Category Archives: Uncategorized

*not to be confused with our other favourite pasttime: hookers and blow.

So, as most of you are probably aware, last week was my 35th birthday. Rather uneventful day. I slept. I lounged for a couple hours. I worked until midnight. Well, we decided that this past Saturday we’d go out for dinner to celebrate. The choices were pretty simple: Applebee’s or Hooters – both having opened recently in the Forest City. The winner was Hooter’s – for no other reason than neither of us had ever ate at Hooters before. I’d heard many great things about their chicken wings so I was quite looking forward to it.

Okay, I can’t talk about Hooters without talking about the Hooters’ Girls. I think I’ll sum it tidily with this one word: meh. Sure, they had decent racks on them but none of them were terribly beautiful and the nylon orange shorts were rather hideous.

Now, about the food. Hang on…I’ve got the perfect word for it: meh. We both found the chicken wings to be rather greasy and, while we ordered them as hot, we’re pretty sure they didn’t deliver hot. I ordered a Buffalo chicken sandwich (hot) that came with fries. It actually was hot. Not burn your tastebuds hot, but an okay kick to it. I’ve had much hotter. It was a huge chicken breast, but, like the wings, was greasy – although not as greasy as the wings. Nikki had a Smothered Chicken sandwich which she said was quite good. She found the fries to be greasy as well but I didn’t think they were that bad.

If we were with a group of people that wanted to go to Hooters, we would probably tag along, but I don’t think we’ll be going out of our way to eat there again. On a scale of 1 to 5, I give Hooters a good solid meh.

Alright, so that covered the Hooters part of the title, now on to the Dough part. This morning, rather nicely after I had just awoke, the phone rings. I look down at the caller ID and see “Corus”. Now I immediately realize what this is but couldn’t quite figure out what the hell they were calling us for.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is Nicola there please?”

“Sorry, she’s not available, can I take a message?”

“Sure, this is {insert forgotten name here} from FM96. She entered the Freeloader draw for Future Shop and she was one of the winners. She’s won a $200 gift card for Future Shop”

“Most excellent!” (Yes, I really said Most Excellent, which, oddly enough, was more excited than I sounded when I won the FM96 $10K Payday back in ’01)

So yeah…Nikki won a $200 FS gift card. She hasn’t decided what she wants to spend it on, but it really sounds like she wants a Nintendo Wii. Wii’ll see….

So this past Friday we were doing our weekly Costco spree and what did they have there? Pop Shoppe pop! For those of you that are old enough, you may remember The Pop Shoppe. It was a place founded here in London where you would go to buy pop. They did all the bottling on site and sold it directly to the customer. You would go in, pick up an empty plastic case and fill it with your choice of flavours. If I remember correctly they had around 20-30 flavours of pop including Black Cherry, Cream Soda, and Lime Rickey.

Well, around the mid ’80s Pop Shoppe fell on hard times and closed. It turns out that in 2004 a guy resurrected the brand. Apparently Sam’s Club started selling it last year but this is the first time I’ve seen it in Costco. Unfortunately, the “choose your own flavours” method has gone the way of the dinosaur. A case of 24 355ml bottles is $9.99. You get 6 flavours. Yeah, it’s a premium price but the case I bought was pure nostalgia. I certainly wouldn’t be buying it again at that price, but the trip down memory lane was definitely worth the price.

So…yesterday morning Firefox started doin’ wonky things on me. Namely – it refused to remember its window settings or toolbar settings. Most annoying. Useable, but annoying. My computer was starting to get kinda slow on bootup anyway so I figured it was about time to reformat and reinstall anyway.

And SINCE I was reformatting and reinstalling anyway, why not go up to the RC1 version of Windows Vista – the next operating system from the folks in Redmond. Well…I ran into a little problem. The DVDs I burned of Vista didn’t quite work. I *STILL* don’t know why, but it’s beginning to look like a LOT of DVDs I burned before the reformat didn’t work. Man that’s a lot of pr0n down the drain. 😉 Seriously though – it may be a HUGE bummer as I’ve burned off all the old 8mm video tapes I imported into the computer. If I end up having to redo all that….fuck. That’s all I’ve got to say about that.

So, okay, no Vista. Reinstall XP, install the HP stuff (drivers and shit), then go to install Office. The disc won’t read. Jeebus. Try it in Nikki’s computer. It appears to read from there. Cool – time to install over the network. Slow as hell, but it works. Usually. This time? Nay. It got stuck on a file. Okay. Let’s make a copy of the disc and go from there. Well, while Nikki’s computer was taking just short of forever copying one CD, I tried burning off ANOTHER copy (this is #3) of Vista RC1. This one actually works! OKAY! Well, since all I’ve managed to install is some drivers, let’s go for Vista. Fire it up and choose upgrade. When I go to bed it’s happily upgrading away. In the mean time, Nikki’s computer FINALLY finished copying one CD. Only took about 90 minutes. Largely due, I suspect, to corrupt files and NOT the speed of her computer.

I wake up this morning, bring Alex out to the living room and am met with a eerie silence. No computer fans. Hmmm….Fire up the computer and it starts to boot into Vista before kicking out an error that says the upgrade wasn’t successful and to click to roll back to previous version. Click. Minutes pass of it doing stuff. Error message saying it couldn’t roll back properly or something. Drop in the Vista DVD and reboot. Format the partition again and reinstall from scratch. Success! WooHoo! I’m running Vista.

Now for the office install…drop in the newly created CD and fire it up. The install starts…and hangs. No go.

Thank god for torrent sites. 3 hours and one newly downloaded version of MS Office AIO and I’m up and running.

So it’s now early Sunday evening and I have MOST of my old software installed. I have a few more programs to install. Unfortunately, there’s a TON of software I usually run that just simply won’t run on Vista yet. This happens to include both Alcohol 120 and Nero, the two best burning programs out there. Makes it tricky to burn discs. I think Vista burns DVDs natively but I’m not 100% on that. Also, almost none of my Stardock software runs yet. Object Dock Plus DID run until I loaded in my theme and broke it. I think it’s probably my MSN dock that’s killing it, but I don’t know. I’ll play with that more later.

How’s Vista you ask? Pretty freakin’ cool. Think of it as XP’s cooler big brother. There’s been plenty of “under the hood” changes – especially to security – which are supposed to make this a far better operating system. Me? I turned off most of the “security” features right off. Kinda annoying. The UI, in my opinion, is a gazillion times better than XP.

So that’s where I stand right now – I’m running Vista RC1 with most apps installed and running. Anxiously awaiting fixes for some others and awaiting the official 2007 release of Vista and the inevitable crack/workaround for those of us that absolutely, flat out REFUSE to pay more for the operating system than a lot of people pay for their computers. The retail cost of Vista Ultimate is reportedly around the $600-700CAD range. Fuck. That.

Here’s something you’re not going to read me talking about very often – sports.

21 years ago I, like millions of others, was captivated by a brash young man who dared defy convention with his splashy yellows and flamboyant pinks. The courts of Wimbledon and the US Open would never be the same. He was Nike’s Golden Child of tennis. My friends and I would hit the courts, inspired by his success. Today, Andre Agassi retired from professional tennis after losing in the 3rd round of the US Open to Benjamin Becker. Those of you that know me, know I’m not much of a sports person. Other than NASCAR I don’t really watch any sports. I do enjoy basketball, but purely as a spectator sport. The only sport I ever really enjoyed playing growing up was tennis – and I owe a lot of that enjoyment to Agassi.

Thanks to a combination of the NASCAR race being an evening race tonight and nothing else really on this afternoon, I had the US Open on. It happened to be the Agassi/Becker match. At the end of the match the crowd was on its feet for an incredible standing ovation. Agassi broke down during the ovation but was able to more-or-less compose himself during the Becker interview to thank all his fans. I suppose everyone has a sports idol growing up, and often into adulthood. While I didn’t follow much tennis after high school, Agassi was definitely that idol for me. So for that, I say, “Thank You Andre!”

Okay, it seems as if some posts are appearing and disappearing at random. It’s very odd and I’m not sure why it’s doing it.

Alrighty. I’m more rested now. As I mentioned in the last post, it was a brutal day yesterday. But, before we get to that, let’s step back to Wednesday night. Melinda was in town for a final night of drunken bowling at Palasad before packing up and moving off the the U.K. for two years to teach. I had planned on having a great time that night but then my Mom gets the call that the surgery is first thing Thursday morning. So I didn’t figure I’d be out too late now that I have to be at the hospital at 6am. Yeah, so we ended up basically closing the place. Never did get any bowling done though. Just sat around talking. It was great to see come current and former Stream people out. Being off on parental leave, I don’t see too many people. Tim made it out, as did John & Laura. Liz came out for a bit with her friend Terry. Kate drove in from out of town in absolutely horrible weather to have some drinks with us. Chase & Tony made it and brought along Tony’s girlfriend Michelle. We had an absolutely amazing time. And, for those of you that know Ledawit, NEVER let her hold your passport! (j/k Ledawit – the way I hear it, it was a shared responsibility!)

So, 5am rolls around and the alarm goes off. My mom picks me up and we head off the hospital to be there for 6am. We get registered and are sent down to another waiting room. After a few minutes there, we’re taken to the surgery “intake” room. There, my mom had to get into the gown, and into the bed. A nurse came along and took some blood, started an IV, etc. So about 7:40 or so they take her away and I wander back the waiting room to wait. Well, actually, I wandered up to the cafeteria to get some breakfast. After waiting for the cafeteria to open, I had their version of the Bacon ‘N Egg McMuffin and their version of a hashbrown. Meh. It was food. I needed food.

The surgery was expected to last between 4 and 4-1/2 hours. So I had a while to wait. I sat down and broke out the laptop. Unfortunately, no wireless signal anywhere in the hospital. Which really sucks. It would have been a lot easier to pass the time playing poker. So anyway, I read through Barry Greenstein’s book, Ace on the River. Excellent read. I also played some World Series of Poker video game. But, mostly, I waited. And waited.

Around 1:30 the Doctor came out and let me know that the surgery went well. He believes that the cancer was localized and that he excised it all. She was just being moved into recovery and it would still be a couple hours yet before she was awake. He recommended (and my stomach whole-heartedly agreed), that now would be a good time to grab a bite to eat. So I headed up to the cafeteria to make some phone calls and have some food.

After that, I headed back down to the waiting room so I’d be there when they called me. I waited. And waited. You know, this makes me realize, “waiting rooms” are quite possibly one of THE MOST apt named places on the planet. As we approached 3:30 every time the phone would ring, I’d expect the volunteer to call out my Mom’s name. Nope. Then he’s done at 4:00pm. They put the phone up on the desk and expect us to answer it. So around 4:20 the phone rings and some dude answers it. As he’s talking to the voice on the other end, I see my Mom rolling by outside the room. They stop and come in and retrieve me and we head up to her room. They get her all settled in and I get to visit for a bit. While, actually, I suppose I could have visited until 8pm as that’s when visiting hours end but my mom was still VERY much out of it. When she wasn’t sleeping, she was hard to understand due to the drugs. I left the hospital around 5:15 or so and headed home.

when I got home, I talked to Nikki for a few minutes, played with Alex for a few minutes, Called my Aunt & Uncle to let them know all went well, then went to bed.

I slept until about 11:00pm when Nikki came to bed. We talked for a bit then, being wide awake, I got up and caught up on the days ‘net activities before heading back to bed around 3am. Fortunately, Alex slept in today until 8am. So, I’m up. I’m still a little bit tired, but definitely more rested than I was yesterday.

Hey all, Just a quick note to let you know that my Mom had surgery today to remove the upper 1/3rd of one of her lungs to removed some cancer. Needless to say, it’s been a very physically and emotionally draining day for me. The surgery went well however and she is recovering nicely. I’m pretty wiped so I’ll post more about the day later.

I am so sore right now. I had anticipated being sore tonight but not nearly as sore as I really am. You see, today I went over to Jen & Mike’s to help Mike demolish part of their 3rd floor. The plan was to demolish the baby’s room, the bathroom, and the hallway. And be demolish -we’re talking right down to the studs. Oh, and it’s plaster, not drywall. So it was MESSY. We all had masks on and I’m sure they helped immensely but I think I still managed to inhale around five pounds of plaster dust. So, as I mentioned, I planned on being sore – lots of lifting, ripping down wood, plaster, etc. but then things changed.

The baby’s room used to be a kitchen, complete with a row of cupboards above where the sink used to be (that was removed ages ago). We took down the cupboards and put them out on the back balcony, standing up. There were 6 doors so it was probably a good 10′ long. I said to them, “I don’t know guys. The wind may blow this over.” They poo-pooed the idea and we went back to work.

Later, I’m out dumping a pail of plaster into the trash bin below when, sure enough, the wind blows over the cupboards. I didnt even see it coming. It struck my right arm then my right leg before nicking my one toe and giving it a small cut. My arm and leg definitely took the brunt of the blow. Both of them now have HUGE welts and damn nice bruises. That really took the wind out of my sails.

While it may seem incredibly unlucky that the 5% of the time I happened to be in the position where it could have struck me it did; I actually consider myself VERY lucky. If I had been over a bit more or bent over then cupboards could very easily have struck me on the head (not that getting hit there would do any damage) and knock me off the 3rd floor balcony into a huge trash bin filled with sharp plaster and nails on the ground below. Nikki could have been rich!

Well, it turns out there WAS death and carnage on the 401. Seems like some dumbass decided to drive his truck the wrong way down the 401. Must have been playing too much Burnout 3: Takedown or somethin’. If so inclined, you can read about it here: London Free Press.

Just a quick note wishing Nikki a very Happy Anniversary. It’s been 4 years since we arbitrarily delcared June 1st as our anniversary date. She won’t remember this of course, but a Happy Anniversary to her none-the-less. I love you very very much.

Today’s London Free Press has an article on the expansion that’s going on at White Oaks Mall. The main anchor of the expansion is a fashion store called H&M. I saw this place at Eaton Centre in Toronto when we were there a couple months back. Decent clothes for men, women and children. Looking forward to that. BUT THE BIG NEWS….

Applebee’s is coming to London. FINALLY!!!!! First the announcement last year that we’re getting a Hooter’s (for the wings pervert. Get your mind out of the gutter) and now an Applebee’s! The London restaurant scene is now complete. If they wanted to open a Chili’s or a TGIFriday’s I’d probably eat there, but I’m not gonna lose sleep over it.

Happy Mommy’s Day Mom!

Alex also asked me to pass along a BIG Happy Mommy’s Day (though he’s still stuggling with the word Mommy) to his Mommy and has Grandmas!

R.I.P. – Gizmo (1998-2006)

My mom just let me know that her one ferret, Gizmo, died. We got him back in ’98 as a gift for me but he quickly became my mom’s ferret. He was an albino ferret and, as such, was stone deaf. He was incredibly funny to play with though. And, unlike most ferrets, he wasn’t a biter at all. Instead he would shower you with kisses.

The average age of a ferret is 6 or 7 years so he lived a full life. Silent, but full.

Wow!

Last night, Jen & Mike invited us over to their place for a full seven-course meal that Jen practically made from scratch. About the only things she didn’t was bake the bread, slaughter and butcher the cow, catch the fish, or grow the vegetables! EVERYTHING else was made pretty much from scratch!

First, before I begin to describe the culinary delights we partook in, let me apologize to Jen – I am absolutely going to BUTCHER the proper names and everything that was in each course, but I’m hoping that I’ll be able to convey through my words how delicious everything was.

Okay, the first course was an bread-based appetizer that had this absolutely delicious spread on it, along with a strip of roasted red pepper. Small, but oh-so-tasty! Besides, we had a seemingly endless plate of Portugese bread.

The next course was a salad with a home-made herb-based vinagarette dressing. Yummy. Oh yeah, and more Portugese bread. 🙂

Next up was the soup. It was called ‘Sane Mushroom Soup’ (as opposed to being insane). Okay, now those of you that know me well know that I don’t touch Cream of Anything soup – especially mushroom! Ewww. Icky. Let me be the first to say – this was NOTHING like what Campbell’s or any other soup company makes. The soup itself was made up of portabello and one other type of mushroom (I forget). It then had a garnish of trouffles and trouffle oil (the mushroom trouffle, not the dessert trouffle). Prior to my first spoon full, I was hesitant, but that quickly disappeared.

Three down, four to go. Next up was a delightful pasta plate with homemade pasta sauce, homemade ravioli with spinach inside it. Yum yum yum!

Now, around this time, Nikki was starting to lose steam. She was up fairly early and didn’t have a nap in the afternoon like I did. Also, prior to starting to eat, she wasn’t feeling well. Once she started to eat though, she felt better. Yet, oddly enough, she denies that her ill feelings had anything to do with hunger. Weird huh?

Alright, we’re starting to get into the main stuff now. Next up – fish. Fish?!?! Ugh. Salmon????? Ugh-ier!!! Jen KNOWS I don’t like fish, but I told her I’d at least try it. She was very cool about it. Oh, the salmon was served with a spicy pesto sauce. The salmon was grilled, and, much to my surprise, didn’t taste the least bit fishy. With the pesto, it went down no problem and I finished off the entire portion.

We’ve now reached the main entrée: Beef Tenderloin steaks. These were served with red potatoes and aspargus. Now, we’ve had these steaks before at Jen’s, and let me tell you, they are absolutely the BEST steaks I’ve ever had. Last night was no exception.

Alirght, we’ve polished off six courses, and I think I’ve probably done in half a loaf of scrumptious Portugese bread. Everyone is staring to get full! But wait, there’s still dessert to come! It was a German chocolate cake. I’m not a big sweets/chocolate person and most cakes I usually find too rich to enjoy. Once again, Jen comes through with a delicious dessert. Now, as I said, we were all getting pretty full, but I managed to finish off dessert as well. Wow. Sooo full. There were still two pieces of bread left, but I was too full to enjoy any more bread.

From the bottom of my stomach, thank you Jen & Mike for an absolutely delicious dinner! Nikki’s at work right now, but I know she enjoyed it as well and thanks you too!