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.