Brought to you by the number 12

The other day in a blog I mentioned my love for the personification of inanimate objects, namely: puppets of the Jim Henson variety.

Fraggle Rock is probably one of my most favourite TV shows.

But, being the age I am, I also have a soft spot in my heart for Sesame Street. Like, old-school Sesame Street from the early 1980's. The ones with Linda the deaf lady, and Barkley the dog, and Mr Hooper's General Store.

Quite often, people of my generation will sing to a certain tune when counting to the number 12. Personal observation is that the preferred tune of my generation is the 'Pinball Countdown':



However, I personally prefer the less popular 'Ladybug Picnic' tune:



If you have a copy of Pixar's 'The Incredibles', this is an extra on the DVD because the guy who made it worked for Pixar.


Puppet-wise, its hard to beat Kermit. And there's something about his 'Do-Wop, Hop' video that makes me smile every time:



Of course, then there was the Letter Salesman
and the teeny little super guy
and the two red aliens who couldn't figure out the telephone ( Uh huh, uh huh, BRRRING)
and the Monster Piece Theatre - Chariots of Fire spoof

So there ya go. A Sesame Street kid and proud of it. If you've ever been to my house, you know that I've even got a stuffed dog named Barkley (granted, I've had him for over 25 years - its not like I got him yesterday, so don't judge me too harshly).

Compact Digital or SLR?

le sigh

I was going to give you a long opinionated post about how I think photography is about money, and SLRs are the new status symbol, the new cool. About how the digital revolution of photography has opened the floodgates and allowed access to the art like never before. About how the technology has leveled the playing field and allowed any average joe to think he's a good photographer. But instead, I think I'm going to give you the reasons why I don't necessarily think that an SLR is the right fit for me.

The SLR
I drool over SLRs. I can spot one from a mile away and will zero in on that thing like a fly to ..well, you know. They're beautiful things. I like how they feel. I like manually focusing. I like being in control of my camera. I like the sound the shutter makes. I like looking through the eye piece. I like feeling like I'm holding a camera the way a camera was meant to be! I like that you can get gadgets for them: different lenses and filters and flashes and remotes and, and, and. I love the clarity of the photographs and the depth of field. I love that you can keep the shutter open indefinitely.

But...
SLRs are expensive. The Nikon D90 (newest one on the shelf) with a standard 18-105mm lens kit will run you $1500 at Best Buy. My preferred brand, the Canon EOS 50D with a 17-85mm lens kit costs $1,800.

Lenses are limiting unless you're willing to spend even more bucks. Those 18-55mm lenses... you're just not going to be happy with one of those. Sure, it'll give you great pics! (as long as you're within 10ft of the subject) To get greater range from your camera, you're going to have to invest in more lenses. You're at least gonna want a wide angle for taking nice group shots, and a zoom lens for that far away action. I LOVE my zoom! The Canon 100-400mm would only set you back, oh, the price of the camera! $1749.95. Granted, you're paying for the brand at a fancy camera shop, but you get the point - lenses add to the cost of the camera. Oh, and that 400mm, that's about the equivalent of something like a 10x zoom, are you going to be satisfied with that? I wouldn't be.

Bulky & Heavy. The camera body itself is pretty heavy, then add in two or three lenses to cart around, plus some filters, a tripod, cords, remotes, flashes, blah, blah, blah. Its not unusual for a properly equipped SLR owner to have an entire backpack dedicated to his camera! And I hope you don't want to move from a macro shot to a zoom shot in less than 2 seconds, cause it's going to take you at least a minute to dig through your gear to change your lens! I took my mom's SLR on vacation with me once - it was a giant pain in the butt, not to mention heavy to drag around everywhere. Not something you want to carry on a 10km hike through the woods.

Memory. Oh man, those new SLRs, they're 12-15 mega pixels! Not to mention that they take pictures in either JPEG or RAW formats. You know how much space that's gonna take up on your hard drive?!

They have more capabilities than the average user knows what to do with. Unless you're willing to spend hours and hours and hours and hours (and maybe take an actual photography course), practising with your new toy, you're not likely to use that camera to its fullest potential. And actually, you're probably going to be taking pictures that look fairly similar to any other point & shoot camera that you could buy for 1/10th of the cost. Disappointing eh?

The expectation factor. I already have people who tell me that I'm an awesome photographer and I missed my calling and I should try to develop that talent. Umm. Hate to break it to ya, but its just not true. Really, its like telling a karaoke singer he should sing the national anthem at an NHL game - probably not a good idea. In the past four years, my little camera has taken over 16,000 images. By shear dumb luck, a couple of them have turned out really good! But I'm not naive enough to think that I could make a living at it (I also know what the market for stock photography is like - the market is so flooded with people trying to make it big that stock photos are all but worthless.) Put an SLR in my hand and I'm going to end up with everyone who knows me asking me to shoot their weddings and babies! AUGH!!! The camera doesn't make the talent, trust me. Just to clarify: I am not some sort of outstanding photographer; I take lots of pics, sometimes I get lucky. End of story.


The Compact Digital (aka Point & Shoot)
Everyone's got a compact digital. They're everywhere, they're cheap. And, for the most part, the technology has come so far in recent years, that they all take really good pictures. The market is so overwhelmed with compact digitals (I mean, FisherPrice sells them for little kids for like $20), that there's really nowhere to start when talking about them. So, I'll show you what I like about mine.

I've got a Canon PowerShot S2IS. It was top of the line in compact technology 4 years ago. Still a good camera, not quite as powerful as I'd like, but still good enough that I don't necessarily want to upgrade quite yet.

What I like about it:

• It feels like a camera should feel, its got some size to it.
• Its got manual settings
• 12x zoom! yeah... that's the stuff! I can litterally focus on stuff that is touching the lens I'm that close to it, and then within seconds I can be zoomed out taking a pic of something that's 200ft away! For me, zoom makes the camera. Maybe I'm a bit of a sniper photographer - I like to sit way back out of the way, but still be able to zoom in for those nice close ups. I can do that with this camera.
• Its got just the right amount of play toys on it to make taking pictures fun, but nothing silly like 'smile recognition'.
• I can take decent video with it (something I forgot to mention, they're just starting to release SLRs with video capture - not all of them have it)
• I can throw it over my shoulder and walk around with it for a week without having to slug around a backpack full of equipment.
• at 5 mega pixels, it does a decent 8x10 enlargement. And, each picture doesn't take up ridiculous amounts of space on the hard drive.
• This camera is as close to being an SLR, without actually being an SLR, as you can get.
  

If I had my choice of cameras today, anything I wanted, I would be tempted to fall in love with a Nikon D90 and learn to be a snobby SLR user. But, I would hope that at the end of the day, reason wins and I would put the SLR back on the shelf for the simple reasons that its far too expensive for me, and its way more bulk than I want to lug around.

I'd have to say that I would (and probably will eventually) invest in the older brother of my current camera: The Canon Powershot SX10IS. All of the Canon functionality I know and love, with a longer zoom! That's right, a 20x zoom lens (equivalent to a 28-560mm lens) for a price under $450! You know what a 560mm telephoto lens for an SLR would cost?! Too much!

Here's one I found for $28,500!! I'm not even joking! Sigma 200-500mm

Anyway, I've found a winner in the Canon PowerShot S - series. I'm going to stick with it, and fight off the crazy ragamuffins telling me that I should invest in an SLR. SLRs aren't for everybody you know.

The times they are a changing

I had a very sudden and fleeting scare tonight that, for an instant, made me think there was potential for me to lose someone who means an awful lot to me.

Over the past two years or so, so many people, who mean so much to me, have made transitions and gone on to new chapters in their lives. They're not all completely gone from my life - just a little harder to stay in touch with.

Relationships change all the time; people's lives are always in a state of fluctuation. People change: get new jobs, move to new cities, get married, go to school, have kids, fall in and out of love, get sick... Friendships come & go for a variety of reasons, but the facts don't make it any easier to let someone go whom you know you're really, really going to miss.

Missing people sucks.

I'm afraid that as I get older, there's just more and more potential for me to end up missing more and more people. That really sucks. I don't look forward to that part of growing up.

Earth Hour (grumble, grumble)

What is this anyway? Lets guilt trip as many people as possible into shutting of their lights for an hour just after dark! It'll be fun! It'll be a phenomenon that will spread around the world! We'll feel good about ourselves for saving an entire hour's worth of energy! woohoo!

Who's dumb idea was this anyway?

Raise your hand if you're going to turn off your lights tonight (in about an hour) and light a bunch of candles or oil lamps instead. uh huh...

So, what you're telling me is that you're going to turn off your fairly efficient electrical lights and burn very inefficient petroleum based products to light up your house instead. And.. that's going to make you feel better about 'saving' electricity (which is going to be continually produced by the power plants throughout that hour anyway)?

And this is teaching us what exactly? To conserve energy by turning out the lights for an hour once a year? I don't think so... Cause I'm pretty sure that a week from now everyone will have forgotten all about it until this time next year.

You want to learn about energy conservation, lets implement a powerplant-controlled rolling brownout across the country on a daily basis. That might have a little more effect on the general population.

As for that 8:30 hour that is ever drawing closer... I'm sure I'll be guilted into turning out my lights to fit in with the rest of my neighbours. But I'm not going to go lighting a bunch of candles. Maybe I'll go for a walk...

In the (camera) beginning...

This is what my mother has for a camera. Its about 30 years old, and takes beautiful pictures. It was the beginnings of my photographic love. She's collected a number of gadgets for it over the years - a wide angle, a beautiful 55mm-420mm telephoto lens, a mounted flash, a decent tripod.

I did a lot of playing around with it in my early 20's, even bought a few lens filters for it and a fancy plunger thingy that connects to the shutter release so that you can keep the shutter open indefinitely. Its a beautiful thing - there's nothing more amazing than taking a 1/2 hour exposure of a starry night sky!

This camera is in awesome shape, and has only been repaired once in 30 years. (I think it was around the time it followed the user into a giant mud puddle.) Both my mom & I have taken some really nice photos with it (a number of 1st prizes at the Chatsworth Fall Fair!), it's traveled all over the country on numerous vacations and been to tons of weddings.

But... its film. And film is just enough a pain the the butt that this great little camera has hardly seen the light of day in probably 3 years. So sad.

I (heart) Grey's

"Trauma always leaves a scar.
It follows us home, it changes our lives.
Trauma messes everybody up.
But, maybe that's the point.
All the pain and the fear and the crap
Maybe going through all of that is what keeps us moving forward.
Its what pushes us.
Maybe we have to get a little messed up before we can step up."

~ Grey's Anatomy (ep. 519 "Elevator Love Letter")

The Film/Digital Debate.

Had you asked me a mere 6 years ago what I thought of film, I would have told you that it would be around forever. Nothing can replace the charm and quality of film. It was nothing for me to happily shoot off 6 or 7 rolls of film on a 2 week vacation and then spend $60 or more getting it all developed (in duplicate) for sorting, looking at, sharing with friends, and filing away in big old photo albums. Always carefully framing a picture before I snapped the shutter; never throwing out a single developed picture (even if it was so poorly underexposed that you couldn't tell what it was a picture of). Pictures cost money after all, and throwing money away is foolish.

I took a media course in highschool where I got to work in a darkroom for a couple weeks. Even built myself a pinhole camera. It was awesome, I loved every minute of it! At the age of 17 I had dreams of one day having abundant knowledge and skill in the field of film development and technology.

Alas, the digital revolution was on the horizon - film was doomed.

Probably the most annoying thing about film is the cost. You spend $5 or $6 for a single roll of 24 exposure film, and then another $5 to get it developed. And if you're lucky, about half of those turn out the way you want. $10 for 12 decent pics? ouch. Digital solves that - once you've got the equipment, other than the cost of batteries, taking and viewing a picture doesn't cost a thing.

You know what ruined film for me though?
Shoddy film development.
The person behind the counter at the one-hour photo booth does not give a rip about the colour processing of your prize-winning photo. And the person downtown at that fancy camera shop, he's twice as expensive, you'd think he'd care, but he's let me down on a number of occasions as well. There is nothing more disheartening than being incredibly excited about seeing that one perfect picture on your roll of film only to take one look at it and realize that they completely botched the processing job and it looks like a giant pile of poo. Quality film development is a lost art and that's a shame.

To be fair, its not just film that they screw up - they screw up the processing of digital pictures too. I had this absolutely stunning digital photo of a sunset once that I wanted blown up to an 8x10. It was gorgeous with beautiful shades of yellows and golds - it looked spectacular on my computer screen. I took it to the most expensive place in town to get it enlarged. I was so excited about that picture! I got it back, fervently opened the envelope, and pulled out this putrid green-tinted sunset. Seriously, it was actually green. I was so angry and disgusted and disappointed that they would even allow such a poor print to leave their shop. I have yet to go back to that place.

Actually, I've all but given up on 'professional' processing. I find that, with some decent glossy photo paper, I can get great true-to-life coloured prints off my home printer. Its no more expensive than a one-hour lab, its instant, and there isn't any disappointment. Unfortunately, unless you've got your own dark room in your basement, you don't have that choice with film.
Digital wins on pure convenience alone.

Randoms...

1. This is published post #50. I congratulate myself for getting ridiculously hooked on something I said I'd never do.

2. My 'unique visitors' hit counter is at 27 after only 3 days. There are a few explanations for this:
a) its not working properly.
b) The 6 people I can think of who might bother to read this are reading from an average of 4 different computers each - wow! That's loyalty right there.
c) More people are stalking me than I realized. I'm not sure how I feel about that...
If I take all these blog posts and bind them into a book, would people pay money for them?
And for the love of all things Good and Holy, feel free to leave a comment once in awhile!

3. I'm hopelessly addicted to reading the Diary of one Bob T Bear (esq). Once you get your head around his 'Bear English', remembering that he's spelling phonetically with an 'Oirish' (Irish) accent, its really great! There's nothing more simply entertaining than experiencing the world from the view of an 8" teddy bear. Plus, he talks a lot about poo and that's just funny (he's a bear, what do ya expect?!). I hope there's never a time in my life when I 'grow up' and lose my imaginative love for the personification of inanimate objects. Maybe I missed my calling... Maybe I should go work for The Jim Henson Company.

4. Our 11 year old newspaper girl knocked on the door at work this afternoon looking for a bandaid because some dumb dog across the street bit her. CALL THE NEWSPAPER!! OH MY GOODNESS!!! To be fair to the dog, the story that eventually came out sounded something like this: little kid at home alone with a small dog, possibly a puppy, strange newspaper girl comes to door, dog gets excited, jumps up on girl, somehow snags a tooth on girl's arm leaving a 2" long scratch with some minor bleeding under the skin. THIS IS NOTHING TO AN 11 YEAR OLD! Holy Cow! When I was that age, if I didn't have a multitude of scratches or bruises or bumps or slivers, there was something wrong. And this 11 year old was no different, all she wanted was a bandaid; actually, she asked for a kleenex.
Enter the adults. Fine-thinking lot. Is it really an advancement of society to ingrain into our minds words like 'report', 'SPCA', 'hospital', 'tetanus shot', 'emergency', 'call your parents right now' for a bruise on a kid's arm? I mean, really... simmer down people. It'll be ok.
If you really want something to talk about, lets talk about the part where this workplace did not have any peroxide in it's sorry excuse for a first aid kit so we just poured scotch on the kid's arm instead! Now THERE's a story to tell your grandkids! "Did I ever tell you about the time", she'll say, "when I had a priest pour scotch on my arm in the church parking lot. Those were the good ol' days.."

5. Some dirty rat of a boy keeps dropping a sly little word into my vocabulary; one I don't necessarily want to think about, but it keeps popping up: SLR. *sigh* SLR is the epitome of photography at its finest. To invest in an SLR is to embrace photography, not as just casual picture taking, but as an art. It comes with reverent respect, the odd jealous glance from passers-by, and, worst of all: expectation. Expectation of skill and knowledge and beautiful photographs. I'm not sure that there's another consumer product on the shelf with such weighty expectations as those. Its a lot of pressure.
I'm pretty opinionated on the subject of photography. I have enough photographic opinion jumbled around in my head right now to write an entire series of lengthy blog posts (if not a book) about the subject. ...Actually, I'm not sure why I've never written about photography before now. Ooh, you're in for a treat!

Time to start thinking SUMMER!

Spent about 2 hours chatting with a friend last night (yes, I have some of those - amazing isn't it?!) about the potential for a camping trip this summer.

This isn't just any willy-nilly camping trip in the nearest campground down the road where you take everything with you including a kitchen sink. Don't get me wrong, I like those camping trips and hope to do some of those this summer too. But the trip we're talking of is a, get this, 7-10 day backcountry hike through the interior of Killarney Provincial Park. AHHH!!

The LaCloche Silhouette Trail is a 100km trek through some of the roughest (and likewise, gorgeous) landscapes this side of the Rock Mountains. If we manage to get this organized, it will be one awesome adventure!

I don't have ANY proper equipment for a hike like this, so I spent most of last night browsing the MEC website and brushing up on my knowledge of differences in hiking boots, packs and sleeping bags. I guess I know where my income tax rebate is going! (Dear Receiver General, just make that cheque out to 'Mountain Equipment Co-op'.)

Anyhue... we've only got 3 people roped into this thing at the moment. It would be nice to take a 4th. If you're interested in stumbling through the woods for 10 days swatting bugs, bathing in lakes of acid water, carefully avoiding bears, eating freeze dried who-knows-what out of a pouch, and trusting your life with 3 other dirty smelly people, let me know.

"Dancin' like a fly, bite like a mosquito!"

I witnessed something this past weekend that was absolutely astounding. Well, amusing anyway. Imagine a dog. A medium sized golden retriever. One year old and full of energy. Running around, playing, jumping up, play fighting, sniffing everyone, full of energy and enjoying life. Enter the evil red muzzle of doom. No sooner had that muzzle been put on that happy excited dog than BAM! complete and total change of disposition. That poor dog became instantly depressed, knew he was in trouble, and sat quietly with the biggest, saddest puppy-dog eyes you have ever seen!


Every once in awhile I get edgy and I go looking for a fight. I'm an oldest child, so I've won my fair share of fights over the years (well... until my little bros got bigger than me and I quickly learned to just walk away!) But every once in awhile - ooh, what I wouldn't give to step back in time 15 years and have a full-blown all out wrestling match with someone! (Not into fist fights so much - don't like the potential of blood and broken bones. Its not about hurting a person afterall, just wrestling into submission and sitting on heads!)

I've been clenching my fists all day today looking for a good fight. And its not that I'm angry - not at all, not in the least little bit! Maybe I just have a bit of pent-up energy to spend, but wow, all day long its been all I can do to keep myself from poking an angry bear with a stick! They say that you have a pretty good chance of getting mauled when you do that, but some days, the entertainment factor is just too great to not do it! Does that make me a jerk? Yes. But to be fair, I usually lose anyway.

The muzzle thing isn't very fun, but sometimes its in my best interest just to keep my mouth shut before I end up looking like poor Mac there in the picture! My boxing skills are better in video games than in real life anyway.


Speaking of bears... Check out this blog of Bob T Bear, Esq.

Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha, ha

..."pushing the envelope". Ha.





Yeah, I don't really know what I want in life either, but its always good to dream, right?

Little cabin in the woods

I just watched Grey's on my lunch break - Something that I shouldn't do, but will probably continue doing. Grey's is too much of an over the top emotionally high-strung show to be watching during the work day. ...I guess that's why they call it 'drama'.

Word on the street is that Katherine Heigl (Izzie Stevens) is going to leave the show to pursue a movie career. That just means that from now until she does leave, there's going to be twice as many uber-high-strung emotional plot twists. Why do I love tv that can make me cry?

Anyway, this particular episode from last night (the one where they give the guy a face transplant) left me wanting one thing: a trailer in the woods.



Behind this sad-puppy-dog-end-of-the-world-depressed face of Dr Shepherd, is his trailer in the woods. (Isn't it a great picture of the trailer?!)

Essentially, its a hiding place. A retreat from daily life, from reality. A place to get away; to cocoon. It helps that this particular get away is in an absolutely beautiful setting on a mountain near a stream.

I'll leave it there and let you draw your own conclusions. I'm going to go look up some real estate prices - that should sufficiently squash any crazy ideas I might have.

I've been everywhere Man

I've realized that I've never fully explained the header on this blog.

In my fight against starting a blog, a friend of mine suggested that I could use a blog to write about my travels. Gotta admit, I go a lot of places. Nothing too fancy, but I do have 30,000km on a 2009 Corolla - that's gotta count for something! Thus the name of the blog, Travels with Aimer. (The 'extra-long-winded' part is just because sometimes I don't know when people have quit paying attention and I should stop talking.)

Anyway, I put the header together with pictures I've taken at places I've been. Some are pretty obvious, others not so much. I'll give you the grand tour:





1. A waterfall. Good. Its actually Inglis Falls in my own backyard of Owen Sound.
2. A flower. Ok, this one could be from anywhere really. I took it at Camp Edgewood, Eden Mills.
3. The Sky. Earth? Ok, not so obvious, but the sky and the water at the bottom of the header are the same picture. The in-between part of the the picture that isn't visible is of a mountain at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.
4. A pretty famous statue of a pretty famous guy. The Terry Fox monument in Thunder Bay. Watch this video from 1982.
5. That's a big goose. Wawa, Ontario - reminds me of that Red Green movie where they made the giant goose out of duct tape.
6. Mount Rushmore, South Dakota. Don't be fooled, the place is a giant tourist trap.
7. The Parthenon, Greece. HAHAHA (I've never been in a plane, so that's not possible). THIS Parthenon is a full scale replica in Nashville Tennessee.
8. I love the mountains, I love the... sorry, camp song. These mountains are in Jasper National Park, Alberta.
9. Sun Studios, Memphis Tennessee. Where the King got his start (him and a few other people).
10. Corner Gas, Rouleau Saskatchewan. Not a whole lot there, but still worth the trip!

So there you go. I've been all these places and more. I love a good road trip. ...anyone want to go somewhere?

Walk Hard

I went for a walk tonight. The weather was just too perfect to not get out (I have visions of another massive snowstorm before spring is finally here for good).

I almost didn't go out. I went curling Saturday and ...pulled an important muscle for walking. That's what you get when you only go curling once a year I suppose. Anyway, I considered using it as an excuse to not go for a walk - didn't want to make it hurt again. But, in the end, I took the chance that a walk would do more good than harm.

I'm a country kid. I'm used to going out for a walk down a dirt road (or through the back 40) and not seeing anyone the entire time I'm out. Out there in the country I can walk down the centre of the road, talk to myself, swing my arms around in grand gestures, yell, try to sneak up on bunnies, kick stones, whatever I want really.

I live in a city now. There are people everywhere. They look at you funny when you talk to yourself.


Upon returning, I jumped on the Wii Fit. I purchased a Wii Fit way back before Christmas as my alternative to a gym membership (gym people look at you funny when you talk to yourself there too). I use my Wii Fit about as much as I would use a gym membership --> not nearly enough.

I did however unlock a new activity tonight that might keep me coming back: "rhythm boxing". Being a person with absolutely no sense of rhythm, it took me awhile to get the hang of it, but it is super fun! It helps that for the last 10 seconds of the exercise you get to just wail on this punching bag as hard as you can.

Yeah, Wii Fit maybe isn't the most ideal of exercise programs but it'll make you sweat if you play it long enough and its pretty fun too. I mean, who doesn't like to pretend hula-hoop in the middle of their living room?

Sunshine, rainbows & teddy grahams

full-sized here.


In the world of newspaper comic strips, there are only a few that I read on a regular basis. One of them is 'Pearls before Swine' - talking animals at their finest really.

This week, they happen to be making fun of another comic strip: 'Garfield minus Garfield', which is a comic strip that makes fun of another strip which is void of any actual humour 90% of the time - 'Garfield'. In 'Garfield minus Garfield' they just take the regular 'Garfield' strip, and erase Garfield leaving Jon talking to himself and looking crazy. In theory, it sounds sort of funny. Except that... Garfield isn't funny to begin with.

If I'm going to spend 15 seconds of my day reading a comic strip when it pops up on my RSS feed, it'd better be funny! Pearls before Swine delivers.

Taming of the Hair Monster

Ok, enough's enough. This is ridiculous.

Rae, you've been married for well over a year now; the hair growing thing is over. I need to get a cut before I go insane.

Crackbook

Haha... So, Facebook has changed - again.

At 5pm I was still one of the fortunate few with the old/safe/comfortable layout. By 5:30pm, I had the new homepage.

And cue the complaints:

• 'The new facebook sucks'

• 'i wish facebook would stop **** around, i can't get used to one crappy version before another retarded version crawls out of some hosers computer'

• 'Also, she really REALLY doesn't like that she has to scroll down to see her current status'

• 'the new face book stinks'

• 'WhatThe Heck Is This Facebook Doing Now???'

• 'i dont like this face book'

My question to you is: Do you even remember the OLD facebook? No, no, not like yesterday's version of facebook but last year's version of facebook, or two years ago even.

Always complaining about change... but it doesn't really stop change from happening. Heck, within a month, this version of Facebook will be the old one that everyone is used to and there will be a new change to complain about.

Don't worry, none of the above facebook statuses are mine. I just watched last night's ER so naturally my status has the name 'George Clooney' in it!

Dance with Me

Today is March 10th.

A new Johnny Reid album comes out today. "Dance with Me"

This is the first single off of that album: A Woman Like You

So, that brings it up to 3 albums now:
Born to Roll
Kicking Stones
and Dance with Me

If anyone would like to purchase one, or many, of these albums for me, I will probably kiss your feet.

I tried to purchase one of his albums at the most well known record shop in all of Nashville Tennessee. They had never heard of him. I cried.

Epic Fail

You know my little proclamation about giving up chocolate for Lent? Fail. Fail, fail, fail.

Ignoring the chocolate chip muffin & chocolate milk from Timmy's within the week of Ash Wednesday, I was doing pretty good until the multiple hot chocolates. And the Cadbury mini eggs. And the chocolate cookies. And - ultimate fail - giant chunk of chocolate bar.

... I suck at this Lent thing. Its pretty much right up there with New Year's resolutions, and I learned to not bother making those a long time ago.

I would (drive) 500 miles...

Hey! So, fun weekend.

Traveled roughly 800km this weekend. For why you ask? To hang out with friends - I mean, really, why else?

OS to KW
KW to Newmarket
Newmarket to KW
KW to TO
TO to KW
KW to OS

Woohoo!

Fun weekend - more to come later. But for now, between the excessive driving and the time change, I'm pretty much expecting a horrible, horrible (worse than normal) Monday morning so I should probably go find my bed.


....of course, maybe I should first do something about the water dripping from my ceiling. *Sigh* Not sure what anyone can do about it at 11pm except put a bucket under it though. Hopefully it'll stop dripping when the rain stops.

The Trouble with ...Styrofoam

I've been keeping an eye out for a decent coffee table since I've moved out on my own. I had been using a cedar chest for the job, but it was a few inches too tall and I was sort of concerned about wrecking the finish on it.

Do you know how hard it is to find a decent coffee table?!

Ok, ok, let me clarify - Decent Quality (ie: no dings, scratches, visible screws, fake wood. So, that pretty much ruled out anything from the Canadian Tire/Zellers/Walmart type stores) and Affordable/Cheap (ie: under $100. Which rules out anything from any actual furniture store).

Solution? Grocery Store! That's right. I found a really nice set of furniture at Zehrs - President's Choice brand even. And, bonus, it was on sale!

Anyway, that's only half the adventure. The other half was assembling it (which was fun) and cleaning up the packaging (which was not fun).

The cardboard boxes the pieces all came in aren't a big deal. I broke them all down and will recycle them on the next corrigated cardboard recycle day.

But the STYROFOAM!! Ugh. I'm pretty sure that there was more styrofoam in each box than there was furniture. Owen Sound doesn't have curbside styrofoam recycling. So I had to break it all down to put in garbage bags. Disgusting.

Not only that, but when I did break it down, it left little tiny balls of styrofoam floating all over the place. What a pain to clean up! Its all got a static charge to it, so it sticks to everything - it even sticks to skin so if you do manage to pick up some of it, you can't put it into the garbage because it stays stuck to your hand!

Its everywhere:
its stuck to my coffee table
its stuck to my couch
its stuck to my pants
its stuck to my computer screen
its stuck to my carpet
its stuck to my fish tank
its stuck to the outside of my vacuum cleaner
its stuck to my socks
its in my kitchen
its in my living room...

reminds me of this:

Cough, cough, hack, basketball, sneeze

So a week ago I felt like I had been hit by a truck. There is only one solution for that feeling and it only works about 50% of the time - consume an entire bottle of ColdFX in less than a week.

I felt not bad all week. In fact, I had plans to go visit Rae & Pete & baby this weekend, so I was really hoping to avoid the cold altogether.

On Thursday though, I knew I was doomed, and Friday was worse. Cancel trip to see friends - don't want to give cute little baby a cold.

I woke up Saturday with a completely free day ahead of me. So naturally, I stayed in bed. Seems logical to me. And then I got a very unexpected phone call from my cousin. She wanted me to drive to Toronto with her to pick up her daughter.

Actually... She wanted ME to drive HER to Toronto to pick up her daughter because the thought of driving to Toronto herself was causing much stress. I don't know why she thought I'd be any better at it, but off we went.

HoopDome International was our destination. Its pretty easy to get to actually; exit the 400 at Finch and its like 5 minutes away. No problem.

Basketball was the game of the day. My cousin's daughter is on a district basketball team, with players on it from 3 or 4 local schools, and they travel all over the place to go to these tournaments.


Its been a long, long time since I've watched high school basketball. I didn't expect to remember too many of the rules. But the longer I sat there and watched, the more I remembered from my own high school basketball experiences (I played on the high school team in grade 10). And it wasn't long before I was calling fouls with the refs and explaining to my cousin why her daughter was taking foul shots.

There's a reason why I only played high school basketball for one year - because I wasn't good at it! I couldn't wrap my head around the plays: where I was supposed to be on the court, which player I was supposed to be covering. Gym class basketball was great, but competitive basketball was beyond me.

But watching my 14 year old cousin out there running around took me back. It was fun. Mind you, they got creamed, completely schooled by the other team, but oh well, I remember that happening to my team a lot too!