That name again is Mr. Plow.

The plow went by and did a lovely job of removing the wheels from the black bin, and the operator or some passerby was nice enough to stick the broken wheels into the snow bank. It would have been a better idea to just throw them into the bloody bin seeing as they’re now garbage, rather than plant them in the snow like a flag declaring just how busted the wheels are. “Hey, just wanted you to know your bin wheels are broken off and busted and it’s going to be a bitch to cart it around but at least you know where the wheels are. Cheerio!”

I drove up to Ch’town to meet up with Mike from college, who was in town on business and is someone I haven’t seen in years. Normally I’d steer clear of meeting up with a person I haven’t talked to in forever one-on-one but Mike was always pretty easy-going and generally an all-around good guy so I figured it would be good to hang out for a bit.

I picked up him at his hotel and we decided to grab a bite to eat at Churchill Arms, a place that never lets me down when I’m hungry. We talked designer stuff which was great for a change considering I don’t get the opportunity to chat to designers very often, and caught up on things from the last ten years or so. It was nice to see that he still seems to be the same old Mike.

“Use his leg! Use his leg! Use his leg!”

In an effort to get out of the house more, I went for a short walk first thing after getting up today and went over to Mom’s, who had her friends Judy and Oscar over for lunch. We chatted for a bit and Oscar told me a story about a roofer who secured the rope holding himself up on his roof to the bumper of his car on the opposite side of his house, only to have his unwitting wife take off in the car and drag him up over the roof, down the other side and then down the street for a quarter mile or something. You’d think that would be enough to kill a guy but apparently he’s alright, though, lesson learned one would hope.

I headed back home to do some work then busted up a giant ice boulder with a pickax so I could get my car out of the damn driveway to go see The Wrestler with Sharon and Greg who had free tickets and also got a free pop for me out of the deal. No complaints here. Nice that something like that worked out for a change and that the movie didn’t fuck up before it was over. Aronofsky did one bang up job with this movie, a great character study albeit a depressing one, and Mickey Rourke was so good in that role that I guess you could say he was perfect.

Melissa and I had a few rounds of lame-but-entertaining Photoshop Tennis tonight by email using found imagery on the internet, and here’s the end result (click for full size…though, I wonder why you’d want to):

The excesses of the day.

I stayed up way too late. I slept in way too long. I shoveled way too much. There are way too many crows flying overhead.

I met a new kitty outside.

Confusing sheepshanks and bowlines since 1989.

I saw Slumdog Millionaire tonight with Nathan, Greg and Luke. Danny Boyle sure knows how to make movies. I think the movie deserves all the attention it’s been getting but that always leads to it getting over-hyped unfortunately.

This evening I donned my old Scouts sash replete with my earned badges—my mom having given it to me recently after coming across it tucked away in a drawer. I recall our Scouts troop as being kind of a joke. I don’t think our leader had very good control over us so it never seemed as structured or serious as I imagined it to be going into it. Why I joined what is essentially a young boy’s version of the army, I’m not quite sure; probably because my friends were in it. I tended to shun (and still do) organized groups that require participation or structured commitments. That’s probably why I always decided to stick to house league in hockey. I can only imagine the dread I would have experienced going to a jamboree had I stuck at it long enough to attend one.

It was fine, though, a good way to keep a bunch of kids supervised on a weeknight and keep us out of trouble and our parents’ hair. Plus, we learned how to tie knots and I got to go to Canadian Tire with my dad and ask the clerk to cut me a length of rope to practice with. Why I found those rolls of rope, chain and wire so fascinating is beyond me. I do remember that Scouts meetings meant I had to miss The Simpsons—something I was never very happy about.

We went to camp once during the winter and at night we played Hide The Sickly Kid's Meds because we were a sensitive group of young boys in that way. There was a campfire/survival stuff in the snow. I believe some kid pissed in his snow pants or had a nosebleed or both. One morning I was having a dream that I was in a scientist’s lab who was doing experiments on a female Swamp Thing. She woke up to find herself strapped down to a tilted table all Frankenstein-like and proceeded to bust out of her restraints and wreck up the place, setting off the alarm in the process. This cast the lab into a strobing darkness as the flashing red alert light came on as the alarm wailed. I awoke to the same alarm sound, discovering the alarm clock going off by my bunk had made its way into my dream.

I was also in Beavers and we attended meetings at the Wilmot Community Centre, a place I’ve been wanting to go back into for years to see what it’s like now. I honestly don’t remember much about Beavers except that I hated those stupid hats with the little beaver tails hanging off the back of them. I’m sure that to parents it was cute to see their little guys in that brown and blue outfit topped off by that ridiculous cap, but I’m fairly certain that the leaders had to wear those hats too. That had to be humiliating.

Beavers reminds me of felt and pipe cleaners.

When blow out the candle becomes a euphemism.

Jill and Troy had their joint birthday party with Joni and their uncle Kim out at their place in the country tonight. I bought a cake at Sobeys and asked the very nice bakery lady if she could write “Happy Birthday X 4” on it, explaining that it was for four people sharing a birthday party. She went off to do her bakery lady cake-writing duties but ended up writing “Happy Birthday XXXX4” on it. She obviously didn’t get the lame joke I was making and misunderstood my simple and specific instructions. So, not only did she ruin my attempt at mild humour but she sort of made it look like a sexually-explicit cake with her gratuitous use of Xs. That ended up giving the cake a another kind of humourous spin, though, so I guess her making a sex cake by going overboard with the Xs worked out just as well.

Oh, I got pulled over on the Blue Shank on the way there, and rightly so because I was very stupidly going way too fast for no particular reason. It was a mighty hefty ticket that was generously reduced to a moderately hefty ticket by the super-nice cop who even apologized for ruining my weekend. It did indeed suck to be served a one-hundred-dollar speeding ticket but, just to be different, I decided to not let it ruin my night.

DVD OCD. AVI A-OK.

I just watched Conan’s last episode of Late Night and, of course, my recording ended before the show was over. Typical, an episode that will be going into my best ofs in its entirety gets the chop with three minutes to go. Well, hurray for torrents. Downloading shows means I won’t have to let my completist nature eat away at me for not setting the recording time correctly or missing a show.

It’s sad that this is the type of thing I worry about. It’s also sad that I feel the need to write about it. It may even be sadder still that I’m considering buying a PVR or a second DVD-recorder so I can record both Letterman and Conan when they air in the same time slot this summer. I do not want to go back to the VCR days again.

Maintaining parity.

It’s storming yet again (yay). I found out that I have a cavity (yay). This means that I’ve now had as many cavities as tumours.

Featuring Bowl Cuts and Pickled Wieners.

Seeing as I hadn’t heard back on the test results from my recent eye swabbin’, I called the doctor’s office and was told that my eye had no sign of infection. The swab only showed the expected types of bacteria normally found in a person’s eye. Ok, thanks for the report but WHY THE FUCK IS MY EYE PINK AND CRUSTY THEN!? Some answers, please.

Anyway, I thought I would share the latest batch of search engine keyphrases from my site stats that I find amusing and a photo of me with Moe Howard hair. The reasons for which I have Moe hair, the fur shawl and satin gloves I can’t explain, much like I can’t explain why someone would be searching for item number four below.

1. pudding cup butt
2. wanna hot dog?
3. pickledwieners
4. recipe for pickled weiners

This would cause a gypsy to turn right around.

This afternoon I had a quick shower, loaded junk into car lickety-split and arrived in downtown Ch’town, all in one hour flat. This is a record for me. I had to be up there to proof a project before it hit the press. It was a long way to go for a quick proofing but I did get a tour of Kwik Kopy while I was there. That was cool, I didn’t realize their shop was so big or that they had that much equipment (that’s what she said).

I sold some stuff at Cash Converters for a few lousy bucks then picked up Melissa and went for lunch at The Interlude Café. I’d only ever been there once before but this was the first time at their new location. I ordered the dumplings and curry chicken, both of which were excellent and therefore I will be going back more often.

After a delicious lunch, I was treated to the sight of two dead crows right next to each other at the end of Melissa’s street. Is that some sort of omen or merely two unfortunate crows who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? I just hope I wasn’t infected by some virulent pathogen when I rolled down my window to take a photo. I’m reminded of a scene from Millennium where, after dead crows start appearing, a family sitting around their dinner table begins to perspire blood all over their bodies and die horrible, nasty deaths.

And they all lived happily ever after…I think.

I went to see Frost/Nixon tonight with Greg and Nathan. The movie was great, there were solid performances all around, Frank Langella was awesome, and everything was going fine at the cinema. That is, until the very end when not only were the credits cut off but the epilogue was cut short. They ended the movie before the movie ended, and that just ain’t right. Not surprising either.

Are there actual people running those projectors any more? Was it a technical problem with the equipment? Or was it some under-trained teenaged employee eager to get home to his Pokémons (or whatever the kids are into these days) who stupidly mistook the text on the screen for closing movie credits? Even then cutting off the credits is unacceptable in my opinion.

Regardless, I don’t think the manager would know the answers to those types of questions because he seemed pretty clueless when Greg and a couple of other people complained about being denied experiencing the full movie we paid to see. Instead of answers, as usual, management simply attempted to placate peeved patrons by giving out free passes. I’ll give him a bit of credit for giving us the slightly fancier ones that also gets you a bit of food but free passes aren’t solving the problems that consistently come up in that theatre and the rest like them (*cough* Empire *cough* sucks).

We should have received a free pass to see that movie again plus a free pass for another movie for putting up with constant incompetence. Also, those in the theatre at the time should be given the choice as a group to single out one teenaged employee to be soaked in Empire’s popcorn “butter”, uniform and all, and chased around the lobby blindfolded for five glorious minutes by a several sucrose-supplied children whipping and flailing him or her with pool noodles.

Seems fair.

Gracious! Your fairy cakes look fabulous!

Laine invited people over for a pot luck tonight where the dining room was exploding with gooey, swirly colour from decorated cupcakes aplenty. Not only did they look awesome but they were excellent-tasting cuppin’ cakes as well.

I made roasted red pepper cornbread, having roasted the peppers with tongs over an flame from the propane stove. It did a good job but holy hell the stink of burnt peppers lingers in the house now. The bread turned out pretty well, the flavoured whipped butter I whipped up to go with it making it all the more tasty, if I do say so myself.

How do you say “gouge out my eye” in Russian?

When I bought a bottle of Polysporin drops and spoke to the pharmacist about my eye, she told me that if there is an infection in my eye that the Polysporin should start clearing it up in a few days. If not, I should call my doctor and have it checked out. Well, I left it a little longer than I should have, about a week and a half too long actually, which is super stupid on my part. After seeing no change, I finally couldn’t put up with this irritated eye any longer and I went to the walk-in clinic tonight hoping a doctor could figure out what’s been plaguing my eye.

A National Geographic magazine kept me busy with the history of Sitting Bull during the wait until I got to meet a doctor with a Russian or Eastern European accent of some sort. She was a lot better and nicer than the last walk-in doctor I dealt with at that clinic. She asked me a bunch of questions, I told her everything I could think of and that, to me, it seems like pink eye because I had it when I was a kid and I’ve got the same symptoms (i.e. crusty eyelashes in the morning, um…a pink eye). It’s gross and driving me nuts. She chided me for leaving it for so long, scribbled down some things, said she didn’t think it was pink eye, and then swabbed my eye, telling me they’d run some tests to see what’s going on.

I hope these tests don’t take very long. I’m seriously being driven mad by this bloody demon eye and can’t get a damn thing done because of it.