y and seemingly less rich. I prefer the old recipe but it was still mighty tasty. I filled up on that as much as I could and ate way too much, resulting in serious amounts of pain but I got over it by the time we reached the cinema. Zodiac was great. I've always been fascinated with that case so I was really interested to see the film and how close it would be to the documentaries I'd seen in the past. I was really impressed by how well they nailed the look of the 70s, the performances and the music choices. Not only that but they had a couple of amazing overhead shots that I'm still trying to figure out. They also showed one of the more disturbing stabbing scenes I've ever seen. The hooded nutcase just effortlessly stabbed away into a young couple in a rapid, automatic way that just made me feel very strange. The screaming, the sound effects, and the girl watching as her boyfriend gets stabbed didn't make the scene any less unsettling. I have to go back and watch the documentary I have packed away somewhere. Maybe I could start borrowing lots of books and videos on various serial killers from the public library, look them up on the public computers and leave with some of the windows still open, and constantly do the same thing in book searches at the Coles and Indigo in-store computers. It wouldn't take long for me to be known as "that weird dude who's into serial killers". Then I might as well just start wearing Charles Manson shirts and get a ferret and name him Paul (after Paul Bernardo). Though that scenario is quite exaggerated, I've heard of someone in town who's been known to do some of that. You know who you are, cab-man. The 11th Against my better judgement and due to the fact that there isn't a decent place in town to go for breakfast on Sundays these days, I went to eat breakfast with Nathan, Ian and Holly at The Two Sisters. They don't give you free refills on your coffee, their portions suck, they deep fry their potatoes and their bacon, if I'm not mistaken. The lingering odour of bacon and fryer fat on my clothes would suggest they do. At least their breakfast is cheap and their homemade toast is mighty good but that doesn't make up for the rest of it. I realized when I was sitting there sipping my crappy coffee that I really need to carry a small digital camera around with me at all times. I saw a woman sitting across the room who totally had a Wrath of Khan hair thing going on, except it was on the permed side. It was uncanny and you can't appreciate this without seeing it. Having a photo of her and her hair would have been the best thing ever. It was like this grey and white, curly plateau of hair that sloped back into a long permed mullet. Perfectly formed actually, a Chia Pet quality of sorts. I wonder if she has a bone to pick with Kirk? Oh, why don't I own a digital camera yet!? At least I have my memories. The 10th I went to see 300 with Shawn and Nathan tonight after a long wait and watching the trailers many times. I was surprised by how few people were in the theatre and, of course, I had the two people in the whole place that felt the need to talk and kick my seat. I did my best to ignore them so I could focus on the blood spatter, decapitations, dismemberments, impalements and mounds of Persian corpses. All I can say is that the flick looked awesome, was gruesome, and had lots of murderous warfare and bloody brutality. There were so many amazing shots and seeing the Spartans' battle tactics and the bloodbath they created was impressive. They make wrestlers look like fair ladies in dainty delicates. I find it so strange that Paolo from Lost played Xerxes because I didn't recognize him at all until Shawn pointed it out. Maybe I'll have to give him a second chance as Paolo after seeing him play such a megalomaniacal creep of a ruler in 300. The 8th Today was spent in Charlottetown because I had to have a lunch meeting and wanted to try and cram in some more meetings while I was there but no dice. It always seems like such a waste to write off a whole day for a forty-five minute meeting. It was productive though (and I got a free lunch) but being in Charlottetown always means I spend money while I'm up there. Between eating at restaurants all the time, buying CDs, and seeing bands play I don't even want to tally up how much I've spent in the last two weeks. I stopped by Tyler and Melissa's new place and hung out with her and Jade for a little bit. They have a really nice place in a nice neighbourhood. They also have a big patio built around a giant tree stump which is pretty neat. I was going to go home after that but Kira had mentioned that the now nineteen-year-old George was going to be in town so I figured I might as well stay up for a bit and maybe go see a movie. Again, no dice. I just hung out with Jamie, Nikki and Kira for a bit, George never showed and I figured trivia would be a better bet for the evening since Kyle is home for a few days. We won first place. Richie Rich's butler's name is Cadbury. Nice work, Kyle. I picked up some sushi to go in the afternoon so I'd have something good for supper when I got home. Though, I was starving before I left for home and eating take-out sushi with no chopsticks or soy sauce in my car seemed like a bad idea. What seemed like a better idea was getting something quick on the way out of town. I decided on a cheeseburger from Peter Pan. It was a very good decision. I had never eaten there in my entire life and always told myself that next time I'm in town I'd go in and get something. It took me long enough to finally try it and the burger was so damn good. It was like a burger from a dairy bar or the carnival except way better and it wasn't served by a carnie, it was served by a cute girl with a nose ring instead. Real, juicy ground beef topped with super-grilled onions, ketchup, and mustard on a grilled sesame seed bun, served in a checkered paper wrapper in one of those little cardboard trays. I'm drooling right now and want three more of them. The 4th I drove up west and stayed at my grandparents' place last night after spending some time sitting in my car in the Canadian Tire parking lot listening to the Quirks & Quarks podcast, eating trail mix, and watching the moon disappear into the Earth's shadow. While a lunar eclipse isn't exactly exciting under those circumstances it definitely was neat to see. Once I got to their place, Trudy came over with her nephew Ashton. I brought out some toy trucks I used to play with when I was a kid for him to play with. Ashton's a pretty funny little guy and looks just like his dad, Ronald*, who I hung out with when I was younger. The weird thing is, Trudy still lives across the road with her parents, and Ashton lives next door in the house Ronald and Mary bought right next to his parents. I don't live far from home but next door would be a little too close for me. After they went home, me and my grandparents played some Queens but Hubert was feeling pretty sick with a really bad cold so we called it quits after a couple of games. I felt bad for him because being ninety and having a painful chest cold must be the at top of the suck list. I just hope he feels better soon. After they went to bed it was time to catch up on some Letterman and Conan, and eat a whole bunch of stuff I don't need. Let's run down the list, shall we? - two small cinnamon rolls (after eating three earlier in the evening) - a plain cheese slice sandwich made with store-bought white bread - a peanut butter sandwich made with store-bought white bread - a chocolate chip cookie - roughly three cookies that are apparently made with ruffled potato chips and mint chocolate chips For lunch today (essentially my breakfast), I had pancakes, beans and sausages with strawberry shortcake for dessert. I certainly don't ever need to worry about going hungry when I visit. (*As a side note, I once went snowmobiling with Ronald when I was probably about twelve. I reluctantly put on my grandfather's ill-fitting snowmobiling suit and stomped through the snow across the road to see how much fun awaited me. Before we left, he took a swig of something and offered some to me. I asked him what it was. He laughed his shrill, almost witch-like laugh and replied, "Moonshine." I passed on the offer. Then we headed out on the snowmobile, a winter recreational vehicle that at times hit eighty clicks, driven by a twelve-year-old who drinks moonshine kept in a jar in his uncle's garage.) The 2nd My great uncle Emmett's funeral was today so I went to the funeral home in Tyne Valley for the service. Of course, I was a little late and had to sit in the hallway of all places even though there were available chairs inside. I guess walking in during a eulogy is probably bad funeral etiquette. In any case, the service was nice except for the constant God-stuff. I know he and his family are God-faring relatives of mine but the service, I think, needs to focus more on the man who passed away instead of talking about how great God is. It was sad to see how upset my great aunt and my grandfather were. Emmett was his younger brother and his other brother, Sherman, died years ago now. I can't imagine how strange it must be to lose a sibling but it seems that when you get to be their age that they view death differently. I can't really explain it, I guess it's just inevitable acceptance. After the interment at the church in the freezing wind, I raced home to get some more work done before the end of the day. Then, despite an impending storm, I went to Charlottetown for Kira and Andrea's art show at Beanz. They had some really nice pieces, mostly abstract, a pretty good turnout and some snacks. Andrea played a few songs, I ate cookies, people bought artwork, and then it was time to clean up. A success it would seem. George and I went to Subway before heading back to Kira's to hang out for the evening. The guy who made our subs—pardon me, the Sandwich Artist—had all of the personality and panache of a tired zombie but at least my sub was good. Thank you, zombie sandwich artist. Thanks for wearing gloves! After the majority of friends and family left Kira's, the rest of us hung out for the night and it was soon made evident by the storm outside that me and George were going to be stranded at the apartment. Sleepover! The lot of us went down the street regardless of the weather for some Chinese food at the China Garden. George insisted on ordering his meal in a Homestar voice and the restaurant's security guard succeeded in making me despise him for no apparent reason other than I didn't like the cut of his jib. Andrea called it a night, I went back to the apartment with the others with a belly full of more food that I didn't need at all, and sat back to watch movies formatted for TV. Jamie played DS, Nikkie played mahjong, George snored and Kira went to bed. I was left to watch Eraser on TBS and quickly realized it was a terrible, terrible movie. Oh, terrible and foolish. I decided to go to sleep after Bandits didn't appear to have any redeeming qualities except for the Dylan songs. The 1st Now my algae eater is dead. What gives?