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Pros:

• The feeling you get when you think you’re ready.

Cons:

• Missing the Jeff Martin concert.
• Missing the Jeff Martin concert with surprise guest Oliver Black opening up. (insert Darth Vader’s ‘Nooooooo!’ yell from Episode III here)
• Finding out that 85% of the questions on the exam were the same ones in the three test the Prof had in class.

Pros (again):

• Realizing that you definitely aced the exam…but you could have made it out to the concert.

Lesson Learned:

• Never stop rocking. Go to the concerts no matter what or a magical night will escape you.

http://www.tulipfestival.ca/en/Concerts/

Check out the concerts coming to town for the Tulip Festival!

I will be out on May 12 to see the Novaks and the Trews if anyone wants to join.

As for the rest of the lineup..can’t say I’m overly interested. I think I shall just pick up an evening pass for this Tulip Festival.

I also don’t care how they put all the musical acts during the weekend…ESPECIALLY during the long weekend in May. We all know that’s not a time to hang around inside the city. 😉

More commonly known as the Agelaius phoeniceus (who am I kidding…who uses these words?), this little fellow has been hopping to and from the cars in the park and ride lot for the past few weeks.

At first, I thought “Hey, that’s pretty neat. A bird who actually hops around on the mirrors and hoods of a car. It looks like it’s trying to get its reflection!” This bird doesn’t even bother flying around. Perhaps it is wounded somewhat?

Then when the bus pulled out today and I looked back at my car, I noticed the bird had moved to my car and then I realized this is where all this bird shit is coming from every day on my car.

Red-winged blackbird, you’re going down! I’m thinking of putting some glue on the mirrors.

In other bird news, Mom was saying how she heard some morning doves near my house when she up here…turns out there is a morning dove nest right next to the neighbour’s door. The bird stays there constantly as it is protecting its eggs. Craziness. I live in a zoo!

At least the rabbits seem to have disappeared…

I was talking with a woman at work today and she was talking about allergies and how traditional medicine never helped her son out with his allergies, but someone mentioned they should try an accupuncturist.

She was not a believer in the alternative medicines, but she gave it a shot, and it worked.

Her son also had migraines so bad that he would faint and all the doctors in the area could not figure out how to cure it. They tried medicine after medicine after medicine. She went to the accupuncturist and after ten visits with him, he was cured. No migraines anymore.

She also has a daughter who was allergic to cats and after going to accupuncture, she now has two cats.

She had awful pains in her feet at one point in her life and went to the accupuncturist. Afterwards, no pain.

You all know me and medicine…I stay away from it. But I know there are a lot of you out there that suffer from allergies, migraines, etc.

I can say that after hearing these stories, I am more open to trying alternative medicines like accupuncture. They sound pretty wild.

She was a sceptic when she first went and let them know it. All they said was if it doesn’t cure them, they can have their money back. You have to know it’s going to work if you’re going to give a guarantee like that!

So, to all those out there reading this and have something that has been bothering them and the traditional doctors can’t cure it…try your hand at alternative medicines.

Situation: You’re at a 75th birthday party for your grandmother.
The people: A mixture of people that are old and young.
The talk:

Prety well everyone over 60 at this party: “Ryan, I haven’t seen you since you were this high!” (motions to their knee level)
Ryan: “Oh really.”

Then they walk away and I don’t even know their name because I was so young that I don’t remember.

A message to us all. When you’re going to comment that you haven’t seen a person since they were ‘this’ high’, do them a favour and tell them your full name, and how you are related to said person. It helps. Otherwise, you just have some blogger out there commenting on all the older people he met on the weekend but don’t know who they are.

I love when you see this massive arrangement of food laid out for you and you think “Alright, it’s feeding time!”

Then you begin to approach it methodically. Not too many carrots, a little turnips, oh, alright, I’ll take two scoops of potatoes. Let’s move onto the parsnips, and hey, is that brocolli? Ok, ok, we’re getting towards the end, WHOA, coleslaw! I don’t need that because right next to it is the STUFFING. MMMM…stuffing. No one will notice if I take two scoops of…ah crap, someone is eyeing up how much stuffing I’m taking. Better just put that extra scoop onto their plate. They’ll think I’m nice. Alright, onto the meat. Oh, here’s some ham and turkey! Bonus! Oh, no one will mind if I take that one with the skin on it. No one likes skin. Mini-pickles! Yum! A few buns here and there also.

Before you know it, the plate that you were trying to lay out nicely has become a disaster area with some potatoes mixing into the turnips and god knows what that monstrosity over on the far edge of the plate is. It’s a cross between brocolli, some sort of baked good and resembles The Blob. Then you top it all with gravy because you can’t really find the meat anymore and it just holds it together a little better.

Instead of a nice turkey dinner, you now have Easter Ghoulash on a plate. Top that off with everyone shovelling it in in 3 minutes or less and you have the typical North American turkey dinner. I say North American because I have eaten with some European families and they like these things to spread out over three days. In those cases I feel dumb for shovelling down the plate so I have to get another one just to feel like part of the crowd. Europeans are strange that way. 😉

I hope everyone had a similar experience when it came to Easter dinner. I know Mel and Mike were having an army over at their place so I can only assume that they also encountered this phenomenon.

I wonder if it would just be easier to actually MAKE a ghoulash for dinner.

Special thanks to Paul who pointed out this brilliant show coming out (hopefully?)

http://www.muppetcentral.com/news/2005/090505.shtml

Oh my, oh my.

It was a BEEEEAUTIFUL day here in Ottawa yesterday so we all know what that means. As soon as I got home, the BBQ came out, and beers were cracked.

I hooked up the BBQ in the backyard (which is our second BBQ at the house courtesy of Mike and Carrie’s) and it was all going well until Mike got home and mentioned that he had had problems with it in the past and that flames used to come out from the bottom. I figured I had somehow fixed it until I came back out and the thing was afire near the controls. Swift thinking of my part saved the neighbourhood as I braved my hands getting near the controls to turn it off. I’m making it sound worse than it was. It really wasn’t that bad. But I won’t be using it until it’s fixed.

By the way, there was a half eaten mouse in the yard in front of the BBQ. YUM! I just flung it over the fence at the pizza shop. Hopefully they get a nice topping out of it. Ewww.

Anyhow, my story really revolves around these AMAZING sausages I picked up. These were the ones that are so big, they stick outside the bun. I’ve only had those from the sausage vendors, not in my own home! I could not get over how good these sausages were. I proclaimed to Mike that I would never buy Johnsonville or any other pre-packaged six inch junk any longer. Go big or go home.

Because I was in such a great mood from the sausages (and let’s not forget the new Sam Robert disc I picked up), we called Eric over for an impromptu listening party of the new Jeff Martin album (which is excellent by the way…vintage Tea Party stuff really. Sounds like Splendor Solis and Edges) and popped in the Sam Roberts album afterwards.

All in all, an excellent night and I don’t think that will happen again tonight, but who knows? I heard it’s supposed to go up to 21 degrees today. Holy crap. Perhaps I’ll just get my bike ready to go out.