The 30th
Mom invited me, my sister and Jason over for dinner again tonight, not even a week after being there for Easter dinner. I’m not complaining, that’s for sure, and I’m not about to pass up another home-cooked meal, especially a feed of roast chicken, scoops of mashed veggies, stuffing and all the gravy I can handle. Completely unrelated to the meal and by no means anywhere near a reflection of its quality, somehow the conversation turned to the so-called “meat” they use in Chunky Soup, the beef-y types in particular, and I was reminded of just how much I used to love the Beef Burger kind when I was younger.
During my heydays of eating things like Chef Boyardee Ravioli and Beefaroni, and various Chunky Soups, I wished dearly that the Campbell’s Soup people would have increased the ratio of miniature beef burger patties to the rest of the Beef Burger soup’s ingredients by five to ten times. The little patties even had little grill marks on them for fuck sakes! A quick check of the Campbell’s website reveals a marked change in their Beef Varieties lineup. Gone is the Beef Burger from days of yore, replaced by what appears to be an attempt to class up the can’s contents by renaming the soup to Sirloin Burger—now with sirloin! Well, shit. You couldn’t have very well called it Sirloin Burger before if it didn’t have sirloin in it, now could you? Wait, you probably could have because you used to call it Beef Burger and that sure as shit didn’t have any real fucking beef in it!
The topic of Chunky’s pseudo-beef reminded me to ask my mom about another dog-food grade, mystery beef canned good from my childhood, namely, Fraser Farm Gravy and Meatballs. Oddly enough, I just so happened to have a photo of said canned goods on my digicam to show Mom to preface my question, taken only days prior when getting groceries because that’s what I do, I take photos of products while grocery shopping like a normal person does.
Mom confirmed that I sure did like to eat those gross things when I was a little kid but couldn’t remember me ever eating them cold, even though I have a recollection of having eaten them cold…from the can…like a hobo…a five-year-old hobo. Chances are she’s right. Chances are I only fantasized about getting my greedy pre-school mitts on a can opener to pry open a can of those sodium gravy-soaked, expired-Alpo-turned-people-food meatballs. There’s a solid possibility that I did do just that when Mom wasn’t around, though. For some reason I can remember getting caught in the act and having the half-eaten can taken away from me. I should have hidden way back in the cupboard and eaten them as quietly as possible in the darkness like some sick, feral child.
While my memory may be fuzzy on what exactly happened, I do know for a fact that the only thing I didn’t like about those meatballs was coming across little hard bits of something from time to time. I have a pretty good idea what those bits might have been and while things in the bone/cartilage family tend to surface first I’m not so convinced of that to rule out the bits to be things not of an animal nature. Actually, that’s probably disturbingly more healthy.
The 29th
I’ve been cooped up in my office far too long lately and will be stuck in here for many more long days as far as I can tell as I try to wrap up some projects. It’s been making me go batty and I needed to get out of the house earlier, to go for a walk and to get some fresh air for a change. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone for a walk and today seemed like a good time to go. It was nice out after all, a calm evening as the sun was beginning to set. I ended up behind Spinnaker’s, took a few photos and threw big chunks of ice down onto the harbour ice like some bored child before winding my way along the harbourfront to take more photos of the fish plant and the construction behind the old Holman’s building. Sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? I should organize vacation packages for tourists looking to have a blast in Summerside in the cold months. There’s lucrative idea, a way to take advantage of a vast, untapped niche market in the tourism industry. The tourist dollars and subsequent suicides are going to start rolling in, I tells ya!
The 28th
Neil and I spent a very unusual Friday evening at a monk’s attic apartment where he talked about starting up some sort of film noir society. We were clueless as to what to expect when we got there even though I was responsible for designing a little leaflet for the event and, in a way, I’m still somewhat clueless to what it was all about. The sparsely-attended meeting (just the three of us) was, to say the least, interesting and definitely not something either Neil or myself generally does on a Friday night. I’m not entirely sure what to take from the whole thing because it did take some paths to odd places conversationally that I wasn’t expecting at all but everything seemed to work out alright in the end. While I’m still confused on many of the details of the film noir society to which I’m now apparently a member of, I am a little clearer on its overall purpose and vaguely understand my role in it all, though only slightly. At the very least, if it means we can convince some people to get together for screenings of movies and shorts then it will make for some more interesting evenings. Though, around here that may be easier said than done.
With my brain still trying to decipher what exactly happened at the film noir meeting, I decided to satisfy a recurring craving for Michael’s pizza so I spent my second Friday in a row eating a pizza combo in the same booth with no other customers in the restaurant section. The 8" combo never disappoints and I’m thinking I should keep this Friday night pizza combo streak going. Hell, we used to go to Michael’s every Friday night to get a huge mess of garlic fingers after watching The X-Files so this is just like old times, except this time I was by myself and The X-Files has been off the air for years…well, the pizza tonight was good anyway.
The 26th
I did pretty good this year with avoiding buying mass quantities of post-Easter reduced-to-clear Easter candy and chocolate. Only a couple of little bags of Mini-Eggs came home with me from the store (so far) and hopefully that will be it because I don’t need to be eating giant chocolate bunnies and bagfuls of chocolate eggs at all, though, I want to. Let’s see how long my meager will power can withstand the seduction of pastel-coloured packaging with big, red sale stickers hanging below them like passive yet powerful lures for the weak and sweet-toothed shoppers that hover around the discount seasonal aisle, the faint aroma of chocolate lingering ever-so-faintly from its cardboard, plastic and mesh bag homes.
Hmm…come to think of it, it sure has been an awfully long time since I’ve had a Mr. Munchie.
The 22nd
I spent most of my night going through the lengthy process of transferring old video to DVD, and am convinced that me and my friends were as annoying as kids today are. I’m also convinced (though, I never really figured otherwise) that I was sadly an embarrassment as the definitive “obnoxious goof/loser” during my adolescent years but I’m sure a lot of people feel that way looking back at videos and photos of themselves as teens. Clayton cheekily posted this Polaroid of me from 1996 on Facebook. Fantastic.
For the most part, we were all loud-mouth, yelling, objectionable youths causing trouble and mouthing off to people at random, usually only from the safety of a moving vehicle though. Granted, I think kids today start on the road to their annoying youth career a little earlier than we did but I don’t have video evidence of me before age fifteen so I can’t truly be certain. All I know is that there is video of me and my high school pals being annoying idiots, causing shit and, at times, being outright dicks. Ah, the good ol’ days. Actually, I seem to remember still being as immature even after college so what does that say?
The 21st
I had a major craving for Michael’s Pizza tonight so found me a booth in the quiet restaurant half and ordered the 8” pizza combo with mushrooms and bacon, and a tall glass of root beer. Other than Michael’s making some of the best damn pizza ever (one of the things we’re lucky enough to have in this town for decades now), the pizza combo satisfies three things: 1) pizza cravings, 2) bang for your buck because it’s more pizza than I can generally eat in one sitting and doesn’t require getting a huge 18" pizza which is the next best bang for your buck, and 3) the little combo pizza are always cooked perfectly, unlike the larger pizzas which can be hit or miss at times. Though, I’ll take a Michael’s pizza that’s a little over-cooked any day over whatever the hell Greco offers…even if it were free.
While I may complain about the lack of restaurant variety in this here town, other places should consider themselves lucky if they ever have a pizza joint this good. Of all places Wellington shares this privilege with Summerside, and while I have eaten at a lot of excellent pizzerias which make delicious pizza pies in their own right, to be sure, none of them are ever the same as Michael’s. They may rival Michael’s but no other place has matched the distinct taste and unique quality that is Michael’s Pizzeria pizza. I guess that’s a good thing because it makes the place what it is—a local tradition to be appreciated by anyone who likes good pizza—instead of some run-of-the-mill chain-style pizza place churning out pizzas made with fried dough covered in ingredients that need to be followed by the word topping instead of ingredients that state exactly what they are. I’d much rather a pizza with ground beef and bacon instead of ground beef topping and bacon topping. Makes me wonder if those places even have real veggies or if they're just coloured bits of industrial-waste plastic.
The 18th
The murder of crows is getting closer to where I sleep. Here they are roosting in trees at the end of my street when I got back from getting groceries. They didn’t fly away when I went closer to take pictures this time, and I wonder if they’re sending me a not-so-subtle message. They’ll be outside my window and waiting for me when I leave the house soon enough. The End is Nigh.
The 17th
Clayton took this photo the other night of Bruce very much enjoying every moment of making me cringe into the corner away from Wally the Python. This photo makes me laugh every time I look at it, mostly because I can imagine Bruce laughing the whole time.
The 14th
Here are few random shots taken with Laine’s digital SLR before I returned it to her. I really should have gone to town with the photo snapping while I had it, instead it sat idle in my room for a few days and all I took were these shots, a few of the cat, some of the dogs and dozens of shots of potatoes for a client. Yes, potatoes. Glamour shots, in fact.
Andrew, Amanda and Bruce invited people over to their place tonight and I was the only one who showed up at first. More Rock Band was played until Shawn C and Clayton popped in later on and the fellas jammed in the basement while I tried to perfect my mad skillz on the drums on easy mode. I still suck. Between the unblinking game play and their smoking I’m not sure which is making my eyes sting more.
At one point Bruce took out his snake. The head kept getting further and further away from him, at one point there must have been a full fourteen inches sticking straight out at me. It was seriously freaking me out and I was recoiling a bit because he kept pointing it at me until I was backed into a corner. He thought that was pretty funny. I eventually worked up enough nerve to touch the damn thing but could only stand it for a second, I found it too weird and disgusting. I tried to take pictures of it while he held the monster in his hands but he couldn’t keep damn thing still so he decided to put it back where it belonged. I felt much better once it was safely back in its resting place and don’t ever need that thing out in the open, exposed around me ever again.
The 12th
I went out to Bruce, Andrew and Amanda’s place tonight to hang out for a bit and watch a movie but, first, the projector was fired up so that Bruce and I could play a couple of rounds of Rock Band on the big screen. I had a helluva time trying to play the drums, even on easy “Black Hole Sun” was tough to follow so I can only imagine what it would be like on expert. Granted, it was my first shot at the game and Andrew said expert mode is actually more like playing real drums at that point instead of single hits that don’t exactly coincide with the way you’re expecting the hits to land. I might try an easy song on expert next time to see if it sits better in my head and can actually play drums more like I’m used to on a real kit.
They rented Into The Wild and the four of us sat back with our popcorn and kettlecorn, their dog Jack eventually jumping up on the couch to lie against me. All I can say about the movie is that it was beautiful to watch, all of it, even the heavy stuff. It really makes you appreciate the character of a person like Christopher even though it’s hard to imagine that someone could just pick up and leave everything, literally everything, behind them. Jack wasn’t into the movie, though, because he was snoring pretty loudly for most of it and kicking his legs a bit while he was dreaming of whatever it is dogs dream about.
The 11th
Friday has always been and still is the day my grandparents ritually come in town from up west to shop, visit, get hair done, etc. Ever since I was a little kid it’s been that way. Other than seeing my grandparents when they would stop in and the off-chance I’d be able to go spend the weekend at their place, my brother, sister and I always looked forward to the treats hiding in my grandmother’s purse. The three of us would hover eagerly around her, pretending we weren’t expecting anything, and waiting to see what sugary confectionary she’d produce to spoil our dinners.
On one end of the sugar scale were the powdered candies like the plastic-wrapped rolls of Love Hearts, the flat, shiny packs of Sweet Tarts and the appropriately named Garbage Candy in the little plastic garbage can with the pop-up lid full of refuse-shaped candies. Those varieties always led to that citric acid burn on one’s tongue after consuming the handfuls of pastel-coloured bits of tart candy.
On the other end we would find such tasty treats as Kit Kat Bars, Junior Mints, both varieties of M&Ms, and boxes of Smarties. Any time I got Smarties I would dump them out onto the table, separate them by colour and eat them one-by-one until all of the groups of colours had the same amount in each. At that point I would eat one from each group, rotating through the colours until the last red one was gone. Yes, to answer that age-old question, I did eat the red ones last and, yes, I have OCD. Nice to see it developed in such a yummy way at such a young age. Although, when they introduced the blue Smarties to the mix it altered my system and the blue ones were then the last in line to be consumed. Sorry, Red, that’s just the way it had to be. No hard feelings.
After I finished my Smarties and convincing myself that the dark brown ones tasted differently than the light brown ones, me and my siblings would have Smarties box horn/whistle blowing matches. Each of us would stick the open end of our Smarties box into our mouths and blow as hard as we could. The result: a hollow, tight honk issuing from the closed end of the box, and the taste of wet cardboard in our mouths.
Nature vs. Nurture: I guess it’s not very difficult to see why I developed such a sweet tooth.
The 10th
I borrowed Laine’s digital SLR and went to my parents’ place to get some pics of the dogs. Winnie ran away from the camera and tried to hide in Mom and Dad’s bedroom but I managed to get snap a few pics of her and Khaly anyway. Khaly was up on the bed with Dad while he ate ice cream and Fudgee-Os, and watched Trailer Park Boys. Winnie tried her best to hide around the bed or seek Dad’s protection up on the bed from the flashy thing that steals people’s souls.
They’re both such big, spoiled babies, as evidenced by the fact that Dad fed them each a spoonful of his ice cream.
The 9th
This logo is just awful and the most un-church-like design I can think of. I know more is going on in that church than just hymns and sermons, and I suppose it fits a church-related youth group or family centre but it’s gaudy (not God-y), clunky and even makes use of a hackneyed, groaner of a swoosh to boot. Why is “United” downplayed so much in the composition? It’s like the designer forgot all about it and at the last eye-darting moment awkwardly wedged it into the other words hoping no one would say anything because they’d be too wrapped up admiring the literally “united” paper cut-out family poorly wrapped around the world.
“Hey, everyone. We’ve given our church a trendy, contemporary logo like some other logos I saw on the Internet back in 1999. Here’s a checklist of cool things we felt should be incorporated into our logo: 1) A globe because we have churches all over the world and globes are totally in right now, 2) a family holding hands that wraps around this big, old world of ours (but not as old as those scientists say it is) to show that we are one big, united (wink) family, and 3) a swoosh because swooshes mean new and cutting-edge. That’s what the church is after all, we need to show everyone in our logo that we’re with the times and hip to it all. So what does everyone think?”
“Why does is say ‘Trinity Church’?”
“No, it says ‘Trinity United Church’. See? Right there, see it? It says ‘United’. It's all good.”
The 7th
Troy and Carol invited people over to their place in K’town tonight for Troy’s thirty-fifth birthday party and were nice enough to put me on the guest list. He celebrated in style with a bottle of tequila that a paltry royalties cheque for his graphic novel couldn’t entirely cover and with a doomed bumblebee piñata. Patrick risked life and limb while Old Man Little busted out his trusty cane and whacked the living shit out of the beeñata until it was decapitated, hemorrhaging candy and condoms all over the living room floor, and Troy was able to wear its head as a trophy.
Most of the night involved taking turns playing Guitar Hero, and I actually decided to play this time. I sucked badly but it was still fun and addictive, I know I’d never stop playing it if I owned it. Troy’s night took a turn for the worse and saw him spending the latter half of his party praying to the porcelaine. That was unfortunate and probably not a very pleasant time for Troy but I had a great time, got to see some people I hadn’t seen in a while like the Brunets, Andrew and Amanda, and Shadow the elderly dog.
What fun night out for me would be complete without something unfun and painful happening though? When it was time to leave, on the way out to the car I slipped on the rain-slicked ice and banged up my knee pretty good. I’ve got a date with an icepack when I hit the sack. Hot diggity.
The 4th
Luckily, the “in like a lion” shit storm that crapped all over us this weekend didn’t continue into yesterday so I was able to avoid going to Halifax by bus and hitch a ride with Kathy instead. Neil came with us too and it would be the last we would see of him for a while since he’ll be on his way up north next week to teach. Stay warm, Neil Forbes. Stay warm.
My follow-up appointment for my surgery wasn’t until the afternoon which left me with some time to kill beforehand. The sunny, mild day was a welcome change and made for good walking-around-the-city weather. I ambled my way to the hospital with a bit of Superunknown on the iPod, looked for a washroom upon arrival and discovered that the scent of the anti-bacterial soap immediately made me feel ill. It brought me right back to when I was in my hospital room washroom during my recovery except this time I didn’t need a nurse to clamp off my lumbar drain so I could take a leak.
They had me fill out a some questionnaires in the clinic about being half-deaf and stuff like that before I went in to see the docs. When the team came in to chat they seemed very pleased with my recovery, a couple of them behind me looking at my incision scar and clamp marks while another doctor talked to me about my head stuff. It was a little distracting and gave me the sense of being on display for the scientific community like some bewildered specimen of ape brought back from Borneo for study. The doctors do a test to check my inner ear by grabbing the sides of my head and snapping it quickly to each side while I try to keep my eyes focused on the doc’s nose. They were pleased with whatever my eyes did or didn’t do, which is good I guess. If they’re happy then I’m happy.
Thankfully they explained to me what the blockage in my ear hole was all about, too. The ear canal was shortened for some reason and sealed somewhere to keep my head juice from pouring out. Vague, I know, but I ain’t no doctor so I couldn’t exactly follow every detail of their explanation. All I know is that they stuffed fat they cut from my belly into my noggin to keep my brain from rattling around too much. Actually, I think they said it was meant to line the incision area, preventing cerebral-spinal fluid from leaking out because apparently that’s bad…bad enough to give me a damn spinal tap type of bad. The post-op CT scan they did the day after my surgery shows the blob of fat pretty clearly and all of the swelling on that side which weirds me out but I still find plenty interesting. I’m not exactly enthused about having this weird skin lump in my ear but I’d rather have a skin lump in my ear than a tumour lump in my head.
As I expected, the appoinment lasted less than ten minutes and left me wondering if the drive and bridge toll were even worth it. Such a long way to go for seemingly so little, and I was then left to stick around Halifax until 7:15am today because there aren’t any gawddamn busses or shuttles going back in the afternoon. That gave me lots of time to make my way back downtown to meet up with Shawn at Bryanna’s, and take pictures of ducks and pigeons in the park along the way.
Shawn and I went out to eat at Your Father’s Moustache where I got a mighty good plateful of tasty pad thai at half price, and then we hit up Dio Mio for bountiful portions gelato in waffle cones. There’s something oddly amusing about two bald, bearded dudes walking down the street together eating gelato on a cool March evening, and why I didn’t take a photo I’ll never know.
Back at Bryanna’s, Nadia made herself a colourful salad and some salmon that looked plumb delicious to me and I would have been a lot more envious had I not been so full of noodles and Italian-style ice cream. The lot of us settled in for a night of TV watching now that their apartment had been outfitted with a cable-enabled television set, and it made me realize again why I cut my cable package in half. Reality TV c-r-a-p. One show was about a hard-ass dude who simultaneously trains dogs and fixes relationships, and another was some terrible, phoney-bologna documentary-style paranormal show with the worst acting. After everyone went to bed I ended up channel surfing for hours on end even though I had to be up at 6:30am. TV is the Devil and I am his weak servant.
Shawn and I hopped on the bus at 7am, me with only two hours of shut-eye and no breakfast. By the time we hit Amherst the bus driver informed us that passengers going to PEI won’t be able to board their connecting bus because it was stuck on the opposite side of the bridge, high winds closed it down and we were more or less stuck. The options were to keep going to Moncton and hope the 2pm bus would be able to cross, or group up with fellow Island-bound passengers and call a cab to take us across the bridge. Cab fare to PEI was $138 so Shawn called his papa to come rescue us from the mall- and fast food-infested expanses of Amherst, where we would need to entertain ourselves for an hour or two. Not an easy task, I know from first-hand experience.
We decided to get some breakfast at Burger King, later questioning this terrible decision as there was a Smitty’s nearby and a Zellers restaurant in the mall, both of which serve actual breakfast foods. Feeling ill before I had even finished my very breakfast-y Classic Chicken Sandwich, we sat back in the booth and soaked up BK’s casual yet sophisticated atmosphere (and the smell) and played a crossword like some old married couple. Yay to being stuck in Amherst!
Shawn’s dad showed up eventually in the McNallymobile to spirit us away from the Town That Never Entertains and as we entered the home stretch it became apparent that the bridge had opened back up to high-sided traffic. Of course it would do this, and we would have been better off taking the bus out of Moncton in a couple of hours time which would have meant three things: 1) money saved on bridge and gas, 2) no mind-numbing wait in Amherst, and 3) a fairly certain chance my breakfast would not have consisted of a deep-fried, rendered chicken sandwich from Burger King.
