June 29: Do you have a fast car?

Knight Rider teaser poster OK, I so hadn't heard about this before: they're making a Knight Rider movie. That is freaking epic. There's no info about it to speak of (and it might even be a fake — who knows?), but I love the poster. KITT kinda looks like a Cylon, actually. I wonder if The Hoff is in it or not? Boy, do I ever love that eighties stuff is getting movie-ized. Transformers is out in less than a week and I'm so excited that I could just die. On the flip side of this stuff, of course, is the fear that we might've peaked as a creative society two decades ago, and we're doomed to just re-make old things until there's nothing left to say about them. It's sort of like peak oil, I guess.

Spice Girls - Say You'll Be ThereIn other, more horrifying news, the Spice Girls are back together. This is a horrendous idea on so many levels. I'm not going to lie: I thought the Spice Girls were insanely catchy. Stop is still one of the most infectious songs ever written. But this is a bad idea. Look at this picture here. Their reunion is basically going to be that, half a decade out of practice and with stretch marks. No thanks.

In the excitement department for this week: Janet and Katie fiiinally got cell phones. Janet got a product(red) Motorola KRZR, and Katie got a Nokia inscrutable-series-of-letters-and-numbers. The KRZR is a neat form factor, because it's super tall and skinny, and the Nokia can be held sideways and used like a traditional camera, which is pretty cool. Everyone take a moment to welcome them to the world of possible brain cancer due to radiation.

Anyway, I've got to return to working. Happy Canada Day weekend, folks!

June 23: Weekend Two

Well, I certainly managed to completely forget about writing here all week. Go me! We got the housework stuff done last weekend and had the real estate agent over on Monday to assess the house, which went well. Mom's made up her mind and decided to sell it, and thus begins another weekend of housework stuff. On Wednesday night, we went to look at a condo in Dartmouth, just to see what she thought of it. Since our house isn't even on the market yet, there's not really any chance of her getting that specific condo — she just wanted to see what they were really like. It was quite nice, actually, a loft with cathedral ceilings and all that jazz.

This weekend, we're tackling the downstairs bathroom (removing wallpaper, painting it, possibly flooring it) and the spare bedroom (painting it, possibly adding trim to it). It seems like you could fill up every weekend with stuff pretty much indefinitely. I guess we'll have to come up with an actual plan at some point.

Anyway, I have to go get something to eat and get started. Ciao.

June 16: Kuffa is awesome

Last night, we (me, Janet, Katie, David, Nick, Cheryl, Keddy, Christine, Steve) went to the annual Multicultural Festival. It was awesome — I love unknown foods! I had something called a kuffa. I can't find it on the Internet, which means it's probably not spelled that way, but I really liked it. It was a fried egg-shaped thing with meat and spices inside, and I am a big fan. I also tried a weird desert thing that was some sort of super-compressed pastry dipped in chocolate. Good times? You guessed it, had by all. The Multicultural Festival just rocks.

Today was day one of an intense clean-up-the-house-yeah-I-mean-it-this-time weekend that involved mucho yard work and some painting (at least, that's what I was involved in — lots of cleaning stuff happened inside while I was outside). Katie and David came out to help and I definitely wouldn't have gotten nearly as much done without them. Our yard was incredibly overgrown, mainly due to the fact that I'm inattentive and Mom's leg's still not back to normal. The grass/dandelion combo was halfway up my shins and took a really long time to mow. Meanwhile, Katie niced up our side garden (we have bark mulch!) and David pruned and mowed and trimmed. We also got the first layer of primer on the walls in Mom's room, the first of at least three to be painted. Things, generally, went well. I'm pleased (and exhausted).

Anyway, I am uber tired, so I'm going to get some sleep. Much painting remains to be done tomorrow. Ugh.

June 14: Croquet

I did something weird this evening and played a rousing game of croquet with Janet, Katie, David, and Keddy. We went out to the Ale House for cheap (greasy/unhealthy/delicious) burgers before hand and decided to go back to Janet and Katie's place to play Mario Party 8. However, the TV was unavailable and it was finally nice out, hence the croquet. We headed over to the baseball field at Hawthorne Elementary School and set up an impromptu, non-regulation croquet ... series of ... gate ... thingies. Um. Yeah. It was fun! I discovered that by drawing lines in the dirt of the baseball diamond — something I spent countless hours doing at that very field during my brief stint as a little leaguer — I could sort of steer the croquet ball into the gates. Sure, probably not legal within standard rules, but who cares? When you don't have skill, you have to strategize a little bit.

I, of course, lost anyway. After the game, we thought it'd be fun to go play on the playground, which was a fun, juvenile way to kill some time. I'm sure it was somewhat ridiculous to see five twenty-four year-olds throwing rocks at each other and leaping from platform to platform in an effort to avoid the lava, but it was a blast. I had a good time.

Moving along, in non-ridiculous news, Chirag and Taylor have birthed Chime.TV, which is a video aggregator site for lazy people. You can choose a channel and watch hours of videos without having to do anything. It's Wii-friendly and pretty easy to get the hang of, and it's sort of starting to make a name for itself online. If you like videos and are lazy, you should definitely check it out. Although I think it'll make it on its own, I'm sort of prodding it along in the background, trying to get the word out about it as much as I can. Help me out with that, will you?

Anyway, it's getting late and I have to get up early, so I guess I'll stop typing now. Until we meet again, Interwebs...until we meet again.

June 12: Hello, world

Heya. I'm back from Scotland (obviously — I got back on Saturday) and back in the swing of things. I keep remembering to update this site when I'm indisposed — on the bus to work, or driving somewhere — and promptly forgetting once I'm connected again. I'm just the worst when it comes to stuff like that. I really wish I was the sort of person that would be good at a GTD sort of thing, because I could certainly use it.

You see, I'm trying to get more organized. I want to stay on top of things, particularly my finances. I've started keeping track of all of my money again (as of yesterday) in the hopes of returning to my early 2005 budgetting glory, wherein I was putting 75% of my money into paying off my Dell laptop as quickly as humanly possible. It was great, but it takes a lot of dedication to do successfully. It's not just about getting rid of bad spending habits (like buying lunch every day)...it's about actually keeping track of where every dollar has actually gone. What's measured improves, they say. Wish me luck — I'm bad at sticking with things. I figured that writing about it here would give me the public shame factor to fear if I get lazy and stop doing it.

Anyway, I'm glad to be home and back to normal. I had a great time in Scotland, and it was fun seeing everyone, but it's always good to get home. It's been raining since Saturday, so I can't say I missed the weather here, but home is home. Everything seems to have finally come out in bloom while I was away — the little patch of woods behind our house has reached nearly rainforest proportions. Everything is so green! I love it. Our weather might suck for general outdoorsy enjoyment, but it certainly seems to be working out well for nature.

Speaking of outdoorsy enjoyment, the Multicultural Festival is this weekend. Keep your Friday evening free, because that's when everyone is going. If you're not working, you should totally show up. Het zal groot zijn*
(That's Dutch for 'It'll be great!'.)
!

June 08: Scrubs

Victoria has inflicted a horrible new addiction on me: Scrubs. Before an afternoon marathon earlier in the week, I had never actually watched it (other than a clip on YouTube called Man Love, via Alex). I'm definitely into it. The fact that the guy who plays Dr. Cox was one of the Bobs in Office Space merely multiplies its greatness. It's pretty funny — and yet again, I'm a good five years behind the rest of society. D'oh.

Anyway, my spontaneous trip to Scotland is just about over. I (figuratively) hop onto a plane tomorrow afternoon and I'm home by supper time. I'm going to miss this crazy island, but I'm sure I'll be back before too much longer. It's hard to resist the siren song of unlimited IRN-BRU.

June 06: More photos

Hey, all. I just got back from a trip up to Edinburgh and I put up a few photos.

June 01: Scotland update

Heya all. I'm still alive and still in Scotland. So far, I've been having a great time. I spent the first part of this week sort of go-go-going, so I've compensated by being pretty lazy over the past few days. Today and yesterday was mostly just Victoria and I. We took the bus into Glasgow yesterday and caught the first train from Glasgow Central Station — pretty spontaneous by my standards. It turns out that the first train just went to Paisley, so it was a pretty inefficient route. To paint things in terms of Halifax, it'd be like busing from Dartmouth to Halifax and then taking a train to Cole Harbour. Still, fun. Today, we went up to Xscape, a sort of sports/entertainment mall place with a nifty indoor ski hill and mini-golf, which of course I couldn't resist.

Plans for this weekend include a trip to the Glasgow Science Centre and bowling + dinner on Sunday with the whole gang (including John + Barbara, Maryrose's mom Rose, and the basic set of Scottishes). It'll be great.

Anyway, Brian and Maryrose and I are starting to watch Short Circuit 2, which is easily one of the greatest movies of all time, so I should go. How can I resist Johnny 5?