Les Bonnes Choses

Totally unrelated to the previous post, so I decided to make a new post out of it:
This Christmas, I got my tea needs completely taken care of. To recap, I had lost my Ikea coffee/tea steeper AND all of my tea balls. I received a tea ball, TWO superior coffee/tea steepers, green tea from Kaz in the lab gift exchange, and a stocking full of loose teas (English Breakfast, Rooibos and something else). So I have been steeping leaves like a crazy person. If anyone wants to read fortunes, I got plenty of fodder.

I also found that Pokey is a big tea fan. Clearly, he comes by it honestly. He tried some green tea last night for the first time because that's what I had, which is reason enough for him to want it. I gave him a sip, and he was all over it. This afternoon, the two of us had some black tea with raspberry. It was all very civilized, though we were missing crumpets. Things did get a bit heated though when the topic of US foreign policy came up.

It's been 5 years since I did (that's the past-tense of "I do"). To celebrate, I made the dinner that we had at our reception: loaded potato soup using Amy's turkey stock (there's lots of leftovers), chicken cordon bleu with steamed vegetables, and a baguette with balsamic vinegar/olive oil dip. Mmm, tasty. That's really the highlight of the day, because Rebecca is still under the weather. I hope I don't come down with whatever is making her feel ill. Usually it seems that she is impervious to illness.

Earlier in the day, while she was out shopping with her sister, I fixed up the cable line going into our cable box, so that we reliably get the HD Discovery and CBC channels that only came in intermittently, which annoyed me to no end (even if the discovery channel only shows the program about building the flood wall around Venice). I also hooked up the Mac Mini to the Toshiba 32" LCD TV through the HDMI cable I bought. Now I just have to hook up the DVD player with the component cables I bought this afternoon, and then calibrate the TV so that the picture isn't so dark on the computer (this is apparent when watching movies with iDVD).

I have no other news.

Whaddya know, it's Christmas morning!

I'm up late while Rebecca does some late baking for Christmas day dessert. The season was somewhat compressed for me this year, as I was at school right up until Friday the 21st, though that was just to photocopy some music for the caroling. It seems that caroling with the Amabile hooligans is what marks the season in my mind. Until the traditional walk through Marion Villa, it's not the holidays, no matter how many days I've stayed home.

I will now blog about why we didn't attend mass this evening. We tried. We showed up at St. Justin's Parish in London, Ontario (all this is included for google's sake). The church bulletins used to (and may still) have the motto, "the friendly parish". Grossly misleading. With 4 children (at least 2 of them were overdue for a nap) in tow, we took a bench at the back of the church to facilitate quick escape to avoid disrupting mass. It used to be that there was a cry-room at the back, where one could take a crying or disruptive child, however it has been turned into an office. Now, if your child starts acting up you have to ... well, I have no idea where the hell you're supposed to go. Leave the church, maybe? I guess you just shouldn't bring your children to church in the first place.

So after about 15 minutes of the church filling up, a female usher seemed to take some glee in telling us we had to move along because the bench on which we were sitting was reserved for the ushers. As we passed her after collecting our coats and diaper bags, I heard her say something to another usher that suggested that she believed that any idiot who didn't show up early enough deserved what they got. A male usher was indeed helpful in trying to help us find a seat, though by this point, the family would not be sitting together. He did find us two seats, however one parishioner, when asked if he would shuffle down so we wouldn't step all over him in the likely event that Jude fussed, started griping how he came 30 minutes early so he could get a good seat. We told him to keep his seat. I hope his wife was mortified -- many people were watching this transpire, so everyone around must have seen how big of an ass he was. The usher then offered to find us another seat, however at this point, it wasn't worth the bother because all this time the church was filling up, so seats were hard to come by, standing at the back wasn't an option because of fire regulations, and there was nowhere to go with an increasingly fussy Jude. So, we left. That may be the last time I ever step foot in St. Justin's Parish. Odds are better than even that I will be writing both the parish and the diocese. My tolerance for stupidity has decreased over the last few years, and I have started calling people on it.

Update: I checked back today (January 12), and it appears that my blog entry about St. Justin's Parish, the Roman Catholic church serving the White Oaks community, and located on Ernest Ave., in London, Ontario, has made it into the second page of google results for "St. Justin's parish london" (http://www.google.ca/search?q=St.+Justin's+parish+london). Perhaps this little addendum to my St. Justin's Parish entry will put it over the top? My, that would be fabulous if people could read about my experience at St. Justin's Parish on the internet!

Hey, I found a topic

From CBC news:
"Quebec is already facing a lack of workers with specific trade skills, and the Ottawa-based think-tank says more generalized labour shortages could be felt in the broader economy as early as 2010."

Of course, it's somewhat difficult to get work in Quebec if you don't speak French, or speak it with an offensive accent, so, you know... oh, and if you happen to be an ethnic minority, well, don't forget you have to demonstrate that you know enough not to throw acid at your wife.

I feel guilty about not posting anything for awhile, so this is my token post to take my mind off the exam marking I am doing for Paul's course. I'm trying to think of something topical on which I might comment, but I can't come up with anything that leaves me particularly outraged that I haven't written about already (CRA continues to send us crap -- yesterday was a Jude-related government cheque in one envelope, and a letter telling us to give it back in another envelope -- your tax dollars at work!).

I hope the snow stays for Christmas, or Heather is going to be pissed. Plus, I'd like to go to bogganing.

If you are reading this because the title intrigues you, then, well, I am mortified. Rebecca came up with the title (the Porn Identity part of it), so I thought I would borrow it to mention a kiddie pop singer by the name of Hannah Montana. It must be the rhyming thing, but whenever I hear that name, I keep thinking "porn star". Though maybe porn stars are more into alliteration than rhymes.

And I have some bad news (sort of). I had this million dollar idea, but it's kind of been taken. If you've ever bought or sold a textbook, you will know that books that have been heavily marked up with highlighters don't fetch as much money. Well, about 5 or 6 years ago, I realized the solution to this is a removable highlighter. I imagined that it must be possible to come up with some kind of fluorescent liquid that dries like a removable tacky rubber cement. Put it in a roller pen, and voila! Well, for some reason I decided to google "removable highlighter" tonight and found that highlighter tape is available for that purpose. I should also add, to my credit, that I had also considered this as a possible way of implementing my idea, since I am familiar with white correction tape. The good news is that the product isn't available in a marker form, which I think would be way cooler than tape. And that the general idea is apparently marketable also reaffirms the excellence of my idea. I have no contacts at 3M, nor am I a chemist, however, so I will never see a dime from this idea.

Well, I just finished composing a cover letter to Canada Revenue Agency, outlining the changes that need to be done to our tax returns, and suggesting a rather simple requirement that would prevent problems like this from happening in the future. I concluded with the following request, which Amy (whose uncle works for CRA, not that that is sufficient to make her an authority) assured me wouldn't get me in trouble:

And finally, if you casually review my records, you will find that I am in regular correspondence with the Canada Revenue Agency – perhaps even disproportionately so for a graduate student with enough familiarity with statistics to know that this is so, and the honesty to report an incorrectly reported public transportation tax credit. I would like to unsubscribe from the CRA Biannual Reassessment Plan, because I no longer have the time and, frankly, my heart isn’t in it anymore. Besides, as I have been living within my means on a student’s income for the past several years, I am not even certain I qualify.

I still have to get Rebecca's signature on the T1 adjustment forms before I can mail everything, so if you disagree with Amy's assessment, please contact me ASAP.

I have had this song bookmarked for a couple of years now. O Holy Night is my sister Heather's favourite carol, and has been honoured by a number of renditions, including Cartman's version on South Park. However none are quite as bad as this. I hope the guy hosting this file on his website keeps it on there for years to come. I've subjected a couple of my friends to this in years past, but now I'm taking it national! When you listen to this song, I need you to remember one thing: just when you think it can't get any worse, it does.

What if Canadian television producers concentrated on making just a single program that doesn't evoke utter contempt for our television industry? They could funnel all that money that they put into melodramas set in PEI and sitcoms written to patronize Canada's ethnic minorities, and maybe come up with something that doesn't suck.

So for the past few years, we have celebrated the season with festive holiday flavours of Jones Soda. Last year we had the Turkey Dinner revisited, featuring flavours like Turkey and Gravy, Dinner Roll, Sweet Potato and Antacid. We fortunately missed the year before which had Salmon Pate. I think the smell of a fishy carbonated beverage would have been very upsetting. This year, they have a Christmas Ham, Egg Nog, Sugar Plum, and ... Christmas Tree? WTF? People don't EAT Christmas trees. That's just stupid. Oh well, it won't matter anyways, because our normal dealer supplier wasn't able to bring any up from the US when they came to visit. The Channukah pack might have been interesting. Not sure about Latke flavoured sodas, but the Apple Sauce, Jelly Donut and Chocolate Coin flavours might not be too bad. Plus, hello! Dreidel inside!

Looks flashy on a scrabble board, but isn't worth many points, unless you made it by emptying your tray.
After I read my last post, I realized that the title, Nothing Stupid to Report, was somewhat inconsistent with that last bit about the movie, which did have some stupidity to it, though I should admit that I still somewhat enjoyed it enough to give it a passing grade. I am, however, surprised that it got 80% at Rotten Tomatoes.
And then I clicked on the "Next Blog" link, at first just to see where it would go, and then to see what some of the other blog colour templates looked like (I am somewhat dissatisfied with my current colour scheme, which I changed from white on black to save my wife's eyeballs from the autokinetic effect). I think blogger #2 said it best when he wrote:

Eins sollte man wirklich beachten, den Klingelton. Letzte Woche hatte ich Pippi Langstrumpf, Alfred J. Quack, heute ein ankommender Zug und sein Warnsignal. *lol*

I believe the humour in names like Pippi, and Alfred J Quack transcend the language barrier. LOL indeed, my friend, LOL indeed.

It has been brought to my attention that some sadistic people out there derive some amount of pleasure from my willingness to freely describe events in which I am the straight-man to fate's peculiar sense of humour. I am afraid that nothing bad has befallen me since the hair removal wax incident, unless by the time you have read this the lamb vindaloo from Curry Garden has passed through my system -- though that story may also be shared to varying degrees by Michelle, Rebecca and Deanna. Just now, I am considering the fact that we have a large supply of Penaten. If you are not familiar with the product, then clearly you do not change diapers on a regular basis. Follow the link, and see if you can figure out where I am going with this...

In commemoration of Alan's birthday, last night we watched the fourth installment of the Die Hard franchise. Justin Long was in it, playing the role of a computer hacker. Everytime he opened his mouth, I expected him to say, "Hi, I'm a Mac..." But that wasn't what wrecked the film for me. Rather, the problem was that I'm not sure that the technology used in the Golden Gate bridge would be sufficient to suspend my disbelief. Sorry, that little attempt at cleverness was a bit strained, but then, so was my ability to ignore the plot inconsistencies and reality-defying feats. Unfortunately, the only products out there that would allow those reservations to be put aside so I could properly enjoy the movie also happen to be controlled substances.

Today is chilly. Not middle-of-January chilly, but with a forecast high of freezing, it's cold enough. Two stops before I got off the bus, some teenage kid gets on, wearing jeans and a short sleeved tee-shirt. My first thought was that he was trying to be cool. But then I thought he could just be mentally deficient. And then I decided that perhaps I was being unfair because this was Kipp's Lane, after all, and there's some subsidized housing nearby, so maybe he doesn't even have an appropriate jacket. So I got off the bus, mulling over how "too cool", "too stupid" and "too poor" might be sadly related to one another.

Speaking of "too stupid", I spent the last hour getting beauty wax off my hands. I'll stop you right there. I do not use the product, as will soon be apparent. I take a Gillette Mach-3 to my head every 3rd or 4th day. Rebecca's aunt, however, is an aesthetician, and it is she who owns the wax melting pot that was being returned from Rebecca's mom. Last night when I brought it in, I left it on its side because I had no idea what it was, or what the consequence would be. Sticky wax everywhere. So I felt obliged to try to clean the damn thing. This is the part of the story where it becomes apparent I have never touched the stuff before: I didn't wear gloves. I was clever enough to use an embossing torch to melt the wax so I could wipe it off of the pot. However, I managed to get the wax all over my hands. And the bloody stuff was extremely difficult to get off. It reminded me of those sticky paper mouse traps. Hot water and soap didn't cut it. Alcohol didn't work either. Using a sharp knife to scrape it off only removed the bulk of it, but my hands were still extremely sticky. In the end, I used campfire fuel (which is a flammable solvent) and, inspired by a CBC radio segment on household stain removal, peanut butter (which is oil-based, and mildly abrasive).

And to the lady-folk who deliberately apply wax to their bodies ... what the hell?

I got a new ergonomic foam pillow last weekend. Now we have a(n almost) matching pair. They're both made of that memory foam stuff that forms to your contours. The only downside is that, because the pillow is brand-spanking-new, and made of crazy petrochemicals (I suppose), it still has a sort of strange chemical smell. I don't really notice it, except in the morning, when I wake up to find that my head has a new car smell.

Meanwhile, back in facebook land, I have been drafted into multiple scrabble games. I just wrote on Vivian's wall to explain that I am not a scrabble snob. Rather, I am trying to keep the number of games I am playing at one time under control. I am kind of hoping more of my opponents make use of the little message board. I really look forward to checking out my game with Michelle because we have this little conversation going on. By the way, I am no where near as competent in real-life scrabble, where if you play a bogus word, your opponent can call you on it, and you are screwed. Online, you can play your word, and if it happens to make other really obscure words along the way, bully for you. Also, I rely heavily on the 2-letter word list. Actually, I found a lot of good scrabble tips on this website. I really hope you're not surprised to find I would read up on scrabble strategy. Honestly. *I've been competitive at everything I've done since losing to Vivian in that spelling bee back in grade 6.

*That's not really why I'm competitive. I like to win because I'm a bit of a jerk. But just a wee bit.

The New York Times has an article online about Sesame Street, and how the show with which we grew up couldn't possibly be run today. Just like those death trap school yard playgrounds that have been since nerfed, it's yet another indicator of the pussification of society. Now that natural selection is no longer allowed to operate, how are we going to survive as a species?

I'll give you three guesses as to what I got in the mail today. Those of you who are aware that Revenue Canada has reassessed me at least twice a year for the last five or six years only get one guess. I do not generally identify with the Conservative party. However, their election platform included one item that I could get behind: income from scholarships was no longer to be taxed. As last year's income came primarly from my NSERC scholarship, I felt like I was getting away with something when I filed my taxes in April. Except when it's Revenue Canada you're dealing with, you can be sure you won't get away with anything. Even if the country's taxation policy says you can. For some reason, some jackass in Winnipeg decided that, in my case, my NSERC scholarship is taxable. Is coin-flip now part of Revenue Canada's taxation arsenal?
Can someone please come up with a reason that I should even bother filing my taxes? I mean, if they are just going to make shit up and tell me I owe them some random amount of money anyways...
Amy thought I should apply for the Canada Research Chair position in Winnipeg. I emailed her today and told her that it is best that I don't live in Winnipeg. If I did, I would be on the news by now. It wouldn't be pretty. I look forward to updating on Monday, after someone at their call center has a really bad day. I'll try to go easy on them though. Unless they can put me through to the clown who's responsible for this idiocy. Oh, I hope they can do that! This may come as a surprise, but I can be really snippy.

This computer will soon go offline for a little while as I install Fedora 8 (currently running Fedora 6). Normally, I wouldn't be in any particular hurry to upgrade, however I downloaded the latest version of AFNI (the software I use to do fMRI analysis) and it no longer seems to work. Plus, the latest version of Fedora is codenamed Werewolf, which is really cool.

Did you see that? I was being ironic just then. But seriously, they have added a feature that will download codecs, which are bits of software your computer needs to play back multimedia files. Now I understand it is still limited to the one required for .mp3 playback, but it's a step in the right direction. I don't know why I don't just install Ubuntu, which I hear is better all-around at accepting the reality that people are going to publish media files using whatever software they have available and know how to use (news flash: when CNN hires some DeVry graduate to convert some video for online presentation, they will let him use the same software package that the school taught him to use, because that just makes sense. I doubt many linux-hackers that are familiar with Ogg-Vorbis are to be found doing such menial tasks).

And also, in addition to the missing tea balls, I am missing my Ikea coffee/tea steeper, which is considerably bulkier and one would think much more difficult to lose. It was my backup plan for making loose tea. I am at a loss for why the tea gods are smiting me.

People who may have been paying attention to my Facebook or MSN status in the last few weeks may have concluded that I am often feeling particularly macho. This has never been truer than right this moment. Several years ago, I was in the magazine section of Chapters when I noticed a computer magazine for Mac users. It was called Mac Home. However, the typographers were all clever and artsy and ran the words together: it looked something like "machome", or as I chose to read it, "macho me". Well, I am now at home, and using my new Mac mini (I really like it, probably because it's so tiny). I had to get a VGA cable so I could hook it up to our LCD television down here in the basement. I also note that I am getting a really good wireless signal from my router, which is often not the case with my laptop. While I wish I could take advantage of the entire screen (my television will only support a 4:3 aspect ratio, even though it is widescreen).

One might wonder why I am down in the basement with a computer hooked up to a 32" LCD television. There are a couple reasons: first, I really needed to look at some files that were on this computer from the fMRI crash-course I took so that I can figure out how to do a couple things for a project with a looming deadline, and I didn't want to have to disconnect my monitor from my desktop computer. Second, and just as important, I did it because I could.

Y'all can stop looking now. John is the scavenger hunt champeen of the world. Or at least, the interwebs. Now I like to think I can navigate that series of tubes as well as the next guy -- and maybe I can, so long as I am not sitting next to John. I must ask him (and indeed, by writing this, I effectively am) where the hell he found a digital copy of the Indio album, because I couldn't find it on any torrent sites or even for legitimate download. Yes, I could purchase the album in mp3 format from a skeezy website based in Russia, but I'm about as likely to patronize a Russian ecommerce website as I am to patronize a syphilitic prostitute.

In other news, my car is presently modified so as to be detectable to the blind. Hi tech gadgetry? No, I hit a skunk (or at least straddled it) on my way to this evening's soccer game (for which I paid $4 to park so that we could wait around for a ref not to show up). I saw the stunned skunk waddle off in the rearview, so I didn't kill the damn thing. However even if I did: not my fault. Wet roads and a plodding, predominantly black animal at night time with an awkward gait do not mix. So yeah, the underside of the car has been skunk-guarded.

I added a couple of things today to my wishlist. If anyone is able to find that Indio CD in a used CD bin somewhere, I shall crown them the World Scavenger Hunt Champion. Amazon sells it used starting at $130. Supply? Demand?

I also found some instructions on Lifehacker for making your Linux desktop look exactly like that of a Mac. Down to the login. I mean, if you follow these instructions, and download a few files, you would have no idea at all you weren't using a Mac. That's funny. I don't know if I would go to all that trouble, though if we start using Macho Me around here, maybe I would do that to transition Rebecca...

"We replaced this woman's operating system with Folgers crystals. Let's see if she can tell the difference."

Later this month, Rebecca, Jude and I are tentatively scheduled to meet up with our friends Krista, Brett & family (formerly of Rochester fame) in Toronto at the Delta Chelsea. Brett is a faculty member at OSU - Cincinnati, and I believe that academic business brings him up to Toronto. The hotel is downtown, so it's a bit pricier than, say, a motel room on the highway. So as I was washing the kitchen floor this afternoon, I was thinking about this upcoming stay, when those thoughts mingled with some details about the CogSci '08 conference, the website for which I have been charged with building. It occurred to me that conferences often book large swaths of rooms, and the conference-goers enjoy a discounted rate when staying at the hotel. For the CogSci conference, for example, one should mention they are with the CogSci conference when booking at the Omni hotel in Washington, so that they can get the discount. Of course, conference web pages get indexed by Google, so it seemed to me that finding a conference going on at a hotel that you plan on staying at anyways might be trivially easy.

Incidentally, if you plan on staying at the Delta Chelsea in Toronto on the 23rd, a travel advisory association will be convening there that day.

A couple things occurred to me this evening. Actually, 3 did, but I forgot the last one, so I probably won't mention it unless I remember it by the time I am finished talking about the other two.

So, first of all, I was shopping for my dad's birthday this evening. I won't say what store it was because it might give away the surprise. Not that my dad reads my blog. Or even knows I have a blog. Or thinks that blog is a word in the English language. Anyways, I got to the checkout, and paid by credit card. Then the guy hands me the little receipt thing that I am supposed to endorse, and tells me he "just needs [my] autograph down at the bottom". It's one of those cliches that everyone in retail says -- I'm not sure why, because it's too tired to be useful for breaking up the monotony of it all. I had to pause because my brain was apparently in smartass mode. I really wanted to reply, "Shall I make this out to my number-one fan Steve, best wishes, Chris?" But I didn't.

Right afterwards, I met up with Rebecca in Toys Я Us*. And when I walked around looking for her, I remembered how I used to go there all the time as a kid -- I grew up on the street right behind it, and remember when the land on which it was built was a muddy field. Anyways, I had one of those moments when I realized that I was on the other side of the looking glass. Although I didn't buy anything for Pokey, I could have, and that's why it occurred to me that I am now in the role of a parent who goes into toy stores to buy toys for their kids, whereas my memories were of being a kid for whom the toys were being purchased. I'm not sure if I can adequately convey how deep and trippy that was, so I may have to appeal to the inadequacy of my writing if you don't believe me.

Maybe that last thing I wanted to mention concerns Deanna's word association norming study that I did. I won't give away specifics, in case she has enlisted you to help, but suffice it to say, it turns out that one of her dad's peculiar responses was not so idiosyncratic after all. If you know Deanna, feel free to ask her for details.

*I really wanted to type a backwards 'R', however I could not find an equivalent HTML Unicode character code in the two character map websites I googled.
UPDATE: I was able to select a similar character from the Cyrillic alphabet on one of the character maps, and cut and pasted it.

I just noticed that I got a random blog comment from a total stranger, which means that my audience goes beyond my list of facebook friends. Gille, whoever you are, you made my day. I see now why Alan got so intense about blogging. I think I may be drunk on power right now.

If you happen to come to visit me sometime, take a look at the side of the road as you drive down Edenridge, just before you get to my street. You will see orange traffic cones at the side of the road, marking off sections of the concrete curb. They're tearing it up. Again. The very same section of curb has been torn up at least three times within the last year, most recently this past August. This is my impression of the work order from city hall:

1. Apply jackhammer to 100 meters of curb along Edenridge
2. Remove debris
3. Pour concrete to form new curbs
4. Repeat

I am presently in Wisconsin, just outside of Milwaukee, for an fMRI hands-on course. We're staying at a Holiday Inn Express, and yes, I kind of do feel smarter. Ken and I got back from dinner about 45 minutes ago. Ken was under the impression that it was about 1.6 miles from the medical center to the hotel. That figure, however, may be accurate only for cars that can drive on the highway, because experience on the treadmill has told me that I walk about 3.0 to 3.5 mph, and so 1.6 miles should have taken well under the 50 minutes that we took walking through what is basically an industrial park.

So that's basically just a journal update on one part of my day. The actual course is going along nicely. I learned a few things. I also got to skim over a few things, as pretty much all morning was spent discussing the intricacies of the unix-like shell environment on Mac OS X.

Oh, and the title? That's referring to what prompted me to jump over here for lack of anything else to do (Rebecca seems to be unavailable for chatting at the moment). I have the TV on right now. Nothing on, really. I had tuned into a PBS channel based on the title of a program appearing on that TV Guide channel. I think it was called Supernatural Science or something like that. Instead I am watching the Windows 95 Starfield screensaver on that station. No, I am not exaggerating. That is literally what is on TV: a bloody screensaver -- and possibly the most boring screensaver ever, at that. I think that really shows a lack of effort.

I think the guys from Amabile may appreciate the following complaint:
Oh, my sciatica!
I somehow managed to get something that I think is a pinched nerve. At some point on Saturday, I started to get some kind of radiating numbness/tightness that starts in my lower left back somewhere around my tailbone that seems to travel along my left hamstring into the calf and down to the foot -- I assume that it's nerve related. For those of you who aren't really limber, it kind of feels like that unpleasantness you feel when you sit with your legs flat to the floor and lean forward to touch your toes without bending your knees. Except, it's correlated with movements that are nothing like that action. It sucks. I suck. Good thing I'm not a horse. I'd be in a bottle of Aylmer's by now. I just googled sciatica, and this is what I found:

Sciatica occurs most frequently in people between 30 and 50 years of age. Often a particular event or injury does not cause sciatica, but rather it tends to develop as a result of general wear and tear on the structures of the lower spine.

Awesome. I'm just entering into that demographic, so I guess I have another couple decades of this to look forward to. And know what else I can look forward to? Read on gentle reader!

Sciatica symptoms that may constitute a medical emergency include:

• Progressive weakness in the leg

• Bladder/bowel incontinence or dysfunction
  

I really like dreams; I find they are often very entertaining. They usually fall into one of two formats: the first, where I am experiencing the dream as myself, or the other, where I am watching events unfold as if on TV. In fact sometimes my dreams aren't just like TV, they are TV. The other day, for example, I dreamed up an entire episode of House. Generally the plot to each episode runs along the same lines, so I basically used those elements to fabricate a new episode. Now, bear in mind that I was asleep, which meant that, 1) the storyline was probably full of holes, but also 2) I didn't care. I mean, really, can you write a script for a 1 hour prime time show in your sleep?
I also generally have enough control over things in my dreams that it never gets out of hand, as in a nightmare. If it starts to go south, I usually do something like turn it from a 1st person perspective to a 3rd person perspective and decide that I'm actually watching a movie or something. Or I arbitrarily change things up a bit to give myself an edge. Last night, for example, I was being hunted by a bounty hunter. I think it had something to do with crossing the border. A handy skill to have when you are being hunted is the ability to make yourself undetectable, which is exactly what I suddenly became able to do. Then I'm not sure if I switched to a different but thematically related dream, or what, but I found myself with another related ability: I was barbequeing some sausages and hamburgers, and I was able to render invisible and otherwise undetectable the food I was cooking, allowing me to perplex a curious onlooker. That would be a superpower with a somewhat more limited scope of usefulness, I think.

It appears that I am a werewolf. I have no other explanation for it. As soon as the sun goes down, Pokey wants nothing to do with me. In fact, he actively retreats from me. I have checked to see if I have pointy ears and fur, but I can't detect any. But then, I heard somewhere that kids have extra-keen senses, so maybe it's something only he can see.

Rebecca had been reading the Harry Potter series to me when we would go on extended trips. I was timing it so that we'd get through a book before the movie came out, and I wouldn't want to start the next book until after the movie. It worked okay for the earlier books because in a 3 or 4 hour car ride (one-way), it was possible to get through them in one trip. The later epics took more than one trip. And the last two, well, I had to read most of the 6th book on my own. Fortunately, I was lagging behind the book releases so that the 7th book had been out for months by the time I finished the 6th book. Good thing too, because the 6th book didn't really stand alone -- at least, not if you wanted some kind of closure. I mean, sure, if you are into books where the main character just gets crapped on for 500 pages then you might check it out. But otherwise, you're kind of obligated to read the next book. I don't know how the hardcore fans handled it because I would have been pissed off after finishing the last page of the second last book.

I had been reading the books on the bus, and made the mistake of not finishing up the last couple of chapters of the last book so I would have something to read the next day. For those who haven't read the book, the last couple of chapters are basically where the fit hits the shan. As in other things in life, stopping halfway through the climax can have irritating consequences. In this case, I ended up with a case of the Mirandas that night because I kept compulsively thinking about the book. That, and Jude was kicking me in the head. I finished the book the next day, and am now looking for something else to read. Until I find it, I'm not as eager to take the bus.

I got through the NSERC application process intact. It felt like I was on a holiday this weekend with that thing taken care of. Today I set about the task of doing some number crunching that Ken assigned me a couple weeks ago that had been on the back-burner. I had written some programs to do this before, and fortunately, I had backed them up. Unfortunately, I wrote them a few years ago, and can't get them to run on the new lab computer we got in about a week ago. If you're reading this, and know anything about XML/XSLT, please let me know (I'm talking to you, Morgan)!
Let's see, what else...hmm. I have a head cold. That's new. It's also not very excellent.
This past weekend, I played 10 minutes of hockey with what I took to be old friends. I'm hedging on that because I only played in the context of a really vivid dream I had on Sunday morning. I actually can't play hockey to save my life, mostly because I can't skate to save my life. However, in the dream, I was a competent skater, and believe me, hockey seems much easier when you don't have to worry about falling on your face or flying into the boards because you can't stop. So yeah, that was kind of fun. I seem to remember that Mike Szekeres and Jeff DeBruyne were there. That's all I got on that one. Unfortunately, it will probably be up to Jude's uncle to teach him how to skate. He'll only get encouragement for field sports like football or football (US) from me; I only know how to run.

Is there a term that's sort of the opposite of penultimate (second-last)? A word meaning second from the beginning. I mean, besides "second", smartarse.
So I like the default layout. I may change it, though I may not, because the simple black looks nice and clean. It also didn't post my gmail address on the page as far as I could see either, so I think we have a keeper.
Alan and his posse, Kevin and Amanda, and John and Panic just left from our epic games night. Good times were had by all. I think I might suck at trivial pursuit though. For some reason, I contribute next to nothing for the Pop Culture Edition (part 2). Unless it's a question about 80s pop music, forget it. There should be a drop the needle game featuring pop music. I'd do well at that. It would also sell well. But the costs for licensing all that music would probably be prohibitive.
Okay. Well, it's time for bed. It's now technically Jude's birthday, though he wasn't born until after 2am. But I was definitely awake this time 1 year ago. That was a long night. This one will certainly be more restful.

So I have just started up this here alternate blog to replace the one on windows live. I had been meaning to do so for many moons now, but never really overcame the inertia until this evening, when a series of clicks starting at lifehacker.com ended up with me at google analytics. I guess google owns blogger. Neat, I guess. Except I don't want my gmail account to get published all over the internet, as it has so far been fairly spam-free.

So I guess this is a sort of test-post. I'll see whether this blogger account does what I want it to, and if it does, I'll move in for good.

Oh, and in other news, 1 year ago right now, Rebecca and I were playing Ziggity in the hospital room while she was in labour. Yay Pokey!